Not Ghosts, But Spirits I: art from the women's, queer, trans, & enby communities

By Emily Perkovich

art from 92 contributors from the women, queer, trans, & enby communities - all proceeds from this issue are being donated to Saving Our Sisters

-Edited by Emily Perkovich

• Language: English
• Publisher: Querencia Press, LLC
• Release date: Dec 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798330256167

Book preview

Not Ghosts,

But Spirits

Volume I

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Querencia Press, LLC

Chicago Illinois

QUERENCIA PRESS

© Copyright 2023

Querencia Press

All Rights Reserved

No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with the written permission of the author.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

ISBN 978 1 959118 11 4

.

www.querenciapress.com

First Published in 2023

Querencia Press, LLC

Chicago IL

Printed & Bound in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Silueta – Sophia Isabella Murray

Spell for Cleansing – Sophia Isabella Murray

Oh Mouse, – Angelica Whitehorne

Untitled Works – Irina Tall

Vintage – Elsa Valmidiano

Conception – Elsa Valmidiano

Birth of Lakapati – Elsa Valmidiano

From Mrs. Santos in Lapog to Her Husband in Seattle, 1939 – Elsa Valmidiano

Water Burial – Elsa Valmidiano

Being Non-Binary is Like Multiclassing Across Genders – Beks Freeman

Being Non-Binary is Boxed Like Schrodinger’s Gender – Beks Freeman

Being Non-Binary is Like Being at the Triple Point of Water – Beks Freeman

Being Non-Binary is Like Being the Book in a Book Club – Beks Freeman

Being Non-Binary is Like a Gender Re-Reveal Party – Beks Freeman

Just Sedimentary Solitude – Helen Chen 熙悦

Queer – Pam Lozoff

A response to Tiana Clark’s Poem: My therapist wants to know about my relationship to work – Pam Lozoff

