greeting and salutations
from a rainy thunder day in detroit after six years away
what’s up good people? how you be in this moment.
I’m writing from a white on white hotel bed in a hotel room with a door that shuts, as my menstrual, airplane and summer sweat laundry cycles dry in the other room. i’m in cherryred boxer briefs, a pad mopping up the day four remnants of a perimenopause chaos cycle that started on day 18 after a 64 day cycle previous, and a pigeon grey ribbed cotton crop top bearing luigi mangione’s smiling face and thicc brows in pink cupped by the words BUT DADDY I LOVE HIM fore and aft, a 3 for 2 deal impulse purchased from a queer trash online retailer. I’m in an accessible reno’d hotel in the reno’d new downtown detroit that feels like a different kind of ghost town than the ghost town of fifteen years ago, a hotel with ADA rooms and better and more appliances than my apartment.
it’s june jordan’s 89th birthday and the day before and during a full summer moon in capricorn as I write this.
it’s day four of the stacey park milbern liberation arts residency, the first one. all three of us at the residency are having a “body day.” turns out travel is hard, even when your residency is more accessible than most/ all of the rest. so we’re at the hotel, not the residency.
on day 2 T, looking at the “how we organize the amc” zine on the shelf of the building where we residency during most days*, remarked that we should make a “how to organize an accessible residency” zine, (which we are early working on, I’ll post here when we get it done.) good idea and I am contributing, but my initial internal rueful snort first response was: how do you make an accessible residency? think on all the residencies you’ve been to, patched together on your own or more likely, never made it to because you got rejected from, left early or never even tried to go to, and how inaccessible they were….and then do something different. even and especially as you are making it up as you go along. I shared, we laughed, we agreed.
and when I say inaccessible i mean- yes, stairs and cracked sidewalks, lack of doors that open, the assumption that every night will be forced small talk with competitive others. but also in terms of the assumption of what a residency will be- cranking out the words day in and day out, a word factory.
when I was writing up the guidebook for the residency and hashing together some guiding principles, this is some of what I wrote:
Community Agreements
The Stacey Park Milbern Liberation Arts Center is a new residency created by Living Altars, by and for disabled queer and trans BIPOC writers to have supported, accessible time to devote to our writing (as well as rest, dreaming, play and connecting with each other and local community members, spaces and activities as desired.) It’s a lineage project honoring the life and legacy of disability justice writer and organizer Stacey Park Milbern.
The Residency’s goal is to cultivate a supportive, safer and inclusive space of respite, support and care for the creative lives and full selves of disabled QTBIPOC writers, especially in this time that is so openly violent towards disabled Black and brown queer and trans people. We work together based on the 10 Principles of Disability Justice, particularly collective access and centering the most marginalized. Here are some of the organizing principles of the residency:
Collective Access: While Leah takes responsibility as the organizer of the residency to research access of travel, hotel and residency sites, check in with residents about access needs and problem solve around any access barriers, we recognize that access is a process, not a destination with a fixed goal, and that our access needs can and will change and evolve, including that we will share more of them as and when we trust more. The Residency is committed to working together to address access needs and realities as they emerge.
Crip happens! We move into this residency understanding that our body/minds are magic and unpredictable Any of us may get sick, have a flare, have a mental health emergency/ menty b/ altered state, get COVID or need to go home early. THIS IS OK. We can always pump the brakes, problem solve and reconfigure if need be. We move at the pace of our bodies/ minds. Nothing is a failure.
Care and rest: We center rest and care. We aspire to use the residency time to write, and also know that writing and creation also require and demands rest, care and play- things we don’t get a ton of chances to do as disabled QTBIPOC. We practice collective care in a way that honors each other’s agency, choices and ability to know what’s best for each of us– understanding that might look different for each of us.
because basically- I have only been on one Official Residency in my life and it was 20+ years ago (and interestingly, I think it’s not an accident it was one created by a disabled woman, albeit a rich white queer one) , and a lot of others that have been me going to Fancyland which was pretty low barrier to get in and free and just getting groceries and writing and going for walks, cooking, reading and going to bed early- i have always wanted to go hard and make as much use of the space to hyperfocus and pop out some writing as possible because when i’m home with my cat/ laundry/ piles/ bills/ dishes/ need to vacuum/walls to stare at/ humans near and far to interact with/ cvs medicaid scripts to pick up, weeks roll by with five lines written or one poem edited. and that makes sense and is Fine.
