Seconds before becoming daisies

News, a sculpture edition, a lot about books and poems

Each time I go to write a newsletter I realize it’s been almost exactly a month since I last composed one. I promise myself I’ll write more frequently and then lose track of time again, but really, genuinely, it’s something I’m working on. I’ll make a confession here which is that I often reach informational capacity and arrive at a point (surely at least partially grief-induced) where words are simply washing over me, never to be remembered again. To then try to write something coherent is a recipe for feeling absolutely inadequate and brainless. But you know what? It’s GEMINI SEASON and my Mercury is in Gemini, so communication and information are very much aflame this month. This newsletter will be a bit scattered and image-heavy, so please bear with me.

Of late: I turned 37, I visited the Haverstraw Brick Museum, The New School established the country’s first faculty Gaza solidarity encampment, 700 people were reported killed over ten days in Sudan’s El Fasher, NYPD brutalized protestors at the Bay Ridge Nakba Day protest, UCLA’s encampment is back and stronger than ever, Jenin’s resistance successfully defended the refugee camp from IOF invasion, Spain, Ireland, and Norway officially recognized the Palestinian state, Biden continues to issue abhorrent denials of an ongoing genocide despite israel’s escalation of the invasion of Rafah, settlers have been continually attacking aid trucks to destroy their contents, and Al-Aqsa Hospital reached a crisis point of fuel shortage, saying seventeen hours ago that only “minutes” of fuel remained. Here, again, is where I especially feel an inadequacy of words: what is there for me to say that is not being critically discussed by genocide scholars, scrawled urgently across protest signs, drafted in legal documents, and shouted across oceans and borders by the people directly experiencing violence?

This family (connected with some close friends) is fundraising to escape Gaza; please support with anything you are able so that they may be able to rebuild their lives.

I learned a new word today through Fariha Roisin (whose recent newsletter dispatch “On Zionism” is a very worthwhile read): Epistemecide. From Fariha:

“It means ‘the killing, silencing, annihilation, or devaluing of a knowledge system’ - essentially it is the destruction of knowledge. The first documented Epistemecide was when the Muslims and Jews were expelled from Al Andalus and the Christians burned, eradicated, and destroyed libraries of 50,000 books or more throughout the Muslim world, destroying hundreds of years of mathematical invention and astrological and medical discovery. They destroyed our culture, our knowledge systems. Then they stole all our information and adapted it into their knowledge systems.

Never forget: whenever they burn books, they only have genocidal intentions.”

I have a new edition of three ceramic wall sculptures available at a choose your own price structure, and am adding some small odds and ends from past work as I try to organize and streamline my studio space. I’ll update here as new things are added (as I unpack storage boxes, more realistically).

I’m fortunate to have been asked to both nominate tattooers for and contribute some writing to Tattoo You: A New Generation of Artists by Phaidon. This is a beautiful, dense book that brings together a survey of innovative, boundary-pushing styles in tattooing. It’s no secret that the last decade has seen an explosion in never-before-seen approaches to tattoo art, and being able to profile artists whose work deserves to be archived— such as Clay Gibson, Nassim Dayoub, Adrianna Stabs, Skin Scammer, and Mars Hobrecker— was an honor. I’m proud to say that three Flower World artists are represented (Sema, our beloved Quiara Capellan, and the illustrious Nas Dynasty).

One joy of adult life is seeing friends publish books and getting to add them to your home library. Two I’ve been anticipating and lucky enough to hear about the process of are Trust & Safety by Laura Blackett and Yves Gleichman and The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger. I foresee Trust & Safety as my beach read and The Light Eaters as my bus read. All these authors are currently doing readings and signings, and I highly recommend catching one in your city if you can.

Above: “Revolutionary Letter” by Wendy Trevino

I also just finished Cruel Fiction by Wendy Trevino and CYBORG MEMOIRS 2012-2019 by M. Téllez, both of which I read in one sitting. Each author writes incisively and ferociously about the material and psychic violence of borders, anti-Blackness in the project of mestizaje, identity politics as a whole, and so much more.

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My friend Marcus Correa’s grandparents have long owned the Aztlan Theater in Denver, Colorado, a lesser-known bastion of Chicano culture whose founders represent a lifetime of Black and Brown solidarity organizing. The theater has been a landmark cultural and community space since the 1970s, but is in danger of closing down due to skyrocketing property taxes. Contribute to its preservation here.

Flyer from the Aztlan Theater, 1972.

Finally, here is a tattoo I’ve been working on and am one session away from finishing, just in time for peak swimming season. We outlined it three years ago and have been slowly chipping away at it, with some short sessions here and there and long breaks in between. We joked at the last appointment that this piece is sort of a “greatest hits compilation” of all the images I most love working with. From a technical perspective, it’s been gratifying to see how sharp the linework has stayed, even three years later with all single needle and tight 3 needle groupings. Email if you’d like to book a tattoo this summer.

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Currently reading: Locked in Atrocity Image: The Ruination of Muslim Space and Body in India and Kashmir by Shivangi Mariam Raj at the recommendation of the brilliant Zoé Samudzi.

*The subject line of this newsletter is from Noor Hindi’s evergreen poem:

Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying

BY NOOR HINDI

Colonizers write about flowers.

I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks

seconds before becoming daisies.

I want to be like those poets who care about the moon.

Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons.

It’s so beautiful, the moon.

They’re so beautiful, the flowers.

I pick flowers for my dead father when I’m sad.

He watches Al Jazeera all day.

I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan.

I know I’m American because when I walk into a room something dies.

Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound.

When I die, I promise to haunt you forever.

One day, I’ll write about the flowers like we own them.