against writing?

no not really. or maybe a little. + the usual links!

I’ve been writing this newsletter in my head for a few days. I wanted to wait for día de los muertos to fade away for the year in case there was anything else I wanted to write about. But now that I’m here, sunday morning, sharing cafecito and pan dulce with my dead, I’m realizing some of what I’ve experienced and tapped into over the last few days is better left between us.

I have this fear of “sounding crazy”— maybe other disabled, mentally ill, & otherwise marginalized people relate to this. But it’s so bad that I find myself even telling my therapist and my closest friends “I know this sounds crazy!” when I also know they believe me. Do I think that writing and sharing what I’ve been through validates it? Maybe the validation I’ve been needing is internal, though. Maybe the amount of pain and trauma I’ve experienced in just two and a half decades is too much for me to hold alone. Maybe I just really fucking love reading and writing and creating and engaging with art. So maybe I am just finding that balance. How do I create art that matters, that leads towards collective liberation, without building my entire sense of sanity on the written word?

There’s irony in me writing all this in my newsletter, which is also about writing. I just finished reading The Day’s Hard Edge by José Antonio Rodríguez. Can I write the feeling, the truth of what happens in my life without having to expel all the details on the page?

current notebook. something about the scratches on la luna’s shine feels relevant

The truth of what I’m feeling: connection to my dad, to my ancestors, to my friends and lovers and comrades, to a liberated future. And while I hope to channel all of this every day that isn’t día de los muertos, there is something so beautiful and so necessary about altares (created by lxs infrarrealistas) in a small Texas town honoring those we lost to state violence. There is something healing in leading an intersectional latinidad poetry workshop with my chosen familia at our local library. The new moon has come and gone, and I also feel renewed.

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Global Solidarity:

• No matter the us election result, this country is and will be a genocidal empire before and after November 5th. Keep mobilizing, boycotting, resisting in any and every way you can. Both parties are complicit in the Palestinian genocide, violence on the southern border, active colonization of Turtle Island, and countless other horrors. Keep resisting.

• Donate to the international The People Stand with Palestine fundraiser

• Support Mosab Abu Toha’s call for Children’s Days of Action for Palestine

• Donate through Gaza Funds

• Poet Oliver Baez Bendorf is raising funds to fight police misconduct. From his fundraiser:

  • This fight isn’t just about me—it’s about setting a precedent for challenging police misconduct, systemic discrimination, and ensuring that marginalized people are treated with dignity in the workplace and beyond.

Writing & Art Opportunities

• beestung - open for work from non-binary, genderqueer, & two-spirit writers - February issue will be guest edited by KB Brookins!

• diode poetry journal - open to all types of poetry year-round

• TalkDeath -

  • TalkDeath.com is always looking to commission marginalized writers on pieces related to death traditions, grief, death care, and the funeral industry. We offer $0.20/word for 800-1200 words, and folks can pitch to me directly at sage@talkdeath.com

• For Trans Families, With Love Anthology

  • TransFriend is creating an anthology of writing by family members, friends, parents of trans kids, and by trans kids themselves who have stories to tell

• here to complain - pays BIPOC contributors $50 - nonwriters welcome!

  • if you’re Black or brown with a work-related microaggression story to tell, we wanna hear it— because who among us doesn’t need to vent.

• LittlePuss Press

  • We are currently considering original manuscripts of fiction and non-fiction (including works-in-progress). We are also considering reprint proposals of literary/historical works of significance by transgender authors.

• Printed Matter is seeking artists books, zines, etc on Decolonization, Resistance & Solidarity

• Arsenal Pulp Press - open for full manuscripts in many genres (no poetry)

• Tin House Summer Residencies - closes TODAY 11/3

• Alta California Chapbook Contest - open for poetry chapbooks by Latinx writers - closes 11/11

• So to Speak - open to all genres, publishes work with an intersectional feminist outlook - closes 11/15

• Abode Press - open to poetry, prose, & hybrid chapbooks - fee waivers available for QTPOC - closes 11/30

• Watermelon Grant - $2000 USD in unrestricted funds to an emerging Palestinian creator in the field of speculative arts - closes 12/6

• Sundress Publications - Microgrant for Palestinian Writers - closes 12/31

• All My Relations - Volume 8: honoring our lost - open to racially and ethnically marginalized, gender variant, and disabled creatives only - closes 1/5

Around the Internet:

• The new issue of ANMLY is out! I had to take a step back from a lot of my literary obligations in the aftermath of Helene, but this issue’s nonfiction section is incredible and I’m excited it’s out in the world.

• The new issue of Split Lip Magazine is also out! Check out “Tove’s Cento: Youth” by Séamus Isaac Fey

• Jasper Joyner’s new book Pansy: A Black American Memoir is out now! Check out their Memoir Land interview here

• Bessie Flores Zaldívar was interviewed in Latinx in Publishing for their debut novel Libertad

• I got to hear Zia Wang read “She Said (Ghazal for Nyla)” at Roots. Wounds. Words., and now you can enjoy it in the new issue of Allium! This issue also has Nicolas Rivera’s flash piece “Public Transportation” and two poems by nat raum <3

• Incredible poem “Eohippus” by féi hernandez in Split This Rock

What I’m up to:

• My poem “AGAINST DYING” was one of three winners for Garden Party Collective’s mental health poetry contest. The poem was published on the 31st, right around the start of day of the dead. I’m really really grateful to GPC and Christa Vander Wyst's family for choosing my poem. You can read “AGAINST DYING” as well as “Aisle C” by Josh Lefkowitz and “For I Am Not Frida Kahlo, But I Have Seen Her Painting in the Bathroom Mirror” by Susan L. Lin here.

oddly enough, this almost 2 year old excerpt from AGAINST DYING feels applicable to the emotional impact Helene had on me

• I’ve finally started writing and somewhat reading again after a month of a mental block after the hurricane— stay tuned!

hasta la liberación siempre
<3

Thanks for reading this far down! Trans poetica will always be free, but tips are greatly appreciated! I have free zines here, and I’m available for editing, readings, and more through my site.

If you have an opportunity for trans, BIPOC, disabled, otherwise marginalized writers or artists you’d like me to include, please let me know. If I’m platforming an institution that is doing wrong by our communities, please let me know that, too.