Body Split: When Tongue Was Muscle / I Wanted Just To Be Soft

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Jewish Studies. Women's Studies. LGBT Studies. I WANTED JUST TO BE SOFT is part anatomical travel log, part prayer book, part emotional collage and part new anatomy. This collection of lyric prose pieces is built from accounts of trying to find balance between hardening and softening, being guarded and being open, and learning, slowly and tenderly, about vulnerability, knowing one's selves, and letting one's selves be known. The arc of the book traces physicality, queerness, identity and relationship through the stories the body tells. Whether it's an exploration of tear ducts, fingernails, shoulder blades or nude art modeling, each piece in the collection moves through the experience of being as present as possible for this world and not only all of its heartbreak, but also its wild and beautiful color.

WHEN TONGUE WAS MUSCLE is a small book that searches the abstract reaches of language in order to name the corporeal and ethereal multiverses of a human body. A book of limbs, prose poems, questions, and incantations.