Missed Connections with Tall Girls

by Gwen Aube

train hopping
pill popping
fur wearing
sink pissing
tranny
punk
odes!

Tweaking working-class colloquialisms into new forms of elegy and song, Gwen Aube’s hilarious and uncompromising poems chronicle a precarious, debaucherous carnival of trailer-trash divas and Discord autistics, living and delighting in survival at the edges of technocapital.

Like a digital-age Wanda Coleman, like a transsexual Kevin Killian, like Elizabeth Smart infused with Sybil Lamb, Missed Connections with Tall Girls establishes Aube as a brash and unstoppable singular voice for a monstrous new world.

Genres: Poetry, Transgender, Queer, LGBT, 21st Century

104 pages, Paperback

Published April 7, 2026

Reviews

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might actually be my favorite LittlePuss title yet + an impressive addition to their already formidable catalog. Gwen Aube is, as I thought to myself many times while reading MCWTG, the much needed successor to late transMad poet kari edwards, who masterfully blended pop culture, philosophy, myth, and the material realities of living a precarious trans life. Aube has done the same here, weaving effortlessly between confessional, theoretical, and ekphrastic registers, but never straying far from a visceral emotional closeness that made me feel I was simultaneously at a reading and a slumber party. I can't wait to read more from her, and will be recommending this book to anyone interested in transMad poetics.

[Sybil Lamb · Rating 5 out of 5]

The mind boggling research that went in to these poems was like a human endurance contest for ill advised guerilla kamikaze invulnerable vulnerability that defies the idea of logic so much it might have been a performance stunt, a dare, the omega fusion of identity and desire. Gwen poetry is all or nothing life or death deathly serious silliness stuff! Like Japanese-rockabilly, Gwaube's half century in the future remix of the merry prankster has maxed herself in to the fondest dream of a beatniks worst nightmares and pie-piper like has lead a hundred girls in to that delicious abyss she manifests, Something you wouldn't expect of a ZOOLENIAL but I hear she was raised by Xenials so that makes sense.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historically, poetry is the genre I have struggled with the most. My mind responds more readily to long-form pieces where words are cheap and fill the binding to bursting, the minimalist approach of poetry has always seemed so fraught with unknown rules that I struggle to understand: what makes it good? Unschooled ignoramus that I am, I've found it easiest to approach poetry like I do visual art: a piece is good when it causes me to pause and evokes an emotional response in me. From that starting point I can tease out what evoked this response.

I very much enjoyed this collection of Gwen Aube's poetry and found myself reading them aloud to my empty house to better fall into the rhythm of her words and letting the imagery of her chaotic trans punk life rise up around me. I respond to it because she evokes a scene I know in my bones, the places where I am most fully myself (warts and all). Her writing reminds me so much of her mentor and mother, Sybil Lamb, but also the nihilistic abandon of Laura Albert writing as J.T. LeRoy. Each piece is quick, few stretch over a page long, but it's enough to bring the scene to life. To feel the joy and the abandon and the desire to poke a stick at the straight world. To live defiantly free. This may well be my favorite publication from LittlePuss Press so far.

[Alanna Why · Rating 5 out of 5]

poetry for freaks only. gwen aube is the real deal!

[little_pangolin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit, I'm blown away.

[this_eel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fantastic collection - violent and colliding and kinda hot. She's referential and mothering, inaccessible and aggressive. It feels like she's beating up the form of poetry and then presenting it to you as a new messy gift that is one of the best you'll receive this year. I like her very much. I hope she really did steal that book from the library.

- Aside

It's interesting to read this after Plastic Prism Void, which is unique to this and by a different author but between these two books - their mental acuity and transness and mean little senses of humor - you can see some of the razor-sharp editorial interests at the inimitable Little Puss Press.

[Paige Genest · Rating 4 out of 5]

transsexxxuals will read this and just think hell yeah

[Francis]

I don't know enough about poetry to judge this. It's definitely poems and it definitely has an extended section about the Ottawa Art Gallery. Yay for regionalism in media?

[Aolund · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book. I appreciated its social and political heart, the lusty, snarky, and heartfelt flame it carries for the girls, for friendship, for the street. I especially enjoyed the more lyrical pieces, finding them more daring and inventive.

[ELK · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the first 2/3 better than the last section, which I barely felt equipped to exist in conversation with (probably due at least in part to our stark differences in exposure to fine art/art history). But the stuff i did connect with was very earnest and tender, and i enjoyed that about these poems.

[August Driussi · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could prescribe a poetry collection to every trans person I met, this would be the one. There is a new chamber in my heart, and it's swollen to bursting with the trashy tgirls, crusty transmascs, and obnoxious genderqueer teens I met in these pages. I want to see this collection, stained and underlined, between HRT bottles and lube on every T4T bedstand in North America. Help me make my dream come true!

Pair with The Faggots and Their Friends and Napkin by Carta Monir for the ultimate T4T care package. (P.S., I encountered these poems at the hospital bedside after a friend of a friend's bottom surgery and promptly sent them to the last girl who broke my heart, who told me they made her cry and cry. I'm just saying that here because I'm hoping gwen aube will come across this review someday and know how much these poems mean to me and mine. Just, holy shit, thank you, thank you, thank you!)

[The Queer Librarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO GOOD. This short collection packs a punch. I loved blood pact, especially:

"i've killed a man for you. i've murdered.
my hands stained to resemble yours."

I don't want to belabor the point with a super long review but yeah, Little Puss Press continues to do fantastic work and this is another great addition to it. I love this collection, you should read it.

I also did want to say that I'm not a huge poetry person. I get intimidated by poetry and then usually choose something else to read after reading a few poems in a book. I stuck with this one all the way through. I was engrossed. I kept showing pages to friends so that they could read it too. It's great.

[Connor Bruler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surges of sour candy stand kindred with the heady verse Aube steers. This she holds with the verve necessary to step forward from these cauterizing moments which commune any who linger in those icked memories fractionally too long.

[Samrat]

i'm just not there with poetry yet. i did like the long-form one that went third the most.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really equipped to review poetry, but at least some of this book's themes felt like they came through strongly and I'm happy to have read it.

[Bronwyn Garden-Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

WHENEVER ANYONE ASKS I ALWAYS SAY GWEN AUBE IS MY FAVOURITE POET

[June · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's good poems.

[Lisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

WTF am I reading? This one’s not for me.

[Raino Isto · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is pretty much the definition of what I imagine when I think of “queer poetry”—hilarious, self-deprecating, and joyful. Props for the Nick Land (!) (?) references.