Second, I recently had the pleasure of being a guest my friend Mars’s Marker Park Radio Show Edge Case. I took the ferry (ofc) all the way to Staten Island and spun all vinyl for the very first time! It was a blast—video below!

Maintenance: keep the dust off the pure individual creations; preserve the new; sustain the change; protect progress; defend and prolong the advance; renew the excitement; repeat the flight.

— Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Contribution to the catalog of c. 7,500. Index card, 4x6 in. (10.2 x 15.2 cm)., 1973

Over and Done With 
A.R. Ammons 

Continually is continuously 
from time to time

and continuously is
continually all the time. 

Earlier this month, TC’s prompt in our poetry workshop was simply continue. Since, I’ve been thinking about this gesture—one that is neither the impulse of beginning nor the satisfaction of end, but in the infinite space between two false poles. Both post pre- and pre post-. The middle of continuation requires motivating beyond the optimism of start, demanding sustaining without being tempted by completion’s supposed finality. The challenge, or perhaps invitation, is embodying continuation’s potentials without slipping into spirals of accumulation or endless scroll. In its most useful, the space of continuation can ground us in our lineages: by the fact that the art and the struggle we are doing today is linked to long histories before us and after us.

In How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell writes about the feminist artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, whose body of work considers the art/work of maintenance.1 Experiencing the invisibilising of caretaking’s repetitive labor inspired several artistic projects in the 1970’s and 80’s, including Washing/Tracks/Maintenance, where she washed the steps of Hartford’s Wadsworth Athenaeum, and Touch Sanitation, where she spent almost a year shaking hands with and thanking all 8,500 sanitation workers in New York City. (Indeed—thank you to the workers who paved our roads during this weekend’s winter storm.)

Perhaps towards continuation is part of the intention of maintenance—how our actions of repair and clean allow objects, homes, archives, relationships and even movements to go on. This kind of labor can counter the capitalist impulses for producing the new and disposable—I think of the “repair cafes” popping up in community spaces where folks bring objects to fix instead of buying replacements, investing in continued use.

The ways that this kind of labor is not only made invisible but always gender, raced, and classed makes it all the more urgent to engage in. If maintenance is care and maintenance allows continuation, continuation can be a gesture of care. Care is attention and maintenance is attention, too. In Ukele’s own words, maintenance is “trying to listen to the hum of living.”2 If a hum is sound continuing, let’s listen.

Upcoming

This Saturday I’ll be DJing Celebrate 365’s Celebration from 5-8 pm. Join us virtually!

The first of two virtual workshops hosted by exquisites is coming up on Thursday, February 5th! Join us at 8 pm EST for “Punk as Poetry.” Register for free here!

We had our first session of For Keeps: Archiving for Artists recently and alexa and I felt so motivated that we’re adding mostly co-working meetings between the quarterly check ins/discussions. For more and to sign up, fill our this short form.

I’ve always loved the suspended in-between of the time between Christmas and New Year’s. It feels like these days exist on a different plane, temporary untethered to capitalist routine, or at least a little less so. As usual, I want to take a moment to reflect on the year and it has certainly been one.

It was a year where unions and workers more broadly were tested and proved stronger than spineless institutions. It was a year of art and performance, with highlights including collaborations with Laura Ortman and Bertha Vanayshun. It was a year of discovering (and loving) Pittsburgh for the first time, restful trips heading north of the city including a summer weekend in Maine. It was a year of dog walks and trying to ride the ferry any chance I had. It was a year of clouds. Of a genocide of a genocide of a genocide. Of a new mayor.

Amidst the continued heartbreak and betrayal of Covid-denial, one of the highlights of the year has been seeing the ways a rich Covid-conscious performance ecosystem has blossomed. This summer, I co-organized the first Outer Listening party with my friends Mars, Ana, Dre, and Saar; and attended (on my birthday!) the first Positive Deviance event. Since then, I’ve attended, co-organized, and performed at masked parties at Come Forever, Abrons Arts Center, Judson Memorial Church, and last night at Recess fundraising for A.I.R. NYC—all of which have been joyful and transformative. I’m excited to continue co-creating these kinds of spaces—starting late January in Beacon (details below!).

Spotify Wrapped was not a thing for me this year, not only because I’ve unsubscribed (and you should too), but because most of the music I listened to was at home on my record player. I’ve finished cataloging my 12” collection (including all of the Barbra) and are moving on to 45s in 2026.

Some favorite releases from this year:

• Rosalia, LUX

• Bad Bunny, DeBí TiRAR MáS FOToS

• Lily Allen, West End Girl

• Saya Gray, SAYA

• Boys Go to Jupiter, Meet Me After Practice

• Bunny White, The Higher the Hair, the Closer to God

• Silvana Estrada, Vendrán Suaves Lluvias

• Tame Impala, Deadbeat

• Natalia Lafourcade, Cancionera

This year, some of my favorite reading experiences have been alongside others. From the second year of the Long Poem Support Group, to my Love in a Fucked Up World bookclub, to the People’s Saturday School Book Club. Some of my favorite books this year:

• Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

• Bryan Washington, Palaver

• A.R. Ammons, Tape Turn for the Year

• Joey Yearous-Algozin, A Feeling Called Heaven

Of course, the poems! I’m ever-grateful to Emily’s Google Docs (see my post about September Sonnets here), this year’s exquisites readings, workshops, and anthology, and continuing to be part of the board of No, Dear Magazine where I was proud to be on the team that published three first chapbooks in a series called Record/Record.

Going into 2026, I am taking lessons so vividly illustrated by Octavia in the Parable: that change is everything, that practice is everything, that preparedness is everything. Let us all practice being prepared for all the change that will continue to shape us this coming year.

Upcoming

The first party I’m DJing in 2026 is with Celebrate 845 in Beacon (and streamed!). Save the date!

and save the date for our upcoming exquisites workshops starting the first Thursday in February!

Then, on New Year’s Eve Eve, join us at Recess for a fundraiser for A.I.R in conjunction with Anna RG’s Sick (Music) Center and Outer Listening! (I’ll be doing the opening set!)

Next year, join me and alexa dexa for For Keeps, a free quarterly virtual co-working space for artists to chat (and do!) archiving. RSVP for our first session in January by 12/31!

Finally, if you’ve made it far—and you’d like to receive a year-end postcard from me, I’d love to send you one! Send me your address here (or text me, DM me, whatever):

Hope to see you soon, and more soon,

d

This month’s Long Poem Support Group pick is one of my favorite poems, Thanksgiving by Ted Rees. Join us on Tuesday the 25th on Discord!

And, two recent goings-on:

• I had the great pleasure of judging the 2025 Banyan Review Poetry Prize. The winner, Michelle Bitting’s “The Clearing” was just announced along with the finalists and honorable mentions. Congrats to all!

• In December and January, I’ll be doing sound description for alexa dexa’s (year-long!) collaborative virtual bed opera “dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams,” organized through Rest Fest! Sessions are on Zoom on the first Saturday of the month, from 3-5 pm EST, tickets suggested $3-33 / NOTALOF.

