FRUITSLICE Issue 5: Rituals

Fruitslice

Issue 5 Winter 2024

Ritu als

Insert Your Pet Here

pronouns) (he/him) (she/her) (he/him)

the cOurAGe tO reWrite the script. the BOld, the teNder, the ABsurd, ANd the diviNe.

Fruitslice is A celeBrAtiON OF:

cOMMuNity ideNtiFicAtiON ANd the hABituAtiON OF selF eXpressiON

Fruitslice is A BAcklAsh AGAiNst:

A WOrld thAt sAys this is hOW it’s AlWAys BeeN NOrMs thAt deMANd We shriNk, cONFOrM, Or disAppeAr.

sittiNG Quietly At the kids’ tABle.

this issue is dedicAted tO the MOrNiNG rOutiNes, the MOurNiNG rOutiNes, the WiNdiNG dOWN, the spirAliNG dOWN, the cOMiNG iN, ANd the cOMiNG Out.

This issue is dedicated to the imperfect—to the rituals created through sloppy, messy attempts, propped up by our experiences, loves, and what we have lying around the house.

this issue is dedicAted tO thOse WhO Ask “Why?“

The curious—the ones who pause to question, reimagine, and reclaim the rituals that shape their lives.

tO the seekers OF MeANiNG

Those who find magic in the mundane, who make rituals their own, and who take on uncertainty with an awareness that comfort and routine will come. To those who infuse meaning where there is none—the most human act and the most divine.

The innovators who separate ritual from tradition. Those who see rituals not as shackles but as opportunities—opportunities to embrace, reject, or redefine the practices that shape our lives.

Those who come together to celebrate, to mourn, to connect, and to create. In your hands, rituals become acts of resistance, reclamation, and love.

Spinning stories from silence and finding significance in the quotidian. It’s a fragile, profound thing—the work of shaping life into something worth holding onto.

tO thOse reWritiNG the script

tO the cOMMuNities thAt GAther With purpOse

tO All OF us

letter FrOM the editOrs

Dearest Reader,

So we meet again. We’ve officially surpassed the one-year-of-Fruitslice milestone and you, readers, keep coming back for more. The cycle continues, the wheel turns, and we are honored to continue sharing the love, care, joy, and vulnerability that permeates the pages of each issue. Your Editors at Fruitslice say hello and welcome back. Contributors, staff, and readers alike–you are what makes us Fruitslice. You are the force that powers the Fruitslice lifecycle. You are our heart. We hope to see you over and over again. Thank you for sticking with us.

As we readied ourselves to embark on Issue 5, our second winter installment, we reflected on the repetition, processes, and rituals that brought us here. As a Queer-run literary arts quarterly publishing work exclusively by and for our community, we’ve had to reframe our own notions of work and reinvent models for what the world could look like if Queer voices were invited in rather than kept out. Many mainstream media outlets, magazines, and publications are built on long-established traditions of exclusion and a ritual of excising that which does not conform. We denounce the entities that censor and police our narratives and instead dedicate ourselves to radical storytelling and living archives, documenting our present while building liberatory futures. Through this issue, we assert that we will no longer be swept under the rug or kept at the periphery; we will no longer be the ritual sacrifices and scapegoats of a society that refuses to accept us wholly, as we are.

This issue is an acknowledgement of the ways we have all had to rework, reimagine, and redefine spaces and rituals not built to accommodate us. It is a recognition that each of us have forged new paths and rites of passage for ourselves and our community. When the ritual does not name us, we have learned how to name ourselves. When the habitual acts began to harm instead of hold us, we were the ones to break them down and begin again.

Through this cycle of reading, writing, and creating in community, we’ve tasked you with exploring the ways rituals are infused in the fabric of our daily lives, especially when they defy our expectations. From Queer weddings to holidays with our chosen families, how do we hold space for and reinvent meaningful milestones? How do we participate in rituals? How do Queer communities craft rituals and practices that affirm us as individuals and as a collective? Can we recreate the rituals that originally sought to wound us, transforming them into something else entirely?

We hope you’ll leave this issue with an expanded perception and understanding of what a ritual can represent. Each contributor in this volume has shared something sacred. We hope you’ll be tender and gracious with others’ visions and interpretations, and remember to bear witness to one another’s alchemy. This volume braids the old world’s rituals with the new as smoothly as the tide follows the moon. May you find comfort in the familiar while challenging yourself with new perceptions. Rituals to keep, rituals to renew. Rituals to live by and rituals to die by. Rituals sewn together, stripe by stripe, by a community in need. When each of our G-ds has called upon us to perform the sacred, we answered the call.

In uncertain times, one of the greatest gifts we can receive from one another is grace. Against a backdrop of global war and genocide, while resisting a political system that is antithetical to our wellbeing and interests, and in the face of a national backslide that targets many in our community, we hope this issue serves as a reminder to prioritize the rituals of care that propel and protect us. Prioritize caring for yourself and holding each other close. Prioritize the communal, collective, and cooperative. Our rituals and practices (including those passed down from the Queer ancestors who came before us) will remain steadfast and holy–however you choose to define them.

Let’s make a better, Queerer world together.

Above all, the Editors at Fruitslice want you to know this: We see you. We love you. We think you’re beautiful.

Art by Ais Russell

CONTENT WARNING: This issue aims to reclaim and reshape the rituals and ceremonies that have previously mistreated, denied, and shut out our community. In doing so, Fruitslice Editors and our contributors do not shy away from interrogating the damage that traditions and rites have often inflicted on Queer people throughout history. Even as we celebrate the new paths and practices we’ve constructed for ourselves, we also address more difficult topics including homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia, racism, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, slurs (at times weaponized by those who aren’t intending to reclaim them), religious trauma, strained family dynamics, addiction, the injustices of incarceration, sexual themes and nudity, sexual assault, interpersonal violence and abuse, graphic imagery (including blood and bodily harm), mental health struggles, body image, dysphoria, self-harm, grief and bereavement, death, and genocide. These themes are all critically important and interwoven with our history and community. We hope you manage your discomfort as it arises and take steps to care for yourself.

Every effort was made to contact and properly credit copyright holders. Please get in touch with us regarding corrections or omissions. Reproducing or reprinting all or any part of this zine without prior consent will be considered utterly disrespectful and generally uncool.

cONtriButOrs

• Aaron Hutts

• Ais Russell

• Amber Janay Cooper

• Amica Huynh

• André Le Mont Wilson

• Angelina Leaños

• Ann McCann

• Anz Yurcaba

• Ava Crane

• Bailey Bauer

• Bobbie Webb

• Cam Reid

• Casper Orr

• Celeste deBardelaben

• Chimera Mohammadi

• Christine Kao

• Donald Patten

• Dustin Keirns

• Edward Luellin

• Eugénie Koshka

• Fox Welsh

• giorgia sage

• Greta McGee

• Hailey Green

• Hailey Sprinkel

• Hazmin Hermosillo

• Jaxon Seraphina

• Jeffrey Alfier

• Jennifer Bastian

• Jill Young

• Joe Klaus

• Juan Sebastian Restrepo

• Kayla Thompson

• Kelsey Smoot

• Khanh Nguyen

• Kim Arthurs

• Landin Eldridge

• Lexi McDonald

• Liam Strong

• Maggie McDonald

• Maxwell Edmonds

• Meg Streich

• Mercy Tempest Turle

• Micah Brown

• Moe Leady

• Moxie Bright Evan

• Nyanjah Charles

• René Zadoorian

• Rhyker Dye

• Roman Campbell

• Rowan Mucci

• Roxanne Gonzalez

• Sam J. Leeds

• Samantha Stevens

• Scott-Patrick Mitchell

• Skyelar Wiedrich

• Starly Lou Riggs

• T.S. Leonard

• Taylor Michael Simmons

• Tess Conner

• Tom Infection

• tuff cretin

clAss OF issue 5

Chloe Oloren Founding Editor-in-chief

Melanie Zhgenti Art Director

Nicole Hernandez Reyes Art Director

McKenna Gray Senior Designer

Jason Wayne Wong Production Coordinator

Cam Reid Senior Editor

Kayla Thompson Senior Editor

Starly Lou Riggs Senior Editor

Meg Streich Senior Editor

Casper Orr Senior Editor

Ann McCann Senior Editor

Em Buth Senior Editor

Andi Rand Editor

ashley hunt Editor

Bailey Bauer Editor

Caroline Lopez Editor

Ellie Allan Editor

Hamish Bell Editor

Kamrin Park Editor Ky Tanella Editor

Rhyker Dye Editor

Sarah Josephine Pennington Editor

SJ Wasachi Editor

Tess Conner Editor

Bellamy Bodiford Literary Staff

Cal Vaught Literary Staff

Ellie Davis Literary Staff

Kahlea Williams Literary Staff

Maggie Franckhauser Literary Staff

Micah Brown Literary Staff

Natalie Walton Literary Staff

Nikolai Renee Literary Staff

Rene Zadoorian Literary Staff

Roman Campbell Literary Staff

Timothy Arliss OBien Literary Staff

Zoey Knauf Literary Staff

teAM Fruitslice

Executive Council

Ann McCann

Ariel Tusa

Bellamy Bodiford

Cam Reid

Caroline Gharis

Casper Orr

Chloe Oloren

Em Buth

Emma Hochhalter

Jason Wayne Wong

Kayla Thomposon

Meg Streich

Melanie Zhgenti

Nicole Hernandez Reyes

Nikolai Renee

Olivia Bannerman

Rhyker Dye

Starly Lou Riggs

Board of Directors

Ann McCann

Chloe Oloren

Jason Wayne Wong

Founding Editor-in-Chief

Chloe Oloren

Art Directors

Melanie Zhgenti

Nicole Hernandez Reyes

Senior Designer

Mckenna Gray

Director of Development & Communications

Ann McCann

Creative Strategy & Operations Coordinator

Caroline Gharis

Website Design & Technical Support

Olivia Bannerman

Production Coordinator

Jason Wayne Wong

Organizational Community Director

Rhyker Dye

Operational Chronicler

Casper Orr

Events Director

Emma Hochhalter

Assistant Events Director

Cal Vaught

Project Manager

Hailey Green

Social Media Marketing Lead

Ariel Tusa

Social Media Team

Ann McCann

Caroline Gharis

Daisy-Drew Smith

Dillon Parker

Hailey Green

Meg Streich

In-House Comic Illustrator

Meg Streich

GABriel’s cAleNdAr

by Dustin Randall Keirns

Photo

Joey they/them

everydAy AlcheMy

it WAs All teeth

smoking is a real nasty habit to have. I know because I’ve got it—that hunger, that need to fill a cup until its overflowing, until water is spilling into a freezing puddle on the tile and there’s not enough paper towels in the whole world to ever mop it up.

I smoked pot until my sister sat me down and told me I was turning into smoke too—slowly dissipating into thin air before her eyes, floating up to the ceiling before disappearing. She asked me if I wanted to disappear. I thought about the college courses I’d been failing and then dropped, my car that was rusting like some garbage in the driveway, the thick fog that seemed to settle over everything I touched. But how could I say yes to that girl? My sister with the honey blonde sew-in and the big brown eyes that could swallow the moon. My sister who wanted nothing more than for me to put my useless, idiot feet back on the ground and stay close to her, where the earth is solid.

“No, Elodie,” I told her. “I don’t.”

“Okay, then,” she said, and flushed all my shit—my metallic pink grinder, my last eighth, my bedazzled pipe, my cherry-flavored cart. I watched the fuzzy green nuggets spin and spin in the toilet water, round and bloated like some kid’s dead fish. She held my hand as they went down, that angel, the bottoms of her pink acrylics fluttering over top my brown skin. Nobody will ever love me as much as she does, I remember thinking to myself, no matter how hard they try.

I really did try to quit. For real. I’d say these affirmations I found online in the mirror every single morning, no matter how ridiculous I felt. I’d look into my own round face, trying to love every inch of it—my flat nose, my full lips, my buzzcut a few weeks past needing a trim—and I’d recite the words real seriously. I deserve to have a clear head, I’d say to my blank face. I am in control of my own emotions and thoughts. I am worth trying for.

Quitting cold turkey is not a thing for the weak, not a thing to settle into. It was hard

to sleep, even harder to eat. My sister saw me, though, a cicada shell of a person stuck to the walls of our place, and she helped. She fed me, up in the kitchen before and after she got back from her business casual type job, chicken and rice and beans. She stayed up with me on nights where I was wide awake way into the AM, wrapping us both in a blanket while Orange is the New Black played real soft through our living room. I was convinced she could’ve anchored the Titanic with just her two arms. She sure anchored me.

I could deal with those things, though—the insomnia, the no appetite, the anxiety. It was about as easy as threading a pile of mini sewing needles, but I was doing it. The biggest monster was myself; that gross, twisted craving inside of me just begging and begging to be satisfied. I was home alone one day, those hours between when my sister leaves and comes back. My phone vibrated in my pocket and, as unsuspecting as a lamb with a blade to its neck, I opened it.

eve what happened to thursdays?

Just the notifications themselves had me wide-eyed, the messages like a crooked picture frame, all ugly and out of place. The contact name read anita, some syllables that—admittedly—I’d let my mouth get too used to saying. They’re this tornado of a person, this whirlpool, this screaming avalanche. A natural disaster, so beautiful and so out-of-control, turning everyone they touch into rubble. They’re the only person I’ve ever been in love with. And, also, they’re my plug.

Looking at the texts suddenly made me feel like a criminal. Lots of Thursdays washed over me, jagged patches of memory clouded with smoke. Once a week I’d get a quarter ounce.

I’d text Anita, usually just an im ready, and they’d show. They’d park their busted up Cadillac in my driveway, slide out the driver’s side like a shadow. I’d watch them from my living room window sometimes. Breathing in

the way that 5pm sunlight made their black curls look fiery red—the stubborn ghost of a previous box-dye job. It’s real hard to look away from a person like that; arched nose and full lips, dark eyes like midnight. They’d knock at my door—two knocks, never more— and hand me a mason jar sealed with a navy blue ribbon.

“That’ll be sixty,” they’d say, but I’d invite them out back and they’d forget I owed them any money at all. I’d roll some and light it and we’d lay out under the mango tree in my backyard; its leaves long and slender above us. The thicker the smoke got, the heavier the conversation—the more tangled our limbs in the grass. I’ve told them things I’d never even think of telling nobody else. About my dad’s divorce and my dead dog, the person I was in highschool; heavy, boring garbage like that. They knew me like a pianist knows their keys, fingers magnetic to the notes.

And I thought I knew them the same. We’d had the same routine for years—I know what went down at their brother’s funeral, which side of their top surgery scars they like more, where their dead kitten was buried. I knew their body well, their mind even better.

Words by Skyelar Wiedrich

“Oh,” they said into the darkness. I felt them rub their eyes with a fist before answering, slow and languid in the pitch black. “I think we’re fine just the way we’ve been.” I was quiet, one with the pipes and the moon. “Isn’t this enough?”

eve

what happened to thursdays?

No matter how bad I willed the messages to disappear, they sat there—bright and obnoxious and begging. I looked up and saw one of Elodie’s fake eyelashes stuck to my nightstand, splayed out like a spider. I am worth trying for.

The sex was good. It was all teeth, mostly. Bite marks on my inner thighs, on my chest, little bruises where they dug their fingers in real hard, my bottom lip swollen from their canines when we kissed. I liked it. I like them. We’d lay together afterwards, their head on my chest, my fingers slipping through their curls. It was all whispers—you’re so beautiful, they’d say, half sleeping, like rain clouds.

i’m done with all of it please don’t come here again

Once, so high that nobody in the world could’ve stopped me, I said what I was really thinking. We were both fully naked, curled together above the blankets, covered in the moonlight leaking through my curtains.

“I’m in love with you.” The room was so quiet I could hear water running through the pipes, Elodie taking a shower upstairs. “Be my girlfriend? My boyfriend?” I didn’t care which. “Be my everything.”

recipe for a ritual summer dip

Words and Photos by Sam

J. Leeds

on the first day above 75°- 70° if feeling brave find a lake

any body of water will do but it’s best to feel the water on bare skin so a nude beach is ideal

carpool or bike or bus to the water

lay summer fruits out for a drenched and hungry return slather on sunscreen—be sure to cover any fresh scars— bask until your skin is warm to the touch strip down run into the water squeal let it rise above your waist ~ under your armpits ~ up to your neck

notice it no longer feels cold if able, swim out breathe take in the new view —remember the several seasons gone since the last swim— see your legs glistening beneath the water submerge and listen to the quiet let the water learn who you’ve become in the seasons passed begin the slow swim back to shore feel the rocks and algae under foot emerge from the water dripping return to the towel and your sun-kissed summer fruits repeat as many times as possible in as many bodies of water as possible until the sun leaves again

cOOk yOurselF hOMe

Words by Fox Welsh

Photo by Dustin Randall Keirns

He sits at your desk in the center of your tiny studio apartment, adorned with the speakers you built by hand. This was supposed to be your home, but you are fading fast. Green and purple flashes meld with shouts of rage. The one who shouts the most creative, most offensive insult wins. Either the team laughs or they fight harder to win. With each shout and laugh and whoop of victory you fold into yourself a fraction more, getting smaller and smaller. Cocksucker. Pussy. Come get me fucking faggot.

You retreat into the kitchen, pray that someday you won’t cringe every time he yells, won’t feel on edge about his ability to take up space. But the kitchen… the kitchen has become your sanctuary. Slip the headphones into your ears and turn the music up until he is only a far-off echo of something you used to give all of your attention to. Let the music move through you. Don’t think about your failings, your sacrifices, your silence. Don’t think about the bed that burns your skin when you lie in it. Your bed, now claimed by his hands, his skin, his urges.

Open your cookbook, the one you bought on a whim wandering through the bookstore, the word “vegan” catching your eye for reasons you don’t yet understand. You uncover a world where it’s normal to soak almonds.

You fish them from the hazy water one at a time, slip the skins from creamy bodies and drop them naked into the blender. Sometimes you squeeze too hard, sending them pinging across the room. You smile, often the first smile in days, amazed at how far you manage to shoot it.

shed their skin wait to be crushed into something new, a different kind of whole.

He eats buffalo wings and doritos while you massage lemon into kale, juice stinging the fresh cuts on your fingers. You are still learning to wield a knife, to have control over your own sharpest edge. Acid burns bright, cleansing his voice from your thoughts if only for a moment.

You cut green apple and cucumber into cubes, dropping them into the bottoms of mason jars. You will be working until midnight and need to bring food with you. You make a spare. You aren’t sure you’ll be able to force your feet back up the front steps, back into your bed with him.

But you will need to eat eventually.

You drain the lentils simmering on the stove, black liquid dripping into the drain. You think, maybe I am just simmering, cooking off all that darkness and one day I will be soft, palatable. You scoop a dollop into each jar.

The dressing is your favorite part: lemon juice, maple syrup, olive oil, mustard, salt and pepper to taste. Shake until you remember what it feels like to want, to leave this man for somewhere you can relearn love.

Shove as much kale into the jars as you can fit and marvel at the deep green curling edges. Pour in dressing and seal the lids.

As you cleanse the space, wipe down the counters, wash the dishes, you hum along to the music in your headphones, your heart steady, breathing easy. There is no question. You deserve to be nourished. This tiny room is yours, set away from the rest of the apartment: a fridge, a stove, a blender. Everything you need to remember what it means to want to stay alive. Befriend the knives. Learn what it means to hold the power. Pour the fresh almond milk into your tea. Leave for work. Don’t kiss him if you don’t want to.

dreAM suite

Art by Amber Janay Cooper

relAtiONship rituAls

Celeste deBardelaben’s Relationship Rituals is a photographic series exploring the rituals and traditions people share in relationships, asking the question: “How do these small, repeated habits keep two people connected?” This collection is inspired by the rituals in our lives that connect us to our community, a reminder to take a step back when our practices become second nature and our spaces taken for granted.

DeBardelaben, reminded of her own relationship and practice of devotion, captures the shared rituals shared within others’ relationships, not in mere words, but in purposeful actions and daily rhythms. In thinking about relationship rituals, she asks her viewers the questions; “Are your rituals compulsory? Are they public or private? As a Queer couple, do your rituals differ between your private and public life?”

In Relationship Rituals, Celeste deBardelaben captures moments from four different couples. Val taking up the ritual of caring for Amanda’s chug, Doggo, as if he were her own, side-by-side with Amanda; LeAnne and Julianna sharing the gadgets and gizmos that represent their love, each beautiful moment marked by a memento or photo to forever commemorate the memory; Paula and Kendall walking to a coffee shop on a Sunday morning, creating a new ritual for themselves on a day synonymous with worship and devotion, a day of devotion all the same; Riona and Justin listening to a long since memorized mixtape made in college, reminiscing on their beginnings—acknowledging growth—as ritual.

Words and Art by Donald Patten

Oil pAiNtiNGs OF MushrOOMs

The subject of these oil paintings are illustrative depictions of a mushroom that has a cute smiling face. These are part of series of smiling mushroom paintings that I have been making for the past 2 years. There are currently 200 oil paintings. I feel so much joy making them and seeing how they make others feel joy and smile. They are inspired by the mushrooms I see on nature walks around Mid-Coast Maine. So I use the unique and beautiful shapes that mushrooms create to make the paintings in the series. I explore my identity by making art that expresses my joy.

AN OFFeriNG At yOur tired Feet

Words by Samantha Stevens

I didn’t need you. To be anything is exhausting, and you were so much before I came along and demanded these versions of you. Years pickled beyond recognition, I got the brine,

Still, there are parts of you I’d choose if allowed to reach my hand into the jar. Unmuddled, I see you, strawberryhaired girl on granny’s swing, head in a book, briefly up-up and away from

men who left, or tried.

Only boy, quiet philosopher, tender of roses. You were handed a crude implement already broken and sharp, a double-edged absence your life depended on. You worked to make it

This imperfect union of making do and keeping on. There was always music, and everything stretched thin always reached me. I earned each part of myself and took them all with me, but what comes is an offering at your tired feet.

matcha poem Words by Samantha Stevens

I bring a matcha so smooth and fi nds fullness. to my lips there must be the way it empties an unearthly explanation evidence of this body for how we both arrived mind having so much to this cup, having gathered and suddenly I don’t only the light that allowed I can feel sometimes, sweetness, loosely shrouded I remember how in a human-made shade until type of morning. buds, with the vaguest ideas on the surface of my favorite of becoming, broke off now a golden koi from the patterns of years. beneath the murky waters, I thank the hand that joy that sank that poured it And there it is again, and many others from sunken bitterness. who labored allowing me in suspension, whisked away to be held

shAriNG a MOMeNt

"Sharing a Moment" captures candid portraits of life on 35mm film and is composed of three subcollections.

