Released May 19th, ecdysis: cacophony of skins is the latest pamphlet from the award winning poet Dena Igusti.
Dena is a queer, non-binary Indonesian Muslim poet, playwright, filmmaker, producer, and FGC survivor & activist raised in Queens, NYC. Their pamphlet Cut Woman (Game Over Books) was listed as a 2020 Harvard Bookstore Staff Pick and a Entropy Mag’s Best Of 2020-2021.
ecdysis: cacophony of skins is an unflinching collection of poems that look at assault, racism, and anger, finding a throughline to help heal. It’s an empowering read working with the themes of memory, family, community, and love.
“Dena Igusti’s pamphlet is a powerful symphony sung in honour of the queer, urban body. In ecdysis: cacophony of skins, modern violence is portrayed in its multi-faceted truths: as residue of colonialism, as connecting tissue to one’s formative relationships, as an object one can embody for self-protection. These poems loudly resonate, tell you that you’re wrong – you can own the right to heal. A triumph.”
-Troy Cabida
“Both protagonist and antagonist throughout ecdysis: cacophony of skins, the anamorphic body (of the speaker, of the poems) shifts as needed – as physical and digital vessel, as idea or avenger, as ghost, as a time capsule.
In those shifts, the poems find their anchor to explore trauma, joy, violence, regret, the experience that “anything / could look like a want.” Even the quotidian work of artistic self- promotion, brilliantly captured in “every request for an interview* in which ‘experience’ is replaced with ‘pussy’” and the pureness of true friendship in “I’ve cultivated paradise without being sacrificial”.
Igusti imbues the poems with adventurous line work and serrated imagery, compelling and frightening enough to keep you, right there, in the poems. “I know none of us // are comfortable,” Igusti writes. “that’s not // the point,” which testifies to this collection’s brave intentions.”
– Ben Kline
“ecdysis: cacophony of skins is incredibly alive – a bleeding, blistering, enlivening thing. Igusti takes us on a perambulating journey through, with and for the body, interrogating what it means for us to hurt, to heal, to do more than survive.”
-Gayathiri Kamalakanthan
ecdysis: cacophony of skins features elements of artwork by Michael Seward, used with permission. You can see more of Michael’s artwork at their instagram: @bigflowersguy
Now available at:
Fourteen Poems
Fourteen Poems
Dena Igusti 
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