The Main Event, by stacy-marie ishmael

I would call my friends on other devices;

May 17, 2020

I was one of those teenagers who’d say things like “if you have no expectations you can’t be disappointed” and who was very into zen kōans and who spent a...

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The woman in front of me had been reading

Premium post · May 10, 2020

Today I am thinking about Wanda Cooper-Jones. About Gloria Darden. About Sybrina Fulton. About Geneva Reed-Veal. About Gwen Carr. About Lesley McSpadden....

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Even what was beyond us / was recast in our image;

May 3, 2020

What does it mean, for tens and hundreds of thousands of people to die? Friends, colleagues, children, grandparents, strangers. What does it mean for their...

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I am glad / you are so small,

Premium post · April 26, 2020

Still safe, still well — such is the drumbeat of my days; an exercise in daily gratitude for what I have and who I have in my life. Sad, tired, angry — all...

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We are spendthrifts with words,

April 19, 2020

I think about words, constantly. When I am not writing them, I am editing them. When I am not editing them, I am thinking about how to write them. When I am...

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Sweet is it, sweet is it

Premium post · April 12, 2020

I rode my bike today, for the first time in this new state. Texas, pandemic. Kept my distance, waited on the lights. I am angry all the time. At the people...

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who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, /

April 5, 2020

Last week I joined the ever-burgeoning ranks of people who’ve been smitten by Animal Crossing: New Horizons, persuaded by a friend and former colleague of...

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I’m waiting for my right mind.

Premium post · March 29, 2020

In tragedy you are reminded of the difference between being allowed access and belonging. In tragedy you learn which bonds hold you fast and which hold you...

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Sometimes the moral arc of the universe

Premium post · March 22, 2020

I am mostly furious, and because this is not a good state for me to be in for an extended period I have been trying to redirect my rage into work and works....

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Someone is dancing us.

March 15, 2020

I am a person you can text in a crisis. I am never more calm then when all hell is breaking loose. It is one of the traits that I have sharpened and polished...

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I have been woman / for a long time

March 8, 2020

There are boxes—mostly of books, to the surprise of absolutely no one who knows me—piled precariously in every room of my current apartment. This is the...

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All I want / is to be the river though I return

Premium post · March 1, 2020

I have a new job, and for the second time in two days, I have a migraine. I haven’t had one in a while (a migraine, not a job) and I had forgotten that you...

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One way to erase an island is to invent the waters

Premium post · February 23, 2020

I am the very definition of the so-called “high-information voter”, except for the “voter” part. I am semi-permanently disenfranchised: I am not allowed to...

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Please remain calm,

February 16, 2020

A thing about being a person — a non-white, immigrant, female person especially — is that other people sometimes forget both that you are not entirely like...

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Not the blue the orthodoxy of the day

Premium post · February 9, 2020

I have been trying to practice yoga daily, or nearly daily (rest, too, is part of the practice). I had forgotten just how much the act of making space to...

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The worst injury is feeling you don't belong so much

February 2, 2020

Saeed Jones, a brilliant poet and memoirist, wrote in January about the ritual of annual determinations: “We don’t make resolutions in this house; we make...

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Our bodies spun / On swivels of bone & faith, / Through a lyric slipknot

January 26, 2020

Grief is messy, complicated, unpredictable because people are messy, complicated, unpredictable. The narrative of our lives is not something over which we...

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Beyond dreams and the arc of justice

January 20, 2020

[Dear Reader, this is long.] I have long been one of those people moved to irritation and sometimes anger by misattributed quotes. I once intervened to stop...

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running and running until she reaches

Premium post · January 19, 2020

I’ve been thinking a lot about time (this is, perhaps, a mark of having friends who died young). Time in the sense of deadlines; time in the sense of...

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awards medals to generals

January 12, 2020

These days, the siren song of ~grad school~ is not quite so loud, replaced by the incessant drumbeat of so what are you doing to reduce all these harms....

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