About the Book
A debut poetry collection drawing on horror-movie tropes to examine the body—both its traumas and its possibilities.
Scream / Queen, CD Eskilson's debut poetry collection, examines queerness, mental illness, and transgender identity through the lens of thrillers and B movies. The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Michael Myers, and the Headless Horseman are just a few of the fright-film villains and monsters that populate this book.
Eskilson's formally innovative poems document how a body—a nonbinary transgender body, a chronically ill body, a body carrying trauma—can be understood, accepted, and healed even in a violent sociopolitical climate. Drawing on the language and images of horror cinema, the poems' speakers find strength and the means to survive both family legacy and the pain inflicted on them: "I want to behemoth, be the biggest / violence in the galaxy," says one who thinks about Godzilla and dreams of "learning how to roar."
Though an atmosphere of trans panic and state legislation against trans bodies pervades the book, Scream / Queen ultimately conjures a world of hope and tenderness through connection and care. It celebrates all the body's possibilities: the glorious and the monstrous. As a werewolf in the book says, "I kiss the moon; it took so long / to get here."
Table of Contents:
Found / Footage
On Witchcraft 6
After Failing to Come Out Again, the Apparition Comes 7
What Starts as a List Poem About OCD 8
A Brief History of Broken Glass 10
King Ghidorah 12
Burning Haibun for Geryon 14
Palos Verdes 15
How Are They Picking the Next Halloween Director? 16
Deleted Scene: Each Time I’m Trans Enough 17
Body / Horror
Recipe for Roasted Broccoli 20
Dystychipaphobia, or Fear of Accidents 21
Heredity 23
Ghost Story with My Uncle 24
Portrait with Inconclusive Lab Results 25
When People Tell You GAD Can’t Be that Bad 26
Confession from Medusa’s Head 27
During Intro to Film Theory 29
Update on HIM from Powerpuff Girls 30
At the Midnight Show of Sleepaway Camp 31
Jump / Scare
Prey: A Gloss 33
Trans Panic Contrapuntal 37
Fan Mail for the Headless Horseman 38
Be My Baby 39
I Séance with My Uncle at MacArthur Park 41
Finsta of Icarus in Drag 42
Accidental Selfie in the Photo of a Window Quote 43
My Roommate Buffalo Bill 44
Para / Normal
I Still Haven’t Seen The Fly 47
How to Be Happy 48
Hollywood Forever Cemetery 50
The Demon King Paimon Comes by for Monstera Clippings 51
Arkansas Bans Healthcare for Trans Youth 52
Transcestor Creation Myth 53
The Ocean Within Me 54
Every Man Their Mortal Enemy, Every Woman's Beauty Prey 57
Super / Natural
Our Family Leaves the Haunted House 59
When Meryl Streep Sings “Dancing Queen” in Mamma Mia! 60
Portrait as Werewolf 61
What I Will Write About My Father 62
Since Moving from the Beach 63
Reversed House Cleansing 64
Ode to an Anti-Joke 65
Draft Message to My Sibling After Top Surgery 66
Notes 67
Acknowledgments
About the Author :
CD Eskilson is a trans-nonbinary poet and translator. They are a recipient of the C.D. Wright / Academy of American Poets Prize, and their work appears in Kenyon Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Offing, Passages North, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and others. They were once in a punk band.
Review :
“In Scream / Queen, CD Eskilson unravels the ciphers of the celluloid closet, using horror as a lens and entry point into poems mapping transness, chronic illness, and familial trauma. These whip-smart, funny, tender, and lyrically inventive poems both pay homage to and critique horror, unwilling to overlook the genre's entanglement in ongoing moral panics surrounding transness. Though Eskilson stakes the claim that 'So much language,' the very building blocks of their craft, 'is a hunting ground,' and though this collection orbits a series of personal and historical violences, the beating heart at the core of Eskilson's poems is love—for the self, their community, family, partner, and for the genre of horror itself.”
“As preluded by the title of their gorgeously written book, CD Eskilson’s Scream / Queen conjures the throaty power of poetry in defiance of 'cruelty made quiet.' With deft formal innovation, these tremendous poems are aimed with command and compassion at the realities and the myths that would refuse trans love and liberation, forging new sacred possibilities from their sonic wakes, resolving to claim all the joy owed. As Eskilson says it, ‘I lick my lips, // I kiss the moon: it took so long / to get here.’ Amen.”
“If you’ve survived the unsurvivable, is that enough? Are you also allowed joy, pleasure, contentment even? How much? Scream / Queen dances in the impossible tension of creating a new life while reparenting our current and younger selves. Eskilson’s poems scream in their pauses, silences, surprising variations of form, and sharply-forged verbs. Obstacle after obstacle, from external harm to the ghosts of harm that are intrusive thoughts, the voices of Scream / Queen are languaging their attempts to live in unforgettable sound.”
"Eskilson’s broad talent belies the fact that Scream / Queen is a debut. . . the cohesiveness of the collection makes the book seem almost predestined. . . . The collection is introspective and highly vulnerable, showcasing revealing poems about chronic illness and failed relationships. Eskilson writes in conversation with contemporaries, family history and current events, weaving in interviews, pop culture references and other poets’ work for a solid collection that respects the art while pushing boundaries."
"[An] imaginative and playful debut. . . Scream / Queen interrogates monstrosity and the monsterification of trans, queer, and disabled/mentally ill bodies through the lens of pop culture, particularly horror films. . . . By radically re-envisioning familiar characters and tropes, Eskilson breathes new life into their stories, granting them agency and also allowing readers who have been marginalized or flattened by harmful language and representation to see themselves reflected, perhaps for the first time. Scream / Queen is a testament to the liberatory power of queer imagination, creating 'Not simply / a new ending, an entirely new script.'"
"Monsters, body horror, and terror have a long and storied literary relationship with representations of queer experiences, social ostracization, and trauma—a relationship which presents a series of predictable tropes that are easy to fall into. In CD Eskilson’s debut poetry collection Scream/Queen, Eskilson spectacularly avoids and at times wittily critiques these clichés, presenting a beautifully original series of poems which play with familiar themes and poetic forms in practiced, unique ways."
"Eskilson’s incredible debut poetry collection asks us to examine what happens to our connection with our bodies when experiencing and perceiving them via a language based in violent binaries. Their work is a lyrical invitation to consider what monsters might demonstrate, what it means to act out what society views as horror, and how the body, particularly the trans and chronically ill body, is surveilled by a society whose language is inherently hostile towards it. Scream / Queen is not only diagnostic, but foresees a reality in which transness is synonymous with beautiful, with unlegislated connection to self and community, and also with monster."
"CD Eskilson’s debut, Scream / Queen, is full of slashes. The punctuation mark divides the book’s title and each of its sections. . . It joins pronouns (they/them) and characters with multiple names. And in a book that takes on horror, both in film and in life, the word slash itself expands to encompass many meanings. The slash’s prominence in this book challenges the very binary of division and integration, two extremes that the stories of trans, nonbinary, and queer people can be forced into. The reality that Eskilson evokes in their poems—experiences of actual trans and nonbinary people—is neither all anguished dysphoria nor all triumphant harmony. It’s much more complicated and interesting. . . . It’s tempting to say that Scream / Queen bends toward hope. It’s something we all desperately want right now. And there is a hope that springs up more often near the end of the book, but it’s spiky and grounded. . . . These are dim hours indeed, and Scream / Queen knows that slashers almost always have sequels."