The first subcollection, "Daily Rituals," chronicles small rituals between friends and chosen family that make getting through the days at work and university feel bearable, from the everyday repetitions to the once-a-year occasions.

Photos by Bobbie Webb

"Winter Walk" is a collection from January 1st, a date given each year to chosen family. After the difficulties of Christmas, we create our own peace and comfort to welcome in the new year with the people that we choose to keep close, reminding us of the love and power of family.

The final subcollection, "Al Fresco and Sharing Lunch," is collected from time spent in Paris and observes the daily act of carrying garden chairs and tables through the city to the river bank where people often picnic with fresh bottles of wine.

Capturing these moments has been a way of celebrating the small but significant rituals that keep us connected to one another. These photographs reflect the warmth, resilience, and intimacy that chosen family brings—especially within the Queer community. Even amidst life's challenges, we can create spaces of joy, love, and belonging.

Photos by Hazmin Hermosillo

Words byMaggieMcDonald

The concept of girlhood was foreign to me. Exotic, repellent, it slid off my shoulders when I’d attempt to try it on. It wasn’t something girls were eager to share. I’m not sure it was something I even wanted. I was neither girl nor boy—something else, like a bug. Something different, maybe something worse.

In kindergarten, I had about three friends. One of them was a loud redheaded girl named Megan who still wanted to spend recess on the monkey bars until her palms calloused. Megan was maybe more girl than me, but she was also feelers there that poked outside the girl box, strange imagined worlds inside her head that often synced with mine. Together, we would play Sky-Sky, a game where we were squirrels who stole and ate underwear. Sometimes, the game entailed just threatening to steal and eat a pair of panties or a lacy thong; other days, it was drawing the squirrels stashing their plunder for winter in elaborate tree cities. On some occasions, we would tell the main pageant girl of our class, Bailey, that we had already stolen and eaten her underwear, and it would piss her off. Girls didn’t want bugs getting a taste of what was theirs.

bug, extra legs and no boys;

When we went to the reptile house, I remember Megan jumping over the big snake, Baby, who they kept in a bathtub. Some other kids also jumped over the big snake but I did not. Can you imagine stepping on the big snake? It’d be like stepping on yourself, all neck, just one long throat.

I did get invited to the party of one of the girls in my class one time and it was a tea party where you got to wear jewelry and fancy hats. Invite list: girls and girl-adjacentbug-things and it was a small class and etiquette rules girl world, after all. The birthday duchess’ name was Dakota and her dad shot some rattlesnakes on their ranch once and made the rattles into earrings for her. I thought she was so beautiful; I wished she’d shed her jean jacket and I could crawl right into it and take the shape she was. The girls navigated the tea room naturally in their gloves and feather boas; my head drooped under a flower-coated brimmed hat while I watched, enraptured, as they fondled floral tea cups. Everyone got sick off the finger sandwiches and punch afterwards.

In fifth grade, my main friend was called Kyle. One of the girls hated me because I got to skip fourth so I think the other girls maybe hated me too for that, just a little. Girls like to hate in groups. People like to hate in groups. It’s one of the great unifiers. Sometimes you can become hate and transcend girl altogether, just for a little while. They will stuff you back in your box though, just know it.

Anyways, Kyle was boy, thoughtlessly, and he wore his freckles and reinforced-knee pants like some sort of divine right. Together, we’d draw our strict German teacher, uglier and uglier, on our desks in dry-erase marker until the markers got confiscated. Kyle approved of how hideous I’d make her and the way I’d do his work for him in art class sometimes.

One thing I thought would make me very normal, always, was to get a boy to have a crush on me and maybe take me to a dance. If we could touch each other red-hot to Lips of an Angel by Hinder in the lunchroom after school hours with all the luau themed decor up—oh! To be elevated to a show-and-tell object from the lowly status of bug, my pockets would drip with social capital and my wide, white-veneered smile would shine with normalcy. But I could not have a crush in a normal way; as ever, I felt the urge to feed and become. I’d think of Josh from class every time I had to go to the dentist, how he’d want to kiss me for my well-manicured teeth and how I’d sink those teeth right into him until he was nothing and I was full. Would I get sick afterwards, finger sandwiches and tea all over again? Would it even matter?

the sea & me: a personal ritual for reflection

Words and Art by Amica Huynh

Mr.V he/him

AltArs OF Our MAkiNG

QuArtet FOr three vOices

I: This language palpitates as light against its own intention — manifests as infestation: musk & blood & man. Razors in the room of mind, I cut spectral cataracts with the lens of never stay — shower, scour God’s deadname from skin & dress Her ghost.

There, amidst the almost-light, I almost like myself again — meditate on depth & breath — breathe deep — almost drown. Vacuum still abhors itself despite a dispassionate void — what is a shadow beyond light’s nostalgia — a relic of absence or presence?

Where is the light in this shot coming from? Where does the light want to go? Is a man judged by the depth of his shadow or all the things she leaves behind?

II: Can you hear me now? This voice is no fragile art,

you art, despite its

born beneath the sign of the bull

in a china shop, its syllables, like strings of harps or archers will break skin if let to snap

dressed for a dance with the shah of the elephant shrews.

Sword-arm in my throat constricts itself around my larynx; pulls up prayer beads from the sheath, which, once, had housed a gun—

both the snowstorm’s softness & the freezing death that follows — queen of the elephants around larynx; a wire-mother’s rehearsal of softness — every gate, pāragate passing more

every whispered rosary breath is running out.

pacific — there are oceans still too shallow for fathomless voices to fathom — this body is a submarine; its

is an artifice, too — Freed from its lacuna, any bridge becomes a stele — pantheon to pilgrim-gods whose paths now all have past — Child of Holy God on Highways, where on Earth can you call home? Angels forfeit elbow room at heaven’s customs check — Devils bet on falling stars — Everything’s the same.

* * *

to start this work? this name, this act of Mercy? — Oh, Love elbow room at heaven’s over again:

Let me start this life — I mean this Language— over again:

A fire never snuffs itself; it’s either starved or smothered—

Darkness

Darkness does not know the difference: Only the death of the light.

Tenderness this tongue’s slow tromp transcends; truth, like love, leaves temples empty.

uNder AN OctOBer MOON

Art by Roxy Gonzalez

Under an October Moon, a relief print, depicts stereotypical imagery often associated with Witchcraft and Paganism. The piece explores the preconceived notions and fears held by those who misunderstand or fear these practices, offering a deeper reflection on spirituality and its many forms.

This piece came to me as a way to express how individuals who fear witchcraft or paganism might envision our rituals. Each element draws inspiration from the imagery they might associate with us—dark, mysterious, and otherworldly. Yet, these stereotypes couldn't be further from the truth. There is so much stigma against any religion that strays outside the bounds of Christianity, but these fears are rooted in ignorance and misinformation, not reality.

Our path is one of harmony and intention, guided by the principle of "Do no harm, take no shit." This mantra is central to many of us, representing a balance of kindness and self-protection. It emphasizes that while we aim to live peacefully, we also honor and defend our boundaries.

This piece challenges the stereotypes associated with witchcraft and paganism, inviting viewers to confront their assumptions and reflect on their understanding of spirituality. The intricate details—like the goat’s head, candles, and overgrown foliage—provoke thought while maintaining an edge of shock value for those unwilling to question their biases.

Ultimately, Under an October Moon asks viewers to look deeper than surface-level fears and embrace a broader, more nuanced view of spiritual practices. It’s a piece meant to challenge, provoke, and, most importantly, spark conversation.

When asked to fill in the religion checkbox in demographics forms, for many years, I picked ‘agnostic.’ I didn’t want to commit to a label. I just wanted people to leave me alone.

My family was technically Buddhist, but only my aunt and uncle practiced it. My aunt religiously follows the fasting and festival dates, and my uncle was instrumental in setting up a temple in San Jose. My parents didn’t make us go to temple. We had a family altar and paid respects to our ancestors, but I didn’t consider it a religion. More a responsibility.

During the pandemic, I shifted from ‘agnostic’ to ‘spiritual.’ I delighted in how deliciously vague that was. Spiritual could mean anything, a different way of not committing. It could conjure up images of the holy, the devout, the pure. I knew the truth, and it amused me: I was a witch.

Being a modern witch in New York in a time of dark academia was quite easy. Trader joe’s cinnamon whisks and muji scented candles. Almost every bookshop worth its black salt had a section full of exquisitely painted card decks used for divination: a buffet to dive into.

Tarot decks were invented in Italy in the 1430s. The standard modern tarot deck is based on the Venetian tarot. It consists of 78 cards divided into two groups. The major arcana spans a lifetime journey. The minor arcana has four suits. Wands are ambitions; cups are emotions; swords are intellect; pentacles are wealth.

In the 1780s, a French clergyman first assigned meaning to tarot cards. He created a link between tarot and Egyptian mythology, even claiming that the word was derived from ancient Egyptian meaning “Royal Road of Life.” None of these claims were ever substantiated, though the lack of evidence did not keep his work from spreading like cards.

I used tarot as a way to soul search. I asked the deck questions that I grappled with. I didn’t believe in the divine, but rather intuition: whatever card was pulled would guide me on what I secretly wanted. Tarot unearthed my deepest desires. When I got into the Masters program overseas, I pulled a spread with the two of wands. The card showed a two-faced Janus, the Roman god of transitions, looking through the doorway back at the past and towards the future. Potential paths, new journeys, and overseas travel. When I was trying to decide if I should leave my job that was draining my soul and creative energy, my spread included the king of pentacles (depicted as a woman). A provider, the pinnacle of success. Except: the card was in reverse, which meant putting money before anything else or being stuck in a dull rut. That shook me to my foundations, reminding me to reexamine my priorities. The cards didn’t tell me to uproot my life and continue searching in a different place, but they reassured me that I was following the decision that resonated with my soul.

In the French colonial period, spiritual activities flourished in Vietnam. Two new religions emerged during that time. Séances to communicate with the dead led to the formation of Caodaism. Hòa Hao Buddhism originated from a founder believed to possess miraculous healing and psychic abilities, able to look at the past and the future. Janus, through the doorway.

The spring before I graduated, Sister Dang Nghiem, a Buddhist nun, came to lecture to students at MIT about mindfulness. She practiced in the tradition of Thích Nhât Hanh, a Buddhist monk and activist who had been exiled from Vietnam before the war. The day after the lecture, she hosted an “eating meditation” event that I attended. I did not consider myself a Buddhist then, but events hosted by Vietnamese people of renown were rare. The attendees were served a meal and encouraged to savor each bite: to think about what they were eating and to be present in the moment instead of jumping to consider the next spoonful. The nun pointed out that often, before we were even finished chewing, our hands would grasp the utensil and already form the next bite. I retracted my hand from my fork, letting the tines fall softly back to the plate.

Hòa Hao Buddhism, or Phât Giáo Hòa Hao, was founded in 1939 by Huỳnh Phú Sô. It rose from the An Giang Province of Miên Tây, the western region of the Mekong Delta. He quickly amassed followers, his work as a mystical healer and his prophecies on the outbreak of world war II and the conquest of Southeast Asia by Japan leading to his success. He proclaimed himself as the reincarnation of the Buddha.

As my journey into spirituality unfolded, I started getting into meditation and mindful practices, which, in modern western practice, is based on many Buddhist teachings and methods. An Easterner using a western lens to understand Eastern principles. I had circled back to home, in an attempt to escape it. The way I primarily interact with and understand my own culture was through concepts and language presented to me by its colonizers.

The community meditation session a friend and I attend Thursday evenings is hosted at a Japanese Buddhist temple by an older white male who gives the energy of a retired navy SEAL. My nightstand has a host of books on Buddhism, mostly about Japanese Zen Buddhist practices.

As an experiment, I marked ‘Buddhist’ on the last demographic survey that I took.

Huỳnh Phú Sô and his followers became a key nationalist and anti-colonialist force, with strong sentiment against the colonial French rulers. The Hòa Hao struggled against a deluge of persecutors. Since the fall of Sài Gòn, they have been in conflict with the new communist government, which only recognized the Hòa Hao religion in 1999.

I was born in the same region that gave birth to Hòa Hao Buddhism. I came to the United States the same year that it was officially recognized. In San Jose, where my family relocated, there is a temple for the branch Hòa Hao. On its walls are two documents: a list of gratitude, and a deed. Both documents feature the name of the realtor: my uncle.

My journey into spirituality, which began with me refusing to accept my Buddhism, led me to tarot and fortune telling – the origins of the sect that my family worships.

Vietnam was colonized by China, France, Japan, and the United States.

I am learning in English, using mostly Japanese Buddhist resources that are available to me. The tarot that led me to my decision to better engage with my Buddha nature originated partially with the French, and Vietnamese fortune telling practices originated with China.

I am infusing new meaning into their words and practices, and making it my own. By performing this colonization in reverse, am I undoing the layers of restraint put upon the Vietnamese by their oppressors? Would it ever be possible to strip all that bare, to reveal a Vietnam unencumbered, and free? Is Vietnam only possible because of the blended culmination of all of these influences?

In San Jose this past Têt, I joined in my aunt’s tradition of going to the different temples to seek blessings. We first visited the temple of our family’s religion. We then visited other popular Vietnamese-Chinese temples in San Jose. The next day, we drove up to the mountains to visit the grand temple there. I still did not consider myself a Buddhist, back then. I did wear an áo dài, and bowed and prayed at the altars, and thınh for an object from the temples. Water bottles and tangerines and beaded bracelets, symbols of good luck blessings once consumed or worn.

At the last temple, I threw moon dice and sticks to tell my fortune. Two sticks landed on the ground, though you were only meant to have one, usually. The thirteenth and the tenth.

Next to the platform were pieces of paper that explained what each fortune meant. Since the thirteenth fell out first, I took it, and asked my mom if I should take the tenth, too. She insisted. The thirteenth was a peaceful fortune, though not a good one. It told me that I was currently in a difficult, tumultuous situation. It warned me to be careful when going far, to watch over finances and new people I met. The tenth was a good fortune, showing that all aspects of life had been achieved: family well, fortunes secure.

I could see why my mom, worried about my future, had insisted I take the tenth, but upon rereading the fortunes, the thirteenth was more telling. A snapshot of a soul in turmoil, of the search not being finished. I was in a period of turbulence, about to move across the country again to seek change and to chase the potential of new work. I was still searching for love, for deeper friendships, for meaning, for myself.

What does it mean to be Vietnamese? To be Buddhist? To belong?

Art by Kim Arthurs

in another life, i would light candles with shaky hands, wax dripping onto my fingers, and kneel, a willing supplicant at His altar.

in this one, He comes to me.

vessel aching, pleas dripping from his lips like honey wine.

(does He know that i am selfish? that this, this is as much for me as it is for Him?)

my God is beautiful, spread out in my sheets as i straddle Him.

WordbyRomanCampbell diviNity

His shoulder blades are mountains, the curve of His spine a river, endless plains of porcelain skin stretching out in front of me.

my God is beautiful, and i am pious, thorough in my worship.

i rub my hands together, warming the sacred oil. it’s sweet, fragrant on my skin.

joints crack and pop under my fingers like a flickering fire.

muscles soften beneath my palms like melting butter

as i move, my eyes trace his skin like scripture. i mouth the verses woven in the freckles on his arms; hum the hymns hidden in the divot of his tailbone.

when i am sated, taste of prayer still heavy on my tongue, i press a chaste kiss to the nape of his neck.

as we lie boneless, “this,” i think, “is divinity.”

rituAl As A WAy tO Access the diviNe

“I had to leave the church to find a new language,” Britton Smith tells me with a knowing smile, “to find a name for what I was always doing.”

Britton Smith (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist. From the Broadway Stage, to the non-profit Broadway Advocacy Coalition, to fronting his musical project Britton & the Sting, Britton’s career is full of the use of ritual. In building spaces where Queer people can bring their full selves to the table, Britton invites his audiences to connect to the divine together.

The first time I saw Britton & The Sting perform, I witnessed something so unique—a crowd of strangers becoming a congregation taking in the communion of music. We were spiritually connected in a transformative experience of Queer joy, Queer pain, Queer brokenness, and Queer authenticity. We were being celebrated exactly as we were.

Below is a glimpse into my conversation with Smith about Queer reclamation and the divinity that can be found in the ritual of wholeness.

Photo by Julieta Cervantes

WhAt hAs BeeN yOur JOurNey As AN Artist?

BS: I think the first place I found artistry was in church. I found [it] in direct connection with raising my hands, screaming—finding God. So, those two things have always been connected. While I’m a product of the Black Christian church, I’m also someone who’s always been defiant, always questioning. God made me very curious. I’m connected to something higher, and I’ve always known that I have the right to go to any divine place I want to—you can’t tell me otherwise. I’ve been like this since I was ten.

Now my art is about using all the things God has given me—curiosity, Queerness, rage, pain, trauma, love, style, my Blackness, my connection to spirit—all for the betterment of myself first, and using that to connect with others and create space for people to be reminded of who they are.

i lOve thAt. yOu Just As A teN yeAr Old BeiNG like, “Fuck OrGANiZed reliGiON!“

BS: I was that kid asking “How did Noah’s Ark really work?” and “What do you mean Adam and Eve?” Curiosity wasn’t welcomed–it was very frowned upon. But as you read, find other people, and build community, your language becomes more of a weapon.

Britton & the Sting is a thing I am part of, but it is also teaching me more about who I am and what I’m supposed to do. It continues to pull me into more understanding of life, relationships, humanity, healing, and myself.

Words by Hailey Green

BeFOre We tAlk ABOut the ActuAl cONcert pArt OF it All, hOW dO yOu see the cONcept OF ’rituAls’ iN yOur liFe hAviNG shiFted BetWeeN WhAt the church GAve yOu ANd hOW yOu hAve redeFiNed it FOr yOur liFe NOW?

BS: I think rituals are simply people coming together with a common intention.

I’ve done shows for four thousand people; I’ve done shows for four hundred people. No matter what it is, I die for it. I want everybody to get on the same page. When everyone’s on the same page, I can feel a [shift] in the room—a spiritual happening. I want that so bad that I’ll scream or I’ll jump off the stage—I become a crazy person.

[I have a] project that premiered earlier this year in July called MAMA. It’s about the human connection to the spirit and the essence of water. The music explores what water would say to us if she could speak—to the globe, to society, to communities, to our policies, to our church. What would she say to the church?

are agreeing to. Earth is agreeing to it, The spirit is agreeing to it. The body is agreeing to it. That is a ritual.

yOu’ve tAlked ABOut these BiG, uNiversAl rituAls. But i’M curiOus ABOut the sMAller ONes tOO hOW dO rituAls shOW up iN yOur persONAl, dAily liFe?

BS: A ritual I go to often is the morning ritual. I love it because it sets me up for the day. I will go ten minutes late to a meeting if I don’t have what I need. I can be so impatient that I need the morning to even just acknowledge how I really feel, how I’m really starting, what I need, and where I’m coming from. I have to remind myself of so much—it’s almost annoying, but I need that ritual of remembering in the morning.

“Britton & the Sting is a thing I am part of, but it is also teaching me more about who I am and what I’m supposed to do.”

BeFOre BrittON & the stiNG, hOW did rituAl plAy iNtO yOur eXisteNce As A persON hAviNG tO dO eiGht shOWs A Week [ON BrOAdWAy]?

BS: Everyone on Broadway has a way to remove themselves and become whoever they need to be. Whether you call it ritual or not.

tell Me MOre ABOut thAt cONNectiON BetWeeN WAter ANd rituAl.

BS: The idea that when we die, the water in our bodies returns to the water cycle—that’s a ritual in and of itself. There are small rituals that we do in our daily lives, but then there’s the big picture ritual of when we die. It’s like a universal ritual. It’s a global ritual. A process of death and renewal that all things

To do eight shows a week at The Theater Olympics—which they call Broadway—you have to remove something to allow that. The ritual obviously doesn’t just start at the theater where you’re there, remembering your lines, going over words that your character needs, putting it in your body, and physically getting ready. It starts when you wake up. And when you go to sleep, you have to turn it off. They don’t teach that in college... it’s not just about the audition and booking the job, it’s about the whole shift of your life that has to revolve around your health and sustainability.

Photo by Brian Russell Carey

let’s tAlk ABOut “let’s Get druNk ANd GO tO church.“ WheN i sAW yOu perFOrM it live, i WAtched yOu AdApt tO the crOWd’s eNerGy. it Felt like yOu Were BuildiNG A rituAl iN reAl tiMe.

BS: Wow. Yes. Do you? I feel so seen, Hailey Green, thank you. There is a vehicle inside that song that, if you’re willing to get inside, will take you where you need to go. When we do it in New York, people know where they’re about to go, and there’s a willingness in the room that becomes infectious. You watch people who are new to the space go “What’s about to happen?” while people who know are like “We’re about to remember that the divine belongs to us.”

I actually sang that song in front of my grandma recently—she had never seen me perform before. After the show she said, “I’ve never seen so many homosexuals in my life!” [laughs] But she was also like, “I’m so proud of you. Did you write all those songs?” She witnessed the joy I was giving people. She may not agree with what I’m doing—she just wants me to sing for Jesus—but she saw me.

Photo by Maddy Talias

WhAt dOes thAt sONG MeAN tO yOu NOW?

BS: There’s a level of rage and reclaiming and joy that lives in that song. If you know what it means to feel pushed out of a holy space, you go “Oh yes, my turn. Mine.” And everybody goes “Yes. Yours. Yours. Yours.”

There’s a break that happens – the room becomes a cathedral of all these people breaking and remembering. The whole space becomes drunk. Not drunk with alcohol, but drunk in remembering, drunk in spirit, drunk in reclaiming.

I’ve seen bartenders lose their shit during this song, I’ve seen security guards moved–because to have a ritual inside a song that unlocks something for people who have been in pain, who haven’t had the space to feel it... that’s an energetic thing happening. I’m honored to sing this song every time we can, because I know its potential.

I think that it is very brave and courageous to step outside of something that was already given to you.

Why would God not want us to create ways for us to feel and be okay in seeking goodness? I am trying to create access to more of God. Why would God not want that?

Follow Britton & The Sting on instagram @brittonandthesting or visit www.brittonandthesting.com for upcoming shows and releases.

