Lonely Britches Presents: ALL THE MONGRRRLZ OF THE WORLD UNITE!

Soooooo. I don’t know about you but my emotions are all over the place. For a second I entertained the thought of skipping this week’s post, but I feel duty bound (even if only to myself) to be present in this space, to be visible. But I needed help to do that, so I’m sharing the stage this week with MCAG: WE WRITE A STATEMENT CONCERNING OUR FREE AFFECTIVE LABOR A STATEMENT TO SHAME THE TRANSPARENT DESIRES OF PATRIARCHAL AUTHORITY/AND WHITE CORPORATE GOVERNANCE. But first, there’s a poem I’ve been working on for a while that I want to share with you. I don’t think it’s finished yet. 

I.
I can’t breathe.
I’d say to my friend (if I had one)
I’d say to my therapist (if I had one)
I’d say to my self (if I had one)
I can’t breathe
over and over
everyday
on my way to class
on my way to dinner
on my way to the gym
I can’t breathe
surrounded by white bodies and the air
itself too thick and white to be taken
into my lungs during a panic attack
I can’t breathe
the air is too stiff
it has me pinned against the atmosphere
in a room where I can’t be me
I can’t breathe
ever and ever
surrounded by white bodies

I can’t breathe.

 

IIa.
Mike Brown watches the theatre of my dream He peers
into it like a diorama I’m surrounded by white
people They don’t talk But I can hear their thoughts

They

smell like sardines
palindromed in oil
Their thoughts are
maggots rotting
A stench I can’t clean
out of my clothes

[III.
I just want to ask him questions.

What was your favorite thing to do when you were high?
What makes the wind blow?
Does all our grief keep you bound here?
What makes the world feel so small?
When did you know you were dying?
Who invented bells and why?
Are you alone?
Did you like poetry?
When did time begin to be a thing?
What sort of things would you think about during church, if your mind drifted off during a sermon?
What was the last thing you dreamed about?
Was there ever a song that would make you cry when you heard it, no matter what?
What star is the energy of your existence now apart of?]

IIb.
I wake up from this dream and cry
I’m one of

you people

I dare be uppity I won’t learn my place
Just another paranoid

minority

who suspects racism
in everything I’m the innards of the

inner city

an Oreo
dissolving in milk my heart is
disintegrating

ghetto

for the gunned
down

 

IV.
The last time someone I love died I was two. My grandmother. I don’t remember how it felt. I know that I cried. No one could understand what I was saying. I was saying that I wanted her over and over.

I feel like a fool when I cry now.

 

