Journal of Writing & Democracy

Tag: Riggio Writing & Democracy Honors Program

  • Sponge

    Sponge

    I came to New York City—to visit—

    and I began writing poetry

    well

    and now I live here

    and my ink well is empty

    but of course I’ve never used

    an ink well

    because this is the

    21st century

    and if I have anything of importance to say

    I just open my notes app;

    let my thoughts spill out

    on to the screen…

    but now that I’m thinking about it,

    they don’t really spill

    since it’s not ink from a well

    they just,

    just…1

    1. I closed out my notes app and opened Instagram. I’ll come back when I’m feeling more poetic. ↩︎

  • I Bought a Rug

    It’s been over a year since I moved into my apartment, and I just bought a rug for my room. I also hung some paintings that I had from back home, but that’s not as monumental as buying this rug. The rug itself is rather inconsequential. It’s black and white in a zigzag pattern and a bit shaggy. I bought it from Target, where it’s been mass produced in multiple factories and distributed across every Target in the country. It is literally one in a million, but it is also one in a million because it is now my rug.

    Why did it take me so long to buy a rug? Well, I hate commitment. Since I began living on my own, I’ve been averse to decorating. In college (the first time), I moved into a small dorm that couldn’t have been more than 200 square feet. On opposite sides of the room were two small twin-size beds. Neither myself nor my roommate at the time had any interest in decorating. I don’t know what his reasoning was, but I found decorating foolish. A dormitory is a transient space, it’s not meant to be lived in for more than two semesters. What was the point of pimping out my room with LED lights and hanging up school memorabilia when at the end of the semester I’d have to dismantle the whole thing? Tastes change, too, and who’s to say I wouldn’t wake up one morning, decide I hated everything, and tear down the walls? It’s a waste of time, space, and money. I’ve held onto that mentality in every state and apartment I’ve lived in. Each subsequent apartment remained bare. Easy to get in, easy to get out.

    This is not to say my room is empty besides this newfound rug. I’m not giving ‘DL’ trade who lives in a room with a stained mattress on the floor where twinks go to die. There are certain standards to meet. I have a mattress, a bed frame with cabinets and cubbies, and multiple sets of sheets. These, however, were left over from the previous occupant, so they weren’t even mine to begin with. I have a lamp, too, and the aforementioned paintings, but those were all transplants from my parent’s place in New Jersey. It’s easy to assimilate to the randomness of it all because I don’t have to commit to it, and, at the end of the day, when it’s time to move again—which I will inevitably do—I’ll be able to leave the room behind and return the paintings back to my parents. It’s easier to move forward and assimilate to what’s to come, whatever that may be. 

    Shopping for furniture is a fraught experience. I’ll go to Crate & Barrel, Target, or Ikea and be overwhelmed with anxiety. I’ll see a bunch of tables that I like and struggle to decide which I should buy. Do I want the cherry wood finish or the mahogany? Endless possibilities mean the potential for endless mistakes. Nothing in there is unique either. It’s not made for me; it’s made for the masses. Looking at the catalog of options, the homogeneous nature of the items kills any expression of individuality. Nothing screams personality. It’s all so uniform and unfeeling. I never end up buying anything.

    Dating in New York is similarly challenging. I go online or go to a bar and swipe/look through a lineup of potential guys. I appraise men like I do furniture. Do I want to bring him home? Does he match the walls? Would he look good on my couch? In my bed? Does it come in a bigger size? Returning furniture and men is a hassle. There’s nothing worse than bringing someone or something home and after a week realizing it doesn’t fit or that I find no comfort in it. I’ve invested time, I’ve wasted time, and there’s just not enough time in the world.

    As I’ve gotten older, I’m still scared of commitment, but the fear of being alone has only grown. My hodgepodge of a room is screaming for some life and warmth. Similarly, I’m screaming for the same thing. Recently, I looked around my room and thought, if I were to die inexplicably in my sleep, I would be surrounded by nothing. This room doesn’t hold me. So to change that, I decided to buy a rug to create a room that not only would I want to live in, but someone else as well. Baby steps. 

    I marched into my local Target on 14th street and went to the housing section. There, I found four different rugs for sale. I fondled the soft synthetic bristles which left no impression on me. A slew of variations of the same. I almost couldn’t do it, but if I couldn’t commit to a rug, how could I commit to a guy? Throwing caution away, I grabbed one of the rugs and slung it over my shoulder. 

    Checking out was a task. Placing the oversized rug on the pint-sized scanner and locating the even-smaller barcode nearly broke me. I then trudged across streets and avenues and cut through the StuyTown courtyard carrying this rug. This is what commitment is; it’s cumbersome. When I got home, I rolled my rug out on the floor and laid atop it. Commitment, as I learned in that moment, is also comforting and rewarding. 

    I’ve had this rug now for a little over a month. I let the discomfort of commitment pass and have grown to enjoy, maybe even love having a rug. I’ve stained this rug, stretched on this rug, fucked on this rug, and when I wake up in the morning and step out of bed, my feet are gently caressed and protected from the cold by this rug. It reminds me that this rug is mine and only mine. It makes me want to have more things to fill this space and call my own, like a chair, or a bookshelf. Maybe even a guy.

  • Unbecoming Homeless

    In between beats of thunder, the cars on the congested highway slow, and then stop moving completely. The flood symbol seems to jump out of my Waze app like the devil in Claus’ original Jack In The Box. I think how unprepared I am should a flood actually happen. Another glance at Waze and then I flip on 1010 WINS just to make sure the app is not sending me into the East River instead of averting a flood zone. I’m not a good swimmer. 

    It’s September 8, 2023 and I’m in my 2019 Elantra on the Bruckner Expressway. I’m driving back from my sister’s house in Long Island to the Westchester Airbnb I’ve been staying in for the past six weeks. Since my eviction I’m trying to stay as far away from Belleville, New Jersey as I can get. Well, at least forty-plus miles away. I calculate: a car moving at 70 on the highway may not be fast enough to break the sound barrier but will be enough to shatter the memory of that N.J. courthouse, its judge and her final judgment for non-payment. I adhere my foot to the gas pedal. Selective amnesia, that’s what I’m gunning for.

    Amid the screeching of worn windshield wipers against glass, the newscaster announces the results of the latest economic indicator, US Household Wealth. The report tells us Household Wealth rose for the second quarter to another record high, evidence of our country’s robust financial health. The newscaster wants to know how we listeners feel about that—about how our wealth has grown to record breaking proportions, because he says, “I don’t know about you, but mine hasn’t.” 

    Well, Mr. Newscaster, neither has mine. 

    The numbers showed an equal rise of over $2 trillion each in both stocks and real estate prices. 

    Most recently, fourth quarter’s numbers released on March 7th confirm another record. This time the driver is stocks which surged nearly $5 trillion. It offset a smaller drop in real estate values.

    If approximately sixty-one and sixty-five percent of the population own either stocks or real estate, respectively, the other thirty-five percent, or 117 million people do not. 

    117 million is a lot of people. 

    For reference, that is about three times more than the number of people living in California, five times more than New York. 

    Out of that 117 million, 600,500 people in the U.S were counted homeless in 2023; a jump of more than twenty percent compared to prior year 2022.  

    New York ranks second, capturing nearly 16 percent of the total US homeless population. Only California stands ahead with 27 percent. 

    With that, New York’s homeless population stands at 37.7 percent. 

    It’s grievous that our country has turned into a socio-economic oxymoron where US Wealth numbers and homelessness numbers are both at record breaking levels. 

    No wonder why many of us are not celebrating. Who cares about which direction the stocks are headed when you don’t know where you and your family will be sleeping tonight? 

    Another contributing factor to our growing disaffection is that the homeless number is higher than 600,500. 

    There are a couple of reasons for this:

    First, the current methodology used to capture data by government agencies like Dept. of Housing and Urban Development or the Census Bureau is faulty. I propose it undercounts the number of homeless population, not intentionally, but because it’s flawed.

    Basically, whether using direct or indirect estimation methods, point-in time, unsheltered or sheltered counting methods, transiency is a common side effect of homelessness. It makes the segment difficult to track. 

    The second reason is the homeless person’s reluctance to be counted.

    When I was homeless I shied away from sharing my situation except to family members and one close friend, because I understood the consequences. You get denied housing. 

    While evictions no longer show up on a person’s credit report, prospective landlords can contact previous landlords for references, as well as use an online tenant screening service.  

    Another reason is that a portion of the homeless that temporarily stay with friends or families are not counted, but are still technically homeless. They are likely to fluctuate on and off the homeless grid. 

    ***

    My membership in the “precariously homeless” club began several years ago. That was April of 2006 when I left my cushy job on Madison Avenue as the co-manager of a hedge fund’s trading desk.

    I had to resign; my physical health was deteriorating because of the stress.

    In January of 2002 I temporarily lost sight in my left eye during trading hours. A subsequent trip to the hospital and a neurologist visit lead to a Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis and weekly intramuscular injections of an interferon. The side-effects were horrible; imagine having the Flu for a few days each week combined with depression as a chaser. 

    I went on short-term disability, my eyesight returned, and I returned to work. My world had changed. I had changed. 

    Then, April 2006 came, and I resigned—as do all traces of the economic calm that characterized the 1990s.

    In 2007, a year after I left my job, the “Great Recession” swept in and stayed through 2009. The money that I saved during my time on Wall Street was spent on personal trainers, joining a weightlifting team, and eating healthy. My health recovered; and I remained asymptomatic. In December 2009, with my Doctor’s blessing I stopped the interferon injections. 

    All I had to do was find another way to make money. 

    However, in 2023, nearly fifteen years later, and my bank account still hasn’t recovered. I’m not alone. 

    Neither have the bank accounts of those other 117,000,000 million that don’t own stocks or real estate.  

    On Sunday, July 23, 2023, I moved to the Airbnb, a cramped, 125 square foot basement “suite” in Westchester, which I rented for two months and eleven days. Two rooms make up the suite (really one room with a thin wall separating it.) There is one bathroom; no shower. There is a toilet which I am forbidden from flushing toilet paper down. And, although I try my best, the black wastebasket next to it is perpetually overflowing. You’d be surprised the sheer quantity of odors a one-hundred square foot room can hold out of spite… I don’t look at the assortment of strange faces I pass on my way to the kitchen or shower on the main floor. 

    I will tell you I keep that suite in the basement locked. Always.

