sans Eurydice

Leia Penina Wilson

don't you know anything anymorean epic is a poem with history in itwhat if      what if it's all gonethe experienceof the event      of the poemas it was experienced—that's what they doalter the soundsghost the moment      wash it (watch it)until it is wretched (wrecked?)& what is the politically proper way      to saydickbagwhite & hetero normative      & cis gendered i suppose &      too academic toomany syllables too      let's simply say      male/yuck      was i notwas i not supposed to notice all that male/yuck      i wentin fearof abstractions      of being abstracted ( extracted?)why is it always      knowledgea smiting hand—i lost itwhat if      what ifpoetry was never therehere—      i bound the spinewith poison      hopingto take you with mewhat is herelet's see

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Leia Penina Wilson is a Samoan poet hailing from the Midwest. When she’s not reading trashy paranormal romance novels, she plays Magic the Gathering and Dragonage.

Oakland, California

“I enjoyed the fabular vibe of This Red Metropolis What Remains, the way that exacting loss and neon pleasures combine with a light yet complex tone. ‘[I] want to be wild/in the wilderness,’ exclaims the narrator-poet, as a centaur canters past or stamps its hoof in sudden anger. And what would it be to step over the boundary of ‘red salt’? How do ‘menace’ and ‘extinction’ speak to each other across zones of human and animal comfort, or desire? Leia Penina Wilson conjures her magic as a poet in service of questions that, themselves, form during the act of reading itself. All of this feels quite generous and free, optimistic, while at the same time speaking to survival. How ‘something must come’ no matter how ‘beastly’ the experience is.”
—Bhanu Kapil, author of How to Wash a Heart

"In our riven American moment, one which Leia Penina Wilson rightly sees as reeling between apocalypse and carnival, what can cure us? Not a poem. And certainly not a poem like all the other poems. We need something more like poetic fury and mythic rage. We need words drawn from the wounds of those violated bodies and gas-lighted souls now suffering among us. And we need not a poet, but a witch, a ghoul, a nighthag, a demigorgon, some darkly feminine spirit with the ferocity and will to 'unwound' us. This is exactly what Wilson strives to be and do. Through her epic upendings, her feral incantations, and her savage heart, she conjures up for us the specter of our post-wounded selves."
—Eric LeMay, author of In Praise of Nothing: Essays, Memoir, and Other Experiments

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