Works
Letters to My Dead Name
Letters to My Dead Name illuminates the ways that gender norms and assumptions confuse, divide, restrict and terrify. These intimate and inviting epistolary poems lift off the page, singing an anthem for the trans community. Richelle Lee Slota’s expert use of rhyme is unparalleled in today’s poetic landscape. Her rhymes are integral to each poem. They create a dazzling energy that is sometimes playful, sometimes ironic and sometimes devastating: “Mother like an army/raped the darling child/ unhinged, glassy-eyed, wild.” Richelle Lee Slota is not afraid to confront trauma and expose those who have tried to destroy her, yet optimism prevails again and again. Refusing to give in to hate, insisting on finding joy, Richelle Lee Slota is “taking back the flowers.”
––Autumn Newman
Stray Son
Stray Son sets the supernatural solidly amidst the bizarrely mundane life of Patrick Yaworsky, Vietnam vet, married with two children, whose current job is picking up bodies for a mortuary. And when a young but familiar looking marine keeps crossing his path, nothing is normal again, and, we find, as in real life, it never really was.
Patrick and his family are swept back and forth in time in a gorgeous 1937 Packard on their way to two funerals, his grandmother's in 1942 and his father's in 2000. Haunted by an array of surprisingly tender and horrifying ghosts, Patrick meets not only the brutal family he's estranged from for 30 years, but his past. And beyond. In a startling unraveling of memories and revelations, he comes to terms with his scaring past, and has a cascading domino effect on those around him.
This gutsy, lyrical, and, hilarious journey into the past and present––and what often passes for love––is an emotional, metaphysical roller coaster. Through Patrick's eyes, we look long and hard, if tenderly, into our own hall of mirrors. And at the things we were taught never to talk about.