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Koss Poetry & Art

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Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect – Now Shipping!

cover aerial view of book dancing backwards towards pluperfect by koss with brown tones and black wire and telephone pole with birds

Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect

by Koss

Diode Contest Winner and Lambda Literary Lammy Lesbian Poetry Finalist (2025)
Published by Diode Editions
Shipping in October 2024

Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect is a poetic assemblage of a life sown outside the predictability of middle-class, straight America, one where the aftermath of repeated trauma and loss is allayed by unexpected moments of connection, empathy, and love.

Koss pens inventive textual routes through life transits, forging head-on through the debris with unflinching vision and grit in a timbre that shifts from existential dread to dark comedy. Part dirge and part survival story, Dancing Backwards transmutes the rubble of trauma, abandonment, grief, and suicide loss into a queer, hybrid elixir, their lived story worthy of telling.

PURCHASE a signed copy


Blog Posts

dark hallway in abandoned building

Meg Tuite | White Van Review

In White Van, Tuite creates her own genre of darkness, of inescapable trauma drawn in vignettes that smear into a miasma of despair. Point of view shifts and blurs, creating a disembodied, dissociative vibe.

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Petrichor publication promo with poem excerpt by Koss on pink background with pink text

Petrichor Magazine Issue 21 Poetry

Petrichor Issue 21 is full of interesting writing and includes a number of great visual art pieces. My work is an ekphrastic poem about Joan Mitchell’s “The Hudson” painting from the 50s, called “The Hudson Looks Different.” Also included is an asemic art or writing piece, made from old journals and sketchbooks, a palimpsest of […]

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Gone Lawn flash publication with cabbage moon face by Koss--a green moon on black background

Gone Lawn Issue 46 | Flash | Koss

Honored to have cover art and flash in Gone Lawn Issue 46. The artwork is hand drawn, then enhanced digitally. The flash, “The Dictations of Cabbages,” is, I think, a COVID persona piece written in the voice of a carrot on the moon. Okay, I hope I didn’t spoil it. It’s unlike anything I’ve written. […]

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Gone Lawn best of the net nominations 2023, black background with colored text for nominees

Gone Lawn Best of the Net Nominations 2023

Really honored to have my zuihitsu poem, “Again: Holidays” nominated for the 2023 Best of the Net anthology for the poetry category. Very grateful to Owen Wyke and Amy Barnes for the nomination.

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Outlook Springs Best of the Net Nominations 2023 promo black background with nominee names, ghost with glasses, and logo

Outlook Springs Best of the Net Nominations 2023

Very pleased and surprised to be among Outlook Springs Best of the Net nominees for 2023. My poem, if William Burroughs Were Your Secretary, published in Outlook Springs print journal and online, was nominated. There’s lots of great poetry and fiction you can find on their site. Check out the print issue and my sound […]

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red hillside cliffs with text from an eco-poem by Koss in Mom Egg Review

Mom Egg Review | Eco-Poetry Folio

Surprised and happy to be included in Mom Egg Review’s online eco-poetry-themed folio. It includes a great selection of poets, so be sure to read the whole issue here, and find my work here. The poems in this portfolio, curated by Cindy Veachy and Jennifer Martelli, are mother-ecological pieces with a range of poetic expressions.

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black and white feet photo with red text indicating poem published in rat's ass review

Rat’s Ass Review Fall & Winter 2022 | List Poem

Happy to have a list poem included in Rat’s Ass Review’s Fall/Winter 2022 issue, “Ten Things to Remember About Me When I’m Dead,” a darkly funny piece that shares a few special things about me. I love list poems (also called inventory or catalog poems), which, in many cases, are zuihitsu poems with constraints. One […]

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black and white tornado watercolor in eat the storms journal

Eat the Storms Inaugural Issue | Artwork by Koss

Honored to have tornado artwork (a watercolor) in the first Eat the Storms literary print journal, a project of the international Eat the Storms Poetry Podcast (from Ireland). It’s a fine-quality journal with glossy pages and color work–plus lots of great writing. Eat the Storms Podcast and Eat the Storms Journal are edited/curated by Damien […]

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indigenous chief on horse statue alongside a poem by koss called "Telemother"

Schuylkill Valley Journal | Koss Telemother Poem

So grateful for this publication in Schuylkill Valley Journal, Volume 54, Spring Summer 2022, of “Telemother,” a mother poem I wrote in my twenties (it has been refined). This is such a handsome issue. When humans kill themselves off and the apes learn to read, they’ll find this in an abandoned used bookstore and love […]

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axe in stump with text and excerpt from a koss poem, Economies, in San Pedro River Review

San Pedro River Review | Poems About Ancestors

Honored to be included in the latest San Pedro River Review (Vol. 14 No.2) in the company of some great poets. This is a long poem about my great-grandmother, West Virginia logging, labor, and my southern roots. I will update this with the actual poem in the near future, but here’s the link to buy […]

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koss poem called hue sung spelled out

Red Ogre Review | Koss Prose Poem

I’m honored to have a strange, mystical synesthetic poem, “Hue Sung,” in the latest issue of Red Ogre Review. There’s an eclectic mix of work in this issue, including art, prose poems, and poems. This piece will also be in their fall anthology. The acceptance came fast and the piece was up quickly. I love […]

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red brick church and steeple foregrounded with cemetary against a blue sky

Hyacinth Review | Photographs

Hyacinth, a gorgeous new journal that publishes a range of poetry, photography, and art, published a suite of photographs, August, on August 11, the anniversary of Max’s suicide. Three of these were taken with her by my side a couple of days before she died. Two were shot shortly after. One angel piece also appeared […]

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