Poetry / Prose

 
 

Hold Me Gorilla Monsoon

(OPO Press, 2017)

Hold Me Gorilla Monsoon collects poems and comic strips about sex and gender as viewed through the lens of professional wrestling. In poems written to or about wrestlers like Junkyard Dog, Roddy Piper, Ox Baker, The Ultimate Warrior, The Rock, and CM Punk, Colette Arrand teases out the homoerotic roots of wrestling and how its warped, cartoon masculinity plays itself out over the course of a fan's life.

Comics drawn by Scott Stripling

The Future Is Here and Everything Must Be Destroyed

(Split Lip Press, 2019)

“I Love Colette Arrand’s Poetry; it makes me feel close to George Michael again, makes me understand my own childhood better, and Star Trek too, which is important because Star Trek and transition are the only things that let the future make any sense to me. ‘As white boys often find themselves in Seattle’ is a sentence that lives permanently in my brain now.”

- Daniel Lavery (Women’s Hotel, The Toast)

To Denounce the Evils of Truth

(Long Day Press, 2016)

“Instead of a simple yet inherently false truth, Arrand opts for complex truths. ‘Observe me,’ she writes, ‘I want to be remote, but not unreachable.’ Arrand is successful in putting the person on the page, and she does so with language that is beautiful, in essays that are lyrical, in moments that are clear and affecting.”

- Eric Nguyen (Things We Lost to the Water)

Editing

The Wanderer, the poetry journal Colette founded as a weekly feature of Harlot Magazine in 2016, co-edited with Roque Raquel Salas Rivera until 2018, and brought back for a brief 2020 reprise, is archived at https://wanderer-poetry.com/.

2022

  • “The Catalytic Converter and the Dry Vegetation” / “The Future Is Here and Everything Must Be Destroyed” / “Salt Vampire” - Always Crashing #5 (poems, print)

2021

  • “Buffalo Bill” - Wax Nine (poem, online)

2019

  • “Xenomorph” - Peach Mag Season 3 Yearbook (poem, print)

  • “For ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage, In Whose Madness I Find Myself Suffering” - BRAINBUSTER #2 (poem, zine)

  • “For ‘Hollywood’ Hulk Hogan, On the Occasion of Joining the New World Order” - Paintbucket (poem)

  • “Third Kind” / “The Thing” / “Crystalline Entity” - Passages North #40 (poems, print)

2018

  • “mother” - Peach Mag (poem, online)

    • Peach Gold shortlist.

  • “For the Juggalo Kids I Know, Now Adults, Who May or May Not Read This Poem” - DIAGRAM (poem, online)

  • “When Men Regard My Body” - Cosmonauts Avenue (poem)

    • Runner-up, 2018 Poetry Prize.

    • “Yes, poems about bad dates. Yes, being more comfortable in words than your own skin. Yes, Galactus. This poem is rangy and flirting with flipness, but is actually deadly serious. How else to deal with being a body constantly on the edge of violence. I love the way the poem takes up space, flings itself wildly outward, and resurfaces in the moment. I love the world of this poem and all the things in its gravitational pull.” - Tommy Pico, judge.

  • “Addressing the Rumor That Marilyn Manson Had His Lower Ribs Removed So That He Might Suck His Own Dick” - BOAAT (poem)

2017

  • “That Time of the Month” - Barrelhouse (short story, online)

  • “Nookie” / “Faith” / “The Idea of Musical Taste As a Kind of Rebellion” - The Tiny (poems, online)

  • “My Ideal Boyfriend Is a Two-Sport Athlete” / “Celebrity Restauranteur” / “Body Image” - Waxwing Magazine (poems, online)

  • “Recurring Dream of Self as Darryl Hannah” / “Electrolysis” - AADOREE (poems)

  • Five Moves: “Atomic Drop” / “Reverse Atomic Drop” / “Twin Magic” / “The People’s Elbow” / “Tree of Woe” - A Bad Penny Review (comics, drawn by Scott Stripling)

  • “Spells Against Dysphoria, Prayers For Getting Fucked” / “Grief Ritual: Winter” / “Grief Ritual: Summer” / “Spells Against Capitalism, Prayers For Getting Paid” - Aspasiology (poems, online)

  • “The Use of Roland Barthes to Justify One’s Love of Wrestling” / “For ‘Adorable’ Adrian Adonis, Unable to Wash the Pink From His Hands” - Big Lucks (poems, online)

