The Faunboy is Done. He has a collection.

Yes, it’s true: I am finally about done with the MFA (four weeks!), and that means that my limited edition thesis manuscript is going to press shortly.  People have started asking how they can get their hands on a copy of The Book of Broken Hymns, which is fantastic. Right this minute I am trying to figure out how many to print for this limited edition, so you should get your name on the list sooner rather than later.

Here’s all the Big Pertinent Info:

The Book of Broken Hymns is my MFA thesis collection, and I am printing it in a limited edition short run.

It will cost $10 plus shipping (it’s small enough to fit in a Priority Mail envelope, which is not quite $5 in shipping, or I can ship it media mail for less).

You can pay with PayPal or with good old fashioned Checks.  Email me (or message me on Twitter @ponyonabalcony or Facebook) for the right address.

The Book of Broken Hymns will be available starting May 6th (perhaps a little earlier) and will stay available as long as I still have copies (probably not very long).

If you have other questions, email me or Twitter me or FB me. I look forward to adding you to the list.

(this is mostly crossposted from ponyonabalcony)

My First Signing

The signing at Bluestockings was completely packed with gender transgressors and outlaws and benders of all descriptions.

This was extremely superb.

I wasn’t sure I would be reading, though I hoped I would, and so it was a delightful gut-shock of a moment when Kate Bornstein called me up. Plus, either people are impossibly polite, or I am reasonably entertaining. So that’s all good.

There were so many spectacular things that happened – I will write more about them when I have a little more time. And when I can process a little better.

But: thank you to my friends who came – A. and Rugger and Tori – and the new friends I made there – Tor and Michael and Web and Ai and Nickolas. Thank you to the people I didn’t know, but who made a point of thanking me, or congratulating me, or saying warm lovely things to me – Guinevere and Mariana and Seth and the nameless Australian (?) fellow. You folks made my night.

And thanks to Bluestockings, and to Kate Bornstein, for making it all happen.

(this is cross-posted from the Pony blog)

Poem for Tuesday

Actually it’s not for Tuesday, but today IS Tuesday, so…

This is my out queer trans person poem, read to great acclaim at the Welter reading back a couple of weeks ago. It appeared first in the Spring 2009 issue of Welter, a national literary journal published through the University of Baltimore.

(trans)lation

Once I was a maenad
a Bacchante nun married to a leopard-wearing god.
I ripped my own head off –
you should see the scar.

Now like Orpheus
I can’t look back
to a past I can’t reclaim
remember or disprove.

There are pictures.
Years of pinafores and smocks,
halters and velour
Christmas dresses.

My mother keeps them
a dozen albums
of who I never was
but pretended to be
wearing a skin that never fit,
put on in the dark and worn by mistake.

Now like Lot’s wife
I am frozen by remembering,
by the backward glance
into the missing yesterdays.

I emerged from my labyrinth
in another form, entire,
freer than Icarus,
a mermaid, a faun, a god,
a woman, a man, a myth.