POSTS

Michael Wasson

T H Y   G I F T S,  F O R   W H I C H   [ I   A M ]   A B O U T   T O   [ D E V O U R ]

Bless me, dearest Father, for the sin
                                                                      I was

born with—how I forget
                                                your face, once

I see your flesh-
                                                tinted photograph:

I am your ghost, a blessing

for the damned—a way out
                                         of your life as soon as

the earth opens up

its mouth to let you
                                in. & inside, to carve this

haunt with brighter air
                                                       you are still

breathing—to stay
                                        this alive: so faint

against the wall
                                                               I shiver

in the warmest of rooms.

I appear as a single finger-
                                         print on the lips

of a god betrayed, to smear away
                               what shame I entered

into you those years
               gone. Stare at me like a house

burning in lavender, Father.
                                       Give me your voice

please—for it is

the only gospel I ever had. & never once 

heard. 
                                              As if this body-

shot & hungered sky was left starred

with countless eyes.

 

Michael Wasson is the author of Swallowed Light (Copper Canyon Press, 2021). A 2019 Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow and a 2018 NACF National Artist Fellow in Literature, he is from the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Crisosto Apache

41. Cardiac

But he knew the cause of his malady. —R.
Akutagawa, 41. Sickness

—caution in starting a chainsaw

the buzzing vigor generates an onset
and eases the space between my ears,
as the massive jolt from the metallic
melodic rigor rages from the chainsaw

what my supposing father does not know
is, pulling on the trigger can cause a negative
interaction with his pacemaker

the space between my ears bow upward,
plumping my cheeks and creasing crows
feet, almost in a hopeful snicker

a tiny thought in my head voices its concern,
warns my supposing father, leaving me with
this dismal decision to notify, but contrary
to my supposing father’s heart condition
is

—do I dare warn him not to cut wood?
                            —or should he die trying?

 

50. confined

But to believe in a God, — to believe in a God’s love,
that was impossible.
—R. Akutagawa, 50. Captive

many of them went astray, as whispers away from faith
many of them went astray, from faith as a whisper, away

in the exhaust of these whispers, I become the air of arid fall
as it torments my hands of some presence, by some torment
                                                                                                       — God?

here, pacing inside my small square room, in falls’ remains
I persist this empty pace, but the room is small and arid inside

—inside, I am small, and I believe the pace of this arid room
Inside, I astray from the belief of fall whispers and small rooms

belief in them fails in the small space of this whisper
yet, in this whisper they fail and may fall in exhaust
I have paced the floor for so long, I have gotten better at it

but the arid belief in God fails the small spaces of these rooms
but mostly arid whispers pace the presence of small beliefs

—to believe in God, is to believe these small beliefs exists

 

51. Conquest

In this semi-darkness day to day he lived. —R,
Akutagawa, 51. Defeat

—in this determining dark,
inside my condensing state of mind, there is much clarity to consider,
inside my conflicting state of mind, there is much conjecture to clarify

as the sordid lump of flesh drapes over a yellow armchair
I presume the defeat, the control of place, the control of people
I presume the manifest which continues to exist, and I resist
I challenge daily the destiny, which is this darkest hour of being
My state of becoming is this dark American hour

an opinion like all options leave nothing to clarify, even after
a conclusion formed based on incomplete information
by use of force, or by use of this state of mind, this darkness
manifests a destiny left in a gripping palm and blank conjecture

nothing is determined, nothing determines the outcome without
a belief to consider a consideration leaving no belief, and yet
outside the wind blows the dry leaves about
                                                            —the day moves on without me

 

Crisosto Apache, originally from Mescalero, New Mexico (US), on the Mescalero Apache Reservation. He is Mescalero Apache, Chiricahua Apache, and Diné / Navajo. His Diné clans are Salt Clan born for the Towering House Clan. He holds an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Crisosto is an Assistant Professor of English at the Rocky Mountain College for Art + Design (RMCAD). He is the Associate Poetry Editor for The Offing Magazine. He also continues his advocacy work for the Native American LGBTQ / ‘two-spirit’ identity.

Crisosto’s debut collection GENESIS (Lost Alphabet) stems from the vestiges of memory and cultural identity of a self-emergence as language, body, and cosmology. Some of the poems in this collection have appeared in Denver Quarterly (Pushcart Nominee), Cream City Review, Plume Anthology, Common Place: The Journal of Early American Life, photographer Christopher Felver’s Tending the Fire. and most recently The Poetry Foundation’s POETRY Magazine June 2018 issue.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Kit Thomas

 

“Make things happen!” says L.A.-based artist Kit Thomas. This Mohawk Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer is Wolf Clan from the St. Regis Mohawk Territory of Akwesasne. Kit (she/her/he/him) is an LGBTQ and Mental Health Advocate. This mixed media artist has been honing her painting skills for the last decade and now has a recognizable splatter paint style infused with Native American symbolism.