  • “For The Ultimate Warrior, Screaming Nonsense Into the Void” / “Full Body Slam” / “For the Drunk Fan Yelling ‘Fagot!’ at Every Heel” / “Executing a Pumphandle Slam, 1998” / “For CM Punk, Finished with Professional Wrestling” / “For The Great Muta, Who, By Massaging an Extra Gland in the Back of His Throat, Is Able to Spray a Fine Poison Mist” - Vanilla Sex Magazine (poems)

  • “For Greg ‘The Hammer’ Valentine and the Slow Decay of Our Bodies” - Moonsick Magazine (poem)

  • “Recurring Dream Wherein I’m Watching an Episode of Star Trek” - The Mondegreen (poem)

2016

  • “Constant Manicure” - Cosmonauts Avenue (poem)

  • “144. Articuno” - Vetch No. 3 (lyric essay, online)

  • “004. Charmander (v1)” - The Offing (lyric essay, online)

  • “On Watching Tiny House Hunters In a Waiting Room” / “137. Porygon” - EOAGH (poem/lyric essay, online)

  • “004. Charmander (v2)” - Tiny Donkey (lyric essay)

  • “Met Me For Lunch” - ENTROPY (erasure fictions)

  • “Something Like a Labyrinth” - 7x7 (collaborative fiction with Preston Spurlock, online)

  • “107. Hitmonchan” - Hardly Doughnuts (lyric essay)

  • “My Trans Body as a State of Desire” - Autostraddle (essay, online)

2015

  • "The Orgiastic Future" / "Unlikely Femme" / "Problems Only Introverts Will Understand" - Powder Keg (poems, online)

  • "132. Ditto," No Tokens (essay, print)

  • "Chrysalis: Transitioning and My Trans Identity" - The Toast (essay, online)

  • "See the Before and After Photos of 18 Celebs Who Clearly Have Fake Teeth" - Broad! (fiction)

  • "Two Wrestling Comics" - Hobart (comics, drawn by Scott Stripling, online)

  • "011. Metapod" / "129. Magikarp" - The Collagist (lyric essays)

  • "081. Magnemite" - Gigantic Sequins (essay, print)

  • "054. Psyduck" / "086. Seel" / "134. Vaporeon" - The Mondegreen (lyric essays)

  • "Ghost Rider: Riding Around Town with His Head On Fire" - Shoot the Moon Comics (comic, drawn by Michele Chidester, out of print)

  • "002. Ivysaur" / "089. Muk" CutBank (lyric essays, print)

  • "Giant Size Man Thing" / "Channeling Ox Baker" / "Mullet Lake" - Whiskey Island (poems, print)

  • "034. Jigglypuff" / "080. Slowbro" / "109. Koffing" - The Atlas Review (lyric essays, print)

  • "020." Raticate" / "124. Jynx" - Moon City Review (lyric essays, print)

2014

  • "019. Rattata" / "104. Cubone" - Cartridge Lit (lyric essays, online)

  • "For Hulk Hogan, Who, By His Own Reasonable Estimate, Has the Largest Arms in the World" - BOAAT (poem)

  • "After Michael Sam" - Hobart (essay, online)

  • "In Retrospect, the Fan Who Started the First "You Fucked Up!" Chant Feels Pretty Bad About the Whole Thing" - KNOCKOUT (poem, print)

  • "For Jake ' The Snake' Roberts, On the Occasion of Making an Unlikely Out in Center Field During a Charity Softball Game" - Hobart (poem, online)

2013

  • "Blood or Ketchup?? ... It's Blood!!" - Monkeybicycle (fiction)

  • "For Brutus ' The Barber' Beefcake, Who Was Unable to Cut Hair" - 491 Magazine (poem, print)

  • "At Breath's End" / "After a Festival Screening of Andersson's You, the Living" - jmww (poems)

    "The Xerox Machines Lose Their Will to Live" / "The Full Nelson Wishes to Speak" - Heavy Feather Review (poems, online)

Anthology appearances

“Themyscira,” from Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers (Short Story)
(Cat Fitzpatrick & Casey Plett, editors; originally published 2017, republished by LittlePuss Press in 2024)
2018 Winner of the ALA Stonewall Book Award’s Barbara Gittings Literature Award

“The Thing” from Best Microfiction 2020 (Lyric Essay/Poem)
(Michael Martone, judge; Meg Pokrass & Gary Fincke, editors; Pelekinesis 2020)

“For Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts, On the Occasion of Making an Unlikely Out in Centerfield During a Charity Softball Game” from Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Poem)
(Todd Kaneko & Amorak Huey, Bloomsbury Academic 2018, First Edition)