february skating
Reply
slut (an excerpt from licking stars off ceilings #10 circa 2009)
evacuation of stars
stars like tumors taking over my body. i open my mouth as if to speak. i bring my hand to my heart as if, as if i felt anything. i am overcome with stardust, choking on the shit. it is overcome with me, attracted to every crevice, every orifice. oh look, there’s the diamond your long term partner left up my asshole. fuck. will i ever redeem myself? would all of you still love me if you knew who you were fucking with? because i’m a bad, bad girl. the glitter begins to bubble, like my body is a cauldron, like i am the grail and out froths eternity, pouring over the top. and my wet lips beg you to take a sip. you want to taste forever and forever you will be mine. i’m so sorry. i let go, but my stars don’t leave me, they shine, they shine. i lay down, crash into the water, it overcomes me, i’m breathing cut rock, sparkling hard and collapsible like air. i am the invention of time, this sparkling girl and i choke and there’s blood and i collapse on the floor. is it going to kill me? are you going to kill me for this? because when i left you, yes, the sky did follow me. yes, when i look over my shoulder i can see that the moon is following me. i am not alone even when i try to be. and you were jealous. jealous that the moon kept following me around, jealous that you could never get me alone, with out the presence of the sky. she was always peeking in through the windows, looking, looking for me. and then the ceilings fell in love with me. you declared me crazy. you fucking crazy bitch. you fucking slut. you succubus witch. and i feel the straight jacket and i feel the ice pick and i feel the rope binding my wrists and the stake at my back and the flames that encircle me. i feel the metal instruments searching and prodding inside of me like my grandfather’s wet worm tongue. i feel the splitting, the disassembling of my parts. and he touches it and it was me. this is what they do to my body. and i’m up on my broomstick looking down. counting the slashes, the cuts. counting the pushes, the touches, the kisses, the fucks. i keep the inventory of what they do to her, me, what they do to her. i can’t breathe. i don’t need to. and when they are done, i fly back down and i put her body back together again. i sew her up and kiss her tenderly and she is gushing nothing but stars. the floor is wet with it. the sticky starlight of witches blood. split and sucked and fucked from her. and them drunk like gods from raping a goddess just leave us here to clean up the mess, me and myself. we put the stars back, the ever multiplying stars. we place them back in her eye sockets, up in her ovaries and piled up in her womb. and even as we are doing this they are multiplying and flying out of her, pouring all over the floor, but we do what we can to try to keep as much as we can inside her. and we seal her with thread and love. i touch her on the head and i don’t show her my sadness because it’s my job to be the strong one here. but i want to weep. i want to fucking weep. look what they did to her. they split her the fuck open. it’s disgusting. but she is resilient. i stroke her. i tell her ‘shhh, shhhh’ because it’s all i can say. and she isn’t crying just slowly gushing starlight and i hold her in my arms until we are strong enough to merge. and then i wake up and i am her and i look at my new healing wounds. i remember that they did this to me and i thank myself for taking care of myself. and i stare into the distance where there are stars like my own. and i am still multiplying all inside, i am still continuously becoming more than myself, and i know, i know they will kill me for this. i can’t stop it. i can’t stop it. i mop up the starlight, shake the excess stars from my hair. but there is always more. and for that they will kill her.
layers of sexuality (an excerpt from saliva girl #2)
let’s go wayyyyyy back in time for a second, to the year 2003. i was sixteen years old, living in bradford. i was a high school drop out and figuring out the tools that would lead me onward in life. i was just beginning to get a grasp on my sexual identity after going back and forth between gay and straight for years. this is a page from the second issue of my first (published) zine saliva girl. saliva girl will always hold a very special place in my heart because it was my first experience publishing and distributing zines, and i figured out a lot of myself in those pages. here’s me figuring out my sexuality. and naturally, my sexuality has evolved since then. if i were to write this article today it would be different, but a lot of it would be the same. this article also appeared in the zine the fence.
O
shine, the size of open eyes, the disk reflects the light and fills the sky and i — my mouth is open, forming O, there is no question there? an open window. a door, a front door, left wide open in the middle of the night. there are strange people sleeping in my house. and i think there always have been. and that’s a very unsettling thought. so i look behind the shower curtain and under the staircase… this is where they keep them, where they hide? shine, i see the night seeping out of the cup like black blood and yes it disturbs me a little bit. my limbs twitch. i begin to wonder. i shake the feeling no. i dig my fingers inside, of no, O. the open hole. we walk like endless legs and swim like we never had them. we walk and we wake like it is nothing and so i stand, separated from them, becoming another one and another one and each time i get further away. there will be nothing left. i will be too far away, just a dot, just an O, oh, oh, ohhh. zero. take the place of nothingness. make it stand for something (else). O. her mouth took the shape of an O? was that a question? her eyes looked so shocked and i didn’t want to mention. these waking pantomimes. so tell me, what was she doing with her mouth like that? shine, shine. the moon, globe, white disk, tonight it’s bigger than ever. oh. it escapes my lips. oh no. i wonder. i wander? take the tour of veins back to the centre. but it is endless. tell me so. tell me, no, no. i form the words, the vowels slip like jewels, they sparkle but they are pointless, oh, oh. oh. uncanny, left without the whole, an unstellated star, a star without its points. so tell me so. shine, bright and slow. the white light of the full moon, lunacy, sweet but oh? O.
know your bible if you’re going to preach
today while riding my bike i saw a guy preaching the bible and making sexist and homophobic comments and yelling about sin. before i knew it, i had stopped my bike and i was yelling at him “jesus christ loved a whore! mary magdalene!” this got his attention. he attempted to reply but i kept yelling “there are two whores in his lineage! two of the three women named! tamar and rahab!! and ruth was queer!!” he tried to speak and i yelled “who is rahab? tell me who she is!” and he said “rahab the harlot” and i said “now open that book to the first page, the first paragraph and tell me whose name you see!” and then i rode off on my bicycle.
some thoughts on white privilege
all white people, whether we consider ourselves racist or not, directly benefit from racism through white privilege. all white people are responsible for racism because we benefit from it at the expense of other people. an individual prejudice based on race is not the same this as the long history and current complex structure of systemic racism, white supremacy and colonialism. white people often have a hard time seeing white privilege because it is our privilege not to see it. we are oblivious to it because we don’t know what living with racism (and without white privilege) is like. but here are two small examples of white privilege operating in my own life: 1) i was arrested for shop lifting. i was not charged. if i were a woman of colour i most likely would have been. because of my whiteness i therefore do not have a criminal record, giving me access to many freedoms that would have been taken from me had i been charged. 2) my sister, who is also white, went missing. my family called the cops. at first they tried to give us a run around but we managed to convince them to look for her. they did look for her. they took it seriously. because a white girl was missing. meanwhile the running statistic is that there are 500 ‘missing and murdered’ native women in canada, hundreds of women who are not being looked for because they are not white. these women’s lives are just as valuable as my sister’s and their loved ones love them just as much as i love my sister. whiteness means that the cops look for us, so therefore our lives are considered valuable. to me this is one of the most terrifying examples of how racism and white privilege operates. and those are just two isolated examples. i benefit from white privilege at the expense of people of colour every day of my life. acknowledging it and understanding how it works are the first steps to undoing it.
