The Main Event, by stacy-marie ishmael

a concrete jungle drum can’t play no calypso

July 2, 2023

There is something ridiculous, perhaps, about crying in a soca party. But then, it was David Rudder in a slightly incongruous setting - midtown Manhattan -...

And if sun comes / How shall we greet him?

June 25, 2023

What happened to hundreds of people who drowned off the coast of Greece?75 years of Windrushers, a "bittersweet" anniversary at best.There are days, weeks,...

Do not go gentle into that good night.

June 18, 2023

Let them say you were complicated. That you made mistakes and that you owned up to them. That everyone knew your name. That you were a fierce defender of...

Embrace. / Grow flowers with your lungs

June 11, 2023

In crisis, gather the generations. Figure out how to be in two places at once. Rearrange schedules. Book flights and hotels. Figure it out. Make it happen....

emigration is never an election issue

June 4, 2023

June. Complicated month. Yet another opportunity to litigate whose rights are worth defending despite backlash from folks whose whole personality is hating...

Stars are great drops / Of golden dew.

May 28, 2023

Some lovely responses to the question, “what would you say to your 17-year-old self?” Including: “(You haven't started watching Buffy yet, but log onto alta...

Whatever / what is is is what / I want.

May 21, 2023

Growing up, as a student of that very proper school on the hill, the one that provided both a demanding and rigorous curriculum and that policed skirt...

now I start to understand her love

May 14, 2023

a farewell to BuzzFeed News, by SMI and Millie We wanted to be your smartest, most interesting friend. But first we had to ship a mobile app, for iOS and...

Because white men can’t / police their imagination / black men are dying.

May 7, 2023

“Because white men can’t/ police their imagination/ black men are dying.” What was in your mind when you wrote that line?When white men are shooting black...

This rain. / The blues gone gray / and yellow

April 30, 2023

New York has been churlishly soggy and cold and dark the whole weekend. Leading, to quote a witty friend, to "an excess of lassitude".April ends in showers....

The recent buds relax and spread, / Their greenness is a kind of grief.

April 23, 2023

Live long enough in media to see multiple of the places you worked just cease to exist. Live long enough in media to have a nemesis list related to the...

There are no curses—only mirrors

April 16, 2023

The algorithms always know when I'm having a back flare-up, because I tell them. Lots of searches for "psoas" and "sacroiliac" and "piriformis" followed by...

So many of us are breathless, / you know, like me

April 9, 2023

If you punched* Nazis and stole their memorabilia, I suppose you could keep them. Much less convinced than if you acquired them by other means, though.So...

There are no good kings. / Only beautiful palaces.

April 2, 2023

Eight years ago Alana Massey published an essay titled "Against Chill". It was a different time on the internet, in media, and in culture. It is always a...

I stepped outside to answer and rain / Beat my chest.

March 26, 2023

There is something about rain in Trinidad, sharp and sudden and sometimes fleeting. Of course there is the smell, the petrichor of the collision of hot pitch...

Everything’s a testament To life lived on the fringe

March 19, 2023

Been a long minute since I did one of these, so: Read: Babel Watch: Grand Crew, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,...

a kind of terror / at the chain / of events

March 12, 2023

I spent many a Friday night, fifteen years ago, writing about banks that failed. Another bank failed on Friday, as financial institutions sometimes do, and...

Empty jar: / I think to grow beansprouts and look into ordering seeds.

March 5, 2023

March, the longest year. Everything since, marked. Folks talked about a before when there was a sense that there would be an after. Yet it is still, somehow,...

we would speak / in auto-rhyme, the world would echo itself

February 26, 2023

There is a song that I have seen performed live probably a dozen or more times, though not in the last two decades. It's called Miracle, and it's by a...

I would do it all over again: Be the harbor and set the sail,

February 19, 2023

It seems I am always thinking about James Baldwin, at least since I first knew to be. I bought, on a whim — because that is what good bookstores are designed...

How do you know what you want / If you don’t tell you?

February 12, 2023

“How are you doing?” A question when, sincerely presented, demands and merits a sincere response. “What are you willing to stop doing?” A provocation...

things that can't be undone come to call, / muttering recriminations at the door,

February 5, 2023

Dates and times: not my fave. What day is it: hold on, let me check. What time is it: hold on, let me check. Where am I supposed to be now: hold on, let me...

7. monster until proven ghost / 8. gone

January 29, 2023

I am always thinking about stories. I am always trying to change the rules about who gets to set them, tell them, define them. I am always trying to...

/ what if in the endlessness, / what if in a lifetime of conversations,/

January 22, 2023

If you have had friends for a long time, if you have been friends for a long time, then being with and around them, the people who knew you then is like...

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways;

January 15, 2023

A reiteration of Dr. King’s words and works. First published in 2020. First, Letter from a Birmingham Jail(1963), or the one in which MLK is exasperated...

