Wound from the Mouth of a Wound

by torrin a. greathouse

“Some girls are not made,” torrin a. greathouse writes, “but spring from the dirt.” Guided by a devastatingly precise hand, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound—selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil as the winner of the 2020 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry—challenges a canon that decides what shades of beauty deserve to live in a poem. greathouse celebrates “buckteeth & ulcer.” She odes the pulp of a bedsore. She argues that the vestigial is not devoid of meaning, and in kinetic and vigorous language, she honors bodies the world too often wants dead.

These poems ache, but they do not surrender. They bleed, but they spit the blood in our eyes. Their imagery pulses on the page, fractal and fluid, blooming in a medley of forms: broken essays, haibun born of erasure, a sonnet meant to be read in the mirror. greathouse’s poetry demands more of language and those who wield it. “I’m still learning not to let a stranger speak / me into a funeral.”

Concrete and evocative, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound is a testament to persistence, even when the body is not allowed to thrive. greathouse—elegant, vicious, “a one-girl armageddon” draped in crushed velvet—teaches us that fragility is not synonymous with flaw.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer, Disability, Transgender, Audiobook, Nonfiction

88 pages, Paperback

First published December 22, 2020

About the author

torrin a. greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk and MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota. She is a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. In 2020, they received fellowships from Zoeglossia and the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Their work is published in POETRY, Ploughshares, and The Kenyon Review. Her debut collection Wound from the Mouth of a Wound was published from Milkweed Editions in December 2020.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Before we named the stars, we named the shapes their bodies made.’

Wound from the Mouth of a Wound by torrin a. greathouse—winner of the Ballard Spahr prize for poetry—is a collection of flux and fluidity, building ‘a new mythology’ on trans identities and having disabilities. ‘What does it mean to live in a body greathouse asks us to consider, ‘to suffer in this late empire?’ There is a running theme on various surface tensions and so liquid imagery and metaphor flows throughout the entire book often compounded to add texture with the images of the body--fluids, functions and all. What sinks, what can float? In keeping with the violence and beauty that works in constant duality in greathouse’s prose, this notion of fluids and fluidity becomes the lifeline that can keep up afloat in life. This collection is a brilliant earthquake as it gazes into the struggles of the body as a 'mistranslation of itself' and growths of being ‘cripple, trans, woman, & still alive.’

‘Begin with the body--itself a kind / of ending.’

Prefaced with an striking ekphrastic poem on the cover art of Luciano Garbati’s Medusa with the Head of Perseus statue--a statues that has become a symbol for women’s collective rage--greathouse immediately ushers the reader into a realm of myth-making where violence, tenderness, ugliness and yearning swirl together in the maelstrom of poetics. These ideas are in constant flux, and the body is the pipeline where all our emotions and impressions of self both external and internal must travel. Her work centers identities that are also in a state of flux, such as being a trans woman but also on the states of the body as a vessel.

Through investigating this, while she often speaks of the body in states of decline as ‘a palette / of decay, it is balanced through impressions of beauty and possibility. ‘Consider: the disabled body, they write in Essay Fragment: Tragedy Model of Disability, ‘as city / How it’s potential energy [a near living thing] // cannot be measured’. Language too is a kind of vessel, and she frequently examines ableist language and the stigmas it normalizes. ‘how long / have you been naming us by our dead?’ she asks in a discussion on the history and use of the word ‘lame.’ The constant criticism from society on people with disabilities collide with an internal desire for hope, change and growth and greathouse marvelously intertwines dark and light imagery, decay and desire. ‘Let every rot be beautiful,’ she writes, and the prose is a perfect representation of this.

‘Even in the harshest season,
we survive. We bloom forever
where we are told we don’t belong’

This is a harrowing collection that deals with many difficult subjects and struggles. Family relations, cycles of violence, eating disorders, self-image struggles, and more become the landscape in with greathouse plants seeds of survival and self-actualization. Like a flower that blooms in darkness, this is powerful an hopeful collection that shines light into the darkness while embracing both at once. Through prose that moves comfortably through biblical language and mythology, greathouse has perfected their craft in ways that is gripping and emotionally arresting. A must-read.

5/5

‘I mean to say, the cost of surviving into softness is this scatter
of dead stars decorating our limbs.’

[Sruthi Narayanan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely incredible. Every poem in this collection is razor-precise and, per the review, “demands more of language and those who wield it” in a way that’s utterly electrifying and left me SWEATING.

[Ken]

This book is, quite simply (and complexly), an in-depth look at what life is like from a Trans point of view. Added to the mix is ever-present violence, not just from society at large but from the family itself due to alcoholism and physical abuse.

Though they trend between physiological and psychological, the poems are always lyrical, even if disturbing. Greathouse is honest and unflinching in her writing, employing occasional humor and frequent creativity despite the images of violence. Thus you will find poems with footnotes, word strikes, right lane/left lane stanza divisions, and even a poem written backwards (a gift for your mirror).

