sterling-elizabeth arcadia
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selizabeth.bsky.social
sterling-elizabeth arcadia
@selizabeth.bsky.social
250 followers 330 following 600 posts
trans poet, lover of birds, cats, and my friends
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selizabeth.bsky.social
someone get me the fuck out of here
November 15, 2025 at 1:48 AM
selizabeth.bsky.social
We love being women! #women #poetry
November 1, 2025 at 12:59 AM
selizabeth.bsky.social
here’s the first poem i wrote for the collection, and also the first published, up @beestung.bsky.social
SXSW further out in the desert the saguaros get weirder and weirder. they grow tails, wooden legs, hemorrhoids, eyes like angels. i don’t see a gilded flicker but i do spot a cactus wren and a black throated sparrow. both lifers. on the way back to the airport, a saguaro riddled with buckshot. i want to commit an act of terrorism against the NRA when i drive by their headquarters on my way south from philadelphia. i see a lot of cows in virginia. i think about playing KENO but as soon as i get to tennesse i take a terrible shit. i wonder what makes cow patties so round, and have to stop at every rest stop to wreck a toilet. the hills and hollows are just foggy enough that i can see sunshine made material. i make it to knoxville and watch one waitress manage an entire restaurant, peyton manning staring me down over my cobb salad and cheese bings. if you see a good omen about a bad omen, what does it mean?
September 28, 2025 at 6:39 AM
selizabeth.bsky.social
new poem, flag poem, up the other week @fifthwheelpress.bsky.social
a burning thin blue line flag with red outlined white text over it reading “flag poem” new year, now i am from boston, now i am from dc. now, i am checking my ex's twitter. now i am publishing poems where i mention that i am checking my ex's twitter. i am no longer convinced i have to choose between being a cunt and being a dyke. no longer believe in things like government, or money. am almost as scared of pain as i am of its absence. i have spent years gaining a deeper understanding of the sweet potato. the sugar in my iced coffee is sand in my mouth. not melting. yet again the hyperpop i used to love is making me sick to my stomach. when i moved to connecticut i took an edible that made me feel weird for a week. struggled to adjust my car's rheostat without swerving. sometimes, i consider myself to be one of my exes.
August 23, 2025 at 7:09 PM
selizabeth.bsky.social
btw i’m selling this chapbook as fundraiser for palestine mutual aid $11 shipped in US dm me!
front cover of “a note that will shatter the way things are” by sterling-elizabeth arcadia, black text on tan background above a john james audubon print of three blue jays eating bird eggs
July 25, 2025 at 12:56 PM
selizabeth.bsky.social
if new york war crimes doesn’t stop their bullshit we’re gonna forcefemme will shortz don’t say you weren’t warned. “frotting” and “autogynephilia” WILL be found in future puzzles (graphic from glaad and fair media watch on instagram)
a graphic in pink blue and white from glaad and fair media watch shows that in 2022-2023 out of 116 sources in front page stories on trans issues, only 22, or 19% were actually trans. For the 2024-2025 study period it was 14 out of 132 sources, 11%
July 15, 2025 at 10:15 PM
selizabeth.bsky.social
indie press who?
"Manuscripts that engage algorithmic writing tactics (cut-ups, collage, erasure, large language models, AI chatbots, autotranslation softwares, etc) are fine as long as you're up front about their use."
July 15, 2025 at 7:13 AM
selizabeth.bsky.social
still a poet. still a bisexual trans d¥ke. you still can’t stop me.
a headshot of sterling-elizabeth, a white trans woman, smirking. she has multiple facial piercings (mostly nose and mouth) and is wearing a backwards camo baseball hat, large scalloped matte black hoop earrings, and chunky, oddly shaped orange acetate sunglasses with brown hued lenses. in the background a set of wooden stairs next to a white wall leads up to a floor where shelving is visible. an oval light fixture is visible on the ceiling above
June 25, 2025 at 1:11 AM
selizabeth.bsky.social
Today my poem “transmasc marvel girl (sonnet)” is poem of the week at The Missouri Review!!!
missourireview.com/arcadia/
sterling-elizabeth, a fat white trans woman with a mustache and a very short haircut and glasses, smiles at the camera. she’s wearing a grey patterned jacket, has glasses and lots of facial piercings Author’s Note This sonnet is perhaps the unlikeliest of poems for me. When I walked in to see Deadpool & Wolverine, I told my friend there was no way I would be able to make a poem out of it. In reflection, though, I realized that at every step of my transition, Marvel movies have been an exception to the gendered rules I gave myself about which films I could watch. My understanding of them has still changed alongside my understanding of myself, and that made the Deadpool movies ripe material with which to trace my own journey in an earlier draft of this poem. In revision, I shifted away from touching the Deadpool movies so explicitly and leaned into my own emotional landscape in my relationship with film; the sonnet seemed an appropriate form to strain against in a poem about breaking my own rigid, gendered ideas about something I love.
June 23, 2025 at 10:41 PM
selizabeth.bsky.social
June 18, 2025 at 7:05 AM
selizabeth.bsky.social
when i don’t want art to make me think at all
a black lineart comic against white background. the comic is a dog holding a frisbee in three frames 1) pls scare? 2) no think! 3) only scare
June 2, 2025 at 5:49 AM
selizabeth.bsky.social
from Figuring by Maria Popova, the reason I hate when people use “female” to mean woman
In a testament to the power and ever shifting provisions of language, “controversy erupted over the word nestled between the institution’s namesake and its function. Since Darwin had ignited the dawn of evolutionary theory several years earlier, the term “female” had taken on animalistic undertones associated with sexual reproduction—connotations some women saw as dehumanizing and some men used deliberately to dehumanize, particularly in referring to slave women as “females.” One woman, who had previously lauded Matthew Vassar’s plans for the college, charged at him in a spirited letter condemning the name: Female! What female do you mean? Not a female donkey? Must not your reply be “I mean a female male woman”? Then…why degrade the feminine sex to the level of animals?” Excerpt From Figuring Maria
May 27, 2025 at 5:48 AM
selizabeth.bsky.social
doing a reading tomorrow night @ 6:30 EST! email editor@anomalouspress.org for the zoom link!
