ISSUE 2: DREAMPUNK of Prism Queer Arts Magazine by PRISM

A R T S M AG A Z I N E

PRISM QUEER

dreampunk

ISSUE 2 I 2020

Connect with us: IG: @prismuwo FB: @prismUWO 2

3 Â© Fayadh Ahmed

contents

letter from the VP

10 12

turquoise-shy dancing prefixes

eight

waves

colors

moonlight

a summer with amy

cartoons, cartoons, cartoons

call me by your name

dream girl

52 55 62

dream of me

a poem about them the surgery gender x(traordinary)

+ more ÂŠ Dal Assi

meet the team! President

Vice President

Editor, Graphic Designer

Communications

Editor

Lily Allen

Ravinder Hans

Ana Paula Ocampo

Rebecca Seaby

Bridget Whelan

Editor

Communications

Danielle Solo

Dal Assi

Bella Pick

Julia McCarthy

letter from the VP Dear Readers,

Thank for tuning into ISSUE 2: DREAMPUNK of Prism Queer Arts Magazine! ISSUE 2: DREAMPUNK puts a hopeful spin on the dystopian ethos of cyberpunk, steampunk, and other related genres. This issue explores our place in the universe and our grand visions for the future, and how our experiences shape our subjective realities and our individual notions of self. This collective issue converges our realities together and allows us to share this space to explore our sexualities, our genders, and our shared human experiences; it is a celebration of both our individuality and our interconnectedness. ISSUE 2 is composed of art by various LGBTQ+ artists from the UWO community. We hope that you can ďŹ&#x201A;ip through these pages and feel welcomed with open arms. Due to the unforeseen pandemic, the release of the magazine had been delayed. At least, however, in great anticipation! We thank you for connecting and celebrating with us.

Sincerely, Dal Assi 7

Â© Dal Assi

[turquoise-shy dancing prefixes] b y A n a Pa u l a G o m e z O c a m p o

If you were a poem youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be turquoise shy-dancing prefixes. Prefixes because you keep walking the first step bravely into the world and then taking a step back on your own so no one gets the chance to push you. Turquoise because you flow powerful. However, silently. Carefully camouflaging yourself to the forest background. You move with purpose and no direction. You try. Stumble and cry. Exist shyly. Butterfly.

ÂŠ Charu Sharma

You are a process.

“Butterfly. You are a process.” - Ana Paula Ocampo Gomez

by Ana Paula Gomez Ocampo

13 Â© Fayadh Ahmed

Â© Charru Sharma

17 ÂŠ Gabrielle Delorme

Â© Yo u s s e f N a d a m m o n U n s p l a s h

by Ana Paula Gomez Ocampo

Â© Je s s e B ow s e r on Un s p l a s h

by Ana Paula Gomez Ocampo

21 © Paw e ł C z e r w i ń s k i on Un s p l a s h

Â© Fayadh Ahmed

Moonlight by Julia Rooth

"Did you hear?" "Yeah. I heard." It's a stupid question, and she knows it. We've been staring out the window for months, looking up as the stars get smaller and smaller, knowing well what is to come. It was only today that we got an expiration date. I sit beside her in the sand, hugging my legs to my chest. I glance over and she's staring out at the water that is gently nudging the coast. I think about how this might be one of the last times I ever see her, and I have to push the thought away immediately. "I think I get it." She breaks the silence that has grown around us, catching me off guard. "You do?" She throws a stone towards the moon. "Maybe we're just too good." It doesn’t really make sense to me, but then again, nothing she says ever really does. I tuck it away in my jacket pocket, knowing that in three weeks when we are being swallowed whole, I will understand it. I run my hand through my hair, noting that it's gotten a little long at the top, wondering if I should get it trimmed or if any of that matters now. Seems trivial. The moon doesn't care if I am clean-shaven or have a thin layer of stubble. It will take and take and take regardless of what we have done to prepare. "Maybe," is all I can think to say. "Are you scared?" She turns and looks me in the eye for the first time since I sat down. I feel the wind nip at my cheeks, and when I see her it's like the first time all over again. Her eyes scan across my face frantically, maybe looking for some sign of fear, maybe trying to memorize what it looks like.

