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    Swollening
    Swollening
    Swollening
    Ebook103 pages1 hour

    Swollening

    By Jason Purcell

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    About this ebook

    • In Swollening, Jason Purcell (they/them) documents their relationship to queerness and chronic illness which has informed much of their adult life. Jason suffers from stomach-related issues that have yet to be properly diagnosed; the title refers not only to the physical manifestations of illness but also the psychological impact of homophobia and heteronormativity, resulting in a “body in revolt.”
    • In Jason’s own words: “I started writing this book as I was working on my Master’s thesis, while experiencing sickness and pain that doctors weren’t able to diagnose, and while I was looking for another way of thinking through and writing about illness, seeking the logics of sickness that prose didn’t allow me. I wanted to explore not only the feelings of illness but perhaps attempt to theorize it for myself, to imagine potential connections between the effects of my environment on my physical feelings of safety, health, and well-being.”
    • Two-time Lambda Literary Award winner Joshua Whitehead (Jonny Appleseed) is the editor of Swollening. In addition to Joshua, Jason counts among their influences Billy-Ray Belcourt (particularly his confidence bringing a theoretical inflection to his poetry), Anne-Marie Turza (form and use of language), K.B. Thors, Lauren Turner (a poetics of sickness), John Elizabeth Stintzi, Ocean Vuong, and Canisia Lubrin.
    • Blurb already provided by Vivek Shraya; others by Alex Dimitrov, Leah Horlick, and K.B. Thors to follow.
    • Jason is the co-owner of Glass Bookshop in Edmonton, one of the best new indie bookstores in Canada.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArsenal Pulp Press
    Release dateApr 5, 2022
    ISBN9781551528861
    Swollening

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      Book preview

      Swollening - Jason Purcell

      I

      Things swallowed.

      I call you

      my body to me—I think

      I misplaced a memory, the past behind

      the wall and rotting. Gagging

      on childhood. I need the sense to smell for it and then

      let it grow, except

      my senses are misfiring in the domestic.

      Imposition

      "There is no word for the ‘floating’ gender

      in which we would all like to rest."

      — ANNE CARSON¹

      Not in the jam that sticks the lid.

      Never under the thumb, the butter, kneading.

      Not here on the shoulder do I know you, gender,

      even though that’s where you put your weight and pushed,

      diminished me, left holes, some threads flagging the nail on the fence

      that divides one from the other, as though there can only be two

      sides at genital-height, rigid division. Not here

      do you make longing out of absence. It sleeves on.

      My adult voice careens through the house. I catalogue

      spores and motes, things that dust my smallness

      and can be wiped away with a finger, blown

      up to settle somewhere else.

      1 Carson, Anne. Anne Carson, The Art of Poetry No. 88 Interviewed by Will Aitken. Paris Review, no. 171, 2004.

      Wroxton, Saskatchewan

      Bask in the summer of fathers dying.

      First your orchard, then my mother’s

      childhood: a place easy to imagine

      the both of us being but not all at once.

      Before, your own past: some fruit stolen and driving

      drunk, angling the sound of the car toward

      the lawn, headlights on your son and daughter’s

      bedroom windows, and your wife hushing

      you inside before straightening up your mess

      in case the neighbours could see the direction

      of you. There, the small box of your life, that contained

      everything and so little of it.

      After death: meeting for the first time, your grandness

      diminished and all your stories

      sad. Even now, after all, there is no need to be ungenerous.

      We say what we can about ourselves.

      If there is a word of mine you don’t know, replace it

      but always for the better.

      North of Nipissing Beach

      I stood ankle-deep in polite water

      and there was wind coming over the trees

      and toward the camper where my mom and dad sat

      with friends I only recognize

      from one of their few wedding photos, by now out

      of its frame and discarded. Under the surface,

      my eyes darting little fish, so many and so

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