  
  With care,

  d

This month, I’ve been a part of Emily Bark Brown’s1 “Sonnet September” Doc, writing new sonnets not-quite-everyday. Looking back, they’re a snapshot of my month, beginning with Labor Day weekend and its after (“forearms stack rented fences / on top of each other, big load / them onto big-wheeled trucks”). I cloud-watch; feel the fickle of rain and humidity; ride the ferry (of course) (so much sky / grids of windows / bend to make more empty balconies”) and the occasional bike (wind, handle-arms, pedal-legs / you feel like just limbs / which you don’t all the time”). I run errands (“early to the appointment for which i / call to request that the doctor be masked / told of course and then of course they are / not”), get my vaccines (“nothing like a fever you can schedule / shoot me twice, left deltoid”), and try to process yet another surge (“how do they know, she asks / the wastewater, mom, / it all ends up in the wastewater”)—which we are very much still in.2

Some of the sonnets this month have been ten lines, others fourteen. I don’t count syllables, but some of them are tidy rectangles. Throughout, I contemplate the form itself and have been thinking more broadly, in our current equinox era of tumult, of the voltas—the turns and bends and Butlerian3 changes in our lines and lives.4 How sharp are the angles of our turns or, put another way, how jarring or smooth is our transition from one song to the next? How can we build and embrace invitations for change, redirection, and contradiction even in the steadiness of form?

Upcoming

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This month, I was a part of the first events organized by Positive Deviance, a “community of cultural innovators who are living intentionally and designing a collective vision for the future” through “mask-positive experiences at the intersection of art, culture, and public health.” The first, on my birthday, featured CRASHprez, Ivy Sole, and Drew Empire. The second, I was the DJ/Emcee for a stellar lineup of singer-songwriters: Sunday Comes Afterwards, Saint Wilson, and Cleo Reed.

Most often, I am in a production role for an event—it’s what I do for my full-time (union) job and what I do beyond that in ever-present side projects1. I know how intricate this labor is, how it blurs the creative and logistical, and how it can be easily undervalued or unnoticed. I believe in the work (as much as I can under obscene capitalism) because I how much of a difference that labor can make the experience of artists, audience members, and collaborators. I know that at its best, it is radical care, it is safety, and it is sacred, even.

As such, when I find myself in the performer role, I notice that very production labor I am intimately familiar with. The organizers, producers, and staff of Positive Deviance and the venue Abrons Arts Center made me felt very well taken care of. This involved many of the things that seem obvious (but that we know are not necessarily standards, especially in the creative field)—knowledge of my artistic practice/POV, fair compensation for labor, clear and thorough communication (frankly one of the best onboarding/contracting processes I’ve seen), and day-of attention.

Beyond that, however, the team at Positive Deviance, reflected an understanding of our shared reality, specifically in which COVID is a continued threat to all and that most institutions (from the fascist Federal Government to liberal institutions in liberal cities) have, for the most part, gaslit and left behind workers who refuse to reject the facts.2 The choices of the organizers for these events specifically made it so that the performers and audience could gather around music in a way that did not require compromising safety, especially during an especially high summer surge.

What did this look like? Like most things, labor! It looked like the labor of securing PlusLife testing3 for all performers, it looked like air purification and Far-UVC, it looked like providing high-quality masks for those that need it, it looked like a high-quality Livestream option. As is often the case, it is worth emphasizing the combination here of intention (one needs to think about the necessity of having these elements at an event) and resources (one needs to have the funds or the connections to buy or borrow these elements)—both connected to labor!

I spell these things out in a gesture of praise and gratitude for spaces like Positive Deviance, but also to hopefully counter invisibilizing of this, or any kind of labor. Noting of course that for the folks attending and these choices were quite visible, quite noticed, and quite appreciated. Yes, realist, joyful spaces are still possible, yes, they take hard work and resources, and yes, there are still folks working together to do that hard work and obtain (and share!) those resources4.

Zooming out, the stakes are high: our most basic infrastructures (medical, transportation, food) are continuing to crumble under both old and recent inequities. Arts and artists are impacted by these conditions, atop which we face our own systemic challenges worsened by our current government and pandemic. We have normalized risking our safety and livelihood—even ability to make art. Most people are validating the eugenic, ableist, racist, genocidal agenda of capitalism with every day choices denying reality and what the present requires of all of us.

At the first Positive Deviance party, one of the organizers noted, looking into the sold-out masked crowd, that this felt like the future. The second party was titled “What Comes After?” and I’ve been thinking about that question both generally through this Substack about the post-, and specifically at this current moment of not just rising cases, but threats on all sides around reporting and vaccines5. There isn’t an after pandemic, but there is an after-delusion we can get to once we realize that layered and collective safety practices can be not what prevents us from being (and dancing!) together, but what makes it possible.

Upcoming

I’m thrilled to be opening at FACESTRAPPED, an Access-Centered Rave curated by Cuéntame at Judson Memorial Church this Thursday, September 5th:

Tickets + Access information here! See you there?

[our boat has just departed. at the dock two stay wobbling in Booth Bay, one named “ALL OUT.” almost half of the frame is water, almost half the frame is sky, flanked by two buildings shades of lobster // sun stripes on the boat’s floor and on the back of our laid-out lightly-brindled pit; striped are the pants visible on the right, opposite a bit of the floral jumpsuit visible on the right]

[ \ white window diagonals \ intersect sharp rock edges wet earth \ topped with green / ]

[most of the frame is undulating water—a hand points, a red buoy floats distantly //

a red buoy, numbered 8, floats centered in the frame where more wispy sky is visible]

[ / docking the ferry from the island in Manhattan, red lifeboat, bronze seal, curves along sharp lines // look up and see \ ]

//

Happy Leo Season,

d

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There are two days left in June, which means it’s almost the end of so-called Pride Month™. This 2025 edition has had the usual ups and downs—in temperatures and in sentiments.

*

A few days into the month, I finally saw Oh, Mary during Cole Escola’s final weeks in the show. Thanks to Michael waiting in the early morning rush line, we got to see Cole (pre-Tony) float in that iconic dress in a true feat of writing and physicality. I’ve seen maybe one show in the last five years and I’m so glad to have seen this one. How comforting it was to be squarely in the realm of the absurd for ninety minutes. The show felt like it was simultaneously deflating and inflating: poking holes at the constructed seriousness of history and gender while pumping the characters (and audience) with laughing gas.

I left thinking about authenticity and how so often the folks most marginalized and least believed have it in spades. Mary’s true desires of cabaret are mocked precisely because she expresses them, contrasting her husband who hides his wants. Arguably, the hypocritical backlash to Mary’s authenticity can be extended to anti-queer and anti-trans rhetoric especially.

In “Out Home Out West,”1 Cole reflects:

“I don’t think they hate me. Life is basically not very fair, and some people like to make up their own little rules. I think they believe that if they follow all their rules, nothing bad will happen to them. So when they see someone who is not following their rules and doing just fine, it makes them scared that their rules don’t really matter. And when people get scared, they get mad.”

