Winner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry

Finalist for a 2020 CLMP Firecracker Award

Finalist for a 2020 QUEER|ARTS|PRIZE for Recent Work

“'Queer utopians think human beings are perfectible / but we’re not, we’re just correctable.' So begins one poem in Cyree Jarelle Johnson’s so-good-I-want-to-quote-every-last-line debut collection. But these two lines contain the central explosion and, though they sound like a statement, the central question of SLINGSHOT―What happens after the admission, the recognition of the fact that not everything is salvageable, that some things must go? The answers are various, are voracious: sometimes, zines; sometimes, toe-sucking; sometimes, 'ominous petrichor'; sometimes, total exhaustion over the so-called allies who bring 'a big ass pot of raw beans and rice with a lonely fucking bay leaf'; sometimes, 'burn manhood / down in button up crop tops.' And sometimes, Chewbacca. Johnson’s language here is restlessly inventive while acknowledging how tiring it is to always, always invent, reinvent―and some things don’t deserve to be reinvented. 'Oh please,” one poem says about America, 'Oh please / let it burn down this time.'”―Chen Chen

"Nothing short of magnificent, Johnson jailbreaks language to speak ambitious, rigorous lyrics of Black/trans/disabled/ sex working story. At times I screamed out loud at the wonderousness of the work. Slingshot is the next generation of Black disabled genius poetics, and I'm in awe and grateful."―Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha