Emilia Phillips

I forgot to post yesterday’s book I read for the #SealeyChallenge: THROWN IN THE THROAT by Benjamin Garcia (Milkweed, 2020). How lush, how varied this book is! I’m a fan!

Hi, DeMisty! Nice to see you here!

Photograph of lines of poetry, with underlined text in the message

Photograph of the book Your Dazzling Death by Cass Donish

“Some say my pronouns / should be used for the plural only, // but my dreams / are singular”

—Cass Donish (@cassdonish.bsky.social), “Dignity” from YOUR DAZZLING DEATH (Knopf, 2024), which I’m reading as I catch up on the #sealeychallenge today!

Peculiar Heritage — MASON JAR PRESS The shock of American violence and hate shouldn’t be shocking at all. This is our peculiar heritage from an ugly institution. Still, we are not without resistance and Peculiar Heritage, a collection o...

If you read Peculiar Heritage for the Sealy Challenge, lmk, review it, share it with a friend, and when you're done, shelf it, or put in a little free library, or give it to your boyfriend's grandmother. If you'd like a signed copy, get in touch with me via my website. @masonjarpress.bsky.social

Stunned and absolutely thrilled that Nonbinary Bird of Paradise (@uakronpress.bsky.social, 2024) is a finalist for the LGBTQ+ Poetry Lammy (@lambdaliterary.bsky.social)! Congrats to all the finalists in all categories 🏳️‍🌈

📣 We are thrilled to share that Nonbinary Bird of Paradise by @emdashphillips.bsky.social has been shortlisted for the 2025 Lammy Awards! 🥳

#poetry #poetrycommunity #lgbtqia #nonbinary #poets

We told you they were going to do project 2025 and it’s 2025 and they’re doing project 2025

Just did my full gear fit check for the Arctic 🐻‍❄️ Leaving Wednesday for Oslo!

Page from a poetry collection. (I am not sure about copying and pasting the entirety of the text here sorry)

Page from poetry collection.

“Not halves of a whole.
Not mirrors. Not puzzled
together in the missionary
position. Not a gunpowder
keg and a gun going off.
You scoff, but I wasn’t
the fruit to his pit,
a tangle for his nit.
No, Adam and I,
we were more like brothers
from our quickchange
infancy forward”

-Emilia Phillips

Thank you!!!!! 🥹🥹🥹

Poetry book with red-orange background. On the cover is a beautiful illustration of a snake twined territorially and comfortably at the top of a tree, jaw wide open and fangs bared, startling a black and white bird. A rattle behind it is raised high. Two other birds are perched on different twigs of this spindly treetop branch. The snake almost seems to be protecting the bird greyer bird perched right by it.

I’m in awe. & beginning yesterday morning with the “Queerness of Eve” section colored the rest of my day in this open, lovely light.

GORGEOUS craft and insightful, com/passionate poetry in this book “Nonbinary Bird of Paradise” by @emdashphillips.bsky.social I’m so glad I got this at #AWP25!

thank you! Where are you?

Cover art for a poetry book showing birds of paradise in a brick red background.

Page one of a poem

Page two of a poem

I don't recall where I picked up @emdashphillips.bsky.social fabulous book of poems, but I hope they have a reading somewhere I can go to in the near future!

#poetry #amreading

MY BED WAS BELOW A PAINTING OF THE RAPE OF IO. Midnight sun. No curtains, only red, yellow, green, and purple construction paper I’d taped (masking) the windows. In a squint: stained glass. I slept in fits—thirty minutes broken by hours staring, hours masturbating, and hours rereading sentences I couldn’t remember reading. The moon, something like a cheek smudge left on a window by a train passenger. I left my

body. I sucked black pepper candies at my desk, took shots of Brennivin in the shared kitchen with the other artists. Volcanic ash blew in and grayed my black jeans drying on the line. No rain since April. Now June, near solstice. A new species of biting flies erupted one night in the bedrooms. New birds from Greenland. New birds from Britain. New birds shitting seeds of new plants scrabbling in the ash. The hottest

summer on Iceland’s record. I stopped writing with pen. I stopped typing in the word processor, that work of making a light slightly darker. Instead, I took lipstick and traced my cheek scar, pressing it like a kiss on paper. I called this a poem. I laid awake in my underwear, upside down in bed, to stare at the black lines of the heifer, the curly-haired god. They never

broke, their figures a knot. A man’s work, I was sure. I had been here before. Not as in déjà vu. Not here here. But in the country. Snowed-in. Another season with a drunk husband, an unheeded no. New birds from Greenland. Birds from Britain. Old seeds finally sown. I called him to say I was coming home soon but not to him. Those last nights I’d walk the lake against the wind. Emilia Phillips

