Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing

by Topaz Winters

Finalist, 2018 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize
Finalist, 2018 Broken River Poetry Book Prize

Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing is an award-winning, omnivorous collection of poetry residing in the space between confessional & manifesto. Portrait is interested in the immediacy of language; in girlhood as wolfhood; in the cartography of illness; in fractures through the dark; in bodies, human & water alike. Luminous, tender, & unflinching, Portrait cuts straight to the marrow. To all those whose bodies have been more bruise than human—who feel so loudly the sky turns black in fear—this book is for you.

Genres: Poetry, Lesbian, Queer, LGBT, Mental Health, Nonfiction, Gay

74 pages, Paperback

First published May 27, 2019

About the author

I am a writer, artist, editor, performer, & author of So, Stranger (Button Poetry 2022, winner of the Button Poetry Short Form Contest & a LitBowl Best Poetry Book of 2022) & Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing (Button Poetry 2019 & 2024, finalist in the Broken River & Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prizes). I serve as editor-in-chief of Half Mystic Press, an independent, international, & interdisciplinary publishing project, & as co-editor of Kopi Break, a journal of new Singapore poetry.

My poetry, fiction, & nonfiction have been published by The American Poetry Review, Foglifter, & Passages North, profiled in Vogue, The Straits Times, & The Business Times, & performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Centre for Fiction, & the Singapore Writers Festival. I am the recipient of fellowships from Sundress Publications, the National YoungArts Foundation, & Unearth Writing Retreats. In 2017 I gave the TEDx talk Healing Is a Verb. I’m the writer & star of the 2017 short film SUPERNOVA (recipient of awards from the Newark International, Across Asia Youth, Laurie Nelson, My Rode Reel, Singapore International Student, & CINE Golden Eagle Film Festivals), & from 2015 to 2022 I wrote the annual column Silver-Tipped Swallow for Half Mystic Journal.

I hold a B.A. in English with certificates in Creative Writing, Visual Art, & Italian from Princeton University. I live between New York & Singapore with a white dog named Hachii & a black cat named Volta.

Reviews

[Topaz Winters · Rating 5 out of 5]

“What is it / they say about love? That it’s only possession / rechristened. That it lives outside the body. That it’s / florid & empty & cheating & thankful for so much, / so much it doesn’t know how to name. All her life / the girl has eaten. Now it’s your turn. Doorbell ring. / Quiet bruise. Price of deadly. Anything is yours / if you swallow it.”

Proud of this ravenous reckless skin-searching little creature. I hope you love her as much as I do.

[Scarllet ✦ iamlitandwit · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the way a girl becomes a bomb:
gradually, in open mouths & restless
childhoods & a thousand gut-wrenches
of lifting planes.

Tell me how to feel Topaz Winters... in your completely otherworldly and abstract tongue. I swear, it's like being transported into another dimension where Winters can see the future, the past and everything in between. This collection is just vividly heartbreaking in its relatability. One of my favorites in this collection has to be the one its titled after: Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing — "in my wrists, swaddled robins" & "feathers in their throats". There are so many top tier bits that I adored and was so captivated by, it's insane.

[Trista Mateer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing tackles the unapologetic nature of girlhood, the mouths we mar with our own, the way our bodies look in the light. With the collection, Winters has created something unashamedly queer and self-sufficient. She asks her own questions and does not wait for someone else to answer them. “Must I say it to survive?” asks the poet. “Then I will.”

[Caitlin Conlon · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are few writers that I struggle to pin down as much as I do with Topaz Winters. Something about the way she can twine images so neatly (and, at times, clumsily) to collective feelings of yearning and persistence and absolute necessity is breathtaking in every sense of the word. Portrait Of My Body As A Crime I’m Still Committing is an homage to light and all the ways it touches us and all the ways it abandons us in times of need but still manages to return. This is a collection about love, the ways we both survive it and grow with it, and desire, and the way night fades delicately into the dawn (always, always). There is a loud voice in my head begging me to also state that this is her most personal collection to date, but is it? Is it really? Winters gives you the impression of “maybe this, or maybe not” that is unmistakeable, and lingering, and incredibly effective. You are not meant to know everything. This is clear. This is riveting. You can’t help but keep looking at it.

I don’t quite know how to end this review with anything other than Topaz Winters is a poet to keep your eye on. If you haven’t noticed her yet, you will. She’ll make sure of it.

[Crystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Topaz Winter’s portrait of my body as a crime i'm still committing is a book in which tenderness has given way to hunger, both literal and of the soul. Queer desire, mental illness, and loving a girl likened to the moon in poems sharp and explosive.

The references to hallucinations, coupled with the poem about antipsychotics, and references to hospitals and other forms of mental illness, made me feel that moment of being seen, of the reality/unreality of that experience being written about frankly.

Love and desire cleaves two sick girls together, the journey of their ascent and descent chronicled in poems so bright with want they ache, they cut. Relatable: “& still I do not believe / in God. Still I believe in you instead.”

Relatable: “Some days I don’t eat just so my best friend / will worry about me, just so my mother will / call at 7:30 & make sure I’m eating dinner.”

This collection ends softly. It ends with forgiveness. Topaz Winters takes you to the edge of destruction and holds out a saving hand, inviting you into the warmth of healing and familial love.

—

I received a PDF copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Elke · Rating 4 out of 5]

It starts so raw. Open. Dropping you into the deep end. But also: cards close, not showing everything yet. Or ever. Contradictions in all their beautiful and intriguing existence.

How in love we are with the things our minds
create to survive

Self Diagnosis feels like all the air punched out of your lungs at once.

I love the girl something holy is a line from Trigger that feels so much like Heaven or This, but this is different. Sharper. Words that can hurt you, but also words you can cut with. I love the girl 14 reasons to bleed into the ground and no matter the hurt, words you will be grateful that have been said. I love the girl. Can I not have this soft thing, too? On my back & shotgun to my chest & question on your lips & no more words to hear. So pull the trigger. I love the girl. I love the girl. I dare you. Pull the trigger.

This collection is really hard to capture? It feels like the cover. Images you recognise or can decipher and images you can't. It doesn't matter. Read more. Continue. Immerse yourself. The feelings are there and you cannot help but ending up wanting to know more, and the story, and her.

I feel like Topaz sees things I don't. Like colours are waves of words, or something. It is a unique privilege, to be able to bear witness to someone writing many things you know are worth reading even if you won't be understanding them all.

So go on, show me around your homeless.
Show me central park & show me the places
where we died.

It's brutal and honest and real. From a poet who notices groups of people who usually don't get or want this spot. You're not safe. But it's better here in the light. Even if it's too bright when it is right on you. But maybe it is right on them too and we can share this strangely comforting discomfort together.

God, I am tired of writing
poems about sickness.
When he spoke, I heard
my own shaking voice.
(…) So
many times my body
has been more ache
than human.
(…)
Just once, I
wanted the sky to wake
up on time & remind us
of the little mouths with no names except erasure

Topaz Winters feels inevitable. You cannot escape the touch of her work.
I made notes whilst reading this and they just ended up being quotes and page numbers and people to read certain things to.


There are poetry collections that i love because they immediately spark my own words and motivate me (thinking about Heaven or This again). This one i love because i know it will influence me on a longer timescale. Because it makes me pick up threads in my brain, and then, maybe, eventually, in my words.

And i love it because, i, too, have a body more ache than human. And now i know i am not alone. And even if i/we have had enough of our own poems about that, there is a special kind of homecoming in reading those of others.

I was so sure dying was easier
than cleaning up the horrendous mess

I'd made in yesterday's yellow light

Also. I had Florence + the Machine's High as Hope open in another tab, not playing whilst i read because i wanted to focus, but some parts of some songs automatically made its way into my head anyway. It feels like they were made to be paired. (& more about pairings: i felt like this was Heaven or This + If My Body Could Speak + sharp shards of what was brittle glass before, but no more)

A thousand times thank you to Topaz for providing me with an arc in exchange for my honest review.
TW's for eating disorders, pain, blood, mentions of violence.

What I mean is that I want an existence without the scarring of unfinished things.

initial reaction:
you have no idea how much i want this. how much i need to read this book that says: "To all those whose bodies have been more bruise than human—who feel so loudly the sky turns black in fear—this book is for you."

and

"‘This is the way a girl becomes a bomb,’ Topaz Winters declares, in this ticking register of girlhood, illness, and queer desire."

i have loved everything topaz writes and creates and their presence as a human being with all the tenderness, honest and raw emotion.
this is going to be so good, and so needed. my heart is already breaking
preorders: https://t.co/xzY2OgflYs

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

So if I must, I'll
admit it now, with the barrel of a gun the only confessional:
yes, I love the girl. I love the girl matchstick & gasoline,
something fierce. Something holy. Something on my back &
shotgun to my chest & yes, I love the girl like 14 reasons to
bleed into the ground. I love her on the border of sainthood
& sinner, her mouth the way burning happens.

