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Battalion Shaped Girl
“Who but an oracle ought to become in our present battlefields of embargoed being and (un)sanctioned brutality? Who but an oracle of riotous sense and ecstatic vision could so incisively depict ‘desire’s exit / wound’ and ‘futures refracting in the rip.’ Temperance Aghamohammadi’s Battalion Shaped Girl is a rhapsodic, occult debut.” - Aditi Machado, author of Material Witness
“Temperance Aghamohammadi writes poems that are at once feats of language sharpened to its utmost point and spells that can transform our sense of the world. How we move through her lines—stopping at unusual points to consider meaning before it evolves into something else—becomes an example of how we might move through our days. While this book is written with a strong consciousness of how public and personal histories can be called forth to determine the present, the power of Battalion Shaped Girl is rooted in its maker’s resolve to ‘always. begin. / again.’ And there’s so much pleasure along the way! This is a magical, marvelous debut.” - Heather Christle, author of Paper Crown and In The Rhododendrons
“Part anthem, part Victorian rock ballad, these rhapsodic lyrics dazzle, documenting what it is like to be girl, doll, daughter, alive in times of atrocity in one’s homeland and one’s ancestral home. Forugh Farrokhzad lines the skeleton of this book, with traces of Lucie Brock-Broido’s numinous syntax lingering between the pages. ‘My life is happening again,’ the speaker says, and it is such voyeuristic luck to witness their life.” - Diana Khoi Nguyen, author of Root Fracture
“Temperance Aghamohammadi writes poems that are at once feats of language sharpened to its utmost point and spells that can transform our sense of the world. How we move through her lines—stopping at unusual points to consider meaning before it evolves into something else—becomes an example of how we might move through our days. While this book is written with a strong consciousness of how public and personal histories can be called forth to determine the present, the power of Battalion Shaped Girl is rooted in its maker’s resolve to ‘always. begin. / again.’ And there’s so much pleasure along the way! This is a magical, marvelous debut.” - Heather Christle, author of Paper Crown and In The Rhododendrons
“Part anthem, part Victorian rock ballad, these rhapsodic lyrics dazzle, documenting what it is like to be girl, doll, daughter, alive in times of atrocity in one’s homeland and one’s ancestral home. Forugh Farrokhzad lines the skeleton of this book, with traces of Lucie Brock-Broido’s numinous syntax lingering between the pages. ‘My life is happening again,’ the speaker says, and it is such voyeuristic luck to witness their life.” - Diana Khoi Nguyen, author of Root Fracture
Paperback
Published September 1, 2025
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About the author
Temperance Aghamohammadi
1 book2 followersTemperance Aghamohammadi is an Acolyte of the Exquisite. A trans Iranian-American poet, medium, and critic, she is the author of BATTALION SHAPED GIRL (DISCOUNT GUILLOTINE, 2025) and Behnt (New Delta Review, forthcoming), selected by Dorothea Lasky as the winner of the New Delta Review Chapbook Prize.
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, New England Review, Fairy Tale Review, and elsewhere. She has received support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Hailing from the Northeast, she currently haunts the Midwest, attending Northwestern University’s English Literature PhD program.
She runs poïsons: a trans reading series, salon, and cabaret in Chicago, and helps organize the P.O. Box Poetry Series. Her editorial work includes serving as the Helen Degen Cohen Fellow and current Associate Editor at RHINO, assistant editorship at Tyger Quarterly, and her previous role as editor-in-chief of The Spectacle.
Her critical work is situated at the intersection of experimental modernist and contemporary poetry and poetics, sound studies, erotic theory, and electronic music.
Find her @battalionshapedgirl on Instagram.
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, New England Review, Fairy Tale Review, and elsewhere. She has received support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Hailing from the Northeast, she currently haunts the Midwest, attending Northwestern University’s English Literature PhD program.
She runs poïsons: a trans reading series, salon, and cabaret in Chicago, and helps organize the P.O. Box Poetry Series. Her editorial work includes serving as the Helen Degen Cohen Fellow and current Associate Editor at RHINO, assistant editorship at Tyger Quarterly, and her previous role as editor-in-chief of The Spectacle.
Her critical work is situated at the intersection of experimental modernist and contemporary poetry and poetics, sound studies, erotic theory, and electronic music.
Find her @battalionshapedgirl on Instagram.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 27, 2025
one of the most stunning collections of contemporary poetry I’ve ever read. earns every moment of its emotional excess, pain, and sensuality. stirring, haunting, mystical, and deeply personal while always tempting something greater than the self. required reading for any poetry fan, lover of the dark feminine, or reader of queer/trans literature.
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December 18, 2025💌
December 27, 2025
beauty out of the shards and fragments of destruction, gender, the baroque, queerness. <3
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews