A Firetruck Is on the Moon

It is a wonderful collection of stories, it warmed my heart reading these. I loved it ! Thank you for sharing, and congrats on the 2yrs !!!!

"A Firetruck Is on the Moon" by TOR WAR (website/instagram). This is a book you read magnified to 200%. It's certainly interesting in being a unique and short collection of poems 3-5 lines long, centered, and in size 6 font - but that still means you'll want to make sure you can read it. In his words "A celebration of two years being and having a boyfriend." and I would say that's very true. It's great and wonderful to have a submission from a gay trans man about his experience with love and his gay relationship. It's an under-represented perspective in published work by trans men, and even when the work from a trans man is about his gayness, it often still comes from a white writer. TOR WAR however, is a mixed Vietnamese-American man and I know there are many unrecognized readers out there who are hungry for work from people like them.

Each poem focuses on a specific piece and aspect of the story of the evolution of his relationship. In that way, it's very intimate. It's almost the gift sort of chapbook you would make to celebrate time together with your partner. While the formatting may initially seem drastic or unusual, if you take it as a reflection of the topic and content it really begins to make sense. His boyfriend is the only thing that matters in this story, and the story is the center of attention. They really are just snippets of a story only they two can understand. But you can feel it, and you can feel the evolution, and you can feel that romance in your mind. I think I can remember having felt similar things now and then once before. Sometimes all you want is to tell that kind of love story. It makes sense; the world pretends these stories are impossible. It can feel silly or over-indulgent to pen simply something pleasant you're grateful for, but the small pockets of happiness are the occasional reprieve we all need now and then.

"I run up the stairs to the train after we start a promise, and you text me while I'm on the way home because you can't wait to finish it. You tell me you ran up the stairs to your apartment because your legs were electric, and it makes me laugh."