Another New Poem: “The Parts of Me They Trimmed”

May was a whirlwind of end of school events, culminating in a trip to London and Paris with my spouse for a very late 20th Anniversary trip. We had an amazing time walking, sightseeing, visiting museums and historical sites and churches, and eating delicious food. It was the kind of trip that changes a person, and I’m so glad we finally did it. When we returned home, we were already well into June. I spent the rest of the month relaxing into summer, working on a cosplay, celebrating my birthday, and trying to stay as cool as possible.

And July is beginning with the best news yet! Today, the speculative fiction magazine Kaleidotrope published my poem, “The Parts of Me They Trimmed,” in their Summer 2024 issue. It’s available to read for free online, and I’m so happy to finally see it in print. I have a draft in Word that says I wrote it in 2021, but I think I handwrote it long before that, tinkering with it until I got it just the way I wanted it. And then, it took a while to find the right home for this small, strange poem that a mutual online dubbed “horrifying, devastating, and beautiful,” but I’m so glad it landed at Kaleidotrope. If you’ve read most of my other work, you’ll discover this piece is unlike anything I’ve had published before.

Thanks to Fred Coppersmith, the publisher and editor at Kaleidotrope, you can find “The Parts of Me They Trimmed” here.

And since it’s getting quite late here, I must be off to bed.

As always, thanks for reading.

A. Cook