Kit’s evolution into digital art allows her to introduce other elements of design with social issues into this union. It extends the range of her talent even further as well as encouraging and inspiring healing within LGBTQ and Indigenous communities.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Jenny L. Davis

White sans serif text reads: "Ootfalama / (to go and return) / by Jenny L. Davis // I. Hopaaki (ancient time) / II. Otaiya (past) / III. Himmaka’ma (present) / IV. Himmaka’pila (future)". The background is an image of stars in a night sky.
White sans-serif text reads “Our stories— / were not lost”. In the foreground is deerwoman, a matriarch with long white hair in a braid and antlers. In the background are two does in a forest.
White sans-serif text reads “adapted to new places.”
 Deerwoman is a young woman with antlers wearing jeans and a black jacket. She is in an urban setting, and is walking away from a wall where a leaping doe has been painted in bright graffiti. Deer hoofprints lead from a dark puddle on the ground to where she is.
White sans-serif text reads “transcend / binaries”.
Deerwoman is in a forest of rectangles with circuits on them in the shape of trees, on the side of one is the binary sequence for issi (deer) “01101001 0110011 0110011 01101001”. She wears a fitted suit covered in zeroes and ones.
White sans-serif text reads “will be told / among the stars”. Deerwoman is a Black Native woman with white antlers, she wears a space uniform with a deer hoofprint on the right chest. Behind her is an asteroid and a constellation in the shape of a jumping deer.

 

Jenny L. Davis (Chickasaw) is an Indigiqueer/Two-Spirit writer and artist from Oklahoma and an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her work has most recently been published and TransmotionSanta Ana River ReviewBroadsidedYellow Medicine ReviewAs/UsRaven Chronicles; and Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance and exhibited at the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways and Minnesota Center for Book Arts.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Julian Talamantez Brolaski

 

Julian Talamantez Brolaski the author of Of Mongrelitude (Wave Books 2017), Advice for Lovers (City Lights 2012), and gowanus atropolis (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011).  Julian’s poetry has been included in New Poets of Native Nations (Graywolf 2019), Native Voices: Indigenous American Poetry, Craft and Conversations (Tupelo 2019), Tending the Fire: Native Voices and Portraits (University of New Mexico Press 2017), and Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat 2012).  Julian is the recipient of the 2020 Cy Twombly Award for Poetry. They are the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of Juan & the Pines, which recently released its first EP, Glittering Forest (True West 2019).  Julian lives in Goleta, California.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Rapheal Begay

A Vernacular Response is an ongoing series of images representing everyday moments, yet diverse aspects of the Navajo Nation. In support of the Dine’ way of life, the documentation of environment celebrates and interrogates site/sight-specific perspective. As a form of contemporary Navajo storytelling, the series also acts as a (re)collection of intimate moments tied to my own understanding and ever-developing relationship to my surroundings. Thus, the visuals expand the possibilities of Dine’ cultural stewardship and an ongoing mission to explore the past, create the present, and curate the future.”

#WeAreSacred

A desert field just off the roadside covered in snow and fog.
1. Field (Monument Valley, UT) 2019
Side of a rock with visible watermarks located at the base of the canyon.
2. Flow (Canyon de Chelly, AZ) 2019
Wheatfields Lake reflecting the color of the sky on a cloudy day.
3. Vanishing Point (Wheatfields, AZ) 2019
Wet red dirt with snow, ice, and water on the northside of the sheep corral.
4. Side Corral (Hunter’s Point, AZ) 2019
Evening view of orange red dirt and lit vegetation on the side of a rural road.
5. Roadside Attraction (Cowsprings, AZ) 2019
Blue sky with brown water running over the edge of a stream.
6. Tip (Hunter’s Point, AZ) 2019
Covered in snow and fog, Monument Valley just visible by the outline of its base.
7. Missing (Monument Valley, UT) 2019

 

Rapheal Begay is a photographer and curator from the Navajo Nation. Currently based in Window Rock, AZ, he serves as the Public Information Officer for the Navajo Nation Division of Human Resources.  In 2017, he obtained his BFA in Art Studio with a minor in Arts Management and Certification in Museum Studies from the University of New Mexico. He has exhibited, curated, and collaborated in creative initiatives highlighting Queer and Indigenous art throughout the Southwest.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

M. Carmen Lane

Black Lives Don’t Matter, Black Bodies Do.