    My friend Jane warns: “You think [the owner] hasn’t gone in there while you were out? I mean, the lock means nothing.”

    Even with Jane’s warning, I am shocked when the owner confides that she picked the lock of the guest’s room while they were out “just to check.” The guest had broken a house rule, which amounts to a major crime in an Airbnb. She left one of her sandals on the living room wood floor. 

    However, there are practical advantages to an Airbnb if you’re homeless: no background credit, criminal, or income checks, no security deposit to put up—ideal for anyone technically homeless who otherwise is unable to meet standard leasing requirements. Although, be prepared to pay exorbitant fees.

    My Airbnb “rent” started at $2000. Once moved in, my host changed her mind and raised the monthly rent to $2650. She said she could get more money by charging daily rates rather than monthly rates and didn’t want to “feel resentful”.  

    Before I secured a room at the Airbnb I was mostly worried about my pets. 

    The threat of ending up somewhere, while my beloved cats ended up elsewhere, stalked me during those awful few months leading up to my eviction. 

    I thought of neighbors, several who had come to me in the past on the cusp of their own evictions—usually the night before or day of their desperate departure. Mostly after hours when the talons of economic loss finally eviscerated the last glimmer of hope they had. They pleaded with me to find homes for their soon to be homeless pets. I did; I rehomed their cats, found transport to a refuge for an injured seagull; fed a lost white dove… 

    I also cast judgments on those same neighbors I helped.

    How could they have not seen that coming? How could they risk their own safety and their pets? 

    And later, how had I not seen this coming?

      ***

    It’s July 5th, 2023, two weeks before my eviction hearing. 

    The white dove appears in the parking lot behind my old apartment building. The bird is pecking at the pebbles in the dirt, in between the cracked concrete. I dump the two trash bags I’m lugging into the green dumpster and slowly walk back towards the dove. To see if it’s injured. It flies to the roof. The wildlife refuges’ tell me it’s either a lost racing dove or a wedding dove. Either way, they say, it’s doomed. It will starve to death. It wasn’t born outside. It will never survive. I start feeding it and hope for a miracle.

    ***

    It’s Friday July 21, 2023 , two days before my move to the Airbnb using a loan given reluctantly by my employer. It’s a loan I’m grateful for but one that also leaves me feeling diminished. It’s been four days since I’ve seen the white dove. I’m still unsure about leaving the bird food with my neighbor, in case the bird returns… I’m stopped at a light on Belleville Avenue, about a half a mile from the apartment I’m being evicted from. Above me, a flock of pigeons are lined up on a telephone wire. In between the long row of grey feathers is a familiar set of white. The dove has survived so far, and has found friends. 

    ***

    COVID-led inflation has brought the housing crisis to the forefront of many lives, but the real monster lay in the unfair zoning laws created decades earlier—around the start of the 20th century. They call it NIMBY (“Not in My backyard”) and many of the zoning laws it inspired over a century ago still retain, at least in part, NIMBY’s original intention: exclusion and racial segregation. 

    Existing zoning laws, responsible for the housing crisis, have also led indirectly to “legalized’ discrimination within towns, particularly suburbia. It’s also led to an unnatural homogeneity which has caused dangerous levels of intolerance. You only need to look at a news headline to feel the rage. 

    Last year, Governor Hochol introduced plans to increase affordable housing in New York, but they were met with fierce resistance by local suburban legislators, along with their single-family homeowner constituents. Ultimately, they were abandoned as were watered down proposals introduced afterwards by local officials.

    ***

    Thursday September 28, 2023. I’ve finally pulled the trigger on an apartment in Long Island. 

    The “Island” is where I grew up; it’s where my family is.  The apartment, in Suffolk County, is further east than Nassau County and further away from Manhattan, and from school where I am a student. However, Suffolk has more vacancies than Nassau which makes the rents more palatable. 

    Money and a dwindling window of time become the deciding factors. 

    There were a few “hurdles” to clear. 

    I had to find a co-applicant (which I did). Then apply with the property management company’s “in-house guarantor,” which I also did. Once approved by the guarantor, and their fee was paid (about 60% of one month rent), I paid the landlord their first month rent. Move-in date is set for tomorrow. It pours all day and because of it the landlord will postpone tomorrow’s move-in due to flooding concerns.. After several back-and-forth calls, they put me in the books for Saturday. 

    Tomorrow will be our last night staying at the Airbnb. While the owner’s boyfriend uses his Shop-Vac to suck up the water that’s flooded the Bnb’s basement area outside the room where we’re staying, my cats and I are dry. Somehow the rain can’t reach us in the small space we’ve been stuck in for the past nine weeks. 

    Saturday September 30, 2023. Moving day. 

    With a cat carrier in each hand, I climb the sixteen plush, carpeted stairs to my 805 square foot apartment—double the size of my last apartment. I set the carriers down and inhale the smell of new carpet. I couldn’t have dreamed this one up. 

    Still I won’t delude myself about dreams. Joy, I learned, is best served, tempered, like a condiment. 

    In nine months my lease will be up for renewal. That leaves nine months to prepare for the rent increase that is coming (the amount unknown,) as well as another annual payment due the guarantor. 

    If they’ll still have me. 

    Who can be certain of anything these days. 

  • Cecilia Gentili’s Legacy, Southern Transness, and the Reclamation of Sainthood

    In Catholicism, sainthood may be granted to an individual posthumously through the process of canonization: a rigorous investigation into the life of a Christian of “exceptional holiness” who is believed to have attained eternal life in Heaven. Among the numerous qualifications to be met: an official recognition as a servant of god, evidence of a virtuous life in accordance with the Church’s teachings, and the attribution of at least one miracle, typically, to the candidate in question. Cecilia Gentili, artist, writer, performer, activist, transgender icon, and devoted mother to many in New York City, can teach all of us, regardless of our faiths, what it means to live and fight for those we love—the force behind many miracles we can tie back to a legacy that gives new meaning to sainthood entirely.

    In light of Gentili’s recent passing at age 52, I dove head first into the archives of transgender saints throughout history and was heartened to have discovered a few recorded instances, such as Perpetua, Marinos, and the popular, yet controversial, Joan d’Arc.

    In the public declaration of her faith, Perpetua, describing one of her final visions while preparing for a fight with the Egyptians, writes, “I was stripped, and became a man.” Though their stories may not explicitly detail their experiences with gender, likely due to looming threats of imprisonment or execution for “heresy”––like Joan, for instance, who famously deviated from gender norms and burned at the stake as a proclaimed heretic by the church––it can be gathered from the preservation of many of their narratives that these revolutionary trans figures, including others lost to history, strayed far from what the Roman Catholic church considered to be “the image of god.”

    Cecilia was born in Gálvez, Santa Fe in 1972, only four years prior to Argentina’s military dictatorship and its onslaught of extreme political repression, known as the “Dirty War,” which resulted in the deaths or “disappearances” of tens of thousands of civilians who were suspected to be subverts or left-wing “terrorists.” In an interview with Trans Oral History Project in 2017, Cecilia recalls her first childhood memories in Argentina, enduring constant pressure from family members to keep a veil over her true identity, finding solace under a tangerine tree at her grandmother’s house, and imagining she might have been born on some fantastical transfeminine planet populated only by other girls with penises. 

    Cecilia began using the girl’s restroom at an early age because it felt right, for which she continually found herself in trouble during elementary school. Fast forward to 2024, the year of her death, where the simple act of urinating as a trans person continues to be a public debate amid increasingly popular “bathroom bans” implemented by at least 11 states in the U.S., and where, overall, a whopping 428 active bills target every aspect of a trans person’s life–including healthcare, education, employment, incarceration, and the military. I can’t help but think of 16-year-old Nex Benedict who recently died in February after being brutally attacked by fellow students in their high school restroom in Oklahoma, and the countless, unnamed trans and nonbinary youth who have faced inexplicable violence as a result of the rapidly growing anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment across the country. 

    As a nonbinary trans man who began medically transitioning in my late twenties, it was just last year that I experienced my first altercation after deciding to use the cramped men’s restroom in the Whole Foods at Union Square during a break from Pride Week festivities. (The paradox of visibility comes to mind here.) I was high on mushrooms, which only exacerbated the muddled trio of fear, anger, and humiliation simmering in my core, and although I walked out physically unscathed and, for the most part, equipped to tend to my own insecurities about “passing,” there remains a lingering apprehension whenever I enter a men’s restroom. I often opt for the dreaded “W” in the event that I am cursed by the binary in public spaces, for the sake of my own wellbeing. It breaks my heart to imagine my younger, closeted self in that Whole Foods restroom, trembling in fury under the cis male gaze, completely at the mercy of a man twice my size fuming with toxic male fragility.

    I think many of the trans people in my life, especially those who, like me, were raised in ultra-religious, conservative households across the Bible Belt, can relate to the phenomenon of having an innate understanding of their gender from an early age, and the struggle with language encompassing it, or the lack thereof. Growing up in the South, I always played the husband during games of House, never questioning my eager tribute. My first kiss at age ten was in an episode of make-believe with my friend and neighbor Hannah, in which I played the role of her boyfriend at her coy request. We made quite a habit out of our pretend relationship, my own sprouting feelings for her kept carefully under wraps. Imagining myself in any other role felt ludicrous. Contemptuous whispers and rumors that she was a lesbian eventually spread like wildfire around our suburban neighborhood. When Hannah moved away, I didn’t kiss another girl for a decade.

    During every girls-only slumber party throughout junior high school, I experienced a burdensome sense of displacement. In retrospect, as cliché as it sounds, I envied their flawless portrayal of girlhood, my own attempts falling short as I yearned for both their attention and approval. I dated (read: AOL instant messaged) boys that I wanted to look like, chopped my hair off up to the nape of my neck for the first time, and took up skateboarding at 13 just to prove I was capable, if only to myself. Like Cecilia, I knew what felt right for me, even if my deviation from cisheteronormativity was deemed “sinful”–an invitation for God himself to intervene. 

    What I didn’t realize at 13, but understand now, is that the god I’ve been praying to all along is also a faggot.

    David Wojnarowicz, a multidisciplinary American artist, writer, and AIDS activist who spoke candidly of his passions and anxieties into a tape recorder while confronting his HIV diagnosis, frames the limitations of language so aptly in his tape journals, comparing his struggle to transcribe the elusiveness of a singular feeling to “[the approximation] of something that’s like a cyclone,” an analogy that never fails to pull at my heart.  When I relate this truth to my transness, it broadens the possibilities of everything I was forced to believe about myself. Perhaps my gender was always meant to transcend language.

