The Main Event, by stacy-marie ishmael
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There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
June 26, 2022
Attribution: But we must recognize that many of our high expectations of rapid revolutionary change did not in fact occur. And many of the gains that did are...
Dad, he turns, and looks / at you, bewildered, /
June 19, 2022
Took a few days off (well, mostly: the gyrations in the markets I cover for work meant I was about as connected as not), hit up two bookstores, bought some...
/ We are not wise, and not very often / kind. And much can never be redeemed.
June 12, 2022
Things I miss about Trinidad:- friends- family- Diwali, Eid, Old Year's- mango season- julie mango- long mango- mango chow- Maracas- liming until 4am at some...
what is history but constant recitations / of flawed people pushed
June 5, 2022
I am always fascinated by silent edits. Like the one that takes "wasn't as bad as some feared" and turns it into "wasn't as deadly as some feared".Who is we...
Don’t want the people to get wise to their own power, /
May 29, 2022
Kids Who Die This is for the kids who die,Black and white,For kids will die certainly.The old and rich will live on awhile,As always,Eating blood and...
black magic island that spawns boat people and chaos
May 22, 2022
There’s a lot of Discourse swirling right now about academic vs journalistic attribution because of some editorial decisions and assumptions made by...
i am tired, / but i am not the first / to be tired
May 15, 2022
I have been thinking about how I answer questions, and what I choose to obscure when I answer them. “How come you already know so much about [process,...
Choices are always field work, / freedom song, elegy, / captivity narrative.
May 8, 2022
There are days and there are weeks and there are days and there are weeks and they each and collectively feel like there is no reprieve. How much worse can...
Freedom / Is a strong seed / Planted / In a great need.
May 1, 2022
There’s a James Baldwin quote — indeed, there’s always a James Baldwin quote — about the role of the artist that goes like this: “An artist is a sort of...
something encloses the impossible in a fable
April 24, 2022
“Beauty stands in for unconsummated mourning” was a beautiful sentence in a review of beautiful and not so beautiful things (art!) that included a brief and...
Float in the black / and stay there / if you need to
April 17, 2022
Something can be a privilege without being pleasurable. The (absence of) one does not negate the (reality of the) other. Is rest a presence or an absence?...
no one is neutral here. And you must choose your part in the end
April 10, 2022
What does it mean to be brave? If it is situational, what do these times demand? If it is universal, how are we called to show up? It feels - absurd!...
There will come a time when some bastard / will surely write heroic poems about this.
April 3, 2022
You don’t have to look at the videos of the bodies in the streets to know that there are bodies in the streets, or to know why they are lying there, why it...
There is a magic made by melody
March 27, 2022
Musicians are always dying. Bob, Freddie, Kurt, Tupac, Biggie, Amy, Chester, Chris, Taylor. Aaliyah. Selena. For that, every time, a specific kind of grief....
It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery.
March 20, 2022
"The word "children" was spelled out on two sides of the theater before it was bombed, according to satellite images." "The bodies of the children all lie...
It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery.
March 20, 2022
"The word "children" was spelled out on two sides of the theater before it was bombed, according to satellite images." "The bodies of the children all lie...
We would try by any means / To reach the limits of ourselves,
March 13, 2022
It’s still war (it’s war still). We’ve reached the “media organisations reacting to news of journalists being killed while reporting” stage. We are well into...
I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be / fooled
March 6, 2022
How much doom is too much doom? And is this a test?This week I will take a deep breath (maybe a hundred, maybe five) and do the things I need to do: the work...
nice people do not notice this transformation all at once
February 27, 2022
It is / would be Carnival in Trinidad. Tabanca.It is / did it have to be war in Europe.What emotion do I describe here? Which of them?I defer to the people...
Modes of witness / expose our inadequacy, the human.
February 20, 2022
"A 35-year-old woman was stabbed to death inside her Lower Manhattan apartment early Sunday by a man who had followed her from the street and into her...
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