I reached through a small square of storage that lives behind one robin-egg blue swinging door in my ballroom apartment. I groped the unlit space for a roasting pan, or wire rack? Something metal and sturdy, instead I met 130 year old wood. A splinter, at least 1.5 inches long, lodged itself into the fleshy alcove between right thumb and forefinger.
I love the smells of the south
That slam me against color
After months in the white cold
I am this wildness too
Twenty nine years ago
My grandma Ruth died
On the twenty-eighth day.
A Swede, the opposite
Of Texas.
“What you thought was the sound of the deer drinking
at the base of the ravine was not their soft tongues
entering the water but my Love tying my bow tie.”
I’m riding trashE dissonance between grad level scholarship on settler sexualities + black&feminist existentialism, a less academic lean into relationship anarchy, and intense cravings to watch rom coms on repeat. Curious, who is queering the science around the “mere exposure effect”?
A poem about the seasonality of nature’s events, the heart’s too. As in we love for a season, or two, or three, but oh how free if we admit, not for four.
I am on top. I’ve spent the summer on top. I climb on top over and over - wet hot sweaty. I ride waves of pleasure. I ride her. We climax and come down. We defy the top-bottom binary.
SCOTUS Flavored. Generational trauma at the hands of all that’s “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (IWSCP)” infused. As always, art, community, wildness, texts (as in books) and co-learning lend spaciousness.
There are multiple parts of attending Lynx games, especially Lynx vs Mercury matches, that are passages. This night is both the same and different; beyond, a new beginning, a return to my strong and vulnerable selves.
Annotated bibliography is my middle name right now. Grad school!
So when, post speaking gig las month, students from a macro social work class asked me to blog a list of my 25 favorite books about pleasure activism, sexuality, reproductive justice, and relationships I agreed. Here you go fabulously curious co-learners.
Queer ethnopoetics, a decentered/centering poem, an attempt to hear and read the rhythms of distant others & self, Relationality to words, bodies, sexuality produced not in some kind of isolation from different language or cultures. Creativity queering the effort to reach distances and place as we bring our own spaciousness (entangled identities) into fuller consciousness.
‘Spring’ in Minnesota is most definitely the best time to have one’s mind blown. And to write write write as an act of conjuring in this state of expansion
It must be Texas. All this splendiferous BBQ. Yes that’s it! The reason i’m hyper-aware of just how much I I LOVE to floss. At least once a day. Perfect flat minty-ness. Oral health prioritized.
A Love Letter to Words, Warmth, Writer (bell!!), and the right Winter Wear
The words, poems, poets, rhythms I read over and over again in 2021, carving Mariana Trenches in my being.
The Night Dances by Sylvia Plath
A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!
And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics? …
Maybe it’s the change in seasons. As northern Minnesota cold starts to strut its cocky self around, I find myself using fire metaphors to understand who I am as a sexual being.
When one receives (via USPS!) a beautiful-as-fuck, bright-like-blue-glowing-full-moon ceramic dildo made at a queer arts camp in d’Midwest wilds, you know your queer sex guides are watching over you.
September offered many gifts. On the full moon I opened up a belated birthday present. Wrapped in a repurposed chain saw box. Hand crafted at a queer arts camp in rural Wisconsin. I’ll say more next month after I get to know this risky creative call to pleasure and love.
Recipe for Queering End of Summer 2021
1 Water is Life festival
1 Weekend Leo bday flavor visit w/ Dad in chiTown suburbs
1 Week turned 2 at beLoved western NY cottage w/ maternal family.
3 Days = start of grad school saucy remote learning style
5 Days back in Chicago for 77 yo Dad’s wedding/Irish Polish loveFest
Dash of Frida Kahlo, Ani, Willa, Joy
Heaping spoonFull of fab sister and cousin time
Sprinkle with wildness, adventure, anti-abortion wack, and generosity
Put in oven and bake to a queer crisp climate change is everywhere 450 degrees.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about feminist art of the femme body, especially the body of a self-identified woman of color. I wanted to write a poem that was like slowing down a sentence. I want the present tense to listen to its possible futures, and to ask, ‘What kind of power of undoing is wielded by being undone?’” - Kimberly Alidio