When I was thirteen years old, I wore a white blouse and black skirt to school for the junior high band concert. I went to my home room teacher to ask what time I needed to be in the gym. I wanted to make sure I was checked in to class before I left early. I didn’t want to get into trouble. The teacher, a blonde mid-forties white male watched as I walked toward him. When I went to open my mouth he stopped me and said, “Don’t come any closer. If you were eighteen, look out.” I laughed uncomfortably and kept walking towards him. He said it again with the additional, “I’m serious.” My body stiffened.

Walking to the bus stop in high school I see a car driving down the street. It is a car load of white youth, male, yelling out their window. It took a moment to realize they were yelling at me — the distortion through the wind, “N-I-G-G-E-R-R-R-R!” My body stiffened. My stomach dropped.

I’m at a gay bar in Detroit with a white lover. She’s trying to impress me by taking me to all the hot spots in town. She asks a white gay male where the after-hours spot is. He retorts in the snarky stereotypical accent of his ilk, “There’s a place on the other side of town if you don’t mind too many black people.” He turns and notices that I am with her and simply says, “Oh.” An old rage bubbled up in my body.

Last week I am standing in line at Whole Foods. I am waiting while two transactions are occurring. The white man behind me says, “Are you going to move up?” I turn around and say, “No.” I tell him I am waiting for the two people ahead of me to finish. It’s my turn to purchase my items and the white man follows behind me. He moves my cart to put his items on the counter. I grab my cart and tell him loudly to be patient and wait until I am complete with my transaction. He moves back and tells the woman behind him, “You should move back. It’s safer there.” The new old rage returns and I am reminded of my function — to know my place; to move when a white man tells me to. If I resist, I am the problem. The young white man aiding me with my purchase is stunned. He doesn’t know what to do — he remains silent.

Black lives don’t matter. Black bodies do.

This is a concern informed by our current understanding of intersectionality — the impact of the black body. Skin color, body size and shape, hair texture, how white and straight our teeth are, the color of our eyes, our genders, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, the sound of our voices and class perception within our black bodies impacts the multiplicity of responses we receive living while black. Where we are, who we are with, what we are doing (or not doing) with our black bodies, what words are coming out of our black mouths all have meaning and consequence within settler colonialism.

We do not have lives. We have functions.

The function of my teenage body is to prepare itself for the pleasure of a white male. My young female black body was practice for young white men to learn and occupy their superior place in white culture. My queer black body should not take up too much space; there is a limit to how many black queer bodies can be in one place — lest there will be consequence. My middle-aged black body needed to move in alignment with the speed a white male desired.

Under settler colonialism, under occupation, “mattering” is of no significance. It does not resonate within empire. How I feel, who I love, what I am dreaming of does not matter. What’s important is how I control my black feelings; my black thoughts and my dangerous black desire in relationship to the function assigned me by white culture.

The issue of the sovereignty of black bodies is paramount. Currently we have the right to exist under particular circumstances. The “right” to be in your body. The “right” to breathe. The “right” to have a heart that beats. This does not exist. Black bodies pretend to “be.” In the wisdom of our hip hop elders, “Ain’t no future in your frontin’.”

The right to experiment, to play, to create for oneself and one’s own curiosity has become a right — not what it means to be a human being. We do not have the right to matter.

What we do have are the responsibilities to unravel the old yet very young system that has created these inhuman dynamics. We must understand the stories we tell with our bodies. We must acquire clarity regarding the gaps between who we know ourselves to be and what society sees. We must close this gap by being the foremost authority of our being. Self-mastery. This call is both in service of our sense of self and our membership to our communities (ancestors, family of origin, families of choice, our family across the Diaspora, our extended relations who also face similarly bound perceptions of who they are). Our capacity to be in solidarity is in direct alignment with our willingness to do our own work to be embodied in our truth. That is, the old adage that, “I must change myself before I can change the world” has no meaning if my capacity to know myself has been limited by racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, transphobia, ableism, my undocumented status, my history of violence, etc. It is not enough to understand structural oppression if we do not know the parts we play to perpetuate it.

ANCESTOR 1699. Margaret Copes was presented by the churchwardens of Hungers Parish, Northampton County, Virginia, on 29 December 1699 for having a “Maletto Barstard child”

Only a white male can choose to make a mulatto bastard child. The above is one of the oldest ancestors I can trace. I only found her due to the control of her body which was documented by a court of law.

DISTANT RELATIVE 2016. Jasmine “Abdullah” Richards, a Pasadena Black Lives Matter leader, was sentenced to ninety days in jail and three years probation for “attempted lynching.”

Jasmine interrupted a woman being arrested by the police. Jasmine perceived harm being done to this woman. Jasmine is a queer black woman with masculinity; some call this “masculine of center.” At the center are white heterosexual men (presumably Christian). Located on the margins of white culture, Jasmine’s black body should be used for a different purpose. Jasmine used their body to obstruct and interrupt oppression. By expressing who she actually is and following her conscience, Jasmine was punished and taunted with the charge of “attempted lynching.” The event of lynching which historically and overwhelmingly has been imposed on her kin.

Black bodies have a function under US settler colonialism — the use and abuse of our bodies. We can be worked to death, trafficked, bred, used for sport, mutilated, taunted, tokenized, marginalized, heckled, locked away and murdered. Sonia Sotomayor wrote a powerful dissent in 2016 of a Supreme Court decision that now allows evidence collected from an unlawful stop by police to be used lawfully. Her words speak to the past, present and potential future for the sovereignty of Indigenous, Black and brown bodies if we continue to choose not to engage in a particular kind of liberatory work. “Your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be catalogued.” Your black body has been invaded down to its marrow; across space and time. We must birth ourselves — again.

BLOOD COUSINS June 12, 2016 2:02AM. 49 people are murdered in a gay bar on its Latin Night. All queer Latinx and Black.

These brown queer bodies were celebrating, acknowledging, seeing, loving each other; embracing who they are in the face of uncertain outcomes under occupation. They were doing what they were not supposed to be doing — engaging in acts of body sovereignty.

They were punished by Omar Mateen. In this culture, he is a man of color labeled “white” as a person with Middle Eastern ancestry. Like George Zimmerman, a Latino, functioning as proxy for the white heterosexist and racist patriarchy.

Enslavement controlled how we were able to use our black bodies and for whom. Jim Crow controlled where black bodies could eat, drink, live, learn and shop. These words are gone; the dynamics within slavery and Jim Crow still exist (e.g. homophobia, transphobia, police brutality, imprisonment, sexual violence, fat shaming, human trafficking, sports trading). The control of the agency of the black body still exists, is crucial to keeping this project of America turning. Miscegenation laws controlled who black bodies could make love to — some of these laws still exist on the books across various states.

Muhammad Ali’s body paid the price for rejecting the systems perception and attempt to control his black body. There is a cost.

Body sovereignty is the absence of so-called respectability politics — if I control my body in certain ways, I will be accepted. Body sovereignty is the absence of ingesting the system’s archetypal responses to our black bodies — a rejection of the need to matter. I AM. WE ARE.

The desire to matter versus a claiming of our sovereignty is a form of collusion; an asking of the system to acknowledge our function(s) here — this is not liberation. Body sovereignty is the new black. It is blackness without the historical on-going entanglement with white supremacy as a means to understand the self.

If we are constantly engaged in resisting how our black bodies are tampered with, the ability to discover the need to assert anything about ourselves becomes a difficult task. Asserting the sovereignty of our bodies is a gift for ourselves and the worlds we traverse. It is an investment in the future possibilities for our kin to live in the world free of a need to matter and embodying the understanding that their work while alive is to become.

The time is now to claim our body sovereignty; to listen to the knowledge within our bodies. The answers to our dilemmas live there. Oppression deliberately distracts us from accessing this critical information.

The space(s) we occupy daily are stolen. They do not belong to us; sovereign only to the Indigenous people of these lands. Our bodies are our only place of ownership, the work of decolonization — here and now.

— M. Carmen Lane
Revised 6/2/2020

M. Carmen Lane (Tuscarora, Mohawk, African-American) is a two:spirit artist and writer living in Cleveland, Ohio. Their poetry has been published in the Yellow Medicine Review, River Blood & Corn and Red Ink Magazine. Carmen contributed to the Lambda Literary nominated anthology Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literatures. Their first collection of poetry is Calling Out After Slaughter (2015). www.mcarmenlane.com IG: @m_crmnlne.

Jorge Sánchez

Technology has a funny way of being really slow. The same oppressions, exacerbated now by this delay, are embedded in code and coding and form part of a series of 100101’s. Since coding nowadays is usually whitewashing and big data is really just white data, I insert myself in images, texts, text messages, architectural spaces, our built environment, to interact and challenge these existing codes.

Note regarding audio: In conjunction with International Studio & Curatiorial Program ISCP’s billboard offsite project ‘Amigxs,’ artist Camilo Godoy invited Ella Boureau, Susie Day, Michael Funk, Jorge Sánchez, Pamela Sneed, and Aldrin Valdez for a reading on November 28, 2017. This is the audio for Jorge’s “A wired society will have to eat cables or Una sociedad llena de cables va tener que comérselos”.

