Description

Phantasmagossip by Sara Mae is a packed funeral. The poems mourn shouting over one another to tell a story, squeezing hands of strangers and loved ones, picking at the many homemade mac n cheeses. The game of the Exquisite Corpse, usually played by many, is used here as a way into polyvocality, intimacy, and remembrance. Here, the poems infuse formal tradition with discomfort, adapt the shapes of literary and queer ancestors, speculate fleeting worlds of gender as the speaker sees theirs through and alongside best friends. Phantasmagossip does not romanticize death, but instead grapples with the stakes of gendered violence and the simultaneous desire for pleasure, dissecting accusations of dangerousness levied against women, fems, genderqueer speakers. The speakers seek acceptance of their own queer desires, alongside the grief that being looked at and desired is not always the same as being seen.

Sara Mae is a genderqueer writer raised on the Chesapeake Bay. They are the author of two chapbooks including
Phantasmagossip, winner of the Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest and released from YesYes Books in 2025. Their first chapbook, Priestess of Tankinis, was published with Game Over Books. They are a 2023 Big Ears Music Festival Artist Scholar, a 2022 Tin House Summer Workshops alum, and a 2021 Sewanee Writer’s Conference Scholar. They write and release music as The Noisy. They received their MFA from UT Knoxville. Sara Mae is currently based in Philadelphia.