but there is this ethos floating around in fancy writing residencies I have sometimes tried to get into and mostly not of… a different kind of expectation of hyperproductivity mixed with gratitude and eagerness. gifted kid shit. i was a gifted program kid so I know. go sit at your nice desk in this nice rich robber baron mansion turned over to Art and be grateful not uncomfortable/ and you better pump out the work and make it worth your/ their while, to give it to you. be a poetry factory cranking out product. a return on investment.
but here, there is a: sit in bed day. read. rest. don’t hang out 24-7. etc. a neurodivergent sick residency. i stayed in bed and watched the thunderstorm roll in from the river and beat down on the street out my 4th story window and from that cloud bed. i lounged in bed like i do so often at home on my sick working writing dream days. I went over the edits my friend rigorously and complicatedly gave my poetry ms, and feel very satisfied about where it is at, including cutting a whole final section (which may appear in a small poetry chapbook or recording of love and palestine poems written in the last year, watch this space.) while re-reading friend’s old work, chatting, looking at something else, snacking, napping reading, jerking off. i’ve been known to fuck up a hotel room before, sprawl out on the big bed, have a room of my own that is not of my own to marinate in, some novelty, this is no different.
it’s radical in this moment to insist on rest and slowness. and no, I don’t meant in a 101 rest is resistance way that’s often stripped of understandings of how work and hustling is not a choice because survival isn’t optional. but in a when everything is utter panic cattleprodding us towards the flight/fight speedup. it’s resistance to refuse. to somehow spend three hours pulling weeds, eight hours sitting with a manuscript, to still rest and play with the sick slow body.
i am a long term believer in “dreams take work” as part of how i make writing. but dreams also take rest and free time. and just like people fuck more under socialist democracy not ecocide, people create less when we don’t have dreamtime. a residency where there’s time for everyone get sick and weird, where we really can be disabled during it and alter it to suit, not show up on time eager, early and grateful, is part of that.
**
every time I contemplate leaving philly now for more than a two hour drive to the ocean or nyc im like, huh why. doesn’t seem right. place based and also neighborhoods based, radius of my block, 8 blocks, a hundred different small towns feels just fine. there are seeds i want to see how they’re doing in gardens I care about, regular hangs with friends, because there are people to see about too. including tending myself and my daily and weekly cyclic rituals. especially post covid, my ecosystem thrives when i zoom in not zoom out. true for many of us. and yet: the chance to create something exponential, the three of us that are here, in this covid safer accessible building- something to cherish. something to be curious abour
**
patty died. i knew last month but couldn’t say yet. its what i meant last letter when I said every time a disability justice hera dies the world brings us some kind of cataclysmic revolutionary moment. maybe I cropped that down so much it wasn’t intelligible.
disability justice is going to need multi volume contradictory encyclopedias to tell our histories.
heras are heras and complicated. i wouldn’t be me, my whole present life wouldn’t exist as is without you. true for tens of thousands at least of us. more. your hands moved small precise shapes that changed the whole goddamn multiverse.
**
philly breathes wrote this article about our work for the abolition journal’s kickoff “everyday shit” issue, “everyday acts of disabled love and care: the philly breathes story” i would like to take credit for “the philly breathes story” part bc I wanted us to sound like lifetime television for women ;) but it holds a lot of bangers including:
Disability justice is not an academic or abstract framework or a bunch of empty statements. It is the real everyday work of getting our people (which includes us) what we need. That includes masks, information about what masks work on faces with broad nose bridges or big or small shapes, how to wear masks without breaking your hair, how to care for yourself and your family during a smoke or toxic air emergency and detox after. In a world increasingly pushing people into daily isolation, the daily acts of getting people those things break isolation and are real acts of solidarity, relationship building, and love.
When air emergencies hit, we pop up on local Signal threads and social media reminding folks we can get them masks for free. Air emergencies both happen in a newly intense way due to climate change fueled wildfire smoke – whether it's from Canadian fires or fires in Jersey or New York – and is a regular thing in Philly, where the air quality is regularly in “moderate or yellow” on the AQI (Air Quality Index) chart, asthma is common, and where bad air coming from tire fires or travelling east from Pittsburgh is a regular occurrence. When the plane crashed into Northeast Philly, we drove up in P100s and tried to give out masks. We make cute Instagram reels about how to make an air purifier from stuff you can get at Home Depot.
