#Joy Priest

[notchainedtotrauma]

I do want to point out that the popular poets and popular poems here, the Mary Oliver type, are rarely from Black poets (I’m very keen on the “Black” of it all). You might see Audre Lorde in passing, maybe Lucille Clifton, but very few Black poets are widely circulated, reblogged, screenshotted on this site and  for me that’s a difficult pill to swallow. And they’re quite easy to find too, so...This has nothing to do with “representation” or “diversity” but about erasure and who seems to exist in the poetic imagination.

[inhernature]

(via Joy Priest: "The Black Outside")

Dear Beloved, Come on out into the Outside: — where the nightshade trumpets cry slow sap   & celebrate. Come on Beloved. Come on out   into this milieu of militant affection. Gather in the clearing,   the shaded bush room, around this tree named Brother   where the funk is sweet, warm, damp place that gives life. Come on. Starry-eyed swamp sugar, smelling like   outside, sitting on your granny’s good couch, Lovemud.   Out into this other world, where the whole body becomes   a drum. Out here: —this ecological condition of Blackness.   Come out of that long longed for opening, lubricated   with spit. Dear Beloved, it’s a conspiracy of spirit: — it can’t be done alone. Come find me on the one & make it one more. Take your time but come on.   Out into the absurd emerald universe where their eye   can’t reach. Outside sense, where their mind can’t eat.   We are tearing the calluses of bark from our wounds. We are here in the grooves of bark, dancing up musk.   We are listening to the dehiscence   of honeysuckle seed           — : break open. When the bass crawls   up your roots and out into the night air our syncopated heartbeats boom together.   I need I neeeeeeeeeeeeed: — Listen: — You look good Beloved. Feel so good. You feel like sliding   out into dusk when it first begins.   You feel like a heat wave, shimmering   on skin. Uh. This fume of sorrowful smoke leaves me when you come closer: —                                                                       Goddamn Beloved, You’re so                                                                          soft dark night. You know                                                                          you’re out of sight: —

Copyright © 2024 by Joy Priest. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 26, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

[litandlifequotes]

When the bass crawls   up your roots and out into the night air  our syncopated heartbeats boom together.  

The Black Outside by Joy Priest

[dwellordream]

"Out into the absurd emerald universe where their eye   can’t reach. Outside sense, where their mind can’t eat.   We are tearing the calluses of bark from our wounds.  We are here in the grooves of bark, dancing up musk.   We are listening to the dehiscence   of honeysuckle seed             — : break open. When the bass crawls   up your roots and out into the night air  our syncopated heartbeats boom together."

Joy Priest, "The Black Outside"

[thesefevereddays]

When I See the Stars in the Night Sky

By Joy Priest

I think of Whitney Houston in her sequined glamour

She’s centerstage It’s 1988 Her head

Thrown back against a black backdrop She is the only thing

glowing So distant from us in the universe

of her voice She is already dying when

I hear her sing the first time When I slip inside

my rhinestone leotard white tights Before a mic

My vocal chords are still elastic Vibrating harpstring

Not yet sclerotic with unlovely smoke and shame

I’m drawn to Whitney like a cardinal on a branch

in winter Beauty too bright for camouflage Her story

a constellation twinned with mine. I love myself

because of her. Our sweet lip sweat sparkling in the flame

light. I went home inside myself too. The world became so small.

Secrets collapsing my life into a vacuum. To burn a little longer—

Whitney, you know no one is coming—you must save yourself.

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Nathan J. Northland/Vlad Blutstein- Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites by Joy Demorra

Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan- Guardian/Zhenhun by Priest 

[weewoo911]

Eddie over at Buck’s post-breakup and they end up sleeping together. Eddie feels conflicted and goes to see Tommy and they end up sleeping together here’s how buddietommy can still win-

[cavevulpis]

Evan “Buck” Buckley summarized in a Reddit post.

(He does this pre-coming out and post-coming out.)

[mischiefbuckley]

For this season being marketed like Eddie’s season again with Ryan doing so much press heading into the beginning of season 8… like where are all my Eddie scenes ABC??? Season 8b please deliver on more Eddie scenes and more focus on Eddie’s storyline please 🙏🏻

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Ohhhh! Ohhhhh!

So you know how the well call was about Eddie - how Chim was the second character involved (as in went into the well) but the call back was about Chim.

And how the lightning strike was about Buck - how Eddie was the second character involved (as in also up the ladder) but the callback was about Eddie.

How Eddie had to lower Buck to the ground to save him and had to watch on before he could take action - how in the call back buck is the one watching on as Eddie is able to wake up the stunt man who is hanging.

How Chim found his certainty about his family growing in the callback - much like Eddie found certainty about his own family dynamic changing in the well (hello will). How Chim went home and spoke to Maddie - how they had an open and honest conversation after all the miscommunication leading up to it. How Chim and Eddie’s take aways from the well calls were basically positive ones.