    After high school graduation, Cecilia discovered community through sex work, an age-old profession through which many Black and brown trans women are able to find stability within a society that systematically rejects them. Like any other profession, sex work was merely that to her: work. A means to an end. During this time, Cecilia struggled with drug addiction and sought treatment at Samaritan Village after her first few years living in New York City, leading her to The Center for group counseling where she eventually began facilitating her own meetings for trans women. During her time in recovery, she went through the asylum process with assistance from Catholic Charities and was able to land her first legal job as a patient navigator at Apicha, a community health center based in Lower Manhattan that prioritizes LGBTQ+ health and wellness. Cecilia transformed Apicha significantly over the four years that she worked there, so much so that she required a larger staff to keep up with growing clientele and insisted on exclusively hiring trans women of color. By that point, she had been recruited by Gay Men’s Health Crisis, a health center dedicated to providing support for those living with or otherwise affected by HIV/AIDS, where she was named the Managing Director of Policy only six months after her onboarding in 2016.

    In her lifetime, Cecilia championed protection for all trans people and played a crucial role in bridging a significant gap in New York City through her intersectional advocacy around HIV/AIDS, breaking through stigmas affecting marginalized communities brought to the fore by the 1980s health crisis. Overall, Cecilia’s outreach work in New York City spanned a wide range of issues including abolition, healthcare access, sex worker’s rights, homelessness, and gender-based discrimination. She worked tirelessly for people to understand these struggles as interwoven. Cecilia lobbied for GENDA (the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act) which was enacted in 2019 as part of an amendment to the Human Rights Law, adding further protections specific to transgender people within the spheres of employment, housing, and public accommodations. In 2019, she also founded Trans Equity Consulting, a policy-reform organization providing workshops, campaign support, conflict mediation and more, all in an effort to make institutions, academic settings, and workplaces more inclusive, by educating on the LGBTQ+ community. In a partnership with Callen Lorde in 2021, NYC’s largest LGBTQ+ community health clinic, Cecilia created the COIN program (Cecilia’s Occupational Inclusion Network), which to this day provides free healthcare to all sex workers.

    Her extensive collaborations in community-oriented projects and affiliations with grassroots initiatives such as DecrimNY, a coalition of sex workers and allies dedicated to the destigmatization, decarceration, and decriminalization of the sex trade in New York, for which she was also the founder, is a true testament to a life spent committed to the liberation of all people. Her wholehearted commitments to justice are a true representation of saintliness, redefining traditional notions of sanctity through her courage, compassion, and advocacy for marginalized voices.

    The fruits of Cecilia’s love and labor will forever remain deeply embedded in the life of every trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming person in New York City. This much was evident at her recent funeral service in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, as the church’s pews overflowed and resounding cries of her name echoed out into the morning air for every passerby on Fifth Avenue to hear. It was an iconic place to memorialize a woman of her esteem, considering St. Patrick’s Cathedral was central to many HIV/AIDS related protests in the 1980s. Most notably was Stop The Church, a demonstration organized by ACT UP in December 1989 that disrupted a Mass service and received national attention, ultimately forcing the U.S. government to confront their negligence surrounding the health crisis and their complicity in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

    Above all, Cecilia embodied the spirit of a saint, transcending the boundaries of convention and challenging sanctimony as a trans sex worker of color. She even mocked the hypocrisy of the church in her debut off-broadway show, Red Ink, and much to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York’s disdain, was a self-proclaimed atheist. A quintessential matriarch, she fiercely protected the livelihood of those commonly ostracized by Christianity in a time of escalating fascism by the religious right in America. For those who cherished Cecilia, her willingness to stand up for those most persecuted by the Church seemed nothing short of miraculous, though such acts of grace would never find recognition within Catholic doctrine. In an Instagram story reposting the statement from St. Patrick’s Cathedral calling for a Mass of Reparation after her controversial funeral service, one user wrote, “they wouldn’t know a saint if one slapped them in the face.”

    Cecilia’s legacy reminds me, all of us, of the inherent resilience and generosity of trans people in loving a world that often tries to erase us. After all, we bear a responsibility to one another, a duty to care for, protect, and defend each other, because only we can truly keep us safe. I am reminded that trans people will write their own history, and will avoid the exploitation of our narratives. Our truths are tokens of valor; sacred mementos for trans generations to come.

    A holy card with an illustration of Cecilia sits at my bedside, next to an amber bottle of immunity tincture and a Trans Oral History Project postcard. Her hair is slicked back into a ponytail, leather jacket draped over her shoulder, her right hand placed tenderly over her heart as she gazes into the distance looking cunt as ever. It reads, “Travesti, Puta, Bendita, Madre. Be my child.” Underneath, the verse of Psalm 23. When I think of Cecilia now, I hear her shouting, “I want all the faggotry and tranny behavior!” in celebration of love and life, somewhere in a queer paradise. When I pray to Saint Cecilia, I feel the warmth of her protection, and I see her smiling down at me from Heaven, enveloped in the holy splendor of tangerines.

  • 20 Seasons of American Dad

    The pilot of American Dad! premiered on February 6, 2005, directly after Super Bowl XXXIX on Fox. Originally intended to fill the Family Guy-shaped hole left after the series’ cancellation, its revival a mere three months later left the two shows—both created by Seth MacFarlane and both airing on FOX—to compete. Today, following almost two decades on the air and a move to TBS, American Dad! has maintained significant popularity and raised the bar for syndicated adult animation by having the greatest thing a sitcom can have: an impeccable cast of characters.

    To understand the strength of American Dad!’s characters, one need not look further than the cast of Family Guy. The Griffin family is undoubtedly iconic, but they suffer from ambiguous characterization and missed potential. The dichotomy between Peter’s middle-class brewery job and Lois’s background of wealth is barely acknowledged save for Peter’s father-in-law despising him, a trope rarely absent in sitcoms. Their son Chris’s struggles with adolescence are too few and far between to be compelling, and teenage daughter Meg’s role as the family punching bag is unsavory to say the least. Stewie the baby and Brian the dog are probably the two strongest personalities on the show–particularly the former. First portrayed respectively as a mad scientist and the show’s voice of reason, their development over the decades—Stewie becoming blatantly and effeminately gay and Brian growing more pretentious—has been gradual and in line with their characters without losing sight of their origins. Unsurprisingly, episodes focused on the duo are the show’s highlights, specifically their roadshow-themed adventures that pop up every few seasons. The rest of the cast serve only as toys to be pranced along through whatever shenanigans the writers envision each week. That’s not to say the show is bad; although its quality has wavered over the years, its use of cutaways as a comedic device is the show’s greatest advantage, allowing an endless amount of humor and topical reference. It is worth noting, however, that the show’s reliance on this style of comedy is likely due to most of the characters’ inability to carry an episode on their own.

    While Family Guy must rely on cutaways to be topical, American Dad!’s Smith family is itself a vessel for political satire, a parody of the archetypal nuclear family found both in the history of American television and in the nation’s collective consciousness. Stan, the patriarch, is a red-blooded nationalist who works for the CIA. Although he commonly displays moments of idiocy—particularly when spouting conservative rhetoric—his ability to escape from capture and go toe-to-toe with terrorists makes him far more capable than the average sitcom father. Francine’s doting housewife facade belies a savage spirit bubbling underneath. Her wild side is repressed by expectations of homemaking, only peeking out when she drowns a bird with blank-eyed stare or convinces her family to engage in cannibalism after their refusal to engage in a nice Sunday dinner. Hayley, Stan and Francine’s daughter, is a caricatural tree-hugging leftist who doesn’t always practice what she preaches, such as when she binge eats at the UN headquarters while children starve in a refugee camp outside. Steve, Hayley’s brother, is a wimpy teenage nerd whose voice actor, Scott Grimes, provides him with an extraordinary amount of charisma. It takes a great talent to make loveable a whiny adolescent with aspirations as silly as clowning or backup dancing, and Grimes nails it every time. The pet goldfish, Klaus, is likely the show’s least cohesive character, as his convoluted backstory—once an East German Olympic ski jumper, his brain was switched with a goldfish by the CIA to ensure his nation’s loss in the 1986 Winter Olympics—is good for about one joke. Still, Klaus also has standout moments of humor due to his haplessness and the scorn he receives from the other members of the family.

    These characters alone would make for an enjoyable watch, but none of them hold a candle to the absolute wildcard that is Roger. A Roswell Grey alien that saved Stan’s life in a shootout at Area 51, he now lives in the attic of the Smith house and assumes alternate personas when venturing outside to keep secret his extraterrestrial identity. He is an ostentatious hedonist whose pettiness knows no bounds, and creator MacFarlane’s genius comedic timing keeps Roger as the preeminent source of hilarity at all times, even when becoming a dictator of a banana republic or desecrating the grave of his ex-wife solely for the purpose of creating a wig from her hair. Furthermore, his madcap collection of alter-egos spices up an already well-founded cast of characters, thrusting the other members of the Smith family into confrontations with the most bizarre personalities that anyone could possibly conceive of. A wedding planner with ties to the mob? Jeanie Gold. A news anchor with stories such as “Is Heroin the New Cure for Cancer?” and “Bulimia: Bad for you, But is it Good for Your Toilet?” Genevieve Vavance. A sociopath who burns down petting zoos and defecates in the open torso of a man undergoing surgery? Ricky Spanish. Crass, absurd, and delightfully flamboyant, Roger has also become something of a queer icon—with his swish accent and proclivity to dress in drag, it’s easy to understand why. In 2014, he was voted “Gayest Cartoon Character of All Time” in an online poll by Logo.

    The sitcom is a unique genre of television in that it exists solely as a showcase of characters’ shenanigans rather than compelling storytelling. American Dad!’s family-based approach excels at parodying the genre. Its use of the medium of animation permits its characters—particularly a certain extraterrestrial master of disguise—to fall into any and all manner of wacky and unexpected circumstances. While Family Guy may have been the blueprint for Seth MacFarlane’s television dynasty, American Dad! perfected the formula. 

  • Down South

    Down South

    I understand but do not take part
    and the only community here is laundromat owner
    one plate.        one spoon        washing in the giant sink
    looks like fine china                  and me.