[Danielle Loverro · Rating 5 out of 5]

“You with your fingers dipped in revolution, the history of what will someday be true.”

“I do not know how to write about you without writing about the fire / how my body became punctuation in your gentle orange hands.”

“Knew the wild at first glance, by their soft & shredded underbellies.”

UGH—this book voraciously portrays the juxtapositions of wanting and accepting, hurting and healing, hoping and despairing, as well as loneliness and belonging. Wow! I love that poetry is so subjective. What do you want it to mean? You can take it how you wish. I felt hurt in my heart when reading some of these. Wowwww. Beautiful.

[Asha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes I'll read a poem and have that moment of thinking like, gee, at some point the poet and I must've been in the same cloud of start dust marveling at the same sun. There were several of those poems in this collection. An easy favorite.

[sacredheart · Rating 4 out of 5]

& on the seventh day he looked straight into the sun / said i didn’t mean for it to turn out like this / & the sun laughed & laughed & laughed / said there’s a whole world in that / in not meaning for it to turn out like this

[Hannah (Ink & Myths) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to thank Topaz Winters, for writing a poetry collection as brilliant and wonderful as this one, and for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve been a huge fan of Topaz Winters’ poetry for years now. I love the way her words reach me, resonate with me; no one else manages to evoke not one or two, but a whole flood of emotions in me, like Topaz does with her words. You can imagine how happy I was, how honoured, when she contacted me to read an ARC of her newest collection Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing — and isn’t that title alone brilliant and intriguing? Don’t you want to know what happens next?

Now, reviewing poetry collections has never really been easy for me, for reasons I’m not sure I can explain. Maybe is because I love poetry in a way that is very different to the way I love novels. Maybe it’s because poetry is so deeply personal or maybe it’s because I think everyone finds something different in poetry (and, to me, a lot of reading poetry is about finding yourself between the lines). Whatever the reason, I’m sure that my review won’t do this collection and Topaz’s words justice — so just let it be said here that this is a brilliant collection, filled with longing and love and pain and healing and, most of all, survival. I love this book endlessly.

“How in love we are with the things our minds / create to survive.”

What I think must be said about Portrait is that it is not a book you read and forget about. Topaz Winters strings words together like a melody, and, like a song, her words stay in the back of my mind, always there. It’s a thought both comforting and frightening, that words have the power to stay with you in such a permanent way. Either way, I think it says a lot about the kind of writer Topaz is; that is to say: a magnificent one.

What must also be said is that this is not an easy read. Portrait deals with a lot of difficult topics and it’s incredibly personal; many of the poems are about mental illness (panic attacks, eating disorder and anxiety are topics that are often talked about) and there are multiple mentions of suicide. So, be aware of that when going into this book. But then there are lines like this:

“& bless the day the meds finally / started working, but also, // bless every day before that. / Bless every poem // about healing. Bless / every false start // that made it possible for me / to write poems about healing.”

And I truly believe that Portrait is an incredibly important book and I admire Topaz infinitely for her bravery and strength; writing this collection can’t have been easy, but there’s so much to find between these pages and if any piece of writing has ever made me believe that there’s hope and that healing is a possibility, this is it.

Another theme that caught my attention again and again while reading Portrait was the theme of want. In But First, the Stomach, Topaz ended with this line and it has stuck with me since:

“In the beginning, there was want. / I can’t remember what came after that.”

I feel like this line somehow grasps the essence of this collection, or at least the essence of what I found in it: that there are so many things to want, to long for, to reach for but never quite reaching — until maybe, just maybe, against all odds, you reach them after all. This is a collection of poems that is intense in its desire and I loved every single word.

I’m certain that there is a poem for every single person in this collection: there are love poems, and so many amazing poems about girls loving girls (and can I just take this moment to say: read Pandora, it’s wonderful in every single way), there are poems about grief and about loss, about hurting and healing. There are poems that make you smile, and (possibly even more) poems that make you cry, but every single one is breathtaking and honest and glorious.

Overall, I can only say that this has been a stunning poetry collection — and after I finished reading Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing and wrote this review, I instantly pre-ordered my own copy. Topaz Winters has been one of my favourite poets for a while now and, after reading this collection, I love her words more than ever before. If you’re a lover of poetry or if you always wanted to get into reading it, I recommend this collection with my whole heart and soul.

