The Main Event, by stacy-marie ishmael

and i become relic

October 27, 2019

It is quite a thing, on the day before the first anniversary of the Tree of Life massacre, to see some of the most powerful people in the world defending...

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them:

$ · October 20, 2019

There are many ways to respond to stress. You can drown yourself in books and tea; go for a run; practice yoga; add several new piercings to your collection;...

I love your hair / You always wear such interesting things

October 19, 2019

In Chile the students are marching. In Washington DC, Kirstjen Nielsen is gearing up for the start of her non-apology tour. In two weeks I will walk out of...

“Put your hands up! Show me your hands!”

$ · October 13, 2019

There are things you think about— like what it means when you can be black in your own home minding your business and somehow still be killed by police. When...

get up and try to do something

October 6, 2019

Botham Jean died, and then Joshua Brown died, and this keeps happening, will keep happening, and we rush to valorize the appearance of forgiveness without...

Fear is the paralyzing agent,

$ · September 29, 2019

What a year this week has been and other such refrains. How does anyone even keep up with everything and other implicit shrugs. I mean what can I even do and...

In the beginning before the beginning, there were drums, and hymns,

September 22, 2019

Kids marched. Another black trans woman was run off Twitter. Another tech CEO stood up for government agencies charged with detaining and deporting children....

T.S. Eliot said that humankind cannot bear very much reality.

September 15, 2019

Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Will not stay still. There are very few days when I am not...

But this was a kind of joy, too, forged

$ · September 15, 2019

If your news organization is comfortable suggesting to its 700K+ social media audience that “having a penis thrust in your face at a drunken dorm party may...

because the low of my back believes what the sea told it

$ · September 8, 2019

misc.misc — Sometimes when I say “oh, I wish I were creative” I know that I am channeling the exasperation of all the art teachers whose classes I failed;...

O whatever God or whatever ancestor that wins in the next life

September 8, 2019

If you have been on the internet for a long time—say 25+ years—and even if you started being on the internet from the relative distance of a tiny island in...

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

September 1, 2019

When I was a teenager I worked for multiple ~summers~ in a tattoo and piercing studio; I’ve never been afraid of needles — a useful thing when you spend your...

No faith comes without cost /

August 25, 2019

I have found myself thinking more and more about consumption, and the costs of consumption. Is there anything I even really need that I do not already have,...

How many iambs to be a real human girl?

$ · August 18, 2019

This weekend white supremacists marched, and folks suggested the thing to do in response would be to classify antifascists as terrorists. This weekend the...

Here, blackness isn’t a commodity; it isn’t inherently political;

August 11, 2019

There are a few ways to give people their flowers before they die. You can support their art — buy their work, attend the plays and the films, introduce the...

There is no end / To what a living world / Will demand of you.

$ · August 4, 2019

Listen, keep going. Nothing we do will bring back the people who died in El Paso and in Dayton. And so we must ask, “what shall we do to save other people...

I give you / a legacy / of doers

July 28, 2019

“But if we don’t do this for each other, who is going to do it for us?” An entirely reasonable question, from a great friend doing a good job of forcing me...

What to do with this knowledge

July 25, 2019

I booked the full-workup physical (with bonus fitness test and “BodPod” assessment) because, as I told the charming and helpful medical professionals, I...

“Where I came from” is the sky, the ground, the sea, the very air we breathe

$ · July 21, 2019

Sometimes you can cure a migraine with two Excedrin tablets and a large bowl of ramen to which you have added two eggs and two slices of the alchemy we like...

It is time to ask very hard questions and to take very rude positions.

July 18, 2019

What I want, I suppose, is for you to feel guilt. Not anger. Too clean, that. Too easy to direct outward at a convenient target and thence to move on with...

What are you demanding / That we feel?

$ · July 14, 2019

The New York Times @nytimesPresident Trump weighed in on friction between a group of Democratic congresswomen and Nancy Pelosi, suggesting the congresswomen...

Play it away. Be ceremony.

$ · July 7, 2019

Two very different shows I’ve been watching, both featuring interesting writing that also happen to provide incisive and hilarious social commentary: What We...

The first Pride was a riot

June 30, 2019

I’d known about Marsha P. Johnson, but not about Stormé DeLarverie, drag icon. There’s always history no one will teach you, just there’s always stories no...

I can’t get over that, & wonder if it’s true,

$ · June 23, 2019

On a whim on Friday I left work and headed to a literary event at which I was (surprise!) surrounded by people whose books and poems and essays have long...