    Brothers by mouths and white socks –
    kind my mother put on me.

    Train mothers put children on
    your mother takes to work
    and brought you home on.

    Community is vehicle driver
    name unknown         white truck     4 ave     driving slowly south.
    Diamond company truck. Ah
    Driving gingerly driving motherly

    Downstairs they pass food to mother through the old window.

  • Hope for Rain

    Hope for Rain

    It is summer and all my friends are dying.

    Usually, summer is when we come to life, reborn from the roots of our ancestors. It is the time when we typically sway in the wind, embrace the sun, and drink from the pail of the old man who lives in the even older brick house. But this summer isn’t the same; we are dying, and the old man has yet to emerge from the withering wooden door at the top of the stairs. This man with his dusty gray hair and kind eyes. Who looked after my friends and me this past spring after the old lady died on the concrete path. Oh, and when she died, he kneeled over her and cried, and kicked little Tulip in the head. 

    The old lady fell on the ninth day of spring. She lost her footing on a protruding weathered plank. The watering can tumbled out of her grasp and clanged against the concrete path. She lay there, eyes vacant, beside our exsanguinating pail. Sap the color of Rose’s head covered the ground, leaking like sun rays from underneath her skull.  The old man ran outside, his heavy footsteps resounding on the old wooden porch, and, for the first time in my life, he stepped into the dirt without a care in the world. Tulip lost her petals, and two of her sisters’ spines snapped under his foot. Yet, he cried for the woman instead of the lives he had just taken.

    Strangers took the little old lady who cared for us away in a big white car that blocked out the sun. She never came back. From then on, the old man who loved her would fill her pail with water and shower us from above. He would tread carefully on his tiptoes, ensuring he gave us each the water we deserved. He would cry as he watered us; his salty tears sunk to our roots and shriveled them dry. 

    But it has been almost three weeks since we have seen him, and we cannot take much more. Zinnia’s head is falling; Tulip’s getting weaker every day; Rose looks as if she’ll go bald with a large gust of wind; and I don’t think I can support myself for much longer. 

    Where did he go? The man with the glasses on the edge of his nose. The one who would sit just beyond the speckled window in a weathered leather chair with the paper in his wrinkled old hands.

    “Daisy?” Tulip calls out to me, her voice sounding weaker than ever before.

    “Yes, love?”

    “What do we do?”

    I watch as everyone turns to look at me with anxious and tired eyes—those who hadn’t already fallen, at least. And I looked to the sky, a bright, vibrant blue, clearer than ever before, without a cloud in sight.

    “All we can do, my dear, is hope for rain to come.”

  • Pixelated

    Pixelated

    SOUTH CAROLINA 

    Before the Internet 

    Pixelated 

    i. 

    I was 15 in North Myrtle Beach,  

    skateboarding towards 420 World  

    under the stale haze of old billboards and tattered confederate flags. Big Mike worked there,  

    and it’s where the porn was. 

    My friend Lauren, who dated Big Mike, told me that I didn’t masturbate right. 

    I never put my hands in my pants. 

    I held a pillow under me  

    like a torso  

    something firm  

    and humped until I came. 

    I was bisexual, 

    I am still bisexual. 

    2 men and 1 woman kind of bisexual. 

    I am sure it existed in California,  

    but queer feminist porn wasn’t in my sphere  

    among titles like Karma (with a backwards R) and Cock Busting Teens part 3. 

    Devil’s Threesome: Hot, Wet, and Blonde: $19.99 

    A perfect bisexual DVD. 

    A “late bloomer” I guess, 

    though most boys in comparison to girls are. 

    Blooming in a world that viewed

    me as female,

    and was withering. Blooming in a world viewed 

    me as female,  

    was withering. 

    Too big for my britches / stunned, 

    a screaming groin.

    So funny how quickly shock turns to arousal. 

    I skated home in the merciless sun, 

    the smell of softening asphalt below me  

    following an orgasm lantern adorned by a faint flicker. 

    ii. 

    The kissing was exhilarating,  

    the devil was a male character 

    playing the brother of the female character. 

    Pants were peeled, 

    my awkwardness deepened. 

    A sunset of an unnatural energy cast a shadow on my mind and boner, there was a contradiction 

    between the visual and the meaning. 

    Entropy 

    my shoulders/face/back stained red. 

    I wanted to be her brother/boyfriend? 

    I didn’t want this flesh,  

    my body, 

    to be touched 

    the way that the men touched hers. 

    Squinting/Furrowing brow gave focus to the sound, 

    Pixelated/my hard-on emerged. 

    15 minutes of panic-jerking 

    TV turned off 

    pulled up my underwear/grabbed a pillow. 

    An inaudible space 

    imbued with honeysuckle shampoo/Erin’s face. 

    She swept her pink bangs away  

    /I made her laugh in Wendy’s. 

    Drunkenly kissed my neck skinny dipping. 

    I turned to lightheaded glass 

    on another plane/a wave/a shudder/a tiny echo planted a seed that blossomed 

    in a boisterous and debilitating desire. 

    “brother and sister” 

    Nucky Thompson’s Final Scene 

    A half-baked coupe 

    trying to come to terms with my blood relations. Scorching highs, booming lows. 

    My family and Atlantic City  

    had the same facade, 

    being a big important machine 

    that doesn’t function now. 

    Eye contact on the bus,  

    fucking in the lifeguard boats 

    she took me to her girlfriend’s house  

    in Asbury Park. 

    Pieced together 

    that we weren’t together 

    at a Pride barbeque. 

    Under the boardwalk 

    two boys, engrossed, watched a video  

    on a flip phone: rotten.com 

    something was being eaten alive  

    rusty tap water 

    barefoot baby I found outside of the Wawa  

    the way that no window’s elapsed the city’s pitilessness time did too 

    until I was healing  

    from surgery

    Boardwalk Empire,  

    my reason for living. 

    The only thing you can count on is blood  

    the blood in your veins and the blood that’s in mine. 

    Nucky Thompson dropped 

    like a full bottle 

    onto the boardwalk 

    the psychic without a crystal ball  

    read my palm that Summer 

    right there 

    where the fictional death lies  

    next to mine 

    perplexed and agitated, she said, “You’re a man.”

    ASHEVILLE

    Tomorrow, tomorrow 

    Your last breath 

    with a summer rain soundtrack 

    in the crook of a mountain. 

    I was down the mountain 

    parked in front of my house,  

    my girlfriend’s car. 

    The rain stroked the peripheral of the blue screen life 

    on my phone. 

    Giving cybersex a cadence with a man who lived far away.

    When one wakes up they can hear the heat in North Carolina. 

    Pitch like a dog whistle, 

    only southerners understand. 

    The hum was louder that morning, as the cicadas cried. Why doesn’t the cicada offer any knowledge of its demise? Maybe the cicadas cried for you too. 

    The spin of the earth pierced the silhouette on the picnic blanket. 

    Surrounded by our friends, I stared into outer space. 

    Shrouded in the disgrace of jerking off while you died. 

    I avoided hormones 

    creep 

    as long as I could  

    a violent white man 

    out of fear of turning into  

    everything I hate 

    takes advantage of the living and the dead. 

    “They couldn’t even choose their meals on any given day. I can’t believe  they could have chosen this.”

    “I didn’t see them as selfish until now.”  

    How small of us. 

    We had just come out to each other,  

    only you and I knew that. 

    Wiping the tears from your cheek that night I whispered,  “We can sleep on the playground 

    and if it rains, 

    we’ll bury ourselves in sand,  

    it’s cooler than our houses.” 

    CHICAGO

    NASA 

    No kissing naked namelessness naïveté 

    A mirror that you watched yourself in afternoon abbs aloof Sadly, there was no foreplay seeking safeness salify Ariana Grande blasting abrupt avast abscond

    NEW YORK

    Planes Flying By 

    In Queens, I hear planes above the light pollution shipping

    lives either closer to or past one another 

    while we endure the stickiness of August in the city. 

    Tiny bottles and cans 

    clinking in the houseless carts  

    from the basement apartment. 

    I hate it  

    When lovers only focus on my pleasure.  

    It should be requite. 

    It’s always like this: your head held between my

    knees. I clutch your neck, labored breathing. 

    You look up. 

    Teary eyed with adoration: this is our tenderness, yet I am growing numb. 

    John Lennon’s beady eyes stare into mine 

    from the other side of your room. 

    The first girl I ever loved comes to mind as you say, “I’m your faggot,  daddy.” 

    I nod. 

    She was afraid of pleasure and obsessed with it when we were younger. 

    She told me that on AIM 

    maybe? 

    If not, 

    it’s something we’d have typed out in Courier New  

    on LiveJournal.

  • Palestinian Liberation is Jewish Liberation

    My heart is breaking again. And again. I pray that in the broken openness I will find a way to stay open. I know the hearts of my people, the Jewish people, have been broken millions of times, and I know the hearts of the Palestinian people have been broken and continue to break at our hands. At the hands of Western Imperialism. It feels at this moment that trauma is swallowing us up whole. 

    In her book, A Map to the Door of No Return, Dionne Brand offers that diaspora is a door. My door, the door of the Jewish diaspora, seems like a revolving one. Smacking us directly from victim to oppressor. How utterly maddening, and uniquely confusing to be both the victim and also the face of Western Imperialism in the span of a few generations. Brand writes, “Our inheritance in the Diaspora is to live in this inexplicable space.” 

    Uncapturability. Uncapturable heartbreak.

    In her Nobel lecture, Toni Morrison wrote, “There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering . . . memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination . . . arrogant pseudo-empirical language crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.” I pray with the delicate and powerful and glorious language of Toni Morrison that our hearts do not calcify. That the Jewish people do not make a home in this Pharaoh trope. That amnesia does not make us the villains of history. 

    And what about the rest of the West? The nations who allegedly support genocide in the name of Jewish safety? The Christian Zionists who have eagerly used my people as their kingpen? The United States’ bankroll? Germany’s rigid pro-Israel agenda? What about their hypocrisy? And what about the gentile American left? To those who are too happy to see us die and did not allow us space to grieve. To those who are too relieved that our mess is not in their backyard. What about their amnesia? Their ancestors? 

    I refuse to succumb to any false monolith assuming what it means to be Jewish. I refuse to keep my grief silent or to have my grief weaponized in order to justify needless death. I refuse to close my heart. 