“This is what the wolves taught me: / the most beautiful word is girl. / The most beautiful part of her body / is what she did to survive.”

[James Lunet · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This is what the wolves taught me:

the most beautiful word is girl.

The most beautiful part of her body

is what she did to survive.”


In Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing, Topaz Winters weaves soft and hard pieces of her body together like stitches in a downy comforter. Body turned dead bird turned mouth turned home for she who does not want it. Winters clings to fledgling metaphors like they will bring the girl she love[d?] back; ever in heart thrown song, these chirps serve as a warning to fly away before your wings are clipped. Winters’ Half Mystic Press revels in the ballroom dance of music and poetry - a frantic clutch of syllables and soundbites stepping on toes. With this waltz in mind, I’ll be inserting various songs to compliment Winters’ imagery and word choices. The opening lines of the poem this collection shares a name with writes, “My presence in these bird bones is hostile territory." When Winters talks about birds, she spins them as light and hollow and fragile, yet ever-present and achingly whole. I am none of those things. When I think about birds, I see myself as turkey dinner: bones picked clean through by her teeth, yet still saying thank you. I see Winters as swallow, as black swan, as bird not in the sense of weakhollowbonedloss, but in the sense of something strong enough to fly away from The Bad Thing. [music: strange birds, birdy; birds, imagine dragons; bluebird, sara bareilles; birds, coldplay; jump then fall, taylor swift]



Winters continues her animalistic imagery in "Lightning/Fire", with lines, "When I ask why you were late the other day, why you didn’t pick up the phone when I called, you tilt your head to relapse, say: cherry blood, strange flower, mouth so close to ruin. A rabbit is screaming along to these words." And later, in the same poem: "What I’m trying to say is love, death, & freedom mean nothing to a rabbit, but everything to a girl in the headlights with eyes of stare, broken rules, safe haven... There are so many dead rabbits, & still I do not believe in God. Still I believe in you instead. Still I can’t tell if this will ever be enough for you to give me my hands back. Maybe one of these days I will know to stop waiting." As someone who is notorious for lying on train tracks, in a perpetual state of waiting and brakes, please let me know when that day comes. [music: hunger, florence and the machine; way down we go, kaleo; fool for you, zayn; hard feelings/loveless, lorde; pray, sam smith]



And behind the soft-yet-wild, untamed girl on burnt flesh, bullets thrown only in her name thunder, there is still pause for pliable lips, Achilles heels, and muttered want-like-prayer. In "Portrait", Winters pens, "every night my collarbones tremble their way to violence", a sequel to the line, "You, martyr for twilights raging for love," which teeters within the poem, "Guidebook for Wild Things Wishing to Be Tamed". Perhaps the clearest example of controlled turbulence is painted in salt spray via one of my favorite pieces, "Flood Season". Words stumble over each other in waves, pulling the reader in, under the current in lustful, begging vulnerability: “Kiss me like a filthy ocean. Teach me to drown without the help of baptism. Your hands twisted in my hair, mouth melting, swallowing my breath.” [music: waves, mr. probz ft. robin schulz; oceans, seafret; blue, troye sivan ft. alex hope; tenerife sea, ed sheeran; vienna, the fray]



Winters treads the delicate waters of gentle force, of soft body you can melt into, of hard feelings beneath the tongue, of I love you, but -



Does the ending even matter? Or is love within parameters a foolish, haphazard casualty? Do you think about her under the shower nozzle, back arched and shaking? And what good is found in that? A punishment? A crime? An excuse to access any bit of feeling you have inside you? So you wish to drown? In water, in emotions, in regret - choose your fighter. I see you tying bricks to your ankles because you think with a big enough push, she'll come back.



Honey, you'll just drown.

[Arley · Rating 5 out of 5]

why don't you burn my piano while you're at it

[janeee :D · Rating 2 out of 5]

well-written but ultimately impactful and structurally repetitive

[bailey 💛✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

biased or unbiased, topaz is just a blessing to the genre of poetry. i love her and this collection dearly!!!

here’s a list of my faves, if you’re interested:

trigger
new york city probably has an anxiety disorder
if the body is an artefact
infernal/inferno
the night you are diagnosed
lone/pack
high specific heat
panic attack as airplane departure time
dream sequence
event horizon
50 words for snow
july
hands

[Silvia (roomforbooks) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was super lucky to receive an E-Arc of Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing in exchange for an honest review.

You are not the kind of human / who calls herself human.