Indeed, this Pride Month and every other month, there are plenty of people mad and scared. Rule-followers of all kinds are holding tight to the fantasy of their own authority. I think of lawyer Chase Strangio taking an Oh, Mary Playbill into the Supreme Court to remind himself that he was “also doing a performance;” “channeling people who inspire” in “those spaces that are meant to be so serious, but are in fact so absurd.” (One of the many setbacks this month was the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Skrimetti that ruled that Tennessee’s ban of gender-affirming care for youth “does not illegally discriminate against individuals on the basis of sex or transgender status,” allowing “Tennessee, and any other states that may choose to follow its discriminatory lead, to ban medically-necessary health care for minors.”)

*

Later that week, we hosted our June exquisites with a sweet lineup of Providence poets. This months marks three years of the series Em and I are so genuinely proud of. I feel so lucky to have witnessed (and paid!) almost 200 queer and trans poets together.

*

I also read at Hive Mind Books as part of a reading titled Queer Rage, organized by Jennifer MacKenzie. In preparation for the reading, I looked through my archive hoping to find my most enraged poems and found very few.

So, I wrote a new poem, one of those you finish on the train to the reading. It consisted of six six-line stanzas, which I delighted in reading as one of six readers performing on the sixth day of the sixth month. I won’t share all of it here, but it was a small opening to talk about the rage of Pride (“our / allocated rage month, set aside just / for us and the corporations that love / is love us”), of masculinity (“FATHERS OFTEN USE TOO MUCH FORCE, Jenny / says — and that force becomes exam / -ple suffocating lineage we foll / ow or don’t — what room was there for you — did / you occupy it or fill it with some / thing else”), and of Covid denial (“every nostril, every / chin feels like betrayal”).

I continue to think about the shape of rage, its form and use. How does it relate to pride? To fear? To just simply anger?

Kevin Gotkin’s recent Crip News reflects on this moment well and includes some invaluable links and readings:

It’s queer endurance month for those trying to honor the Mad Trans Black origins of Pride while navigating the present realities of ‘rainbow capitalism.’

Pride Month is an occasion to get with your people, cast off the shame too many of us learned as kids, and demonstrate the difference disability mutual aid can make in queer spaces. It’s a chance to link up with queer organizing that addresses the global imperialist co-optation of Pride.

Pride could be a time for vibrant political education. That’s why it stings when organizers of the annual WorldPride festival (who once worried it was becoming an "orgy of pinkwashing”) spent more time encouraging trans people to stay home than educating the public about the crucial role of disability protections for access to trans healthcare.

*

That first weekend, I also produced an edition of Drag History Hour with the iconically-named Bertha Vanayshun. One of the highlights was an act by DJ Aimee Amour which was a tribute to the trans electronic music pioneer Wendy Carlos (who is still active!). The number incorporated a BBC interview with Wendy from 1970, where she was in full boy-drag, mutton chops and all. Wendy’s work shaped the sound of dance music, which is to say shaped the sound of the (queer) dance floor for decades.

***

This Summer also marks the fifth anniversary of The People’s Saturday School. This month was also the third annual reunion, the day after which I traveled to Mass MoCA on what is now also a yearly pilgrimage with my friend varun. We went on a guided “ephemeral” tour of the temporary exhibitions, including Jeffrey Gibson’s “POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT.” Gibson’s spaces at Mass MoCA evoke a church, a club, and a library. They are marked by literal platforms (which for me recall Felix Gonzalez-Torres) which are also symbolic (the artist has programmed a an ongoing series of performance activations featuring other queer and Indigenous artists in the space). Walking through on the tour, I was struck by the power artists have to say-the-thing directly and in all-caps like the title. One cannot engage with the work except in the terms it sets—one where queer, two-spirit, and Indigenous people are present and powerful.

Here’s one detail with sound advice I’m still thinking of:

*

Five years ago, we were also listening to Lorde’s Solar Power (“when the heat comes, something takes ahold”) and now we’re taking in her latest Virgin. The X-ray cover—literally revealing—is accompanied by lyrics which speak to what in interviews she’s described as her “gender broadening.” Indeed, the opening track “Hammer” includes the lyrics “Some days I’m a woman / Some days I’m a man” and “I'm ready to feel like I don't have the answers.”

***

In these vignettes from my month, I am seeing the recurring questions of queerness, questions of authenticity, of transparency, of ritual. Where do we broaden, where do we bend? How do we deploy our desires and what do we make known to others? Who is listening to and seeing us? These are the questions that will take us into the post—into the after—where there may continue to be pride, but also rage and wrath and and and . . .

Upcoming

• This Thursday (7/3), exquisites is back at Aberdeen Community Garden with a lush summer lineup:

• Em and I are also be reading with exquisites at the NYC Poetry Fest Blackbird Stage on Sunday, July 13th at 2 pm with the wonderful Aishvarya Arora and Chae(lee) Dalton, who led our virtual workshops earlier this year. Take the ferry and say hi!

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I don’t know when exactly the collecting of this star’s records was born, but it must be at least ten years at this point. I probably stumbled upon her face in the local Goodwill, among the bottom-shelf records that were all a dollar. But, I must be honest and say my first exposure to her was likewise second-hand, via one Rachel Berry on Glee, which I watched Live on Fox when it aired. (I know, I know.) In the 2009 finale of Season One, Rachael, played by Lea Michele, defiantly belts “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from Funny Girl, the Broadway show that starred Barbra Streisand in 1964 (and Lea herself in 2022).

Over the last several weeks, I’ve been listening to my collection of Barbra records: 38 and counting, which means I own the majority of her six-decade discography which consists of 37 studio albums, 12 compilations, 11 live albums and 15 soundtracks.

***

In the Summer of 1967, 135,000 people gathered in Central Park to hear Barbra. The back of the vinyl from the performance (which begins with applause, to which she says “I haven’t done anything yet!”) notes the residue left by the crowd, which “took the NY Sanitation Department 4 Days to collect the 5 tons of flotsam and jetsam1 strewn about.” The notes continue, sharing that “[a]mong the remains, more exotic items included empty vintage champagne bottles, a Scrabble set, a Russian-English dictionary, a half-eaten Hebrew National Salami, assorted empty wine bottles representing 8 foreign countries, a Sterling silver champagne bucket, and upper plate, a jar of quail eggs, an 8-day alarm clock, a Merry Widow bra and a black, pleated mini skirt!”

