Jubi Arriola-Headley

Jubi Arriola-Headley is a black queer poet, and storyteller. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Ambit, Beloit Poetry Journal, Nimrod, People’s World, & Southern Humanities Review.  In original kink (Rivalry Press), Jubi Arriola-Headley explores kink as mythscape of promised pleasure.It’s kink as Godzilla’s desire for softness and the speaker gone “starburst,” kink as “the sun-soaked / surface of impossible kick” and “something loose enough / to dance in.” At once soliloquy, praise song, and injunction, original kink divines the brutal offices and beauteous comforts of syntax, street corners, and superheroes as sites for Black and queer (un)becomings. Jericho Brown, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Tradition noted that “In original kink, Jubi Arriola-Headley speaks with a voice that the old folks back home would say sounds like he has an attitude problem. […] These poems strut about and roll their necks. There are boasts and insult. But even when this book is sorrowful, it is proud.”