After a heavy moment of consideration I say “yeah, I am.”

She smiles softly like that’s what she was expecting, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. Her vision shifts to the water again, the breeze pushing her golden hair back from her face. “I’m not.” I raise my eyebrows at her, a concoction of doubt and familiarity settling in my stomach. She’s never been scared of anything, always letting everything wash over her like the ocean’s tide. But if there were any time to be scared, it would be now, and I wouldn’t blame her for it. I wonder if her vessel will leave the ground with a smile on its face. (Cont’d)

"There's something comforting in knowing that whatever we do will fade away one day. That we're not burdened by our choices." She turns to look at me again. "I'm content with what I've done here." I start to think about it as she holds her gaze with mine; am I happy with what I've done in my time? She starts to smile again, her mouth lifting at the corner and the moonlight reflecting in the whites of her eyes, and in a distant thought, I think about kissing her. Every time I've considered it before, I've slid it into the back of my mind, right behind my ears. But now, I can't stop thinking that I might die before I ever do it. She reaches out her right hand slowly, her fingers snaking through the sand until they find mine. I look down at our palms pressed together, then back up to her face, and I think in that moment we both understand. “I always thought it would be the sun.” She faces forward again, my eyes still trained on her, our hands laying in the sand between us. It hits me then that she must have thought about this a lot, how it would end and why it would end and what it all meant. In that moment I envy the way that she can think about the end of times with careful consideration, look at it from a distance and still be able to smile. I wonder if she cried when she heard the news like I did. I doubt it. “Me too,” I say, contributing to the conversation for the first time. “Seems like the end should be burning, doesn’t it?” “Seems like it,” she says, slowly thinking it over. “But it’s going to be cold.” “I love you, you know.” She looks at me, her eyes glittering like it’s what she’s been waiting for this whole time, the entire conversation a choreographed prologue. An introduction to my all-consuming longing.

The way she looks at me makes the beach fall away around us, and I’m suddenly upright in a chair, the bow in my hand and the violin heavy on my shoulder. I strike the last note and she stares at me, a smile on her face and a conducting wand still in the air. The waves of my notes are still bouncing off the walls, and the audience holds their breath with me. She has the power to lower her hands slowly or keep me suspended in this symphony for the rest of my numbered days. “I know.” The grip on my hand gets tighter, and I know we will never talk about this again, but I feel it in my fingers, the pulse that radiates from her fingers to mine. I had to say it with words, but she doesn’t. I think I understand it now, what she said earlier. She is just too good. The earth has been holding the weight of her glow for eighteen years, and it cannot do it anymore. The moon needs to bathe us in ocean water before her light burns us all alive. In twenty-one days, the moon will grow so large that the water will erupt from its banks, flood our lungs, and its gravity will pull us one by one like a magnet into its stratosphere. The months of magnetic shifts and tidal tsunamis we have survived will finish their dramatic drum-roll. We will soar into the lunar surface, burst with the force, and there is nothing we can do about it. Powerless. Left to mark our days off the calendar in silence and wait for our inevitable demise. But I don’t feel powerless. I look at our hands still intertwined, the moonlight casting the entire beach in blinding white, and I am calm. I feel free, liberated, as if a thread connecting the surface of the moon to the top of our spines, lightly hanging us over the sand. “I hope it will feel like flying.” I look at her, and I smile for the first time since yesterday. “Me too.”

ÂŠ Gabrielle Delorme

Â© Dal Assi

dream of me | b y b pick

Â© Charu Sharma

{a selection of short poetry on sleep}

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the Opposite of a Dream?

You used to occupy my dreams Laying in a sweet field of lavender, Kissing me until my cheeks turned rosy. You only appear in my nightmares now; The same, distant memory filled with nostalgic aches.

Lullaby or White Noise?

