A debut poetry collection about Earth and to Earth that contemplates imposed systems—gender, capitalism, time, wage and exploitation—and how they are mapped onto us, the trees, and the planet. Immersed in a tangled weave of contemporary life where big box stores and suburban parking lots coexist alongside the instructive silence of juniper trees and a pulsing waterfall, Our Air sketches the possibilities of eco and social interdependence during late-stage capitalism. Their inscriber, Nora Treatbaby, is a trans woman reckoning with the constraints of gender categories, when being a woman is “an implausible dream” and “an insane vibration.” With sincere curiosity and a sprinkling of levity, these poems advocate for the world-building potential available in a material commitment to gentle friendship with all networks of life on Earth. "[Treatbaby's] multivalent boldness makes her a particular voice in this generation of poets; she is playful without trivializing her distress, political without being rigid or reactionary, queer without being obvious, and endlessly thoughtful without getting lost in intellectual jargon or posturing. She knows where she stands—or she isn’t sure but she’s going to make you laugh about it." — hannah baer, Interview " Our Air is an instant classic, a work equally of woundings and of clearings, a new testament to the beauty in the wreckage. As the book progresses, the poems build in emotional intensity and reach several devastating crests of agony, apology, sorrow, and catharsis." — Joseph Albernaz, The Brooklyn Rail " Our Air swells with collective dreams at once dashed and found in hearts drawn in the fogged glass of a supermarket freezer, conditioned air we breathe together and so toxify together, the sensuous, herbal lick of revolution." — Drew Zeiba, Document Journal "Treatbaby transits between spheres and registers to make a topography of the present that is lucid and opaque: lucid in its conviction of what needs to burn, opaque in its imaginary of what will blossom in this small gap of scorched earth between two types of living." — Angie Sijun Lou, The Whitney Review "Thudding through the spine of Nora Treatbaby’s Our Air is her observation “it is vulnerable to be in awe.” These poems’ political promise is to render us vulnerable: uncovering the source of our wounds so we may touch them. Here, dominant grammars self-destruct and love springs forth from a seed, no longer the property of the naive. Tracing the grotesque shards of capitalist detritus and preaching metaphysical axioms, Treatbaby is our theologian at the end of a world that is ceaselessly refusing to end. I’d follow her anywhere." — Rosie Stockton "Delphic, ecstatic, erotic, mystical, riotous, erudite." — Adelita Husni-Bey "In Our Air by Nora Treatbaby, nature is a lily pad launch out of systemic isolation: Even the ink is bright green! The narrator turns to nature, its indifference and strangeness, as a way to interrogate rigid expectations around gender and labor—while staying grounded in her own body." — Heather Bowlan, Anarchist Review of Books " Our Air is so good, it’s silly, and so serious. Anguish is coterminous with the fruiting of Apple stores cuz that’s what it feels like where we live, have no money, and don’t like it. It’s a book that will make you think hard about where you are and who you’re with because it’s in love with reality i.e., the world where rocks cry, and we try to make the pain improve." — Benjamin Krusling Nora Treatbaby is a writer and artist based in New York State. Our Air is her first book. She has published two chapbooks, I <3 2 Swim (2022) and Hope Is Weird (2020). Author residence: New York, NY