Indeed, this assortment feels like an accurate description for Barbra’s sweeping, lasting sensibilities: it’s a mixed bag, it’s a mashup, it’s international, it’s impressive and it takes a long time to get through. Her first three albums, simply titled The Barbra Streisand Album2, The Second Barbra Streisand Album3, and The Third Album,4 were released between February 1963 and 1964, when she was 21. The Second Barbra Streisand Album reached #2 on the charts and included “Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home,” which last year was the inspiration for my exhibition with Maggie Wrigley at Bullet Space.5

Born Barbara, she changed her name to Barbra when she began her career as a teenager. This dropping of the “a” reminds me of Warhol—who also dropped the “a” of his birth name Warhola, which he could too ethnic. (Barbra’s gesture to keep her last name6 was the opposite of Andy’s choice, of course.) Indeed, her early albums include My Name Is Barbra (1965), My Name is Barbra, Two (also 1965), Je m’appelle Barbra (1966), Simply Barbra (1967), and Barbra Joan Streisand (1971). These titles emphasize what seems like one of the driving factors of her career: her singularity. Many times, you are listening not because of the song, but because she is the one singing it. Moreover, many of these recordings, even if they are reinterpretations of songs written by others and for other contexts, end up being fascinating reflections of biography and her specific positionally. I think of charming self-referential moments, like the ad-lib of her birthday on “I’m Five/A Kid Again” on My Name Is Barbra, which features a picture of five-year old Barbra on the cover taken by her brother. Other moments reveal self-awareness, like in a skit between her and a producer at to the beginning of The Broadway Album, where, cueing up a cover of Sondheim’s “Putting It Together,” Barbra scoffs at the producer’s hesitation about the material. “No one’s going to buy it . . . No one in Middle America, anyway,” they say, but Barbra disagrees, though does concede “Advancing art is easy . . . Financing it is not!” Barbra has the last laugh, of course, as the album went on to hit #1 on the Billboard charts and earn her a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

***

Of course, over the last 60 years, she’s become a larger-than-life public figure who has, for better and worse, made her points of view known. She’s supported and fundraised for Democrats ranging from McGovern7 to both Clintons, along with issues ranging from Prop 8 to Ukraine. She’s also (disappointingly, disgustingly) been a long-time Zionist and supporter of “Israel,”8 performing at a 2011 concert for the IDF.

The edges show in the music, too.

She dedicates 1969’s What About Today “to the young people who push against indifference, shout down mediocrity, demand a better future, and who write and sing the songs of today,” offering tepid covers of “With A Little Help from My Friends” (released two years prior) and Paul Simon’s “Punky’s Dilemma” (released the year before). Her strength has not usually been contemporary covers—I think she’s best when reviving across time.

In 1987’s One Voice, hosted during the Reagan Era at her Malibu home to fundraise for Democratic causes, she jokes about the ticket price for her show: “I’ve spent more than a few sleepless nights wondering what I could possibly do that would be worth $5,0009 . . . then I figured out that I would be singing about 3,924 notes and that comes to a little over a dollar a note.” Later, she “Aren’t we all the same, really? When a mother holds her baby, her joy is the same no matter what country she lives in. Lovers are lovers no matter under what government they make love. We all inhabit this tiny planet and, if we are to survive, it will have to be together or not at all. We must recognize we are all just people… who need people.” At the end of the concert, in the concert, after “Happy Days,” she doubles down with “America the Beautiful,” encouraging the well-financed audience to join her.

The vinyl insert for 2018’s Walls includes pictures of Barbra in her garden alongside a gray-scale image of an anonymous hand gripping a wire fence. She notes she’s “been especially moved by the millions of young people in the United States and around the world who have found their collective voice and are demanding to be heard. They are more interested in building bridges than walls. They are the very definition of hope. They’re on my mind…and I dedicate this album to them.” The first song, of course, is “What’s On My Mind,” which includes the lyrics (co-written by Barbra): “Sometimes my eyes wants to cry / How did we come to this divide? / Is this God's creation? / One for all, but millions left behind / That's what's on my mind.”

The album continues with a mashup of “Imagine” and “What a Wonderful World,” a gratuitous rendition of “What the World Needs Now” and ends with “Happy Days Are Here Again.” She notes that while she’s performed this standard “at least 100 times,” on this album she wanted to “present a symphonic version . . . that could express my sadness about the state of the country.” She continues: “As a woman, I would have been so proud to call Hillary Clinton my president . . . I believe there is a better road to take for our magnificent country. And history has shown us that when we are resilient in the face of adversity, truth prevails . . . I hope that in the not-so-distant future, I’ll be able to sing [Happy Days] the way FDR used it as his 1932 . . . to celebrate the times with optimism.”

***

I choose not to get stuck in the rain of the sad, liberal, Zionist, millionaire reality/delusion of Barbra because, as she says in Funny Girl there are “a thousand jokes.” And indeed, for me, Barbra is best in her joking, which she always claims on her terms. When she started going on the Tonight Show in the 1960’s, even Groucho Marx found her funny. Who else would release a themed album called Wet10 with “Splish Splash” and “Kiss Me In The Rain?” Who else would release multiple Christmas albums and sing with earnestness and zeal? Who else would open a concert with “Sing” from Sesame Street and release a duet with Kermit the Frog11? Who else would be credited with the finger cymbals on a TV special called Barbra Streisand and Other Musical Instruments? Who else would not only include pictures of her dogs on more than one album but clone them?12

Timing is key with delivering a joke or a note, and perhaps enough good timings make timelessness. There are few with as many decades of making and with such an iconic persona as Barbra. Dolly and Liza are among the few that similarly meet her stature. It’s too simple to reduce Barbra to the humor, of course. In the titular song from Funny Girl, she sings: “That’s me I just keep them in stitches / doubled in half / and though I may be all wrong for a guy / I’m good for a laugh.” Looking at Barbra, in all of her limitations, she is good for more than a laugh. She is large! She contains multitudes! She has reshaped the role of the popular singer, or at the very least made a unique version of it for herself. Barbra knows how to get what she wants—she’ll march her band out, she’ll beat her drum. She simply has to! Behind the winks is a brilliance, and behind the character and absurdity there must be some Taurean groundedness. I love the bits and that’s where I see Barbra’s self-awareness and autobiography—and maybe that’s the best gift from this complex star that takes up so much room on my shelf.

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Upcoming

• This month’s Long Poem Support Group is Hart Crane’s The Bridge, guest facilitated by the great Cyrée Jarelle Johnson (check out his Substack here). Join us tomorrow (Tuesday, May 27th) on Discord!

• Our season of exquisites at Aberdeen continues on June 5th with a shining lineup:

• On June 6th, I’m excited to be reading with some old and new friends at Hive Mind Books:

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10

National Poetry Month1 is one of my preferred pre-sanctioned affinity months (save, of course, for the “National” of it all). I often introduce myself as a “poet first,” and poems and poets are a significant part of how I make sense of the world. Even though the power of poetry this month—or any of the other 11—can be overstated (as it is not immune from the same traps of all creative industries, guilty of the usual silos, commodification, and violences), there is real impact of poets and poems past and present to be part of (un-televised) revolutions and connections.

This April, I’ve been reading Vallejo’s Trilce for the Long Poem Support Group, hearing RFK’s obscene comments saying that autistic people kids will “never write a poem,”2 and, earlier today, I had the pleasure of launching the 2025 No, Dear first chapbook series Record Record, at the also-so-nice-they-named-it-twice gem Kissa Kissa. As part of my ongoing vinyl archiving, I’ve also been listening to recordings of Nikki Giovanni and Gil-Scott Heron.

Last March, I was set to support a program with Nikki Giovanni in celebration of the film Going to Mars. A few days before the program, the filmmakers withdrew in solidarity with Palestine. Last December, of course, Nikki Giovanni became an ancestor.

Earlier this year, I stumbled upon 1971’s Truth Is On Its Way at a vinyl sale. The record draws primarily from Giovanni’s collections Black Feelings, Black Talk, and Black Judgement, and features the New York Community Choir under the direction of Benny Diggs. The opening track combines the standard “Peace Be Still” with her poem “Great Pax Whitey.” It continues to feel present: “And america was born / Where war became peace / And genocide patriotism.”

