The Main Event, by stacy-marie ishmael

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...

liberation from my own daily routines

July 3, 2022

Over the past several weeks I have been practicing making space. The thing about practice is that it is not about perfection; it is about consistency and...

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?...