More Than Organs

A love letter to Brown, Queer, and Trans futures, Kay Ulanday Barrett’s More Than Organs questions "whatever wholeness means” for bodies always in transit, for the safeties and dangers they silo. These poems remix people of color as earthbenders, replay “the choreography of loss” after the 2015 Pulse shooting, and till joy from the cosmic sweetness of a family’s culinary history. Barrett works "to build / a shelter // of / everyone / [they] meet,” from aunties to the legendary Princess Urduja to their favorite air sign. More Than Organs tattoos grief across the knuckles of its left hand, love across the knuckles of its right, both hands cupping fiercely “the kind of cause / that makes a person / want to lay down / and just / live in it.”