As I write this, my tastebuds pucker, saliva gathers greedily at the inside corners of my cheeks. In my mind, I see the almost hysterical orange-red color, the slightly greasy surface of Catalina as it oozes out of the little round hole in the white plastic bottle cap. Catalina is a gift my mother gave me before I left home to raise myself at 13 years old and, though it may seem strange, I don’t regret this gift.
Bothwell’s use of glass is guided by her belief that the material creates a kind of inner space when transmitting light. Curiously, as it moves through her creations, the light itself undergoes a kind of transmutation, which forms an aura around the object. These pieces carry Bothwell’s intuitive awareness of metamorphosis into the space they occupy, responding to and then transforming the light that surrounds them. Her works are physical metaphors of the constant change we undergo at any given moment.
Remember, dying ain’t pretty, and you can’t let the kiss of death linger too long. Pretend that you love him. Pretend that you are Milton’s little girl. Pretend that the pain is too much to bear. Do not laugh at how botched your aunt looks. Instead, kneel and pray—pretend to if you cannot.
He doesn’t dance with me like that, Mom. He trips over my toes and splashes cranberry juice on the floor and I love it. I slurp it off of his New Balances.
Deep in the strange forest—half dead and sprinkled with the bones of long extinct creatures—was an even stranger nest. It was large and rotting, parts of it collapsed and covered in foliage. But it was The Mouse’s favorite place in the entire forest. The large nest was full of the prettiest rocks The Mouse had ever seen. These rocks were flat and could be pulled open and they were full of leaves. The leaves, in turn, had colorful markings on them. The leaves were mesmerizing, fascinating, and oddly delicious. On occasion, the markings looked like things The Mouse had seen. Sometimes, even The Mouse themself would be in one of the rocks.
This moment is outside of time
Ironic cause that’s what i’m needing
To teach you
Pleasure I have in my veins
This planet rewinds everyday just
To feed you
How can I be of service?
Burn me up, Wave me
Listen here patiently
Lessons entwined in my roots
Plant me within your mind so nervously
You motion for another martini and down it quickly. What number is that? Three? Five? Why hasn’t He noticed you yet? You’re drunk but not yet sloppy. You’ll leave before that happens. Catch a cab, stumble up the stairs to your fourth-floor walk up. You pick up your cell and your fingers move slowly but you put a note in your phone with the name of the bar you’re at—sober you will appreciate the breadcrumbs.
This is the work of The New Historia: to summon women deliberately left out of history and discover them and the shards of information about them that can be found. As more and more female actors are made visible, another narrative of the human experience emerges that is more inclusive, accurate, and just.
shirt button open
revealing breastless chest
breathless lungs
sternum
I want someone to see me./
I want someone to know/
it ain’t easy.
If I met America at that bar on 8th St, I wonder if he would correct me
And tell me that’s not his preferred pronoun
I came to say,
That I love you,
But instead, you gave me nothing
That I could hope for.
I daydream a lot about floating in the air. A slow, sort of dead man’s float across the sky. This doesn’t make much sense to me because I don’t like planes. Or swimming. I prefer concrete over carpet. Analysis over meditation. So, the floating in the air thing—well that is a little crazy. A contradiction to my nature that feels oddly good.
I found I was still able to evoke emotions and capture beauty. It was safe. It was comfortable, and I never had to look away. Rather than feeling lost, I felt that I wanted more and could do more. I began to see the clouds as art, as the way they might look or could look. I saw them as paintings, as layers, and eventually, some as abstracts.
“Addiction is all or nothing thinking,” my father told me, “like your battle with depression. You either pull yourself together or completely succumb to the sadness, never leaving your bed. All or nothing thinking, the hardest and most manipulating kind of reasoning.”
“Mama,” you’ll say. “Mama, Mama.” And I’ll be the one to blame. Taking a second fall that never pushes back against a tide of shits and mouthful of fucks. Nameless and easy to point out the pangs of absence and guilt. Useless and replaced with something even more robust and diligently cared for.
It lies in their souls. That Earthly promise of life beyond the flesh and ascent into the sky along an arch formed by rain. It is only the drowned—buried under the seafoam corpses of our ancestors—whose souls remain in the sea.
For years after Arturo’s death, Robert lived as a recluse, conspiring with David in the dark. David understood what it felt like to be modeled after his maker and his maker’s desires, only to become something far greater, lonelier, the romantic genius always looking over the precipice.
I am often asked why I don’t drink. Everyone asks me: people in Pakistan and people in countries that are not Pakistan. I like to joke that I do drink—water, lemonade, coffee, chai. If I didn’t drink, I would likely die. No one ever wants to know why I don’t drink carrot juice or why I don’t eat hard-boiled eggs, but it is of utmost importance for them to know why I don’t drink alcohol.
