120 Days

Pulse Orlando
June 12, 2016 - October 11, 2016
Turnip Van Dyke

Its fitting that it was supposed to be Pride there that weekend before the
worst storm in years threw that off course, and that 120 days after a massacre we
celebrated/processed/refuted National Coming Out Day in the US.
I still dont have language for my own personal, somatic grief. I still barely
have language for being queer, trans, and in grief. The only language I feel allowed
for is for me to be white and grieving; for this to be removed and universal and
incorporeal. This project does not escape the violent physicality of that dialectic. I
cannot pretend that sympathy is a salve.
On a day about the power of language, four months after demonstrating the
fragility of our communities, I didnt need language to be connected. I needed
anger, grief, validation, and action. The Orlando massacre was about the violence of
the closet, the violence of homophobia, and the wounded vulnerability that white
supremacy constantly scratches open on people of colors bodies and psyches.
This chapbook is being released 160 days after, on November 20, 2016
Transgender Day of Remembrance in the same year. On a day about the weight of
true horror, about how the house of domestic violence breaks most at the margins, I
dont need language to be connected. I need a mirror.
I want a coming out that celebrates our scars, our pain, our fuck-ups, and
our regrets as queers, more than it celebrates our language. I want memorials that
cherish breathing more than gasps. Black sisters matter before they are murdered;
brown queens live outside of the club. Our strength will never have limits.
I want to come out as wounded and ashamed and grieving and depressed. I am
queer, I am trans, but sexuality and gender is not what drives my need to connect
and heal. Its the violence we dont have language for. Im not going to pretend that
this project speaks to that abyss; this is an attempt to write for grief as a practice,
grieving as a skill.
- Turnip Van Dyke, Chicago
November 20, 2016

Eddie Justice
Through the windows the light throbs
against the music - a color-bearer, a herald.
How many beats before his head ducked?
How many interruptions before the door
closed in
aplomb
shuddering
barricades the body pops and shoddy lock.
Ricky Martin sings about the hole in his heart.
Te pido perdn. Por qu andar solo?
Por qu vivir solo? Why keep on living
alone? Juntos podemos vivir en los balazos.
His thumbs will stretch past the present:
Mommy I love you In club they shooting

Got Til Its Gone

DO NOT CROSS

Dribbling over the Orlando sun the concrete

took quickly over that warm orange stare.
To settle is to dry up all at once. Heels meet
a dreaming asphalt. Joy lifts the humid air

ribbons will fly

in the wind they catch

and she shouts Te estaba buscando por

las calles gritando! at a skip with Nicky Jam
pocketed, the heels a furtive stutter on the lam
happily captive to the evening. Singing more,
the memory dulls. He wakes as the earbud beat
stumbles from his crumpled body before
his eyes follow. Color in the water cant compare
with the streams of red evaporating from the shore
his receding ceiling catching them like a dam.

each other in swirls

red caught on brown
dark they twist in step
ribbons scatter out
of place of time
their flaps knotted
in thought they will weigh
refusal and the black
ribbons cant soar its just
yellow on a palm tree

My Love Is Your Love

Oh I hunger

From you I learned again that disgust is distinct from denial and maybe
this was all a fervent argument for ugliness as dispossession but
I am carved from you - you are my marble.

Oh I hunger for that gentle hunger

that sways

Memory scratches out your name

much sooner than your lips your lips
much sooner than
words scatter out
of place of time
and I run through your veins; you loom
as a terrible mountaintop where I learn I cannot write your shame.
I am carved from you - you are my silence.

and I hope for that bleak hope

that sparks
but I care for that selfish care
that leaves
in escape
this, now -

confrontation
luces apagadas
or I close for that red close
that hums

Renewal
look we dont have to talk about it more rn
Frantic text and following
from the kitchen table as he turns toward
the door:
im fucking tired
quiero bailar
there isnt another way through.
He shifts past him phone
at eye level as hes, angrys,
not the word, hes brewing, bottled.
i wanna shake.
They kiss. Say
bye.

The Florida Renewal Project cordially invites you to participate

in its Rediscovering God in America
Renewal Project with Special Guest U.S.
Senator Marco Rubio. Pastors, we
ask that you please pray for this event and register
if you plan to attend. If your church has a Youth
Pastor, please pass this invitation along. For any
pastors considering funning for elected office,
we will host a special session called Issachar
training from 12 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Friday. Space is limited, so
RSVP as soon as possible; but no later than August 1,
2016.

news alert

Best Thing I Never Had

Note the way the light cuts

at this angle for exhaustion.
The morning is a roast and yall
rolling over alone to read
words are
all I know yall through

Grief is that great white demon

that cracks an egg in the morning
and turns on Beyonc for you
because It pinned open your eyes
the night before when Grief sang
with Its bleak, hairy voice on the TV,
marble scales shedding across the mic.
Grief carries a body cam for you
to record all your good intentions dont worry.
Grief sits and waits to delete not-so-good
intentions. Grief is the hidden editor,
Its elastic claws peeling the paint of memory.

only breathed in my phone cried

in my tinny recreations of
song to community, chorus to
voices tracing stitches on the
brown comforter the way
the light fell with everything.

On The Regular

hurricane detour

That stranger in the bush walked

indoors and slept in the guest bed where
they used your bathroom. That stranger
owns a gun and gave you a hug
that time you saw them on the bus.
They have the greatest smile, teeth
talking about it takes a lifetime
to unravel a person from string, just

Pull down the motel blinds and unpack

just the turntable. Grace Jones sings
Singing in the darkness, shining in the night.
The coming conclusion, right isnt right.
Walking, walking, in the rain. Slivers peel
from the blinds and the ceiling begins
to circle; the bed struts. The sound
is a heartbeat to a verdant flooding
of the past through asphalt contours.
Ten drinks later and everything
is alive, is well out
of place of time.

three hours, thirteen minutes unspooling, rethreading, tearing.

Faggots cant kill our own
familiarity.