What if this time I stayed – Pam Lozoff

Beloved Body – Pam Lozoff

The Taming of the Hair – Sonia Charales

Dried Storm – Sonia Charales

Malayali Woman – Sonia Charales

Rise and Fall – Sonia Charales

Pink – Cai Quirk

Blue Cords – Cai Quirk

Green and Brown and Gray – Cai Quirk

Rose-colored – Cai Quirk

Kaleidoscope – Cai Quirk

Something metaphorical on the bushes – Kalyani Bindu

What I taught them of my insanity – Kalyani Bindu

Is it something in the air? – Kalyani Bindu

Dear friend – Kalyani Bindu

Private fires – Kalyani Bindu

The Cathedral – Scott Russell

Lux – Laura Beth Johnson

Skyline – Laura Beth Johnson

Virginia P. – Laura Beth Johnson

I Was a Fox – Laura Beth Johnson

Untitled – Lilly Weakley

Untitled – Lilly Weakley

Untitled – Lilly Weakley

Untitled – Lilly Weakley

Untitled – Lilly Weakley

Nightcap for Motherhood – Samantha Tucker

Heatwave – Samantha Tucker

Trimester One – Samantha Tucker

Thatching the Roof of Forever with You – Katherine Leonard

A Graft for Time – Liz Baxmeyer

Birth of the Cyclades – Liz Baxmeyer

The Wild Woman in the Mirror – Nélari Figueroa Torres

Untitled – Alivia Knight

Untitled – Alivia Knight

Ghosting Myself – Shilo Niziolek

Tremulous – Shilo Niziolek

How To Pray – Shilo Niziolek

Playing Telephone – Shilo Niziolek

grooming – Kiera Obbard

ctrl-f – Kiera Obbard

I ask my father why he believes. – Ariana Alvarado

[See, Sister] – Ariana Alvarado

A Poem for Rachel – Ariana Alvarado

Puberty – Ariana Alvarado

The straight line – Jennifer MacKenzie

That’s not your solar plexus – Jennifer MacKenzie

Nawal asks – Jennifer MacKenzie

I didn’t say gay tree and I deleted old – Jennifer MacKenzie

Decontamination fail – Jennifer MacKenzie

Don’t Envy my Enby – T. Lydia McKinney

Chameleon – T. Lydia McKinney

If you knew me as the wolf – Rye Owen

Forced Femininity – Rye Owen

Fading Memory – Rye Owen

Coat of Many Colors – Rye Owen

Heartsteppe – Ryan Wong

Shifting Seasons – Jodie Oakes

Tell me everything you love about her – Jodie Oakes

I will leave you again – Jodie Oakes

Cerebellum – Kristen Gregg

Wernicke’s Area – Kristen Gregg

12.1.21 – Stacey K. Manos

4.25.22 – Stacey K. Manos

7.11.22 – Stacey K. Manos

Blood Binds – Sarah E. Azizi

We Don’t Win for Losing – Sarah E. Azizi

The Deacon – Esther Mubawa

Peony Pussy – Caitin Smith

Untitled – Caitlin Smith

Catcalling is not a Compliment – Caitlin Smith

Mansplaining – Caitlin Smith

Dandelions – Sarah Blakely

Don’t Come For Me – Sarah Blakely

I Fight Like A Woman – Sarah Blakely

Liminal Spaces – Sarah Blakely

A Woman’s No – Sarah Blakely

Pandora’s casket – Kristiana Reed

Ode to the Hymen – Kristiana Reed

Child bearing – Kristiana Reed

Buried in blood – Kristiana Reed

Saving her from September – Carella Keil

Alice and the Big Bad Wolf – Carella Keil

Dollmaker – Sophie Dickinson

Fields of Gold – Sophie Dickinson

Procrastination – Christina Lynn Lambert

I Can’t Contain – Christina Lynn Lambert

The Night Below – Christina Lynn Lambert

HELHEST (Hel’s Horse) – Jessica Drake-Thomas

Reading in the Bath – Jessica Drake-Thomas

Cold Moon Ritual – Jessica Drake-Thomas

Blood Oath – Jessica Drake-Thomas

The Fan – Alice Jane

Untitled – Mykyta Ryzhykh

Untitled – Mykyta Ryzhykh

Untitled – Mykyta Ryzhykh

Sunday morning flight – Amy Cook

Anna – Sean Paul Connolly

Dead Name – Remi Recchia

First – Remi Recchia

Dressing as a Trans Man in the Early Morning – Remi Recchia

Waking Up from Top Surgery in a Sparse Airbnb Living Room – Remi Recchia

Self-Portrait as Ghost – Remi Recchia

i love my trans body – Cameron Castaldi

Fear – Sally Quon

YMCA Parking Lot – Emmy Weissman

Flux – Eleanore Dykes

Hair on the Back of my Neck – Eleanore Dykes

I Watch the News – Eleanore Dykes

No Prince Charming – Eleanore Dykes

Silicone Expectations – Eleanore Dykes

Peach Colored Glasses – Julia Lomonte

A Simple Mid-Morning Levitation – Stephen Brown

DIY God or Lover – Stephen Brown

Scrub this Man – Stephen Brown

Pretty – Addhaya Anil

Rimmel – Emma Conally-Barklem

the speech – Olivia Rose

airtight – Olivia Rose

i like it like this in your car – Olivia Rose

The Books Have Never Gotten It Right. – Olivia Rose

Nonno’s Shoes – Alysa Levi-D’Ancona

Nocturne Recipe for Rebirth – Alysa Levi-D’Ancona

. I Anymore – Alysa Levi-D’Ancona

Legos and Cinder Blocks – Alysa Levi-D’Ancona

I am from Neptune – Lena Snow

Rainbow Girl – Lena Snow

Neptune’s Maid – Lena Snow

Agnes from Enceladus – Lena Snow

Myth of Myself as Horror Story – Sarah Herrin

Constellation Stories – Sarah Herrin

Warning Signs – Sarah Herrin

Speak to me of my mother, who was she – Jhane

A weight I’ve carried far too long – Jhane

A list of places I must visit alone – Jhane

Elizabeth (*1910) – Annette C. Boehm

Answers to Correspondents (The Girl’s Own, 1886) – Annette C. Boehm

The E. D. liberations – Annette C. Boehm

Wingspan – James Jackson

S C E N E R Y– James Jackson

I’m Tired – Syd M.

Show Yourself – Syd M.

Anger pt. ii – Syd M.

Mental Madness – Syd M.