Side A ends with “Ego Tripping,” a poem I first read in a Cave Canem workshop with Marwa Helal, and which became the (humble) jumping off point for my poem “(telling).” Especially with poems like “Ego Tripping,” it’s clear that the emergence of hip hop in the 1980s was in the lineage of poets like Giovanni, even if misogyny makes other names—like Gil Scott-Heron—more commonly cited.

***

Saeed Jones of Vibe Check ends every episode with a poem. On an episode earlier this month, in response to the absurd publicity stunt of Blue Origin’s “Taking Up Space” mission, chose Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon.” Featured on the record Small Talk at 125th and Lenox (1970), the poem scoffs at the disconnect between the well-funded Apollo missions and the earthly realities of racist inequity.3 Gil was inspired by Eldridge Cleaver’s assertion that the space program was a distraction from the issues of the United States, an argument that continues to feel true in the present, as do the poem’s lines about medical debt, rent increases, and food prices. Gil was 21 years old when the record, his first, was released, one year before Giovanni’s Truth is On Its Way.

Part of my collection now includes the compilation record The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron (1978). It features the poem “H2O Gate Blues,” where Gil says:

Richard Daley, imperial Napoleonic Mayor of Chicago
Who took over from Al Capone and
Continues to implement the same tactics;
George Wallace; Lester Maddawg4
Strom Thurmond; Ronald Reagan
An almost endless list
That won't be missed
When at last America is purged

It feels easy to replace these names with current mayors, cops, and presents who won’t also won’t be missed.

***

A year before Gil’s death in 2011, he was set to perform in Tel Aviv. Pro-Palestinian activists called him out, and he cancelled the performance.

***

Back to Going to Mars (which is available to stream on Max). The film, which artfully combines archival and recent footage from readings and interviews (including her iconic conversation with James Baldwin that aired in 1971 on Soul!, the same year Truth Is On Its Way was released), is structured around her poem “Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars).” In the poem, and in front of podiums in the film, Giovanni talks about her interest in space travel and argues that NASA needs to send Black folks (Black woman especially, she notes, including on stage at AfroPunk) to space. She contends “The trip to mars can only be understood through Black Americans . . . When we go to Mars . . . it’s the same thing . . . it’s Middle Passage,” writing that “NASA needs to call Black America” and ask:

How did you calm your fears . . . How were you able to decide you were human even when everything said you were not . . . How did you find comfort in the face of the improbable to make the world you came to your world . . . How was your soul able to look back and wonder

And they will tell them what to do: To successfully go to Mars and back you will need a song . . .

***

In the documentary, and in this 2014 interview, Giovanni even talks about her experience with the now-unavailable Supersonic Travel (SST) that she rode to attend a friend’s funeral:

In terms of me imagining things, that’s why I want NASA to send a bunch of writers, like 10 of us, so that we could go sit down and have some wine and daydream in Antarctica. I won’t get to Mars. I would love to get to Mars. And I’ve been very fortunate because the old SST, which you’re too young to remember, supersonic transport, I was able to take that a couple of times, which goes up to 80,000 ft. So you do get to see the curve of the earth. And that was totally, totally fascinating to me. I would love to go to Mars. And I think that they need to send old ladies.

I wonder how far we are from a space mission with poets and if would ever be unattached to maniacal billionaires.

I wonder if Gayle King thought about Nikki, or Gil. Did she have time between the fear and the Katy Perry of it all?

***

Billionaire Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000. His fiancée Lauren Sánchez was one of the passengers “taking up space.”

Another billionaire, Elon Musk, is obsessed with Mars travel. Musk was born in South Africa in 1971, where the apartheid his family benefited from would not have ended until he was in his early 20s.5

***

On my shelf

1971 means Nikki Giovanni’s Truth Is On Its Way.

1971 means Roberta Flack’s Quiet Fire.

1971 means Carole King’s Tapestry.

***

The film briefly touches on Giovanni’s criticism of the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s, which she clarified in a 2024 interview:

I wasn’t against the boycott movement. I was not pro-apartheid. Yeah, I saw that, I’ve seen the film three times, so I saw that. And I think that what might have been misunderstood was that I thought: You clean your own backyard. And we saw people—and it’s their right, it’s their life—and they were complaining about a situation in South Africa. I never saw them complaining about the situation in Haiti. And Papa Doc and Baby Doc were some of the worst people who ever walked this earth.

And so I thought, Why are we worried about another country when we’re living in a country that is destroying or trying to destroy us? And so that was my position. And a lot of people didn’t like it. But my job is not to be liked by a lot of people. My job is to tell the truth as I see it.

I mean, we look right now at Ukraine, or we look at what’s happening with Israel and the Palestinians, and nobody can be in favor of any of that. Either way—not in favor of the Russians, or in favor of what Israel is doing because all of these people, mostly women and children now, being killed. There’s no way to be in favor of that, but we still have fourteen-year-old Black boys... and we have a woman, Breonna Taylor, who was in her bed who got shot by a cop, and they don’t even want to call him guilty. Or we get the Sandy Hook. I mean, it’s so many of them; I could go on.

Indeed, nobody can be in favor of any of that.

***

A few weeks following her death, I stumbled upon the voice of Nikki Giovanni on the rental car radio during a long drive. I don’t remember the station or the host or what city we were passing through. What I remember is that she talked about teaching (which she did at Virginia Tech for 35 years) and about a preference for early-morning classes, when her students were still half-dreaming.

***

Recent/Upcoming

• The second part of my interview with alexa dexa is now up on Futch Magazine. (Here’s Part 1 in case you missed it!).

• There’s two exquisites events coming up soon! Our monthly reading at Aberdeen Community Garden on May 1st:

  

  And this special program celebrating the work of Irena Kelpfisz at The Bureau (and YouTube Live!) on May 4th, featuring Ariel Goldberg, Clairette Atri Mizrahi, and Ayaz Orme Muratoglu.

  

I’ve been thinking a lot about somewhere. Look: even that sentence’s awkward grammar points to the stickiness of the concept.

We’ve been forced to watch the president point violently at many somewheres. In January, the Gulf that should be called Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl (the Aztec deity of the seas) or nahá (Mayan for “great water”) but has been “of Mexico” since 1550 is suddenly renamed: “of America.” The companies whose CEOs got the good seats at the inaugurations capitulated with the change; the Associated Press’s refusal resulted in one of their reporters being blocked from an Oval Office event.

The president has pointed at Greenland with threats to annex (Usha Vance is now set to visit in time for the National dogsled race); pointed at Canada with threats to make a 51st state along with obscene flip-flop tariffs. In one of many theatrical Oval Office meetings these last few months, Zelenskyy asked the vice president whether he’s been to Ukraine to see the destruction, to which the vice president responded he’d “watched and seen the stories,” as if that was the same thing.

And, just last week, a group of 261 Venezuelan migrants alleged to be gang members were sent to a somewhere—to a prison in El Salvador.