Sample poem (written in couplets, though GR can't handle long lines in poetry, so...):

Heirloom

My mother bought the plates because they were supposedly
marketed as unbreakable. I sweep shards from the floor

while my brother hides in the other room. My teeth cavity
with excuses, with I don't know my own strength. But my mother,

she knows how easy ceramic can confetti, shrapnel, warning
-shot, wound. She takes all the proper precautions. I remember

the too-bright paint in the corner of the kitchen wall, the cabinet
of unmatched mugs. I'm misdiagnosed--bipolar this time--then,

three days later, my grandmother is diagnosed with cirrhosis & isn't
this exactly what we mean when we call family by the word blood?

I buy two of everything, thick, cheap, & heavy. I don't remember
throwing it. I joke that when I am the last child alive, there will be

nothing left to inherit. My grandmother breaks a wineglass every visit.
Drinks herself to splinters. My mother & I both know the slow ballet

a glass hard makes beneath the skin.

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 because the story of these poems is complex and deserving of the love it took to write them. I want to own this collection so I can take my pen to the page and study the continuity of Greathouse's words. I didn't need to find myself in these pages, I only needed to open my ears to listen. I'm feeling poetic if you can't tell, and I love a book that affects the way I write a sentence.

[Basia · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the start of "An Ugly Poem," torrin a. greathouse recalls a time when "I edited all / my ugly out, made a perfect poem of my soft & lacquered / mouth." But not any longer. "Now, I'm looking for the ugly of my tongue, / lolling serpent curled in the slick of my jaw..." And what fierceness, what freedom, comes out of this refusal to capitulate, singing and slithering throughout these poems. The result is diamond-hard truth: "& isn't this just like my poems? / Dressing a violence in something pretty & telling it to dance?" The result is also tenderness that speaks through a certain kind of sorrow: "After my lover dries the sudden / ocean from my cheeks, I search for beauty / in the world as if I were new. / Gather it in fistfuls. Tongue the sun / -light. Teeth against the buttermilk moon." greathouse manages both, and much (much!) more, in a collection that shimmers, infuriates, seeps and surprises.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wound from the Mouth of a Wound was a deeply moving collection that I know will stay with me for a long time.

C/W:transphobia (challenged), ableism (challenged), detailed descriptions of bodies + bodily functions, abusive parent

[Marianela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Body as metaphors, body as a “mistranslation of itself”

[Caitlin Conlon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I’d read about greathouse’s invention of the burning haibun & was intrigued, wanting to consume more of their work. Though I think some of these poems were a bit too vague for my taste, this was overall a really engaging collection that played with form and language in unique, dynamic ways. I would read another collection of theirs in the future.

[Iris · Rating 5 out of 5]

“How removal could leave the building unable to stand. She prescribes Estradiol, Spironolactone, offers something for the pain. The way my mother whitewashed the porch. How she knew the structure was beyond repair & still insisted on a graceful collapsing.”

“When I began to transition / it wasn’t into a daughter, but / instead a flood.”

it’s honestly remarkable that trans women are able to create such moving depictions of our lives when we’re so heavily pressured to repress and deny our identities every day. this whole collection was incredible and it made me want to work harder on improving my own craft too. highly recommended 🌟

[🌜Elliot🌛 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since I’ve wanted to read poetry recently, I asked my dad for some recommendations and this was one of them. I loved it, and it’s been a great introduction to poetry and how language can weave a beautiful picture of someone’s life experience.

[Kim Lockhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is visceral soul-piercing poetry. I closed my eyes and said "Wow!" after nearly every one. The poet is a self-described transgender queer cripple-punk, and this suffuses the work. The poems are not only reflections on her life, but representations thereof, even in the form of metaphor.

Is auto-poetry a thing? I hope it is. I found reading this a bit like encroaching on the most painful parts of a person's life. As I went along, I recorded whatever popped into my head (as a kind of reader's call and response).

Blood that claims you.
Blood that births you.
Blood that accuses.
Blood that cleanses.

Fire which purifies.
Fire which destroys.

A tongue of flame
Opens the world
Like a new mouth.

The mouth is a wound
Which gives birth
To the world
In a never-ending cycle.

[Namita Krishnamurthy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't believe this is what I'm saying but it is what it is... this collection was too intense for me. By too intense, I mean every sentence and image is too powerful and overbearing its hard to take a breath in the middle - which is what poetry is all about for me. The breath in the middle of a long run. This didn't have it, so its extremely beautiful scenery but the run is too exhausting.

Regardless, A+ for great visual storytelling, fresh perspectives on ableism/body/trans-rights/family etc. and hard-hitting metaphors.

[John Riggio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me a really long time to finish, I was really trying to sit with it. This was a birthday gift from my bestie who bought this after I said I wanted to read more trans poets for my birthday. Really sat with a couple of these, especially “When My Brother Makes a Joke About Trans Panic”

[JuniperScerry♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ugh, Torrin, the woman you are.

Easily one of my favorite poets, and again, I'm so grateful to independent Minneapolis bookstores for carrying your work so I could discover it naturally like a beautifully colored bruise under clothes that you never notice until you're naked in a mirror.