March 26, 2025 at 4:14 PM
selizabeth.bsky.social
always grateful to @beestung.bsky.social for publishing this one!
poisoned! at the buffalo wild wings i’m at the south street wawa at 1:15am reeking of sex when i text kale that it turns out not only do i like being bitten, i like biting. this coupled with the fact that i like blood – kale asks me what the difference between me and armie hammer is. when C was biting my lip i almost asked her to make me bleed, then remembered the pain, which i don’t particularly like. okay, yes, that’s obviously a lie, but it’s true i don’t like the amount of pain it takes to bleed by teeth. my own or others. i do it because i’m the less stubborn bottom but causing other people pain makes me squeamish. and still i like to bite, but the sturdier the better. watching bones and all with kale last week i was disgusted w all the tearing of flesh by teeth. it reminded of the time i bit the top of E’s left breast and felt something give. they cried out and i recoiled from their body, from my self. i went somewhere far away from my mouth.
February 25, 2025 at 12:50 AM
selizabeth.bsky.social
girl, the democrats are complicit!
In his last full month in office, Biden scrapped pending plans to provide protections for transgender student-athletes and signed a bill that includes language stripping coverage of transgender medical treatments for the children of service members.
February 23, 2025 at 9:15 PM
selizabeth.bsky.social
this one
February 21, 2025 at 6:13 PM
selizabeth.bsky.social
"a note that will shatter the way things are" covers are on their way from the printer! here's the receipt for donations so far. thanks so much to everyone who bought a copy!
receipt for donation to gaza sunbirds, $152 from chapbook proceeds, with $1.50 additionally donated to the fundraising platform from my personal funds Cover spread from "A Note That Will Shatter The Way Things Are": on the left side the rear cover reads "Proceeds from this chapbook will go to mutual aid in Palestine" above an Audubon painting of four mockingbirds harassing a snake around a nest, and "$10"; on the right the title above the authors name ("sterling-elizabeth arcadia") and an Audubon painting of three bluejays opening and eating eggs
February 18, 2025 at 9:36 PM
selizabeth.bsky.social
also of note
black and gray tattoo of two cliff swallows facing eachother on the back of a shaved white head. a semi-circle like a halo goes around the crown of the head from their backs but there is a break in the circle between them large black and gray full back tattoo of a seraphim made up of hawk parts, with several eyes birdpoem i’ve said so many times how i want to be a bird, but what i really mean is that i want to be free of my body. of the earth which holds me down. to get away from all this. my body is not who i am. my name is not who i am. there are no portals into my soul, but this body is the only tool with which i might connect with others.
February 16, 2025 at 10:16 PM
selizabeth.bsky.social
hey philly lemme tattoo ya
sterling-elizabeth wearing a camo cap and asymmetrical black glasses, with stickers of black and white lino-cut style veggies over them (garlic, bell pepper, butternut squash, carrot) thick-lined black and white linocut style tattoo drawings of veggies on a white background: butternut squash, bulb of garlic, carrot, bell pepper
February 16, 2025 at 10:10 PM
selizabeth.bsky.social
chapbook i’m going to print early next month! poetry and concert reviews about navigating (white) privilege, having a platform, and our moral obligations (to act against genocide). $10 shipped in the US, dm me for venmo. all proceeds to gaza sunbirds or other palestinian mutual aid
February 13, 2025 at 9:50 PM
selizabeth.bsky.social
wrote a chapbook about concerts, white silence around the genocide, and other shit — if you dm me a receipt for $10+ to mutual aid in palestine i’ll mail you a copy (internationally you’ll have to cover postage), or you can venmo me and i’ll send that full amount to gaza sunbirds or other aid
book cover for “A NOTE THAT WILL SHATTER THE WAY THINGS ARE” by sterling-elizabeth arcadia. black text on a tan background, with a full color painting by Audubon of three bluejays eating another bird’s eggs while perched on a dead branch with a flowering vine around it.
February 11, 2025 at 6:57 AM
selizabeth.bsky.social
new t4t poem out thanks to philly aids thrift @ giovanni’s room
garbage disposal by sterling-elizabeth arcadia your sink was backed up, badly clogged. i reached into the drain and pulled out a handful of my missing estrogen syringes, the needles sticking through my hand like knives. you know now what you need is testosterone, what you need is acne, bottom growth, your voice dropping, a harder jaw. outside my bedroom window the garbage truck is malfunctioning. what would our family curse have been: how would we have fucked up the kid you wanted to have. would they have been trans, like us, or cis, scared, like our mothers, of what they can’t control. i’m in my bed. you’re not here. i wonder what it would take to make it all explode, to destroy everything that holds and separates us. outside my bedroom window the garbage truck gives up, drives off.
January 2, 2025 at 11:28 PM
selizabeth.bsky.social
IN: top surgery
December 29, 2024 at 10:29 PM
selizabeth.bsky.social
even these?
black sweatpants with a full length side zipper on a white person
December 27, 2024 at 6:44 PM
selizabeth.bsky.social
my poems:
a picture of a white sign with red lettering that reads “is it hot? does it look good? are you proud to serve it?” edited with overlays so it reads “is it about gay sex? does it mention your ex? are you proud to publish it?”
December 25, 2024 at 12:11 AM