***
I recently finished Somebody Somewhere (2022-24) on Max, a tender series whose title points to the everydayness of its characters and its Midwestern location, which for many just represents another some/elsewhere. Behind this, however, is a placemaking and storytelling driven by specificity—the show is set in Manhattan, Kansas (real-life population 53,682 as of 2023; compared to Manhattan, New York which is 1.6 million), and inspired by the life of Bridget Everett, who plays the lead role of Sam.

****

I’ve been cataloging my record collection this year, slowly and alphabetically. A few weeks ago, I spun Nana Grizol’s South Somewhere Else (2020), a record whose titular song begins “It was assumed that the South was a thing that took place somewhere else.” A whole region not just was somewhere else, it occured somewhere else. The song continues to describe all of the “dangerous narrative[s]” and “haunting imperatives[s]” of their upbringing, where “Jim Crow geographies” and “white liberal logics” seeped into all of their familiar architectures. “We weren’t noticing where the power was held,” they sing, and commit to “multiracial resistance to greedful ambitions.”

Later in the record, the band writes about another “somewhere:” Tacoma Center Detention Center in Washington, where “buses carry unnamed inmates to unnamed jails on unnamed roads.” Gizol minces no words in calling it for what it is “a euphemistic package for apartheid / a billion dollars earned in someone else’s blood / a manufactured answer to a xenophonic question.”

The prison opened in 2004 and has been the site of several inmate hunger strikes, including in 2014 and in 2020. Washington State has passed laws banning private detention facilities and the prison is expected to close this year when GEO Group’s contract with ICE expires.

***

Just a few days ago in my record archiving journey, I also stumbled upon Dolly Parton’s cover of “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” on her iconic 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs (1980). The song was written in 1948 by Woody Guthrie, who was responding to a plane crash that killed 28 migrants who were being deported to Mexico. Guthrie was struck by the fact that newspaper and radio coverage of the crash did not name the victims and instead simply referred to them as “deportees.” (The Fresno Bee did list a few names, though incorrectly.) The poem Guthrie wrote in response included symbolic names—Rosalita, Jesús, María—later set to music by Martin Hoffman and popularized by Pete Seeger years later.

Of course, with Guthrie and Seeger and Parton, it is worth interrogating the impact of these white folk singers singing about non-white deportees. What is the impact of names merely symbolic?

***

More than 75 years after the Los Gatos plane crash, the US Government is not providing a list of names of the Venezuelan immigrants it is currently trying to deport, not to mention not disclosing evidence of their connection to the gang Tren de Aragua. Many families are left to recognize their loved ones from videos from the government of El Salvador. (NPR)

***

I’ve been re-reading Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas (2017) in preparation for this month’s Long Poem Support Group (this Tuesday on Discord, guest facilitated by e.jin). In “38” (also shared by Jimena Lucero during her exquisites workshop), she writes:

Everything is in the names, too, whose misspellings and re-namings are a kind of muddying, a kind of clouding that make systems of power and histories of violence clear like potable water.

***

Of course, it is all connected. Racial capitalism, eugenics, and colonialism require the dehumanization of bodies, it also requires spaces to be stripped of their specificity and of their original tenders. The original names of Gulfs or rivers or cities are too much of a reminder of their original stewards, so it’s easier to just change it. From Brooklyn, the South and the Midwest are far-off somewheres that might as well be one blurry thing. Who cares if you’ve been to Minnesota or Manhattan or Ukraine. We’ve seen the propaganda paintings and posts and those give you as good a sense as you need of those places. All migrants are violent and less-than-human, doesn’t matter what specific lesser country they come from or what number they get in detention.

And what of the reclamation? There’s a reason why moments and social movement chants are full of names, as are land acknowledgements, as fraught as those are too. Does naming, real and symbolic, go far enough?

***

It makes sense to long for somewhere, for else. So many of our spaces fail to meet our needs and so we look others.

What of that space that has not been built? (Really not been built or imagined, without any of the colonial delusion.) What can we make possible there?

***

Currently Reading:

• Michael Genese’s blooming newsletter The Minor 9th: Every Small Tipping Point — with a new post, “The Land Shifts” certainly worth a read post-Spring equinox and as a potent seed for hope and rigor

• Joselia Rebekah Hughes’s Substack Black_Sapce’d, which just released an urgent, wandering, and also musical essay “Tap the Pain To Say…”

• Renee Gladman’s big-small, poetry-fiction, meta-eulogy TOAF, via Lara Mimosa Montes’s wonderful Writing on Writing Book Club

• More of Dean Spade’s Love in a Fucked Up World! Here is another of many underlined sentences:

Recent/Upcoming

• My interview with alexa dexa, “space to be a while” is now live on Futch Magazine! I’m so excited to share this conversation (in two parts!) that was such a joy to have with alexa last summer.

• I am DJing another party with Celebrate 845 this Monday (3/24) on Zoom! Free, with donations going to their PPE Hubs—come dance!

  

• Next month, exquisites is back at Aberdeen Community Garden with a sweet lineup of poets:

  

• Also next month, I’m supporting and the opening DJ for No, Dear’s upcoming Spring Fundraiser at Enoch’s! Join us for readings by Eileen Myles, Shira Erlichman, Jive Poetic, and t’ai freedom ford—and if you can’t look through our silent auction for some goodies.

Until somewhere,

d

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I asked Dean about this at the end, in part in a gesture of gratitude and recognition as a fellow event organizer. He talked about beginning this book because of isolation, years before the pandemic. He named the challenges of working with such a range of venues and talked about learnings along the way leading to adaptations. One part of his answer continues to stick with me. He said that sometimes compounded rejection can make people rigid, which I found to be such a profound naming of some of the dynamics present in the online call-outs. I am still reflecting on the compounded rejections I and so many of us face and the often-difficult instances where that results in rigidity.

Just recently, Robert Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as Health Secretary. The latest People’s CDC Report does not look good. The dangers of his beliefs and the policies they may result in cannot be underestimated. Mask and demand masked spaces! Support masked and cleaner-air spaces (another shoutout to A.I.R. NYC and their events calendar!) Access is love! Masking is love!

A few days ago was a the so-called holiday of Valentine’s Day. Growing up, I knew it as el día del amor y amistad—the day of love and friendship. (I saw a chalk sign I wish I had a picture of outside of a car repair shop that said “amor y amistad” and below it “today!”) What I love about that coupling (over neoliberal galentine’s etc) is not just that it expands what is celebrated, but, for me, underscores that friendship is love and vice versa. I was glad to spend the weekend connecting both with lovers and friends.

In the book, Dean writes about the “romance myth” which insists that a committed romantic relationship is the most important kind of relationship and fantasizes about a “one true love” that lasts forever. This myth results not only in us undervaluing the full expanse of relationships that can be meaningful, but has us fall back on gestures of scarcity and disposability. Reading, I recognized how solidly I have unlearned relationship hierarchies, while recognizing other patterns or tendencies that remain in-progress. What I appreciate about Dean’s book is that throughout, he is asserting the structural context that seeps into our most intimate relationships, especially in political spaces and as political people. I’m still processing (and finishing) the book and may keep sharing reflections.

