The Drag Gospel of Queer Jesus by Chris Watkins
Review by Tatiana Avdelas
The Drag Gospel of Queer Jesus is one of those titles that demands to be read. Chris Watkins’s collection captures the experience of queer identity, and they write to twist religion in a way that’s gender nonconforming. Of course, it’s something that can be done to religion, but is it something that faith can encourage its believers to do? Watkins relives gospel stories with a twist. The poem “The Apostle Paula” is a satirical reimagining of the Apostle Paul with a focus on his well-known admonitions about women’s modesty. This poem is read as if Paul experiences a second conversion in the form of becoming a drag queen, Apostle Paula.
O ladies of Ephesus,
surely you know that most of us
need more than one transformation
in our lives. Christ set me straight
a second time by putting me in drag.
And I have to admit, at first,
I thought She was crazy,
coming at me with that makeup brush
Christ appears as a gender-bending figure who puts Paul in drag which in turn reframes holiness as something expansive and of self-discovery rather than its restrictive tendencies. It’s a confession of suppressed desire, and the need for authenticity or a chance to discover one’s true self. It’s really incredible. It’s as if these poems are both a critique and reclamation of stories that have been used for prejudice for too long. It’s a chance for queer, expansive, and liberating transformations to be present in the church.
Watkins then transitions into the second section of their collection with the same recurring themes, but with the idea of environmental concerns and its impact on marginalized communities. The poem “Waters Bop” questions who gets to claim such peace and holiness.
I’ve got peace like a river in my soul.
Nestlé ™ waters. Bottleable waters. Brokerable.
Brokenable. Bared oyster bars and bleached boneyards
of the coral reefs. Climate scorched waters.
Global South waters. Buried aquifers with oil leaks.
Deep Water Horizon seas—oil rainbows on the pelicans’ wings.
Glacial melt waters. Great Pacific Gyres. Rising
waters no sea wall can contain. Mangrove-shaved
shorelines split open to the hurricanes.
I’ve got peace like a river in my soul.
The refrain has origins from the Bible that is, again, a phrase that becomes ironic and transforms as the poem reveals the ecological crisis that has done harm to nature. This poem returns to the idea that transformation happens through the body. Bodies of water, bodies that have been contaminated by such harm, bodies that transform through self-discovery. It’s something that is physically felt and exposed rather than something hidden in oneself. What is true holiness if not physical expression and liberation from the ideas that cause such constraint?
Watkins uses form as another way of transforming from what’s seemingly rigid into something that expands the metaphorical landscape. “The Sonnet in Drag” is, obviously, written in the form of a sonnet, and uses iambic pentameter. Shakespeare is reinvented through queer performance, and we’re very much reminded that Shakespeare’s plays were performed in drag. Watkins takes this traditional form and makes it camp. They suggest that poets are like drag queens. We embellish, we dramatize, romanticize, stylize our writing, etc.
You’ll want to read like her. You’ll want to wear
hip pads beneath your quatrains. Stuff big words
in every line to burst the iamb’s brassiere.
To be Elizabethan, queen of bards.
But can you bring it like a bottom from the top--
from the title to your couplet’s death drop?
There is so much to love about traditional form, but it reaches new grounds when we figure out how to transform it. Watkins’s playful tone and playful way of transforming the words on the page both visually and viscerally made the pacing of this collection quite effective. I read it in one sitting. And then read it again in pieces because I wanted to live in these poems for as long as possible. Watkins’s collection is a thread of creative disobedience. They deconstruct piety, purity and tradition, the ideas that have been used to police our bodies and natural landscapes. Faith and holiness do not come from the rigidness of poetic form or gospel; they come from the push to liberate and transform.
O ladies of Ephesus,
surely you know that most of us
need more than one transformation
in our lives. Christ set me straight
a second time by putting me in drag.
And I have to admit, at first,
I thought She was crazy,
coming at me with that makeup brush
Christ appears as a gender-bending figure who puts Paul in drag which in turn reframes holiness as something expansive and of self-discovery rather than its restrictive tendencies. It’s a confession of suppressed desire, and the need for authenticity or a chance to discover one’s true self. It’s really incredible. It’s as if these poems are both a critique and reclamation of stories that have been used for prejudice for too long. It’s a chance for queer, expansive, and liberating transformations to be present in the church.
Watkins then transitions into the second section of their collection with the same recurring themes, but with the idea of environmental concerns and its impact on marginalized communities. The poem “Waters Bop” questions who gets to claim such peace and holiness.
I’ve got peace like a river in my soul.
Nestlé ™ waters. Bottleable waters. Brokerable.
Brokenable. Bared oyster bars and bleached boneyards
of the coral reefs. Climate scorched waters.
Global South waters. Buried aquifers with oil leaks.
Deep Water Horizon seas—oil rainbows on the pelicans’ wings.
Glacial melt waters. Great Pacific Gyres. Rising
waters no sea wall can contain. Mangrove-shaved
shorelines split open to the hurricanes.
I’ve got peace like a river in my soul.
The refrain has origins from the Bible that is, again, a phrase that becomes ironic and transforms as the poem reveals the ecological crisis that has done harm to nature. This poem returns to the idea that transformation happens through the body. Bodies of water, bodies that have been contaminated by such harm, bodies that transform through self-discovery. It’s something that is physically felt and exposed rather than something hidden in oneself. What is true holiness if not physical expression and liberation from the ideas that cause such constraint?
Watkins uses form as another way of transforming from what’s seemingly rigid into something that expands the metaphorical landscape. “The Sonnet in Drag” is, obviously, written in the form of a sonnet, and uses iambic pentameter. Shakespeare is reinvented through queer performance, and we’re very much reminded that Shakespeare’s plays were performed in drag. Watkins takes this traditional form and makes it camp. They suggest that poets are like drag queens. We embellish, we dramatize, romanticize, stylize our writing, etc.
You’ll want to read like her. You’ll want to wear
hip pads beneath your quatrains. Stuff big words
in every line to burst the iamb’s brassiere.
To be Elizabethan, queen of bards.
But can you bring it like a bottom from the top--
from the title to your couplet’s death drop?
There is so much to love about traditional form, but it reaches new grounds when we figure out how to transform it. Watkins’s playful tone and playful way of transforming the words on the page both visually and viscerally made the pacing of this collection quite effective. I read it in one sitting. And then read it again in pieces because I wanted to live in these poems for as long as possible. Watkins’s collection is a thread of creative disobedience. They deconstruct piety, purity and tradition, the ideas that have been used to police our bodies and natural landscapes. Faith and holiness do not come from the rigidness of poetic form or gospel; they come from the push to liberate and transform.
Chris Watkins, The Drag Gospel of Queer Jesus. Saturnalia Books, March 2026.
ISBN: 9781947817968
ISBN: 9781947817968
