Transitory

Subhaga Crystal Bacon is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Elegy with a Glass of Whiskey, BOA 2004, and Blue Hunger, Methow Press, 2020. She was a nominee for the 2021-23 Washington State Poet Laureateship and was nominated for both Pushcart and Best of the Web prizes in 2021. A Queer elder, she is a teacher of embodied awakening and poetry and the places where they intersect. Subhaga’s work touches on the liminal spaces between personal identity— gender, sexuality, aging, loss, and ways of being— and contemplation of the natural world. She lives with her partner, Sugandhi Katharine Barnes, a painter, and their Labradoodle, Lola, in the expansive Twisp River valley on the eastern slopes of the North Cascade mountains in Twisp, WA.

“Having roots in documentary poetics, and approached with deep lyric intensity, the poems in Transitory stand as elegies to the transgender people murdered in the U.S. in 2020, from Nina Pop, ‘Missouri drawl, the way you drank / from that tall Styrofoam cup and straw, your face lit by car lights,’ to Brian “Egypt” Powers of Akron, Ohio, ‘Paula Abdul back-up dancer was his childhood dream,’ and onward. The poems are written in a whirlwind of forms, containing facts from public records and snippets of dialogue from the murdered victims, their loved ones, and strangers, and the details— ‘fingerless black gloves,’ ‘Her love for My Little Pony,’ that compose a life. The forms provide elegance. Dignity. The details, affinity. I tried to read Transitory as I usually approach books of poetry, but this collection asked me to supplement my reading with research. I sought news stories, faces. I wanted to know. To have known so deeply that I could feel each loss with profundity. I found myself in keeping with Subhaga Crystal Bacon, who writes, ‘I need to name this, the brutality of tallying the dead…not just counting, but incanting.’” — Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets “Subhaga Crystal Bacon’s brilliant new book is poetry beyond the unrelenting pressure of newscycles, giving names to harrowing statistics of murdered trans people, returning life to the air ---for a moment --- in the breath of a poem. When politicians sanction violence by criminalizingtrans and queer bodies and branding us subhuman, Bacon puts the love and the real livebeating hearts back into their bodies, turning every No into an emphatic Yes! I love this book!” — CAConrad, author of While Standing in Line for Death “Transitory's chronology of hate crimes starts on January 1, 2020, documenting one year of the unending river of names--"Samuel, Bianca, Dominique, Fifty Bandz"--of people we've lost to anti-trans violence. Here beloved bodies are "pulled from the Schuylkill River," hurt "in the parking lot of the Days Inn," on "a bit of grass off the University of Ohio campus," or "on her own block, close to home."These poems witness these horrors, and honor the dead in the complexity and real joy of their lives, creating a timeline, shared eulogy, and act of resistance. Combining traditional forms and erasures with the pleasures and close calls of her own past, Bacon highlights not just these acts of violence but also everyday moments in the lives of those lost: "studying nursing," "driving a taxi," "showing off in short shorts and shearling boots," or looking forward to cleaning the house: "a Saturday morning deep clean that’s a whole vibe." Slowing down long enough to look at this one year's worth of loss allows us to recognize the enormity of our collective grief.” — Jill McDonough, author of Here All Night