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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
Release date: October 2025
Now shipping!

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

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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sister story promo with railroad tracks and text excerpt

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 […]

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head cheese deformed on light blue background with sandwich promotional text

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 […]

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Hope, an Emily Dickinson Erasure Poem by Koss on coarse burlap background in black and white.

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 […]

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photo of published poem: Emma Lazarus's Outing, a poem by Koss in Sinister Wisdom

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 […]

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poetry photo with raw hamburger and orange text--poem by Koss in Bending Genres--Dinner at the Brady's

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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swing set photo in sepia with flint girl handcuffed on dort highway text

South Florida Poetry Journal #25 Poem

Honored to have a disturbing but important poem in South Florida Poetry Journal’s latest issue (#25). #CW. So grateful to the editors for publishing. Read it along with a bunch of great work and sound files here.

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cartoony watercolor in red, orange, yellow and blue of woman slinging snakes while sucking sludge from the void

Drawing and Grief

I’ve been organizing and digging through years of debris as I figure out what I want my life to look like going forward. Haven’t been able to write lately but have been making cards and paper art, which does something else creatively. It’s nice to be outside of language right now. Below, a drawing of […]

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