What happens in the West doesn’t stay in the West.

Logan Phillips, the Poet Laureate of Tucson, Arizona, comes to Philadelphia for two dynamic spoken word performances from his new book RECKON, featuring immersive sound design and video projection created in collaboration with Philadelphia-based artist Adam Cooper-Terán.

What does it mean to have been born in Tombstone, Arizona, a town where myth, masculinity, and whiteness have long performed a narrative of American nationhood?

In RECKON, artist Logan Phillips returns to the fabled site of his childhood to confront the frontier stories he inherited as a boy: outlaw gunfights, Hollywood cowboys, and the racial and gendered power structures that sustained them. Blending evocative video projection, photography, poetry, newspaper clippings, and screenplay fragments, RECKON is a witty and moving examination of sexuality, masculinity, parenting, and the contradictions of loving a landscape built on erasure and “slathered in murder.” With an original, searing voice, RECKON is an essential answer to the tough questions of past and future, inheritance and reinvention, all from the perspective of a boy stuck in the middle.

This multimedia stage reading from the book is a first look at the work-in-progress of the full theater adaptation, a one man show being commissioned by Arizona Arts Live, debuting in Tucson and New York City in 2028. The book RECKON was published by The University of Arizona Press in February 2026 and is available at ReckonBook.com.

“‘This isn’t poetry, this is the news.’ I’ve never read a book like Logan Phillips’ RECKON. It’s almost not accurate to call it a book—it transcends genre, mixing history, personal narrative, myth, memoir, and poetry..." – Javier Zamora, author of 'Solito'

"Flying through masculine silence, RECKON is the owl." –Sesshu Foster, author of 'Atomik Aztex'