    I need a poem full of vitamins to give me the strength to remember we have always survived atrocities. When we thought the world was ending, it was true, many worlds were ending, and too many worlds have ended too soon, but a new world was also beginning. 

    Morrison continues, “Whose heaven, she wonders? And what kind?” Heaven is not created from colonialism. Heaven does not arrive through occupation. Heaven cannot come after genocide. “Our inheritance is an affront…how dare you talk to us of duty when we stand waist deep in the toxin of your past?” I read this and think of all the young Palestinians, Israelis and diaspora Jews who grew up under the shadow of the Nabka and the Holocaust. As an Ashkenazi Jew, Israel was never my promised land. 

    I fantasize about a time before the Holocaust, before we went to a land that wasn’t ours. I fantasize about the renaissance of Jewish artists who were blossoming in Vienna. I reach back to hold the hands of my ancestors in Hungary who left in the face of pogroms and landed in Milwaukee. In Vancouver. In Los Angeles. Is Los Angeles not already the Holy Land? And what about New York? We were never a country. The diaspora goes too deep. Let us free back into the diaspora again.

    As an American Jew living on stolen land in the heart of the empire, I follow the brave leadership from Palestinians and Israelis on the front lines of the anti-occupation movement. I follow the brave Palestinians and Israelis who loudly oppose the horrific violence that guarantees no one’s safety. I pray for the possibility of safety and livelihood for all Palestinians, Israelis and diaspora Jews. Our oppression and liberation are entwined. Ceasefire now. Free everyone. In solidarity, Palestine will be free.

  • Last Call

    Last Call

    Illustration by Jillian Rees

    The ground is sticky. You lift your boot, cringing as your rubber sole peels off the buffed cement floor, hooking your heel on the gold footrest beneath the bar. You probably come here too much—enough to know the leather backsplash is actually made of vinyl; that there’s a crack in each of the three circular mirrors hanging above the gin. It smells like dirty mop water, bleach and spilled beer. Fry grease wafts in from the kitchen, which comforts you. Even the over-served regular swaying back and forth on his barstool, with one hand deliberately placed on your knee, his breath hot and smelling like cheap tequila, is reassuring. You don’t do anything but stab your olive and smile.

    It’s loud in here tonight. You much prefer the quietness of a Wednesday when the cute bartender with the slicked-back hair talks only to you. Normally you’d position yourself in front of the cash register for this very reason, but with tonight’s crowd, you’re forced into the corner, smashed between the wall and the regular, who’s now consumed by the couple next to him that won’t stop making out.

    You’re too old for this. You tell yourself you’re done after tonight—sure of it this time. Olive juice and Hendricks slides down your throat.

    The front door opens. At first, you perk up at the cool autumn breeze fanning the back of your neck, but then . . . Shit. He’s here. Mr. Charisma. His voice is loud and booming, just as you remember it. You straighten up as if someone has yanked an invisible thread up your spine. You don’t want to look right away, so you tilt your ear toward the sound, but you can hear that voice getting closer, the smell of his too-strong, amber aftershave hovering. You clench your glass and swirl the liquor, surprised that your grip isn’t shattering the stem. What do you normally do with your hands? Quickly, you reach up to fiddle with your hair, remembering fondly how He used to push it back from your forehead. You start to do the same, then, embarrassed, drop your fingers and take another sip. 

    The bartender’s pouring a Maker’s Mark—it’s a double and you already know that Mr. Charisma will swallow it in two sips. He’s greeting patrons like a politician—high-fiving the guy in a Yankees jersey; planting a kiss on the cheek of the woman wearing all her diamonds. Your breathing speeds up. You realize your glass is empty, so you motion for another. You still don’t turn around.

    Does he still have that dark, thick hair you’d run your fingers through, you wonder? He must still have those coarse patches on his chin because even if he shaves in the morning, it just grows back by mid-afternoon. You remember how he liked surprising you with presents. You’re wearing one—that bracelet with the purple moonstones. Is that a sign? Angrily, you shove it deep in your pocket.

    You’re such a fucking idiot. Why didn’t you dress better? Finish that degree?

    Slowly you crane your neck.

    He’s tall, taller than you remember him being, so you search for something to hate. His mouth is still too big for his face. When he used to kiss you, it was wet and sloppy. More than once, you had to spit out his saliva.

    Your fingers splay out across the bar. Fuck. That knot in your left shoulder blade twists as you realize . . .

    He didn’t actually bring her here . . . did he?

    She’s standing just over his shoulder. You want to be feminist, tell her to run, but you can’t help feeling that sour burst of nausea spike up your throat. Too young for him, that’s for sure. Stupid. Weak. You want to scream about their seventeen-year age gap, but what’s the point? She’ll twirl her fingers through her shiny hair; reapply unnecessary makeup to her poreless skin. She thinks it’s charming how loud he is, profound that he quotes obscure authors and paints when he’s sad. If you hadn’t found those texts on his phone, you probably still would too.

    As the bartender flips a bottle, the smell of Maker’s Mark and red wine swirls into your nostrils. You don’t want to remember, only you can’t help but think back to that one night around Christmas when the snow stuck to the fire escape outside his window. You were both curled up on his couch watching British television, candles lit, takeout eaten. That night, you drank Tempranillo you’d stolen from The Penrose, and had mind-blowing sex three times, the twinkling white lights of the Christmas tree you decorated together glowing in the background. You stayed awake long after he fell asleep, staring up at his attempt at expressionism—a painting of a frozen woman burning in a fire. Back then, you likened it to you—some muse of an ice princess thawing from love—but now you realize he’d painted himself. Untouchable. Iced out. Cold and fleeting like the snow.

    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.

    There’s a toothpick at the bottom of your glass.

    This is the last time. No more after this. You’re sure it’s a promise you’ll keep.

    Finally, you get the courage to talk to him.

    You spin round, but He’s gone. Instead, you catch brown eyes staring at you from across the room—like yours, but glossier, brighter. Yours did that once—shimmered with certainty—back when He wanted you. You feel suddenly small. She looks sad for you. You want to tell her to mind her own goddamn business, but instead you feel pathetic and sick. Quietly, you avert your eyes.

    Where did He go? You take another drink.

    “Hey, last call alright?”

    Startled, you glance up at the bartender. Your brain is spotted now. Your vision begins to blur. You blink hard. Suddenly it’s quiet. Nobody’s there anymore, just you.

    . . . What?

    Where is He? Or she? You turn and nearly sway off the bar stool, your foot landing on the sticky floor. Across from you is one of those round mirrors with the crack. 

    Oh . . . You realize. 

    There she is.

    Older now. Wrinkled skin around her mouth, dark circles under her eyes. You’re not sure if you’re glad or angry about this. You can still see how her hair used to be shiny. How her poreless skin and glossy eyes made her twinkle. You’re sad for her. Tipping the last of your drink into your mouth, you think about how you miss twinkling.

    “We’re closing,” the bartender says more urgently. “Do you want another drink or not?”

     Mr. Charisma hasn’t been here for years. In fact, you’re not sure what happened to him, not after that night, years ago, when you ran away, fists shaking, from his apartment.

    “One more,” you tell the bartender. Staring back at the mirror, at least you’re not alone. Another martini is set in front of both of you. Your brown eyes meet and you make another promise. 

    This is it, you say. For good this time. 

    In the mirror, she stabs her olive and smiles. Cheers.

  • Interview with Christopher X. Shade

    Interview with Christopher X. Shade

    In the mid-November 2020, I had the pleasure of sharing an email thread with Christopher X. Shade—a teacher, poet, and author. His most recent publication, Shield the Joyous is a book of poetry centered around deep grief, love, and the space in between the two. Christopher teaches at The Writers Studio and co-founded the literary journal Cagibi. His involvement in the mid 2000’s resurrection of 12th Street is amazing, and a lot of the work he did on our journal has helped to set the current precedent which we publish by.

    12th STREET: In terms of grief and dealing with grief, what is your understanding of belonging, humor, isolation, and the part they play in the process of healing?

    SHADE: I love this question. I see something of poetry in the structure of the question. The juxtaposition of belonging, humor, and isolation—the togetherness of these three—resonates with me as a moving way of lifting ideas right up off the page about what makes us tick. Because for each of us there is belonging alongside isolation, and humor has a special bond between them. Humor can carry us from dark isolation to joyful belonging. Belonging is of joy, and isolation the opposite—isolation is manifest peril, very much so for those who suffer addiction. I grew up in small-town Alabama. We were a mom and four kids whose early years were interrupted by the deep trauma of loss—my dad was killed when I was two. To this day in my family, we hold each other close with the deepset fear that we might lose another of us. All of my childhood, I was laughing and entertaining the others. I longed to make them feel joy. At a very early age, instinctively I recognized that humor distanced the pain. On Christmas in 2017, the loss of my baby brother Matthew, a half brother many years younger, was a loss that unknown to me at the time gathered in its arms all the other losses I’ve experienced and the fear and dread of more. I made expressions of that deepfelt loss and pain in poetry, on monastic retreats, all of which came together in this book Shield the Joyous. And many times I reached for humor in the poems. I would like to say that this process has been one of healing, but I feel so far from healed that I wonder if healing is even possible. Sometimes I think healing is simply to have hope that it is possible to feel less pain, so that I may cope enough to do more work out in the world.

    STREET: What sorts of books line the shelves of a Catholic monastery? Are there any surprises?

    SHADE: At the monastery they have a library, in the enclosure, of over twenty thousand books. Incredible! So many books! Though when I say it’s in the enclosure, I mean that it’s off limits. When I stay at the guest house, anything within the enclosure is off limits. So I have only ever heard about the library. I mailed them both of my books, and they are glad to have them on their shelves. I wonder who I have the privilege of standing next to—maybe call numbers with the letter S, and I stand next to Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

    STREET: How the monastic tradition of prayer/meditation stayed with you?

    SHADE: One day I was with a dear friend of mine who is yoga teacher, author, editor, East Villager, and she pointed to a young man who I think was serving tables, and she said, “He meditates.” And it seemed clear to me, too, that he meditates, and his inner work had stayed with him. He seemed steady, even-keeled. If only I could approach my own daily life this way—if only I could approach my writing this way, as ever steady and even-keeled, carrying the monastic meditative experience with me. But it’s more the case that I feel the opposite, my mind tossing on the ocean. I do meditate every morning. I’ve been doing this for years now, and lately I post on social media a focus of “today’s meditation” with the hope that it may inspire others to do this difficult work of sitting. It’s the most difficult work I’ve ever done. I’ve spent most of my life missing the point, feeling that inner work was simply not the best use of my time, that working outward was all that was important.