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

"& at last a poem that can't be read without / it [the body]: crippled, trans, woman, & still alive." reads the last couplet of the collection's last poem (Ars Poetica), which has to be read with a mirror to boot. And like those last lines suggest, the collection's poems one by one write the speaker's body, an Aphrodite rising out of a sea of pain. They exorcise, invoke, pray, and they make manifest the power of naming. Wound from the Mouth of a Wound imparts what it names directly and unsparingly.

[kendall · Rating 4 out of 5]

the “essay fragments on disability” in this really hit for me. rtc with quotes soon❤️

[Elliot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Visceral, raw, and deeply personal. Greathouse's poetry is full of striking and arresting imagery. The poems in this collection trace over the themes of violence and the body. Particularly a disabled body, and a trans body. This collection is a defiant scream into the darkness and I'm glad I read it.

[Annabelle Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

ate. what else can i say

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poetry collection about the poet's experience as a trans person. Visceral. powerful, and deserves more recognition.

[Alice LeFae · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't even know what to say, this book floored me. It's stunning and visceral, beautiful and brutal. Definitely worth a few rereads. Can't wait to recommend to a few people in particular and everyone in general.

[Miss Syreena · Rating 5 out of 5]

So powerful....read this over one month, reading and re-reading poems that play with different formats to be read. Themes of identity, the body, ability, self worth, acceptance.

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Northeast 19th is a powder-stained
July, sky still hot from the glitter
burst of good american fire.
This summer, the hydrants break
like sweat, poverty inventing new magics,
thirsty hands conjuring stolen rain.
On the porch the cat hums like a queen
of spades trapped in tire spokes.
My mother is cracked thumbnails
beheading dead brown blooms.
My father is a palm folding, paper
white fist, an envelope
around the garnet dawn
of my mouth."

// Portland, 1999


greathouse hones in on "always this body of crooked back & sidestepped gender", "the body as a fickle language", the ways in which "the body becomes an excuse". Her focus on pathology, the lens of medicine and diagnosis, reminded me a tad of Madness by Sam Sax, but they are quite different in their approaches and I definitely appreciated this more. She looks at the Body as a receptacle as well as Being, questioning how it is valued, demarcated, judged, individuals becoming "less than", placed outside the fold, how suffering is forced upon it. It's very visionary, mixing brutality with tenderness.

greathouse is incentive with how her poems appear on the page. There are fragments of essays - disabled struck out, haibuns where the prose is gradually whittled down to form the haiku, an inverted sonnet that requires a mirror. More than dealing with trauma & hate within and without/inside and outside a home, she writes of living and loving, always centering resilience & defiance. It is an ode to being "cripple, trans, woman, & still alive", a statement of survival, against being boxed-in: "Even in the harshest season, / we survive. We bloom forever / where we are told we do not belong."



(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a stunning poetry collection. greathouse reflects on queerness (particularly transness) and disability, as well as the intersection of the two, to give a glimpse of the violence and injustices these communities face. These poems are sensitive, much like the emotional and physical wounds carried by queer, disabled people. Some wounds remain open and raw, while others have healed but are ever-present, and greathouse does a phenomenal job to address the complexities of carrying such wounds, gracefully and fiercely addressing the pain, power, and resilience that come with being disabled and queer. Much to think about long after finishing these poems.

Some favorites: “Essay Fragment: Medical Model of Disability,” “Ode to the First Time I Wore a Dress & My Mother Did Not Flinch,” “The Queer Trans Girl Writes Her Estranged Mother a Letter About the Word Faggot & It Is the First Word to Burn,” “An Ugly Poem,” “Phlebotomy, as Told by the Skin,” “Still Life with Bedsores,” “On Using the Wo|men’s Bathroom,” and “Ars Poetica or Sonnet to Be Written Across My Chest & Read in a Mirror, Beginning with a Line from Kimiko Hahn”

Read for the Sealey Challenge.

[Jake Kilroy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This poetry collection powerfully explores its author inside and out, detailing the beauty and devastation of life as a "transgender cripple-punk." In its pages is a thoroughly engaged, deeply layered, and sharply self-aware existence that has found great hardship with the assigned body and each glory of becoming more familiar and in love with the body they know to be theirs. She comes with profound purpose, elegantly finding the rhythm in the tiny wins of new comfort and connection as well as the heartbreaking moments that come from everywhere, whether it's a doctor's diagnosis, a family joke at her expense, or simply trying to reach the subway without being taunted or murdered. Violence radiates around each corner, and she continues on, carrying profound observation and colorful dissection for the movement through.

[Nadine in NY Jones]

rec by NYPL

[julie | eggmama]

favorites:
- Portland, 1999
- Hapnophobia or the Fear of Being Touched
- Ekphrasis on My Rapist's Wedding Dress
- An Ugly Poem

really liked the way she used form in Ars Poetica and On Using the Wo|men's Bathroom

"the cost of light is hardness"

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing, complex work. This will reward deeper study, which I’m very excited to do.

[Ot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some brutally beautiful poems.

[emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

woman was taught to me in the language of subtraction 🙂

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a magnificently woven book of poetry-- definitely a book I can tell I'm going to want to reread again and again!