 

Una sociedad llena de cables va tener que comérselos
A wired society will have to eat cables

On a black background, with softwhite light source at top left, from bottom left, a white proprietary Lightning cable is held pinched between a thumb and index finger; the cable housing is split where it meets the eight pin connector. The hand repeats a gentle upwards motion in this short animation.
Figura 1 
A significant quantity of hardware, terminals, power sources, and connector cables of all sorts are pictured. Three black matte monitors are shown from behind, sitting on a wooden desk stained to a finish like cherry. The right (sinister) two of the monitors are legibly marked HANNspree, one of these disappearing at its top edge into the top right edge of the image. At least ten boxes, of indistinguishable type to this editor, are arrayed on the right (sinister) edge of the desk, upon one of which the muscular miniature figurine of a baseball player is place, in white uniform and blue cap, right arm raised and right leg lifted, midthrow. On the floor, which is of a darker stain than the desk, like black cherry, many cables and other hardware are tangled and arrayed, as well as a pair of lightgray sneakers with white accents. A white hardware shell is visible in the bottom left corner of the image, on which a black sticker with red, blue red, drab, green, and yellow lettering indicates GAMERTV.
Figura 2

How’s that for a connection? How’s that for being connected? How’s that for time and space and distance? What the fuck are we supposed to do with all these cables? Are fishes going to eat plastic or fiber optics? Will we eat them too, when we go hungry, when all of our food has been polluted and contaminated? Will bees pollinate fiber optic cables or wires?  

On a finished granite or quartz surface, a white Lightning cable is shown at close view, with visible scuffing to the 8-pin connector, which faces the left edge of the image. The housing of the cable is completely torn from the place where it would meet the housing of the 8-pin connector. In the top right corner, a large yellow Slightly Frowning Face emoji is overlayed.
Figura 3
In the left-two thirds of this image, black, grey, yellow--and to the far right, some orange and blue--cables hang downward onto a grey or beige low-pile carpet. From within an aperture among these cables, completely overhung, protrude two human legs, visible from midthigh outward, clothed in chinos slightly paler than the grey or beige carpet; the legs where greyblack or drab socks, and black derby shoes. The toe of the leg on the left (dexter) is occluded by the bottom edge of the image.
Figura 4

It’s like being deliberately handed a poisonous gift. Cables look pretty for exactly three seconds before you touch them, before you put all of your filthy fingers on them or so they will have you believe.  Apple (are we going to have any of those in the future?) is stashing trillions of dollars of profits overseas and is selling you white cables. And you buy them! Is it a coincidence that all of the Apple cables are white? Apple cables turn darker and darker and break down. Things that now become nonwhite are made to look uglier and disposable with usage. Is it a coincidence? Is it coincidence that when you rip open the chords, the cables, by accident, by over usage, by boredom, you get burnt! You literally get ZAPPED! Wake up! But no, you continue plugging that phone in, you have to, you carefully put tape around it, you carefully find ways to tease the cable, you speak to it, you call it names, you baby talk it, you say, baby come on, you gotta work for me today, you gotta get that 5% charge and that connectivity.  You might receive a text, you might need to listen to an audio, you might need to send that selfie, you might need to take that selfie, delete that post that didn’t get enough likes, unread a message, unsend an email, delete an email, or you might need to see the weather, which in Spanish also means to see the time. Ver el tiempo. There may be no new messages, but let’s refresh. 

From bottom left, two thirds up the frame, a white hardware shell divided itself horizontally in thirds, behind which in top left third of the frame, large bundles of cable terminate in white tile ceiling and along gunmetal gray girders. The white shell is draped with yellow, red, and blue cables. Next dominating the remaining two thirds of the frame, a large black metal stack, with hardware shells and cable terminals, junctions, overwound with cables red, yellow, blue, and purple. In a drawerlike protrusion of this stack, a chrome color laptop with a black keyboard sits open and powered on, displaying a gray screen with some white and green regions, perhaps blue text. An additional black keywboard is visible in the bottom right corner of the stack.
Figura 5 
In chief, this image shows a significant tangle of yellow and blue cables, behind which are variously visible hardware stacks in black and chrome. One or two red or orange cables are visible wrapped among the yellow and blue. The tangle is denser at the center of the image, with more yellow cable on the left, and more chrome hardware, and more blue cable and black hardware on the right.
Figura 6