Your voice is softer than The sweetest lullaby. Is this what love feels like? I cannot imagine life without you.

Your words slice through me. I cannot love you Without bleeding out.

If I Stayed the Night, Would We Fall in Love? I fell asleep Your frail body surrounding my own; Sweat fermenting against our bare skin, Unwashed hair sticking to our foreheads. The world felt lighter in your arms If only a dream.

Short Term Memory Foam

I’ve noticed that you tend To gravitate towards the left side of my bed Where the mattress dips in the shape of me. I would have slept on the right side for you.

All-Nighter

I’ve been awake for forty hours straight, a feat I haven’t accomplished since I was an adolescent and All that I wanted was to turn your memory into Nothing more than a fever dream. As your soft features pixilated into the sun Each time it rose or set so long ago; It’s come back to focus now. And I can no longer escape you in my dreams, So I peel my eyelids back as if we might have Peeled onMy bright eyes have sunken, Amber into a deep blue, Blood vessels burst Forming a broken picture of what once was, Now that I’ve been awake for forty-one hours.

33 Â© Charu Sharma

Â© Fayadh Ahmed

35 “ G i r l w i t h t h e p e a r l i p h o n e” ( 2 0 1 9 ) b y J o s e t t e J o s e p h

37 Â© Charu Sharma

Â© Fayadh Ahmed

A Summer With Amy by Grace Campbell

Amy, Do you remember when I practically lived at your house during the summer of 2010? We’d spend all day swimming your pool. I always wore sunscreen and you didn’t, but somehow you ended up tanned and blond while I got a sunburn that never stopped peeling. We would launch ourselves off the diving board and try to land on those giant pink inner tubes your mom bought from Costco. When that got boring we would just float next to each other and talk. Only when shadows turned the water dark blue and goosebumps rose on our arms did we climb out of the pool and run towards your hot tub. The jacuzzi lights would eventually become our only light source. Even though we had spent all day in the pool I always felt shy as we sat across from each other in our bathing suits. I blamed my blushing on the hot water. That was the summer we watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You had already seen the first season so we skipped it. I spent the first few episodes of season two confused but you’d whisper answers to my questions during the pauses in dialogue. I loved it even before I knew the characters names. In season four Willow came out as a lesbian and you said, “ew”. I laughed in agreement and then threw up in the bathroom. After that Willow would kiss girls on screen and I would stare right above the tv at the chipped paint on your wall. Sometimes we would sit at your computer and scroll through your secret facebook. Your mom thought you were too young to have an account but you got one anyway because everyone at school did too. Besides me. I was always too sacred of getting in trouble to break any rules. You’re left handed so you had to use the mouse backwards. I thought this was hilarious and would sit staring at your orange nail polish as you clicked with the wrong

fingers. I would watch you look at the pictures and laugh at statuses you thought were funny. From the side I could see your seashell earrings and chipped tooth, the blue light from the computer screen made you glow. I thought you were so beautiful. Then, The wind turned from cool to biting and summer ended. I cried when we finished Buffy and they drained the pool before the filters could get clogged with the falling leaves. School started and I would wake up feeling homesick in my own bed. I missed you even when I saw you had saved me a seat in our classroom. When our teacher asked us what we did that summer I didn’t raise my hand, I knew I would only be able to answer in half truths. The real answer was that I made a wish I would never blow out candles for. I dreamed of something that only seemed possible in the small space between school years. I prayed to a god I didn’t believe in for a miracle he’d resent. The real answer was a piece of a story I knew was fiction, a story I’d never write down. A story titled: A Summer With Amy. One day in late July with your face lit up by the computer screen you would notice me staring at you. I would quickly look away but when I’d look back you would still be watching me. My heart would beat hard in my chest and you would be the one to kiss me first. My chapped sunburnt lips would sting but I wouldn’t mind. It wouldn’t last long but it would feel like how it feels to jump into cool water when its 32 degrees outside. It would feel like the heat breaking at sunset and sinking into a hot tub with chattering teeth. It would feel like sitting on the couch in our pjs, bodies exhausted from the sun, watching our favourite show. Together.

maha shah

by ravinder hans 40

ÂŠ R avinder Hans

Cartoons, Cartoons, Cartoons.