Words by Tess Conner

You step into your childhood church with your head unbent and unafraid. It is your nephew’s baptism and you are thankfully not the godmother. You are already the godmother to two other children. Hopefully god does not hold it against them.

For your brother and sister-in-law, this is mostly for the ceremony of it all, the tradition—there is a new person, behold him. But for your parents and other members of your family, it offers the relief that if your nephew were to suddenly and tragically die, he would now go to heaven. This is sacred and necessary, not just an excuse to eat cake.

You are wearing a skirt for the first time in months. It’s your sister’s but your mother cooed that it suited you when you stomped down the stairs and into the car. You try not to be in your body. You smile at your family members, shake hands with the priest. You volunteer to take pictures. You let the familiar words wash over you and find yourself reciting prayers that never left your tongue.

You do not think of the car ride over here, when you foolishly told your parents you had a girlfriend. You do not think of the silence that followed. You don’t even think of their previous promises to always treat any partner you had the same as your straight siblings.

You take pictures while the familiar faces in the stained glass windows all look down at you, staring with saintly serenity. You try not to listen to the words of the priest, but some of the homily bleeds through.

“There is nothing you can do to stop god from loving you.”

And you can feel your mother’s eyes on you, some disgusting knowing on her face, and you resolutely do not look at her. You keep taking pictures and do not look and scream that you don’t want god’s stupid fucking unconditional love anymore. You just want hers. You want her to ask excited questions about your first girlfriend and to notice that you hate wearing skirts.

“Once he goes through the sacrament of baptism, he will become a member of the catholic church forever, no matter what. That mark will be on his soul for all eternity.”

Your nephew reaches towards the beautiful easter candle, not knowing what

it means to burn, and the priest drones on. He is blessed over and over again, with oil and white clothes. He is dangled over the font of holy water, wriggling and dazzled by the lights of the church. When the water is poured over his head he clings to your brother, squirming and grumbling as he is made new.

You take some more pictures and smile with everyone else when it is done. You look forward to going home and eating cake. You do not get back into your parent's car. You ride back with your nephew and kiss his damp, blessed head. You tell your sister-in-law about the conversation and allow her to fill you with the righteous anger you'd been tamping down.

“You deserve better.” She says and it starts to rain. The soft patter and sound of your nephew's warm breath are like god to you.

All waters are baptismal if you’re dramatic enough. The muddy puddle you stomp in when walking home from work. Your nightly shower. The tears you cry when that first girlfriend breaks up with you. The murky sea. The condensation that drips onto the bar from your glass. This is not a reclamation, it is selfflagellation. It is instinctive as a bruise. It is a devious trick—to make something needed to survive a reminder of god and his promises.

You see god in everything and miss him more than your ex. Everything is a symbol or ritual and you have no say in the matter. Maybe it is that mark on your soul from your own baptism, a decision made before you could speak. Maybe you are doomed to always be searching, to never be clean. Maybe it is god who will not let you go.

You must make a new faith. One of hope, not fear. You must believe that one day water will be just water, with nothing holy about it.

Water will be water and wine will be wine, not blood. The 7th will be an ordinary date, not your anniversary and the day she broke your heart. Sunday will be a day of the week and the smell of incense will be relaxing. The poems you wrote for her will be just words, not prayers.

You can free yourself from being reborn over and over—from the task of being holy. You can settle in yourself, grow old instead of becoming new, and eat cake any day you want to.

Art by Ais Russell

tAshlich cycle Words by giorgia

1. i don’t know much of faith or of my people but i know of hands and feet bread and calluses the work it takes to get through the day. the break of the sea against the will of the shore. the break of language against the tide of history. the language through which we survive. how my blood and bones continue to pray when my mouth cannot. how i bless my weaknesses on their way to the wilderness. how they return brazen and kind in the next year. how the world mends no matter how broken. how the stones sink only from up here on the banks. from the seabed they are fl ying 2. gravity is the surest way to know we belong

the friend of your friend is also my friend the whole world is a shtetl i’d like to care for you the rest of our lives as a bud clenches before it swings into bloom what to offer other than an unfl inching gaze?

i throw my love in the sea i throw my grief in the sea i throw my rage in the sea when will i be quiet enough to re-member the way home when will i be furious enough to force my will on the world when will i be gentle enough to be a body & not the systems that make it 3. i throw my self in the sea 4. what a year weaves with its own unraveling spools of new mythology our true history enunciates itself like bismuth purpose power presence it’s not to atone, but to re-member become embodied, become harmable so as to again have a body to prevent harm to care i myself am held in the act of holding how did we get here?

5. once on another hot day during a cold season i sweltered with my fi rst lover on concrete fi ve-pointed like starfi sh pressed my ear to the space between her lungs felt her laughter fl uttering from deep in her belly today, as we braid the year into a fi nal knot i lay on the wet sand, fi ve pointed as a desecrated star take the lashing of the tide an ardent, angry lover take it into my mouth and ears and nose, it asks me how i dare even for a moment swoon with anything other than agony but then as pelicans ascend, descend, ascend in a line tracing the surf & a chorus of shofar keen for a new world & the sun fl ares crimson before vanishing i feel the earth’s laughter roaring from deep in her belly

i think of my grandfathers re-member the churn of my legs against the pedals as i ascend, descend, ascend

A FerOciOus suBstitute FOr FlOWers

Words by giorgia sage

harsh-lunged, the winter swarmed itself a timelapse of decay, the empire a desiccated log and all of us myceliating and frenetic for revolution skin peeled back to a bare bone ready for breaking at the speed of rest, forget the rest call it an ego death call it the body keeping the score call it a raucous opera of unseen birds at dusk ignited by the realization: nothing happened the way i thought it did scour the past for a better way forward and all i get is more past

i didn’t know liberation would be so devastating i didn’t know what is it what is one to do

after Noor Hindi’s “Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying”, and David Edelstadt’s “In Kampf ”

Art by Dustin Randall Keirns

i wish i remembered how to dream even the thunder’s tongues in my mind can’t beckon them i dance with my wrought stiff limbs for a dream that isn’t just more fear the way all our ancestors would dance for rain how now we dance for peace & don’t they sound the same? the thrum of voices and footsteps, all together now coaxing life from the dirt the forest from the seed, the storm from the raindrop aren’t they the same? so much violence comes down to where the water goes through my phone’s cursed alchemy i see a crowd in los angeles, simmering down the street, a murmuration of grief and rage, yiddish workers’ song shimmering from their throats equal parts dirge and praise

unbidden, i weep, and wonder which ancestor, lost in the ashes of the old country, wove this melody into their pulse’s current to be born into me, to beat in my soft strong heart, that stutters for every creature objectified into roadkill on the long spine of mountain to the mojave swells without bursting, could forge a sword with all its brine and iron

i’m no longer afraid of desolation if there’re trees there’ll be home i’ll befriend them sing my songs, braid my bread, bless my wine i’ll wrestle with god and always lose i’ll do it for the feeling of the fight i call a game the berimbau flinging me into the roda that circular trickster laugh kaddish and ladainha woven together into my gait as we push up market palestinian flags wave from low riders muni drivers fling keffiyeh out their windows to join the flock of thousands

increasingly, the question becomes how will we get free the answer has always been not in this lifetime & we already are

peeki NG

GO d , she W ill pl Ay“

i embrace worldbuilding through collage as a spiritual art practice. My collage practice cites Octavia E. Butler’s mandate to “create your own worlds” and “write yourself in.” My work also responds to another Black woman speculative fiction writer, N.K. Jemisin, who wondered—as The Jetsons glided through a predominantly white utopia in the upper atmosphere— “what happened to the people beneath the clouds?” The world beneath the clouds that I conjure with paper collages using vintage Black culture ephemera is rooted at the intersection of Blackness, Queerness, peace, and piety. I am deeply influenced by beauty, romance, storybook fantasies and fairytales, as well as the life of the spirit – glimmers of joy, yearning to be understood, and rebelling against strict definition. My collage world draws inspiration from her identity as a religious person with respect for expressions of faith, spiritual fervor, and mystic love. It is a world where supreme beings are diverse and within our reach, tangibly involved in the Earth realm, longing for us unconditionally as we are seeking them.

Altogether, the collages exist in a universe where Blackness is rich, boundless, blending with flora and fauna, reaching into space, and known by an omnipresent higher power depicted as a single eye or an overlooking guardian.

While focused series are not uncommon in my practice, one should understand that meaning in each of my collages is derived from the source described above, though the settings of each collage vary, whether familiar landscapes,

far off worlds, or inside dreams. Human/creature hybrids and disembodied forms break down the bondage of the human form and accompanying social constructs allowing the subjects to realize they are essential to creation just as they are. As a composer of cut and torn paper, I learn more about myself, practice vulnerability, and promote the imagination as a liberatory tool.

&BlOOdliNes BelONGiNG

WAit FOr eNtry: ON stAyiNG tOGether

the past few years have taught me a lot— like, break the rules that are built for oppression. Like, systems are built with intention. Like, maybe the country I’m from doesn’t want either of us?

On November 1, 2023, my partner Leo and I sat down to fill out the u.s. immigration system’s first step for them to come into the country. I won’t get into all the gritty details, but needless to say it’s way more complicated of a process than either of us ever imagined. We went through everything as carefully as possible, celebrating our submission with a self portrait of the two of us holding up our passports and going in for a kiss.

Thus began a new ritual: for every day that we wait with bated breath for the approval of our I-130 form, I take a self portrait—either together or alone on the days we’re apart.

We are figuring it out, one mistake at a time. My spouse and I are “just kids”—or that’s what we feel like. We read Patti Smith’s book together side by side, knees kissing, absorbing a story that felt relatable while suddenly recognizing that our own plight as “struggling artists” is only romanticized when rich people have decided it has value in some way or another. As Nonbinary art freaks who are always working to better themselves, we wonder who might decide our future together? Who will see value in us? Please let it not be the elite, but through the support of our communities. We are living our dream, at least, no matter where we are, but it would be lovely for my spouse to be able to meet my friends and family someday.

Words and Photos by Starly Lou Riggs

At first, we were hopeful this process wouldn’t be so long. Our estimated wait time was 3 months which then lessened to 3 weeks, so it seemed very promising. All the while, we kept taking our daily photos: making dinner together, playing music, cuddling, packing our suitcases, moving to the next destination, crying, laughing. What you can’t see here is the 8 months we had already spent living apart. What you can’t see is how being from different countries, both artists with limited means, we had to guess our path without legal aid and only our hopes and dreams to guide us through bureaucracy. When I eventually had to work again in Portland because we ran out of money, it was one of the most agonizing times of my life to the point where I was having chronic physical and mental health issues. As time went on, it was becoming painfully clear that this wait would not be 3 weeks, or even 3 months. As I write to you now in October, we have been waiting 11 months for just the first step of this very long process.

We are now 343 photos in (and counting), with pictures taken across 8 cities in both North and South America. This project is a documentation, but it is also a daily routine. It keeps us thinking of each other while apart, and celebrates each moment that we can be together. It reminds us of all we have been through together and honors the time we have and the communities that have supported us. Without them, we wouldn’t have made it this far.

Here are just a few self-portraits taken this past year—in friends houses, my parent’s place, trailers we’ve lived in, and the occasional air bnb—a monument to all we have done for love:

November 2023: air bnb in Montreal, Canada

December 2023: housesitting in Portland

January 2024: friend’s house in Portland

January 2024: couch crashing in Seattle

January 2024: visiting Leo in their trailer in Galiano Island, B.C.

February 2024: hotel in Vancouver B.C. (sending Leo to the airport)

February 2024: living in friend’s trailer in Portland

March 2024: my parent’s house in California

March 2024: reunited in São Paulo

April 2024: living at a friend’s apartment in São Paulo

May 2024: living at a friend’s apartment in São Paulo

June 2024: living at a friend’s apartment in São Paulo

July 2024: living at a friend’s house in Juíz de Fora

August 2024: air bnb for work in Rio

September 2024: living at a friend’s house in Juíz de Fora

September 2024: Rio airbnb for a visitor visa interview to see my family (denied)

October 2024: living at a friend’s house in Juíz de Fora

It comes and goes all over me, it runs, it

Orr rituAl OF revel

Words

by Casper

Released from her label’s contract, Donna Missal released “Flicker” in March of 2023 as a fierce debut for Revel (2023). After being unceremoniously released from her label contract in 2022 and cutting ties with her agent not long after, Missal struggled immensely with her depression and began living out of her car. “Flicker” was a labor of love born out of the struggles she faced amidst this tumultuous period in her career. A far cry from her roots as an acoustic alternative indie singer songwriter, Missal’s first single introduced a new step into her career with a new bright and brilliant dance/ electronic sound.

The music video, which was released with the single, coincided with the main theme of overcoming boundaries. Instead of overcoming career, emotional, or mental boundaries and struggles, Missal pushes herself to her physical limits through the choreography of “Flicker,” matching the fast tempo and melodic, bumping bass. The experimental qualities that Missal plays with in her first single of Revel has an almost lifelike quality, like it’s a breathing—or panting—organism. The angelic harmonizing vocals and twinkling electronic features create the inescapable association of ascension, but not one the Renaissance artists or the English Romantics were chasing. No, Missal defined a new form of rebirth for herself.

Feel my love for you/ Fill my body/ Like a vision in the dark/ Ever-growing

The third track on Revel, “Move Me” is a sonic, upbeat love song for, well, music. Donna Missal creates an intriguing listening experience, both through her new experimental sound—accompanied by some of the most enrapturing siren-esque vocals I have ever encountered—and her storytelling ability. The track before “Move Me,” a song about loving and finding comfort in singing and music, is introduced by “God Complex,” a song about an unhealthy power dynamic in a relationship. I believe the order of these tracks doesn’t feel like a coincidence. It seems more like a portrait displaying the

flows, it almost takes me over (breathe)

complexities of her relationships, while music has always been comfort in her life.

They said “forever never let you down/ Then forever never came around”

“Paranoia” is a surprising change of pace in Revel, played on an acoustic guitar and reminiscent of Missal’s previous work. But this isn’t the Donna Missal that I remembered from “lighter (2020)”. “Paranoia” having a transformed narrative—much like Revel has a transformed soundscape—is what makes it so impactful. This acoustic ballad, considerably slower than the rest of the tracks, is about how dismayed Missal had become with Hollywood after losing her record label contract and agent. Performing palpable and raw lyrics about feeling used in Hollywood, Missal uses “Paranoia” to break from the experimental dance pop and implicit messages behind the songs of Revel to revert back to a familiar genre to tell an explicit story.

Give me healthy, give me homesick/ Give me hope that it’s worth it

Wrapping up the album with “I Saw God,” Missal finally finds her enlightenment. Through the lyrics in the final track on Revel, Missal makes peace with her struggles, the challenges she faced to reach her enlightenment, and accepts the place she’s at in her life.

Concluding “Revel,” enlightenment has been redefined. Missal rewrites the concept of rebirth or enlightenment through her experimental sounds and nonlinear mood and storyprogression. Missal disrupts the traditional narrative of enlightenment and replaces it with that of the messy, nonlinear process of rebirth.

Revel (2023, Oil on Canvas, 55"x75")

Revel references Donna Missal’s album of the same name. This painting honors the album’s themes of spiritual and emotional transformation, as well as the community that came together to celebrate the release. The painted forms nod towards moving bodies and the bright, colorful beams of concert lights.

Words by Lexi McDonald let me say

sister it is so easy to be your sister now hold hands share pink promise purple let’s practice girlhood ten years late let me put this glitter on our cheeks let me brush our hair braid it tight i want to take it all back unravel our memory that binds us in knots unwrap the kindling that lies in our mouth until girlhood strikes a match sets us free this poem cannot read between the lines cannot hold you for the first time can we lie next to each other in the dark sisters finally naming our joy

While it is left to the viewer’s eye to evoke new narratives, some of these pieces depict partial, oblique, or frontal female nudity to illustrate Carl Jung’s concept of the Anima: the female part of the male psyche — sensual, often implicit female archetypes where allegories give shape to dreamscapes of the unconscious, even as the faint image of the female reflects an abstracted, fluid persona. My intents touch upon transgender femininity, and my artistic directions are informed by photo-artists Toshiko Okanoue, Francesca Woodman, Deborah Turbeville, and especially Katrien De Blauwer.

Words and Art by Ava Crane

like dAuGhter, like dAuGhter

From my Genderqueer perspective, I don’t identify with womanhood, but my life experiences are inexplicably tied to it. Not a woman, but always an eldest daughter. Like Daughter, Like Daughter explores the all-too-common experience of adultification experienced by so many “daughters” who become pseudo-mothers—not only to their siblings, but also to themselves. But I wasn’t the first daughter and I’m not the last. Generation after generation, the ritualistic exploitation of feminine labor and their bodies, as vessels, as beacons of fertility, as products, is not only normal, but expected. Babe in one arm, broom in hand, the collage’s main figure juts out a declarative hand like an accusatory Plato. Almost asking us, “Are you a daughter too?”

This piece seeks to not only illuminate the intergenerational trauma of daughterhood, but to also open our collective imaginations to what a harmonious relationship between gender, age, and caretaking could look like. How can caretaking become an intentional, communal act, rather than a gendered, entitled expectation?

BAy leAF ANd pOMeGrANAte

Words by Eugenie Koshka

Bay leaf and pomegranate. Sea and sunset. Mountains and the hot wind of return. The land whose warmth our ancestors drank. The land whose juice our enemies now drain. The land given by the gods or born from dreams, mourned by the Greeks and not forgotten by us. The sea and sunset are in our hearts. In our night dreams, there are mountains and the hot wind that dries our hair before we set foot on the shore.

Our kitchen is a bay leaf that can be picked from every garden. Our family is a pomegranate that cannot be trampled. They expelled us, but our strength remained with us. There was no god in us, but there was hatred. We had no tears left, but in small bags over our hearts we kept soil, dried bay leaves, and barely noticeable pomegranate seeds.

In Central Asia, as in our blessed land, everyone ate lamb. Our grandmothers prepared borscht or lagman, not forgetting a pinch of bay leaves. Beyond the Caucasus Mountains, there were many wonderful fruits. Our grandmothers certainly greeted guests with coffee and pomegranates. When I come back, I will kiss the ground. When I come back, I will pick a bay leaf from the dusty bush where my parents and I sat more than once.

We are our symbols. Our ancestors live in our traditions. And those who want to deprive us of all this are just ashes. The mountains and the hot wind will not spare it, the sea and sunset will not remember it. It will be scattered where bay leaves and pomegranates grow again.

OF lOve ANd hAirsprAy

Words by Bailey Bauer

iam five years old, sitting on a small wicker chair in front of my mother’s vanity. Her bathroom is pristine, adorned in ivory and lilac with small cherub figurines circling the bathtub where my sister sits, her sandaled feet softly thump-thumpthumping against the porcelain as she idly kicks them back and forth. My mother stands over me, clutching the same curling iron that used to fluff and coif her own hair back in the 80s. She works delicately, her smooth, soft hands curling strand after strand of my thick, dark brown hair. I smile and giggle as she works, astounded by each little brown spring the curling iron leaves in its wake. My sister giggles each time I do, a secret shared language of laughter my mother could never hope to understand, though she smiles each time she hears it. The curls all done, my mother takes my bangs and curls them, too, until they sit on my forehead, a little round pop that makes me feel silly and cute, all at once.

I am eleven years old, squatting knee deep in the dry dirt of our grandparent’s south Texas yard. My hands grasp greedily for some grubs, eager to see the fat worms writhe and struggle between my chubby fingers. They are the secret ingredient to the mud pie my sister and I are making for our grandfather. He will pretend to eat it, as he always does, with a hearty “nom nom nom,” praising our baking skills.

“Close your eyes,” she says, and I oblige. She places her hand over my face, but I still feel the cool particles of the hairspray land on my bare shoulders. Finally, she pulls a few of the tight ringlets back and ties them with a red gingham ribbon to match the red gingham tank top and capri set I wear. “Okay, now open them,” she smiles as she moves her hand back from my face. My big blue eyes widen in the mirror. I shake my head, fascinated by the way the curls flounce around me.

“My turn! My turn!” My sister shouts, her natural honey brown waves hanging limply in comparison to my tight ringlets.

And so, we trade places, my saddle shoes softly thump-thump-thumping against the porcelain tub as my mother begins her delicate task once again.

I rise, my camo cargo shorts dusty and stained. I wear a green t-shirt, chosen from the boy’s section for its depiction of my favorite mystery-solving mutt, Scooby-Doo. My hair is a wild tangle atop my head from the day’s activities. My cousin came over for a day of football and gardening. He sits on the porch, preparing the mud pie according to my sister’s directions. When I return with my grubs, my sister scoffs.

“Your hair is a mess!” I laugh in her face, but she, the elder, doubles down. “Sit down!”

And so, she brushes my knotty tangle of a mane. She works and tenderly at each of the rat’s nests housed within, gently working out strand after strand. When the hair is smooth and clean, she works with quick, light fingers to French braid it. She pulls the orange ribbon from her own hair and ties off the braid. “There!” she says, proud of her work. “Much better!”

I am sixteen years old, sitting on my best friend’s bed. We are cozy together under the thick, blue duvet. It is 3 p.m. and we still wear our pajamas, only emerging from our warm, safe nest for a snack or two, just as we do every Saturday. Our favorite show is playing, but we are hardly watching as we gossip and laugh.

“Who do you have a crush on?” She asks.

“I don’t know. All the boys at our school are so ugly,” I say, and I truly mean it.

“I like Cody. He asked me out next Saturday,” she offers casually, as if my heart wouldn’t shatter.

“But Saturday is our day.”

“It’s just one Saturday! Besides, isn’t he so cute?”

I scrunch up my nose. “I mean, I guess.”

She sits up, her legs crossed. “Come here,” she says, pointing to the space in front of her lap. I oblige, assuming our usual position, my head cradled softly in the gap between her thighs. It is the perfect size for my head, the perfect pillow. I look up at her, her warm

brown eyes gazing down at me. “Don’t be mad at me,” she says, as she runs her fingers through my hair.

“I could never be mad at you,” I say. Her nails feel gentle and sweet as they work through my scalp. I didn’t lie. I could never be mad at her.

“You have such beautiful hair,” she says.

pay attention to a single second of baseball. At the end of the night, we go back to her apartment, and she asks with a surprising sincerity I have not heard in her voice for several years, “Why don’t you ever tell me about your life?”

I begin to cry.

“What’s wrong?” She asks with genuine concern.

