She sits by the smouldering tarp, kicking a rock with her dusty boot. Cinder and coals smolder perpetually. The sun is stingingly bright. You can taste the heat. She used to go down to the sea, to cool off, to bathe, to feel weightless. She’d go at night with her cousin, Zadi. When the sea
Exploring Queer Experience: Shame, Pride, and Liberation
“Why do you have to make your whole life about being gay? Like, WE GET IT. Not everything in life is about who you want to date. Maybe people would accept it if you didn’t make it your new personality.” That’s the Instagram message I received from a cis gay man after I had confronted
Sin Miedo, Without Fear
(translated from Spanish) From far away I hear their songs and their screams The ground rumbles Charged by restless spirits Tired of making themselves small To fit into lines drawn to cage us We all hear it from birth and learn it as children The life lessons all women must know calladita te ves más
Why Did You Twist Me Up?
Was the Moon A witness Or an accomplice? I can’t tell But, Both times It was there Sleepless Swollen eye An overripe orange That I mistook For the sun Why did you twist me up? I ask the staring eye Who, Clutching every reply Doubts to confide Even a hiccup Hollow Pulp-less fruit With
That Moment
Film tapes turned to ashes Bare feet on the shore, unable to walk The tied ropes that suffocate me Holding you tight while you slip off My naked ego goes to its knees Carrying the stale bitterness of crying too much Will I wake up from this nightmare again? Will I remove all the blades
Foreign Plants Grow Between My Toes
I couldn’t name a sparrow from a line-up of birds nor tell you what the ants dancing in my summer yard do after dark or before it or during I couldn’t confess which flowers bloom forth from my soul today—I’d have to look them up. Most of the Romantics are lost on me;
The Death of Erekle
Adaptation of Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet VII. The Death of Enkidu “For his Friend Enkidu Gilgamesh Did bitterly weep as he wandered the wild: ‘I shall die, and shall I not then be as Enkidu? Sorrow has entered my heart!” *** ერეკლეს სიკვდილი გიგლა ეწევა ბოლო ღერს, სანთელი ანათებს პალატას. მისი გული ღრიალს ითხოვს,