suspiciousriver

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kablusiak, “looking at facebook,” 2019, felt, thread and fabric glue

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i believe in allocare because quite simply i don’t think that one or two people alone should be allowed to have an immense amount of control over another — which is the case for the nuclear family unit or single parent homes. a person should not be subjected entirely to the emotional, financial, and material whims of an individual or a couple. worst case scenario, it’s a recipe for trauma; best case scenario, it leads to an extremely limited personal world-view

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it really wasn’t that bad of a haircut (i’ll be real i was thinking about what happened to grimes)

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shitty iphone camera qual is what i like 2 keep. thats called a real 70s glaze baby

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At the Gas Station

The patchwork quilt is this:

a Navajo, a pal, a Ronald Reagan,

Two baritone boys, and an alcoholic.

Spanish, plaid, orange juice, white noise,

Criterion, draping my legs over Paul��s

knees and his playful tap.

Me and my friends and we’re chugging beer,

Sky shows up and she was a friend from my childhood

And she plays pool with her boyfriend

and they’re the type that Neo opens the door to.

I bought two gray rabbits at King’s Thrift

And I positioned them to touch noses.

Two black eyes and their noses kissing

on a bookcase and when I sat on the couch

I began to think of them as a camera.

I painted the one rabbit pink with flowers

and left the other one gray.

I looked to the left and their eyes were

Cold-black and chill-haunted.

This is how we taunt: with helicopters

and invisible cameras and a surveilled

Boob light.

No one believes that Paul and I were

that tight.

Zach gives me two objects:

A Gameboy and a wind-up mouth toy,

You twist it and it chatters and jumps

Downstairs. I have too many lost objects to count.

I had three chests that I kept by the door.

A trophy from my debate days.

I was neatly clipped.

He was neatly tipped.

I am too tired to talk.

It’s too dark to walk.

I’m better suited for flourescent-white, sterile,

spandex environments anyway.

I have seen this before:

Mother-rape-son. He had a right to roll

his eyes. African man with angry eyes

I’m trying to tell you:

Maybe when I look in the mirror I see a face that’s better suited for darkness, or lamps, and that scares me — the sun can be so critical.

I don’t always feel deserving of it.

Ever catch a sun ray so pure and warm it sets your heart on fire? I chase that feeling daily. I chase warmth daily.

Love is a form of knowledge,

which I think it is.

We share blue eyeliner.

You’re a thought in your own head, honey.

Will a Twisted tea fix this?

It won’t.

It’s all hidden crackhead knowledge.

These are the treats.

Every day

boiled eggs.

Castro visited Utah and the truck

newspapers. Rich!

That was genuine disgust

Because I looked like a

mullet-Malcom-X-Nazi-whore.

The Asian doctor sniffed my crotch

And said, “You’re really being released

with all of that baggage?”

Fuck you. This is why he ran.

St. George man and I ride the same

wavelength. He was trying to maintain

his sanity.

They flock around Derrick's slit neck

and I am so grief-ridden that I kicked

him. I did not want to escalate.

Is he alive? South Korea Ender’s Game dude

and his robotic voice cracked into my skull:

I am thinking about sex.

This is why I cannot sleep.

He’s 32. You’re nothing. You’re everything.

Give it to Gina: I looked trashy as hell.

Can you act black for a second?

What does Cuba represent?

Not Adrian. Not Adrienne.

Pizza gate: I am politely telling you,

I do not have that disease.

Thank you. It was Isaiah’s parakeet,

and the Bible. I am politely

asking you to show me your 7 cults.

I am asking you to FaceTime my husband

and his dirty beard and a seatbelt.

Day Two, they helped strap

me to a gurney and I was secured.

We like to drop hints: Sunglasses and something is seriously wrong

with the lifeboat. It was his ball sweat and a dog named Cujo.

My father/crack was a child. My father thinks I’m ugly.

It’s about time we met each other

for real. I resisted those journals for two years

because he Ultra-Blued his way onto my couch.

A big treat from the nice girl, pink soap.