For now, I’ll end with a passage from the first chapter:

We are working to recover a broader range of potential responses to the world, beyond programmed reactions. Although I’ve been taught by society to feel shame and self-hatred in the daily indignities of the workplace or family, I can recover my ability to feel rage, greif, and incitement to action instead. Though I am programmed to try to dominate others, I can choose instead to expand my capacity for collaboration and humility. We can move out of autopilot reactions that have become habitual through repetition, and instead respond to situations and people in ways that are more aligned with our real beliefs and purpose. The point of this healing, then, is to increase our capacities to feel and do new things that make our lives more on purpose.

Coming up:

• I’m excited to partner with Celebrate 845 for a virtual dance party next Monday, February 27th. Link will be here the day of the party, and donations support their PPE Distribution work—let’s dance! Furiously! These times are hard!

• This month’s Long Poem Support Group pick is Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Join us next on the Discord Tuesday to discuss with guest facilitator MC Hyland.

• Our third and final Virtual Winter Workshop with is coming up on Thursday, March 6th with the lovely Jimena Lucero. Join us!

With love,

d

Even the memes agree:

Indeed, this January has contained so much. The fascist bro-ligarchs are as explicit as ever about their greed and fears. Los Angeles was in flames and in New York temperatures bounce between unseasonable highs and low-lows. It’s a “quademic” and everyone seems to be just getting over “whatever is going around.” Bad Bunny transported us forward into a Nueva York summer, one decolonial bop at a time.

Perhaps the exhaustion stems from realization that all of it, not just January, has been ongoing; that some of this month’s beginnings—Gregorian, inaugural, or otherwise—are false ones. Deportations have been happening before this administration, too much of our air has been dangerous for a long time, and surveillance over our digital lives has always been.

This year, I’ve resolved to do less to do more. I love a theme, of course, so I made my first book of 2025 a re-read if Andrew Sean Greer’s novel Less. I’ve been cleaning out closets, inboxes, and personal archives, which has taken on particular meaning listening to accounts from LA talking about the impossibilities of packing a to-go bag. Even after the Great (14-hour) Tik Tok Outage of 2025™ had passed, I did not go back to the app. The dystopian language about the ban and its triumphant “return” were enough to have me disengage. I’ve been seeing friends announcing similar departures on my Instagram feed, encouraging alternatives (including Substack) to keep in touch. This shift has liberatory potential, though the challenges are nuanced. What does anything close to an exodus mean for folks who rely on social media channels to stay connected in the context of isolation (from COVID, and otherwise), or who rely on it to fundraise or survive? [I’m still on Instagram, at least for now, and are aiming for this newsletter to be monthly. Also! If I’ve sent you a postcard in the past, I’d love to hear from you, and if you’d like a postcard from me, feel free to reach out.]

This question of gathering, in all of its forms, remains a tenuous one. Hellgate recently reported on the consequences of New York City banning outdoor dining sheds, which have significantly reduced the non-indoor options for eating together. I relate to the isolation folks expressed in the article, a feeling intertwined with sadness and anger at the many structural failures that have contributed to this particular flavor of hellscape we’re living in.

And yet, we keep creating alternatives together. Just yesterday, I went to the Crown Height Mutual Aid / Crown Heights Care Collective Free Store — where mask-wearing, goods-sharing, and food-serving was abundant. Next Saturday 2/1 (the end of January, at last!) comrades at Celebrate845 are hosting a Virtual Dance Party (Also, ICYMI: Kevin Gotin, AKA DJ Who Girl, of Crip News, was recently on Kelly Clarkson (!) talking about crip nightlife). For those in Brooklyn, anna rg (part of A.I.R Collective, which has a whole calendar of cleaner-air events) is playing new songs at The Owl Music Parlor in a masked required show with yaz lancaster (whose Poetry Project Marathon performance was stellar) and gg200bpm.

Looking ahead has been comforting this season. I’ve been planning Spring and Summer travel, adding books to my to-read list, and as always grounded by collaborators. Ry and I are excited to announce another year of the Long Poem Support Group, which starts next week on Discord!

Join us anytime this year:

Continuing to look ahead to not-January, exquisites is continuing our virtual winter workshop series with the lovely Aishvarya Arora, who will be hosting ‘my own self / my quarry’ on Thursday, February 6th (Free RSVP here):

To close, I want to go back to Akbar’s “both directions.” I’ve been thinking about the tensions between simplifying and simultaneity, between slowness and urgency, between abundance and too-much, between the kinds of accumulation that happen out of steadiness and those that happen out of anxiety. How can we develop strategies where “both directions” doesn’t mean binary or strain but instead means possibility? How can we think about units of time in ways that untangle them from capitalism and bring us closer to cosmos, nature, and lineage? How can we reclaim this collective feeling that one month has seem to have contained many as a way to experience expansiveness, to make connections from the overlap?

Wishing you care for this last bit of January and beyond and beyond,

d

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P.S. I want to share one of the postcards I got from Visual AIDS Postcards from the Edge fundraiser, which is still live (and currently having a BOGO sale!). Check out some amazing work for a worthy cause.

I co-curated two exhibitions, to hold a we at BRIC and Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home at Bullet Space. I’m so proud of both shows and of the tender, expansive visions presented by all of the artists involved. Thank you to everyone that came by openings, closings, symposiums and readings, it was such a joy to share these shows and experience them together.

Some photos of the exhibition and opening at BRIC by Toby Tenenbaum (look at those masks!):

And some install photos I took at the Bullet Space on the last day:

I kept shooting on my beloved Kodak Ektar Half-frame:

Shot on a new Ilford Sprite 35-II in Maine:

And was gifted my dad’s old Pentax K-100

This summer, Em and I celebrated two years of exquisites! In 2024, we featured 66 poets, redistributed $7,125 in artist honorariums (thanks to Poets & Writers and Brooklyn Arts Council), and fundraised $1,320 for organizations and causes including Middle East Children’s Alliance, G.L.I.T.S, and Medical Aid for Palestinians. I continue to be so proud of the space we create together, and excited to be kicking off 2025 with a series of three free Zoom workshops starting this Thursday, January 2nd, guest facilitated by Chae(lee) Dalton. Join us!

I co-organized a year of the Long Poem Support Group with Ry, which was a monthly delight. The highlight for me was re-reading Laura’s Desires and having Laura join us on Zoom. I’m excited to share we’re continuing next year (with some very special guest-fascilitators), follow @longpoemsupportgroup for updates!

Most of my writing this year was for exhibitions, but I was happy to publish a long poem chaplet with Ghost City Press as part of their summer series, suggestion as suggestion as more profound or more interesting than the thing itself (or, july), and a feature on Jodie Landau for National Sawdust, “Of course, but also kind of not really.”

I listed to and DJ’d a lot of music. My favorite records were:

• Billie Eilish, Hit Me Hard and Soft

• Remi Wolf, Big Ideas

• Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter

• Dua Lipa, Radical Optimism

• Natalia Lafourcade, Live at Carnegie Hall

(I made a playlist of my top 24 songs here, and have started a new Instagram broadcast channel for my DJ sets, if you’d like to tune in.)