I am twenty years old. We have spent the summer together, me and my best friend. She went off to Ohio for college, and in these long months apart, I have missed her severely. We sit at the edge of her pool, our feet dangling in the water. I wear a borrowed swimsuit, the one she has washed time and time again, keeping it reserved for me alone. She shows me the boy on her phone, the one who looks like me, only manlier.

“I don’t think you’d like me,” I finally reply through my tears.

“Of course I’ll like you. You’re my sister.” A pause. I cannot say what I need to. I cannot tell her. But she speaks first, “Is it because you...like girls?”

I gawk at her. “What?”

“Isn’t he the cutest,” she says, her voice swelling. There are hearts in her eyes. “He’s the best boyfriend ever.”

“He seems nice,” I say. I don’t tell her I think he looks like me. I don’t tell her I think he sounds boring and dull in every story she tells of him. I simply say, “I’m happy for you.” And it’s not a lie. I am happy for her.

“Why don’t you have a boyfriend?” She asks. “You’re so beautiful. With that cute little body, I’d think anyone would want you.”

“I just haven’t been interested in anyone. All the guys at my school are ugly.”

“You think every guy is ugly.”

“Oh, come on. Like I wouldn’t figure it out! You’ve always been a little...you know.” She laughs. “Turn around.” I oblige. She begins to work her fingers through my hair, braiding it down my back like she used to when we were kids. She has not offered to braid my hair since we were teenagers. She is still a master plaiter, and the braid is tight and beautiful by the time she is done. “Of course I love you anyway.”

We laugh and drink the sparkly pink vodka drinks she’s made for us. We swim, and we drink, and at the end of the night we are face to face, our eyes gazing over the top of the pool water at each other. She bobs her head up.

I am twenty-six. I sit in front of my mirror, the girl I’ve been seeing anointing my hair with fragrant oils. She runs her fingers through them, the nails scratching lightly on my scalp. It is calming, relaxing, and I think of my best friend, and my mother, and my sister. The women who have loved me and cared for me. My girl pulls back my hair into two French braids down the sides of my face. It makes me feel strong and confident when I tie her braids off with a bright blue ribbon. My girl smiles up at me.

“I missed you,” she says, a drunken slur to her words.

“I missed you, too,” I say, slurring back. We giggle again before she leans into me. Before I can think, our lips are locked. We eventually find our way back to her bedroom. As I venture down between her thighs, face down for the first time, she grabs my hair, her nails stroking down my scalp like they always used to, but with more force. More desire.

“Perfect,” she says. And it is.

I wake up the next morning with her naked by my side. I do not wake her. I check my face in the mirror, my hair a wild mess, and I leave. We do not talk for six years.

I am twenty-three years old, and my sister has invited me to a ballgame. We drink beer and cheer on our favorite team, and I don’t

Art by Landin

one thursday a month, I look so fly.

Words by Nyanjah Charles

i sit rigid in my barber's chair, my head tilted up as he shaves my invisible chin hairs—this guy got jokes—jokes bigger than a dyke at the barbershop on a thursday.

he makes me sit on a booster seat, so i ask if i get the kids discount, he says that joke is getting old. i tell him he’s getting old.

i leave the barbershop and my reflection glitters in the glass door—i look so fly, i might just be the flyest dyke in florida.

my girl got plenty of jokes too, rubs my head with her fiery hands, and calls me a tennis ball, a kiwi, and a pompom.

one thursday a month, she tells me i look like i’m begging her to drown me—push me down till there’s no where to go but in.

her painted nails scratch at the back of my fresh cut, dig in deep—knife to scalp, fucks me like she fucks my haircut—like i won’t ever see my barber again.

Wiggy any pronouns

MetAMOrphOsis

Words by Chimera Mohammadi

Art by Moe Leady

ON BeiNG WhOle/ let us cAst NeW spells: lesBiAN seX ANd slANG

sappho’s lovers have stepped into the spotlight with renewed force lately. Whether in the punchy, anti-patriarchal revenge fantasy Love Lies Bleeding with the one and only Kristen Stewart, the intense and passionate stardom of Chappell Roan, or Billie Eilish and Charlie XCX’s sensationally flirty “Guess,” Lesbian desire and sexuality are finally being expressed explicitly and intentionally with great acclaim. This exciting pocket of media offers relief after centuries centuries of representation that either blanketed Lesbians in the sexless shadows of Pride’s backrooms, erased and invisible, or spotlighted us as fetishized objects for male consumption. However, in the most powerful and common realm of human magic— language—resources for Lesbian sexuality are still confusingly behind the times.

There is a critically confusing element of Lesbian language, borrowed from other sexual dynamics, that is only being questioned

*This paper is in no way intended to erase or disrespect the experiences of Trans or Genderqueer Lesbians, or any Lesbians who enjoy or dream of hierarchical or penetrative sexual expression. It is only an additive consideration of marginalized Lesbian sex and sexuality, an invitation to place other fantasies on par with those which are broadly platformed.

by the bravest and least experienced souls on Queer internet forums: what do top and bottom mean for Lesbians? The giver and receiver of pleasure? What’s in it for the giver? Stone tops (people who prefer to give/touch not receive/be touched sexually) are implied in this strange dichotomy, a misnomer which did not originally belong to us. The top/bottom terminology, originally used in BDSM communities to generally describe a dominant/submissive dynamic, later became adopted by gay men to describe penetrative role preferences. The language seeped quietly into the Lesbian community not long after. While the terms still hold connotations of dominance and submission, the most salient definition of that binary as penetrator/penetrated eclipses wide ranges of Lesbian and non-penetrative intimacy. Why does this language matter? Intimacy, love, and lust, are, in many ways, inherently indescribable: To give them words is the

momentous task that poets have been chipping away at for centuries. But they are also three incredibly potent markers of human identity, deeply vulnerable ways in which we relate to others and define ourselves. The most powerful magic available to us in the realm of identity construction and recognition is language. We become what we say to others and to ourselves. To go without language, or to borrow the names of others, is to live halfway. Language around sexuality allows us to unearth and offer up the private and murky shadows of our minds and bodies, throwing those shadows into the light, crystallizing those complex feelings into words and finding community and connection. When we moved from sodomites to homosexuals to Queer people, we moved from disempowered sinners to medical phenomenons to a group of individuals with our own unique history and culture. My hope is that we will continue to expand our codes, and that this expansion will amplify the nuances and infinite variability of Queer connection and intimacy.

Of course, in the creative and rich world of Queer theory, this is not the first time this language and model of thinking about Lesbian sex has been questioned — but often, these questions lead down concerning paths that turn quickly vitriolic and bigoted. In her expansive video essay, “Twilight,” on sexual dynamics in the titular film, Natalie Wynn (a.k.a. Contrapoints) deconstructs the assumptions latent in a top/bottom sexual dynamics. She also does an expert job of examining the marginalization of Lesbian sex while rejecting the transphobic rhetoric often hidden within defenses of alternative Lesbian intimacies. Take, for a cautionary example, anti-top/bottom theorist Sheila Jeffreys: her work not only questions the limitations of appropriated language, but criticizes the Lesbians who enjoy top/ bottom dynamics, who engage in any kind of hierarchical sex, and who allow any exchange of power to color their fantasies. In her second-wave purifying fervor, she advocates for exclusively non-hierarchical Lesbian sex, condemning any exploration that at all echos traditionally heterosexual dynamics, and claiming in her collaborate manifesto, “Political Manifesto: The Case Against Heterosexuality” that “…serious feminists have no choice but to abandon heterosexuality … Any woman who takes part in a heterosexual couple helps to shore up male supremacy by making its foundations stronger.” In a world where Lesbian, Queer,

and femme sexualities are condemned and controlled to claustrophobic degrees, there is no need within the community to police one another’s pleasures. Discourse around Lesbian sex and sexuality too often loses itself in politics, desexualizing Lesbianism by portraying it as a political ideology. My argument is creative, not destructive: it is not seeking to chastise my fellow Lesbians, but suggesting we release ourselves from the mundane terminology that entraps us and explore language and intimacy. This reductive terminology often becomes invisible through daily use, hard to recognize. Help arrives in Luce Irigaray’s electrifying book, “This Sex Which Is Not One,” wherein Irigaray lays out the ways in which “female sexuality has always been conceptualized on the basis of masculine parameters:” even our sex, devoid of men, is defined in language that originated to describe them. In her gorgeous essay, “When Our Lips Speak Together,” Irigaray powerfully serenades the incredibly diverse palette of Queer intimacy, particularly within the Lesbian community, painting her poetry with its less often-seen shades. She sings love songs to fuel a rebellion of care, saying: “You touch me all over at the same time. In all senses. Why only one song, one speech, one text at a time? To seduce, to satisfy, to fill one of my “holes”? With you, I don’t have any. We are not lacks, voids awaiting sustenance, plenitude, fulfillment from the other.”

Without framing power exchange as treason or blasphemy, she recognizes the infinite forms of love, softness, and sensuality that exist outside of the labyrinthine, determinative terminology that so often controls Queer and particularly Lesbian sex. Her unbound musings release Queer sex from its theoretical, academic prison, the Foucauldian chambers of study brought upon it by its otherness, its pathologization. So often, conversations around Queer sex remove love or pleasure from the equation, leaving behind only dry, gendered social dynamics to be studied, political actions to be taken. Why not keep the romance alive? Creativity like Irigaray’s is inspirational, her work a compass with which to navigate and perhaps further chart the inherently undefined world of Queer sexuality, a world that is defined by being outside of definitions and standards. May we all develop creativity as unbound as hers and sing in harmony with our pleasure. We all have the power to create spells which accommodate our intimate rituals: Let us seize it.

let’s kiss the bullet, not a cliche this time, because i’ve got horns on my tongue again, dmitri. this is always a love poem without romance. deer lick at a mineral block you left outside, buried into forthcoming permafrost. slicing apples into quarters, doused with salt, droplets of fi across your hedgerows. i’m out in the open, actually open, calved like honeycomb. your exfather-in-law says the polymer coating tastes similar to wax, paying for gum with pennies, disappointment. it’s why we’re unable to taste our own tongues. it’s a cardinal sin to die without ever having fully lived. i’ll do all kinds of shit for you if it means i’m immortal or know the purpose of metallurgy by the end of the day. the fog’s in full bloom, dmitri, like pansies or briefs, candied mouth, your sky with its tonsillitis. you’re giddy with prelude. i’ve left out pea shoots for you, shelved away the rhubarb in jars, in advance of the mourning. you’ve killed me so many times. something was enough but didn’t know what. we’re a cardinal sin because the wind goes straight into your prey’s snout. we’re cardinals because blood is thickest when we feel like death could, of course, be close. death wants to fi nish, too, you know. if you whisper a name that isn’t a name three times, the police will shoot us for free, or at cost. lover, lover. lover. your devil comes. & they’re made of meat & coils & taffeta. my exposed silverskin worth its weight in selfl essness. because silver is a pure metal, it’s pure, dmitri, the feeling you get when awarded for betraying a god. it’s the feeling you get when all the blood drains from the tow rope slung across the dying pine, the only one we have. don’t you know it well enough? when you offer rhubarb to a deer’s limp mouth, though it’s toxic to them. when the shock thuds into your shoulder, there’s a moment of grief ritual. but it’s not your body going down.

re littered

dAMNAtiON

Words by T..S. Leonard

Let’s replace the electoral college with a Faggot University—a dick-suck collage of transgressive revelry—the only pre-requisite is Introduction to Fabulous Morbidity—cackling in the face of death. Boas at the graveyard. Lesson No. 1: In 1990, HIV activist Iris De La Cruz crept into the NYU hospital while everyone was sleeping and decorated their IV poles with pink ribbons and balloons—a veritable refusal of their state-sponsored doom—remember this at the next apocalypse: how a woman in Asheville handed out chocolates to her neighbors trudging through the muddy flood—guts of the Blue Ridge Mountains and their bedroom walls suddenly silt; and even still, to have the capacity for sweetness; to break like an angel even a sliver of yourself; to burst through disaster with the plainest language of love: isn’t this a pinprick glimpse of heaven in the hurricane? When can we replace the department of defense with the Conflict Resolution Bureau? When will we erect the Museum of Small Acts of Generosity? We will teach a different course of history at Faggot University: one where our forests and rivers are narrators of their own story—one where we listen to our ancestors sing; repeating their lessons, not their mistakes –one where we make feasts from their handwritten recipes, feeding each other love cake and olive oil loaf—each crumb the past’s peace offering; delicious lineage—the one where Jim, when his best friend Pat was shivering through the final stages of AIDS in Silver Lake, would drive all the way from Santa Monica just to hold him in the dark—and how this tiny act of care hacks a porthole of potential into the fabric of America, a star-shaped void through which we imagine a future where there are no bombs. It begins here, refusing shame—touching our friends—men loving men, even when we’re cursed in the name of a hateful god to eternal damnation. Whose definition of hell is worse than this notion of sanctity? I’m impatient, luckily, my heaven is here each time I hear my friends do you believe in life after love—after love, after love, after love, after love—each time we passed out snacks to the passing protestorw—that time Chip, under the orange sky, took my hand and started skipping—this is the record of our fabulous survival, its archives housed at the Faggot University’s showpiece building, the Futuristic Preservation Library. There are no late fees; everything is free and open to the public. At commencement, we throw glitter everywhere and everyone comes back the next morning to sweep. And everyone comes back the next morning to sweep. And everyone comes back. sing—

Words and Art by Angelina Leanos

erAsure OF the eXOdus

"Erasure of the Exodus” is a blackout poem drawn from passages about the Passover rituals, in which Angelina Leaños Queers the ancient biblical text. This poem is not only an exploration of erasure as a form but also a reclamation of space within a historically exclusionary narrative. By Queering these passages, Leaños emphasizes the pervasive homophobia within religious communities that often cite the Bible to justify their bigotry, while also illustrating that Queerness and religious ritual can coexist.

In the original text, the firstborn of the Egyptians do not survive—a rigid narrative of judgment and separation. Leaños’ poem disrupts this story, much like she disrupts the idea that Queerness and religion are incompatible. Through this reimagining, she creates a new ending that reclaims ritual as a space where love and inclusion triumph over exclusion and fear.

Jasper Edith, athlete number thirteen, point guard on the university court. This is the person sitting next to me on my dorm room bed, his arms slung wide all casual across the sideboard. He has the name of a vampire and, true to form, he’s always taking something from me. This time around it’s my Saturday afternoon, which I pretty sorely mind—every light is on despite the heavy-lidded sunlight still blowing through the windows, because he can’t stand the sight of a dreary corner, and he said he likes the subtle sparkle in my darkest, favorite eyeshadow, which I’d never noticed until he did.

He’s been stuck to me since that freshman orientation speech I did for the biology department, always pulling up chairs to chat, his breath hanging around my neck like a sweaty palm. He tricked me into this routine: I find somewhere quiet to work, which he manages to burst into at irregular intervals, a can of energy drink in each hand. It’s bribery, of course, but I guess I’m an easy mark. He calls us friends. I don’t deny it, although the temptation is there. But what do I know. He talks, and I respond. Over and over.

I never used to think televised sports were worth paying attention to; the arbitrary rules

the FeMiNiNe NeGAtive

Words by Edward Luellin

Art by Joe Klaus

never made any sense to me. But basketball, at least, has people moving. There’s a game playing on my old laptop by our feet. This is new. He’s never been here, in my dorm. We’re supposed to be studying. I’m trying not to bother about it. And he keeps handing me chips from this giant bag he brought with him, one at a time, which I keep taking, even though the vinegar pricks at my tongue like an allergy. I lick the next one and set it in his hair. He doesn’t notice, too busy cursing out our televised enemy as they drop out a

I admonish, flicking salt off my

up all exasperated like.

any less vexed, though. I mean, I’m trying not to bother about that either. “Listen. Would you be jealous of me if I had like a really great mustache?”

I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m trying to get him to laugh again, but he just closes his eyes. “Nah… I don’t need any more reason to be jealous of you.”

“For real!” says Edith, his hands flying Defense was all the way out from the basket.

I ask what he means. He gestures vaguely with a blase arm around the room, at my posters, the closet, that horrible overhead light. “Effortless,” he says. “Eyeshadow or a handlebar. Fucking both, it doesn’t matter. You get to be handsome and beautiful, or neither, I don’t know. I’d get throttled.”

“Well,” I say. “You don’t deserve any facial hair anyway.”

He hands me another chip and I carefully balance that one right on top of the first.

“It’s a cheap lead. Even you could

“Offensive. Also true. I am a basketball god.”

“Totally, I pray every night.”

He slaps the top of his head when it starts to itch and the crunch rains fried potato hell on his scalp. I was going for a streak of three, but whatever. The crackly buzzer sounds as he whips to face me. I grin. He pushes me down in retaliation and I kick him in the side.

Not like I’m lying. He’s one smattering of disheveled stubble away from landing on the cover of a grocery store discount romance novel.This way, though, I can see a feminine lilt in how he sets his jaw; maybe he’s taking that from me too. The girlishness, I mean. I always thought he had an ulterior motive under the routine call and response, that he wanted something I couldn’t give in the vessel that he hoped, but maybe he craved the being and not just the girl.

I cackle. I give him a good two-finger flip off, but he crushes them back into fists. His eyes go to our hands, then to my face, and they stick there like someone threaded a string through both our heads and

do better.” pulled tight.

I hesitate for only a minute before brushing his hair out with my fingers, picking out the crumbs distributed by my previous crime. He looks up at the ceiling for a couple beats, listens to the game buzzer audio crackle and peak on my laptop’s ancient speaker as someone scores a basket; he’ll care who in a second, I think, but for now it’s that water stain on the ceiling that has a nasty five-point lead.

His hands are on my wrists. He’s gentle. I’m grinning like a fool, like a drunk one, but he’s staring at me like I should sober up, so I do. I put up a stern frown.

He runs his fingers around my ear as if to tuck hair behind it, but of course, mine is far too short. He does it like he’s scared of me.

the blankets with a sigh. that even means.”

“Would you still like me? If I had one?” It’s an honest question, and I hope it sounds like it. I try to feel it on my face. The scratch, the weight of it above my upper lip, all glitzy.

“Yeah,” he says.

“But if it was like really good, like oiled and groomed and everything.”

“For who? For you?”

“I guess.”

“Probably, yeah.”

“Is it bad… if I don’t care?” And he lets me go, slumping down onto I don’t know what

He looks downright tortured with his eyebrows twisted up like that; I can’t say I’m three-pointer. fingers.

“What about like really big biceps, and size 20 feet, and a huge d-”

“Clover. Yeah.”

“I was gonna say derriere.”

“You were not.”

Who cares what I was going to say. I’m starting to believe him.

Fed

Art by Amber Janay Cooper

Life is repetitive. Each day collapsing into the next. We find ourselves stuck in the grooves we have carved with our own hands. Or the ones we have inherited from others. We are a snake eating its own tail. Destined to slowly devour ourselves until suddenly we’ve been gobbled whole. And there’s nothing left. The cycle simply continues on with the next poor soul. Like some great fabled curse. Inherent to our humanity. Fated for an obliteration that grows ever nearer, one day at a time. Or maybe it’s actually kind of nice to have a set bedtime. We all have habits we’ve created, routines we follow, rituals we practice— whether we know it or not. The trick is the intentionality behind these practices. They are a fact of life and if we’re not careful, they’ll be our undoing.

I have done my absolute darnedest to find five films about ‘rituals’ that aren’t just movies about witchcraft. I was dangerously close to sandwiching a review for Halloweentown in between two separate reviews for Hocus Pocus. But that’s a lot of work for a bit. A bit that’s probably only funny to me. But I’m kind of writing these reviews just for myself anyway. If people like them then that’s a happy accident. So maybe I will do the Hocus Pocus-to-Halloweentown-back-to-Hocus Pocus bit. Like a little treat for myself. On the other hand, I don’t want you, the reader, to get mad at me. So I’m not actually going to do that.

“rituAls“ ON FilM

Words by Taylor Michael Simmons

yA like JAZZ?

Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959) by Bert Stern

I have anxiety. If you don’t believe me I can set up a meetand-greet with my therapist and she can tell you herself (it’s not breaking therapist-patient confidentiality if it’s for a bit). Some examples of things that make me anxious include the following: meeting new people, unprotected left hand turns, stand up comedy, ‘playing it by ear’, when you ask someone to repeat what they said and you still can’t quite hear them, the gentle yet ceaseless ache of the sisyphean struggle of existence, and any gathering of five or more people including but not limited to live musical performances. I mean I have a hard enough time with groups of people as is. Add some loud noises, bright lights, and the chance that I might run into someone I kind-of-sort-of know and I’ll be panic-attack-adjacent for the rest of the evening. Having said that, even I can’t ignore the Trans*formative power of experiencing live music as a collective. That sort of communal celebration of all of the best parts of being alive may just be the closest we get to heaven. Unfortunately, I’m still capable of having a full on breakdown even after passing through the pearly gates. And if the god my parents like so much is in there then I’m definitely gonna freak out.

* Verified: Our fact-checking team has reviewed and confirmed this claim for accuracy.

Imagine, if you will, a small coastal town. It’s a beautiful summer day. A gentle breeze blows across the salt water. Cooling your skin even as it’s being baked by the sun. You’re in town for a music festival. The venue is modest. A local park with cement bleachers and wooden chairs neatly organized in the grass. The stage is small, with just enough space for the musicians and their respective instruments. Oh and also Charli XCX and Troye Sivan and Ethel Cain and Chappell Roan1 are all performing. Jazz on a Summer’s Day is a little bit like that. But instead of modern day Queer icons it’s jazz musicians who are all probably dead now. And unlike the plight of contemporary concert documentaries, this film is not interested in simply repackaging leftovers in order to sell them to viewers at a discounted rate. Its interest is in the audience itself. A couple laughing between stolen kisses as they sit in a windowsill, a child making sure to get every last drop out of a coke bottle before discarding it, and a girl dissociatively eating ice cream in a way that will trigger the viewers’ deeply held fear of being perceived by others. These are the people who have traveled to be a part of something larger than themselves. And we are the people watching them.

Beautifully photographed and sonically enrapturing, Jazz on a Summer’s Day stands as a cornerstone of the concert film genre. Shot by acclaimed photographer Bert Stern, it feels more like a photo series than a documentary. With no clear plot or story it simply asks the viewers to immerse themselves in the experience. And what a wonderful experience it is.