V.
Kenneth Goldsmith wants credit for this poem
Tony Hoagland wants credit for this poem
Madonna wants credit for this poem
Stephen Tully Dierks wants credit for this poem
Boko Haram wants credit for this poem
Frederick Seidel wants credit for this poem
White boys want credit for this poem
Patricia Arquette wants credit for this poem
Seth Abramson wants credit for this poem
Israel wants credit for this poem
Thomas Perkins wants credit for this poem
Mark Martin wants credit for this poem
Kim Kardashian wants credit for this poem
William S Burroughs wants credit for this poem
Paul Elam wants credit for this poem
Daniel Handler wants credit for this poem
Iggy Azalea wants credit for this poem
Charlie Hebdo wants credit for this poem
Paul Williamson wants credit for this poem
Macklemore wants credit for this poem
Bill Cosby wants credit for this poem
Joni Mitchell wants credit for this poem
Black Pussy wants credit for this poem
Chuck Johnson wants credit for this poem
Jeff Nagy wants credit for this poem
Stacey Dash wants credit for this poem
Richard Nixon wants credit for this poem
Uncle Billy wants credit for this poem
Taylor Swift wants credit for this poem
Hillary2016 wants credit for this poem
Thomas Jefferson wants credit for this poem
Kanye wants credit for this poem
Paula Dean wants credit for this poem
Abe Lincoln wants credit for this poem
Putin wants credit for this poem
Amanda Palmer wants credit for this poem
Christopher Columbus wants credit for this poem
Vanessa Place wants credit for this poem
FDR wants credit for this poem
Katy Perry wants credit for this poem
ISIS wants credit for this poem
Ryan Boudinot wants credit for this poem
Ann Coulter wants credit for this poem
Woodrow Wilson wants credit for this poem
Tyler Perry wants credit for this poem
Eminem wants credit for this poem
Jonathan Chait wants credit for this poem
Nancy Grace wants credit for this poem
George Washington wants credit for this poem
Carl Andre wants credit for this poem
Michael Dunn wants credit for this poem
Annie Lennox wants credit for this poem
Woody Allen wants credit for this poem
Alexander Dunlop wants credit for this poem
Joan Rivers wants credit for this poem
LBJ wants credit for this poem
Terry Richardson wants credit for this poem
Ramaa Mosely wants credit for this poem
Thomas Edison wants credit for this poem
Tao Lin wants credit for this poem
Sarah Palin wants credit for this poem
Bill Clinton wants credit for this poem
Don Lemon wants credit for this poem
Cathy Brennan wants credit for this poem
Georges Cuvier wants credit for this poem
Andrew Jackson wants credit for this poem
Sheryl Sandberg wants credit for this poem
Rachel Dolezal wants credit for this poem
Janey Smith wants credit for this poem
Dan Savage wants credit for this poem
Chris Kyle wants credit for this poem
George Zimmerman wants credit for this poem
Eve Ensler wants credit for this poem
Robin Thicke wants credit for this poem
R Kelly wants credit for this poem
Donald Sterling wants credit for this poem
Ronald Reagan wants credit for this poem
The Police want credit for this poem
Joe Scanlan wants credit for this poem
SAE wants credit for this poem
Tal Fortgang wants credit for this poem
James Franco wants credit for this poem
Piper Kerman wants credit for this poem
Mike Amato wants credit for this poem
Dick Cheney wants credit for this poem
Quentin Tarantino wants credit for this poem
Michele Bachmann wants credit for this poem
Giuliani wants credit for this poem
Darren Wilson wants credit for this poem
Michelle Goldberg wants credit for this poem
Thomas Hirschhorn wants credit for this poem
Santiago Sierra wants credit for this poem
Vanessa Beecroft wants credit for this poem
Jack Gilbert wants credit for this poem
Tim Wise wants credit for this poem
Richard Prince wants credit for this poem
Andy Warhol wants credit for this poem
Donald Trump wants credit for this poem
Andre Breton wants credit for this poem
Raven-Symone wants credit for this poem
Jerry Seinfeld wants credit for this poem
Wes Anderson wants credit for this poem
Jeff Koons wants credit for this poem
Nikki S. Lee wants credit for this poem
Vijay Chockalingam wants credit for this poem
Chet Hanks wants credit for this poem
Josh Duggar wants credit for this poem
Jim Cuno wants credit for this poem
Steve Miller wants credit for this poem
Sean Labrador y Manzano wants credit for this poem
Heriberto Yépez wants credit for this poem
Barrett Watten wants credit for this poem
Ron Silliman wants credit for this poem
Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke wants credit for this poem
Ted Wafer wants credit for this poem
CNN & MSNBC want credit for this poem
Nick Mamatas wants credit for this poem
Anne Lamott wants credit for this poem
The Pope wants credit for this poem
Kevin Harpham wants credit for this poem
William Sherman wants credit for this poem
Sam Houston wants credit for this poem
Ulysses S. Grant wants credit for this poem
William Byrd wants credit for this poem
Theodore Roosevelt wants credit for this poem
Ben Franklin wants credit for this poem
Clarence Thomas wants credit for this poem
Notre Dame wants credit for this poem
Sheila Jeffreys wants credit for this poem
Walter Keane wants credit for this poem
Ani DiFranco wants credit for this poem
Sarah Silverman wants credit for this poem
Thomas “Daddy” Rice wants credit for this poem
Dylann Roof wants credit for this poem

 

VI.
Kenneth Goldsmith is a fuckboy. Perhaps people feel uncomfortable with my uncreative writing, but for me, this is the writing that is able to tell the truth in the strongest and clearest way possible. I want him to get chased into the street by a flea ridden rabid saint bernard where he is then struck by a bus driven by a driver who has no fucks to give about some shitstain bearded ballsack motherfucker–fuck his entire lineage, future, present, past. Perhaps people feel uncomfortable with my uncreative writing, but for me, this is the writing that is able to tell the truth in the strongest and clearest way possible. This mediocre saltine cracker ass son of a bitch thinks it’s okay, thinks it’s art, thinks it’s complicated, thinks it’s conceptual, thinks his reading is powerful, how could it be otherwise–I want to pour dipjuice down this douchnozzle’s throat, I want to feed him the pubic hair clogging the drains at the Y, I want him to fall into Niagara Falls while it’s frozen–Perhaps people feel uncomfortable with my uncreative writing, but for me, this is the writing that is able to tell the truth in the strongest and clearest way possible.

 

VII.
This is my fear now:
my rage makes me illiterate
my rage makes me illegible
my rage makes me illegal
my rage makes me illegitimate
my rage makes me illicit
my rage makes me illogical
my rage makes me illusive
my rage makes me exactly what they’ve been taught to think of me

The threshold of my anger yawns
how much can my body hold

not much more
please no more
no more than this

all of it converges and crescendos
I feel nauseous
mourning sickness
I must lie down
I can’t help it I cannot I cannot
I always go to bed angry

 

VIII.
I want to say your name so that it begins to chafe my skin. So that it draws boils to the surface. Like a salve I’ll place your name into the sores of history. Your names will be smoldering cinders falling on my exposed skin.

I want to say your name so that it blisters their pretty pink ears. All the piggies. And while their vesicles ooze I’ll chant your names off cadence. Create a cyclone of interruption. A cuckoo cocoon for the delicate piggies before real demons tear them apart.

Without your soul here now is your name just a word like any other stone I would hold in my mouth to keep from biting my tongue? I think of the way I call my darling’s name when he is so close to sleep but I am not. If I say your names will I disturb you.

I cannot hear words anymore. I cannot compute the gentle tones of garish white paint. Grandma’s China. Cotton Ball. Ancestral. Silver Lining. Patriotic White. White Opulence. Picket Fence. I cannot go anywhere without feeling ghosts reaching out to me. From the trees. And the trees. And the blood in the dirt. I cannot look away.

 

IX.
I just want to go swimming. I want to lay my wet fat black fembodt out in the sun. I want to flaunt my colored skin. Sparkle in light like a jewel toned glitter dome. Every few hours my phone asks me How are you feeling? I refuse to answer. Most of my free time is spent crying in front of my computer. Quietly. In an empty house that I swell up with my grief. Now I’m a ghost that everyone can see. If I go to the pool down the street will I spook everyone? Will I ruin the vibe when I shadow out their sun. Will my sudden movements turn their pasty limbs to gooseflesh? How much chlorine do you think I would have to swallow before I bleached myself inside out? So that I don’t provoke you. Or my friends who see my body in the water and don’t see race.

 

X.
I won’t stop crying.
I won’t ever forget.
I don’t have to forgive.

---

Now to hand it over to MCAG.

WE REJECT UPPER MANAGEMENT ALWAYS. PERMANENTLY: BYE
WE–THE DISEMBODIED LABORERS OF THE MONGREL COALITION–

DO NOT WORK FOR YOU
WE PERFORM THIS WORK
THIS AFFECTIVE LABOR
FOR FREE
BECAUSE WE LOVE THE SPLINTERS
THAT WE PROVOKE IN THE CORNERS
BECAUSE WE FEEL A CENTRIPETAL PULL TOWARDS
ANIMALS, ANCESTORS, ABERRATIONS
WHITENESS CANNOT IMAGINE

WE LOVE THE BREAKING OF THE SHAFT
THAT MONGREL PAPERCUT
A WOUND THAT 4EVER RE-EMBODIES THAT THOUGHT
AS CHOREOGRAPHED BITCHSLAP

WE DO NOT WORK FOR DREAM KILLERS
WE LABOR FOR THOSE WHO WADE THRU INLETS
THAT FERTILIZE OUR DREAMS
AND THE WATERHANDS THAT WORK THEM
AND THE STRAY MUTTS AND HOT ROADS
AND THE TOPS THAT SPIN ACROSS THEM
AND THE RAGE BURNING ACROSS WATERS
LIKE A COPPER LIGHT PULSING
AGAINST THE TIN ROOF OF THE SKY

WHITE BOYS BE LIKE: U 2 MUCH THIS U 2 MUCH THAT EVALUATION EVALUATION EVALUATION
U 2 LITTLE THIS U NOT ENOUGH THAT
WE KNOW WHAT THIS SOUNDS LIKE.
THEY THINK THEY’RE ALWAYS IN CHARGE
ALWAYS ASSESSING FOREVER MANAGING
BODIES IDEAS LIVES THEY DO NOT AND CANNOT OWN
BECAUSE THEY’LL NEVER GET IT
THEY MUST BE THROWN INTO THE TOWERS
AND THE TOWERS MUST BE LIT UP

WE THE RUBBISH RETURN WITH THE VENGEANCE OF
BURIED WALLETS ILLEGIBLE REMNANTS
ALL THE MONGRRRLZ OF THE WORLD UNITE
MISFIRING EDITS DISPLACED ENGAGEMENTS
PERHAPS OUR CLARITY IS TOO BLINDING FOR YOU
TO UNDERSTAND OUR MUDDLED HISTORIES
SO LET’S HELP TEAR DOWN THE WALLS:
YOU ARE NOT PAYING US
YOU DO NOT CONTROL US
YOUR INPUT = CORPORATE RELEVANCE
AND OUR ETERNALLY IRRELEVANT OUTPUT
BURNS THE EVER EXPANSIONIST DREAM
OF THE UNIFIED CANON
YOU CANNOT DISCIPLINE US
WE UNDERSTAND THAT YOU HAVE ANOINTED
YOURSELVES AS
UPPER MANAGEMENT OF THE VARIATIONS OF
YOUR POETRY CAMPS
BUT UH FUCK THAT
WE EXIST TO SAY FUCK THAT AND FUCK YOU

WE’LL SAY THIS JUST A FEW MORE TIMES
SO LISTEN CAREFULLY:
FUCK YOU
FUCK YOU FOR BELIEVING WE HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU
AT ALL
FUCK YOU FOR REFUSING TO REMEMBER THAT THIS IS
OUR. FREE. AFFECTIVE LABOR
FUCK YR PHALLIC DESIRES TO SHAPE AND OFFER CRITICISMS
FUCK YR PRIVILEGING OF YR OBSESSIONS OVER OURS
FUCK YR INSISTENCE TO BE CENTERED IN ALL SPACE
FUCK YR VERSION OF THE NARRATIVE
FUCK YR INSISTENCE THAT YOUR NARRATIVE IS MORE TRUTHFUL THAN OURS
FUCK YR VERSION OF TRUTHFUL, RADICAL, DECOLONIAL
FUCK YOU FUCKBOYS FOREVER
DID WE SAY IT POLITELY?

WE GET THAT LANGUAGE & WORDS & METAPHORS & ANALOGIES ARE REALLY REALLY REALLY CONFUSING FOR SOME OF YOU…LIKE PRACTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. BUT YOU SEEM FINE WITH IMITATING CORPORATE HIERARCHIES. SO IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE CORPORATE TAKEOVER WE SAY:

UPPER MANAGEMENT IS REJECTED ON ALL FRONTS

THE UNPAID & UNDERPAID UNIONIZED UNIONIZING MEMBERS ARE HERE TO DEMOLISH ANY AND ALL OFFICES YOU THINK YOU HOLD

WHO THE FUCK ANOINTED YOU MANAGER
WHO CHRISTENED YOU CEO

THIS IS NOT YOUR REVENGE FANTASY
SORRY NOT SORRY YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND

 

YOUR AUTHORITY HAS BEEN REJECTED.
THIS IS LABOR OUTSIDE OF YOUR REACH
YOU ARE WITHOUT AUTHORITY HERE.
THIS IS LABOR OUTSIDE OF YOUR REACH
YOUR AUTHORITY HAS BEEN REJECTED.
THIS IS LABOR OUTSIDE OF YOUR REACH
YOU ARE WITHOUT AUTHORITY HERE.
THIS IS LABOR OUTSIDE OF YOUR REACH
THIS IS LABOR OUTSIDE OF YOUR REACH
LABOR OUTSIDE OF YOUR REACH
LABOR OUTSIDE OF YOUR REACH
LABOR OUTSIDE OF YOUR REACH

---

This week’s Lonely Britchlist

• Wednesday night I went to an informal writing workshop with some of the ND MFAs who are in town for the summer. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to workshop poems and it was a very enjoyable evening. I also don’t think that I’ve ever gotten such on point notes in a workshop setting, which I think speaks highly to the caliber of writers admitted to Notre Dame’s Writing Program.
• Thursday night I was honored to attend the 25th Anniversary Gala for St. Margaret’s House. It was fantastic to see everyone’s hard work come together in this celebration of a community that is so very dear to me.
• Friday I spent the day having some quality time with Chris Holdaway. That evening I opened up Villa Rot for a cookout to celebrate Juneteenth (a holiday close to my heart which happens to fall on my grandmother’s birthday). Chris is a great copilot. He didn’t let my ribs get a bit burnt on the grill while I was busy playing hostess. Nichole came through with two amazing pies (her famous chocolate cream and a new banana creme recipe she tried for the first time). Kyle brought homemade hummus (even though I had plenty already!) and the fireflies showed up and we blew bubbles in the front yard before the sun set.
• Saturday I watched eight episodes of Tokyo Ghoul with Rachel. It went so much better than expected. Because I usually only watch anime alone, faded, with the lights off… it gets tearful. I can’t just be ugly crying in front of people. But it was really great to have someone there who is equally obsessed and invested and moved by a thing as I am. We both had mixed feelings about the opening and closing credits for season two but now they’re growing on us. We also get exasperated at the same things, ugh it’s so good. I can’t wait to finish season two with her next weekend, even though it’s going to be agonizing to wait for season three to come out.
• Sunday was rough. But I spent some quality time with my summer kitty babies. I think my girl Molly is finally putting on some weight, which makes me very happy.
• Monday I talked on the phone to Raquel. I played a lot of Oregon Trail. Jay Santa Cruz gave me some much needed encouragement. I listened to Adele and cried. Listened to old episodes of Friends Like Us. Skyped with Eunsong.
• Claudia Rankine, queen of my heart, wrote this. Shannon Barber, bad bitch alert, wrote this.
• Sometimes I feel like white women have a hard time recognizing that their womanhood is not the default womanhood. White women are not the only women, but somehow they are are the only ones worthy of attention, worthy of naming. When I was looking up the name of the young girl attacked by a police officer in McKinney the first page of search results took me to a white girl being interviewed by mainstream news outlets. How can you have a grand unified theory of female pain without discussing the terrorism lobbed against black and brown women, transwomen and nonbinary people. Even when they are interviewing women of color they still find ways to recenter the conversation on themselves. Maybe it’s just me. But this article I felt really good about.
• Sometimes it’s a chore to just take care of myself. I’m up late all the time. It’s hard to sleep at night. I just felt so unacceptable and ugly and ashamed of my feelings. It’s hard to feel like I’ll ever be happy or safe or free. In all the ways I want to be. But it’s fine. I’ll just throw on a new dress and some lipstick.

Tata for now my lonely britches, Jay Santa Cruz this is for you.