Yellow Flower
Are you a girl
or a boy?
my nephew would ask me,
puzzled.
I’d smile and try not to answer
for as long as I could.
But he was so persistent, so
needy for reassurance.
My nephew is secure in his boyhood;
no questions, no blurriness
in his mind. He, him,
boy things, boy clothes
and books.
But me? An enigma, Continue reading “Poem, Writing & Art by Alix Hyde”
Sam Kaner is a visual artist and writer based in Nottingham, UK. Her work is rooted in the personal experience of social and political navigation as a depressed trans woman of colour.
Her work is documented on her website, www.samkaner.com, and on her Instagram account, @skamglamart.
It all started when Harry had to move into the apartment.
The walls were white, and there were marks where the previous tenant had hung pictures. Harry went around the place, measuring these spaces. In a notepad, he wrote down numbers. He drew little diagrams.
Then he spent the next day in town. It was more difficult than he’d imagined, but he finally got everything he needed: seventeen pictures, each one corresponding to a white space on his walls. Harry didn’t care about the pictures – one was of a grinning cat in the rain, and Harry disliked cats – he just cared that they fitted the spaces.
He spent that evening drinking coffee and hanging the pictures, and eventually he lay down in bed.
The previous tenant had left the mattress, and although Harry was used to sleeping on the left, this mattress had an indentation on the right. Harry lay down in this exact spot. It was too small for him, but it felt safe, and in the morning when he woke he found he hadn’t moved. Continue reading “Someone Else and Harry by Jason Jackson”
It’s a bad habit I picked up
when still living out my pack of lies
& can’t quite shake
attention like a drug
I keep shooting
down the highways of my wanting veins
exposing myself to men
like a circus curiosity
the Amazing Chick with a Dick Continue reading “Confessional by Meeah Williams”
Because I stood up & threw half-hearted punches
at unimpressed bullies for you
I got beat down & climbed back up
spitting blood & seeing stars for you
I struck out, dropped routine fly balls
& ran to first base like a girl for you
I looked at your skin mags
& confused tried to masturbate for you
I drove 120 mph through a brick wall
& lived at the bottom of the ocean
all through high school for you
grew gruff & distant & a little crazy
to prove I wasn’t a momma’s boy,
got married, divorced, and finally
even tried to take my unlived life
for you.
When I failed even to die as I should
I decided it would be the very last thing
I ever did for you.
The next morning
I rose before the sun
& washed the puke & shit
of birth from my body
& I dressed in the clothes
that suited me
& I called myself by a name
I could honestly answer to
& I left the door open behind me
though I didn’t expect
you to follow
& I got in the car & I drove
Continue reading “Don’t Say I Did Nothing For You by Meeah Williams”
Emma Miles is a English graduate and writer, with a particular interest in typography and all things experimental. Most commonly found pretending to be other people.
we, the children of this revolution
who came to it all from fields afar
not born beneath a dissident star
of parents dressed in shades of green
but found we belonged only in between
and here we stand, and here we’ll fall
and we’ll die together
or not at all
we, the children of this revolution
who carry our books instead of swords
who taught ourselves, despite it all
who search for truth wherever it lies
and see the world through suspicious eyes
here we stand, and here we’ll fall
and we’ll die together
or not at all
Continue reading “Children of the Revolution by Emma Ireland”
it won’t do,
grandmother said,
to show bare legs.
you need smoothness
and muscle tone—
not to mention the
barrier between
the hands of men
or even their eyes
and your flesh.
no silk to be had,
and there’s a war,
by the way.
but, still—
the illusion must
remain intact,
nothing’s changed!
When she speaks, the penny bomb drops,
When she decides to say #MeToo #TimesUp
When she remembers, but doesn’t voice it out loud,
When the Ace woman speaks and says ‘Don’t touch me there’,
When the Bi woman speaks and says ‘Actually I’m happily married’,
When the drag queen speaks and says ‘stop bothering me’
It isn’t a challenge, a threat to your identity,
She’s telling you her boundaries.
They are not up for negotiation,
negation, conquering, obliteration,
her body is not your inclusive space.
She doesn’t need your arrogant attempt at re-education.
When she speaks, the penny bomb drops.
puckered tight,
disapproving lips,
where threads have
pulled and gathered
red and white gingham
checks across a chest
that doesn’t know how
to expand, just yet.
tennis shoes tied
in double knots,
sun licking pavement
until it is gooey,
spongy with heat. Continue reading “S(mocked) by Juliette van der Molen”
I am a straight ally.
And I choose to make an oath to all that choose to hear it
I will defend the different dissonance, I will stand with
those told who to love and when to love and how to love
those told that they cannot have.
