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  • The American Poetry Review

    ALL THE GAY SAINTS

    May 01, 2020 4 minutes
    DESPY BOUTRIS

    Apz Books

    All the Gay Saints
    by Kayleb Rae Candrilli
    Saturnalia Books, 2020
    Paperback, 100 pages

    It is clear that if I communicate all the ways I hurt
    I will lose my usefulness.

    So begins the second poem of Kayleb Rae Candrilli’s much-anticipated second book of poetry, . This collection—which won the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize, selected by Natalie Diaz—focuses on the poet’s joy and faith in their future, in spite of the condition of the world today. Candrilli—who uses the pronouns they, them, and their—acknowledges the tenuous state of the world and country in this second poem, aptly named “On Wanting Top Surgery in the Fascist Regime.” The poet also acknowledges some readers’ problematic expectations: that queer and

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