· R L · powell words · literacy & figments
genuinely curious & tolerantly mad
· R L · powell [he/him :: they/them] is a writer of poetry & prose, although he’s proven himself to be poorly committed to any specific genre. They are the founding Editor-in-Chief of the poetry journal, APROSEXIA LIT, and Director of its parent registered non-profit, APROSEXIA LIT PUBLICATIONS. They are an educator, champion of all things peculiar & kind, and appreciably cracked intellectual. In spite of being unceremoniously diverted in the process of completing a couple of degrees, they do hold a Specialist B.A. (Hons.) in English, with a minor in Paradigms & Archetypes; & an MA is in English Languages & Literatures. Before parting ways with his doctoral program, ABD, · R L · s research centered on the epistemologies of reading, the philosophy of science & literature, American modernisms, and something he termed the phenomenology of boredom.
Right now he’s trying his best to finish an MFA specializing in poetry, but whom or whatever seems to be at the helm of running the universe has yet to remove persistent, and somewhat infuriating, obstacles that have got in the way. Anyone with connections to the Powers That Be willing to put in a good word is invited to do so, if they feel so inclined.
To date, they don’t feel particularly sad about leaving their PhD program—and remains genuinely proud of his decision to write full time. · R L · has close to a decade’s worth of experience teaching literature and writing at the post-secondary level; he’s worked in, and across, an improbable range of industries—and been unceremoniously let go from nearly as many jobs that they wouldn’t exactly count as a profession. Recently, they’ve received support from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and studied under the celebrated poets Randall Mann & Michael Dumanis.
· R L · has an unusual talent for thinking & teaching in & around critical theory; they maintain a passion for pedagogy; and have been recognized for uniquely engaging approaches in their critique and analysis of art. He's drawn to imaginative examinations of literal & figurative space, work derived from dreams, and irreverent takes on recondite subjects. They knows of awful lot of words, and have a tendency to use them when it would probably serve him better not to. Sometimes, they’re quite funny.
Above all, he thinks you're doing a magnificent job of being yourself.
the imperative to be heard
Over the course of his life, · R L · has written on an improbable number of subjects, across diverse mediums, & experienced dramatic changes in publishing technologies. A focus on the Arts & Humanities have been consistent throughout, but it has taken coming to terms with the realities of illness, neurodiversity, disability, and other sundry barriers to make a professional return to writing possible. It has taken half a lifetime to genuinely appreciate the levels of support necessary, and the concessions required, to pursue and sustain a professional life in the creative arts. This understanding has become a part of what they have to contribute to the creative sphere, and what led them to found APROSEXIA LIT, a open-access online poetry journal of work by divergent, challenged, and challenging minds. Recently, he made the decision to expand its scope of the project, and work toward providing a greater range of opportunities for invisibly disabled artists be published and find representation that does not assume a need to reach the widest audience at the expense of staying true to their lived experience.
It’s easy to assume that by unambiguously stating a commitment to greater representation of less-visibly marginalized voices in the media, as well as the Arts, would include a strong appreciation for what makes experiencing and perceiving with divergent, challenged, or impaired perception is a fundamentally different way of being in the world. More often than not, this isn’t the case. Having become frustrated, angry, and more than a little tired of facing down tacit assumptions of what disability is—and what makes it legible—by normative minds and able bodies, it’s clear to · R L · that defending and amplifying actively diminished voices is a DIY project.
So, in their mid-life stride, · R L · has decided that its time to make space where it doesn’t yet exist for voices subject to forms of double erasure—by virtue of “disability,” but also assumptions that living as someone divergent or ill has to look and be a certain way to be an authentic narrative of lived experience.
Because it’s all such a load of twaddle.
Recent publications :: poetry
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“Never name the cat / after your morning’s emperors”; “One’s song hardly wed committing violence / aside fears of an open kiss, in 1999.”
Mande Literary, 5. Apr: 2026. Online. [forthcoming]
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“the gauge left to battery a phone call / requiered to abandon work”
Scavengers Lit Mag, 3. Apr: 2026. digital/print.
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"An Odd Couplet :: Re-set the table to co-opt the entire conversation"; “An Odd Couplet :: About That Boy and Table”; “call to our lips to make pale atoms of our nights.”
The engine(idling, 8: collage. 2026. digital/print.
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“Give me contraints; I will give you a rhino”; “What's to stop ringing up the day when goose & god are hopeless”; “Times when Deepak Chopra's wisdom was free.”
Blood+Honey. Mar: 2026. online.
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“Detections that follow misread lines in a marriage.”
junq magazine, 6. Feb: 2026. print.
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“The take-home at the new box-office / now barely covers the cost of admission.”
fwp 2025: an anthology of queer writing. fifth wheel press. Nov: 2025. print.
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“Polariods I didn't take / only to leave in Basque.”
from, Ingenious Lies About the Museum. ballast, 3.4. Oct: 2025. online.
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“Exhibition without the Museum: iii. Without warning, a pitch of desire.”
from, Ingenious Lies About the Museum. The Inflectionist Review, 21. Oct: 2025. online.
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“upon Return from the ATM.”
junq magazine, 3. Nov: 2024. print.
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“always and still / worlds above.”
Impossible Archetype. 16. Aug: 2024. digital.
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“My Suburbia Was a Woodland.”
The Rising Phoenix Review. Jan: 2024. [since defunct] online. read it here.
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“Frost.”
Eunoia Review. Dec: 2023. Online.
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"And the Sea Brags of Its Shells."
Haven Spec, 11. Nov, 2023. digital/print.
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“Are Bright Things to Pray For.”
Impossible Archetype, 14. Aug: 2023. digital.
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“Five Characters”; “Hurt”
The Rumen. Jul: 2023. online.
the extant
As the name implies, the extant is a broad canvas. What is often described in the circles of science fiction & fantasy as a “secondary world,” the extant is the colloquial name for a distant realm named the Agnyett. It is the the aggregate culmination of worldbuilding over a lifetime, too much education with too few degrees to show for it, and a wealth of underserved stories taking up space in · R L · s head.
The extant is large enough to provide a home all their personal takes on familiar tropes, with potential for the occasional twist on genre stories at home in soft sci-fi, speculative fiction, and fantasy. From their perspective, the extant is running behind on where it could be as fiction set down on the page. Between between poetry & nurturing APROSEXIA on a larger scale, getting a better grip on the extant, and seeing more of it in print, has become a large part of · R L · s writing practice.