I made a resolution to watch more movies, and I did! My favorites:

• Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000)

• Fremont (2023)

• Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music (2023)

• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023)

• Museum Hours (2012)

Lastly, this summer I stopped drinking and it has revealed itself to be such a clarifying gift. Shoutout to Minus Moonshine, where I now regularly stop by for tastings, a new beverage, or just a yap. (My favorite NA discoveries have been Tennyson, Ghia, Dromme, and Parenthesis—would recommend!)

Thank you for being in my orbit this year. Here’s to another.

With care,

d

P.S.: I want to shoutout a few more of the spaces that meant a lot of me this year—give them a follow and support their work if you can: A.I.R Collective (utilize their free purifier lending library for gatherings all all sizes!), No, Dear Magazine (look out for a chapbook series early next year I’m very excited about!), The People’s Saturday School, and The Poetry Project (see you virtually at the marathon tomorrow! )

• This Thursday (12/5), exquisites is hosting our end-of-year fundraiser at Purgatory in Brooklyn, featuring Ugochi Egonu, Sunny Leerasanthanah, Clairette Atri Mizrahi, and Jesús I. Valles. We’re fundraising for G.L.I.T.S., Medical Aid for Palestinians (M.A.P), and our upcoming fifth anthology (we just released volume four, available here!). $15, no one turned away for lack of funds. Join us!

  [Masked, Air Purification by A.I.R.]

  

• This Saturday (12/7), I’m excited for shall we go together? A Symposium on Care, Equity, and Access in the Arts, happening online at at BRIC House and featuring a tour of to hold a we, fishbowl discussion, artist-led workshops, and ending with a Remote Access dance party in collaboration with Crip Rave Collective. Hope to see you! [Masked, Free, Purification by A.I.R]
  

• Next Saturday (12/14), we’re celebrating the final day of any place i hang my hat is home at Bullet Space. Join us at 6 pm for a final curator tour and music. [Air Purification by A.I.R.]

• Lastly, I want to share I was so lucky to be a part of Rodrigo Moreira’s latest film, A Grand Affair, which just premiered virtually through Participant After Dark. Check it out!

  

  Wishing you many kinds of warmth this season.
  
  More soon before the end of year,

  d
  
  
  

Titled after the Arden and Mercer standard covered by Barbra Streisand (twice!) on her second album, the show’s all about the fire-fickleness of home, which can be built as swiftly as it can be destroyed—always between delicate precarity and possibility.

Would love to see you at the opening, at the programs, or have you stop by weekend gallery hours.

More soon!

d

I’d love to see you at the (masked required!) reception tomorrow—which includes a performance by CAO Collective—if not let me know and I’d love to go together soon. (More information below, and more reflections forthcoming.)

With care,

d

—
Honoring the many interconnected relationships that facilitate making and being, to hold a we features newly commissioned and recent work by fourteen emerging and early-career disabled artists and collectives from the BRIClab residency program. Across drawing, text, sculpture, video, photography, installation, and performance, the artists continually turn to memory, intimacy, grief, and the archive as both a source of inspiration and a means of connection. 

The exhibition, co-organized with the artists, borrows its title from “SCORE FOR LIFT AND TRANSFER” (2013) by Constantina Zavitsanos and Park McArthur, conjuring ongoing legacies of collaboration, care, and interdependence within disability communities. The titular we counters the everyday, ever-present risk and reality of isolation, neglect, and erasure, and reflects the plurality of the artistic, curatorial, and community processes that made the exhibition (and its related programming) possible.

to hold a we is rooted in the ten principles of Disability Justice, penned by Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, Stacey Milbern, and fellow Sins Invalid activists. Through these principles – including intersectionality, wholeness, cross-movement organizing, cross-disability solidarity, and collective liberation – the exhibition poses kinship, abundance, tenderness, and trust as alternatives to structural inaccessibility, exploitation, and violences.

to hold a we is organized by Maria McCarthy, Curatorial Associate and danilo machado, Co-Curator with A. Sef, Alex Dolores Salerno, Brothers Sick (Ezra and Noah Benus), Chinese Artists and Organizers (CAO) Collective 离离草, Cinthya Santos Briones, Dominic Bradley, Finnegan Shannon, Isabella Vargas, Linda Ryan, OlaRonke Akinmowo, Pelenakeke Brown, Steven Anthony Johnson II, and Yasi Ghanbari.

I am writing this around 6:30 in the evening, which these days means the sun has not yet set. Rufus is looking out the balcony, which I just stepped into for long enough to feel the lingering humidity of the day. Another month has almost culminated.

This has been a month of sweat, travel, and too-much—highlights included audio description/poetry at Lincoln Center with DJ Who Girl; a un-American exquisites BBQ; two days on Governor’s Island for the NYC Poetry Fest with exquisites and No, Dear; and trips to Philly and the Adirondacks. I hope you’ve been staying hydrated and been able to bask in long-lit nights.

II. Post-Suggestion

I’m thrilled to share my third chaplet as part of the Ghost City Press Summer series was just released! I started suggestion as more profound or more interesting than the thing itself in July of 2018, on the bus home after a date I don’t really remember. It became my first long poem, accumulating over months and eventually years. It holds bits of what started as other poems, scraps from what I’ve heard and overheard over the years. In this poem are tales of first apartments, of doctor’s visits, and of transportation centers. While some of the context of the poem has changed, many of the questions remain—how does one approach the extended form? How does one lend just-enough language to the inexpressible? How do we negotiate the power of our winks and Glissantian opacity with the necessity of directness, particularly in the face of (Zionist, nationalist) double-speak?

The cover features Maquette Drawing (Red Light) (2024) by Bix Archer, who I’ve been grateful to collaborate with for the trio if chaplet covers so far (my first two chaplets are available for free download here and here). The layers of translation and approximation in this and other maquette paintings feel very connected to the poem, as does Bix’s tenderness towards light and the domestic.

III. (Re)-Post

• I’m reading at exquisite’s annual all-Leo lineup this coming Thursday, August 1st at Art Cafe & Bar in Brooklyn alongside my co-host (and July Leo) Em, as well as the fantastic Kyle Dacuyan, Alicia Mountain, Rena Yehuda Newman, and Parissah Lin. I’ll be reading suggestion…, and some recent poems as well. Join us!

• I’m thrilled to be supporting No, Dear’s current open chapbook call! Submissions close on July 31st—shoot(ing star) your shot!

  

• This Friday, I’m DJing the afterparty for soak, alexa dexa’s new bathtub Zoom opera. More details + free RSVP here!

  

Leo season forever,

d

If you’d like to support the fundraisers shared by exquisites and at unnamable, please do (both were recommended by community members who have had direct contact with the families):

Help Ahmad's Family Find Safety

Help (dr ahmed) family leaving out of G.a.z.a

Brief shares of recent/upcoming:

• This Wednesday evening (6/12), I’ll be reading on the deck of the Mary Whalen in Brooklyn to culminate my micro-residency with NYC Poets Afloat. I’ll be sharing a new poem about my experiences aboard the Waterfront Museum, where I took this photo:

  

  RSVP Here! Hope to see you!

• Happy to be sharing my latest with National Sawdust’s Motif, new language of deconstruction (or, this event has passed), written for and with and after Holland Andrews and yuniya edi kwon.

Keep taking care of eachother in rage, tenderness, and always towards a free Palestine,

d