What Happened in January – Dora Rumbold

Psych Wards in 2020 – Dora Rumbold

The Grand Hotel – Dora Rumbold

Death Of A Star – Dora Rumbold

The Grieving Mother – Liz Yew

Sculptor – Liz Yew

Red – Liz Yew

Dance – TreVaughn Malik Roach-Carter

god doesn't make mistakes, but this chest feels like one. – Robin Williams

Masculinity – Dani Solace

Femininity – Dani Solace

Fluidity – Dani Solace

Fluidity, PT. II – Dani Solace

Commercial Break – Joshua Merchant

Lost Haibun – Joshua Merchant

5:37am – Peggy Bain

That night – Peggy Bain

Domestic Bliss – Maegen McAuliffe O’Leary

Baby Weight – Maegen McAuliffe O’Leary

Royal Jelly – Maegen McAuliffe O’Leary

On Samson by Regina Spektor – Jennifer Cox

The night the baby screamed for six straight hours, I remembered the time: – Jennifer Cox

La Glaneuse – Jennifer Cox

My Asian Girlhood – Emma Hua

Kathmandu, are we heart-broken? – Aparna Singh

Catcalling – Sofia Iacolare

Dear Friend – Meghan King

A Curse Broken – Meghan King

Religion in the Time of Empty Choices – Tiffiny Rose Allen

Haircut – Megan Alyse

I’ll Admit – Megan Alyse

For Every Action – Megan Alyse

Pressed against this smart glass – Valyntina Grenier

An Oh Well Star – Valyntina Grenier

Valediction forbidding treason – Valyntina Grenier

Leaning Like Us Between Our Brain and Deities – Valyntina Grenier

Aphrodite – Ananiah J

Peonies – Ananiah J

I, Woman – Katelyn Hammack

The birds and the bees – Yelly O’Farrell

Song of the Sinful Siren – Yelly O’Farrell

Check Ins – Yelly O’Farrell

Coming Out Burger – Milly Aburrow

Seduce Me – Milly Aburrow

Gay Nutrition – Milly Aburrow

Moving Like Molasses – Jordan Coen

DADDY – Kristin Garth

My Mourning Clothes – Rachael Lord

Negative Space – Rachael Lord

SCOTUS and Us – Rachael Lord

The Lovers – Kailee Rosen

Angel:Demon – Kailee Rosen

The Sun – Kaileee Rosen

Judgement – Kailee Rosen

Shape-Shifting – Melissa Cannon

A State of Mind – Melissa Cannon

Fig Leaf – Melissa Cannon

Raw – Melissa Cannon

Greer Lankton’s Sewn Dolls – Melissa Cannon

Cherry Tomatoes – Sarah Butkovic

Winged Self – Sarah Butkovic

An Open Letter To Carmela Soprano – Gina Bowen

What the Ravens Heard – Gina Bowen

Mother – Kaitlin Kaiyah Howard

Separation of Wo and Man – Jillian Calahan

An Ode To My Vulva – Jillian Calahan

Maverique – Samar Jade

These Folds (Us) – Merri Andrew

Southern Summer #2 – Keri Withington

I don’t owe you my trauma. – Keri Withington

Ode to Our Bodies – Keri Withington

Teaching Evaluations – Keri Withington

Popular Dictionary for Women – Keri Withington

Side Effects Include… – Chloe Adams

The world is burning and I’m worried about something called strawberry legs – Chloe Adams

Are you there Supreme Court? It’s me, Chloe – Chloe Adams

an ill fitting shoe – Linda M. Crate

it is a sisterhood – Linda M. Crate

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

OTHER TITLES FROM QUERENCIA

Silueta – Sophia Isabella Murray (she/her)

Look. I evoke in this space the soft edges of my body

The lines of my arms, ribs, legs

Poured in gunpowder

Lined with flowers I forget the name of

And we are inland

In this absence I dare you

What have we been made to leave behind?

The mental load of a woman’s work

The bile sieving through the poison we are fed from birth

​Behave. Be a good girl.

And she, mother Luna, moves us and we flow with her

Until we are abandoned, arid, left without her orbit

And sometimes I forget myself.

Metallic salted silhouettes snap

The mechanics of our day breaking down

And like my body in this earth

I have drawn another boundary

​and another

​and another

​Behave.

​and another.​

​Be a good girl.

​and another.

And the force of you trying to break us

only serves to set the fuse

In this limn night we feel our own weight

The more heat we have

The more they want to sink us.