ÂŠ R avinder Hans

B y Matt he w Myl es

Why am I the way that I am? Well we simply cannot exclude 2001’s Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius But I’m not here to talk about him I'm here to discuss talking animals Friends: Courage, Blue, Arthur, Rocko, Clifford Still, I don’t want you to think of any of them Just think of these fuzzy cartoon characters as a concept How do they relate to your experience as a queer person? How have the funny dog people shaped you? I always wanted to be like them Maybe because they were so different from those that made me anxious Never ending softness in a needlessly rough world Able to teach me lessons about kindness and respect Or at least make me smile Unlike me, No one talks about the size or shape of their bodies. They’re able to live and love without fear Maybe because they aren’t real Regardless, How nice it would be To live in abstractions Still me Loud and angry, demanding kindness Infinitely soft and tender all the same Queer as in loud and angry Queer as in soft and tender

ÂŠ Setephanie Fatttori

Dream Girl by Julia Rooth

The fence in the backyard of my childhood home has three large chips in it. I remember the sound of the riding lawn mower striking it, the muddied soccer ball grazing the paint, the maple tree toppling over with a crack of thunder. My mother told me I slept through it, but I can recall its impact even now. I close my eyes against the wind, blowing my hair across my face and rustling my skirt against my legs. Blinking up at the grey sky, an ominous lavender, no sun, no clouds, no gradient, I am suspended in time. Dawn and dusk blur together like smudged paint. I take one last look at the wooden fence in front of me, once snow white but now a dull cream, before turning around and beginning to walk. I take the makeshift dirt path up to the back of the house, and I see the grass tickling my ankles, though I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel it. The stairs to the back porch are solid under my boots and my hand hovers above the railing, ghostly pressure sitting in the space between. I open the stained-glass door to the kitchen and step into my high school foyer. The hallway before me is a dimly lit tunnel that stretches on far longer than my eyes can reach. I am wrapped in a violent gust of air like a train pounding down a subway platform, leaving me seasick. The wind picks up, my hair flying above my head and standing on end, the world going silent and still. The tiles squeak under me as I move forward, my stride slow and purposeful, on the balls of my feet as to not make a sound. The walls are littered with developed film, grainy portraits of me in my swimming pool, me in my prom dress, me in my underwear. A collage of my ever-pressing mortality, a memoir to my vessel. I knock twice on my ribcage for good measure. The tip of my toe tries to find the ground for my next step, but is interrupted by the phantom press of two fingers against my forehead. My eyes focus on the empty space ahead of me, but I feel it as present as ever. I am not afraid. From my scalp to my heels I go rigid, falling backwards like a plank of wood and landing in a field of yellow flowers. The starfish sprawl of my arms and legs parts the grass. Limbless and nimble, light as air and sunken into the dirt, I feel her breath on the side of my face, hot and broken with her laughter. The sky remains a slate of grey, the moons around my irises working double-time. I have reached Buddhaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nirvana, sunken down far below the Earth, suspended myself from a string and washed down the stream of purgatory. This is what it is to have the metadata wiped, the paperwork shredded, the dining table polished. Pressed into a field of flowers, hung above a maple tree, struck by lightning in the hall, I ascend.

