toysofpeace

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Off to the Printers!

Off to the Printers!

Modern Audubon by Joshua Daniel Edwin has been sent off to the printers! Keep your eyes 👀 peeled for more developments!

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Unsettling and gorgeous: Intimations by Alex Kleeman.

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I’m gonna be honest, I’m mostly just a comedy dude who isn’t a fucking total bozo, so there’s stuff on here I need to catch up on too.

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Here I am believing that It is Going to be a Good Year because Sasha Fletcher said so dammit and you don’t distrust a face like that.

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HARRIET TUBMAN ESCAPED FROM SLAVERY AND THEN WENT BACK TO GET OTHERS. LIKE, I KNOW YOU KNOW WHO HARRIET TUBMAN IS AND THAT SHE DID THAT, BUT I JUST WANT YOU TO TAKE THAT IN FOR A SECOND. 

HARRIET TUBMAN WAS HELD CAPTIVE AND BOUND TO UNPAID, BACK-BREAKING LABOR SINCE BIRTH UNDER PENALTY OF TORTURE OR DEATH. SHE MANAGED TO ESCAPE THAT LIFE, AND SHE TURNED THE FUCK AROUND AND WENT THE FUCK BACK TO GET EVERYONE ELSE WHO WAS STILL TRAPPED IN IT. AND THEN SHE DID IT AGAIN EIGHTEEN MORE TIMES.

WHEN ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS UNSURE WHETHER OR NOT HE WAS PREPARED TO MAKE A STAND AGAINST SLAVERY, HARRIET TUBMAN BASICALLY SAID HE SHOULD STOP BEING SUCH A DIAPER BABY AND THAT GUYS WHO ARE TOO SCARED TO END SLAVERY DON’T DESERVE TO WIN WARS.

NOT ONLY DID SHE SECRET OVER 300 SLAVES TO FREEDOM ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, BUT SHE ACTED AS A SPY FOR THE UNION ARMY DURING THE CIVIL WAR, AND BECAME THE FIRST WOMAN TO LEAD AN ARMED ASSAULT IN THE CIVIL WAR. THAT RAID BROUGHT FREEDOM TO OVER 700 SLAVES IN ONE GO.

SO I JUST WANT YOU TO STEW ON THAT FOR LIKE A MINUTE. ACTING IN THE SHADOWS, SHE WALKED INTO HELL ON EARTH 19 TIMES TO SAVE HER FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS FROM THE TORMENT SHE ENDURED, AND THE SECOND SHE WAS GIVEN EVEN A MODICUM OF POWER, SHE MANAGED TO FREE SEVEN HUNDRED SLAVES IN ONE DAY. 

I GUARANTEE, HOWEVER IMPRESSED YOU ALREADY ARE WITH HARRIET TUBMAN, YOU ARE FALLING LIKE AT LEAST 40% SHORT OF HOW IMPRESSED YOU SHOULD BE WITH HARRIET TUBMAN. SHE IS ONE OF THE BEST EXAMPLES OF BADASSERY IN THE ENTIRETY OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

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Tommy!!!

An Interview with  Tommy Pico!

Today we are happy to share with our LGBTQIA GNC Two Spirit Fam an interview with poet Tommy Pico! (@heyteebs ) Pico is  from the  Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation and now resides in Brooklyn. And boy, is he busy in Brooklyn. Pico is  he author of absentMINDR (the first chapbook APP published for iOS mobile/tablet devices) and the forthcoming book IRL. Pico is also  the founder and editor in chief of birdsong,  which is an antiracist/queer-positive collective, small press, and zine that publishes art and writing. He was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow, and has poetry and readings in what seems like everywhere. We’re so glad Pico took the time to share  some stories and thoughts with us!

