Solidad Decosta and two poems
Solidad Decosta is a queer multiracial writer, composer, filmmaker, poet, and performer whose work crosses poetry, music, live art, film, electronic sound, and radical cultural critique. Her public record extends from small-press poetry and performance venues to current voice-and-electronics collaborations.
Issue 24 preserves two poems in full. “where (I) lost (my)” moves through travel fatigue, wordplay, consumer fragments, literary echoes, food, music, debt, and exhaustion at high speed. “the new transgression” turns gender, sexuality, surveillance, bodily autonomy, fetish, commerce, and political anger into a dense catalogue of refusal.
where (I) lost (my)
barely slept and the hostel had fifty dollar rooms and the six am
cafe is snotty and the jelly purses are fifty percent off and the
Natalie Merchant is roadside memory fresh and I smell homesick
and roadsick and parasite paranoid and sleep deprived and I
barely
crept and the turnstile had fifty scholar tokens and the six-
armed pâté is plotting and the jelly roll morton is half bred
(ed) and the National Merchants are turning over ecstasy french
rolls and I smell hassenpheffer and road runner and practically
putrid and need a
revival and I scarcely think that the footstool makes a good
roaster and the picks are mangé/es pion age/while a fella strolls
in June, half dead (yes) and the practical mechanics are revving
their essence mensch tolls and it strolls with Hassan i Sabbah
and Stetasonic heretics and rack of lamb mmm and vegans are
turning in their casein and the toad school makes a good
revolution and the sticks are beckoning/get it, beck on/ring!
hello? A toll in bikini, too? OK, I’ll half your dreads (maybe)
and prance all over your Mabuhay/they’re specializing in French
situationism and it’s starting to get on my nerves and meanwhile
hairstyles are up forty and packs of man-eating flesh pods start
resuming gates and taking total awareness stakes a good beefsteak
and the tomatoes are (…)/still, it/sing, so that the store to
stare your debts (is) and poverty allots/o your mauve/testicles,
they’re/suckling a wrench for titulation/and I thought you
divorced me, or did I divorce you?/nevermind, the/skylight
is/exploding/and surely/you must/need to/sleep/by now
the new transgression
switchblade-carrying stone femme tranny dykes, manginas, girl
dicks everywhere, saying “oh, is that your penis?” to a total
stranger, carrying a picture of your cunt in a locket around your
neck, intersexuality not being hot for a change, scalpel-
wielding, slicing open, “for the good of the child” dancing
eugenics masters tit clamps as foreplay and burning down their
clinics as climax, sex in the meadow every time you think of
starfucking Tom Cruise—that’s a good girl—prrrr—aaaah, balloons
(it’s a fetish – look it up), making out with the Homeland
(in)Security model pics on SF transit then ripping them up
afterwards for the cameras and the whole world to see, running
naked across the tarmac because they declined your credit cards
at the ticket counter again, no more putting out for red meat
repugnicans and their blue balled supporters until they abdicate
our crown of thorns, no rest.
Performance and later work
Decosta’s current artist biography documents a multidisciplinary practice spanning writing, performance, music, film, and workshops across the United States. Nameless Sound records voice, poetry, keyboard, and electronics performances in Houston during 2025 and 2026. Her current public profile continues to identify her as a writer, composer, filmmaker, and poet.