1Funny story. I went on two dates with Chappell Roan in September of 2021. It didn’t work out. I don’t blame her. She is, of course, a lesbian. And I, unfortunately, a man.*

If you’re reading this I’d say there’s a 50/50 shot you’re currently taking some kind of antidepressant. Personally, I take a 10mg tablet of lexapro each morning. Unless I forget, in which case I take it during a different time of the day, for example the afternoon or maybe even night time. Or I forget all together. And I find myself in the early stages of withdrawal. With body aches and blurry vision and something called ‘brain zaps,’ which feel a little like taking a popper but not as cool and way more sad. These brief and deeply unpleasant encounters with withdrawal remind me of the importance of the ritualistic consumption of my little oblong pills. Lest I suffer the consequences. Afterall, these are my pills, there are many like them, but these ones are mine, because my name’s on the bottle. My advice to you? Take your medication. As prescribed. Even if it hasn’t been FDA approved yet and you did what you had to do and got some pills off the black market. No judgment. Now I know what you’re thinking, and don’t worry, I acquired my lexapro through perfectly legal and traditional means (telling my primary care provider that I get real sad sometimes).

It is Elisabeth Sparkle’s 50th birthday. She might as well be dead. After being deemed ‘not hot enough’ to host a daytime television jazzercise program anymore. Her career is over. She’s devastated. She could surely use a 10 mg lexapro right about now. And just when things couldn’t get any worse. BOOM. Car accident. But in exchange for her totaled lexus, Elisabeth is given a chance to unlock a younger, more beautiful, more perfect version of herself. All she has to do is inject herself with an alarmingly green liquid. And after some consideration, and getting completely naked in her millennial minimalist white tile bathroom for some reason, she decides ‘ah what the hell’. But it’s okay, it’s not like what follows is one of the most horrific body horror scenes I’ve ever seen (it is). And suddenly Elisabeth finds herself violently split in two. Elisabeth and the newly formed Sue. One person in two bodies. Each body with a distinctive personality. Kind of like the Holy Trinity. You’re telling me god is three different people? Two of them are father and son and the other is a ghost? Yeah okay mom. But all will be well. Elisabeth and Sue can live their lives seven days at a time. Taking turns living the lives they want to live. All they have to do is follow the rules. What could possibly go wrong?

This movie feels like an amalgam of the sounds and images the united states military used on test subjects during MK-Ultra. It is designed to make the audience uncomfortable. To turn our stomachs. Elicit laughter. And do that thing where we turn away but still peek through our fingers because we can’t help but look.

The Substance (2024) by Coralie Fargeat

The holiday season can be deeply stressful. Especially for those of us that, for good reason, live separately from our families. Personally, the thought of returning home fills me with dread. Last time I was there I got in a fight with my parents. I never fight with my parents. As I am a people pleaser by nature and terrified of conflict. But nevertheless I found myself in a fight. The next morning, my father asked to speak with me. I thought he was going to apologize, instead he told me he thought I would be a really good dad. What does that have to do with anything? Us arguing made you think about my capacity for fatherhood? I feel unloved and your response is to tell me to get a move on with the whole getting married and having kids thing? He probably thinks my bilogical clock is ticking. And it technically is. But Al Pacino and Robert De Niro both just fathered children in their 80s. Which, yes, is gross but means I’ve got plenty of time.

It has been years since Krisha has seen her family. Having been estranged for some time she finds herself as a sort of black sheep figure. But, wanting to reconnect and make up for lost time and atone for past sins, she has finally returned. It is thanksgiving and there are few days better for a family reunion. But not everyone is happy to see Krisha. She is warmly welcomed at first. But some are suspicious of her. Most of all her estranged son. Who Krisha abandoned as a boy. But it’s okay. She brought a turkey to apologize. And as we know, all it takes to heal years of abandonment issues and childhood trauma is a good meal. But things don’t go quite as Krisha would hope. Her son won’t look at her. Her mom doesn’t remember her name. And whoopsie, the turkey fell on the floor because somebody went on a little bender. Now what are we supposed to eat?

Krisha is a shining city on the hill of independent cinema. Trey Edward Shultz made this joint for, relatively, very little money. Saving money by casting his real family and shooting in their actual home. And that blend of fiction and reality, where the audience doesn’t know where the fabrication ends and real family drama begins, makes this film so engaging. This holiday season, if you’re feeling wacky, suggest this for a family movie night and just sit back and watch what happens. But make sure your aunt stays away from the booze.

FAMily diNNer

Krisha

(2015)

by Trey Edward Shults

Jim Jarmusch

Life is meaningless. There is no reason for us to exist. No omnipotent creator. No master plan. It’s purely by chance that we exist at all. And that truth can be absolutely terrifying. But with acceptance comes liberation. The freedom to choose for ourselves. What meanings we ascribe to our lives. What structures we build around them. And what codes to live by. We give our life meaning. Or we allow others to. And what a relief it is for someone to decide for us. Do you know how difficult it is to make a decision? God forbid I have to choose between two or more options. Like making something, literally anything, to eat. Or deciding what workout to do when you finally find yourself standing in the gym. I’ve been going to the gym consistently for a few weeks now. And I have terrible news besties. I feel so much better than when I would just lay in bed doomscrolling until I either (1) had to pee so much that it became physically unbearable and possibly inflicted irreversible damage to my bladder or (2) my battery died. But I have to plan out what I’m going to do ahead of time and write it down if I want to be sure it’ll get done. For my workouts that means a googledoc. This saves me the grief of making in-the-moment decisions. I simply consult the googledoc. And the googledoc must be obeyed. Lest we anger it. Praise be.

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) by

Ghost Dog lives a meaningful life. A life that has been granted purpose by another on his behalf. A middle aged Italian man named Louie who saved his life when he was a teenager. And now he’s really into the Samurai code. Like those guys we all knew of growing up that had swords on top of their dressers. His code dictates that he must now dedicate himself to a life of service to this man. So he does. It’s a simple life. He reads old books, feeds rooftop pigeons, and commits a number of murders for the Italian mafia. That’s mainly what Louie asks him to do. It’s mostly just the killing. They don’t even really hang out or nothing. They just chat through notes carried back and forth by pigeon. And then Ghost Dog kills a guy. So maybe life isn’t so meaningless after all. The meaning comes from our relationships. To ourselves and to others. Ghost Dog is a deeply respected member of his community. He has developed a meaningful relationship with an ice cream man who speaks only French, and despite speaking different languages they understand each other perfectly. He has passed down his knowledge to the next generation. Talking about literature with a young neighborhood girl and letting her borrow his most treasured books. And he has been unfailingly loyal to the man who saved his life. Even to the end. Ghost Dog’s life means something. Especially to those he cares about.

It’s impossible for a film titled Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai not to absolutely bang. And bang it does. Too many movies have boring one word titles that don’t even really mean anything. Give me more weird hyper specific titles. This film is cool. Funny. And imbued with great meaning. And Ghost Dog shoots people with a gun and then whips it around and holsters it like a katana. I think that’s rad as hell.

MAN

I need structure. In a state of total freedom I find myself spiraling into utter chaos. And by that I mean an unprecedented level of decision paralysis that results in me laying in bed and rubbing my feet together like a little grasshopper (something my therapist labeled as ‘psychomotor agitation’). Basically I need to get out of bed and move around right after waking up or I’m in big trouble. And structure can do that for me. Which is really frustrating because I am ideologically opposed to structure. I’ve been feeling very anarcho-socialist lately. But I guess on the commune/farm there would still be some sort of rules. There just wouldn’t be fascists around trying to enforce them. It would be more like gentle accountability that could dip into subtle passive-aggression. But then we talk about it over dinner. And have a group hug. And it’s all okay.

Told through the eyes of adjudant-chef Galoup, an officer in the french Legionnaires, Beau Travail tells a story of deeply repressed emotion, the failure to fully accept oneself, and what happens when we encounter someone who forces us to reckon with those facts. The majority of the film is a reflection of Galoup and his fellow soldiers’ time in Djibouti. Galoup finds great satisfaction in his daily routine. Living life on base, leading his men through their daily exercises, and traveling into the local town for dancing. But a new soldier arrives with a batch of others. Seemingly ordinary, but this soldier stirs something within Galoup. A jealousy. A passion. Desire. He is unmoored. He, probably, wants to fuck him a little bit. Or doesn’t like that his boss, who Galoup may or may not have a little crush on, also wants to fuck the new guy. And unfortunately when traditional masculinity is forced to reckon with anything resembling a complex emotion people tend to die.

Beau Travail is often hailed as one of the greatest films ever made. And for more than good reason. This film is absolutely gorgeous. Some of the most striking and evocative images I’ve ever seen captured on film. With one of the most wonderful endings to a film I can remember. Too many movies just do a close up on the protagonist’s face and that’s so boring bro like come up with something unique that leaves your audience actually thinking about something. Plus it’s got dudes hugging each other so aggressively. And I like that.

Beau Travail (1999) by

Claire Denis

ritual for a queer yule

by tuff cretin

on december the twenty-first, gather together, indoors or out-of-doors.

wear the bright and shiny clothes, and the animal mask.

when the sun dies, light the yule log. candles will suffice. on paper, write down the things you wish to release. sacrifice these by tossing the paper into the fire.

invoke the spirits of the season. hail santa claus, hail woden, hail frigg.

eat good food, play games, run and scream, be merry, be queer.

stay awake all night, keep the fire going, and watch the sun be reborn.

take part in the festivities until january first.

The apple crisps are burning, and the smoke detector screams as if I can’t smell the brown sugar roasting into black sludge. But a golden

Why FOuNd FAMily is this

The doorbell rings when both my hands are clad in oven mitts, sputtering at the hot air wafting from the oven. The door isn’t locked, and the intruders never had qualms barging in any other day. (The manners are fake. Little boys wearing their Sunday best for the holidays.) Just last week, one slept on my couch after a late shift without so much as a text. No, can I stay?

The Prince of Plates and Napkins vacates his pleather throne and meanders to the door when he sees all his servants are busy at work. So gracious. A benevolent monarch. Bringing utensils to the potluck and crushing friends in video games is thankless work, but someone has to do it. Long may he

always be: yes. yes. no. a boil. With a groan that’s

The kitchen’s real estate vanishes in the blink of an eye when glass dishes and crock pots invade the counter space. The mixture of smells is delicious. Comforting. Warm. (Or maybe that’s the laughter ricocheting off bright smiles and high ceilings.) The apple crisps live up to their name when I scrape them from the baking sheet. I throw the stained pan in the sink with some soap and water. To soak. I’ll wash

intended. Couches, camping welcome on the table. No one has to sit pretty.

an attempt to navigate the labyrinth goes awry. Eating shouldn’t be allowed in the No, No, do you have The answer will

it after the party. I definitely won’t rope my husband into

GAy’s FAvOrite trOpe

hair. He lion kings me onto

finished bowl to the family with a dimpled grin, and the crowd goes wild. The kids are doing just fine.

After the flock of vultures descends upon the kitchen, we don’t say grace. We don’t miss the way our hands

christians and colonizers and capitalists. The missing cue between sitting at the table and stuffing our faces sits

run across the gummy space where a tooth should be. (I hope to never hear another one of my grandmother’s prayers. I long to be welcome

This year, I’m thankful for... coffee shop open mic nights Brad Mondo bleach bath tutorials the unsend feature on iphones surviving my quarter life crisis living to see my quarter life crisis my own resilience Kentucky banned conversion therapy and you

The food tastes better when my friend is belting Chappell Roan in my ear. The apple crisps pulled through. Brown sugar turned to caramel under the heat. We’ve turned sweet despite the heat too. Friendsgiving is always after Thursday. A week of deadnames and introducing partners as friends. A week of racist uncles and trying to ignore mother shaped holes in our chests. Soothed by a weekend of hand turkeys and late night smoking on the balcony. Cleansing the altar after a sacrifice. Planting

seeds after a burn.

speakers blast heathen music and the same person wins the Smash Bro tournament

for the fourth year in a row. The kiddie table is gone, and no one tiptoes around the cousin they’d rather not see. The cider is strong, and the shared quilts are soft. Hearth. Home. Haven. May the generations keep the tradition.

Words by Rhyker Dye

We Queer sand with sweat. Full moon pupils, we’re devoured by life. Our teeth grind to the beat as grindr notifications ping dunes. A post-Pride afters at the edge of ocean where the Leeuwin

Current thrums with whale call and krill. Kin in our silica dance, brought here by togetherness. To party on, and on. Waves vibe with us as a DJ divines anthems from a fading star chart.

Once, we were glass boys, shattering. Now we pop the communal wafer of PreP, our tongues blue in the bruise of night’s ending. This is a church, a cathedral. House music as hymn. Vaulted ceiling of firmament. And lo, here she comes: Eos, golden in dawn’s halo. The tune shifts as a drag queen, effigy of love, wearing a tentacle wig, draped in shells and seaweed, green and red, lip syncs to Enya. We feel ourselves lull, sail away. She calls the four corners in through movement, casts circle. Into it she drops nine grains of salt, prays over them: a bane to ward off the hate, the bigotry. Us, protected. Sacred. We are mesmerized as the song lilts, a techno rift surging up beside break, choral as if coral clinging to the bough of our bodies, our pumping fists. This, a holy ritual where we are the sacrament for each other’s lips, spit and kiss. We put our sunglasses on, keep dancing. The water laughs, joins us.

BeAch rAve (perth, WesterN AustrAliA)

Words by Scott-Patrick Mitchell

duGOut

I suppose I had failed you, failed to protect your temple on the Mount of Yuccas. A rancher on horseback, police in a squad car, rednecks on foot, children with weapons, neighbors with rumors, drove me from the land to hike alone in the hills to seek refuge with you.

When I reached the plateau where wildflowers grew wherever we had lain, I found a freshly dug hole three feet deep, six feet long, and mounded around with dirt. Perhaps it was a dugout for campouts. From whom did they fortress? Or a mine for gold. Did they find an empty goose? Perhaps a grave for me. Had voyeurs spied our worship?

Thieves had rent your flesh in two, desecrated your sanctuary, and sacked its relics — my privacy, my safety, my freedom to imagine whatever I wanted to imagine and love whomever I wanted to love. Where have you gone?

of weapons, feet long, was did Did empty I Where you Return for me. Take me with you. My prayers go unanswered. A god has fled the land. All my trails have ended.

“Queer ANd trANs utOpiA“: The Ritual

and Reimagination

of Drag

Words and Photos by

Christine Kao

drag spaces in Los Angeles foregrounding drag kings and gender-expansive performers rise to redefine the art form.

By carrying forward the ritual of drag— including the embodiment of gender performance and the literal routine of “getting in drag”—performers disrupt a gender structure that has long rejected Queer identities and expressions. In LA, Trans, Nonbinary, and Lesbian performers are crafting a world where fluidity is celebrated.

Gender exploration and gender performance have always been a part of human nature; drag is therefore, ritualistic, said drag king Mister IHardlyKnowHer, co-founder of the drag production company named Boys With Tits. The art form serves as a medium for many audiences and performers to connect with their Queer ancestors, they added. However, to Mister, drag also ought to defy expectations.

“Drag should be a subversion of expectations, and it should be punk rock, and it should be alternative,” Mister said. Being a drag king already signifies a subculture within a subculture. “A hat on a hat is what we call it in comedy writing,” they chuckled.

While drag queens - fighting the long and ongoing battle against transphobia, homophobia, and the recent wave of antidrag laws - resiliently reign in pop culture, drag kings and Genderfluid drag artists remain less visible in the mainstream. The phenomenon has been discussed in several publications including Vogue, The Guardian, and Vox. In culture journalist Zoya RazaSheikh’s interview story “Drag kings are ready for their reigning era,” published by Gay Times in April, multiple drag kings in the UK expressed their hope for more inclusive and accessible platforms for themselves and for gender-nonconforming performers.

A fierce force shaping inclusive stages in LA is drag king Chase Lounge, the other half of Boys With Tits, who hosts local shows that spotlight Trans and Sapphic drag performers. Originally moving to LA to pursue comedy, Chase’s drag journey began in October 2021 after attending and feeling inspired by LA’s all-drag king show “Them Fatale.”

“Chase Lounge is a Transsexual Chippendale who loves to glamorize obesity, further the Gay Agenda, and throw ass,” Chase introduces himself before competitions.

He strives to curate raunchy, fun, and COVIDsafer environments that feel authentic to this character and welcoming to Transgender people and Lesbians like himself. “Just kind of a Queer and Trans utopia vibe,” Chase described his vision. “And kind of a Dyke carnival.”

In June, Chase hosted “Pink Pony Club,” a show featuring an all-Sapphic lineup at the Silver Lake Queer bar, Akbar. One member of the cast, two-spirit drag queen Leona Love, also performed as drag king Flaco Paloma that night. Sapphic is a term that Leona freshly reconnected with, being Nonbinary, Transmasculine, and five years into a gender transition outside of drag. Masculine drag felt too vulnerable to execute at the beginning of the transition, Leona said. But today, while Leona as a character honors the femininity previously channeled by the person behind the drag, Flaco celebrates the butch energy - including the yearning and desire - that the person inhabits now.

“Drag is kind of a gender ritual that also subverts gender,” Leona said. “We are recreating gender dynamics that have been helpful to us, while also rallying against them.”

An equitable drag space considers more than genders. In addition to championing genderdiverse environments, Leona began hosting the accessibility-forward show “Disabled Cable” in March. The show features an allDisabled cast, a demographic frequently overlooked in drag spaces, Leona said. As a Disabled drag performer, she is committed to illuminating different ways that disability exists and interacts with drag culture. “Disabled Cable” gives herself and other Disabled performers a platform to combat the perception that disability is taboo in drag spaces and to describe themselves exactly how they feel comfortable.

“I just personally want to craft spaces where people feel really safe to show up exactly as who they are, especially from a disability lens, but in general,” Leona said.

There has been a renaissance of androgynous, Genderfluid performers, Leona observes, saying that local drag shows she has participated in seldom enforce rigidity or favor a specific type of performance. Al A. Moany, a drag king who made his competition debut at a drag king and Nonbinary contest in January, shared a similar sentiment. Most local shows he has attended showcase a diverse range of drag performance, he said, acknowledging that it isn’t a universal experience.

Rocking a bedazzled white T-shirt that reads “THIS IS NOT A DAD BOD IT’S A FATHER FIGURE” at September’s “Pink Pony Club,” Al A. Moany likes to reclaim items and songs that people don’t always associate with Queer culture. He led the audiences in dancing to Everclear’s “Father Of Mine,” Linkin Park’s “Numb,” and Foo Fighters’ “All My Life,” hoping to embolden them to enjoy anything that sparks comfort and confidence.

“Whatever makes you feel the most confident in yourself, that’s what you should be doing,”

Al A. Moany said. Performing drag has helped him internalize the message that he now hopes to spread to the crowd. “Don’t worry about taking up too much safe space or being too weird or too much because you’re not.”

Al A. Moany likens the preparation ritual of drag to athletic routines: getting into a mental zone, considering ways to improve, rehearsing, and trusting himself when a set begins. But he also embraces spontaneous feelings and unexpected acts during a performance, adding that drag is meant to be wild and fun.

Bringing a drag persona to life is a ritual that people execute through different elements such as hairstyle, makeup, and outfits, said Kiki, a drag queen who performed in August at Chase and Mister’s Shakespearean drag show “A Midsummer Wet Dream.” Often donning sleepwear and robes, Kiki embodies the “bed aesthetic” that originated from her hosted show, “Bed.” “Drag to me could be like a religion,” Kiki added as she explained further. “It could be something that you idolize and worship and work hard towards.”

“ Drag should be a subversion of expectations, and it should be punk rock, and it should be alternative,”

Another cast member from “A Midsummer Wet Dream,” Serrahnade sees her drag queen persona as a part of herself, an avenue for amplifying different parts of her personality. As a rapper, searching for a non-judgmental environment where she could perform her music and channel her creativity led Serrahnade into drag in the first place. At “A Midsummer Wet Dream,” Serrahnade found a delightful, intimate, theatre-adjacent night to spend with friends.

“ Drag is kind of a gender ritual that also subverts gender,”

A truly inclusive drag space is a venue for connection. Spectators of local drag shows are not only showing up to view a performance but interacting with those around them, Mister says. They hopes to engage audiences emotionally and physically in real-time, bridging the typical gap between the people on and off stage.

Starting Boys With Tits with Chase in August, Mister credits the drag kings that came before them for fostering inclusive environments that the duo now aims to continue cultivating. Both as a performer and attendee, Mister had encountered Queer spaces where they didn’t feel a sense of belonging. Now as a host, they want to ensure audiences feel included during the shows and comfortable making friends after.

“It’s our responsibility as show producers and performers to be as inclusive as possible,” Mister said. “And the more people come with that attitude, we can do so much as a community.”

they/he

GAMe chANGers

rituAls

A reFlectiON ON the WOlves By sArAh delAppe pre-shOW

Words by Cam Reid

Iwas very lucky, at one point, to join a production of The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe, which is a very popular play that a lot of people have done in recent years—still, I was lucky. It’s a quirky play about a girl’s all-star soccer team. It first premiered in 2016 in an off-Broadway New York City theater. I read The Wolves for the first time while preparing for an audition three years later, as a greasy, Queer college student in Montana at a time of already heightened political disparity. I had never read anything like it, and through performing it, I found a community and a practice that was significant to me at that moment.

It’s a lively ensemble play, following a team of girls playing out their junior year season in a high-level recreational soccer program. The play tackles themes of grief and togetherness, ostracization and friendship, and, of course, the politics of high school soccer. It’s ultimately a quite heavy play, but when reading it there’s the inescapable sense that the script is extremely buzzy. From the very first read-through that I was invited to, the energy in the room was palpable, and very high. In the script, cues overlap all over the place. Sometimes there are two or three conversations going on at the time on stage. There’s a lot of motion on stage— physical activity, props being kicked around and flying through the air, blood, dramatic physical transformation, and grief. The entire first rehearsal myself and the rest of the cast kept asking, “are we really gonna do that?”

And we did end up doing most of it. We kicked real soccer balls and someone bled fake blood. We covered our black box theater in astroturf. And in the last act, we cried more than alligator tears about the pain of loss and the power of intimacy in real-life girlhood friendships.

Years later, I saw another version of The Wolves in Portland that was also in a black box theater, but the staging was different. They had bumpers between the stage floor and the audience, to prevent the soccer balls from going into the crowd. It was genius, and not anything we had imagined for ourselves in Montana. Instead, we spent hours a day, six days a week, running soccer drills. Ceremoniously, we would kick regulation balls to each other back and forth in various formations. We did this until we could shoot and pass so perfectly and so consistently that it was something that a mindful, artful director could put on stage with absolute confidence that we wouldn’t miss a cue, or worse, injure any of the many audience members sitting within a few meters of us.

