Ali’s Aerie (Queer Edition)

The primary subtractive colours of cyan, magenta, and yellow can be mixed to create all the colours of the rainbow. For our Queer Edition, I’m gifting you birdies proudly displaying these colours. Cyan – Superb Fairywren (Malurus cyaneus) A recently-published study, ‘Personality predicts song complexity in superb fairy-wrens’, reveals that superb fairywrens’ beautiful songs hold […]

Continue Reading
Posted On :
Category:

Where Did All The Butches Go?

“Butch is masculinity without men, femininity without compromise, and queerness without apology”. If you’ve been in lesbian circles lately, or especially if you’ve tried dating as a lesbian, you’ve probably heard people joke about the “masc shortage”. Well, if we’re facing a masc shortage, then we’re in the midst of an all-out Butch Crisis. But […]

Continue Reading
Posted On :
Category:

POEM: 15 – Wash

So here we are at last, our final dinner  taken ‘neath dripping, blurry candlelight  Across the table, through the sandstorm, you seek my eye Words are grains of sand, falling  Words that have already met with silence  For the sake of an easy farewell when before you rose from my arms and were gone … […]

Continue Reading
Posted On :
Category:

POEM: Dig – Free Form

Dig.  That’s the first thing they say to me,  When I wake in that muddy field,  Dig.  They press a shovel to my chest,  It’s rough wood, heavy and cruel in my new hands.  Dig.  They say   once more,  I do not know  anything else but –  Dig.  The earth had birthed     […]

Continue Reading
Posted On :
Category:

POEM: Passport X

Between F and M  And warnings that   Deviation  May betray my safety in certain countries,  I choose ‘other’,  Unspecified,  Undetermined.  I *am* other.  I am outside and both  And nothing all at once and  Fluctuating // deviating  From expectations:  From the ‘safe’ route.  X is who I am.   I am willing to forfeit my ease […]

Continue Reading
Posted On :
Category:

POEM: So how attractive am I?

I  The body I call home isn’t mine. Nor was it ever,   it was destined to be deemed public property  And handled with such disregard for its being  Measured solely by its desirability details  And the displeasing flaws that draw the eye  The strangers eye is one of assessment  With it only to judge your […]

Continue Reading
Posted On :
Category:

POEM: Ghazal – Explode

You hide you sins in long sentences, and yet you beg me not explode. If you do not hide your lies, you may turn your back – I will, I promise thee, not explode.   Tensions bleed through air and suffocate the innocent, Words not understood nor said by those who will suffer them, they plea – not […]

Continue Reading
Posted On :
Category:

POEM: Let The Caterpillar Go

A long feast of leaves and crawling in the garden. Hands big and curious scoop me up, Into a jar smudged with dirt. I hear fantasies of colourful wings and sunshine. Months of this, I’m so hungry for change. I don’t care if it will hurt. I wrap myself in silk. Dissolving, Reforming, Clawing my […]

Continue Reading
Posted On :
Category:

A Message from the Stars

Shot off into space, the message coasts on rays emitted from the sun, radiating out deep into the cosmos. Ones and zeros, carefully contained in individual photons, rising and falling in the waves of black. The message dances through space, ducking and diving and swirling around. Jumping from place to place, shifting from wave to […]

Continue Reading
Posted On :