You weep, Janus! / Or is that laughter

January 8, 2023

Staring down a couple weeks of travel for work, mentally steeling myself for the planes and the trains and the hotels and the working every time zone. Making...

it will be hard to let go / of what i said to myself / about myself

January 1, 2023

It took about 18 months, a cannot-be-taken for granted confluence of events, and a fairy godmother, but I finally, successfully took two consecutive days off...

We tell ourselves stories in order to live

December 18, 2022

Self-absorption, cruelty, pettiness. These are traits, these are behaviours, that get to me — especially when they show up in people with disproportionate...

Nothing / in the world / is usual today.

December 11, 2022

Chronic pain is boring. It is waking up fine on a Saturday and by Sunday afternoon not being entirely able to sit, stand, or walk. In between it is ok, I...

these islands real / more real / than flesh and blood

December 4, 2022

There was a time when I lived in London and I could get home - home being Trinidad, home still being Trinidad - relatively easily and cheaply because there...

We have been better for it,/

November 27, 2022

Two parts to the word, in historic darkness coined. Two weeks ago I was supposed to be on holiday for a week; instead I had this weekend. Measure time off by...

what is that about, going out / and not having to explain

November 20, 2022

On Trans Day of Remembrance, mourning more murdered queer people. Over and over again. Attribution: what is that about, going out and not having to explain...

And yes, I have at times wished myself something different.

November 13, 2022

Seek to be useful in a crisis. Care about outcomes and consequences. Understand they are never evenly distributed. Let go of the conviction of intent. Do the...

the black sky rushed at us / like we were falling upwards

November 6, 2022

If you work in / around media and technology and/or care about electoral integrity but not in a “Stop the steal” way, you’re likely dealing with variations...

Some think / nothing is so / until it has been witnessed.

October 30, 2022

A list (of services that if you run a company or provide grants you should fund for your employees, especially if those employees work in media, and of best...

I want to roar but their ears / can never attune to my voice.

October 23, 2022

If I were asked to choose a favourite festival, and that festival could belong to a religion that is not mine, then I would immediately volunteer Divali. A...

Watch them seethe when stimulated

October 16, 2022

Somewhere, in the Discourse about Ye and Elon, is a forgetting. Subject / object collision and conflict, media mediated. We (that media we) show ourselves...

foolishly imagines / she has the right to exist.

October 2, 2022

We can look everywhere, even if we don’t want to, and everywhere we can look there is despair. And every where, every day, people keep going. The fight goes...

How much have I dared in opposition?

September 25, 2022

Stole away to Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge, a middle of the day matinee. One of those times when I could also recite large chunks of the source...

We give because someone gave to us. / We give because nobody gave to us.

September 18, 2022

What do you want remains a cruel question. But I suppose if I had to answer, and if I had to answer truly, I would say: time. Time that is mine. Time that...

Is there aught you need that my hands withhold, / Rich gifts of raiment or grain or gold?

September 11, 2022

I like seasons, perhaps because where I grew up there only two (rainy, dry) and other than the ongoing prospect of tropical storms or hurricanes that mostly...

then meaning came with its invincible glare

September 4, 2022

Sometimes I think about the parallels between “someone is wrong on the internet” and “the very serious function of racism”, which is of course distraction....

sun rises / like rent / sun rises / like a flag / sun rises / like the ocean

August 28, 2022

It is not like you remember it, they say. It is even darker than you recall. So instead you get snippets and shapes and songs and scenes, things that you...

The oldest among us will recognize that glow

August 21, 2022

Very very early in the pandemic, I started saying - in written memos and out-loud on Zooms - that it would be inaccurate to describe the adjustments of 2020...

divisions grow stronger. / That’s what “chosen” and “unchosen” will do.

August 14, 2022

Tried roller skating this weekend. Made it roughly (barely) halfway out of the locker room before practically (actually) falling over. So then I took the...

When disaster comes, some of us will stand on / the rooftop to address the ghosts.

August 7, 2022

On a plane leaving Las Vegas, where the temperature hit 41 degrees Celsius, or just about 106 F. Thinking about why people live there, about why I enjoyed...

The Destiny of Earthseed / Is to take root among the stars.

July 31, 2022

onward, to the stars

my family drowns again / on a microphone for strangers

July 24, 2022

36 degrees celsius. 102 degrees fahrenheit. These don’t feel like real temperatures, until you’re outside and walking around. And I’m just walking around....

We will be as falling stars to those watching from the edge

July 17, 2022

How hot does it have to be before it's a climate emergency?Conversations with friends about the return of low-rise jeans and visible thongs that segue into...

and pain becomes the only keeper / of my time

July 10, 2022

People who live with chronic pain or illness become experts in details. They will know if the muscle involved in a current episode is the erector spinnae or...