As a performer, I may have preferred the relative security of the bumper, but I had really liked practicing the soccer drills with my friends. The stakes were high because if we weren’t good enough at the drills they either wouldn’t end up being part of the show (which would be boring) or we ran the risk of hurting someone (less boring, but still not good). But, despite the heightened pressure, the activity itself was low key and repetitive.

It was a super rhythmic thing, mindful but wordless. We learned to communicate using mostly gestures and physical phrases. We made a lot of sharp, pointed eye contact. We helped each other out and cheered each other on. We had to count on each other, which we ultimately found simple. It helped build trust in the cast, and as a mostly silent activity, was an extremely chill way to break the ice. And we did it every day, for six weeks, forming our own masquerade of a pre-game ritual, the pre-rehearsal ritual; good for when you aren’t an athlete but you need to feel like one. And it made us feel like a real team.

Spoiler warning, but I must divulge that The Wolves has a late-game Queer coming out subplot. Throughout the show, the girls on the team loosely speculate about and prod at the rumored sexuality of one of their (off-stage) female classmates, until a player on their team starts dating her. After, the girls on the team show their support for their Queer teammate and her self-exploration. It is a modest nod to a positive, hopeful Queer experience that is a reality for some. It provides a notable streak of levity in an otherwise very grave part of the show.

At the time, I was Queer person in a majority-conservative state within a rural part of the country. I’m not really in a position to complain about the social climate in Montana since I asked to be there as an enthusiastic college student, and wouldn’t be required to stay long. But what I can say is that I was optimistic for the future of Queer life and community then, as I am now. There were plenty of Queer people all around me in Montana, and even more friends and allies. I was really grateful for the Queer presence in The Wolves because it gave me some ground to know that I would be accepted within my cast, at a time when I was young and vulnerable, although we mostly used scripted words and soccer warm-ups to get to know each other.

“These women may play for different teams, but they all bat for our team.”

Photos

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Words by Ann McCann

the rituAl OF the drippy ’Fit

“Everyone watches women’s sports” the merchandise available across the internet croons, unassumingly, though upsetting many heterosexual men to be sure. There is a shift in sports happening right now, a seismic one, that is finally showing the prowess and greatness of women’s sports, particularly the WNBA right now. Inherently, we understand a couple of things to be true—men’s sports prove you’re not Gay (though their pre-game rituals may allude otherwise)—and that women’s sports are inherently Gay. This is not to say that ALL female sports players are Gay, but Dykes have been their number one fans long before Caitlin Clark joined ranks and amassed a fandom. We also know that many of these lady ballers are Queer. This is on display most often in the pregame ritual of the Locker Room Walk. This walk is the walk from the opening of the facilities to the locker room, as to be expected by the name, where the paparazzi photograph the players on their way in. A red carpet of sorts, only on linoleum floors instead of a plush carpet.

This unassuming ritual brings Queerness to a new light for many who follow it closely. The walk is a bit of a fashion show for these women. They get to stunt down the hallway in carefully curated and individualized outfits that will be the last thing they are seen in before they join their team and all dress in uniform jersey. A timehonored tradition for Queer folks, especially masculine Queer women is flagging their sexuality with carefully coded clothing. Bisexuals are aware of cuffing their jeans, Lesbians aware of flannels, ribbed tanks, the jewelry, the button downs, etc. So when many of these women are given the chance to show off a drippy ‘fit, they don’t disappoint. Among them are all-stars like Breanna Stewart, Diana Taurasi, Brittney Griner, Alyssa Thomas, and Dijonai Carrington—to name only a very few out players. (Honorable mention goes to Sue Bird who is always photographed courtside after retirement with fiancée Megan Rapinoe, of soccer fame, both of whom are always dripped out and ready for the occasion of the inevitable paparazzi shoot.)

There is an incredible coding, a flagging of sorts, as the Queer players make that ritualistic walk to the locker rooms. Caitlin Clark, while incredible, is straight and it shows in her choice of outfit—no shade intended. But when we see DeWanna Bonner and fiancee Alyssa Thomas make their way down the nondescript gray hallway, Queers everywhere understand—these women are our people. Whether it flag femme-Dyke or masc-Dyke off the court, we seem to know, to understand, this is our culture, this is hot, this is sexy, this is Gay. Sure, it may be designer and cost more than most of our salaries, but we see it and know in this little publicized (until now) ritual that these women may play for different basketball teams, but they all bat for our team. Baggy jeans, chains, cropped jerseys, the jewelry, the swag. My G-d the swag. It’s an aura that emanates: I’m Queer, I’m here. Quoting a Sports Illustrated article, DapperQ (a Queer clothing company) says in their 2022 article, “Whereas once, not that long ago, WNBA players were asked to sit through hair and makeup classes at rookie orientation, now they are free to express their style as they want. They can, as a New York Times op-ed put it, ‘celebrat[e] and showcas[e] androgynous swag.’” And express themselves, they certainly have.

When I watch WNBA players walk down those halls, dressed for the Queer female gaze, or even for their own satisfaction, there’s a deep understanding and respect that is showcased few other places. With Lesbian bars an endangered species, where does one go to see Lesbians dressed in their best and finest? In the halls of the WNBA, of course.

Words by Meg Streich

stANd FirM ANd yOu’ll Be FiNe:

An Interview with Stonewall Sports

Want community? Name five of your neighbors and five of their phone numbers (preferably, also their allergies).

The bull has reared its ugly head, the American public has shown us their clear and present drive towards Queer and Trans erasure. We do not slink away, we do not go to the shadows. Fascism’s rise is dependent on the surrender of its people. There are 13.9 million LGBTQ+ people in the United States. There are 13.9 million people who will not surrender. This time we must look to each other. Look to your neighbors. Look to the organizations in your community, join in with the work already taking place. Build strength in ritual, build strength in the routine of community organizing, build a ritual of consistent dedication to helping those you love.

In these times, don’t change your mission, get louder.

In the aftermath of November 5th, I had the opportunity to sit down with directors from Stonewall Sports Philadelphia: CT Young (DEI + Allyship Director), David Waterstram (Director of Dodgeball), and Jared Tracy (Director of Volleyball) to talk community in times of turmoil, coming to terms with our athletic selves, and transformed Sunday rituals.

yOu’ve dONAted Over 450,000 iNtO the philAdelphiA lGBtQiA+ cOMMuNity, WhAt cAuses Are yOu pAssiONAte ABOut suppOrtiNG riGht NOW?

(ct) One of our largest donors is Galaei, they are one of our most consistent community partners. They are really Trans and Nonbinary focused relating to housing and clothing and makeup and hair. They help put on a lot of shows around community health initiatives.

(dAvid) We are focusing on a Queer young adult housing project, which is a program for troubled teens and youth that have been through the foster care system in Philadelphia to make sure they have access to housing and life skills.

(JAred) Our wellness director does a lot with his programming. We can’t be everything for everyone, but if we don’t have a place for you, we have a connection to a resource for you.

WhAt vAlue dO Queer sOBer spAces hAve FOr yOu?

(dAvid) For me, I’m the Director of Dodgeball and I just finished my first season as director. I grew up in a time where it wasn’t really acceptable to be Gay in sports. It wasn’t like today where teachers were encouraging kids to be who they really are, it was a different time. I did not learn to throw a ball, I played soccer and tennis and track. I had to learn how to throw a ball in front of hundreds of Gay men as an adult. It was really scary at first and then I realized that: “oh we are all in the same boat and all coming to terms with our athletic selves in front of each other and with each other,” and gave each other the space we needed to develop. Some people are more athletically talented, some people are more aesthetically talented and show up to play in drag. We have successfully created a space where people can show up and play as the most authentic version of themselves. You can find common ground with anyone in the league.

It’s nice to have a space where alcohol isn’t the focus, a place where the assumption isn’t loud music and drinking around a bunch of strangers.

(JAred) We are offering you another venue, a way for us to build community. I moved up here from Texas originally and my partner was the only connection to the Philadelphia area. I’m a social person, I could go to a bar and meet people, but it’s good to not have

alcohol involved. I never had the opportunity to play volleyball growing up. It’s nice to be in a space where you don’t see the normal Gay pressures. I owe 80% of my friend group to this organization.

(ct) A lot of our members are in the same boat where they want to be in social spaces and want to be social, but they don’t want to drink.

WhAt iMMediAte issues dO yOu see FAciNG speciFicAlly Our philAdelphiA Queer cOMMuNity, ANd WhAt dO yOu see the rOle OF stONeWAll spOrts iN AMeNdiNG theM?

(JAred) We can see after Covid these organizations that are going to become more and more important, incidents where you are seeing places that are going out of business

becoming fewer and fewer, not that bars are the best space, but opportunities to meet other Gay people in Gay spaces are shrinking. Stonewall is going to remain a very crucial Gay space in Philadelphia.

(ct) With a lot of Queer youth growing up during Covid, they spent a lot of their time learning how to socialize at home, and they don’t know how to do those things. We have to give them those spaces to be young and Queer and find others like them. Housing prices are going up and up and they are getting forced further out of the city.

80% of my social circle at this point is Stonewall people. It’s a safe place to experiment with yourself and your identity, because Stonewall is a safe space (safer space), people get to try out a new identity. They can say “maybe she/her doesn’t fit me” “maybe I like wearing a wig, maybe I want to do drag, maybe I’m Trans.”

(dAvid) We do a lot to make opportunities for people in the Stonewall community who might not be able to pay the full price, it is getting more expensive.

We are not immune to inflation just because we’re Gay.

We do a lot to give back to the community not just philanthropically but directly through our fee assistance program and discounted rates. As Queer people we have not always been accepted in finance and business and economy; we have always been pushed to the edges of those fields. We want to be inclusive of all people regarding their ability to pay.

It is wonderful to see teams naturally becoming more diverse every year. Starting January 2025 this will be my 10th season of dodgeball. Ten years ago it was a very different environment. We as a community have evolved significantly. It took people like CT who were able to spearhead these initiatives to diversify our teams.

or places that were Queer spaces turning into a more heteronormative area. Stonewall is a way for us to all still get together, which is why it’s important for us to continue as an organization. As the economy gets rougher and rougher these places are shutting their doors.

We lost two Gay bars this week, Cockatoo closed and Level Up closed, our spaces are

(ct) We have changed and grown as an organization. We have a global incident report coming that will have various ways that our members can self-report so we can actually address issues that our members are experiencing and uphold the promise of being a safe space for them. We have seen a significant uptick in registration and a change in some of our members’ behaviors and attitudes towards “non-standard

identities.” I came out as Nonbinary in the last year and even then, there was that shift in how other players kind of perceive me, address me and talk to me, you know, within a position of authority. It’s eye opening.

That’s what my committee is focusing on right now; just setting up these policies so we can have a truly diverse, equitable, and safe environment for everyone.

(JAred) We are a steady beacon, we are still here, we are still Queer, we are here for you.

hOW dO yOu Feel the receNt electiON results MAy iMpAct stONeWAll spOrts’ MissiON Or cOMMuNity?

(ct) The mission will largely stay the same. It will be a welcoming and accepting environment for Queer people to make community. There will be a doubling down of commitment to our sponsors.

To build community takes community.

Right now, there is a lot of rhetoric about “we have to build community,” but name five of your neighbors and five of their phone numbers. It is truly just community building. We know all of our people through Stonewall, I have keys to apartments, I know their allergies. We need an actionable place where people can build community.

(dAvid) We have put out mental health resources to our community and just having Stonewall to help people know that regardless of what is going on politically there will still be a space for Queer people to be Queer people. No matter what is going off the court or field, you are still a valued member of Stonewall.

(JAred) Our mission isn’t changing, it’s just getting louder. We can make sure our community is in good hands, and knows we are here for them.

especiAlly iN liGht OF receNt eveNts, We stArt tO see MOre peOple speAk up ABOut the iMpOrtANce OF “OrGANiZiNG,“ WhAt dOes thAt MeAN tO/FOr yOu?

(ct) To me it doesn’t mean recreate the wheel. But you don’t need to start from scratch, there are a lot of people already doing the work. The organizations are there, the infrastructure is there, the most important thing is joining in with the work that is already taking place. Instead of us just donating money to these organizations asking our members “hey can you donate your time to these organizations.” They are already doing clothing drives, they are doing name change clinics. Now it’s a focus on how we can put bodies toward the initiatives and you’re going to get introduced to people with lived experiences vastly different from yours and you’ll be able to connect more. If we don’t just throw money at the problem and walk away, we will be able to initiate change.

WhAt Advice WOuld yOu Give tO Other cOMMuNity-driveN OrGANiZAtiONs FOr MAiNtAiNiNG uNity ANd resilieNce duriNG pOliticAl shiFts?

(ct) One, I would tell them to read the book “The Resiliency Myth”. It does a very good job of explaining the breaking down, you know, the ways we’re taught to think about resiliency and the mythos behind it and especially from the perspective of marginalized communities. There’s that importance of storytelling and sharing and connecting, but also acknowledging the systemic obstacles that we face in being resilient. Two, when you know you’re doing good and you are you’re doing the right thing, stand strong in it. Doesn’t matter how many people are going to get a bellyache and whine about it and say, “I don’t want to, I won’t, you can’t make me.” Okay. Say okay, stand your ground.

You know, have confidence in the facts and figures and the knowledge that you have. That doesn’t mean don’t go learn something new, or be open to change if there are credible and valid criticisms. But stand firm because every inch you concede, teaches them that they can push you to giving up everything eventually. Stand firm and you’ll be fine.

(dAvid) There are a lot of people who still don’t understand Gay people. Just existing is a form of political courage. I grew up before Gays were allowed in the military. Just us existing as a safe space is radical.

(JAred) I am a person of radical optimism and delusion, but I think there is going to be a lot of pessimism and moaning and apathy coming along the way. I think if they can see the inch, it is going to weaken us. We still have to persevere, if you get knocked down and stay knocked down, you’re never going to get up. You can’t go back, you have to move forward.

(ct) Liberation begins in imagination. Keep imagining, keep dreaming, keep striving towards a community where Queer people are accepted from birth. Every bit of progress we get is a step towards that goal.

iN WhAt WAys dO these spOrts rituAls help streNGtheN resilieNce ANd sOlidArity AMONG MeMBers duriNG pOliticAlly uNcertAiN tiMes?

(ct) It’s no different than building regular friendships outside of this and outside of Stonewall.

Friendship is agreeing to do something, showing up, and keep doing it again. That’s the ritual here. It’s a ritual of continuation. It’s a ritual of dedication.

Eventually they trust you to do the thing you said you would do, and they trust you with a little more of themselves. Now you’re seeing each other on Tuesday night for no other reason than to see each other and you have their house key.

(dAvid) Our dodgeball is always on Sundays, and for me it’s like church. It’s a sacred time for me, dodgeball has become the third pillar of my life. The way that people have a church community is how I feel about my dodgeball community. These are the people I break bread with, these are the people I drink a little wine with. Stretching out, rock paper scissors for ball control and you have this rush of adrenaline together, the shared Commiseration of defeat thrill of victory. It is very much the experience of men and women in a space experiencing together. The ritual for me is within the game.

(JAred) It’s like when we all get together on Fridays to watch drag race. I grew up southern baptist, that’s what my family did on Sundays, and that’s their community. We are helping people create a ritual to look forward to. This is something that we all look forward to; to be that beacon at the beginning/end of the week that we can all look forward to if you’re having a bad day or a good day. It’s those healthy little habits that you look forward to. This is just a bigger ritual that builds a little healthier of a habit, and it’s this sort of thing that we all need to look forward to continue our lives and make this world a little bit better.

WhAt dO yOu see the Future OF stONeWAll spOrts plAce iN the philAdelphiA lGBtQiA cOMMuNity?

(dAvid) The future that I don’t want to see is one where Stonewall fades out as people my age and younger than me age out of it.

One of the things I fear is that we won’t be able to bring in younger players and get them hooked while they are still young and active. I was talking to a younger player who said “Stonewall is for older Gays” and I don’t want this to end. This community has had a great impact on my life. For the future of Stonewall I constantly pray that we can keep this going, that it doesn’t fade out. Ideally we can keep this going for 50-100 years and make it strong and diverse and lovely and Queer and just bigger and Gayer than ever. To do that I think we need to appeal more to younger Queer people. We have to grow the community and grow the movement. We all want the same things, CT is spearheading the diversity and inclusion component. I fear that we won’t capture young Queers. To keep this movement going we need to cast a wider net and get more young people of all ages and colors and genders.

(ct) When I had my interview here I saw this organization as something with immense potential. I think we have to own the responsibility that comes with our size, and be much more responsible with policy development and response to our members, holding up the promise of being a safe space. I don’t see tolerance as a paradox, I see it as a social contract, if you break the contract you’re out. That’s how I approach policy development. They want us to listen, they want to feel heard, they want to feel included. My future of Stonewall is one that respects our members, acknowledges them and wants to continue to be that space for them. If they leave because they are looking for an all white Gay boys club, I’m not going to shed a tear. The purposes of Stonewall are to be welcoming. My vision for Stonewall is wide, it has room for all that seek room as long as you are willing to be comfort for all those that are here

(JAred) I think the future is bright, we are an organization that can adapt and grow and continue. With this new year we have brought she/they volleyball. With that organization we have a group of 60 people signing up, half of which have never played a Stonewall sport before, which speaks to the whole group of people that we haven’t been able to reach and are able to get into our organization. We can update our policies to make sure everyone is here and welcome and will grow into a more diverse and communal future. I don’t know if that’s me being delusional but I will take that pill and swallow it and go forward.

“Friendship is agreeing to do something, showing up, and keep doing it again. That’s the ritual here. It’s a ritual of continuation. It’s a ritual of dedication” - CT

kick like A she/they

Words by Jill Young

If you’ve spent any time searching for Queer community in Los Angeles, you’ve more than likely happened upon rec sports leagues. And if you’ve spent any time dating as a Queer person in Los Angeles, you’ve almost certainly hooked up with someone who’s hooked up with someone who’s involved in a rec sports league. As a self-proclaimed soccer Dyke, I’m no exception. Queer sports leagues are more than just an affordable gym alternative—they are micro-communities, shared rituals of play and adrenaline. They are outlets to blow off steam, to connect, to date, to work through trauma, and yes—to sometimes kick a ball so hard that Subaru alarms begin to screech.

I recently spoke with Kate Josey, the Senior League Manager for OutLoud Sports, LA’s she/they kickball league, to discuss her experience with Queer sports leagues. Josey first got involved with rec kickball in 2017 when she was living in Fort Lauderdale. She was newly out and looking for Queer friends. After only one season, Kate met her now exgirlfriend and, in her words, “did the Lesbian thing where I, you know, shacked up and then never saw the light of day again.”

After U-Hauling across the country, surviving lockdown, and (sounds of thunder) a Sapphic break-up, Kate continued playing kickball, now with OutLoud’s LA she/they league. The league offers free seasons to players that umpire a certain amount of games, so Kate decided to do just that:

“I get really good at being an umpire. I love it. It’s fun. I get animated. I do get little hand signals. I can talk to people, make people have fun. And then the folks who run the company liked me, like my attitude, like my vision, and they said, ‘Why don’t you be a league manager?’ And I’ve been doing that since. It’s grown exponentially since it came back from COVID, which is really cool.”

Neither Kate nor I claim to have the exact answer for why our respective group sports have boomed since COVID lockdown, but we have our theories. As much as online spaces are essential and often life-saving for LGBTQ+ people, it’s completely different to have real-life, 3-D, in-person communities. And after over a year of intense social isolation, so many of us felt an overwhelming desire for outdoor activities and connection. I asked Kate about why these types of spaces are important to her:

“When I was a kid...it wasn’t okay to be Gay in most places. I didn’t really know Gay people, I didn’t know Trans people. Gay people were like something you’d kind of talk about on the side, and Trans people were kind of just a joke. Whereas now, knowing about myself...liking who I want to like and just learning and growing and being around other queer folks, you find out that a lot of us have very similar stories. I mean, we all have unique stories in the fine details, but a lot of us share the exiling of family, cutting off contact. Folks saying the wrong thing, being discriminated against in, you whatever job or school you went to.

There’s camaraderie coming out of that trauma and discrimination from your earlier days. When we find it, [discrimination’s] not there for the first time in our lives. So we tend to stick with that and it kind of does create a bubble, but it’s a nice bubble to be in because we’re not judged.”

In a polarized world of ever-increasing “us vs. them” mentalities, it is freeing to have an opponent that doesn’t doubt your humanity. To be a part of a Queer sports league is to be part of a team that isn’t fighting against the crushing weight of hate and legislation and cruelty—instead you’re competing against people who—though they might want to see you strike out—share many parts of your identity and struggle. Community comes before rivalry every time. Kate points out how this is unique to organizations like OutLoud.

“I’ve also played in a couple—I guess you could say—straight leagues. The atmosphere is like night and day, to be honest with you. I don’t know if it’s just that I don’t hang out with a lot of straight people anymore, (laughs) but it’s just not as welcoming. Not to paint with a broad brush, but the many that I’ve been involved with have nowhere

near the welcoming atmosphere or the amount of positive people walking around introducing themselves. It’s just, it’s a very unique thing that we’ve happened to build.”

This is also a reason why Kate is drawn to kickball in particular:

“For kickball, while you’re not playing, you’re sitting there talking to people. You’re talking about the game. [You can] hang out at the field before and after their games and just talk to people, hang out, they make it a picnic. The game itself actually allows for a really easy hangout time.”

It’s impossible to talk about Queer sports as a community ritual without highlighting an iconic LGBTQ custom: puns. From drag queens to derby dolls, Queer people love a pun, and kickball is no exception. Kate shared with me some of her favorite team names: Kick Van Dyke, Gay Fieri, Terf Stompers, Sit On My Base, and Lickalotapuss, among the most memorable.

Kate has found that in addition to the fun and games, Queer sports have inspired optimism in her for the future of America’s LGBTQ+ people.

“One thing that I will say is, as I get older, I encounter more and more people who came out at an early age. I feel a profound sense of jealousy, but it’s playful: ‘How dare you.’ It tells me that things are indeed getting better, because there are more people who have been out their entire lives, who sometimes have mentioned they have trouble relating to some people because they don’t have that shared trauma. And that’s a good place, I think, that the community is in. Even when it may not feel like we’re making progress, from what I see, we definitely are. The loud, mean voices will always be loud and will always be mean, but the folks who are happy, they’re just living their lives, being quiet. So you don’t really hear about them much. And if you ask me, the culture’s getting better.

