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'GenderFux' has been nominated for a Saboteur Award for Best Collaborative Work.

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GenderFux

GenderFux is the collaborative work of three immensely talented poets whose work all exists in the same uncomfortable but enduring space. These poems are bursting with the desperation to be heard, and they leave you enveloped in the rich worlds sketched on the page, and the haze of everything else left unsaid in the margins.

Holding space for queer trauma, love, sex, and pop culture references, GenderFux is a masterclass in full and complete portraiture that doesn’t leave anything out. It is tongue-in-cheek, brutal, evocative and electric - and will leave you with their words ringing in your ears.

Kathryn O’Driscoll, UK slam champion, poet, performer, author of Cliff Notes (Verve Poetry Press, 2022)

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Jem Henderson

Jem Henderson is a genderqueer poet from Leeds, UK with an MA in Creative Writing from York St. John University. They have been published in Civic Leicester's Black Lives Matter, Streetcake, Dreich, Full House Literary, and recently won a Creative Future award for underrepresented writers. A book, An Othered Mother is due out in 2022 from Nine Pens.

// delicate stitch //

the white of my lace cotton socks // black rubber plimsolls // squeak on the varnished floor // yellow felt tip lines on cream recycled paper // fragile followed with freshly

sharpened pencil // learn my ABCs

my first kiss behind the huts at school // his cheeks sucked in tight to make a tiny lipless pout // smashing my face on the paving // leaving fat drops blooming like red flowers on grey stone // three stitches

a second kiss in the garden // her pale body delicate like antique lace under my hand // fleeing my mother's house // her sightless eyes // her needle fingers

my rattling cough // mould trapped in tender lace of lung // a parade of men with

flaccid dicks and fleshy bellies // no money // no food // the lace is my arm // delicately

sliced

the lace is my wedding dress // the lace is the cowl around my baby face // audibly popping

at quarter to midnight // the lace is my crumbling marriage // keeping me in place

Jonathan Kinsman

Jonathan Kinsman (he/him) is a polyamorous, bisexual, transmasculine poet from Greater Manchester. His poems have been published widely, including in Butcher's Dog, fourteen poems, Poetry Wales and Under the Radar. His debut pamphlet & was joint-winner of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize 2017 and his second, witness, was published by Burning Eye in 2020.

the first pride was a riot

from the horizon it must look like the end of all things —

conflagration, orange on black;

a contortion of limbs,

one moment pulling in unison

and the next whirling against each other;

furious flesh

and its sweet bellow;

a piano’s viking funeral,

attended only by torsos,

the mourners’ legs swallowed

up in noise —

all are welcome:

you curios;

you nameless of no-place;

you made inside out,

holding your entrails in your hands —

turn them in at the cloakroom;

we’ll watch your things while you dance.

marsha is giving out shots

that taste like blood in your teeth;

there’s one for you.

drink deep.

sing like a sword in the forge.

JP Seabright

JP Seabright (she/they) is a queer writer living in London. Their debut poetry pamphlet, Fragments from Before the Fall: An Anthology in Post-Anthropocene Poetry is published by Beir Bua Press. Their debut prose chapbook NO HOLDS BARRED is out early 2022 from Lupercalia Press. They were nominated for a Pushcart Prize in October 2021. More of their work can be found at https://jpseabright.com and via Twitter @errormessage.

1994

The line in that song where she sings You're a girl & I'm a boy

did more for my gender identity than anything before or since

This was 1994 just 21 & finding out

who I was & am who I love & how

at the Uni queer disco before the T was added to the LGB Soc

my third girlfriend was President of standing watching waiting

checking everyone out just in case searching not for perfection

nor protection but a palpable sense of validation

This was 1994 halfway through the shame of Section 28

I went to my first Gay Pride that year in Brockwell Park

here I found my self my family my people my Protection

if & when I needed it You're a girl & I'm a boy

This was 1994 when Currie’s law failed to pass

the gay age of consent stalled at 18 but no age of consent

for lesbians still we did not exist

This was 1994 when Jarman died of AIDS

before antiretrovirals came in & we watched Blue

in pieces at the Phoenix Cinema You're a girl & I'm a boy

is my manifesto for love though sometimes we are both boys

& sometimes we are both girls too

but I am not fixed I am a state of flux

I am GenderFux I am not one thing

or another alternating like electricity

I am not sometimes this & sometimes that not either/or

I am fluid & peculiar I am everything at once

bubbles rising to the surface of a lake

confetti dancing in the slipstream