i love intellectualizing my feelings

but often it's not possible. current events, TDOR, trauma, writing opportunities, partial face reveal— a full blown newsletter!

Nov 25, 2023

A couple days ago, I texted a person close to me that I’m in love with being alive, so I guess it’s true at least part of the time.

(Content warning! You can skip to the next section break to avoid a discussion about sexual assault)1

Look, I’m just gonna say it to all nearly 200 of y’all. 10 years ago,2 just before my quince, I was sexually assaulted by my cousin, who’s 6 years older than me. I think about it less than I used to. I am talking about it more than I used to, for the first time. There’s power in just, naming what happened to you and what everyone else wants to pretend didn’t happen. I’m an abolitionist, and I know my extended family is not capable of the kind of restorative justice I secretly yearn for. So I just keep my distance. I’ve been doing that pretty much year-round for the last 10 years. I am naming what happened, because when it happened, months after it happened, 4 years after it happened, I didn’t get to talk about it on my own terms.

Silence leads to more abuse which leads to more silence which leads to… you get the idea, right?3 Aside from the nebulous memoir-y thing I’ve been working on since April, this week I wrote a short little essay about what happened with my cousin, like without dancing around it, and I’m unsure what to do with the piece.4 It feels monumental. It’s just under 700 words. To an outsider, I looked like a trans guy typing for about an hour, wiping away an occasional tear, stepping outside for an occasional nicotine break. To me: I’m alive! I’m grateful. And I’m not going anywhere.

Solidarity with Palestine:

Do not let a four day “truce” during an imperialist USian holiday distract from the need for a free Palestine. Keep demanding a ceasefire in whatever ways you can. (If you’re in a state like mine, your reps may have made it more difficult to contact them— this means it’s working). Keep witnessing. Keep witnessing. Keep witnessing.
On that note, protestors shut down the big parade on Thursday, and I saw videos of black Friday protests in various malls. No better time to protest empire and genocide than the most consumerist holiday weekend of the year
Artists Against Apartheid has several toolkits freely available here
Check out CRIP CALL TO ACTION from Disability Visibility Project (thank you Lucas Scheelk for reposting on the blue website)
& No Pride with Genocide! & A Liberatory Demand from Queers in Palestine
& “Can You Tell Us Why This Is Happening?: Testimonies from Gaza” in n+1
& “40 Books to Understand Palestine” in lithub
- Naomi Shihab Nye is on this list— I wouldn’t be the poet I am without her presence in my life the last 3 years. Here are some poems of hers I adore: “Kindness,” “A Palestinian Might Say,” “Moon Over Gaza,” “Before I Was a Gazan,” “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change,” “All the Names We Will Not Know,” and of course, “Gate A-4”
Anne Boyer resigned as poetry editor for New York Times due to NYT’s “response”5 to what’s happening in Gaza. You can read the letter of resignation here
Read & sign Writers in Solidarity with Palestine, Writers Against the War on Gaza, this letter to Poetry Foundation
Keep boycotting Disney+, Starbucks, McDonalds, and other complicit companies, especially those that are specifically on the BDS site, and ESPECIALLY on this consumerist weekend

a sticker on the back of a street sign: end israeli brutality against Palestinians every life is important

Trans Day of Remembrance was this past week. Here is a link to the NCTE’s Trans Remembrance page. Major content warning for trans BIPOC death in this section. Typing this paragraph is painful but important. Jesús Ociel Baena Saucedo was found murdered on the 13th (here’s a link to a story in english). For those who don’t know, they were México’s first openly nonbinary magistrate. They were an activist, which immediately made them a target. This post from Elle Kennedy Fell is worth a read. Also in the news last week: LaKendra Andrews was murdered in Dallas back in April, and was barely identified without her deadname this month. You can read more about her from Pittsburgh Lesbian here. As someone from Dallas and with too much familiarity with DPD and our conservative local paper, I am angered, I am outraged, I am not surprised. We need to resist society’s expectation that we just ignore trans women of color, in life AND death. LaKendra, que en paz descanse. Jesús, que en paz descanse.

New(ish) from around the internet:

“Revision” by Hala Alyan in Guernica
“Yelp! Review for God” by Willow James Claire in The Indianapolis Review
“I Look Good in Debt” by Sara Burge in Baltimore Review
- have scientists discovered why poems written in this form are so pleasing? a lot of my favorite things I’ve written mess with indents and visual patterns like this
“Self Portrait as Methods of Survival” by Topaz Winters in The Boiler
New issue of Screen Door Review is out! MFA pal Kale Hensley has two poems you should read.
“IT ISN’T UNTIL I’M LECTURING MY STUDENTS ON FIRE SAFETY AND THEY’RE ALL LOOKING AT ME LIKE I’VE GROWN TWO HEADS THAT I REALIZE MAYBE I’M NOT TAKING YOUR DEATH AS WELL AS I THOUGHT” by Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer
- you know that essay about trauma I mentioned at the top? lately I’ve been thinking about the ways memory, time, space, etc collapses when we’re triggered (legitimately). I spent most of this week feeling like a crazy 14 year old and it comes across in my writing for sure. These lines from this poem get at that, I think, or at least are related: