Who are you?

I’m Casper! I’m a trans guy living in the hilltowns of western massachusetts. I write, organize performances & screenings, sometimes draw & make music (very privately!) Right now I live on my friends’ farm, work at a bakery, & go to school for massage therapy. A dream of mine is to open up a trans spa with all my friends who are bodyworkers & in the evenings host ambient music shows & readings. In the summer you will find me swimming most days!

What is your book about?

This is a book of love poems! Or you could think of it as one long love poem, to love, to lovers, to friends, to the river, to the fireflies… A fool’s journey, full of failure & some ecstasy, that starts & ends with a wink.

Could you tell us a bit about the process of writing this book?

The poems in this book span the time between Summer 2020 & Summer 2024 and a move from los angeles to rural massachusetts. A lot of these poems I began in my head while on a walk, often along the connecticut river. Writing at its best, to me, is a kind of channeling / a form of play. So I had a lot of fun writing this & it was a way to transmute a lot of pain. I’m not big on discipline & don’t really write on a schedule – either I’m inspired or I have a deadline! I listen to a lot of music while I write!

What are some books you’ve read and enjoyed lately and/or books that influenced the writing in your submitted work?

Midwinter Day by Bernadette Mayer and The Mundus by NH Pritchard are two books of poetry that have recently blown my mind. I watched Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant the other night which was a totally beautiful, unhinged experience. Music influences my work a lot, usually I just put a song on repeat for a while and let it rock… Stereolab, Michael White, & João Gilberto are some big ones for the writing zone. Red Juice by Hoa Nguyen was probably my gateway book to getting obsessed with poetry.

How would you describe your book using emojis only?

🌱😘🌟🦋💔🤡🌸🧡

EXCERPT

Hot person with beautiful Soul

I want something from you I can’t get
because what I want from you is me

a mirror facing the ocean which is the sky
a diagram of my feet in a book on reflexology
you reading it to me like a bedtime story

The wind blows through my kitchen window
I open my mouth in hopes of breathing

Jurassic Technology

On a rooftop
in the dove garden
observe our sun
as it melts over
the neighborhood
chasing a romance
that really exists

our sun will go away
I will reject all false stars
by which I mean
punch out every light
until each bird glows
gathering before they fly
a sloppy constellation
swirling soup of life

No Fantasy Sirius B

Every garden is a sabotage
with its scent and little colors
No emptiness without container

The witch in the barn hands me flowers
dying in her hands like a vanitas still life
says faith without faith is faith

I take no shelter in that
surrender to a lack of refuge
refuse sugar flowing from the tree

Language is spiraling into
infinite mass and some absence
shapes lose their depth & narrative

Let it be that I only take up the space
within the outline of my shadow until
I reach a temperature that is void and lose my outline

All spheres emptied from their blinking machine
spilling across a checkered arcade floor
allow myself to slip and fall and lick the sticky ground

Now float down into the root of things
create a hole where there was knot
daisy chain all my abjection together

Remember a star doesn’t cry when it says goodbye to heat
Love is not a muscle it is an empty grip

I hate that tiny hat you keep forcing on my head,
if it was empty it would be bigger!