How does refreshing something become so fucking obsolete? You press the screen on your phone and with your index finger or your thumb you refresh. You want to see what that person you have not talked to in exactly seventy weeks has for comments, you crave to see her posts, like making your daily puritan rounds around your given Facebook guidelines.  You push down and you refresh again, this time with a bit more curiosity, your blood pressure is rising a bit, you flush, you slide that index finger or your thumb down again and refresh, there’s a pause, maybe there’s no signal, but you try again. Information begins to load, you can see more tweets, more likes, more photos, more texts, more videos, more information by pushing the screen again and scrolling your index finger or your thumb down the phone, refresh and you get new tweets, refresh and you found yourself on a photo album from 2013 of that same girl you now want to defriend, refresh and you missed a post you wanted to see earlier, refresh and you try to find it, refresh and you type the name of the person you’re looking for, but first you have to refresh your recollection, first you have to ask your mind what was the name of the post you were looking for? What was it about? You google something like executive, digital poetics, NYC, and a last name. Algorithmic power gives you the most popular and paid for results brought to you by cognitive capitalism. Refresh and you see that your friend has more likes than you. Refresh one last time thinking that you might be able to get a few more likes on that political comment or post that made you think you are politically active.  A couple more refreshes simply mean you have died a little.  The more you refresh the more you give something up.  Something has refreshed except ourselves.  We did not refresh. We left a little of us behind. 

On a dirty and damaged beige carpet, At left, a four plug gray powerstrip with a black rectangular adapter with gold lettering plugged in the top outlet, then an empty outlet, then a white rectangular adapter, last a black rounded slightly trapezoidal adapter. Next from left, a white six outlet powerstrip, with red lettering, with a rectangular black adapter plugged in top outlet, then a semiovular black adapter, then a square or slightly trapezoidal black adapter, then a square black adapter with two beveled edges,  then a circular black adapter labeled sky, then a semi trapezoidal white adapter. Above this powerstrip, a white modem or other hardware shell, to which are connected two white connector and one yellow connector, all with white cable housings. Third from left, and at the bottom of the image, a white three outlet power strip, with a round black adapter labeled sky in the top outlet, then a black rectangular outlet with beveled wings on its upper half, and finally, a black slightly trapezoidal black adapter with a red light or label. On the right edge of the image, a black hardware shell is suggested; over the whole of the image run black, white, red, yellow, and blue cables, this last with winding silver embellishment.
Figura 7

When it comes to networks and social media, time and space like to have conversations between themselves and without ourselves.  The physical representations of our online social networks are killing us. Time and space have morphed into the most boring individuals on the planet, let me tell you, time and space, they always want to play, but because you refreshed, you stayed with them, you didn’t see the phases of the moon, you missed the tides, you missed the tides and saying hello to the seal that came by to tell you, why am I here, it’s so fucking warm, was I supposed to go south?  It’s warm everywhere now and there’s no food, says the seal, I came by to say goodbye because I’ll die, says the seal. You refreshed and I feel boiling water around me, says the seal. 

In the center of this image, an open passageway, with blue grid markings on a shining gray floor of sealed concrete or cement. This passageway has its vanishing point at dead center of the image, where a rectangle of yellowwhite light makes indeterminate some suggestions of windows or doors. The light takes on a bluewhite aspect where it glares on the floor. Over gray framework on either side of the passageway, and from black girders, as well as from a narrow bluegray floating ceiling which tracks over the passageway, hang red, yellow, blue, green, black, white, and gray cables, with the red, yellow, and green standing out most brightly.
Figura 8

There’s no reason to remove any tears, says the seal. Do you have any? When was the last time you cried? Smartphones and their cables have a way to get to them, clean them up, leave the salt behind.

In a recess or alcove of wooden furniture (or perhaps of drywall construction), a white hardware shell, perhaps a modem box, sits attached to a rear frame, above which a blue covering is visible. Over this white shell, and over the entire right half of the image, hand red, white, black, blue, and one or two yellow, green cables, in great tangle. From the bottom left corner of the image, narrowing slightly as it tapers off into the upper left edge of the image, is visible a wooden door or wall with a recessed pull handle in chrome, with a black grip on its bottom edge. The wood is finished to a shine, with a stain suggestive of cherry.
Figura 9

I see you staring at the screen.  The image lasts for so long.  I begin to add different contextual spaces to you. I see you pooping holding the phone staring at the screen, you look back at me but only see a screen. I see you staring back at me now on a roller coaster, staring at the screen. You’re staring at the screen, in a massive protest against police brutality, you’re now staring at the screen at a movie theater, with a lover, pooping again, eating, hands feel heavy, you look at me, your hands are a little burnt from the usage, they become two separate smartphones. Now you can wave goodbye with your two new smartphones, with that extra connectivity, but you will need an additional cable.

