period peace
By: mk zariel
when i was too afraid to talk to you i was reading
anarchism and other essays wondering why
emma goldman always writes like a depressed teenager
giving herself to melodrama, torn up over
the repressed desires in her—if she were alive
in the 2020s she would be obsessed
with phoebe bridgers and the darkest corners
of tumblr. and i am alive but not living
memorizing every word of patriotism:
a menace to liberty and privately thinking
you're cool—
the first time your art met my poetry
i barely noticed, too deep in the doom spiral
that happens when voltairine de cleyre
gives you gender envy—what it would have been to be that
vaguely transmasculine warrior for the kind of liberation
that shone in new england sun like desire
like the loving rivalries that became her—
if she were alive in this moment she'd probably despise us
maybe not for being gay, but for our insurrectionary lens
on anarchism—but so are we—
and i found queers bash back the year i found you
giving up on the classics, at least shelving them in
favor of your notes-app autotheory, your
substack soliloquies. and we are alive and
standing on the shoulders not of giants but
of depressed gay girls whose recovered love letters prove
that emma and almeda could not flirt without
extended metaphor and shame—that we cannot unmask
can live but never come alive—without each other.
mk zariel (it/its) is a BashBack influenced transmasculine neuroqueer dyke anarchist. it organizes trans liberationist spaces across the great lakes region, performs spoken-word and theater, does graphic design for social movements, and vibes to classic queercore. it also hosts the podcast THE CHILD AND ITS ENEMIES (about anarchy in high school), writes for the Anarchist Review of Books, and writes the blog DEBATE ME BRO (a y2k style advice column about anarchy 101). its free-verse poetry is published (or forthcoming) in Unfuturing, Not Your Poster Child, Free Voice Revolution, What We Think About When We Think About Love, Chasing The Storm, The Creekside, The Insurgence, Anti-Misogyny Club, A Rose By Any Other Name, Suburban Witchcraft, Iceblink, Marigold Community Zine, Midwestern Heat, HNDL Mag, Broken Teacup, The Periwinkle Pelican, en*gendered, Minerva Press, The Nebula Journal, redrosethorns, miniMAG, and MyrtleHaus; its photography is featured in Coin Operated Press’s queer photography zine. it was a contributor to Communication Madison's art exhibition Let Me Tell You, a participant in Free Zine Week 2024, and collaborated with the artist f.f. kahani on an online mixed-media installation. it has presented on youth liberation at BashBack 2023, Smash By Smash West, Davidson Academy Online, Second Unitarian in Lakeview, and the SRSLY WRONG Discord Server. it is a moderator for the Spooky Specters and Chasing The Storm zines. hang out with mk on the big gay internet: https://linktr.ee/mkzariel
