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002

Boston and I had known each other for years at this point, and by the time the discussion had become a soliloquy, I was long ready to murder him. He had been a friend for some time, then an acquaintance, crawled into the hatch of my brain where I lay to rest people I want to avoid, and managed to find fertile soil in the land of people I wanted to harm. Bodily. I loved him, but he had to go. 

He was detestable in many forms, but he was at his peak when he was playing first violin in the LA youth orchestra. He was also pretty bad drunk, which was when his trespassing tendencies were at their highest. You couldn’t talk to him when he was high, which sounds like a dream, only it was not that he couldn’t talk, it was that you interrupted his “flow, man.” 

But he was at his worst when he played in the band of degenerates, yeah. Two hundred year old music never sounded good without him, I think. Sometimes, the conductor would hum a line of nonsense, and he would echo, quietly. By next week he would have a cassette ready to slip in between a girl’s legs, or something. He never talked about what he did with them, the prude. 

The cassette would find me weeks later, when every other woodwind had listened to it and it was encrusted in shit and dirt, I thanked whoever it was that passed it to me and I would give it back over to Boston. I didn’t have a cassette player at home, or in my car; I didn’t have a car.

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Anne Michaels, from "Infinite Gradation," originally published in October 2017

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21.11.24

tour guide trips

mushrooming

mushroom trips a-looming

forested and harvested,

my heart is in a hostel

sifting through the doom

and gloaming rooms in

which i'll lay my weary head to rest.

where i will cry remembering your last bread

and breadth.

where i will fly to,

the nest of your heady scent.

a free bird is what i am,

but i am seeking out your shelter next.

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Zehra Naqvi, from The Knot of My Tongue: Poems and Prose; “Dear Baba”

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tienes k aprender a amarte perra

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Palestinian activists get their message across on Londons iconic Tower Bridge landmark- one of the cities most historic buildings. We need a ceasefire now.

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back baby

001

It was a hot smug afternoon when Boston and me were discussing the nuances of poetic grammar. It was often that I found myself in a stupid conversation like this, because Boston liked to slip in his own terrible verses, things he clearly thought of when he was simply existing on the greasy side of a street. It didn't matter whether he smacked of vodka or you were sitting in a salivating sedan that had sunbathed under Vesuvius.

He was always ready and waiting in the wings to swoop in and piss you off.

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Trotsky was expelled from the USSR in 1929. The first KFC store was opened in 1930. Coincidence? Don’t think so.

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Sharon Tate in Mary Quant, 1966

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American Masters: Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, (Season 33, Episode 9, 53m 25s), PBS, 2019

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This Teen Climate Activist Is Fighting To Ensure Indigenous And Marginalized Voices Are Being Heard

Xiye Bastida, 17, grew up around drought and then heavy rainfall and flooding in her hometown of San Pedro Tultepec, a town outside of Mexico City. When she and her family moved to New York City four years ago, she learned about the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy.

The effects of climate change were inescapable, Bastida learned. And she’s since set out to do as much as she can to stop the damage.

Bastida had always been aware of the need to protect the environment. Her mother and father met in Ecuador in 1992 at a climate change conference. And Bastida is part of the indigenous Otomí tribe, which nurtures reciprocity with the land.

When Bastida got to New York, she started an environmental club at her school. She joined several climate-focused groups, including the Peoples Climate Movement, the Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion, and invited their leaders to speak at her school. She began lobbying lawmakers at the New York state capital in Albany.

Bastida was further inspired by fellow young activist Greta Thunberg, who first delivered a TED talk and spoke at the United Nations COP24 in 2018. Bastida became involved in the Fridays for Future strikes in New York, in which students skip school to demand action from government officials. Since then, she’s spoken at the United Nations herself and helped organize the first of two Global Climate Strikes this month. In fact, Bastida, who lives in Morningside Heights, was one of the youth organizers who lobbied City Council members to request excused absences for students who joined the demonstration that took place Sept. 20. 

We spoke with Bastida ahead of the global climate strike about finding her voice, how her activism has impacted her life as a high school student and the challenges in making sure diverse voices like hers remain at the forefront of this work. 

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“we’re not in hawkins anymore”

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i love how in derry girls they’re like yeah it’s totally cool to be gay but god forbid you’re english

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