Deed

A lyrically and formally innovative exploration of desire and its costWinner of American Library Association's 2025 Stonewall Book Awards--Barbara Gittings Literature AwardDEED, the follow-up to torrin a. greathouse's 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award winning debut, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound, is a formally and lyrically innovative exploration of queer sex and desire, and what it can cost. Sprawling across art, eros, survival, myth, etymology, and musical touchstones from Bruce Springsteen to Against Me!, this new book both subverts and pays homage to the poetic canon, examining an artistic lineage that doesn't always love trans or disabled people back. Written in a broad range of received and invented forms--from caudate sonnets and the sestina, to acrostics and the burning haibun--DEED indicts violent systems of carceral, medical, and legal power which disrupt queer and disabled love and solidarity, as well as the potentially vicarious manner in which audiences consume art. This collection is a poetic triptych centered on the question of how, in spite of all these complications, to write an honest poem about desire. At its core, DEED is a reminder of how tenderness can be made a shield, a weapon, or a kind of faith, depending on the mouth that holds it.[sample text]from EtymythologyI'm clocked by etymology, by the way even stilettos take their namefrom a knife. The way a knife, well-honed, can strip anything to the bone. Bear with me, sometimes even the myths growblurry in the distance. The root of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, is still unknown, but likely comes from artamos--butcher. Let's call this a kind of etymythology, post hoc history; let's call Artemis the root. For her wild heart. Her failedfemininity. Goddess of gender-fuckedgirls. Crooked prayer. The word worship is shaped from two shards--meaning worth & its giving. A mouth gives faith shape like clay. I mean that to pray is to god a God. To be butch & butcher the myth of a son, was to makea goddess of myself.