
Koss Poetry & Art
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Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect – Now Shipping!

Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect
by Koss
Diode Contest Winner and Lambda Literary Lammy Lesbian Poetry Finalist (2025)
Published by Diode Editions
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.
Blog Posts
Boats Against the Current – Poetry – Koss
Boats Against the Current is a wonderfully designed, promising new journal founded by McKenna Themm, a poet and managing editor of the LA Review. Boats Against the Current Magazine is an online journal dedicated to poetry. My poem explores grief as told through the lifespan and habits of crickets. Read it here, and if you’re […]
Alien Buddha – Publication
I’m very behind in blog posts but was happy to have three poems published in Alien Buddha at the end of January 2022. These are pieces from my manuscript, One for Sorrow, and address domestic violence, one, queers and the church–a tough sell for the lit world–so very grateful for the publication. Alien Buddha publishes […]
Done 2021 | Water-Soluble Crayon on Crossword Poem
Done, 2021, a visual poem on newsprint crossword—created by moi at the end of the year. I’ve been depriving myself of color for a long time. Here’s a new start to occasional color. Happy New Year!
Moist Poetry Journal | Poem by Koss
This is nearly a month late, but I’ve been struggling with a photo I bought of Harold’s hearse (from the movie Harold and Maude) and finally finished it today. Was pleased to get accepted into Moist Poetry Journal, a queerish journal and feminist space started by Han Vanderhart. This particular sequence of poems was guest […]
Indecision | Koss | Crossword Art
Sometimes less is more. Sometimes I can’t believe in language. But all that really matters is the pencil, the brush, and this moment. Check out some of my other crossword poems and art in my blog. You can also navigate by the categories. Thanks for visiting.
Celestial Work | Koss | Crossword Poem
Another crossword poem/drawing. It’s made of graphite crayon, pencil and washes. Check out some other recent posts for more.
Calves, a Crossword Poem
Another crossword poem (or the crossword list). Graphite and liquid graphite on mounted crossword poem.
Schuylkill Valley Journal | Dispatches | Publication
Very happy to have this experimental writing, Because You Are Gone: I Dream You Laughing in Schuylkill Valley Journal Dispatches. When Schuylkill editor Rob Kaniuk wrote me and said it was “kick ass,” it confirmed my suspicion it was finished and gives me the confidence to stay strange (and experimental). Schuylkill’s Dispatches is an online […]
Chiron Review 124 | Poetry
Very happy to have poems in Chiron Review 124. Love this cover art. Chiron is a 40+ year-old lit mag publishing writers like Marge Piercy, Lyn Lifshin and Charles Bukowski. It was created by Michael Hathaway in 1981 and was published in a tabloid format, as many journals were then. I’m so thrilled to be […]
Gone Lawn | Koss | Zuihitsu Poem
Thrilled to have poetry in Gone Lawn #42. Thank you @OwenKaelan and @amygcb! There are lots of great writers in this issue. This is my third poem about holidays published in 2021, and how fortunate this one comes out on Halloween and as those other holidays come creeping. This piece, “Again, Holidays” is a zuihitsu […]
Best of the Net 2021 | Kissing Dynamite Nomination
So honored to get another Best of the Net nomination (for poetry this time). Kissing Dynamite has been good to me. Check out all their nominations on their site. The poem that was nominated is “A Dyke Cowgirl Takes Herself on a Covid Taco Bell Date.” They made this part of their Featured Poet series. […]
Prelude Magazine – a Koss poem
Very honored to have this poem, which has had a hard life, in Prelude Magazine. It’s called “Slippery Gods, Not Things” and, well, you just need to click and read it. More art coming soon. Promise. And maybe I’ll even get some up to sell in the near future.
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