Christopher Mongeau 2025_1.JPG
Christopher Mongeau 2025_1.JPG

Sex Camel: Expanded Second Edition — Muggs Fogarty

$18.00

Cover art: Bog Witch by Erin Woodbrey, 2025. Wool, glass, brass, found object, black cohosh, 35 x 18 x 1, used with permission.  

Praise for Sex Camel

“Intimate and immediate, Sex Camel pulses with the lyric virtuosity we’ve come to expect from Muggs Fogarty, a vibrant and singular voice forged by page and stage. These poems dance seamlessly through a sacred rage and a hard-earned love – precise and embodied in every stanza. Even in the most barren moments, Sex Camel is never alone: draped in kinship and influence, invoking persona, complex form, queer history, and a sonic precision sharp enough to transform a single image over and over again. Working with great constraint, Sex Camel walks into a desert and builds poems so alive, they become their own oasis. This is a tender meditation on presence and absence, confession and secret, and holding tight and being held in the aftermath of violence. Oscillating between lines in impeccable staccato and lush narrative akin to prosaic song, Sex Camel is a collection you won’t turn away from. The only way this book could be any better is if Fogarty sat next to me to read every shining phrase aloud, word by word.” 

—Desireé Dallagiacomo, author of SINK (Button Poetry, 2019)

Muggs Fogarty is a writer, performance artist, and vocalist from Providence, Rhode Island. The author of several poetry chapbooks, Muggs is a former director of Providence Poetry Slam and a resident artist of AS220. Muggs can be found fronting music acts Lookers (Almost Ready Records), Bittersweet (Little Lambda Records), their solo loop pedal poetry project (Self Luv Records) and is the host of Chaos Hour on Providence Community Radio. Muggs also practices myofascial bodywork as a cofounder of Angels Collective, a queer multidisciplinary collaborative in Providence.

muggsfogarty.com | @muggsfogarty  

Cover art: Bog Witch by Erin Woodbrey, 2025. Wool, glass, brass, found object, black cohosh, 35 x 18 x 1, used with permission.  

Praise for Sex Camel

“Intimate and immediate, Sex Camel pulses with the lyric virtuosity we’ve come to expect from Muggs Fogarty, a vibrant and singular voice forged by page and stage. These poems dance seamlessly through a sacred rage and a hard-earned love – precise and embodied in every stanza. Even in the most barren moments, Sex Camel is never alone: draped in kinship and influence, invoking persona, complex form, queer history, and a sonic precision sharp enough to transform a single image over and over again. Working with great constraint, Sex Camel walks into a desert and builds poems so alive, they become their own oasis. This is a tender meditation on presence and absence, confession and secret, and holding tight and being held in the aftermath of violence. Oscillating between lines in impeccable staccato and lush narrative akin to prosaic song, Sex Camel is a collection you won’t turn away from. The only way this book could be any better is if Fogarty sat next to me to read every shining phrase aloud, word by word.” 

—Desireé Dallagiacomo, author of SINK (Button Poetry, 2019)

Muggs Fogarty is a writer, performance artist, and vocalist from Providence, Rhode Island. The author of several poetry chapbooks, Muggs is a former director of Providence Poetry Slam and a resident artist of AS220. Muggs can be found fronting music acts Lookers (Almost Ready Records), Bittersweet (Little Lambda Records), their solo loop pedal poetry project (Self Luv Records) and is the host of Chaos Hour on Providence Community Radio. Muggs also practices myofascial bodywork as a cofounder of Angels Collective, a queer multidisciplinary collaborative in Providence.

muggsfogarty.com | @muggsfogarty  

Additional Praise for Sex Camel

“Fogarty's writing is kaleidoscopic—sharp-edged, bright, always blooming into something new. Here, their luminous vision is pulled into tight focus, navigating intimacy and healing amidst a legacy of violence. There's inventiveness and urgency, along with humor—and tenderness, of course. Above all I'm impressed by the care that Fogarty gives, to both speaker and reader, as they try to figure out how to be close and okay, how to answer this right-now question / of sweat and kindness."

—Franny Choi, author of The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On (Ecco, 2022)

“The meticulous language and inventive imagery of Sex Camel made me gasp, laugh, weep, and feel deeply. Whether they are navigating a deep wound, a painful solitude, or a vulnerable effort towards connection, Muggs Fogarty has an uncanny ability to find and reveal new angles of their living like a flashlight guiding a reader around dark corners. When they say, ‘heal crooked, if that's what it takes,’ it feels determined and possible, and it makes me grateful to have their poems as a companion through the dizzying maze of survival and healing—their own, but also ours as well.”

—Sarah Kay, author of A Little Daylight Left (Penguin Random House, 2025)

“With unmatched tenderness, stunning imagery and devastating lines, Muggs Fogarty moves us through trauma, healing, gender feelings and pure unabashed pleasure. They will break your heart, make you swoon, laugh out loud and remind you what it takes to feel alive. Sex Camel is a brilliant collection, an absolute delight to experience.”

 —Noam Keim, author of The Land is Holy (Radix, 2024)

"I Refuse to waste your time, so here it is:

You would be, as much as any of us can be, Right to read this collection of Poems. Something brought you here, Something in you beckoned to receive this blurb, and that is simply Enough. Fogarty's work leads us Bravely & Assertively through stories of Pain, Healing, Exploration - no second guessing, confident as a Spell. Th best we can do to follow this great example is to Embrace Intuition as Wholey. I promise you, these poems fill the heart like both a candle, and the dream of a candle. You are so welcome, here."

— John-Francis Quiñonez, author of Keep Your Little Lights Alive (Write Bloody Publishing, 2022)

“Anything can be a desert if that’s where you’re at. Muggs Fogarty's Sex Camel is an echo of desires in conflict, exposed vulnerabilities, a tug of war between love and grief. A sex camel carries the world; all of the feelings, the inadequacies, the needs, the hunger, the rage, and the aching desire for connection. Fogarty's voice is melancholic, sharp, warm, brilliant, honest. Holding itself, it holds the reader. Fogarty liberates us with their words that unlock, heal, and lead us into an oasis of compassion and self love.” 

 —Shey Rivera Ríos, author of Naty and My Chaotic Stench (Anomalous Press, 2019)

“Sex Camel speaks of what the body contains / what it reserves / how we make a meal of interiority where nothing else can satisfy. These poems transform hurt & loss into sources of unexpected nourishment. Fogarty convinces me time & again that the only tragedy in retreating inside whatever safety means, is that often, safety only has room enough for one. What luck to be asked into those narrow moments of strength. I'm so glad I get to carry this work with me as water towards my next thirst.”

 —Emily O’Neill, author of a falling knife has no handle (YesYes Books, 2018)