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Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect – Now Shipping!

Dancing backwards towards pluperfect
by Koss
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.
Blog Posts
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Bending Genres Issue 28 | Flash Fiction
How lucky can I be? Bending Genres included a flash, Sister Story, which I wrote in my twenties called Sister Story in issue 28. This is a difficult piece about how secrets get buried in marriage, stories, and language itself. I’m very grateful to Meg Tuite, David O’Connor, Robert Vaughan, and the rest of the […]
Schuylkill Valley Dispatches | Sandwich
Happy to have this experimental writing, Sandwich, in Schuylkill Valley Dispatches, an online feature of Schuylkill Valley Magazine. It is not holy, but there is still time to be holy. I’m big on validation along with all the transcendental stuff. I’ve got another piece coming out this month (August 2022) in the Schuylkill Valley print […]
Anvil Tongue | Emily Dickinson Poems | Wuthering Heights Erasures
Happy to be included in this release of Anvil Tongue, a website and book publisher run by Daniel Ryan. An Emily Dickinson erasure on hope, a written poem, and some visual word art based on Wuthering Heights are included. The work is in my manuscript about the suicide of a person dear to me. Some […]
Sinister Wisdom Poems
I am happy to get two poems in Sinister Wisdom, a lesbian poetry journal that has existed for decades. This issue was mostly dedicated to disabled writers and curated, but two of my poems were picked up by the editor. One is about my great-great-grandmother who died in Eloise, an asylum in Wayne County. Her […]
Bending Genres | Brady Bunch Poem
I’m so honored to have another poem published on Bending Genres. This one is about the Brady Bunch, and, oh, how the grass can be greener. I wrote this when I was 25. It was rejected plenty, but I recently sent it out and got lucky. Also, see my page about Toby and Lady, a […]
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