I am scared / is not a good enough reason to not get out of bed

June 16, 2019

I have not been closely following what is happening in Sudan, and I have been tangentially (at best) paying attention to what is going on in Hong Kong, and...

Eventually it comes to you:

$ · June 9, 2019

On Friday I got home from work before 9pm for the first time in a while; that is to say, with enough time and enough energy left to do laundry and cast an...

i can’t stand your ground.

June 2, 2019

It’s June. If you’re involved in corporate rainbows this month, consider this. Because I am finding it hard to provide answers right now, I have been...

I say I, too, am a romantic,

$ · May 26, 2019

As part of my “force myself to make decisions” strategy, I am two days into a longish-temporary-stay and being confronted with the reality of housemates for...

The press is so powerful in its image-making role

May 19, 2019

Internal monologue, Sunday. There are two options when you are moving: give everything away before you attempt to move, or move and then give everything...

To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.

$ · May 12, 2019

I’ve been considering putting an out-of-office reply on my personal email. By “personal” I really mean the email address not given to me by my currently...

“I did know, though, and I was silenced.”

May 5, 2019

Is there a better feeling than “no more events today”? Every 9-12 months I realize (admit) my life has become an unrelenting paen to being a workaholic and...

May you be comforted

April 28, 2019

I think a lot about the responsibilities I have to reduce and prevent harm in the world. Which is sometimes, but not always, similar to using my skills and...

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

$ · April 21, 2019

This weekend I watched Homecoming, a testimony to work and creativity and art and brilliance and blackness. I bought a new bicycle, my very first ebike, and...

Your silence will not protect you

$ · April 14, 2019

When I am stuck, I read. This week I mostly read Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry and Red Rising by Pierce Brown (both of which I borrowed as e-books using Libby)....

I didn’t know and nobody told me

April 7, 2019

I’ve been thinking a lot about the kinds of people to whom resources are not readily given, because those are so often the ones we know should be running the...

Decide, or the world will decide for you

$ · March 31, 2019

I made time for a yoga practice after work last week, a Jivamukti session with a teacher who always inspires and challenges. It felt like a small victory,...

"Hey, what's keeping you busy these days?"

March 24, 2019

“Federal officials at the Mexico border detained a 9-year-old U.S. citizen for 32 hours without her parents in order “to perform due diligence in confirming...

And you will ask: why doesn’t his poetry speak of dreams and leaves

$ · March 17, 2019

There’s nothing you can say that will bring back people who’ve been murdered by exactly the same kind of person who has murdered exactly the same kind of...

Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart

$ · March 10, 2019

I buy most of my clothes online, because I have structured my life in a way that makes hitting brick-and-mortar stores difficult. And because I loathe public...

The way to grow your power is to give it away

$ · March 3, 2019

Over the past few days, thanks to the generosity of colleagues, I attended the Black Enterprise Women of Power Summit. I got to hear from Bishop Vashti...

They call you black because

$ · February 24, 2019

Sometimes words flow out of me, and this newsletter writes itself. Sometimes, like today, I’ve stared at the blinking cursor on the white screen for 45...

The dwarfs found out how to turn lead into gold by doing it the hard way.

February 17, 2019

It is easy, these days, to give up. Everywhere you look: horror, tragedy, violence. It is easy to despair. It is human to despair. Have I mentioned the...

Self-awareness is not the same thing as peace

$ · February 10, 2019

This weekend I got to spend an unusual amount of time in the company of people I love, and the notion of showing up came up over and over again. I am trying...

Somehow, blackface wasn’t even the worst of it

February 3, 2019

There are weeks (months, years) when you *gesture broadly at everything* *make glib comments about challenges being great for building character*...

Never again is now

$ · January 27, 2019

It’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which means I am thinking more than ever today about all the people who died because their neighbours looked...

Instructions for living a life

$ · January 20, 2019

Every day, every day a reminder that people in your industries, people you know by professional association, are more likely to defend and excuse casual...

What is the work that moves you?

$ · January 13, 2019

Today I got to talk to someone, let’s call him David, who is both one of the best listeners I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting and one of the most...

Imagine everything you ever wanted

$ · January 6, 2019

I have on my desk a notepad, a gift from a friend; on each page is the prompt: “imagine everything you ever wanted below”. I have not written anything on the...

Bask in your own heartbreak

December 30, 2018

I cannot remember when I first began to hate December, but it was at least a few years before the Counting Crows released their interpretation of that...

"What if everyone disobeyed the law?"

$ · December 23, 2018

I am packing for 9 or so days in Mexico, which means there are bags and clothes and shoes strewn about as I whittle the options down into whatever will fit...