a poem about them By Anonymous

I’d shower with the love of my life, exfoliating his back and rinsing the shampoo from his hair. It waited behind the bathroom door. Peered from the tank of the toilet. Followed us with clinging fangs and talons and jutting bone into the bumper on long drives where his palm carved roadmaps into my thigh and he serenaded me with a burnt sugar voice. It waited in my bed. When he went away, it took me into its cold embrace and tamed me with its rigor mortis lullaby. Sucked out my shallow breaths, filled my sternum with tar. I haunted the city by day, by night I fed it little chunks of my ribs and peeling cuticles, clumps of hair ripped prematurely from the scalp. Dried blood from my sinuses. I suffocated myself to ease its burden. Like any other, it grew tired and left. When there’s nothing, I beg to hurt. I fell in love with emptiness so I could be refilled with men and women and rum and spit and ink and rot and men. Claw my skin to remind my capillaries how to burst. Crawl the streets to exhaust the body into uninterrupted sleep. Close my eyes with blonde nurses. Ginger dancers. Toughs that spit their words at me like teeth. And then they’ll walk in. Drunk. And I’m drunk. And they’re horny. And they fuck me like they want the boxspring in the cellar. They taste good, and I tell them. Soon we don’t fuck. We talk about the stars, Leo and Libra and Cancer, and the resonant frequency of the ceiling. The precarious cosmic ancestry of squid. Soon I buy food just to watch them eat. Soon every joy is so inextricably linked to them that I swear all 7 notes of every octave are sung in their praise. And they’ll sing. The gentle bass caresses the nape of my neck and leaves no fingerprints. They’ll be pink. When hurt came back for me, I didn’t hear him come in. Or see him burrow into the doorjamb that’ll need a harder slam. Or how he tints the room more grey than blue. Slumping plants and burnt out sockets. The ulcers gently rotting my stomach. I check the vanity and he looks back, knowingly. He tells me he never really left; he was only hungry. I could reach for them but now they’re fifty paces back and receding. They’re frightened. And me and him are finally alone again.

THE SURGERY A short story by Va l e n t i n e W i l d e

The first thing I hear when I wake up is the doctor’s voice. “Go`od, you’re awake,” she says, and her voice tastes like mint strawberry, maybe just a hint of lemon, sharp and sweet and clean. A summer voice. I look around the room. It’s not where I fell asleep - of course it isn’t, I expected that, but it’s still disorienting to wake up someplace else. The walls are painted diamond-white, and the sun slants in between the wooden slat blinds. The curtains around my bed, subtly patterned with vines, look like something that might have hung tastefully in a rich-person’s living room, back somewhere in History when there was such a thing as rich people. How do you feel, I expect her to say. Or do you need anything. Instead she asks, “Do you remember your name?” I gather up my will to whisper. “Devon.” The word sticks strangely in my throat, lodges in an unfamiliar way, and the voice that comes out sounds low, lower even than if I’ve had a cold. I reach up to brush my fingers over my sore neck, feel the little lump there. The laugh that comes out of my throat doesn’t sound anything like mine, and that just makes me laugh harder. The first question my mother asked when I told her: “you don’t think you’re going to get The Surgery, do you?” They always pronounce it that way, with capital letters you can hear. “Of course we support you in everything you need to do,” she assured me quickly, suddenly intently focused on fluffing the feathers in her royal-wedding fascinator instead of looking me full in the face. “We would never want to suggest otherwise. It’s just . . . The Surgery, it’s so dramatic, isn’t it?” In her free time my mother is a historical re-enactor, specializing in turn-ofthe-century British aristocracy - the era sometimes called the Lady Diana period. She’ll go as far as Prince William’s wedding, but she tends to cut it off after Kate Middleton. Dramatic indeed.

