SHORT 'N SWEET: THE BOOK SPEAKS: Designated Stranger

Book Title: Designated Stranger

Author: Gion Davis

Publisher: Thirdhand Books, 2026

How would you, Designated Stranger, describe yourself in two sentences or less?

I am walking out into the surf on New Year’s Day. I am watching the nameless and verdant bottomlands of this country erode into the horizon from the passenger-side window, a song I've heard before in childhood but cannot place playing nearly inaudibly on the radio.

Where would you go on your dream vacation?

Back in time to see the old-growth American chestnut trees, “the redwoods of the East,” before they became functionally extinct from logging and blight.

What is your favorite color?

The yellow right at the edges of a California poppy.

What is your favorite movie?

My Own Private Idaho directed by Gus Van Sant. My soft spot for beautiful boys in beautiful clothes, for the terrifying spaces between city and plain, between boy and man, between lover and friend, between dream and drug, between delight and despondence, light and dark, gay and straight, wins out.

What advice would a therapist give you?

Hopefully, to get over myself. Art doesn’t make you special and neither does poetry, even as you embody it. You can’t carry everything with you, no matter how much you may want to; it’s important to let things go.

What is your favorite smell?

That first whiff of gasoline when you pull the lever to fill up the car in the humid, purpling dusk that is almost damp enough, so as to trick you into thinking it might be the ocean.

Do you collect anything, and what do these items mean to you?

Shells that end up broken in my pocket in the laundry. Rocks in the cupholder of the car. Bunches of bluebonnets drying on the dashboard until they lose their color. Endless photographs. What do they mean? Whatever I was thinking when I took them, whatever I didn’t want to forget.

What is your favorite snack?

Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and a chocolate shake from Cook Out.

If you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be and why?

Either Larry Levis or Frank Stanford because they are two poets who could have written me better, or already have at some other time. Fathers of cousins of mine. Two guys who stepped out early because of how hard it was to be them, even with what they did for poetry. But, if we could, we’d probably get drunk and forget about dinner altogether.

Gion Davis is a trans poet from Española, New Mexico where he grew up on a sheep ranch. His poetry has been featured in HAD, No Tokens, Sprung Formal, The Tiny, and others. His second collection, Designated Stranger (Thirdhand Books, 2026), has been called an “of-the-moment but timeless Beat-style masterwork” in advance praise from Diane Seuss. For the past four years, he has been touring and performing his poetry with the DIY music collective Clementine Was Right and his contributions to songwriting have been highlighted in publications such as Paste and Stereogum. He currently lives in Denver, Colorado.