Those told that they are somehow lesser, that being gay is a joke
That being Trans* is just convenient cover for a pervert
Those told that simply being anything other than straight is not normal, Is deviant, is ‘other’
I make this oath because of the things I see
I see forty-nine threads cut short, I see the right to pee safely being ruled by fear
I see the rules of divorce still governed by straight law
I see secure employment being based on your sexual orientation
I see religion twisted into hate, I see corrective rape, I see murder
I see you, queer girl, your slip shed soul constantly bruised from unwanted advances
When a man reeking of arrogance says,
“You’ve never had a real man, bet I’ll give you a good fuck”
Continue reading “A Song From a Straight Ally by Suzanne Fraser-Martin”
I have ten minutes here,
Less than ten in this press of people, before I go through those gates
to tell you that, Berlin was beautiful, a free celebration of all love
The Self-Owners, The Island, The Girlfriend, The Schwanenberg.
Then under the strict shadow of a worded paragraph I am now a number
Scratched into my skin, my name pressed into records,
between pages and pages of names.
Before Berlin was lights and love and music, gay bars and open study
Here is mud obscuring my identity,
photographed from three angles,
in grim stripes and triangles
we become homogeneous herd, corralled into camps.
oh 200 grams of you
today they told me you will be a woman
a girl, a girl
we are having a baby girl
I will be a father
and with this great news
I’m hurt by the privilege
that exists
that continues existing
that besides all of the battles
will exist when you are born
remember
you don’t have to be a princess
or wear pink
(unless that be your desire)
He who may be she
used to think playing piano
was a way to touch god, or at least
something beyond the window
not made of tarmac, livid body
parts. Such a god, music-mother,
swaggering-string-weaver, hip-horn rooster, took him
(as teachers then stamped her,
with the authority of corridors
going nowhere), took her mind off
Ash and Stardust, a monthly column by artist, writer, and energy worker DHIYANAH HASSAN, explores the intersections of tarot with healing and creativity. You can read the rest of the series here.
What was supposed to be a two-week hiatus at the beginning of July bloomed into a one-month break from all digital screens. I turned off notifications, stuffed my phone in a drawer and only flipped its case open to check a couple of windows when a specific urge took over – always when a message came in that I needed to read. For most of July, I was alone with myself and yes, it started out lonely. My hiatus was triggered by a heartbreak and concluded with another. Each a checkpoint marking just how much can change and evolve once you remove distractions and allow life to happen on its own – and let me tell you, life is fast.
I can’t count how many times I’ve written, “Everything is, once again, different.” Because it’s never not true. Nothing on Earth stays the same, ever. From moment to moment, worlds collide and expand and change and die and manifest and transform and bloom and it can be so ecstatic, so disorienting that it’s easy to forget that a planet’s retrograde is a cosmic trick of the eye. That what we think we need, we really just think we need. What is important is to come back to this body – this one that changes from moment to moment.
1.
Out of all four seasons, summer is the least inviting to love. Continue reading “The Unforgiving Season by Paula Geanau”
Ash and Stardust, a monthly column by artist and writer DHIYANAH HASSAN, explores the intersections of tarot with healing and creativity. These are personal essays and articles sharing experiences of growth as someone who has recently found a deep connection to tarot. You can read the rest of the pieces here.
As a Scorp Sun with Cap rising, this Mars Retrograde plus Capricorn full moon has been at the forefront of my headspace. It’s proving to be a groundbreaking combination for energetic upgrades. Nevermind that since Neptune stationed retrograde, I’ve spent most of my night-time hours getting deeper into dream work. Maybe I’ll write more about that one day – I’m mostly reeling from how absolutely sublime and affirming these experiences are and although I do feel like sharing about them, I still tip-toe around the language for it, hesitant for now. Mostly I’m just allowing things to unfold while my body nags me to both get some work done and to take time off so it can fully catch up with everything.
This Mars Rx reminds me a lot of the Knights cards in reverse, particularly the Knight of Wands. A warrior in reverse is a warrior that performs best in the shadows – observing, strategizing, recharging. Forced into action, this warrior might catalyze chaos via misunderstandings, accidents, or battles with no victory in sight – but not all chaos is unnecessary and a warrior can hold this knowledge well in their body when they’re able to get out of their own way. One way to override self-sabotaging habits is through intention setting and gratitude journaling.
Unless I identify myself, no one’s the wiser. I’m unclassified. What you see is all you never get , or less than you expect. Depending. Mutated, I am two countries with an unmediated border. Continue reading “Are We There Yet? by Joseph Schreiber”
Karissa Lang’s series of manipulated photographs, “I Was Here,” presents snap-shots of hazy memories from her own childhood in which she is the absent protagonist. Lang replaces the index of her physical body with some of the classic obscuring aesthetics of the photographic medium, namely, over-exposure and darkness. The eerie glow emanating from her face represents an inward movement associated with time-travel, as pieces of memories are reconstructed with her true sense of identity missing at the core. In other areas, her body is blacked out into a type of flattened silhouette, another indication of the gap that separates these family records from her physical body and memory.
Cousins Continue reading “Altered Photography by Karissa Lang”
FROM WHERE I FALL
bodies faxed into the earth
hold the ropes tied
to their empty bones. they pull the tails
of the constricted conscience
unwilling to rest with the new black worms.
imagine dry leaves rustling
violently in wet songs, they would
get blown here, not there, by the wounded wind. Continue reading “From Where I Fall by Bola Opaleke”
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 