Spell for Cleansing – Sophia Isabella Murray (she/her)

wait until the onion skin moon peels itself into shadow. take yourself to water. envelop your body in the darkness and pull your hands over goosebump skin to the depths of the riverbed and gather the silt. carry it to the edge and mould her features in the wet mud, the hooded eyes, aquiline nose and thin-lipped snarl that whispered you were no daughter of hers. gather the dead. build around your mired effigy a circle of nature no more. bring to it the flame you hold in your hands that weighed so much behind your heart. while fire crawls black, amber, yellow, usher in the words you could never say to the face of your mother. spit out the red inked curse. take the brute force of the energy that lived within you since you felt your heart break in two and let it travel to your fingertips. rub them into each palm. let the strength swell until it hurts then release. flatten, ravage, maim her darkness, her grimy, dirty countenance. smother the flames and let lilac smoke swaddle you. let it carry you home

Oh Mouse, – Angelica Whitehorne (she/her)

Oh Mouse, I too, know how it is to hide

behind a wall and try to make no sound—

until I starve so loud, I have to come out.

I too, know how it is to step the step; the light,

heavy step of maybe someone’s dinner.

How I bought a green, humane trap

and forgot about it, and a few days later

saw only the long, still tail—

sometimes we try to be better

and end up worse off for it.

Oh Mouse, oh tiny mother,

fierce scrap of fur, finding your way

along my linoleum floorboards.

How to apologize for my forgetful

nature? Forgetting can be a survival,

can be a death sentence.

I know you think things as big as me can’t grieve,

but

I grieve.

I too, know how it feels to be on the list

of the disposable: termites, rats, roaches, rotten

wooden planks, single use plastics—

women— and from it

a kind of mutual understanding.

La Souris, what helps us exist after

finality and failure is eulogy,

so I will tell you now that

you were a grand, gorgeous patio pet.

Man didn’t deserve you, you mysterious, sexy crevice

bat, cat evader, craftswoman, homemaker, drywall warrior.

The green trap is trashed and I promise every chance I get,

I’ll wish for your kind to fare well. Lift them in my bare palm,

send them forthright into the neighboring field with dignity

and the soft aroma of suburban grass second chances

under their tiny, god-formed heels.

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Untitled Works – Irina Tall (she/her)

Vintage – Elsa Valmidiano (she/her)

I walk through a vintage store / stumbling across my mother / in old clothes / hanging off racks / her ghost body / slipping / through necklines / short sleeves / and dress hems / the vintage smell / of these yesterday dresses / conjuring / Ronald Reagan / Michael Jackson / Madonna / Prince / and the Cabbage Patch Kids.

I finger the shoulders / resting above wire hangers / imagining her collarbones / feeling my five-year-old body again / the way I used to wrap my arms / around one of her legs at Lucky’s after Sunday Mass / and her Sunday dress / her forcefield between her thirty-eight-year-old body / and my parasitical kindergartener self / lost / in the flow of her body / hiding behind / printed folds of pink stripes / roses / brown doors opening to blue skies.

Craning my neck back / my mother is / God / I have yet to understand / while I must be / her little monster / knowing me / before understanding me / like knowing the shadows / following her skirt / without ever having the need / to look back.

Will I join my mother here one day / my daughter / finding / my ghost body / among the embroidered dresses / scuffed cowboy boots / and snake bracelets / her ghost body / slipping / into mine / slipping / into my daughter / so on and so forth—

Conception – Elsa Valmidiano (she/her)

We are reminded of the possibilities of past children

we surrendered to circumstance and ended their existence

before their lives could even begin.

The morning after we made love, I walked to work

and prayed for the beginning of your existence

as 100 million sperm swam to my egg.

We conceived a week after the mass shooting in Orlando

and three weeks after a judge was much too kind to a Stanford rapist.

A week after your conception

it had been the 100thbirthday

of your revolutionary great-grandfather whose ghost

would hint at your existence by

making his picture frame crash from our shelf

while heralding the bombing of Turkey

and then the bombing of Baghdad.

Days, ordinarily divided into boxes,

suddenly steamrolled into one long newsreel of

Alton Sterling then Philando Castile then 5 Dallas police officers

while I marveled at a positive pregnancy test in my hand

and already knew the world would always

be unrelenting toward you.

I cradled an empty house inside my belly

while another young mother,

Korryn Gaines, cradled her little son, for the last time,

in the home of her slender arms. She who was

handed over to bullets because of our failures

and was brought back to life through

everyone chanting, Say Her Name.

Meanwhile, your existence would be limited

to the eternity of a poppy seed, forever housed

in your solar system where our ancestors swim

among a tidal wave of red cells

until you would face your own quiet disintegration

dissolving like fish eggs and fish eyes

and I cannot save you.

