T4T (signed copy)

Lest one forget pleasure is a human right, Evelyn Berry edges the reader toward that realization—again, and again, and again—in T4T. Of course, pleasure is sexual, the way that lovers “pretend our freckles honeysuckle.” But it’s not just sexual; it’s beyond sexual. It is the pleasure of life, of embodiment, of safety, and of care and attention. (The latter of which are two descriptors I could easily also apply to Berry’s craft. Those line breaks, like a switchblade surprise!) And the title says who the pleasure is for, and with whom the pleasure is shared: trans for trans, that delectable “erotic symmetry.” But pleasure, unlike some romantic notions of it, isn’t best when it is fleeting. Pleasure is best enjoyed, transmutated and ever evolving, over long lives. In “stay here,” the chapbook’s arietta for transfemmes, Berry writes, “love you here, / love you safe, love you more than everything.” The speaker here can’t tune out the background noise of American fascism, eviction notices, egg price hikes, hashtags to memorialize yet another trans woman who has been murdered, but the knowledge of what’s at risk and the vision of what can be in a trans-utopic alternate reality, leaves Berry with a choice: What is the best proof of her “glittering / luminescent” life? It’s not the wound—“no, i won’t flaunt the wound to prove i’m alive,” she insists. It’s physical connection, feral desire: “kiss me,” she writes, “remind me i’m still here.” -Emilia Phillips, author of Nonbinary Bird of Paradise, Embouchure, & Empty Clip