    STREET: What is today’s meditation?

    SHADE: My latest “today’s meditation” is, “Being with friends is a medicine on the spirit, giving us a perspective on ourselves and our burdens.” Simple words to reflect on and carry with you today. This one rings true in this holiday season, given how challenging it is during this pandemic time to be with friends—while actually not with them. I was also thinking about books here—books as friends, books as a medicine on the spirit in this way. Reading often leads me to a Today’s Meditation—books like David Whyte’s Pilgrim, John O’Donohue’s Anam Cara, Thomas Merton’s Thoughts in Solitude, Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child, and really any reading.

    My latest “today’s meditation” is, “Being with friends is a medicine on the spirit, giving us a perspective on ourselves and our burdens.”

    STREET: Of all the places you’ve lived- where do you consider home? How important is location to your idea of home?

    SHADE: I guess because I have lived in so many places—from small-town Alabama to Colorado to New York City, and now during these tragic pandemic times away from NYC, taking refuge in rural Vermont and New Hampshire—I’ve come to think of home as a shapeshifter in my embrace. Just when I think I have my arms around her, nothing is as it was. Impossible! So what does it take to belong? As I write new poems—a working title of Vermont Diaries for a next book of poems—as I write these, I’m “at sea”. . . with not even the sea here to offer the soulful solace that it does at its shores. Maybe I should be seaside instead of here, where I am writing you from, which is on a rural Vermont road where each day a white-bearded man wearing camo drives his ATV into the woods at the end of the road with a rifle on his lap. Do I belong here? What would it take to belong here? My novel The Good Mother of Marseille follows a woman named Noémie who longs for a sense of belonging in that tumultuous and often violent French port. That story ends on a hopeful note.

    STREET: While working on 12th Street, was there a published piece or a bit of procedure that stayed with you?

    SHADE: What a time that was! I am honored to have had my work appear in that first issue of 12th Street, in that year of 2008—so long ago! Working as a reader in those early 12th Street years. . . I remember the paper—so much paper—all the printed poetry and prose, and the personalities, the people and potentialities, the chemistry of editors in any moment, right or wrong, with the alluring ever present question of What does it take? and the fights, the makeups, the crushes, and the spunk and punk rock perspiration that made trailblazing possible. I remember the urgency—more than important, this was essential—we felt such pressure to do it right! Resurrecting a journal gone since the forties, passing through intersections that so many esteemed New School writers and thinkers had passed. Was such a dream even possible? We all learned that it was.

    STREET: In your writing process, what determines if a work should be told in the form of fiction or poetry? Does expectation play into this?

    SHADE: There is, certainly, a leap of faith that the reader will be engaged. I teach my students to reach for their own unique voice and style based on the literary canon — in other words, look closely at the most important and influential works of prose and poetry. The poems in Shield the Joyous are styled after the emotional fragility of James Wright, the clarity and groundedness of Levine, the fearlessness and depth of Auden, Larkin, Clifton, and so many others, the perseverance of Elliot, the devotion to material and tones of Anne Sexton. All to say, an aim of mine is to have many distinct influences on my work, so that I can do something as inspired as pull together a book, organize it, and underpin it with a resonant depth of meaning for both myself and the world of readers. Many teachers earlier in my life, whose teachings remain with me, stirred me to approach writing this way, with emotional vulnerability, intellectual rigor, and self-discipline—among them, notably Joseph Salvatore and Luis Jaramillo during my studies at The New School, and later Philip Schultz at The Writers Studio where I now teach. All to say, for me the form emerges. I no longer begin at form, though for most of my life I did. Now in fiction, I don’t know whether a story I begin will be a short story or a novel, or whether I will discover that it needs to be distilled down to a poem.

    STREET: What are your favorite literary / poetic tools?

    SHADE: Two of my favorite tools, broadly speaking, are reinvention and distancing—really, any distancing technique. I’ve become very interested in ways to help writers get out of their own way, as I’ve had to. I have found that sometimes I do lack a technical skill without realizing that I do, while more often I think it may be a technical skill that I lack, when it’s instead how I’m approaching the material. With my novel The Good Mother of Marseille, I reinvented its structure several times before I realized the frame, or narrative stance, of a compassionate, knowing, and shapeshifting narrator, across all the book’s chapters, who has the capacity to feel hope and love for the world despite the brutality we are capable of levying on ourselves. The most difficult part of writing, for me, is reinventing what I have done, to let go of what I believe it should be. And this is a reinvention of myself as an author, every time.

    STREET: What draws you to a piece from the perspective of an editor? 

    SHADE: For one, stories that I feel have been authentically told. I find that in my own work it’s a mistake to aim for a feeling of authenticity in a story, because it almost always leads to writing from the neck up—too much thinking. . . and, not enough courage. Writers become very confident about their ability to “technique” their way to authenticity. But what truly does it require? There’s some mystery to this that is beyond us. Writing from the neck up is dispassionate, to the reader, or another way of saying it is that it is reaching to be empathic. As an editor this is usually quite evident, and very common. This is not to suggest that technique is less important. Everything is important. Everything has to come together and earn its own life and lift itself up from the page for us to behold in wonder.

  • Awake.

    We wait.
    On crimson mornings, layers of leaf loam lie
    So deep they are an ocean of land.
    A heart is imprisoned in the heart of a tree
    And only fire can free it.

    So, also, we wait.
    It is a strange and holy day for weeping.
    Pour in all you want, it will not dilute –

    We invented resentment as much as
    Fine bone china and a whirling starry sky
    But if it came down to it you would eat my brain
    And I yours.

    The sky shakes out another eclipsing sunset, and laughs,
    and infinitely, we wait.

    A quiet pocket inside,
    A room padded with patience,
    A soft, receiving moss curved around a single stone.
    Waiting, waiting, waiting.

  • told me you’ll thank me some day – language borrowed from 1-star yelp reviews of cosmetic surgeons

    “a hung out hexology” by Laura Heckel

    1
    reality is that i have only seen the doctor once after my surgery
    and that is because i haunt him.
    2
    i had drains in my legs and they were starting to leak.

    my drains my legs dripping all over the floor

    & this idiot says they have no gauze.
    3
    some consulter name jessie lied out her a**hole to get me down to the office,
    then gave me a quote on a sticky note.
    4
    fyi none of the nurses speaks english
    not even a little so they will be no help
    all they do is sit on the kitchen table

    after surgery he proudly told me
    that he overfilled both implants
    by 15cc.

    as a thin woman with very little breast tissue
    the unevenness of my breasts is unsightly
    in business clothes. every day

    i am reminded of this.
    5
    had surgery in april : “mommy makeover.”
    my stomach was left ruined.

    they have blamed it on me having a child
    but my stomach looks worse than it did before.

    do not trust that man with anything,
    especially your body.

    he does not consider the sacrifices we have to make
    to feel better about our self.
    6
    i felt like a number in a chicken shack.  the waiting
    room looks like a fucking welfare office. people filling out paperwork
    on the floor.  you know they have an armed security guard?

    you people waiting there are idiots.

    we in houston texas    y’all motherfuckers better wake up.

     

  • Stay Awake and See Moonlight

    Stay Awake and See Moonlight

    Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes play the protagonist at three different stages of his life.    

    It’s 1:43 a.m., and I can’t sleep. I just saw Moonlight and so should you. See the next showing! And buy tickets in advance. The 9:45 showing earlier this evening at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) was sold out.

    Here’s what’s keeping me awake: the persistent desire, whether held or unseen, that we bring to the film watching experience to be captured, to be lifted, to encounter authenticity. That was my experience watching Moonlight. I rarely say this, but every element succeeds in this film, which is a coming-of-age story of love unfolding in a rough Miami neighborhood. It’s more than a love story, though. Moonlight is the new standard of the cinematic art of storytelling. This film humanizes characters who have been dehumanized for being black, gay, poor, addicted. This film stands firmly on the fertile ground of compassion, where we all begin. The narrative hinges on intelligence and talent rather than stereotypes and gimmicks played years past their expiration dates. The humor is subtle and cherished. Metaphors and the literal layers of storytelling intersect with grace. The acting doesn’t read as acting; it is living. Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, André Holland, Jharrel Jerome, Janelle Monáe, Trevante Rhodes, and Ashton Sanders (and all of the other actors) show forgiveness that will shake you. There is a scene in which the preparation of a meal contains all of the romance one could ever ask to witness in a movie or in a lifetime; and it doesn’t feel forced. The audience is not manipulated into thinking or feeling. Thank you, Barry Jenkins and Tarell McCraney, for telling this story with your talented crew, cast, and selves. James Laxton’s cinemaphotography, the lighting and sound design, editing, and casting are all works of art. The actors playing the main characters in different time periods are cast so well, for a moment I suspected natural aging. The color palette and tones are so vital to the storytelling, I consider the look of the film a character.

    It’s 2:35 a.m., and I’m concerned I should be writing a review in which I dispense the plot points into three acts and compare director Barry Jenkins’s prior movies Medicine for Melancholy and My Josephine with Moonlight. I should be giving spoilers and spoiler alerts to justify my praise. I should be giving production backstory and budget numbers, writing in third person, and subtly weaving in my opinions about the art I’ve just seen. I should be more critical. I should be but I can’t be writing that review. Or, I don’t want to because that would be fiction for me.

    It’s 3:08 a.m., and I’m still awake. I don’t want to sleep anymore. Being awake is where I want to be, in the Moonlight. This masterpiece offers relief from the many stories told from whiteness and selling that dream. Westerns and civil war stories and stories of slavery, capitalism, sexism, and other forms of horrific human histories that, in the end, with their perspective, embolden and protect the dream of white privilege and misogyny. I don’t need to name these movies whose plots frame all of history around white heroes. These movies that endorse double standards and define success, patriotism, beauty, love, courage. These are the majority of movies we have seen. The majority of movies the Hollywood film industry has funded, distributed, and awarded honors. They serve the whiteness and privilege dream. During the Moonlight scene in which the character Blue encourages the character Little to be proud of being black and tells him that black people have been on this planet longer than everyone else, the white audience members seated behind me sighed and tsk-ed.

