REVENGE BODY

Caleb Luna brings maw and might in their debut chapbook REVENGE BODY while undeniably presenting a collection that plays with tone, rhythm and form fantastically. REVENGE BODY demands to be witnessed while graciously ferrying readers throughout the journey that Luna traverses in a body that refuses to be an apology. REVENGE BODY sincerely envisions a different tomorrow for the many bodies so many of us forget.
— jaye simpson, author of it was never going to be okay

Caleb Luna’s REVENGE BODY is a searing examination of how lived experiences can accumulate inside a body–a body adorned by narratives inherited and prescribed. These poems probe the soft space between memory and hope, making tender, the bodies weaponized by language. The clarity in which Luna writes: “i / want you to see me / & / I don’t / want / that / to / be / brave,” shakes me awake, as if I’ve been dormant this whole time. When I first read REVENGE BODY, I was scared by how much it seemed like the poems knew me, but that fear quickly settled into a feeling of kinship. I want to throw this book at the strangers who stare at my body. I want to make it required reading for all my past and future lovers, to say: before you know me, you must know this: “the body is a celebration / & I have had a lot / to celebrate.” I celebrate this book. I celebrate this poet.
— Hieu Minh Nguyen, author of This Way to the Sugar and Not Here

Caleb Luna’s debut collection of poetry is a series of beautiful and real love and honesty notes to and about fat brown disabled queer survivor body landscapes. These are medecine stories for everyone needing to hear their body and heart’s stories and questions remembered, written with fierce power and grace. Take your time and let them linger on your heart and tongue.
— Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, author of Tonguebreaker, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice and Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home

In Caleb Luna’s REVENGE BODY, the body is defined and redefined so as to reflect the terror and the beauty of the world. There is a great poetic power exhibited here; through odes, elegies, flashbacks, and polemic, Luna shows how structures of violence – fatphobia, heteropatriarchy, racism, capitalism – interlock but ultimately cannot wholly deny a freedom intuited as something more than “one long masochistic scene.” Destruction, Luna powerfully concludes, is not theirs to hold.
— Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of A History of My Brief Body

REVENGE BODY teems with sharp, curious, brilliant work gilded with a sense of humor that careens from deadpan to ALL CAPS and back. Luna’s writing is measured, generous, examining everything unexamined, but also percussive, bereft, and fiery. I love this book, I read it three times back-to-back on my first read, and I suspect you will too.
— Tommy Pico, author of Feed, Junk, Nature Poem and IRL