continued 55

Once they’re satisfied I am not about to vacate my new body, they move me from the recovery room to the two-bed semi-private I share with Megan - Meg, she said to call her. It’s much nicer than the recovery area - same printed curtains, same bamboo blinds, but with framed art on the walls painted by volunteers and local schoolchildren. Our room has a crayon drawing of Noah’s Ark and a reasonably competent watercolour study of light filtering through a stained-glass window. There are bulletin boards to pin up well-wishes from friends and neighbours, and screens on mechanical arms so we could position them either for sitting or lying on our backs. I am lying back watching the documentary channel - a turn-of-the-century ocean piece, with slow-dancing jellyfish - when they first wheel her in. She is still groggy from the medication, which hits her body harder than it once did. I remember that. A single sleeping pill used to take me out for the entire next day. I won’t miss it. I don’t understand a lot of the technobabble behind The Surgery, but it seems to me that one of the most logical parts of it was when they decided to have each surgical pair room together during recovery. We’re each the experts in our own bodies, after all - or rather, in each other’s bodies. It also makes the concept of modesty a little ridiculous. I’ve seen Meg’s body naked a thousand times, looking back at me from inside the mirror, at every stage of life thus far. She’s seen mine, just the same. We’re both newcomers in a foreign land, and each an expert on the other’s terrain. From now on, in some ways, we travel together. My father was less circumspect when it came to The Surgery. “Aren’t you afraid of letting some doctor cut into your brain that way?” “That’s not really how it works,” I explained. The truth was, yeah, of course I was a little afraid of it. Who wouldn’t be? But staying in this body for the entire rest of my life scared me worse. “The medications and hormones work just fine, you know. Maybe a couple of minor surgeries. But this goes too far. It’s too dangerous!” “It’s not exactly experimental surgery anymore, Dad. It’s got a good track record.” You would know that if you read the research I sent you, I could have added, but didn’t, because what’s the point? Dad got to his real objection. “You wouldn’t have our DNA anymore, not a bit of it! It’d be walking around out there in the custody of some stranger we didn’t raise, who doesn’t share our values.” “You think I share your values?” I asked, genuinely curious. He pretended not to hear me. “Biology matters,” he lectured on. “Genetics matters. What if you got married and had kids one day? Those wouldn’t be our grandchildren - biologically, I mean. Our biological grandchildren would be out there being brought up by a total stranger.”

Typical. Mom and Dad spend so much time inside their royalist fan-fiction universe, they forget that they’re not trying to selectively breed the next Queen of England. “Turns out I’m not actually asking your permission,” I told him. “I’m just letting you know what’s going to happen.” “Parenthood is a scam,” he said. “You’re out of the will.” It wasn’t true, of course. It’s just something people say in the historical fiction videos. Sometimes Dad repeats it to be dramatic. I’ve been removed from the will for refusing to eat my green beans, cheering for the wrong sports team, and tracking mud into the kitchen on my boots. Only not really, because who even writes a will anymore? Money, like royalty, isn’t real.

“Tell me about this one.” I glance at where Meg is pointing. A scar slashing across her belly, northeast to southwest. “Grade four. Running with scissors.” “Really?” I shrug. “I was a rambunctious kid. And not a great listener.” “God, what a dumb story,” she laughs, and she’s not wrong. “I’m making up something better for that. Okay, your turn.” I study my new meat suit. We’re both nude, not for any particularly salacious reasons, just because it feels comfortable to be naked around other people for the first time in our entire lives. I find a puckered red splotch on my left arm. “Grease burn. From cooking.” She laughs again. I always thought I had an obnoxious laugh, but on her it sounds beautiful, like windchimes in spring. “Christ, I’ve always been so terrible at cooking.” In this way, we learn to read the text of

our new bodies. She tells me to be careful around citrus fruits, that they’ll give me mouth sores, and that she broke her leg when she was seven so it’ll get sore when it rains. I explain that hers is an easy drunk, that it isn’t allergic to tree nuts but it finds them repulsive. I tell her how bad her periods are going to suck, but she’ll be okay if she takes ibuprofen, never acetaminophen. She dispels the myth that every stray sexual impulse will cause an embarrassing and uncontrollable boner. “Maybe if we were thirteen,” she says. “But not now.” The disclaimer was written in the introductory letter in bold font. Cerebrophysical surgery is not a suitable treatment for all forms of gender dysphoria. Please contact your area specialist as listed in the attached directory to explore whether this intensive procedure is right for you. I already knew that, though. Everybody does. At least, everyone in the community. Outside of it, there are misconceptions. Some people think it only works if you conform to the gender binary, or if you’re upset with what’s between your legs. That’s not exactly true. There are lots of traits that aren’t, strictly speaking, gendered but can still cause gender dysphoria. Being tall or short, for instance. Being fat or thin. Sometimes even having the wrong hair type can make you feel wrong in your skin. Technically speaking, it’s not even strictly limited to cases of gender dysphoria, although that’s what everybody knows it for. I knew as soon as I saw her picture, protected by the glossy bioplastic sleeve. Not particularly tall (but taller than me), not particularly muscled. Oblong face, dark hair. A little scruff, what old novels call five-o’clock shadow. Shadowy, hooded eyes. A haunted smile. Mine. I sent a message straight to her from my microcomputer. The message back came within the quarter-hour. She’d found my picture: the awkward smile, russet-red braid flipped over my sloped shoulders, rounded belly. Constellation of freckles like stars across my back. Tudor rose tattoo I’d gotten in university, trying to make myself feel more at home in the body I was dealt. It didn’t work. Her e-message said, You’re perfect, and in a way that was completely foreign to my experience, I believed it true.