    If you’re still wondering how this movie challenges the narrative of the Hollywood film industry, I implore you to see it. Be vulnerable. I can’t say it enough: stay awake and see Moonlight. Bring a clean sleeve for tears. It’s autumn, people are coughing on the subway, and you don’t want to rub your eyes with the common cold or the flu on your hands. Not a crier? See this film.  You might be a crier yet.

    FEATURED PHOTO CREDIT: A24

     

     

  • One of Two

    One of Two

    At two years old, Annabelle fell into a pool. Just dropped in and floated down through the water like an egg dropped through soup all the way to the bottom where she settled. She didn’t swim at all but it didn’t occur to her to be afraid. Instead she crossed her legs for fun and watched them float off the floor. Her body twisted sideways and she realized being on the bottom of the pool could be a big problem and figured things could go two ways. She could be afraid, or she could just get out of the pool and she knew that being afraid would not get her out of the pool so she decided to climb the walls with their uneven bricks that looked just like simple steps made just for her. No one had noticed she was gone until she appeared dripping wet in front of her mother who screamed and fell off her lawn chair practically stabbing Annabelle in the face with her lit cigarette. Annabelle was confused. Shouldn’t they have a party with some cupcakes?

    Not long after, Annabelle found herself in camp taking swimming lessons. The teachers were annoyed and mad because she progressed too quickly outgrowing classes the same day she was put into them. Annabelle wanted to please her teachers and wondered why—if she was doing so well—they were not smiling at her. She decided to ignore her teachers, and ignore the kids who were staring at her like she was a Martian with two heads, and make her own class. They ignored her too. In gym class at school, the teacher put some music on and Annabelle began to leap and spin. The teacher told her to stop but Annabelle could not stop. The music had filled the echo-ey gym and grabbed hold of her body. Annabelle could not stop until she had filled the gym with her body in flight, until the song had ended. As she stood before class, the cluster of small eyes around the teacher who grew like a stalk out of the center of them, she was ecstatic with her chest pounding and heaving for breath. She wondered at the distant confused looks, why weren’t they happy like she was? She heard the teacher say, “Just ignore her” and for the rest of the class and the rest of her years at school until she was twelve, it was like she didn’t exist.

    It hurt and she felt bad, like there was something irrevocably wrong with her, like she was broken and could not be fixed and limped through her life not getting picked for teams, and pretending for the sake of the one friend she had, to not be friends so as not to taint her friend’s popularity. Then one day in the girls bathroom while being informed about how incredibly disgusting she was by one of the others, Annabelle decided not to care at all and snubbed all the sneers and comments. This made her terribly popular. But by then, the other’s had become incredibly uninteresting to Annabelle and the concept of her own popularity was of no use to her at all.

    As an adult, Annabelle’s boyfriends were a series of broken toys that needed fixing and she had a cat she found in the street that was missing an eye and couldn’t be touched. Her friends were equal portions brilliant, and incredibly alcoholic. One day, she met a boy who almost drowned in the ocean when he was small. He was passionate, and wise and held a profound fear of water. They fell deeply in love and Annabelle taught him how to swim.

  • Do You Feel Safe

    Do You Feel Safe

    This piece is a part of 12th Street Journal‘s series, “Crisis Expressive,”which focuses on why and how we, as humans, creatively express during personal and public moments of crisis. If you have a story to express, we would be exulted to read it. Submit.

    The essay and song, “Jettison,” are both by New School undergrad, Simone Bridges. She is a writer and rapper, whose inherently poetic and forthright work wakens the seemingly impossible and endless fight of race and power in our country. It’s the gentle honesty of her voice in the essay, which allows anyone to approach it with an equal openness. And it’s the proclamation of “Jettison,” which drives it all home.

    [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/60880392?secret_token=s-VIM62″ params=”auto_play=true&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

     

    I’ve hardly known life without the presence of law enforcement. Growing up as the daughter of an activist in Oakland, my eyes were opened to the flaws of the law at a very early age. I’ve experienced enough run-ins with the cops when I was alone and with my father present , that I know that these meetings aren’t always friendly. This led me to question what kind of relationship other people had with the police. Was it similar to mine? Did they feel safe? These questions are especially prevalent in a beast of a city like New York, where the police are a consistent part of our every day. I felt it necessary for my own peace of mind to know where exactly I stood amongst the people I shared a borough with. I felt face-to-face interactions would serve me best in this case. It was important for me to approach people who didn’t know me or about my history with the boys in blue. I also wanted to get the view of a complete stranger, preferably from Bushwick—the neighborhood I’ve only been able to call home for a year.

    I live off of the Myrtle- Wyckoff L and M train stop, which is a predominately Dominican neighborhood. When I moved here a year ago, my roommate and I were the only young black people in our building. As our neighbors saw it, we were the first signs of gentrification on their block. In its founding years in the mid-1600s, “Boswijck,” was used for farming tobacco, which later developed into businesses in the glue, brick and coal industries. Eventually the city needed the space to build cheap residencies and apartments, which attracted young artists to the area. Young artists are still very attracted to the neighborhood and are moving in all the time along with other young students and workers who cannot afford to live in higher priced neighborhoods. These young artists have the money and resources which make the neighborhood natives uncomfortable. The money that is brought in by these new residents is appealing to old businesses and landlords with old buildings looking to charge new higher prices which often results in the replacement of old neighborhood inhabitants. It is almost as uncomfortable as the increased numbers of police in their area, to protect these new rich people moving in, make them feel. It seems the police have come to the neighborhood for one thing: to make sure this transition of “out with the poor and in the with the rich” goes smoothly.

    I stepped out onto the fire escape outside my living room window for a smoke: my nightly ritual. Below me on the street stood a young white man. He asked me if I had a light. Normally I would have said no—whether I had one or not—but I was interested in his business on my block. So I asked him if he wanted to join. After I told him I lived in apartment to 2L he rang the buzzer and quickly came upstairs and out to the fire escape. Our conversation started casually: he asked me where I was from, and replied Arkansas when I returned the question. He was the first man I’d ever shared space with from Arkansas. He held his long board across his lap—a strange thing to lug onto the fire escape. He sat shivering in his Nirvana T-shirt and cut-off jean shorts. I approached my intent in our conversation quickly; worried that he’d be too cold to stay much longer.

    “Do you live close to here?” I asked,

    “Right down the street,” he replied, “off of the Halsey L stop.”

    “Are there a lot of police at that train station; or walking the streets around your place?”

    I could tell he was searching my face for the answer I wanted to hear.

    “Not more than usual,” he said. I knew my “usual” was different than his, so I asked him to elaborate.

    “I see a few cops out late sometimes,” he explained, “but only like four at a time, nothing major. I got stopped once though. They were waiting for me. It was five A.M. in the morning. It was snowing. It was a work day, so the only people up at five A.M. in the morning getting on a train on a weekday are the working class, so they’re just waiting for someone like myself to do—what they say is ‘not a nice deed.’ So this guy swiped his card and the turnstile said ‘swipe again’ and he swiped it again. It said ‘swipe again’ and the train was arriving. He stepped aside and let me and someone else go through because the train was there. So when I got in, I let him in through the emergency exit, and ran to catch the train. Next thing I know two cops grab me and take me off the train.”
    I wanted to know if the cops were mean…

    “No. It’s just that sense of entitlement they have. They just like slam you up against the wall and point to you and say, ‘For opening the door: 60 dollar ticket.’” His eyes told me that this was the first time in a long time that this kid had thought about the incident. He paused for a long moment as he took another pull from his cigarette. “Now that I think about it, there are a lot of police in undercover cars in my neighborhood.”

    “Does that make you feel safer?” I asked.

    “I’m a hippie” he said, “I personally feel safer because I’m white, and I know that I’m not going to be the subject or target of most things. But just in general, I don’t feel safe around the cops because I know what’s happening with their headquarters. A lot of the cop friends I have, tell me that they are specifically trained to protect property; they are trained to steer you away from your rights. They patrol the streets to make sure that no one is destroying any property. They will question you in a way that you don’t even realize you have a right not to answer them.” He pauses; shakes his head. “They don’t teach you your rights; there’s no program to teach you about your civil rights. If you want to know about that you have to go into a specific class about the law, or something. It’s like first you don’t educate the public about their rights; and then you train the cops to navigate around people’s rights; and now, no one has any rights. The cops just do what they want.”

    I have found it to be true in my own experiences and in the experiences of those around me that the police do do whatever they want. Laws like “Stop and Frisk”—the unconstitutional but legalized tactic of stopping and searching everyday people on the street—are encouraged among the NYPD police force. The criticism of this law began in 2011, when it was reported by the NYPD themselves that “the police are stopping hundreds of thousands of law abiding New Yorkers every year, and the vast majority are Black and Latino”[1]. Not only does this create a dynamic where Black and Latino people are taught to fear the police, but it creates a tension throughout communities that cannot be lightly brushed away.

    A little over a half-hour on the fire escape and the cold was beginning to bother me to an unbearable point. I opened the window for my new neighbor, and watched as he clumsily crawled back into my apartment; long board in hand. We awkwardly found a way to say goodbye as I let him back outside onto the Bushwick block. I thanked him for his time and he thanked me for the light. I closed the door behind him knowing that we would probably never exchange words again.

     

    I met Asa on the Wilson L train stop platform. I noticed her as soon as she swiped her metro card at the turnstile. She was gorgeous. She looked as if she were on the runway, with her shaved head, high heels and thick-framed glasses. I was not being covert in my admiration; searching for a spot on the wall with my eyes when she glanced in my direction. She sat next to me on the bench; readying herself for the twenty-minute wait we were to endure. Normally the train runs every seven minutes or so, but there was work being done on the tracks that night. We would have to be patient.

    I’m always reluctant to approach beautiful women in train stations regardless of my intentions. Strangers are strange, and there is no way to predict a strange person’s actions. But I was feeling a little risky that day, and started the conversation timidly.

    “My name is Simone,” I said. Just as I held my hand out to her, a cop walked passed us in the station. Asa straightened her posture while I looked down. This was the perfect segue. I reached into my pocket for my phone and began to record our conversation.

    “Sorry about that” she said, “My name is Asa” She returned the handshake with a smile easing me into a comfortable space to talk.

