NEW SEPTEMBER 2025
"If there has not been such a thing as quantum poetics before, Waling Waling Palpitations cracks open the space for it. These poems are multidimensional in the purest sense — multi-lingual, multimodal, multi-gender, multi-genre. They reach through time and space toward wounds ancestral and cultural, earthy and personal, then name them with an honesty as fierce as it is tender. nawa is generous with images (both in lyric and visually) that stun and seduce as they navigate the impact of colonial exotification on how well we can be loved and accepted as the beings we are. “my own trial is in not gentrifying myself,” and with those words, [Nawa] opens the question of what true care means, for ourselves and our collective healing."
–Lisbeth White, author of American Sycamore “A kaleidoscopic, multisensory, and mesmerizing work, Waling waling palpitations is a heart-wrenching spectacle, a fractal celebration of queer joy, a supernatural conjuration of matrilineal lineages past and present, a permutative drag performance, and a true decolonial heartbreaking gesture that enters you, touches you, makes contact with every cell of your body and being, and carries you through an unbelievably beautiful and transformational journey. ‘i am what my mother hoped: something she could never know,’ the text sings of impossible possibility. I have perhaps never experienced a book that I wanted to absorb into my own being so much. A work of unmeasured beauty and genius. You will be fucking changed by this book. Seriously.” —Janice Lee, author of Oregon Book Award Finalist Separation Anxiety "Waling Waling Palpitations is a stunning debut that expands the borders of what a book can be. It is a gallery, a performance piece, an assemblage, a field of flowers collaged with concrete and decolonization. Angel’s lyric prose and images create a dreamlike state where queer histories clipped before bloom are allowed to bud with possibility, where orchids grow erotic rather than exotic and fiercely, devastatingly, Wild. I left this work shaking with pleasure, my mouth full of words sharp as bolos and soft as the silencing of the Waling-waling. If Waling Waling Palpitations is an altered state, let me never return to the norm." —Jen Soriano, author of Nervous and co-editor of Closer to Liberation 172 pages | A5 5.83 x 8.27 in. | 2025 ISBN-13: 978-1-958600-10-8 (paperback) $25 |
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nawa angel a.h., widely known as Moonyeka, is a chimeric creator with a multi-embodied presence in performance, qt nightlife, writing, experimental media, teaching artistry and divination praxis. They center kilig as a compass to conjure erotically charged revolutions with animistic unapology, risque', and Ilocano imagination. nawa's past publications can be found in smoke and mold; Khôra; The Holy Hour anthology by Working Girls Press; Seventh Wave's On Queer Family Anthology; Instruction Manual for a New Era with PNW Conceptual Art Center; Lilac Peril. They have been the recipient of residencies, awards and fellowships including Tin House, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art CXL, In Surreal Life, George Newsome Humanitarian Award, Mary Gates Research Award, Arc Fellowship, and Andy Warhol Foundation's Precipice Fund Award. nawa exists in the in-between, frequently emerging on Tongva, Chumash, Chinook, Puyallup, Duwamish lands; the Coast Salish sea. Waling waling palpitations is their first book.