#phags 2

Take a look with us and read and ponder and create with the launch of “Headspace” digital edition. 

Apollo Chastain (ze/hir, he/him) is a trans faggot who writes poetry about demon twinks, airports, and being willing to do anything for his friends, among other things. Ze lived in Rochester for undergrad, but is now pursuing research work and grad schools in a lot of other places (like the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and Washington University in St Louis!) to work with poetry, history, and trans archives. The recipient of the 2021 Academy of American Poets College Prize for hir university and PEN America’s 2023 Free Expression Fellowship, Apollo’s work appears or is forthcoming in journals including Poets.org, a PEN America fellowship publication, the Michigan Quarterly Review, and Diode Poetry Journal, among others. Pay hir a visit at apollopoet.wordpress.com, or on Instagram @apollo.chastain.

Two things I’ve come to love are drag and bodybuilding. To me, they are not as inseparable as one might think; both focus on aesthetics, creating an over-the-top form to grace the stage with beauty and wondrousness. As someone who spends hours in the gym, trying to build a strong and feminine physique, I’m incredibly drawn to the art of drag and the expressions of gender, body, and aesthetics it holds. I think of bodybuilders and drag queens as sisters in my world. 

-Erika

moving towards a horizon line that won’t be there when i arrive and accepting that’s how it was intended to be - Nathan

This collection of scanned collages from my sketchbook is a reflection of my findings in the past year since graduating college and what I describe as the mythos of young adulthood. Everything is new, everything is different. Everything is the same. Everything is changing. I often find solace in introspection and release in translating those thoughts into something physical outside of myself. I constantly return to collage as a medium because of its ability to encompass so many meanings through the use of compiled imagery. It’s scrappy and it’s personal which is the voice I like to bring to a lot of my work. 

This collection of scanned collages from my sketchbook is a reflection of my findings in the past year since graduating college and what I describe as the mythos of young adulthood. Everything is new, everything is different. Everything is the same. Everything is changing. I often find solace in introspection and release in translating those thoughts into something physical outside of myself. I constantly return to collage as a medium because of its ability to encompass so many meanings through the use of compiled imagery. It’s scrappy and it’s personal which is the voice I like to bring to a lot of my work. 

This collection of scanned collages from my sketchbook is a reflection of my findings in the past year since graduating college and what I describe as the mythos of young adulthood. Everything is new, everything is different. Everything is the same. Everything is changing. I often find solace in introspection and release in translating those thoughts into something physical outside of myself. I constantly return to collage as a medium because of its ability to encompass so many meanings through the use of compiled imagery. It’s scrappy and it’s personal which is the voice I like to bring to a lot of my work.