We distro at local gatherings like the monthly zine fest in Clark Park. We take a special focus and joy in talking to other Black and brown people about masking. Sometimes we know that people have different emerging needs so we even fundraise for things like drinking water. People know us and say “hey” when we run into them. We're a small, disabled, multiracial group of everyday people.
***
these missives are many things including documentation of the ongoing <big hand gestures at the sky> everything. I don’t always keep up with my own intentions of documentation because there is much to document. I will say that its something, bittersweet tender, roaming around detroit, six years since i last was here, a place I used to come to at least once per year. i am staying in the newly reno’d downtown, few blocks from where the us social forum was in 2010. fifteen years ago was when stacey and us were careening around in her accessible van she;d driven up from north carolina, 13 of us packed into a 4 seater without seatbelts for the very first iteration of creating collective access, a first time disabled Black and brown queer homecoming for me and so many that spun out into so many more worlds we would build, going back to wherever we were from or leaving that home to make a new one, like she did. she was 23. we were babies and dorks, hurting in all the ways life had hurt us and yet stupid heart lifted hopeful.
if you’d told me that fifteen years later she’d be five years gone, floods, fire, smoke and heat would be commonplaces and my kitchen/dining area would sport a little sherberty sideboard gifted to me by a loved one that holds 500+ high quality masks as a neighborhood distro point, I wouldn’t not believe you. but might still have a suspension of disbelief. this is what happens, not the worst nightmare, not the utopic dreamscape.
but that’s what holds me. knowing- as always, this is not a new thought- whatever comes, we will figure some shit out to meet it. that’s the real “ we are ready now.”
this is a short dash-off missive from me that’s never that short, but I wanted to get a rough cut out sooner than later. thanks for reading this long newsy letter that lands in your box. i look forward to hearing about what you’ve been doing, in letters back, in doorways coming and going, in silent thoughts beamed every which way.
lyrics: https://genius.com/Cain-culto-kfc-santeria-remix-lyrics
oh and this is on repeat, skip to :27 to where the song starts. “MAGA-demon slaying, out here like a miracle. redneck jesus speaking in parables, water yr seeds see em turn to marigolds.” “I only fuck with gay boys, theys, bad bitches and dykes
Yeah the redneck thick butt sluts my type” is the chant we’re gonna limp and roll to victory under.
plus this manifesto of:
“I’m a cunt, thick clit
A little blunt, with big tits
Daddy said, “this kid is,
Gotta be autistic”
Spectrum-type genius
Redrum-type demon
You ain’t never seen this
I’m the grim reaper
I’m reaping'“
yours and ours. tend your heart and what land you can, including that of your body, always.
love,
Leah
(and boy was that a trip on the first day- walking through the halls of the love building, seeing all the pasted up schedule pulls outs from amcs of 2012 and 2013 and being like, shit I did this and that, not to mention the radical women of color media poster above that piqued so many of our interest and brought me to detroit in 2009)
(there’s also the bit about the residency where I was wired for sound beating back a panic attack for the days leading up to it, esp bc I couldn’t use the medicine I use to treat my um, panic disorder. it’s a thing, to work on something for three years and be like. shit, its finally here, maybe it’ll be a disaster. a friend said, how could it be a disaster? and i was like, because we have to trust airplanes, hotels, accessible van rental companies and buildings- any of which despite double triple checking may end up being oops, NOPE (we won’t rent to you, you literally can’t get in the doorway, your insurance is fucked up, we broke your body or your chair) at any time. it’s probably one little bit imposter syndrome, sure- but mostly I do trust myself. I have tour ptsd from trying to make things happen without enough resources and having people be angry with you when shit fucks up, and you’re on the road with 11 people for forever, an earlier time of hyperaccountability i critiqued and also gave into. turns out smaller, more knowledge of what our bodies and minds require, a little more resources (not just financial) not going a different place every day, and working together is different?)
but prayers up and continuing, so far- spirit holds us. this is a spirit residency mixed with a writing residency. of course they are the same thing.
*I’m struggling to find a good text file and/or be able to transcribe what is on the poster because of vision shit of my own, but some of it says “ radical women of color media: inspires awareness and critical thinking; is accessible; uses our language; integrates into daily life; removes “hysteria” (not sure what is meant by that); transforms everyday living; builds shared strategies for survival"…” and this is good for me to sit with and recall, yep that’s the tradition and practices that i/we believed in and were doing in the oughts and early teens. analog in the ashes is still possible, so is moving with these purposes, and remembering.
i look forward to reading the residency zine!