Birth of Lakapati – Elsa Valmidiano (she/her)

Lakapati is a Tagalog trans goddess of farmers and the LGBTQIA community. The languages themselves of the Philippines do not have he or she pronouns, and remain gender neutral, as indicated under the Tagalog word siya, and the Ilocano word isu. *

for PJ

There is a love hidden / but also beauty

as if She could make the whole world jealous

or simply cause world peace—

Her secrets are delicate

enough to make one cry

if one were not so afraid to be

that open to another human being

Beauty behind skin

Beauty / under lipstick / under breasts

(made of bags of rice or close-to flesh)

or something closely—

close—

to being—

being—

As She applies her lipstick

like a cigarette between her fingertips

like a shush / like a whisper

there arises a phoenix

from ashes / from sea foam

where they collide / in peace

as someone to worship love

this funny thing we call sex

while She stands naked / a beauty to behold

my Lakapati

where to laugh

is simply a release

from all the cares

of what this society

has been brainwashed

to believe.

I wish I wish I wish I wish . . .

. . . I could be like that

so the chant goes

I am I am I am . . .

Among so many conflicted

who roam the earth like drones

stuck in their fears of trying to be

that woman

that man

who everyone tries to relate to

it is they who stand alone—

The lovers who love completely

without shame without remorse without fear

breast to breast / lipstick to lipstick

where She feels Herself

feels him

inside her

inside him

they: siya / isu: they

and it is anew I tell you

it is all anew.

*Gancayco, Stephanie (November 20, 2016). Lakapati, Transgender Tagalog Goddess of Fertility & Agriculture [Hella Pinay article]. Retrieved from https://www.hellapinay.com/article/2016/11/20/lakanpati-tagalog-transgender-goddess-of-fertility-agriculture

From Mrs. Santos in Lapog to Her Husband in Seattle, 1939 – Elsa Valmidiano (she/her)

Filipino-American communities in the early twentieth century were predominantly male because young men. i.e. Manongs, had been recruited as laborers. Women could not join them because of American Congressional exclusion acts, thus the formation of bachelor societies across the country. While few Filipina women were able to migrate, the passage of the American Page Act of 1875, passed by an all white male governing body, had restricted anyone of Asian descent on the pretense of barring lewd and immoral purposes, where women of Asian descent were erroneously affiliated with prostitution at the time rather than seen as seeking a better life with their husband and family. Decades and decades would then go by, where Filipino husbands eventually remarried in the US. Divorce has never been legal in the Philippines while it was expected that abandoned wives stay chaste and faithful and never remarry even though their husbands overseas had the freedom to do so. Women from the Philippines didn’t emigrate in any significant number until after World War II, when they came as the war brides of Manongs who’d fought for the Americans.

***

you say you’ll be back

you say you’ll bring me to the land of milk and honey

with your fancy job fancy home fancy shoes

when all I want is

you

but I can’t come

you write

I write

you can’t carry me with you

no matter how strong your arms

no matter how much money you have

we do not write of faithfulness

I wonder if you are faithful

fear you are not

know you are not

I wonder if you wonder whether I am

trust I am

and fear I am not

I am Penelope, waiting for Ulysses to return

***

a cruel lover visits my bed

taking the space meant for you

but the space sadly could not wait

it has come to this—

this cruel lover

meets me once a week

while my almond-shaped cicada eyes

rattle your name into his

My mind cycles in wormwood

and this lover cannot even see me

as he whispers my name, moaning

utter delight

and then it is my turn

to change positions—

my elbows, dragonfly wings

pinned under exhibitor glass

and then I must forgive you

& myself

as we spill cruel lovers

into our mixing bowl

I am shutting down until you return

shutting down for thirteen/seventeen/twenty/forty years

and maybe you will wonder if I have lost interest

or changed my mind

What is left after twenty years?

To your parents, you said, Ipatpategka

In my ear, you whispered, Ayayatenka—

this is the wormwood

inside my head

as I stand tonight on our veranda

and the fragrance of kuribétbét blossoms

drowns my lungs.

***

Before bed, I scrub off traces

of his skin

with the bató

of your slough

while across the ocean

your raw skin satisfies itself

Could we blame each other

for starving?

***

Blood drops from my body—

the cleansing process begun

a stream flows out

This space

should be empty

when you return

Water Burial – Elsa Valmidiano (she/her)

This is not the burial she would’ve wanted.

1975 when the Church was against cremations.

Would they condemn her for flushing the toilet?

Would it have been worth it

to scoop her gray mass of a child

and show her doctor his new specimen?

She could not gather up

the red sashes

mingling with water.

She would be given two months maternity leave

but no