I'd already read Heaven or This by Topaz Winters, I'd ended up loving it and crying over my kindle, so when I started reading Portrait I was ready to experience that all over again. And it happened. Topaz Winters did it again. With her honesty and rawness, she hits right where it hurts but that's also what I appreciate the most about her writing.
This collection stole my breath from the very first poem and it wouldn’t give it back until I read the last one three days later, I couldn't read this in one sitting, not when every poem broke my heart and then put it back together. While reading this you'll experience a wide range of emotions that go from affection and longing to regret and pain. The way she deals with topics such as queer love, physical and mental health and self-acceptance is both soft and eloquent, I'm still wondering how she did that, the contrast is fantastic.

You told me I was worthy & yet you / could not extend yourself the same courtesy.

One of my favorite things about these poems, or her poems in general, is the language which is very simple and open but that's exactly what makes them so memorable and it's also what helps convey the message of every poem in the best way, I couldn't help but think “Yes, she gets me” while reading. I find it hard to believe that anyone would have trouble relating to any of the poems. Moreover there's so many verses I loved I could spend hours quoting them.

There's this / girl I know who leaned too far out of her / window & fell into her own mind.

My favorite poems in this collection are The Night You Are Diagnosed and High Specific Heat, I still can't read these two without tearing up, that’s how beautifully-written they are. I've definitely found some new favorites. I think it's safe to say I enjoyed this collection very much and I'm going to recommend it to anyone I know, Topaz Winters truly has a gift.

[Kristian · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the beginning there was want / I can’t remember what came after that

Before I go any further, let me say that I loved Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing in a way that I haven’t loved a piece of literature in a very long time. If you take nothing else away from this review, know that Topaz Winters will touch your heart, squeeze it, rip it out, then offer it on a plate as nourishment, sometimes in the course of a single poem, and in the end, you will be grateful to have witnessed it.

This collection of poems will take you on a journey of want, of hunger, and of forgiveness. From the opening poem, I was floored by the vulnerability of the pieces and the fluidity of the language. I know it is an often overused term in the poetry world, but there is no better way to describe this collection than “tender.”

With explorations of sexuality, body image, identity, and love, every poem in this collection felt raw and honest, at times like looking in on an intimate moment that I wasn’t sure I was meant to witness. Every single poem was rich with voice and urgency, and I never felt like the collection was lacking or slowing in pace.

Overall, Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing gave me everything I wanted. It filled me with light, with warmth, with want, and never left me feeling unsatisfied. It is a collection of poems I will be thinking about for a long time.

I was lucky enough to read an Advanced Readers copy of this collection.

[Mary E · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where to begin with Portrait of my Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing? A bleeding heart of desire, power, and prayer, this collection is a blessing. Topaz Winters’ writing grabs you by the heart and refuses to let go until you’ve read all of it. It leaves your head spinning in the best way, forcing you to chew on and digest each intricately crafted poem. It’s chock-full of delicious contradictions—war and softness, violence and holiness, anger and peace. Winters also canonizes queer desire in a way that makes me feel at home. For anyone who feels too much, this book is a must-read. It is a “small terrifying mercy” to be here to experience Winters’ words.

[Tiffany L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If there is any right way / to be imaginary, please, / let it be this.”

After re-reading Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing, I realized I had inhaled it too fast on my first read. Now that I’ve had the time to slow down, there are so many beautiful lines (if not the entire book) that hit so deep. Winters sees the world differently, and is able to channel those spiritual experiences into poems that flow like light. This book is not all about sunshine (sometimes it is), but it also touches on shadows in life. I’m excited to come back to this book again in the future to see how the experience shifts.

[ameera · Rating 5 out of 5]

definitely one of the best poetry books ive read yet. smth about pretty much every poem just. hit?? there were obviously some poems which i wasnt as affected by but even in those there would always be either a line or a stanza or just something which would just make me pause for a second and reread it. theres so many poems in here that i literally cant stop thinking about or like bits of poems thatre still floating around in my head even after days of reading them. smth about this was just really raw idk i really loved it bits of it were sometimes a little hard to read too just because of how much they affected me but yeah 11/10 would recommend

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Tomorrow’s sun cannot find its way out of my ribcage. In my wrists, swaddled robins.” Just exquisite. Here, Topaz Winters puts forth some of her best work. She finds words of intrigue, colors, and movements, and puts them together in all the right ways. Portrait of My Body As a Crime I’m Still Committing paints a devastating portrait of experiences all-encompassing: both universal and specific, both earth-shaking and heartfelt. Brilliantly introspective, this book is for anyone who has fought against and resented and embraced and loved their own vessel.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's so good. I'm not going to pick out all my favorite poems & quotes because that's overwhelming.

favorite poem:
trigger

I love the girl matchstick & gasoline, something fierce. Something holy.

