A Shape We've Yet to Name

Rendered "highly flammable" into a world of overwhelming social constructs, expectations, and historical legacies, Mya Matteo Alexice inhabits many things in A SHAPE WE'VE YET TO NAME. Refusing to be embodied the way others expect, they transgress, shapeshifting into realms of the celestial, the ancient, and beyond in order to find "personhood unmoored from x & y". They witness the horrors of forced conformity; they find sanctuary in the thresholds of race, gender, and mental illness; they approach each poem with a tender eye. The title emerges from a poem pleading for freedom from binary existence: "they teach us to draw women / with circles and men with squares. / draw me with a shape we've yet / to name."