{"product_id":"short-film-starring-my-beloveds-red-bronco-9781639550609","title":"Short Film Starring My Beloved's Red Bronco","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eShort Film Starring My Beloved's Red Bronco\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e, selected by Tyehimba Jess for the 2022 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry, \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eis an aching tribute to the power and precarity of queer love.\u003c\/b\u003e In small-town Mississippi, before the aughts, a child \"assigned 'woman'\" and a boy \"forced to call \/ himself a girl\" love one another--from afar, behind closed doors, in motels. The child survives an injurious mother and the beast-shaped men she brings home; the boy becomes a soldier. Years later, the boy--the eponymous beloved, Missy--dies by suicide, kicking up a riptide of memory. This is where K. Iver writes, at the confluence of love poem and elegy. \"I say to the water if you were here, \/ you'd be here.\" With cinematic precision, they conjure dorm-room landlines, the lingering sweetness of shared candy, a ballet strap and \"soft \/ fingers tracing it, afraid to touch \/ the skin.\" They punctuate depictions of familial abuse and the cruel politics of the Deep South with fairy tales: a girl who endures abuse refusing to grow into a mother who inflicts it herself, queer youth kissing fearlessly, bodies transcending the violence of a reductive gender binary. In these fantasies, \"there's no \/ reason to leave town no hidden \/ torches waiting for us to fall asleep.\"\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eShort Film Starring My Beloved's Red Bronco\u003c\/i\u003e sees us through a particular kind of grief--one so relentless, it's precious. It presses us, also, to continue advocating for a world in which queer love fantasies become reality and queer love poems \"swaddle the impossible \/ contours of joy.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eK. Iver \u003c\/b\u003eis a nonbinary trans poet from Mississippi. Their poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in \u003ci\u003eBoston Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003e Gulf Coast\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003e TriQuarterly\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBOAAT\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003e Puerto del Sol\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSalt Hill\u003c\/i\u003e, and elsewhere. They have a PhD in poetry from Florida State University.\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eThey are the 2021-2022 Ronald Wallace Fellow for Poetry at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Milkweed Editions","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50608436510994,"sku":"9781639550609","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_9c292c65-cb09-49ce-a4d1-9d3010978e9e.jpg?v=1732321456","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/short-film-starring-my-beloveds-red-bronco-9781639550609","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}