I would say that if you’re looking for community and you’re coming out, or you’ve always been out, there’s probably a Queer sports league somewhere, even if you’re not super into sports—because the least [important] part about adult Queer sports is the actual playing of the sport.”

We might not be Olympic-bound, but as recreational athletes, Kate and I have found places where we can run and kick and yell and laugh without shame. Sports have historically intertwined with gender roles and exclusivity, have become a welcoming haven for Queer amateurs, and the games themselves are a ritual of excitement and celebration. For leagues like OutLoud, “goals” aren’t the only goals.

reiMAGiNiNG the preGAMe plAylist, re-rituAliZiNG the WAlk-up sONG

As soon as I was old enough to walk my mother put a softball bat in my hands.

There I was: a-year-and-a-half in the world and toddling uneasily through the tall grass in my grandparents’ front yard; struggling to raise the weight of the bat and swinging it haphazardly, missing the ball entirely, aluminum meeting the hard rubber of the tee in a metallic thud.

By the time I was six, I begged to play in the local Little League. I was young and wide-eyed, instructed in the brilliance that had been my mother’s softball stardom. Her ascent to NCAA greatness at the University of Maryland was cut tragically short by my grandmother’s cancer diagnosis. Like most children, I wanted to follow in my mother’s footsteps. I wanted, more than anything, to carry her legacy on my shoulders and make her proud.

My advent to organized team sports was nothing short of disaster. In my first year of Little League I was placed on a team sponsored by mcdonalds. I stood in the field in a bright yellow shirt emblazoned with the double arch and wearing jean shorts—of all things—to play in the dirt. I cried whenever I had to ask a teammate to throw with me (a habit that I would not kick until I was thirteen-years-old). I could not look my coach in the eyes and struggled to master the mechanics of the game.

The only thing that made sense to me were the rules, and I learned them quickly. Four balls is a walk and three strikes is an out. With a runner on first, you can get the force out at second. I was not particularly good at the game at first, but I at least understood its rhythms. By the time I was ten, I began playing year-round for a travel organization; then, my childhood was consumed entirely by softball.

Words by Kayla Thompson

For travel ball players, the season begins in August with tryouts. From the late summer until the early fall, you practice outdoors, maybe squeeze in a tournament before the weather gets too cold. Over the winter, organizations rent out warehouses or school or church gymnasiums for conditioning and reps. You take hundreds of ground balls and hundreds of practice swings. You drill the movements into your brain. You build muscle memory for months.

When the ground starts to thaw again, practices move back outside. As soon as school lets out, tournaments start. Every weekend of every summer is a different bracket—a new pool of teams playing in a new town. Every weekend you try to win. And if you don’t, you wait five days until the following Saturday for another chance. When August comes, the cycle starts over again.

The desire to win the games is its own ritual. It is the repetition of want; an act performed over and over again; a visceral longing playing in the background of a player’s brain on a constant loop, manifesting as the same acts before, during, and after every game, for years.

Over time, it became clear to our adolescent minds that all things are connected. Eat mcdonalds or arbys breakfast on championship days. Put the left cleat on before the right. Eat a pack of twizzlers. End soft toss on a hit that feels just right. Do ondeck swings in multiples of twos only. When you’re up, swipe your left foot from the back of the batter’s box to the front, then step in with the right. When playing third base, take a deep breath as the pitcher on your team winds up. On the exhale, step forward with the left foot and then the right. Bend knees into a crouch. Glove touches the ground. Don’t think. React. Win. It was universally accepted that rituals were the road to victory. The slightest variation resulted in a strikeout or lost the team a game.

Pregame rituals quelled anxiety and also caused it. Whenever my team won a game, or I made a particularly good play, or I hit a home run, I laid in bed at night trying to reconstruct the day step by step so I could replicate those actions the next morning; so I could reconstruct the measures of success.

While all of us had our own idiosyncratic (pre-, mid-, and post-game) rituals that we each stuck to with varying degrees of rigidity, the one pregame ritual that was holy and inviolate was that of the playlist and walkup song.

Once you get old enough, music becomes the most crucial component of any athlete’s pregame ritual. It’s an unofficial standard that the best way to get your head in the game is with a playlist that is equal parts energizing, focused, motivating, and commanding. It sets the tone and aligns your mindset. It should

prepare you to concentrate on the game and, more importantly, to win.

If the pregame playlist is a preparation ritual of the utmost importance, then the walk-up song is something else entirely—something with the potential to reverse momentum and turn the trajectory of a game’s outcome. The walk-up song is the foundation that your atbat is built on. A final opportunity to fortify yourself and shore up confidence before facing a field of opponents.

According to the MLB, some of the earliest walk-up songs played in major league baseball were played in the 1970s by an organist at Chicago White Sox games. From there, the ritual and practice of the walk-up song was popularized by Derek Jeter during his rookie season, when he requested that Montell Jordan’s “This is How We Do It” be played before his first major league at-bat in the mid-1990s.

Choosing a walk-up song for my high school team was the most anxiety inducing decision I faced each year. You couldn’t necessarily go wrong with a classic like “This is How We Do It,” but it was uninspired. Or at least it didn’t inspire me. Nothing that my teammates chose for walk-up songs or our pre-game playlist did. Before every game, we blasted the same twenty songs from a giant speaker as our warm-up music (to this day, whenever I hear Drake’s “Nice for What” or Kodak Black’s “Tunnel Vision,” I am back in the field behind my high school, dragging the bases into place).

I think what I hated most about the pregame ritual of warm-up music and walk-up songs was that I did not feel or see myself in any of the music. Most of the music that makes it onto those playlists, the music that athletes view as that which will hype them up or prepare them for competition, is rap or hiphop. I liked (and still enjoy) songs and artists from both genres, but the songs that enshrined themselves on our playlists, that we chose to define us as we approached the batter’s box, were almost always some derivative of misogyny masquerading as empowerment. I did not want to define myself with a song, written by mostly cisgender and heterosexual men, that used me as its punchline.

Once I got to college I stopped playing sports entirely, although the ritualistic behaviors, routines, and anxieties found other outlets

and ways to manifest. I didn’t play sports again in any competitive capacity until a few years ago, when my best friend and I joined a local volleyball league. I was temporarily living in our hometown postcollege graduation and we decided to fill in on a mutual friend’s church team. We were both former athletes who had become older and wiser, but we fell back into the old habits with ease. Before every game, we had a set number of songs that we’d listen to in a very particular order on the drive over in her car.

This time, there were no songs objectifying women written by cishet men, just endless renditions of “Untouched” by The Veronicas and “Tia Tamera” by Doja Cat. And if we ever wondered if using these songs to ready ourselves for a church league was sacrilegious, we simply forgave ourselves for it. We were making up for lost time.

I wish I could turn back the clock and tell myself there would one day be music and a pregame playlist that would feel genuine to me, that would excite me. Although I can’t, I can create something new, now. I can leave a new playlist behind, here, for future generations of Queer athletes who want something different to listen to. A Queer pregame playlist, full of empowering options by Queer artists and Queer artists of color. A way to, ever so slightly, Queer the ritual that guides us through the game and to the win.

Scan QR code for playlist

Shortbread she/her

dsAcred eFiANce

Art by Greta McGee

tlesBiAN seX is MOre iMpOrtANt thAN

My pAreNts

Words by Ann McCann

he quote from Sapphic magazine, Lesbians On the Loose (August 1996) reads as a sound bite cut out on a worn paper background: “Making lesbian love is more important to your relationship than work, friends, and family.” I stumbled upon it on the internet and shared it to my story. Considered controversial by many nuclear family advocates, the idea that making love to a lesbian partner in a lesbian way being more important to your relationship than any external source is radical. You’re supposed to prioritize family, friends, work, et cetera, ad nauseam. Lesbian sex is, societally speaking, very low on the ranks of importance unless you’re a pornographic outlet. I wonder if I upset my mother-in-law with this post and feel bad about it. It wasn’t the idea that she wasn’t important to our relationship, it was that the way my wife and I had fucked earlier that day had brought my relationship to my wife closer than any hangout session with an outside person could ever bring.

The holy ritual of Lesbian sex exists totally and completely outside of the binary of the nuclear household and White Picket Fence “dream.” It does not end in pregnancy, it is not for the purpose of procreation. Simply put, the time my wife and I spent together that afternoon— sweaty under a beautifully knit afghan blanket in the sunshine on our bed under the window— was used to reconnect our bodies, reconnect my love language of touch, follow through on the “I love you, every inch of you,” I had whispered beforehand as my wife lay naked before me, shy, trying to cover their body.

There is something radical in the way that lesbian sex, creative and inventive and not malefocused or centered, can create an intimate bubble of relational healing. Healing wounds we had not realized had even accumulated over the week. A week of work, of meetings, of dinners, and early bedtimes when we did not get to spend as much time decompressing together as we used to. I wake up, a couple of feet away from my wife, and remember the nights when we wouldn’t dare fall asleep without the other, wrapped arms and legs and hearts tangled in a mess that made it hard to tell where one body began and another stopped. It healed tiny microabrasions that had occurred throughout the week when we were simply too tired to give each other our best selves. Under those blankets and surrounded by a bottle of lube and a wand and the dildo still in the harness, we give each other our basest needs and desires. We murmur a litany of dirty phrases and praise the other when they’re good.

Eventually, the shyness melts away, replaced by guttural phrases. We learn to trust each other with those things, with our bodies in the most vulnerable positions. “Is this good for you?” “Yes, please, don’t stop.” G-d, G-d, G-d, I don’t, I never do, and my wife comes under my touches, rhythmic and needy, though I don’t let them know I need their body as much as they need what mine is doing to theirs. This, this is the most important part of our day, our week, every single time. This is when we communicate. This is when we connect. This is when we say ‘Life is hard, but it’s okay, I’ve got you’. It is the moment we come back to when everything, absolutely everything, melts away and it is nothing but bodies and bodies and bodies.

stuck plAyiNG hOuse iNsteAd OF drAGONs AGAiN

I grab them by the scruffs, one by one— come with me and remember what it feels like to hunt and to howl

I want wind-stung cheeks and a wagging tail leading the chase, bare-breasted asshole-out alpha wolf heart pumping as I sprint, ears pricked, girls gasping as I go

I’ll go to work chasing pinecones with the other boys the sting of seed and scale on skin hurts less than passive give-us-this-day-our-daily-demureness

I’m the heartbreaker, the runaway you content yourself with fl orals that give off the sickly scent of funeral homes dreams that unwind like ribbons, chopped and tied into your daughters’ hair

I’ll be pissing in the yard, marking the world as mine

I am so tired of this girlhood womanhood business dealing in quiet voices fl uffy pens and eyelash wishes when we play house by the climbing wall, I want to be the dog you grow round like a pomegranate and listen to the children scream

Words by Maggie McDonald

Photos by hailey sprinkel

ArtbyAaronHutts

Words by Rowan Mucci

church ON suNdAy

I have reserved time on Sundays to sit on the toilet. Won’t kneel at an altar, in a space that would ask me to forfeit my joy. “Convert to he/him or she/her!”

My hands don’t clasp a cross, they grip my skin; one’s on my thigh, one’s holding the syringe, I take a breath before I push it in –worship through a needle, three-fourths an inch. I thank god as I barely feel the pain, I say a prayer as I pull it out, This is what releases me from my disdain, and I know god loves me, without a doubt. Who do you think joins me on these sundays? Discarding the needle, I hear Their praise.

BOOks tO prisONers: A GrApeviNe tO FreedOM

Words by René Zadoorian

The united states of amerika has branded itself as the land of the free, yet continues to be the leading nation for incarceration, with nearly two million people held in correctional facilities as of 2024.1 Despite studies indicating a decline in crime rates,2 the population of incarcerated men, women, Transgender and gender Non-binary people continues to grow. With this growth of population comes the growth of local, state, and federal corruption.

It would take hundreds of pages and many issues of Fruitslice to even begin to discuss the magnitude of corruption and inhumanity towards the prison population. However, given the nature of our journal and its push for art as a tool for liberation, it is important to discuss the positive impact books have behind bars, and the help they provide in alleviating some of the dehumanizing treatments in amerikan prisons.

Rather than being a place for reformation and personal growth, prisons serve as institutions which deprive humans of literature in the name of justice through the heavy and often irrational restrictions set on reading material. In an effort to fill this literary gap in such a large part of our population, Books to Prisoners serves as one of the few nonprofits that work towards getting text into the hands of the incarcerated, many of whom would not have access to books otherwise.

According to their website,3 Books to Prisoners is a “Seattle-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to foster a love of reading behind bars, encourage the pursuit of knowledge and self-empowerment, and break the cycle of recidivism.” The organization was established in 1973 and has been volunteer run since, with Andy Chan serving as its current president. Luckily, Books to Prisoners has the help of an anarchist bookshop in Seattle, Washington. Tucked within the busy streets of Pike Place Market, Left Bank Books, who has also been operating collectively since 1973, has been a partner of Books to Prisoners for years. The shop has a display shelf with requested titles where people can purchase copies at discounted prices to be donated to those behind bars.

Despite the help of a brick and mortar store partnership, Books to Prisoners faces the additional challenge of navigating the often irrational restrictions of incarceration. Certain manga and comic books are amongst the many banned titles for including violence. In the list of banned books in California,4 topics include tattoo and art books due to nudity. Other titles such as Black Against Empire, The History and Politics of the Black Panthers Party are banned for safety and security reasons, meanwhile certain facilities do not restrict Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The Equal Justice Initiative website5 lists titles such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois, Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb, Kindred by Octavia Butler, and Mosby’s Medical Dictionary as some of the many books banned by state and federal prisons in the u.s. In some cases, even books on Sign Language are banned for fear of “code” being used by inmates.

1https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html?c=pie&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwmaO4BhAhEiwA5p4YLsiDmV0bauzD Ngf0UjiCo5ayTYcpN1exYtTmyqpWMoP7InslzIwNhoCe7EQAvD_BwE

2https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-data-says-about-crime-in-the-us/ 3https://www.bookstoprisoners.net/

4https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/12/21/prison-banned-books-list-find-your-state 5https://eji.org/news/banning-books-in-prisons/

learning Sign Language through books, those behind bars fortunate enough to receive literature often spend their time learning new languages such as French and Spanish, or even brushing up their skills in English, since many did not have the chance to finish school. This is especially important for those in solitary confinement. The term solitary often invokes the thought that the person who is secluded from the rest of the prison population must be dangerous to themselves or others. However, this is not always the case. Transgender inmates, especially Transgender women who are forced into men’s prisons, are oftentimes subjected to solitary confinement at higher rates. James Kilgore, a formerly incarcerated activist, goes into further depth about LGBTQ+ inmates and the issues of solitary confinement in his book The Warehouse: A Visual Primer on Mass Incarceration, where he writes that “conditions in solitary confinement vary. In some units, the incarcerated person may not have access to books or TV. Access to phones as well as visiting may be restricted or disallowed” (Kilgore 67). These conditions are exemplified in the words of the inmates themselves. Books to Prisoners published a collection of letters sent to their organization titled Dear Books to Prisoners: Letters from the Incarcerated. Many of the letters

received, with prisoners voicing how they were not expecting to receive any books, let alone ones that they specifically asked for. Reading provides a way to mentally leave the isolation of prison. Once behind bars, these books are shared amongst the people inside. An inmate in Texas wrote, “for many of us it is the only escape from the everyday stress and anxieties prison life entails. Long days in a single cell can really play mean tricks on a mind...With every book you send me it’s like you’re taking me out to the movies. No TV’s in seg. So it’s that much more special...”

As a Queer publication, it is important to address how struggles for freedom are tied to the struggles of state and federal punishment. Books and media are a large factor in understanding Queer identities, and for many Queer individuals, seeing themselves represented in literature brings a sense of belonging and acceptance. Literature is not simply entertainment, especially for marginalized groups who use text as a means of escape, and this should not be a luxury afforded only to those outside of prison.

To help support Books to Prisoners, and to learn more about programs that provide the essential item of books for the incarcerated, visit www.bookstoprisoners.net.

selF-pOrtrAit As pi

Words by Kelsey L. Smoot

we three not-girls not-boys all grit all iris too loud in our mothers’ living rooms too ugly for a prom date ripened through pubescent fantasy ready to come alive nobody to come alive with we three like porcelain figurines collecting dust on our mothers’ dresser-tops sneaking phone calls in our closets secret kisses at an all-girls sleepover while boy-brained trapped in a girl’s body we like hiccups in our mothers’ throats chipping away at a jack-and-jill destiny we all fresh stink still baby in the face but we fast -fast just not on the racing track hurtling ourselves beyond the grasp of our neighborhoods hanging out with girls with names like goddess and serenity meanwhile they anything but we three vagabonding trying to fill a void thorns in our mothers’ sides shame in our mothers’ hearts we grow crooked out suburban soil all the things we coulda been we chose hairy and hard-headed we three could be so pretty if we would learn to mind our elders and keep our legs closed we coulda been a miracle—we three or a bullet train or a ceo in our own right instead, we pencil shavings in the wind bruised peaches not the girls our mothers prayed for we slick in the mouth hot in the pants we might never amount to anything just here letting all the good air out the house taking up space doing everything we not supposed to come to find out it’s all we can do cuttin’ up like this grinning wild like hyenas too wild even for our ancestors’ dreams but quietly we wonder if we finna be bigger than ourselves someday a part of something revolutionary we three like fruit flies circling an altar hungry for an offering or like horseflies thrashing into elbows refusing to still our bodies and be a mirror on the wall we rather be nasty like a water bug make them people crawl out their skin fall away from girlhood like we did it before like we back from somewhere like we some ghosts who never believed in ghosts never believed the preacher or our mothers or the daddies just that we belong to one another like we three could make a different type of world like we goin ’ somewhere for real tracing fingers over palms in bathroom stalls making maps for someone else to follow until then, we resolute stay not-girls not-boys stay black and die the only thing we three are good for

Words and Art by Jaxon Seraphina

uNMAskiNG pride: The Corporate Takeover of Radical Ritual

iWords and Photos by Anz Yurcaba

magine, it’s your first time at Pride. You hop off the train, the sun is beating down on the crowded streets with rainbow flags rippling in the light breeze. Pop music blasts against the voices of evangelical protestors holding ridiculous signs and yelling about how we’re all going to hell. You make sure to snap a commemorative photo in front of them and give them your cutest middle finger before walking to find a decent spot for the parade.

You crack open a drink, ready to see the fun. The first thing your eyes catch onto is a massive banner with honeywell plastered across the front—a company known as much for its Pride sponsorships as it is for its military contracts. Everyone is cheering with phones held high to capture the moment, it’s a celebration of identity tangled with corporate presence.

After each float, you start to notice a pattern—big-name companies with employees wearing rainbow-fied logos littering the ground with single-use rainbow merchandise no one bothers to pick up. You get tired of the advertisements and the rainbow macy’s parade feel, so you decide to dip from the parade early and head to the festival grounds.

As you walk through the entrance, you’re greeted by campaign volunteers, blasting

365 Party Girl and handing out lime green “Kamala is Brat” bracelets. You smile and dodge the life-size cardboard cutout of the presidential candidate as you move deeper into the festival The sidewalks are lined with corporate tents as far as the eye can see. As you keep walking, you reach the small community market tent. You notice zines, stickers, and incredible art featuring phrases like “Stop Cop City” and “No Pride in Genocide” overflowing from the small tables. The cramped and overheated tent has an energy that feels worlds apart from the corporate conglomerate outside. The contrast is undeniable.

How did we get here? Is Pride still serving the people who need it most?

Pride was never meant to revolve around corporate sponsorship. At its roots, Pride has always been about reclaiming space, demanding rights, making the world pay attention to the lives and struggles of those forced into the shadows, and most importantly, survival. What was once a protest for survival slowly transformed into a celebration of acceptance. Along with that transformation came new players eager to align themselves with the visibility and popularity of the movement.

Each year, more and more corporations jump

on the Pride bandwagon to give themselves a reputation for inclusivity and diversity. Yet, they are simultaneously contributing to political campaigns that undermine LGBTQ+ rights, lobbying for policies that cause harm and violence, and perpetuating the very systems of exploitation that Pride was built to dismantle. It’s not just the corporations. Politicians, particularly democrats, use Pride as a convenient photo-op during election season to position themselves as allies while continuing to push neoliberal agendas that do little to support the most vulnerable within the Queer community. The overwhelming presence of corporate sponsorship and political campaigning makes modern-day Pride feel completely disconnected from its origin and meaning. The single-use rainbow merchandise that litters the streets is a perfect metaphor for the emptiness behind the rainbow-washed gestures—fleeting and disposable.

movement becomes complicit to genocide and occupation. The fact is, Queer liberation does not exist if it does not include the liberation of Palestinians.

The time has come to ask ourselves: What kind of future do we want for this ritual? Do we want it to remain a corporate monstrosity where rainbow logos are sold to the highest bidder? A space where genocide is washed over and overlooked? Or are you ready to reclaim Pride as the radical protest it once was, a space where voices are not just heard, but centered?

We must create spaces that center the voices of Trans, Black, Disabled, and Indigenous Queer people. Spaces that center education and inclusion of children. Spaces where mutual aid, direct action, and community are the driving forces. Our liberation cannot be found in rainbow logos or political promises. It must be built from the ground up, through community, through protest, and through the rejection of the systems that profit from our oppression.

It’s up to us to decide.

The shift from liberation to corporatization is disheartening. Many communities that Pride was meant to uplift find themselves pushed to the margins again and left to carve out small spaces in a hot and muggy tent with what they can afford. The fight for adequate healthcare access, protection from violence, housing, jobs, and justice for all members of the LGBTQ+ community remains unfinished, and yet, these issues are rarely front and center at today’s corporate-dominated Pride events.

Unfortunately, the corporate and political takeover is not the worst of it, there lies something much darker that goes against everything Pride is meant to stand for: pinkwashing. Zionist narratives have infiltrated Pride using pinkwashing to sanitize the occupation of Palestinian land and the ongoing genocide. By allowing zionism to find space in Pride, the

cONtriButOrs

Aaron Hutts (he/him) is an artist and musician based in Texas. Most of his work revolves around exploring the intersections of gender identity, sexuality, and Disability through visual mediums.