[Raquel ☾⋆⁺₊⋆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Show me
how poetry, in all its corruption,
brought us back to life again

[lexi becker · Rating 5 out of 5]

in that case i should be fucking incarcerated

[JuniperScerry♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gay girl pain and pleasure. Possibly synonymous and nonetheless felt. ♡

[rie · Rating 5 out of 5]

so beautiful i was gagging

[ange · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Love something tender, // chewy, broken in. Translates to ache without border, / expectation blooming to fit the space it’s assigned.”

[Rhea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sent Topaz a frenzied DM on Instagram after reading her poem 'Trigger' - a wonderful, poignant articulation of queerness and womanhood. I had just come out of the most awful day, and these specific lines shattered me:

[...] I love the girl.
Can I not have this soft thing, too? On my back & shotgun
to my chest & question on your lips & no more words to
hear.

Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing is brimming with painful, vivid, and emotionally raw moments like this. It is a poetry collection about a love continually pre-empted, a manifesto about the sheer uncomfortableness of existing in a body that you cannot choose. An existence that you have already learned is unacceptable:

Consistently falling, I turn & walk through all
the other nowheres. Robins burrow into my veins
& I allow them there, sliced open & itching still.
What you need to know is I hate my body the way
a cage hates the sky, jealous as only a heretic can be
of a thing in hope-scrawled future tense. ('Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing')

It is poetry that is deeply honest. I don't want to use the word 'confessional', because I think that this book and these words are so much more than a mere extension of Winters' psyche. It's an artistic creation in its own right, one that manifests in breathless, tender, and arresting ways. My favourite poem is perhaps the one that is most different from Winters' usually lush writing style, 'Self-Diagnosis':

I arrival of the fittest.
I forcep. I chest. I failure
in broken breaths. I tragedy.
I exist. I layer of bone
beneath. I swollen holy
grail. I mountain lung. I
torn foreign language.

Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing speaks of articulation, the difficulty of articulation; it speaks of desire and longing; it speaks of hunger. But in between the fault lines of trauma and despair, there are also moments that capture the beauty of existence - an exhilarating car ride, a clandestine touch, the deep ache of yearning. And so it is this entanglement of hope and despair that characterises Winters' writing, and imbues it with a humanity likened to a "soft thing". Soft, in the way that it is so fragile, but also soft, in the way that it is so, so strong.



Thank you to Topaz for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review. 'Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing' comes out May 27.

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems construct such tender and yet precarious scenes, with each new line break bringing the poem somewhere slightly new but still familiar, your old bedroom with all the furniture moved an inch to the right. Each poem begs to be read aloud, then read aloud again, reexamined. My highlights:

"When My First Boyfriend Learned I Was on Anti-Psychotics, He Laughed & Told Me He Always Suspected I Was Crazier Than I Let On." This was the first poem I ever read from Topaz, finding it after Brain Mill Press published it on their website. I have a vivid memory of sitting on my high school auditorium's stage, just rereading it over and over, utterly consumed by the rich and complicated anger of it. I was very late to class--ironically, psychology--because of it, and to this day have no regrets. Too often the anger of chronic illness, both mental and physical, is lost when we talk about it, but at least for me, it can be difficult to push against irritability when my pain flares, and Topaz gets at this "strange syntax we / live inside." There's also that soft, firm admission of "Just / once, I wanted reciprocity," perhaps my favorite moment. This is one of my absolute favorite poems, just what I needed when I first found it and still so striking.

"Panic Attack as Airplane Departure Time." The indefinite, time-bending, unstable atmosphere of airports never fails to make me anxious, especially as my anxiety has woven itself into disordered eating patterns and "all my heavy impossibilities." I saw myself in this poem, not indicted or romanticized or forgiven, but simply flawed and out of place.

"Call Me Before You Leave Again." There is an acceptance in "I will survive either way" of hurt that might bring "bottomless fog" or "the fever travelling down the nape of the neck // & never finding a place to settle," but also might bring "relishing / the air, the home, the quiet for the first time in years." I have been thinking often of this in quarantine, how I am both saddened and grateful to have this unfolding when I am alone, no one else to trust except, somehow, knowingly, myself.

[Fadrian Adrian Bartley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this book