“Always Happening Heeree”
“It Can’t Happen Here!”
I always heard
Then I read about
Shays Rebellion
The Whiskey Rebellion
The Fugitive Slave Act
The Trail of Tears
Draft Riots
Andersonville
Sand Creek
Chinese Exclusion Act
JIM CROW
Mexican Repatriation
The Johnson-Reed Act
Japanese Internment
Chinese Confession Program
The War on Drugs
AIDS
It can’t happen here
If it never stops
happening here
—James Blatter
Freak.
Be a freak.
values and a moral compass fully in place.
With a Do no harm, Take no shit mentality.
With intention.
For sexual energy
is divine creative energy.
as anarchists in Chile say
“The only battle lost is the one not fought.”
—Tanya Blacklight
“being transgender”
being transgender
a sin, so they say. but i
have never loved more.
i have met great friends,
related stories world ’round,
and learned ’bout myself.
and beyond the gale
of reports, where they regail
of sex, drugs, and whores,
i know them all well
enough to say the real sin:
being kept at bay.
imprisoning self,
holding fast to who you were,
refusing to grow.
like a fish in a
tank too small, suffocating
in stagnancy. death.
i rattled the bars
of a cage they made for me,
“why won’t you just stay?”
but breaking free i
never knew, until i stood
tall for the first time,
how small the cage was.
and in disbelief that i
policed my being,
that i was afraid
to even touch those bars, i
cried at the knowing:
questioning yourself
leads to questioning it all;
the world’s rotten through.
but i see a hope
in the smiles of all my friends,
an end to sorrow.
and it’s more than just
being transgender; for all
the world seeks a truth.
buried beneath skin,
buried beneath culture and
law, is tomorrow.
—axyl
Untitled
it’s hard to human:
to word the says,
to verb the verbs
and pass the reciprocate,
to up the pick the house and welcomesmile.
easier to bog,
easier to brown pine needle and leaf speck mulch, to mushroom and frog,
to foot creepingly a log.
to upright hoursandhours?
nghh
to stiff straightly
jawtense
person?
rather flop squelch
mossandgrow
worm and low
bumble
mumble
sssslllllowwwww.
to human?
no.
—Heather Nicholson
Planning…
We featured Jessica’s self-portraits last June in the The Revolutionist #6. They are again doing 100 portraits in 100 days, here is just a sample of the works in this ongoing project. Check them out on Instagram @ninsian0
The Revolutionist 