 

In this image, the flag of the State of Palestine (علم فلسطين‎) hangs on a white wall. The flag is a horizontal tricolour of black, white, and green; with a red triangle based at the hoist, the long edge of which triangle is flush with the bottom edge of white crown molding. On a table with a dark walnut stain sit, from left, a tall glass vase holding several stems of purple flowers on an umbel, next, a chardonnay wineglass, thirdfull of transparent paleyellow liquid, next, Jorge Sánchez, in a white sleeveless minidress or romper, with the leftmost (dexter) leg crossed over right. Jorge has short lightbrown or blonde hair, and a short beard and mustache of the same color. Upon leftmost (dexter) arm, Jorge wears a wide chrome or silver bracelet at the wrist, and holds in the hand a chardonnay wineglass thirdfull of transparent pale yellow liquid. Jorge's head is leaned on the shoulder of Carlos Martiel. Carlos wear a brimless, short, rounded cap colored orange, with a gold band around its bottom edge. Carlos has a thin black mustache. Carlos wears a shortsleeved, slim-fitting buttoned shirt, with a red band collar, sleeves, buttons, sides, and accent along the top edge of the pocket. The front of the shirt is printed with a mustardcolored pattern of alternating horizontal and vertical stripes, showing the red ground color between. The top two buttons of the shirt are unbuttoned, showing chest beneath. Carlos wears black pants, perhaps chinos or jeans. In the leftmost (dexter) hand, Carlos holds a chardonnay wineglass, of which the contents are occluded by the fingers of the hand, the third of which is ringed with a plain band. Carlos holds the rightmost (sinister) hand on the shoulder of Brendan Mahoney. Brendan sits in a white, rectilinear parlor chair, at a slightly lower level than Jorge and Carlos. Brendan looks to the left edge of the frame; Brendan has short black hair on the leftmost (dexter) side of the head, and long auburn hair on the rightmost (sinister) side, which hangs to midchest. Brendan  Brendan wears a black, shortsleeved minidress, or perhaps a black teeshirt and black shorts. Brendan's leftmost arm lies along the back of the chair, and has black polish upon the nails of the hand. Brendan's rightmost (sinister) hand lies upon the leg, and has a thin band bracelet at the wrist, and black or darkred polish on the visible nails of the hand. From the right edge of the image, beside Brendan, are visible obcordate, waxy green leaves with pinnate venation.
From left,  Jorge Sánchez with Carlos Martiel, and Brendan Mahoney. Photo by Camilo Godoy.

Jorge Sánchez is a maricón, poet and attorney from Caguas, Puerto Rico. He lives in Newark, New Jersey, and his writings have been recently published by Printed Web, a semi-annual publication dedicated to web-to-print discourse (the full collection was acquired by The Museum of Modern Art Library in January 2017).  Jorge’s writings have also appeared at La Revista of El Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, among others.

Nick Cruz

Through torsion of discourse and form, poems can operate as sites for bearing witness to different crises of language [in these three pieces, moments of failed interpellation and their forceful impact on bodies] to contest and subvert oppressive structures. 

I’m eager to continue learning what this form of art demands: how to best break and transform a police/d line, sieve walls of silence/noise to facilitate the ability of self/others to survive through the interstices of the settler-colonial carceral state and move towards more possibilities for opening. This fall I participated in a workshop taught by Evie Shockley that was incredibly healing and clarifying for me.

Especially as boricua, I am committed to working towards the true realization of free association and freedom of speech – to develop a poetics that is a form of organizing together with, through, and beyond the communities I become made part of on and off the page. 

I stand in solidarity with the J20 defendants, wholeheartedly resounding Fred Hampton Jr. and the Prisoners of Conscience Committee’s assertion that all prisoners are political prisoners.

 

                                                                                                                        self-portrait in two 


            self portrait as an island
            self portrait as erasure
            self portrait as cliché

i.
            no        man     is         an         island 

                         man 

                                      is 

            no 

                                     i

                         am 

            no        man     s                            land 

            no            

                            an 

                                                                island 

                                                                i 

                                                                    and 

ii.
            some context might be helpful for understanding suicide
            was always a common motif in narratives of puerto rico
            especially after the very polarizing essay by rené marqués
            in 1967 traced the phenomenon to what he argued was 
            the docility of the puerto rican male caused a storm of
            outrage on the island
                                                            [the midwestern woman grins casually
                                                             spilling fluorescent light everywhere]


                                                                                                                                     in flagrante


when storefront glass smashed      is not violence
tear gas mace flash bang grenades      is violence


violence is   broken windows policing   breaking 
starbucks mcdonalds bank of america   windows 

                 
is not violence   when the policeman’s baton struck
& i curled like steam   brushing strands of wet hair 


from the back of my head is    

                                               *

the soles of our feet      scorched earth     [what limousine]  
smudged bundles of sage      to make calm      the burning
feeling in our lungs      we were what escaped      kettling 

