round-up: 9/1
quotations, opportunities, call to action, etc.
Happy Thursday, folks!
Just a little (big) round-up for you today—featuring updates, quotations, a fun call to action, & more.
Table of contents:
Housekeeping
Opportunities
Quotations
Call to action
Tweets
Housekeeping:
I have some new work out.
Recent smelfies, etc:
On your (very) problematic fave:
Opportunities:
(Queer!) quotations I’ve encountered this week:
I must become a menace to my enemies.
-June Jordan
Can you give me the statistical dimensions
of your mouth on my mouth
your breasts resting on my own?
-June Jordan
You’re neither unnatural, nor abominable, nor mad; you’re as much a part of what people call nature as anyone else.
-Radclyffe Hall
I really like the word queer because it embraces a genuine sense of the different, the otherness, most of us felt growing up. And being gay—being queer—is so much more than just being homosexual. It’s a distinct sense of being outside something, looking in.
-Jennifer Levin
I am not just a lesbian. I am not just a poet. I am not just a mother. Honor the complexity of your vision and yourselves.
-Audre Lorde
I am not especially defined by my sex life, nor complete without it.
-Paula Gunn Allen
If there were no fear of, or discrimination against, lesbians and gays, maybe just ‘a person’ would do. But our social instinct is to name, even when those appellations become confining or negative.
-Jewelle Gomez
I’m the longest-married woman in my family. I guess it was serious when we put them rings on. I put one in her left nipple and she put one in my pussy and ever since then we felt like we owned a piece of each other.
-Dorothy Allison
The oppositions of race collide inside me, [and] my writing is always an attempt at reconciliation.
-Cherrie Moraga
Art […] should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination, and encourages people to go further.
-Keith Haring
Art is the most intense mode of individualism the world has ever known.
-Oscar Wilde
My gayness is an absolute, inextricable part of my persona and my art.
-Frank Galati
My lesbianism is the avenue through which I have learned the most about silence and oppression, and it continues to be the most tactile reminder to me that we are not free human beings.
-Cherrie Moraga
There are no pronouns in the English language as complex as I am, and I do not want to simplify myself in order to neatly fit one or the other.
-Leslie Feinberg
I am a lesbian, not a woman.
-Monique Wittig
I also found some old torn out pages from literary journals & periodicals in my room and, unfortunately, I can’t seem to figure out all of the poets’ names. If these lines are yours, or you know whose they are, please let me know!
I’ve been told / however long you were with a lover it takes twice that / (for heart to feel as if it wasn’t at stake, on the line, hadn’t been a part).
-from the poem “Where shoreline meets ocean,” unknown author
I’ll admit I’ve used people / like a second skin, pricked a finger, found blood-red / evidence.
-from the poem “Where shoreline meets ocean,” unknown author
Even now, next to you, splayed flat on my back / to take in the gloaming, I close my eyes, try to suspend the smell of the unrisen / moon on your skin.
-from the poem “Under the Jacaranda,” unknown author
Jacaranda engulfs us / in dimness. It could be cloud shadow instead, but let’s / say it is the violet and mulberry of want.
-from the poem “Under the Jacaranda,” unknown author
A breeze through the latticework / of branches shucks a few leaves to the ground.
-from the poem “Under the Jacaranda,” unknown author
I reach my hand / to your forehead, letting parings of want mingle in your hair, my fingers.
-from the poem “Under the Jacaranda,” unknown author
Call to action:
Engage with your local literary community sometime in the next few days.
You might…
check out a local bookstore & buy something!
buy a book online but have the proceeds benefit your local bookstore!
find a local reading / open mic event!
donate books to (or start your own) little free library!
sign up for a local community workshop or writers’ group!
contact a local writer to set up an interview!
squeal on social media about a local writer’s work!
etc!
Tweets:
![Meme:
Twitter when someone jokingly calls their friend stupid [image of a hand smacking a big button labeled 'BAN']
Twitter when @LibsOfTikTok causes an active bomb threat at a children's hospital [image of a skeleton covered in cobwebs leaning on a computer keyboard]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFbdMZqXUIAAEgTd.jpg)
That’s all for today!
Please buy things so that I can pay my rent. Love you.