charles theonia


  • poems
  • discourse
  • editing

Archway Editions, 2024

Like meeting under a disco ball, or listening to Arthur Russell on the Staten Island Ferry, Gay Heaven Is a Dance Floor but I Can’t Relax proposes reading as a form of friendship. This book goes out to anyone who has loved someone they’ll never get to meet.


on GAY HEAVEN:


"As with any reference guide, this text desires a world beyond itself, through itself... These poems remind us of the enduring labors keeping an 'us' alive."


– Rebecca Teich, BOMB Magazine


"The book’s last movement [is] a beautiful, long-form poem about Arthur Russell, the genre-hopping musician who died of AIDS-related illness in 1992. (The “about” feels inadequate—the poem is sometimes an ode, and sometimes a self-portrait as Russell, and sometimes a landscape, New York in the eighties.)"


– Josh Ascherman, The Brooklyn Rail ​


"theonia made... their own version of [Arthur] Russell’s work, woven through the titular poem of their new collection, Gay Heaven Is a Dance Floor but I Can’t Relax. There are bits and pieces of titles and little curlicues of text that can be read in any direction, like snippets of recording tape waiting to be spliced."


– Sasha Frere-Jones, 4Columns


“'gay life: you want to dance,' writes theonia and it’s true: you want to feel it in your body."


– Tausif Noor, The Poetry Project Newsletter



Belladonna* Collaborative, 2023

(free pdf)



some poems online




"Biological Sex on the Beach" - baest


Excerpts from "Gay Heaven Is a Dance Floor but I Can't Relax" - Copenhagen


"I Fell to the Earth Mouth First" – Archway Editions


Excerpts from "Normal Girls" – Small Press Traffic


"Mouth Weather," "Open Hours," and "Truth Game" – The Brooklyn Rail


More from "Gay Heaven" - Black Warrior Review


"What Is Glitter?," "Lily Pad," and "Earthly Reasons" – Tagvverk


"The Color of Joy is Pink" – Guts Magazine


"Are You Hearing It Now" – Social Text


"Ocean Hallway" and "Self Timer / You Peek Out" – The Feelings Journal


"Clear Weather," "2003," and "1989" – Women & Performance


"Light Study in One Breath," "The People's Beach," and "Big Heat" – Triangle House Review





and in print




SplashLand Magazine


The Texas Review


Oversound


We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat Books)


Brooklyn Poets Anthology (Brooklyn Arts Press)



Saw Palmettos




an art book with Container Press, 2018