Angelina Leaños (she/her) is a Ventura County Youth Poet Laureate Emeritus and a second-year MFA student at Fresno State. Angelina regularly serves as a Poetry Out Loud coach and a Poet-Teacher, mentoring youth in poetry recitation and creative writing. Additionally, Angelina is a member of California Poets in the Schools’ Board of Directors and was a reader for the 2023 Philip Levine Prize. Her work has been published by Urban Word, Flowersong Press, the Chicanx Writers & Artists Association, Arkana, and Fruitslice.

ig: @angelinaleanos

website: aarontaylorart.net

ig: @solstice.snakes

Ais Russell (she/her) is a writer and artist based in New York.

ig: @aislinnvrussell

Amber Janay Cooper (she/they) is a DCbased self-taught collage artist who uses the visions spun by her imagination and a healthy collection of vintage African American magazines from the 1960s and ‘70s to create her work. Originally from Georgia, Amber also lived for some years in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She began her collage practice in 2022 as a therapy exercise and has since embraced her tendency for fixations as a vehicle for channeling the visions produced in her art.

Ann McCann sits firmly in the middle of a ven diagram between “Fran Fine,” “Joan Didion,” and “insufferable lesbian.” She finds herself waxing poetic about a California that may not exist and women who have taught her how to love while kvetching about why the Moschino heart bag is still so expensive, and the importance of a ‘90s animal print mini dress. She can be found photo journaling her life with her wife in Northern California on instagram at @beegirlfriends.

website: www.collageandvision.net

ig: @Ambers_innerworld

Amica Huynh (she/her) is a film photographer based in Seattle. Her focuses with film photography are everyday life captured on the streets, through architecture and human movement.

Anz Yurcaba (they/she) is a Queer artist, advocate, and community organizer based in Atlanta. They co-run a local collective focused on mutual aid and education. Anz loves creating zines, organizing community events, and discussing radical resistance. When they’re not working, you can find them at a community event or creating art. website: cunts4change.org ig: c.u.n.t.s.usa

ig: asis_film

website: asisfilm.com

Andre Le Mont Wilson (he/him) is a Black Queer poet and writer who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2024, he published Queer work in The Fruitslice: A Queer Quarterly, Fruit: Queer Literary Journal, Fourteen Poems: Queer Poetry Anthology, Beneath the Soil: Queer Survivor’s e-Zine, Quickest Flip Magazine, Oddball Magazine, and Brown Bag Online. He won the 2022 Newfound Prose Prize for his chapbook “Hauntings”.

Ava Crane (they/she) is a visual artist and arts admin based in Salt Lake City. Their work explores the messy in-betweens and hard to define moments of life, in particular those relating to sexuality, gender, and memory. website: avaecrane.com ig: @cutepatoot

ig: @awilsonstoryteller

Bailey Bauer (she/her) is a writer, editor, filmmaker, and graphic designer from Austin, Texas. After passing 30 kidney stones the old-fashioned way, she became particularly interested in exploring the connections between our bodies and our souls. She once wrote an essay defending Kevin Smith’s “Chasing Amy” and she stands by it. She is honored to serve on the literary staff of Fruitslice for the third issue in a row. website: www.baileybauer.com

Bobbie Webb (they/he/she) is a multimedia creative whose photography aims to capture feelings or moments that we seem to miss in the rush of our busy lives. ig: @belovedweaver

Cam Reid (they/them) is a writer + actor in NYC, and proud Senior Editor for Fruitslice. You can see more of their work at www.cam-reid.com or on ig @toughguycam.

Donald Patten (he/him/his) is an artist and cartoonist from Belfast, Maine. He produces oil paintings, illustrations, ceramic pieces and graphic novels. His art has been exhibited in galleries across Maine. His online portfolio is www.donaldlpatten.newgrounds.com/art

Casper Orr (he/him) is a Queer-Disabled writer radically accepting his residence in New Jersey. He’s a Senior Editor for Fruitslice, and studying literature and creative writing because his one true love is the written word. He has previously contributed to Gypsophila, Bitter Melon Review, Fruitslice, The Academy of the Heart and Mind and has work forthcoming in Clementine Journal. He can be found on instagram @androqurrr.

Dustin Randall Keirns (he/him) is a fine art photographer based in Denver, Colorado. He earned a BFA in Photography from The School of Visual Arts in NYC and spent time studying at École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne in Switzerland. His project entitled “David and Gabriel” explores aging, identity, and legacy within the gay community by photographing an older generation of gay men. Since returning to Colorado in 2015, he has made the state’s backcountry a central protagonist in his work and the work explores where humans and nature intersect.

Celeste deBardelaben (she/her) is a Cartoonist and Cinematographer based in Los Angeles. She has shot feature films as well as narrative shorts, documentaries, and music videos. She currently works in the shipping and receiving department at BECiNE. You can find links to her work as well as samples of her photography at www.celestedebardelaben.com

Chimera Mohammadi (they/them) is a Californian writer whose work has been featured by Artforum, Autre, Femme Art Review, and The Santa Cruz Art Museum. Their work tends to explore the intersections of Queerness, the arts, and magic. website: www.chimeramohammadi.com ig: @faithless_the_wonderkid

Christine Kao (she/they), a photojournalist and graphic designer, shares stories of local communities, meaningful memories, Queer experiences, and Taiwanese culture through photo essays and bookmaking. They relocated from suburban Taiwan to attend UCLA, where they earned a B.A. in Design Media Arts. Kao also loves writing letters, volunteering for community-building events, and gazing at the moon.

website: www.chriscckao.com ig: @chriscckao

ig: @dustinkeirns

website: www.dustinkeirns.com

Edward Luellin (he/him) hails from the snowdrifts of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He writes like he’s bloodletting, all the while forced to share the keyboard with his cats.

Eugénie Koshka (she/her/he/him) is a writer, poet, and artist from Poland, currently based in Katowice. As a creator of mixed origine (Polish, Crimea Tatar, and Ukrainian), she/he takes pleasure in weaving her/his heritage into her/his work. Eugénie speaks six languages and writes in three of them. She/he is passionate about the 18th century in France and is currently working on a series of historical novels. In poetry, she/he prefers dark and mystical themes.

ig: @eugenie_koshka

Fox Welsh is a Queerator (queer-creator) based on Coast Salish land in Washington State. They love exploring the ways we keep ourselves safe in a world that is often unsafe for many of us and reclaiming queer power and joy through fully experiencing our pain.

website: foxwelsh.com

ig: @foxwelshwriter

giorgia sage is a love poet, designer, and community weaver living between Yelamu (San Francisco) and Mar’rah (29 Palms).

Greta McGee (they/them) is a trans nonbinary Black American-Italian short story writer and collage artist on the Autism spectrum from New York City. Their work has been shown internationally in both online galleries, exhibitions, and publications. Highlights include The Holy Art gallery, the Van Der Plas Gallery, The Fulton Street Collective, and the Denver Quarterly. Greta was the recipient of a Silver Award in a Camelback Gallery sponsored art competition this past year. They were recently accepted as a Fellow in the Creative Futures Collective x SohoHouse Mentorship 2024 program. ig: @artworkbygreta

Hailey Green (she/her) is a lesbian writer, photographer, theatre educator & arts advocate based in North Texas. She is proud to be a staff writer at Fruitslice. All my love always to E,G,C&M. website: www.haileyagreen.com ig: @haileyagreencreative

hailey sprinkel (they/them) is a gemini film photographer working out of brooklyn, ny & minneapolis, mn. hailey’s work aims to capture raw, beautifully candid, authentic images on their favorite film kodak gold 200. you can find a catalogue of most hailey’s work on instagram @riskydispo. all images developed & scanned by @922photolife

JC Alfier’s (they/them) artistic directions are informed by photo-artists Toshiko Okanoue, Francesca Woodman, and especially Katrien De Blauwer.

Jennifer Bastian (she/her) is an autistic, queer and disabled artist and mother. Making art is what allows Bastian to regulate her nervous system. She creates objects and experiences related to the labor of parenting, grieving, and making community. Bastian co-founded arts venue Communication in Madison, WI in 2018. She was a finalist for the Women’s Forward Fund Forward Art Prize in 2022, and will be the Thurber Park Artist in Residence in Madison for 2024-2026.

Hazmin Hermosillo (she/her) is a photographer from south central Los Angeles. She mainly focuses on portrait photography on 35mm color and B&W film. She is versatile and shoots both on location and in studio. Her equipment/resources can be limiting at times, but she always works with what’s at her disposal. It has not stopped her from being creative. She has many influences that come together that make her the photographer she is. Her influences include films, music, and art. ig: @hazzz.min

Jaxon Seraphina (he/they) is a true rhinestone cowboy and the muse of his husband. They enjoy collaging on the floor amidst scraps of their writing and gut-wrenching music. His work is best to ponder in the crisp morning air over a smooth joint. ig: @jaxonfarley_jones

Jill Young (she/they) has a BFA in Acting and a certificate in Creative Writing from UT Austin. Jill co-wrote and starred in the feature Dear Leo (2020) which premiered at the Inside Out: Toronto LGBTQ+ Film Festival. Jill’s comedic solo show, THE KIDS MIGHT DIE (a tale told by an idiot) premiered in a sold-out run at the 2023 Hollywood Fringe Festival. She has since toured this show to San Francisco, San Diego, Scotland, and New Zealand. Awards include Best of Fest- LA Solofest, Best of the Broadwater- Hollywood Fringe, and Outstanding Actor- San Diego Fringe.

Joe Klaus (he/they) Is an interdisciplinary visual artist based in Philadelphia. Their work explores the parallels of memory and identity, and the feeling of exuberance or lack thereof.

website: joeklaus.com ig: @JKLAUSART

Juan Sebastian Restrepo (he/him/they/ them/el/ella) embraces the essence of creative exploration through his evocative paintings and drawings. “The place I’m interested in is where the mind goes when it’s trying to make up for what isn’t there,” says Cecily Brown, reflecting the spirit of his work. Based in Florida, Restrepo holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a BFA from Pratt Institute. His art delves into the complex relationship between memory and storytelling. He has upcoming solo exhibitions, including No Further Expectations Beyond this Night at The Art and Culture Center/Hollywood.

Kayla Thompson (she/her) is a writer and Fruitslice Senior Editor living in Brooklyn. ig: @kaylamarie_99 @allegedveganreads

Kelsey L. Smoot (they/them/he/him) is a full-time PhD student in the interdisciplinary social sciences and humanities, as well as a poet, advocate, and frequent writer of critical analysis. They are the author of a chapbook titled “we was bois together” CLASH! an Imprint of Mouthfeel Press. website: queerinsomniac.me ig: @nonbinarypapi

Khanh Nguyen (she/her) is a writer, researcher, and designer from the Bay Area and currently based out of DC. She is trying to explore themes of belonging in the different communities that she is part of – including the Queer community and the Southeast Asian American community. website: www.khn.design email: khn.design.research@gmail.com ig: @khanhquered

Lexi McDonald (they/them) is a lesbian poet and teacher currently living in Pittsburgh. They are the Fall 2024 City Books Writer-inResidence and recently received an MFA in Poetry from University of Tennessee-Knoxville where they served as Assistant Poetry Editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts and Coordinator of the Chiasmus Reading Series. Lexi’s work appears or is forthcoming in the Northern Appalachia Review, Fruitslice, RiverCraft, The Sanctuary, and Essay magazines, among others. Their work has been supported by Sundress Academy for the Arts and Leña Artist Research and Residency Centre.

Kim Arthurs (they/them) is an artist, writer, and Pisces from Providence, RI. Their artwork has been installed in various locations across New England, and you can find them making art and writing in the garden. They like to evoke emotional fluidity through mystical realism and memoir, both in their writing and visual art, and harvest inspiration from botanical influence. website: moonersmakes.com ig: @moonersmakes

Liam Strong (they/them) is a queer neurodivergent cripple punk writer who has earned their BA in writing from the University of Wisconsin-Superior. They are the author of the chapbook Everyone’s Left the Hometown Show (Bottlecap Press, 2023). You can find their poetry and essays in Vagabond City and new words {press}, among several others. They are most likely gardening and listening to Bitter Truth somewhere in Northern Michigan. Find them on ig/twitter: @beanbie666 or more at linktr.ee/liamstrong666

Landin (she/her) is an artist and educator based in Knoxville, TN. Originally from a small town in North Carolina, she completed her BA in Studio Art and Theatre at Davidson College in 2021 and her MFA in Studio Art with a concentration in Drawing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2024. Her art practice is a synthesis of traditional drawing and technological references that explores concepts of intimacy, embarrassment, fear, humor, and obsession. The drawings evoke that emotion right between laughing and crying, like watching a clown who keeps getting pies thrown in her face. ig: @landin.jpeg

Maggie McDonald (they/them/any) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and graduate student in the Master of Library Science and MA Curatorship programs at Indiana University - Bloomington. Their academic and artistic interests include artists’ books, modern and contemporary art, erotica, pleasure, surrealism, zines, yearning, gender and the body and voice, fanfiction, and fowl. Maggie’s work has recently been featured in Tangent Gallery, Backspace Gallery, Great Honkers, and through an artist talk titled “Work and Play in Practice”. They live and collaborate with their cat, co-author, and muse, Mister Elvis Peppers. website: www.maggiemcd.com ig: @aheartthatyearns

Maxwell Edmonds (he/him) is a BFA candidate at The University of Tennessee Knoxville. His work is guided by process, typically by stretching fabric over shaped canvas. He then uses whatever he has on hand to inform the nature of the piece. Max’s work often centers around themes of connection and identity. website: www.schwankystudios.myshopify.com ig: @schwankystudios

Meg Streich (she/her) is a writer, educator, nonprofit director, and senior editor at Fruitslice. Based out of Philadelphia, PA, she can be found running The Big Gay Writing Project, a nonprofit organization focused on creating sober queer spaces, or getting lost in an IKEA. She can take a baked potato out of the oven with her bare hands. ig: @meg.bert / @biggaywritingproject

Mercy Tempest Turle (they/them) is a poet and educator from Cleveland, Ohio. Their work most often explores gender, science, spirituality, and language. ig: @turlesque_

Micah Brown (any pronouns) is a San Francisco–based student who is continually curious about their fellow humans. You can catch them feeling simultaneous wanderlust and homesickness, leaning on a friend’s shoulder, and navigating cities by nearest boba shop. They love tea, finding actual uses for the oxford comma, and doing and creating crosswords. They are currently vibing with their family, lying on a bed, and writing their Fruitslice bio.

Moe Leady (any pronouns) works and resides in Kansas City with his two cats. She has been published in Suboart Magazine, Bipan Magazine, and Homosocial Girl Power Narrative. Their work has been recently exhibited at The Holy Art Gallery in London, Awita in New York City, and La Mecha Contemporary in El Paso. Her work focuses on figurative relationships and their visual manifestations. The particular trappings of isolation or societal expectations in contoured, posed limbs. The freedom or melancholy of body language, the conversation of tension and touch; guided by material and color. website: www.moeleady.com ig: @moeleady

Moxie Bright Evan (she/her) is an artist living in Santa Barbara, CA. She works in painting, print, and drawing, while organizing social practice projects. Moxie’s work archives the creation and caretaking of queer community space, the ritual imbued in the everyday, and the emotional record within the body. ig: @biteyourfriendss

Nyanjah Charles (she/her) is the South Florida Youth Poet Laureate. She enjoys drawing and creating new characters.

René Zadoorian (he/him) is an Armenian writer based in Los Angeles. He was born in Tehran, Iran and recently earned his undergraduate degree in creative writing from California State University, Northridge. His published short stories can be found on his website rene-writes.com. ig: @lammpshade

Rhyker Dye (he/him) is a writer and editor from the Arkansas River Valley with a love for creative nonfiction. Most Saturday mornings, he can be found haunting local coffee shops as he writes best alongside indie albums and whispered gossip.

ig: @writingsinreverie

Roman Campbell (he/him) is a trans author, friend-lover, cosplayer, coffee shop enthusiast, and cat dad whose work has been featured in Neon Arts and Literary Magazine, The Healing Muse, and Fruitslice. In his free time, he enjoys drinking an iced oat milk latte while writing fanfiction (thinking about men), reading fanfiction (thinking about men), or staring at a blank Google Doc and hoping words magically appear. You can find him @romancampbell_ on instagram!

Rowan Mucci (they/them) is an artist primarily focusing on poetry and painting. Rowan believes in the accessibility of art and aims to promote community connections through chaotic cat caricature commissions. Their poetic works address wellness and trauma healing by incorporating their life experiences into the art. Rowan feels folks should freely share their lives and hope their poems open a pathway for others to feel empowered to do the same.

ig: @row_mooch

Roxy Gonzalez (they/them). El Paso based artist, Roxanne Gonzalez, has spent the better part of their life being familiar with death and finding comfort in the small pleasures of life. They received their BFA from the University of Texas at El Paso with a focus in drawing and printmaking. Their artwork encompasses the beauty in death- of life, thought processes, the ego, and other cycles- as well as the grief that they have overcome.

ig: @decaying_flowers_art

Sam J. Leeds (they/them) is an artist based in Seattle. They are most at home when playing with sound, but also work with film photography. As a double pisces, they have a deep affection for the nostalgia film captures. You can find them adding to their collection of field recordings or commenting rapturously about the light in a room. ig @samjleeds or @samjleeds.xyz

Starly Lou Riggs (xe/they/elu) is a queer agender visual artist, musician, and filmmaker residing between Juíz de Fora, Brazil and Portland, Oregon. A self-renowned freak, their work focuses on identity and world building, experimentally challenging the conventional. Working in a variety of mediums—photo, video, installation, etc.— their work is a process of playful exploration. Living inside dreamscapes, they create characters based on personal experience and surrealist fever dreams, blurring the bounds of reality as a way of rewriting norms, examining alternative perception, and reevaluating history while normalizing queer faces, spaces, and feelings.

Samantha Stevens (she/they) is a queer, Black, disabled writer, educator, and healing practitioner from the East Coast living in Oakland, occupied Ramaytush Ohlone land. They are a recent graduate with an MFA in Poetry at the University of San Francisco, are the recipient of the Deathrattle/ Oroboro Penrose Poetry Prize, and have received fellowships from The Watering Hole, Community of Writers, Esperimento Sul Respiro, The Ruby, and Kearny Street Workshop. Samantha seeks to build an integrative practice centering writing, movement, healing, and ritual. Her first manuscript, Rituals of the Living, explores the body, loss, ancestral inheritance, illness, and queerness. ig:@freelywithsamantha

Scott-Patrick Mitchell (they/them) was the recipient of the 2022 Red Room Poetry Fellowship and the 2023 XYZ Prize for Innovation in Spoken Word. Their debut poetry collection Clean (Upswell Publishing, 2022) was shortlisted for The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, The WA Premier’s Book Awards and The Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

Skyelar Wiedrich (they/them) is an emerging writer from Orlando, Florida who adores crafting short stories. Their work can be found in The New York Times Upfront and Diamond Gazette. They’ve also got two Scholastics gold keys and a little black cat who they love very, very much.

website: filthyart.space ig: @get.filthy

T.S. Leonard (he/they) is a disco poet time machine from Kansas City, Missouri who lives and teaches in San Francisco. website: www.ts-leonard.com ig: @TSLeonard

Taylor Michael Simmons (he/him) is just happy to be here.

Tess Conner (they/she) is a genderqueer writer and poet from Georgia. They graduated with a BS in Literature, Media, and Communications from Georgia Tech and have been desperately trying to use their degree ever since. Their work centers on religion, sexuality, family dynamics, and community. When not writing, they can be found reading, embroidering, or protesting the injustices committed by the US Government.

Tom Infection (he/they) is a transmasc autistic artist in New Hampshire. His work discusses queerness, neurodivergence, and whatever else catches his fancy. With a background in agriculture, sound engineering and fish mongering, Tom is now a college student studying art and design. ig: @infectious_mold

Tuff Cretin (they/them) is an artist based out of Norfolk, Virginia, working primarily in the mediums of printmaking and painting. They like to explore liminal themes like death, ufo abductions, folk stories, and high-strangeness through a bright hazy fluorescent lens.

Art by Juan Sebastian Restrepo

Creating each issue of Fruitslice is its own sacred ritual—messy, beautiful, imperfect, and deeply meaningful. Since our very first issue, we’ve launched on the solstice, welcoming each new season with stories and art that reflect its spirit. It’s our own quiet tradition, a moment to ground ourselves in the cyclical beauty of time.

None of this happens alone, and for that, we have so many people to thank.

tO Our cONtriButOrs: Thank you for trusting us with your stories, your art, your rituals.Thank you for stepping into the unknown with us—navigating new systems, stumbling through submittable, and Queering our language.

tO Our stAFF: Thank you for your care, your collaboration, and your unwavering dedication. Every email sent, every check-in and circling back, every late-night proofread, has been part of a shared effort that transcends time zones and screens. It all matters. You are the backbone.

tO Our reAders: Thank you for being the kind of people who sit with complicated questions, who find meaning in the cracks of things, who make time for a little publication like ours. These pages were made for you—with humor, heart, and desperation. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for caring. Thank you for making it all matter.

tO thOse WhO shOW up FOr us iN WAys BiG ANd sMAll: Thank you. Whether it’s a kind word, a late-night pep talk, or just the belief that this strange little project matters, your support keeps us going.

tO Our pets: Thank you for supervising as we Fruitsliced. Whether because of the hours of cuddles or the dozens of photos we shared of you through slack, this one is for you as you keep us going day after day.

And finally, thank you to the storytellers, ritual-makers, and meaning-seekers. This issue is yours.

Susa n Bunch

I v y

M a n go Ha r riet Ro sie (she/her) (he/they) (she/her) (he/him) (he/him) (she/her) (he/him) (she/her) (she/her)

MOuNtAiN ON Blue With piper)

Ol i ver (he/him)

Cover Photo by Jennifer Bastian

Candle Mountain, a large wax sculpture, lives on my kitchen table. I work at it slowly each night during dinner. I began creating it after the death of my second mother and have found solace in sculpting the hot wax, each burst of pain reconnecting me to my body and life. As it grew, I realized the time I spent staring at it was just as soothing as the act of building it.

The photographs I’ve created with my wax mountain, with their boldly colored backgrounds, visualize the intense, positive feelings I experience when creating the sculpture. I make these photographs in my kitchen, surrounded by a chaotic life with a child and four cats. The photograph, Untitled (Candle Mountain on Blue with Piper), captures a moment during image making where a cat jumped onto the kitchen table, looking for his water bowl, and instead, walked into a photograph.