ELMSLIE, Kenward
The Orchid Stories

It was in August I discovered the “Debs” white orchid, across the river from Hode, in its twin city, Spode. Specifically, it was in the Clothing Wing of the Wealth Museum. Mummers and I were standing in front of ferns painted white, with sleeping Mayan faces sort of floating among them—three-dimensional—decorating the three sides of an exhibit, a replica of a prison cell. A naked lightbulb hung from the ceiling, swaying slightly, as if someone has just jostled it. A gaunt mannequin with sagging shoulders and a creased forehead lay on the middle tier of a triple tiered bunk. He was lying with a mackintosh draped over him, like a blanket. Identical mackintoshes lay on the top and bottom tiers. I noticed a label, in the exhibit itself, pasted on the right of the bunk, crudely lettered in pencil and signed by “Mother Bloor” […]

A little-known classic of twentieth century queer literature and a masterpiece of eccentric detail, poet Kenward Elmslie’s only novel The Orchid Stories presents us with interwoven stories as delicate and exquisite as the flowers for which they are named, conveying a dreamlike, otherworldly beauty. [publisher's note]

With an afterword by Robert Glück <3

Published by Pilot Press, 2025
Literature