continued 57

Together

Recovery is slow. The vines of nerves and neural paths have to regrow along the new paths they’ve been given. They give us drugs to accelerate the process, and we learn like infants, quick and constant. We map old motor skills onto new bodies, relearn our place in space. We laugh a lot, at ourselves, at each other. It’s easier to laugh with my body now that it doesn’t come with the bitter aftertaste of shame. And it’s easier to love her body, too, when I don’t have to live in it anymore. The last symptoms to fade are the nightmares, the stories our minds tell us when we wake up trapped in our old bodies, the new ones burned away or falling to bits or just gone like they were never there at all. She crawls into bed beside me after one particularly bad one. I wonder if it’s confusing for her, being so close to this body but still outside of it. It’s confusing for me. I never really thought about it until now, but she smells like me. And I don’t anymore. I kiss her gently, and I remember all the girls in middle school who said I was a better kisser than anyone they knew, and I wonder if that was in the body or the mind. But if I had to guess, I would say the body, because kissing Meg is heavenly. She touches me. She knows exactly where to touch. Of course she does. She’s touched this body so many times, and known what it felt like for that body to be touched. She is the expert on my body. I am the expert on hers. Together we learn.

we learn. 58

59 1

160

“Ni g ht m are s an d D ay d re am s” by Ti a B at e s

when I look in the mirror my gender is a question mark when I get out of the shower I hold my breasts in my hands and I hate them but every man I have slept with tells me they are beautiful so that must mean that I am only beautiful with breasts and an ass so therefore I am a woman blythe is a woman blythe is woman it has never sounded right when I say that my pronouns are she/her my stomach recoils there is a fire in my chest a feeling of guilt and shame overwhelms me until I feel as if cannot breathe so I cry and cry and tell myself that it will be okay when it will not when I touch my hair I want to cut it all off I think of butch icons annie lennox 62

Gender x ,

(traordinary) by Blythe Service

leslie Feinberg I want to be like them but instead I am me and I want to throw myself into a garbage bin and pretend that I do not exist but I fall back into a she/her identity a woman a bisexual woman who mainly has sex with men to try and heal from patriarchal trauma that has left permanent marks on my skin he forces his way into my mouth he finishes and I gag my brain screams I hate this I hate this I hate this but I smile and say did you have a good time? and he always says yes how can I exist when my gender is a canvas that has already been filled? 63

as if It has been decided that I must be a woman Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m here to tell you that I am certainly not I am a gender queer mess of colour I am a gender non comforming bad ass who wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take this shit anymore men make me want to scream the patriarchy makes me want to scream when I mention that I have made love to women he tells me about how he should have been invited I would like to personally invite him to Cleveland because Cleveland is a shit hole and he is a shit hole my heart beats for the cries of cis women trans women all women all gender non-conforming beauties trans men everyone on the spectrum anything except for a cis shit man who expects me to make him cum who thinks I am his slave i am a slave no more 64

â&#x20AC;&#x153;i am a slave no moreâ&#x20AC;?. - blythe service

69 ÂŠ R avinder Hans

170

art at Western.

Â© Dal Assi

Celebrating queer a r t at Wester n since 2018 .