Scream / Queen, CD Eskilson's debut poetry collection, examines queerness, mental illness, and transgender identity through the lens of thrillers and B movies. The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Michael Myers, and the Headless Horseman are just a few of the fright-film villains and monsters that populate this book.

Eskilson's formally innovative poems document how a body--a nonbinary transgender body, a chronically ill body, a body carrying trauma--can be understood, accepted, and healed even in a violent sociopolitical climate. Drawing on the language and images of horror cinema, the poems' speakers find strength and the means to survive both family legacy and the pain inflicted on them: "I want to behemoth, be the biggest / violence in the galaxy," says one who thinks about Godzilla and dreams of "learning how to roar."

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