                                                                                         photo credit to:  Niqui Carter

1. How does your identity inform and not inform your poetry?

I think the “hand” of identity or whatever is more apparent in the narrative moments of my poems, so like telling a tree I wd slap it across the face or getting asked to give someone a blow job in a pizza parlor bathroom. But even the more abstract moments are I think shaped by curiosities and obsessions I have being this thing in my body. So I think identity wholly informs my work, at least rn.

2. What’s your favorite part of being queer?

Tote bags and singing XO at karaoke.

3. What’s your “dream” zine like if you had unlimited time and connections what would you make?

I’m so tired of these like gay male photo zines with white dicks on them and pics of like eating cereal out of clean cut teenage boys’ asses. I wd make a photo zine of queer weirdoes holding hands on the way to the deli.

4. What’s your favorite smell?

Baby oil, the boy I like, lavender, and watermelon gummy candies.

5. What do you wish you would see more of in movies?

Actual nuanced stories, not just special effects, that also include more than white straight men? I don’t think that’s asking too much, and yet.

6. What’s the scariest horror movie you’ve ever seen, and do you think you would ever want to be involved in directing a horror movie?

I just saw 10 Cloverfield Lane and that movie scared the living hell out of me, I literally had to sleep with a light on like a four-year-old. John Goodman plays this abusive, anti-social, violent, angry, sociopathic conspiracy theorist in a bunker that was way scarier than the prospect of aliens or chemical warfare. I don’t think I have the organization nor ability to delegate that’s required of a director.

7. What kind of art did you make as a kid?

I painted, I drew, I danced, I sang. Also in 5th grade I had a comics press called Tommi Gunn Comics, and I would have my cousins and friends draw comic strips for me and I would photocopy them into booklets and sell them at recess. 

8. Do you have a favorite fact or tradition about the Kumeyaay nation?

Kumeyaay people are so freaking funny and tell such good stories. If I have any sense of humor at all, it’s on them.

9. What’s the last dream you had?

I was Sarah Silverman doing summersaults on like this long, gigantic hopscotch. It was weird.

10. What advice do you have for young, queer people trying to find strength and belief in their artistic voice?

Feeling anything other than worthy is a trick of colonialist, hetero-patriarchal white supremacy. Also, naps. Take naps whenever u gd please.

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Camille Rankine’s wonderful and beautiful Incorrect Merciful Impulses!

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Delighted to be holding Nine Coins/Nueve monedas by Carlos Pintado, translated by the wonderful Hilary Vaughn Dobel! Get it from Akashic Books!

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If Earth had Saturn’s Rings

From an excellent post by Jason Davis

From Washington, D.C., the rings would only fill a portion of the sky, but appear striking nonetheless. Here, we see them at sunrise.

From Guatemala, only 14 degrees above the equator, the rings would begin to stretch across the horizon. Their reflected light would make the moon much brighter.

From Earth’s equator, Saturn’s rings would be viewed edge-on, appearing as a thin, bright line bisecting the sky.

At the March and September equinoxes, the Sun would be positioned directly over the rings, casting a dramatic shadow at the equator.

At midnight at the Tropic of Capricorn, which sits at 23 degrees south latitude, the Earth casts a shadow over the middle of the rings, while the outer portions remain lit.

via x

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See the light emanate from Jay Deshpande’s luminous Love the Stranger, available from YesYes Books!

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I’m peeping out from behind Alexandra Kleeman’s spooky, funny, and wonderfully strange You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, available everywhere.

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There have been more gun deaths since 1989 than there have been American combat fatalities in US history.

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Heyyyyyy read this interview I did with Mask Magazine last week, all about quitting things and what I’m doing teaching wise and my overall takeover plan for the future!

THEN go listen to Your Drums, Your Love by AlunaGeorge bc that’s my current jam jam

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Sara Novic’s amazing Girl at War, available everywhere!

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Here we have the marvelous Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, by the wonderful Morgan Parker, out from Switchback Books!

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Here’s today’s Daily GIF!

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Proud does not begin to describe how I feel about Nalini Edwin’s absolutely wonderful self-titled chapbook, out now from Awst Press.