2024 faves

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Books, fiction

Solace Ames’ The Companion Contract (LA Doms #3)

Spectacular, deeply embodied romance. I hope Ames publishes again because this was so damn good.

Micaiah Johnson’s Those Beyond the Wall (Space Between Worlds #2)

Narratively smart and N.K. Jemisin-like in its craftiness. I hope people smarter than me discuss it.

Courtney Milan’s The Earl Who Isn’t (Wedgeford Trials #3)

At last, a romance where the solution is the dissolution of the peerage.

Rebecca Roanhorse’s Mirrored Heavens (Between Earth & Sky #3)

Gimme all the slice-of-life romance between Xiala and Serapio!! Also a Roanhorse romance when??

Valerie Valdes’ Where Peace is Lost

Forever sad this isn’t getting a sequel. One of the most interesting world-building, or rather pacifist-warrior building I’ve seen in awhile.

Jasmine Walls and Teo DuVall’s Brooms

A balm, an antidote of what we can do together when the government seeks to destroy us.

Books, nonfiction

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Nov & Dec 2024, fave media

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Books

Melissa Caruso’s Last Hour Between Worlds (Echo Archives #1)

Vanessa Angélica Villareal’s Magical/Realism

Solace Ames’ The Companion Contract

Kelley Sue DeConnick, Phil Jimenez, Gene Ha, and Nicola Scott’s Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons

Author: Heather Guerre

I tore through a significant chunk of her back catalog.

Misc

TV: Dimension 20’s Misfits and Magic S2

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poem: sailing to you

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Hey, a full moon poem at last again. Written 6.21.23. Musical vibes and inspo: Seinabo Sey’s HEAVY (ft. Seidato Sey), Cedar McCloud’s Numinous Tarot. Cross-posted to IG.

I am sailing to you.
I know it feels like
it’s been a long time, like
I’ve been out at sea and you
’ve been waiting faithfully at the shore.
I know you didn’t ask to be
a candle on the water, but
nevertheless your heart is a light
that calls me closer.
I didn’t ask you to wait for me
but I am grateful for you nevertheless,
the steadfast nature of your heart
that set itself upon me and decided
to never settle for anything less
than my heart, whole and tattered –
all of it yours to be shared.
I’ve traveled a long way to
get to know you dear star.
I do not know when my feet will reach your
shore, I do not know what your hand
in mine will feel like. There is a
continent’s worth of longing between us,
a lifetime of work to make our way here,
but I know the sea – I know what makes
the boat pitch, how to set my feet against the
floorboards, and when to let the water hold me.
I know the water will hold all this and more,
I write my love letters to you in her waves,
and I am sure they will reach you
just as the light of your longing reaches me.
I am sailing to you, don’t give up on me
not yet, just yet, I am sailing, sailing to you.

prose poem: for Darshan

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1975-2024. descansa en poder dear one. (cross-posted to IG).

Quotes/references:

  • “There’s nothing new / under the sun / but there are new suns” is an unpublished quote from Octavia E. Butler
  • There’re also oblique references/riffs to Butler’s “The destiny of Earthseed / is to take root among the stars,” Rumi’s “The wound is the place where the light enters you,” and Anzaldúa’s essay title “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”
  • There’s an abridged quote from Darshan: “Big love to all [the] divas, homies, misfits, radicals, lovers, dreamers, and children of this world on fire…”

The call is coming from inside of me, / where this world has broken my heart, and / where the warmth of other suns seeps in, and I / cannot stay. the water, and the land, and the seeds, and the frogs / are calling for me, and I / must go and leave this place. / do not fear, butterflies will rest upon my footprints, seeds will shake loose from my clothes and take root. / octavia said, “there’s nothing new under the sun / but there are new suns,” and we will grow beneath them. I / go ahead, back to the wellspring, the fountainhead of stars. / do not fear, I will be on the breeze, upon a guiding palm, I am going ahead, ways uncrossing.

The future is alight in my heart, a rainbow that refracts, recreates, reclaims: / we are a thousand drops of water, and / we will topple death machines, pull it out with the tide, and walk / upon the shore once more. even the guns / are dreaming of a better world. even the earth / is dreaming of no more strange fruits. only an abundance of life, / our planet a riot in outer space. we party so hard, our rhythm is a beacon to alien life: c’mon over, let us share.

every child is cared for by constellations, a family is a polycule of stars / our tongues run wild, our imaginations stampede out / into the horizon where borders have no meaning, and we travel as freely as the wind and the sea. / time is a currency, love is a current, / a wave bending time itself. our future, your past, my present.

the future is calling, and each of us is a seed, and I / am here dancing, ten toes down, radical divas, homies, dreamers, lovers, we are / here. I see it, and it is so beautiful.

we will make it so.