a black queer place

will you come with me?

Photo by Alison Beshai

Queering is a verb committed to its waywardness.¹ An active state of imagining a world outside of external expectations. Determined to live both autonomously and deeply interconnected with all living things. We pull at the margins in order to find the line and rip it out, spinning two points into many windows of entry. To be queer is to witness the transformation of a caterpillar already embodied waiting for god's alchemy to occur. Our daily practice is to claim an unobstructed path through. Not for acceptance or in spite of, but in collaboration with the most tender and rigid truths about ourselves for ourselves. And as we lean into one another we are able to quilt a skin as if it is a language everyone can understand on a level no one has dared to go.

Is there such a place?

Will you come with me? 

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I spoke on a panel last month with The Tatter Textile Library called CRAFTING QUEER IDENTITY. They asked panelists “what is queering to you?” and I wrote Queering is a Verb. A woven essay featuring quotes, definitions, and a show & tell of some of my knitwear to explore the question how do we create a world safe for queer people? It has officially become an essay in a chapter of my book called The Gayest Crew. I envision this piece being a performance style reading during the release where the crowd is mad gay and my nipples are especially perky in my cute crop top :)

So be it! See to it!²

If you’re a knitter who identifies as a Black queer femme or non-binary person and would like to test knit The Gayest Crew, a simple customizable crewneck sweater please fill out this form. I’ll reach out with a test knitting application including photos and details when the pattern is ready.

I worked on this presentation during LANDSCAPES: a writing group for all genres facilitated by Cody Cook-Parrott where I’m hosting a monthly meet up for BIPOC writers. We meet twice a week to write, there are guest teachers and cave days for deep work. You can still join and access the recordings.

In every writing workshop I’ve ever attended, we’ve done a variety of list making exercises to get to the truth of what we do, why we do it, and how each revelation connects with another. I’m developing my own approach for an online course — an exercise called The Thread Dictionary to help writers identity the themes binding their creative ecosystems together.

The Audre Cowl. Audre means noble strength.

“…there was usually some part of me guaranteed to offend everybody’s comfortable prejudices of who I should be. That is how I learned that if I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”- Audre Lorde, Learning from the 60s, Sister Outsider (1984)

Talking about creative work is sometimes the most difficult aspect of sharing. The ideas feel so big, interests so varied. I have oversimplified and niched my craft for public consumption loosing that jiggle, that precious meat on the bones. And so I build a language to communicate the breadth of this world. Beginning with just one word — KNIT— I discover double meaning connecting a love of making with fiber to my inclination to heal, to mend, to unite.

How do we soften the corners of this harsh reality and create spaces where Black queer people are tenderly held?

We can begin with just one word.

We can take just one step toward the embodiment of its meaning.

We can dance across the margins of separation and stomp them out, spinning a catch all for the expansiveness of our vision.

Just one word, one place, one person can fuel a new earth.

A free gay warm hug of a thriving planet.

Refuse.

Gather.

Imagine.

1. “ Waywardness: the avid longing for a world not ruled by master, man or the police. The errant path taken by the leaderless swarm in search of a place better than here. The social poesis that sustains the dispossessed. Wayward: the unregulated movement of drifting and wandering; sojourns without a fixed destination, ambulatory possibility, interminable migrations, rush and flight, black locomotion; the everyday struggle to live free. The attempt to elude capture by never settling.” Except from Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman 

2. “So be it! See to it!” is a phrase from Octavia' Butler's journal archives held by The Huntington Library.