“I laid awake / in my underwear, upside / down in bed, to stare // at the black lines / of the heifer, the curly-haired / god.” —Emilia Phillips @emdashphillips.bsky.social, “My Bed Was below a Painting of the Rape of Io” @uakronpress.bsky.social

Why is the dentist the most heterosexual of doctor’s offices????

Pacific Paradise Herbal Tea & Nonbinary Bird of Paradise by Emilia Phillips

8. Pacific Paradise Herbal Tea & Nonbinary Bird of Paradise by Emilia Phillips (@emdashphillips.bsky.social) from @uakronpress.bsky.social

Experimental section of the essay with names of motels the way they appear on their respective signs

"I . . . write down the names of motels I pass, partly because they’ve devolved from Technicolor postcard destinations with mod geometric signs, to roadside slumps of peeling paint and mediocre marquee promises." @emdashphillips.bsky.social blackbird-archive.vcu.edu/v14n1/nonfic...

Self-Mythology, Desire, and Power: A Review of “Deed” by torrin a. greathouse and “Nonbinary Bird of Paradise” by Emilia Phillips Review by Chiara Di Lello

"'DEED' and 'Nonbinary Bird of Paradise' wrest power back from religious rituals, ancient texts, and the normative terminology of medicine and disability, remake mythological figures in the image(s) of queer bodies and sexualities..."

Chiara Di Lello's review:

psalteryandlyre.org/2025/04/11/s...

Self-Mythology, Desire, and Power: A Review of “DEED” by torrin a. greathouse and “Nonbinary Bird of Paradise” by Emilia Phillips Review by Chiara Di Lello

fight the hellscape: read poems about unbridled queer desire & survival & joy. I reviewed two queer af collections in @psalteryandlyre.bsky.social:
psalteryandlyre.org/2025/04/11/s...

The pilot of this plane sounds like Casey Kasem

two photos side by side. in the left photo, a dog is leaning out the driver window of a red vehicle toward a drive-thru window. in the right photo the dog has entered the establishment through the window, only his hind end sticking out.

This dog got a little impatient waiting for his pup cup. Decided to make sure everything was going alright in there. 14/10

I have a dual review out today, of @emdashphillips.bsky.social and @tagreathouse.bsky.social's beautiful books. Link below!

Tomorrow, I’m reading alongside Andy Bodinger, Dewey Fox, Morgan Henderson, and Amy Strieter as a part of Quarter After Eight’s reading series at Ohio University! Come on out and join us! Thanks for organizing, Dalanie Beach! 🥰

In some alternate universe Musk & Trump are just the subjects of two episodes of Scam Goddess. Nothing more than that.

We really need a banging-head-on-wall emoji.

The best boy

Why Hasn’t Columbia U. Sued to Protect Itself? Legal scholars say the university would have a strong case to make if it wanted to use the courts to fight for its funding to be restored.

www.chronicle.com/article/why-...

A Letter From Palestinian Activist Mahmoud Khalil | ACLU Khalil, who was unlawfully arrested in retaliation for his advocacy, details this violation of his free speech rights.

"The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent."

In his first letter since being detained by ICE, activist Mahmoud Khalil details the harrowing ordeal he and his family have experienced in retaliation for protesting in support of Palestine.

A Columbia University Professor Speaks Out Against the Kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil On March 12, at a rally in front of the New York City courthouse where Mahmoud Khalil’s hearing took place, classicist and Columbia University associate professor Joseph Howley made the follo…

“We will not take lectures on antisemitism from segregationists and neo-nazis.” Joseph Howley speaks out against the kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil.