november
note / trigger warning: this month's scrapbook has some things dealing with the ongoing genocide in palestine; it feels impossible to discuss about anything at all without discussing that, right now.

Anne Boyer, in her resignation as poetry editor of The New York Times Magazine:

"I have resigned as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine.

The Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone. There is no safety in it or from it, not for Israel, not for the United States or Europe, and especially not for the many Jewish people slandered by those who claim falsely to fight in their names. Its only profit is the deadly profit of oil interests and weapon manufacturers. The world, the future, our hearts—everything grows smaller and harder from it. This is not only a war of missiles and land invasions. It is the ongoing devastation of the people of Palestine, people who have resisted throughout decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.

Because our status quo is self-expression, sometimes all artists have left is to refuse. So I refuse. I won’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more sanitized hell-words. No more warmongering lies.

If this resignation leaves a hole in the news the size of poetry, then that is the true shape of the present."

You have to fill the tank. You have to move your body and get out and look at things. You have to talk to people and eat strange food, travel if you can, watch movies with subtitles, listen to music outside of your habits, go to art galleries and concerts, do things you're bad at. You have to challenge yourself, keep learning new things, participate. And all of these things fall under the umbrella of 'Stay curious.' And you have to have fun. My housemate is being fussy with me today because I am talking to the dogs in Spanish about how my father fought in the clone wars. Sometimes I am ridiculous, but sometimes he is joyless.

-Richard Siken, in conversation with Thomas Hobohm

Antizionist Abecedarian


Sam Sax

after you've finished 
building your missiles & after your borders  
collapse under the weight of their own split   
databases 
every worm in this
fertile & cursed
ground will be its own country. 
home never was a place in dirt or even
inside the skin but rather 
just exists in language. let me explain. my people 
kiss books as a form of prayer. if dropped we 
lift them to our lips & 
mouth an honest & uncomplicated apology—
nowhere on earth belongs to us.
once a man welcomed me home as i entered the old city so i
pulled out a book of poems to show him my papers—my  
queer city of paper—my people's ink 
running through my blood. 
settlers believe land can be possessed—
they carve their names into firearms &
use this to impersonate the dead—we are
visitors here on earth. 
who but men blame the angels for the wild 
exceptionalism of men?
yesterday a bird flew through an airport & i watched that border
zone collapse under its basic wings.

[source]
this aligns with a lot of thoughts i've been having recently about my own jewish identity. just before the pandemic, i was taking an antifascist yiddish class, and that's the part of my heritage i treasure: the wealth of music, art, theater, etc that have come from jewish diaspora, when we choose to hang onto our jewishness and not assimilate into imperialism, standard-european-whiteness, nationalism, etc.

sunset in boston, on the way to the art book fair.

loveliness is... the sustenance of life! (from witch hat atelier)