thevisualaftermath

[thevisualaftermath]

Book Giveaway For Gaza

It has been years since I've used this account, but I met so many kind people using it that I know it was important to share HERE, too. (missed ya'll!)

I am working with a few "book creators" on Instagram for a "book giveaway for Gaza" where people can enter a few books and bookish items to win. To enter, you just have to send proof of a $10 or more donation to a family or organization from the Operation Olive Branch list to the host via a form. 

We are hoping to help families get closer to their goals, whether it is for shelter, food, medical supplies or evacuation.

For the 4 books I donated (you will see those labeled krix.ko on IG), I ask that folks donate to one of the two campaigns below. These are two Palestinian families that I have gotten to know, and they have been unable to contact organizers like OOB for aid. 

Here are the two families: 

JOSLIN and family of 7

Husband and Wife Dentists

The Giveaway has been extended and runs until June 3rd

The Host (bookish.millennial) explains this a lot better than I do, so please visit the below link. it will give you a full explanation and share all the links you need to enter.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by brittany • bookish millennial (@bookish.millennial)

Please donate, share, and boost until we can reach our goal.

Liberation for all in our lifetime, from Hawai'i to Turtle Island to Congo to Sudan to Palestine.

Thank you all so much!

[thevisualaftermath]

I want to wipe that smug smile off your face. I see myself so vividly reaching down your dishonest throat tearing out your exposed larynx. Hear my wild laughter, as i watch you scramble for apologetic thoughts.

[thevisualaftermath]

“to love her flesh, I am nothing, if not an unspooling knot of want. She feeds me dripping fruit from her fingers. It is constricting and tender, our bellies growing warm with hunger. We are sickening and sweet. I am longing and in need of taking.”

— I fell in love with her on a Tuesday. (k.kø)

[thevisualaftermath]

Fka Twigs X VisualAftermath Poetry

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“Our love was old testament, fiercely vengeful and full of song.”

— They read of us and pray // k.kø

[thevisualaftermath]

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I kept the oddities of self

Sitting warm and comfort of

A churning belly.

You spilt me open

Head to hide

I carried you fully into safety

Into life.

[thevisualaftermath]

"maybe where we come from we see everything drowning in red anyway or maybe there is no other way to explain the haste with which I make my pockets barren before leaving the house even today or why my wife needs a bigger purse to carry such weight for the both of us but when the police came for us that night

we did not hear a sound until danny’s blade fell out his pocket and the bullets that followed

because I guess anything can be a gun if the darkness surrounding it is hungry enough

or at least that’s what I’ve been told when

the bodies of black boys thrash against what

little life they have left tethering them to the earth and isn’t that what we’ve always been fed? that it is just like the nighttime

to rename everything that moves into a monster?", - Hanif Willis Abdurraqib , excerpt from "all of the black boys finally stopped packing switchblades", taken from The Crown Ain't Worth Much

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This is a book that shares itself like melodies.

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CCg2GZ-plWh/?igshid=ntpvsi8daam1

[thevisualaftermath]

I wonder how I could bring a life into this world, looking defenseless with my dark eyes filled with less sorrow, skin deep like my grandfathers, kind and quiet, and a body men in blue will mistake for a weapon.

How will I tell my child that their tiny body is feared when we giggle and dance to Motown with rainbow-colored tongues and joy on our hearts?

How will I tell my child they may be gunned down for trying to reach for their phone to call? How will I survive hearing my child beg in their last moments?

I will remember the first time I held you. Loved you. 

Protected you.

They will decide on a name and story for you in the news. With a photo that does not sit on our mantle. Strangers will comb through your past and give you a narrative.

They won’t know of the first time you cried with me. 

They won’t understand the soft strength of our family.

They won’t know the extent of your love.

They won’t know that your last moments stopped our world in its tracks. 

So, how will I bring a life into this world? With love and light as a guide, I’ll use my voice and body to pave a safer way for you. 

[thevisualaftermath]

"Let the record show that the American Dream is so many nightmares that some Americans dream of death for comfort; and what are we doing to make it better?" - Harmony Holiday

[thevisualaftermath]

"A Black man who sees the world in the way John Wayne sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac…The truth is that this country does not know what to do with it’s Black population."

- James Baldwin

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"There are days in this country when you wonder what your role in this country is and your place in it. How precisely are you going to reconcile yourself to your situation here and how you are going to communicate to the vast, heedless, unthinking, cruel white majority that you are here? I am terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart, which is happening in my country. These people deluded themselves for so long that they really don’t think I’m human. I base this on their conduct, not on what they say. This means that they have become moral monsters."

- James Baldwin

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“I am worth the love that I have denied myself.”

— Say it with me. (k.kø)

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Happy never spreads itself wild without toil. You will never awaken to joy blooming rampant throughout the hollow points of your chest without ever planting a seed. You tend, you give, and you’ll dirty your hands with so much grief wondering if you will ever be able to be clean. Again you will try, try, again and again.

You earn happy. You deserve happy.

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“If nothing else, I hope you can be gentle with yourself today.”

— K.kø

[thevisualaftermath]

worthy of peace

and empathy,

and so much love.

[thevisualaftermath]

Now we are the detriment, in the question of belonging there is a space between the soft flesh of my chest, beyond the cracking of my ribs.

This impulsively built space for you and sometimes I keep myself there too.