Whatever Dimness or Brightness, Cornerstone Press, September 2026
Note from the author:
Whatever Dimness or Brightness is a full-length poetry collection forthcoming in fall 2026 from the Portage Poetry Series at Cornerstone Press. This poem, “Definition,” appears in the first section.
Definition
I thought I was
responsible. I was not large enough
for the knowledge.
I was not good. I was fast
only alone. My hand
was not strong and my letters
tilted above, below
the rules I couldn’t see
perforated when I looked
away from the desk. The desk
did not say my.
The air did not say here
and here and here.
Children ran and called out,
mountain laurel springing
behind as pollinators landed
in those fold-wet cups
too precise to be read as female,
glowing, allowed secrets.
Their bells as though teased
by some blade, breathed
by some clock. Before the mind
opened, it was that cold
and stunning star, a ship, a sea-
bone, a legible indent
one held under the tongue.
More than I could point,
those stars’ command
as inevitable as the poison
on the stamen,
in the honey. Later
in the memory and its
pill-precise case.
Parents flowed in our common
background, as fluid as
language far-off, physical as law.
Others spoke as I
ate the flower repeatedly,
taking its perforations
in. In the distance, the entire landscape
appeared painted.
Every inch in flower
the image already titled,
what adults called pristine.
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A queer poet working in both verse and prose, Rae Gouirand is the author of nine titles of poetry and nonfiction, including Glass is Glass Water is Water (Spork Press), The History of Art (Atlas Review), The Velvet Book (Cornerstone Press)—a 2025 Lambda Literary Award finalist—and Whatever Dimness or Brightness. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Conjunctions, Foglifter, The Iowa Review, jubilat, the Lambda Literary Poetry Spotlight, Michigan Quarterly Review, [PANK], The Rumpus, Under a Warm Green Linden, ZYZZYVA, two volumes of the Best New Poets series, Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology, and many others. She leads several long-running independent workshops in Northern California and online, including the cross-genre workshop Scribe Lab, and serves as a Continuing Lecturer in the Department of English at UC Davis.
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