    “Yeah they have some sort of presence don’t they?” I asked. “They are always walking around Bushwick. Do you live close to here?”

    “I live down the street from this station, right off of Wilson, I don’t see them walking around much by my house but I do see them frequently inside the train stations” She replied.

    “Does that make you feel safe?” I asked.

    “Safe? I’m not sure If the word is safe, I mean I guess I feel protected in a way, like if something were to happen to me right at this moment right in this place, I suppose they could be of some assistance, but not exactly safe. I think it is great in some cases that they serve as an extra pair of eyes in dangerous situations but when I’m alone with a cop sometimes I wonder if that itself is a dangerous situation” I’m sure my face showed my confusion because she began to explain further. “Like at the end of the day its my word against his, and on the news and stuff these days, especially in Florida a young persons word means nothing, even when they are going up against a corrupt officer”. I told her I noticed that she sat up straight when the officer passed; I asked her if this was something she always did.

    “I did that?” She said as she slouched back into the bench, “I’m not sure if I normally do that, hmm maybe it was a respect thing, my father is in the military so I think subconsciously I am put back into this place of submission whenever I’m in the presence of someone like my father, a man in uniform or something.

    “What about stop and frisk? Are you ever worried about being stopped?” I asked.

    “Me, stopped?” she said. “They would never stop me, look at the way I dress, because I’m very feminine and pack lightly I never have to worry about being stopped to be searched, a few policemen have stopped me to ask me out or whatever you want to call it. It’s different for women who carry themselves like you, or for young men. I am scared for my brother everyday. Everyday before he leaves the house I think about him being a young black man. Do you know what is happening to young black men in the hands of police these days? That’s not my only fear for him though, the police are just one of the problems, my brother is a very sweet beautiful boy and the world rarely sees that when they look at him, what they do see scares them and that scares me.”

    Her last words hit home in a way I wasn’t ready for. I found it true in myself as well that I was afraid of the way that people feared me. When I see a cop my first fear is not of him, it’s of the way he will react to his fear of me. I never feel safe in the presence of cops. When they appear, so do more guns and more tension.

    As the train pulled into the station Asa got up.

    “it was nice to meet you,” she offered. I responded the same and decided the wait for the next train, I needed a moment to sit in my discomfort and pray that I didn’t see another officer for the remainder of my night.

    [1] http://www.nyclu.org/issues/racial-justice/stop-and-frisk-practices

  • A House Divided Against Itself

    A House Divided Against Itself

    This piece is apart of 12th Street Journal‘s series, “Crisis Expressive,”which focuses on why and how we, as humans, creatively express during personal and public moments of crisis. If you have a story to express, we would be exulted to read it. Submit.

     

    A House Divided On Itself

                 Black
    Sheep Black
    Sheep caught
    Shear

                Black
    Sheep Barbara
    Bush
    My daughter,
    What have you said?

               Not
    Tarry Not
    Tarry Gay
    Woman

    Ms. Barbara Bush
    supports marriage.

                   Kind
    Woman Kind
    Woman White
    Man:

    Let’s teach
    the donkeys
    their human
              rights.

             Black
    Man Black
    Mr. President,

    Who have we in office?

               Person
    Some Person
    Mrs. President.

               & White
    Black & White
    Woman
    & Man

    We cannot stand.

  • 2014-15 Online Launch, Tuesday December 2nd, 7PM

    2014-15 Online Launch, Tuesday December 2nd, 7PM

    Date: Tuesday, December 2nd, 2014,

    Time: 7 p.m.

    Location: Union Square Barnes & Noble, 33 East 17th Street, New York, NY 10003.

    Please join us for the 2014-15 12th Street Journal Online launch, with an evening of readings by Alysia Abbott, Jeffery Allen, and Marisa Frasca, along with student contributors to 12thstreetonline.com from the Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy, of the Writing Program at the New School.

     

    Alysia Abbott is a memoirist, essayist and journalist. She is the author of the memoir, Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and an ALA Stonewall Award winner. She has also been published in The New York Times, Slate, and TheAtlantic.com, among other publications. Abbott grew up in San Francisco, and received her MFA in writing from the New School Writing Program. She now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family, where she co-created and runs the website TheRecollectors.com ,  “a storytelling site and community for the many children and families left behind by parents who died of AIDS.”

    Words on Abbott: “At once a father-daughter love story, a testament to survival, a meditation on profound loss, and a searing chronicle of a complex coming of age, Fairyland is a beautiful, haunting book that instructs, even as it breaks our hearts.” – Dani Shapiro, author

     

    Jeffery Renard Allen is a poet, essayist, short-story-writer and novelist. He is the author of the novel, Rails Under My Back, which won the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Fiction; the story collection, Holding Pattern, and two collections of poetry. He has been published in The Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers, and Bomb, among numerous other publications. His writing was also included in the 2010 edition of Best African American Fiction. He was born and raised in Chicago and now lives in New York City, where he teaches at Queens College and in the Writing Program at the New School.

    Words on Allen: “Constructed like a mosaic…Allen’s prose is intense, concentrated. His language, which ranges from the delicately lyrical to the aggressively vulgar, demonstrates extraordinary poise… There is also some preaching from a church pulpit that, if read aloud, would stand a good chance of bringing the house down.”–Stephen Donadio, The New York Times Book Review

     

    Marisa Frasca‘s most recently released collection of poems, Via Incanto: Poems from the Darkroom, was named first runner-up for the 2013 National Bordighera Poetry Prize. She has had her poems published in journals and anthologies, such as: Voices in Italian Americana, 5 AM, Arba Sicula, Philadelphia Poets, and Adanna Journal, among many others. Frasca was born in Vittoria, Italy, and moved to New York City where she earned her BA at The New School and was a Riggio Writing Honors student. She holds an MFA in poetry from Drew University. She now lives in the New York Metro and Long Island area.

    Words on Frasca: “”Frasca’s vision and passion are so arrived, so rich with variation, that they elevate us inside a lyric adventure…her darkroom—part time-capsule, part temple—steals everything. It tests the heart with fire and compression, and it tests all of us with razor-sharp memory.”–Judith Vollmer, poet

  • Finding Beckett

    Finding Beckett

    12th Street Journal’s Editor-In-Chief, Daniel Gee Husson, closes his eyes and sits down to a dreamy and eccentric conversation with the ghost of the avant-garde playwright, Samuel Beckett.

     

    It was winter in my junior year of high school when I first read Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. I was struggling with the normal problems teenage boys all over the world have: isolation, loneliness, failure to fit in…

    These feelings were compounded by the fact that my family and I had just moved from London, England, to Upper Arlington, Ohio, a suburb outside Columbus. Culture shock doesn’t even start to describe what I was dealing with.

    Anyway, back to Godot…

    I was walking down the hall between classes and I saw this English professor—odd that I can’t remember his name now; he used to give me shit about wearing blue jeans. I remember once he walked up to me during a fire drill, and said, “I’m really disappointed, Dan. Why can’t you wear red jeans or something?” “Red jeans?” “Yeah. Or purple or green. Blue’s too boring for you. All the guys on the football team wear blue jeans.” I developed a dyed jeans habit after that.

    Anyway, back to Godot…

    So Mr. Whathisname was standing outside his classroom and handed me a copy of Waiting for Godot. I won’t even try to explain how poorly I pronounced the word Godot. “Trust me,” he said. “You’ll read it and it’ll ruin you for everything else.”

    I ran home after school and put it… somewhere. I lost Waiting for Godot in my house for over a month. Everyday, I would see that same teacher at the same time in the same hallway and he would ask me about his book. After three weeks, I started taking a different stairwell to avoid his classroom.

    “You will take my 20th Century Drama class.” His voice boomed through the cafeteria. “You’ll take it, and you will have finished Godot before class starts in the fall.”

    I found Godot wedged between the Yellow Pages and the phone, sharing space with the little golf pencil my mother left there to jot things down. It was three days before Christmas and we were about to drive about six hours to a relative’s house for the holidays. I read Godot twice on that trip.

    Nothing happens. Nothing happens in the play and nothing happened to me. It’s not like a lightbulb suddenly turned on above by head and I said, “Yes, that’s it. That’s what I want to do. I want to write.” I was going to study acting in college and just didn’t see a part in writing for me.

    I kept reading more plays and I noticed I was comparing them all to Godot: the pacing, the language, all of it. I always looked to Godot when I started writing plays myself. Even as I sit here and write this now, I have been glancing up at my bookshelf to that same copy I was given years ago.

    Anyway, back to Godot…

     

    Daniel Gee Husson: Thanks for agreeing to speak with me today. I have a lot of questions for you.

    Samuel Beckett: It will help pass the time, I suppose.

    DGH: People often lump you in with other Irish writers. How do you respond to that? Do you think it’s fair to be compared to Joyce, for example?

    SB: James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can. So that’s the comparison. To find a form that accommodates the mess; that is the task of the artist now.

    DGH: You say you like to leave things out. I feel that one thing that connects a lot of your plays—Godot, Endgame, Happy Days—is the meditative quality that they contain.

    SB: Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

    DGH: So your advice for writers would be to embrace the pauses and the silence in their work?

    SB: Silence, yes, but what silence? It is all very fine to keep silent, but one has to consider the kind of silence one keeps.

    DGH: What about observation? Do you think it aids writers to be especially in tune with what they see and hear?

    SB: Normally, I didn’t see a great deal. I didn’t hear a great deal, either. I didn’t pay attention. Strictly speaking I wasn’t there. Strictly speaking I believe I’ve never been anywhere.

    DGH: Doesn’t that strike you as a mistake; to ignore your surroundings?

    SB: My mistakes are my life.

    DGH: Let’s changes gears. Do you think it helps to have a routine? Did you have any solid work habits when you were alive?

    SB: Habit is a great deadener.

    DGH: So not to have any particular time or place to write is important to you?

    SB: I tend to rise late in the day.

    DGH: How did your journey as a writer change as you grew older?

    SB: I always thought old age would be a writer’s best chance. Whenever I read the late work of Goethe or W.B. Yeats I had the impertinence to identify with it. Later, with my memory gone, all the old fluency disappeared. I didn’t write a single sentence without saying to myself, “It’s a lie!” So I know I was right.

    DGH: How about advice not just for writers, but for any artist trying to make their way in the world?

    SB: Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.

    DGH: Thanks for allowing me to visit with you.

    SB: Come back tomorrow, if you’d like. I’ll be here.