How the lightning strike call back is a play on Eddie’s needing to wake himself up. In the same way Buck needed to figure out things for himself in his coma dream, Eddie needs to learn from the lightning strike parallel that he has to be the one to wake himself up.

How Buck will stand at Eddie’s side - silently mourning as he plans to leave in the same way Eddie stood at bucks bedside silently mourning as buck lay in a coma - because there aren’t the words and it’s something each of them had to do alone.

How the callback is foreshadowing Eddie waking himself up - panicking and then worrying about if his sacrifice was worth it (did they get the shot).

How after the lightning strike Buck was looking for himself and ultimately went to Eddie’s for peace - how he was able to be silent (as he slept on the couch) - but how they then had a conversation. How they actually had two conversations (kitchen and graveside) and we had miscommunications in those conversations.

How in the aftermath of the callback Eddie has been looking for himself (risky business dance) and how he ended up in the couch in silence with buck (Eddie being in the same place as buck was in s6 when he went to Eddie’s). How Eddie found a connection with someone outside of the firefam with a unique perspective on the situation (a Brad Natalia parallel was not on my bingo card but here we are) and how that has lead to Eddie’s decision and then a conversation with Buck.

[birthmarkbuckley]

ok but the only way this storyline could realistically end is by eddie and chris choosing TOGETHER (and it must be together I really do think so) the joy of going back to their home in LA. and to the family that they have made for themselves there.

[jadelemonadee]

oh camp weed how i miss you 😞✊

[flustered-art]

Shout out to the people who ordered my silly conclave stickers (I love you mwah) enjoy the random doodles I’ve been putting on the thank you notes.

You too can own tedesco vaping or perhaps something even sillier if you get some conclave stickers. Who knows.. maybe if you put a little doodle request in the order notes I’ll draw it on a separate sheet 🤭

[grassbreads]

If nothing else, I do love how all three priest romances I've read so far have included some element of "desperately trying and succeeding to keep your most loved one from destroying themselves."

Silent Reading is first and foremost a story about Luo Wenzhou grabbing Fei Du over and over and saying "You are not evil, and I will take care of you whether you like it or not, motherfucker," and it works like a charm. Yu Lanchuan in NPNPH is constantly (and successfully) trying to keep Gan Qing in the light and stop her from committing crimes that would ruin her life if she went through with them. Sha Po Lang emphasizes this aspect less, but Chang Geng and Gu Yun are both still constantly throwing themselves into danger while getting pissed at the other one for doing the same, and they fuss endlessly over the other one's well-being and chronic illness until they're both cured and live happily ever after.

And then the second priest wrote something without a canon couple and was no longer bound to give the main character a happily ever after with their loved one, she dropped the "and succeeding" part completely. Xi Ping tries desperately to save Zhou Ying, and Zhou Ying does end his life happily having achieved his goals, but Xi Ping fails utterly to save him in the ways he wants to. He still dies, and they never get their living reunion. Zhi Xiu tries to save Xi Ping from the cruelty of fate, and he succeeds in some ways, but he can't save Xi Ping from his centuries of lonely immortality.

The priest romances I've read so far have all, to varying degrees, been about the question of how to help and save a loved one that doesn't value themselves as much as you think they should. Tai Sui is about what happens when you can't save them. It's about what happens when your most beloved person's self-destruction succeeds.

[thegoodmorningman]

It spreads on so thick. Good Morning!!!

[thesefevereddays]

Looking for the Beautiful Things

By Joy Priest

I live in Texas now. & in the next lane over on I-10

BIG JEFF is soaring at twin-speed toward the dusk-pending horizon

& something base & graceful has taken us over

like, if I took my hands off the wheel, we could lift into the air & become

part of the indistinguishable wave of laughing gulls above.

BIG JEFF says his license plate, which I first checked when I let him pass

10 miles back because his lights behind me

were the Second Coming (or the First Coming, in his case, if we’re making

the usual jokes about men with big trucks).

But I don’t want to make unbecoming jokes about BIG JEFF, who is

right now, accompanying me down this interstate

of solitude, not leaving me behind or riding my bumper, just gliding

beside me as if he needs someone too, as if he trusts me

& said to himself in his blue-lit interior, Hey, I’m gonna hang on her wing.

She seems to know how to get where we’re going.

She’s probably a hellcat. No balls hanging from his tow bar, just BIG JEFF

on his pearlescent Ford Super Duty, which has a row of three

headlights on each side & which, I admit, I was more than annoyed by

when he came up behind me like an astrodome

on wheels. But Texas is home now & this is the way of things—BIG JEFF

& NASA, tacos & trucks. The only state with more guns

than Kentucky, the expert at the range told me before I left. I am an expert

at beginnings, a Lone Star once again, as I have been

in every state I’ve lived—the Bluegrass, the Garden, the Palmetto, the Bay—

each time hoping I’m closer to the beautiful things.