If We Could Read Minds I Still Don't Think We'd Understand Them.

thinking of jesus at the gay bar again………

fireflies honestly make me cry a little. out of gratitude and wonder. thank goodness we live in a world with bioluminescence. thank goodness we live in a world where it can fly.

if you live in the imperial core, you profit directly from the genocide in gaza. yes, even if you are poor. centuries of our comfort and commodities have been bought with the displacement of populations, the manufacture and sale of arms, and the mutual wealth reinforcement of proxies like isr ael. the literal least we can do is offset a little of our privilege by throwing people a few bucks for food and water.

a poem from gazan writer nadine murtaja featured in an edition of WAWOG’s “new york war crimes” in march. she dreams of becoming a dentist, though her schooling was interrupted by the current aggression and genocide.

please donate and share nadine’s campaign to evacuate herself and her family.

gofundme.com

Donate to Help my family and I evacuate Gaza, organized by Nadine Murtaja

I'm Nadine Murtaja, a 20-year-old writer from Gaza, and I'm reaching out to you with… Nadine Murtaja needs your support for Help my family a

you spent hours in libraries and in art supply stores trying to absorb the artist tips from books your parents didn't want to buy you. on each page of every "how to draw" is a version of the same four things: this is how you shade a sphere. this is how you shade a cone.

this is what a man looks like. he is hard and angular and jutting. his chest narrows a triangle down to his sharp hip and long legs. his jawbone is a square. he is powerful, imposing, his hands are big and meaty. he is a leader.

this is what a woman looks like. she is soft and her hands tuck her long hair back behind a delicate ear. she is big-eyed and round (but not too round, she is skinny, here is the faint sketch of her abs showing), she is smaller and lighter and pretty. she has thick black lashes and her tits do not come with a massive ribcage to offset the weight we put on her - she has curves, but they are impossibly slim without giving her backache trouble. there is a large red hourglass outlined on top of her figure, the way there is a triangle outlined on top of the man. her face is a heart-shape, and her lips are pouting.

here is how you draw the woman and the man together. the man should be in action shots. the woman's ass should be in action shots. she should fit against the man to compliment his negative space - she should slot into his shadow so when they hug, they become one uniform space. here is how all the other artists have done it, see how good it looks when the man (angles, fire, passion, action) and the woman (roundness, water, emotion, supplication) complement each other? he begins the sentence, she is his ending.

do you want to kiss another girl? that is round-to-round. that is fitting the wire into the wrong socket! how would the faces look together? a single silhouette you sketch and then hide, scribbling over it.

do you want to look like a girl? by sheer genetic happenstance, you absolutely don't look like that, and you never have. you don't look like a man, either, though, do you. you don't feel like you truly belong to either gender, but there is not a "neutral/fluid" drawing in the book. there is male (triangle) or female (hourglass).

but you have a square jaw and square hands and "masculine" proportions. but you have curves and roundness and full lips and "feminine" features. someone online says, definitively, that any form of gender noncompliance is "a mental illness." this comment has over one thousand likes from people who agree.

here is how you shade a square. none of the clothes at the store look good on you, you always somehow feel like you're wearing a weird kind of costume. here is how you shade a sphere. your friend's mother calls the school because she's horrified you're in the same changing room. here is the neutral body figure: it is a wooden man. technically the wooden man is genderless, but that is because masculinity is the default, and everyone calls the figure "a wooden man." you must be small and posable and skinny and featureless, then you can be masculine enough to not have gender.

here is how to draw a person. begin with some shapes. choose the right shapes to get that person's gender correct. do not kiss her. shade in short, sharp lines.

when she laughs, look away.

From beyza ozer’s chapbook, Good Luck with the Moon & Stars & Stuff, available at https://bottlecap.press/products/good-luck-with-the-moon-stars-stuff-by-beyza-ozer

i know we’re both just messing around pretending to be whole but look at me. if the train was coming would you move. if the ground was falling from under your feet would you even notice or would it just be another tuesday for you. if somebody stabbed you could it hurt worse than you already do. what i’m saying is that i love you but i think we both drive over the speed limit when it’s raining. what i’m saying is that i want to hold your hand and i understand about how you sometimes have to sit down in the shower. what i’m saying is that i’m here for you and if the train comes please move.

A lot of people ask me what my biggest fear is, or what scares me most. And I know they expect an answer like heights, or closed spaces, or people dressed like animals, but how do I tell them that when I was 17 I took a class called Relationships For Life and I learned that most people fall out of love for the same reasons they fell in it. That their lover’s once endearing stubbornness has now become refusal to compromise and their one track mind is now immaturity and their bad habits that you once adored is now money down the drain. Their spontaneity becomes reckless and irresponsible and their feet up on your dash is no longer sexy, just another distraction in your busy life. Nothing saddens and scares me like the thought that I can become ugly to someone who once thought all the stars were in my eyes.

i hate it when i cant even write a poem about something because its too obvious. like in the airbnb i was at i guess it used to be a kids room cause you could see the imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white. like that's a poem already what's the point