ONE ART’s June 2026 Reading for Pride Month

ONE ART’s June 2026 Reading for Pride Month

Date: Sunday, June 7
Time: 2pm Eastern

Duration: 2 hours

Featured Poets: Julie Weiss, Ren Wilding, Nicole Caruso Garcia, Moudi Sbeity, Abby E Murray, Kai Coggin

>> Register Here <<

(donations appreciated)

~ About Our Featured Readers ~

Kai Coggin (she/her) is the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, AR, and a recipient of a 2024 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. She is the author of five collections, most recently Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024). Her work has been published in TIME MagazinePOETRY, Academy of American Poets, American Poetry Review, Best of the Net, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Coggin is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, a CATALYZE and INTERCHANGE Grant Fellow from the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry.  www.kaicoggin.com

Nicole Caruso Garcia (she/her) is the author of OXBLOOD (Able Muse Press), which received the International Book Award for narrative poetry. Her work appears in Crab Orchard ReviewLightMezzo CamminONE ARTPlumeRattleRHINO, and elsewhere. Her poetry has received the Willow Review Award, won a Best New Poets honor, and has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is an associate poetry editor at Able Muse and served as an executive board member at the annual conference, Poetry by the Sea. Visit her at nicolecarusogarcia.com.

Abby E. Murray (they/them) is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. Their first book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, while their second book, Recovery Commands, won the Richard-Gabriel Rummonds Poetry Prize and was released by Ex Ophidia Press in 2025. For now, they live in the Pacific Northwest and teach writing to military officers.

Moudi Sbeity is a Lebanese-American poet, author, and contemplative educator. Born in Texas and raised in Lebanon, he moved to the United States at the age of eighteen as an evacuee following the 2006 July war. In Utah, Moudi founded and operated Laziz Kitchen, a Lebanese restaurant celebrated by the New York Times as “the future of queer dining.” Moudi was also a named plaintiff in Kitchen v. Herbert, the landmark case that brought marriage equality to Utah and the 10th circuit states in 2014. A lifelong stutterer, he is passionate about writing and poetry as practices in fluency and self-expression. His memoir, Habibi Means Beloved (University of Utah Press), and poetry collection, Alhamdulillah Anyway (Fernwood Press), are set to be published in the fall of 2026.

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty (Kelsay Books, 2021), her debut collection, and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II (Bottlecap Press, 2023 and 2024). Her second collection, Rooming with Elephants, was published in 2025 by Kelsay Books. “Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children” was a finalist for Best of the Net. She won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for “Cumbre Vieja” and was a finalist for the Saguaro Prize. Her work appears in Chestnut Review, MER, ONE ART, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and Variant Lit, among others, and is forthcoming in Cider Press Review, Cimarron Review, The Indianapolis Review, and SWWIM. She lives with her wife and children in Spain. You can find her at https://www.julieweisspoet.com/.

Ren Wilding (they/them) is a trans, queer, neurodivergent poet. They are the author of Trans Artifacts: Bones Between My Teeth (Porkbelly Press, 2026) and Trans Archeology (Lily Poetry Review, 2027). Their work appears in Braving the Body (Harbor Editions), Nixes Mate, ONE ART, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere. They were a finalist for Lily Poetry Review’s Paul Nemser Prize, are a two-time Pushcart nominee, and are co-curator of the Words Like Blades reading series. They hold an MA in Literature and Gender Studies from the University of Missouri and live in St. Louis.

Five Poems by Ren Wilding

Chase All the Ghosts from Your Head

In high school, I recorded a Liz Phair song
off the radio on a cassette— the only love
song I’d heard that didn’t specify gender.
I only played it late at night, volume
so low I had to put my ear against
the speaker. I didn’t know who I wanted
to love me. The first person I fell in love with
burned me a CD of love songs,
the front decorated with sharpie rainbows,
first track The Power of Two by the Indigo Girls
I played it on repeat in my car for months after
we broke up, trying to replace
the heart I forgot on the nightstand
beside their bed where we slept.

* The title is taken from the lyrics of “The Power of Two” by the Indigo Girls.

* 

Bite

You told your boyfriend
to bite you as we watched
The Twilight Zone in your
dorm room. You said he should
bite me too if I wanted. I always
did what you said, and the thought
of you wanting me bitten
made my skin slither. Your
boyfriend’s teeth made rows
of little crescents on my forearm.
I watched your face. You asked
how it felt. I don’t remember
what I said, only that I left
thinking you loved me.

*

Fisherwoman

I forgot my lungs
when I swam from her—
fish scales shiver
my skin

My lips pass seawater,
as barbs
hook me by the jaw.
She reels me from the water—

a dread of air
passes over my gills
in a lacework of burning.

Seaweed strands weigh
me down—
her hands
on my skin again.

She needs to do it right
this time. Scrape
my scales—
become covered
in the sequins
of my body.

Slice and strip my belly
until all that’s left
is the sweetness of me
she wants in her mouth.

I am flotsam
I am gills.
I am gasped air.

*

Origami Dragon

A green-haired girl made me
a paper dragon so small

my hand became its lair.
It couldn’t stop keeling

over on its curled talons—
with each fall, my hand sparked

to think of her fingers folding.
When she gave me a ride

after art class, gold filled
the cavern of my chest.

But I didn’t yet know
I liked girls— no fire

on my breath
to burn her back.

* 

Valentine’s Performance

My belly was full of crackling
eggshells as I helped the girl
working on the student production
of the Vagina Monologues
pass out fliers and ply students with cake.
But I had to leave the carnival
of vulvas to meet my bicurious
art major girlfriend who barely
touched me. I gave her a note
with a pressed violet inside,
and she gave me nothing. All I wanted
was to kiss the theater girl,
our mouths smeared with frosting.

*

Ren Wilding (they/them) is a trans, queer, neurodivergent poet. They are the author of Trans Artifacts: Bones Between My Teeth (forthcoming from Porkbelly Press, 2026) and Trans Archeology (forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review, 2027). Their work appears in Braving the Body (Harbor Editions), Comstock Review, Does It Have Pockets, ONE ART, Palette Poetry, Pine Hills Review, The Second Coming, and elsewhere. They were a finalist for Lily Poetry Review’s Paul Nemser Prize, have received a Pushcart nomination, and are co-curator of the Words Like Blades reading series. They hold an MA in Literature and Gender Studies from the University of Missouri.

Gender Dysphoria with Breast Self-Exam Pamphlet by Ren Wilding

Gender Dysphoria with Breast Self-Exam Pamphlet

You should know
what your breasts feel like.
Lay down, reach across.
My chest is a stranger
I don’t want to know.
Hills mudslide into my armpits.
I can’t reach my arm far enough
across my body. I can only touch
where my heart is.

I hit them on door jams
because my brain
doesn’t know they exist.
They are only good for warning
the rest of me to stop
before I hit my body.
The walls know them
better than I do.

*

Ren Wilding (they/them) is a trans, queer, neurodivergent poet who earned an MA in Literature and Gender Studies from the University of Missouri. Their work appears in Braving the Body (Harbor Editions), Trans Love (Jessica Kingsley Publishers), The Comstock Review, Lone Mountain Literary Society, Palette Poetry, Pine Hills Review, Red Eft Review, Stories that Need to be Told 2024 (Tulip Tree), and Zoetic Press. In 2023, they won the St. Louis Poetry Center’s James H. Nash Contest. They received a Pushcart nomination and are a co-curator of the “Words Like Blades” reading series.