I was smelly. I was brown. Here are your affirmation

cards: World-War-3. I should have

invited Shane(heroin)and my mother(meth)

to share the same couch. I had to snip

my chlorine hair because it was locking.

California is the deep fake. Home box office

recession. Century 16. Who can pretend to be the

most grateful for a chicken leg? I was.

me and a denim coat. Artificially intelligent

and let’s keep shit on TikTok. I met you through

MF Doom and Tupac. The world’s worst violent arm

length and fishing for work. Pork! I want to eat you.

Toasters and fake forks and that twitch.

It’s mine. I want small work. Here is the crystal cage.

Men are obsessed with my militantly tight pussy

and masked men keep shit loud. I don’t know why you don’t finger yourself

I want you! That was a real treat from Joe. I want to sever three red ties.

The blonde. The host. The pace. MINUS 3 POINTS: BACK TO JAZZ.

He lashes his own back like Jesus

and I cannot help him there.

That was her favorite hiss.

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BE UNPALATABLE / SHOW YOUR TEETH

[IMAGE ID: "changing your taste for the cissexuals' palate is to sacrifice your own tongue" in black text. there are wolves on either side of the text with a black border and white background. black stars and trans symbols decorate the image. END]

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“Ugliness is a pathway to intimacy. You can’t have intimacy without trust, and you can’t have trust without vulnerability. In order to be vulnerable, you have to reveal parts of yourself that are dismissed as capital-U Ugly. There’s also this piece around disability — the interdependence of disability is inescapable. I feel like access is not a burden, it’s an amazing opportunity to be generative, to deepen community, relationships, everything.

When I think about intimacy and its connections to beauty, I feel like it’s more connected to ugliness than beauty. I think the only way that we can build intimacy is through ugliness. For example, there is something very magnificent about how disabled people build access to intimacy — that kind of intimacy that comes with not being afraid to state your access needs. Not beauty, but the magnificence or the learned experiences that ugliness teaches you on how to survive. People see this as an extremist thing, but what I’m saying is that it’s been a way in my life to not let go of people, and to live in that interdependence that doesn’t always feel revolutionary and good. Sometimes it fucking sucks — sometimes you just want to be able to take a walk by yourself. Sometimes it sucks to have to depend on someone to help you take a walk by yourself.

There are times when it’s incredibly hard. I’ve learned and we have all learned so many different pieces of how to survive, how to be and thrive within our lived experiences. The alternative is to pretend it away, but I also think there is something with disability that doesn’t allow you to turn away. You could try to pretend it away even though your reality is not such. But there’s a concreteness to me about disability that doesn’t allow you to pretend it away.

Shitty things happen. Ugliness is all around us all the time. Sometimes shit is not beautiful and that’s okay, that’s actually more generative, there is a depth to that. If I was able-bodied and I didn’t fall all the time, I would never know that experience and that depth. There have been so many amazing strangers who have helped me pick up all of my things from the sidewalk, from the floor, helped me get some ice. All of these pieces of everyday life are so connected to those moments of intimacy. There’s something in that.”

Why Ugliness is Vital in the Age of Social Media - Mia Mingus

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NOT ALL OF US GET TO BE GHOSTS

In December I watch movies about ghosts with a woman I call mama though she is not my mother, only a woman who is kind, this all I require. We take breaks to lean against each other on the porch, her sucking smoke from between her fingers, exhaling its skirling; each mouthful dissipating, becoming something like air. My breath’s a less impressive phantom, fleeting silver in the cold light. Standing there in our small shadows, we discuss the ways of the dead, their metaphysics, as if we were experts by osmosis, a certain knowledge absorbed. I say I think our ghosts become us, or at least reside in our dark like tenants we haven’t the heart to kick out. She says, though she hasn’t quite figured it out yet, there are rules: not all of us get to be ghosts.

LEILA CHATTI

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"i made this because i was high" I made that because i am a schizophrenic. Grow up

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Soviet tree decorations c.1930s - 80s.

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poem by matthew rohrer

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