Titles available from r/b mertz

BURNING BUTCH is Mertz's memoir about coming out as queer amidst the 'Merican right wing Catholic fundamentalism that helped get Trump elected both times. Also available on audiobook, read by Mertz, wherever you do audiobooks. 

"That was cool. And I think you'll agree. Cause r/b mertz is queer as hell and can really really write prose. "

—Eileen Myles 

"Burning Butch by R/B Mertz howls against the dogged mouth of the past as much as illuminates the present, evoking the legendary Leslie Feinberg and their struggle for selfhood in the classic memoir, Stone Butch Blues. Mertz’s extraordinary and stunning debut memoir extends and deepens the tradition begun by Feinberg for “butch” life, butch recognition, gender non-conformity, and queerness by writing the catastrophic and world- shattering repressions that radical Christianity can inflict on children, people, and communities. In this gorgeously written, powerful and moving literary accomplishment, Mertz reminds us of the sheer miracle that any of us queer kids are alive. Burning Butch is sure to be a new classic. It will lead us into a brighter future." 

--Dawn Lundy Martin, poet, essayist, memoirist 

"Don’t let BURNING BUTCH’s wry, witty voice fool you. This work is also heartbreaking and harrowing, carefully calibrated, and downright illuminating. R/B Mertz’s strikingly original memoir creates a space on the page for all outsiders, misfits, renegades, rebels, and queers. This is a tale of resilience and hope penned by a writer whose singular artistic voice is like no other. BURNING BUTCH is an account of a life lived bravely, honestly, and above all else, proudly."

—Alex Espinoza, author of 'Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime'

 "This book snuck into my heart like a song I'd never heard but always wanted to, and now I can't stop humming it. Burning Butch is an urgent reminder that in any community where people read the same stories, sing the same songs, and pray the same prayers, there are stunning souls buzzing with contradiction, pain, beauty and desire, voices which create gorgeous polyphony rather than discord. With generosity and disarming honesty, R/B Mertz has written a book to help all of us survive being alive, being alive, being alive."

-- Will Arbery, author of Pulitzer Prize nominated 'Heroes of the Fourth Turning'

CU T  is Mertz's debut poetry collection. 

This astonishing debut by R/B Mertz is not something you read and forget. At the quietest, most unexpected moments, you can feel these poems riding over the tracks they laid across your body. "Edge of human & / seasonal ex- / ploitation," yes, poetry that knits into our DNA. 

--CACONRAD, author of Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return

This book is visceral and cutting, vulnerable and brave. Throughout, Mertz explores the “deep breaks” caused by transphobia, racism, and other forms of American violence. At the same time, they celebrate the joy, pleasure, and other “flickers / of light that come through / the cracks.” Each page feels like a transition towards a multitude of voices that proclaim: “we are not / leaving, we are not giving up this garden.”

--Craig Santos Perez, author of [amot] and Habitat Threshold

“I got my voice like this the old-fashioned way, with cigarettes, with fire ...will telling the truth always have to feel like a fire?” With CU T, R/B Mertz does that rarest of things, they invite you to enter > “you know you—you’re not afraid of the shape of your desire, just your desire.” Knowing the significance of how we are entered & what enters us, each poem each blade, “like the removing of obstacles ... my darling, I love all of your atoms. If you like, I will open my skin for you” where EVERY QUEER IS A PARADE as you trip over the third who is always walking beside you, “slippers and hoodie, hooded I can’t tell if it's a girl or a man or a woman or a —is it just someone you keep inside of you?” Mertz sees you a part of this burning world “(come have a drink with me on the back deck)” & is now a part of me forever. CU T is the company you keep.”  

-- Kirby, author of She & Poetry is Queer

R/B's debut poetry collection, Cut, has the kind of motion poets and readers of poetry live for: running our eyes down the page quickly, but carefully, so that I can touch the next line while still feeling the fleshy bits of the last. This book is for them and for us, for any of us who know that "the blueprint of your body" is not who you are and the pain that lingers underneath, even under scars, will always show through. Being lost in this beautiful book makes me grateful to be alive in such a trying time. 

-- Rachelle Escamilla, Monterey County Poet Laureate 2024/5, author of Space Junk from the Heavenly Palace

What binds the poems of CU T together is a desire to speak what goes unspoken. To reply into the void of empire and late capitalism with a howl of authenticity, not trying to separate parts of the self or parts of the culture, but to exist in all of it at once. This book is a portrait of survival through speech, story, politics, celebrity/star gazing, TV, and all forms of popular music. These poems engage with “Western tradition” and its unraveling, focusing on an economically insecure adjunct life in Pittsburgh, PA which is—against all odds—interrupted by love that entails moving to a safer country. These poems exist in conversation with the author’s conservative Catholic upbringing, anti-imperialist and anti-racist politics, and poets ranging from Sappho to Elizabeth Bishop to Eazy-E. The poems inhabit a world where John Wayne stars in Manhattan and Rush Limbaugh stars in Boys Don’t Cry, with elegies to Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, and Tina Turner, finally culminating in a finale where the author rewrites (or translates, or reboots, or “covers”) T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (with a little help from Cyndi Lauper and Buffy the Vampire Slayer).