Archive (Page 8) • The Main Event, by stacy-marie ishmael

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...