                                               *

evening impasse street theatre troupes uniformed bright 
man opposite us in antifaz his plastic visage all in bronze
skin of streetlight glistening i desiring chance to facialize
see whites of his eyes remove concealment enough to kiss
then spit on him like end of riot/porn & leave his body
covered love marks everywhere on the body desiring 

                                                                                    him   sore as hell next day yes
                                                                                    him   unable to walk straight

                                               *

            a silent cop is a crooked cop
               a silent cop is a crooked cop
        a silent cop is a crooked cop
            a silent cop is a crooked cop
                 a silent cop is a crooked cop

                                                                                    [they (all) remain silent]


                                                                     broken english sonnet: last call at latin night


if you're alive raise your hand                               calls a man  

a man came                                          ringing violent melody

floor humming                                     llamadas sin respuesta    

first attempts                                               to identify victims 


triage soundscape names mangled                        as bodies    

pronounced /wrong/ at the scene                       angelicized     
     
accent being to inflect speech                          through song  

first response disquiet                              that doesn't sound 


like my loved one                                 the desperate chorus

echoing // the visceral                                    calls for blood  

language to bear what                                   corporeal cant 

first bullets mistaken as                                        our music
  


sung through soma, semaphore to refrain:

american killer, dead brown bodies

 

Nick Cruz is pictured. Nick has tall, dark hair, and looks straight ahead with raised eyebrows. Nick wears a blue shirt buttoned to the top, on which is printed red and white flowers and green foliage. Thereover, Nick wears a light grey or beige v-necked cardigan or sweater. Behind Nick, the wall and ceiling of a room are illuminated to a warm mauve color, and leftmost is visible a dark print, painting, photograph, or other image, with a dark frame, and rightmost, a wooden doorway perhaps, of which the door is light wood, the frame darker finished. Nick's shadow is visibly cast upon the wall.

Nick Cruz is a queer latinx poet of Puerto Rican and Colombian descent living in New Jersey. They keep tropical plants in south-facing windows.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Zaina Alsous

I wanted to write about Israel as a carceral state that is perpetually expanding, which echoes the spilling nature of colonialism. The effects of this are felt everywhere, within a system where capital moves freely, while peoples’ movements are violently policed. This is an attempt at honoring the rooted entanglements of struggle and resilience embodied by Third World peoples & ecologies battling white supremacist extraction. The land itself knows how to resist.

 

“Israeli Firm Chosen to Build Prototype of U.S. Border Wall with Mexico”

Most of this space could be wasted
trying to convince you—there exists
an OUTSIDE and an INSIDE. Las Neuces, 
Gila, look there is water, or purchased war
lines in tierra. Empires erase, redraw
we and them in pencil. It remains 
controversial, the question of what
exists. So instead of explaining !again!
WHO is an outside,



                              FREE SPACE                                                                                      

                              To break the weir

 

                                    Past detectability in the radar zone        unpetaled 
                        dry seed      curled inward      the Rose of Jericho      grows
                            wild      in the deserts of Palestine and Mexico      after
                         fifty years without water        the plant still        remembers
                              how to resurrect        Siempre Viva        Between
                                  OUTSIDE and there      the dead rose harbors      be

                                                                       I wait for the water     and

                                                                                              I know

 

Notes on Third World Subtraction

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCARF AND VEILED
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONTRACT AND CAUGHT 
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VACCINATE AND VACANCY 
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INVISIBLE AND INTEREST 
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ART AND FOUND
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TIME AND EROSION
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RUPTURE AND RETURN
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ALPHABET AND FINGER
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WET AND IRRIGATE
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MADNESS AND MERCY
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JUDGMENT AND CELLS
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SUBJECT AND WITNESS
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SPECULUM AND SEX
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HEIR AND STERILE
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FOUNTAIN AND FEMA
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LAND AND LANDED
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VITAL AND VIBRANT
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LUNG AND BLUE
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RIOT AND ROT
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ELECTION AND IMMOLATION
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NAME AND NAMED
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IMPORT AND SALT
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BORDER AND ROUTE
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BODY AND BODIES
IN THE WATER

 

Zaina Alsous is picture. Zaina looks upward and off toward the left edge of the image. Zaina has long dark black hair that lightens at the tips. Zaina wears a silver septum ring, a black sweater or dress with a deep v-neck, showing bare skin beneath. Behind Zaina, taking up the right third of the image, is an abstract image of black, red, and blue, with text above visible stating " October / January 14, ", and text below stating "Ferber (American, 1906-1991) / #6, 1959 / magna on canvas".

Zaina Alsous is a Palestinian writer and abolitionist. You can find some of her work in The Offing, The New Inquiry, Mask Magazine, the Boston Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Lemon Effigies is forthcoming from Anhinga Press. 

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO