Publication in America Does Not Exist Anthology by Beyond the Veil Press

I’m honored to share that two of my collage works, alongside one of my poems, were included in the anthology America Does Not Exist: Anthology of LGBTQ+ Poetry & Art by Beyond the Veil Press. The anthology brings together poetry and visual art responding to identity, erasure, survival, and the fractured mythology of America itself. According to the publication’s description, the collection emerged in response to the “fear-driven erasure” of transgender people.

What drew me most to this project was its refusal to smooth over contradiction. The title itself, America Does Not Exist, feels less like a statement of absence and more like a confrontation with illusion. The anthology asks what remains when the stories we were handed about belonging, safety, and identity begin to collapse. That tension lives at the center of both my visual work and my writing.

The first collage included in the anthology, Never Too Late, moves through themes of longing, regret, fragmentation, and emotional distortion. Torn paper, damaged surfaces, and interrupted imagery create a sense of searching through debris for something intact. The repeated text fragments feel unfinished on purpose, as if the speaker is unable to fully articulate what has been lost. The final line, “It’s never too late to be sorry,” lands somewhere between confession and accusation. I wanted the piece to feel emotionally unstable but visually magnetic, pulling the viewer closer while simultaneously withholding clarity.

The second piece, Good Good Good, approaches fragmentation differently. Where the first collage leans into tension and emotional corrosion, this work explores repetition as performance. The repeated “GOOD” text begins to feel less reassuring the longer you look at it. The bright florals and romantic imagery are disrupted by torn textures and visual noise underneath, creating a contrast between beauty and instability. There’s a kind of forced optimism in the piece that mirrors the pressure to appear emotionally intact even when something underneath is unraveling.

Having both visual works included alongside my poetry feels especially meaningful because my writing and collage practice come from the same place emotionally. Both rely heavily on juxtaposition, interruption, memory, and damaged surfaces. I’m interested in the things people attempt to conceal: longing, identity, shame, obsession, nostalgia, grief. Collage allows me to physically tear apart and reconstruct imagery in the same way poetry allows me to reconstruct narrative and emotion.

Projects like this anthology matter because they preserve voices and perspectives that are too often pushed to the margins or flattened into abstraction. Art can document emotional truth in ways statistics and headlines cannot. To contribute work to a collection centered on visibility, resistance, and existence itself is something I’m deeply grateful for.

You can learn more about America Does Not Exist: Anthology of LGBTQ+ Poetry & Art here.