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We're happy to announce the comeback of our GLOW! Each month, the RADAR blog will feature a queer literary artist to engage our community. For April, we have jamal rashad. jamal rashad is a Black, a Queer, an optimist when careful, a massage therapist, and poet. He has received a fellowship from The Watering Hole Poetry. His work has been featured in Maji Press, Argot Magazine, "Blackgirldangerous.com", the "Moonsalt" chapbook , and Against Equality. Currently, Jamal is working as a fiction editor for African Voices Magazine, and an editor for the forthcoming Imagoes; a Queer Anthology, being published through Love, Pain & Poetry Publishing.
Single Room Occupancy
After Wanda Coleman The mold on my windowsill is conspiring against me to form a union with the fungi on my sheet thin mattress and my neighbor tells me with a full chest/ eyes swimming in water, that he is sending off to Africa for a bride and ask what i think is a fair price music is the slow drag of the mules at 6 am headed to pasture only giving pause for the widow, on the other side of me, whos still screaming about 1992 and the mice we both hear at dawn, living defiantly has brought me solitude in a room, in neutral, in a shack squat , in this gray struck place and slumped on this cushionless pastel chair where i cover the chipped paint of the walls with what art a week of sucks on unemployment can buy- my thighs have been without moisture for months and now the only comforts i have are in the thousands of trite little verses i manage to write monthly, hoping to strike gold there is a man in philadelphia who has hexed me and try as i might I can't seem to keep the weight off home is unmonitored doses of sleeping pills to silence the mariachi coming from two flights down i'm on the 5th floor and home is the light on the phone telling me that the sender, somewhere, has some good dirt to share sometimes i sleep in the same outfit twice hoping it will look just as good tmrw since my money is scarce and i can't always drop quarters at the laundromat sometimes i sleep for days and wake up missing things i can't remember appointments for stamps, case worker visits, inspection dates. sometimes I startle awake from my nap, feet slapping the floor looking in the mirror, after i've done a once over and counted where them bugs done bit. “...least I still got my eyes.” Untitled a boy drowns in the river, which is flooding. a boy maps out the change in currents. boys, throwing bones in a courtyard, hear a person on the news speak about the boy who has drowned. the boys, on a bus, read about the boy who has drowned. the boys, who march, raise money for the families of other boys who have been taken under tow. boys, with bloated skin, give lectures about the importance of reading moon charts. a boy threatens to drown. A boy cynicist, reads the skies and warns that there will be more drowning- silent, painful and slow. boys become professional lifeguards. near the gap, boys gather to make nice under trees, turn each other around and dance. some boys lay wreaths. a boy bathes himself in river water, finds the mouth and makes his bed.  Queridxs, Hoy vengo a decir adiós. Michelle Tea gave me the best job I’ve ever had. I remember meeting her downtown at a coffee shop that’s not there anymore, she came with Atti, her kid, on a stroller. That day we spoke for hours. I had a hard time swallowing the surprise that I was soon to be the director of the place where I had witnessed so much queer magic and brilliance. RADAR Productions, the home of queer literature in SF. The first place that ever paid me to read. The first reading series in San Francisco where I witnessed writing that pushed all the boundaries of craft and storytelling. Where I said, you can write like that? And do that? On stage!? A place where all misfits, all the weirdos found a home to experiment and witness the insane power of queer literature. A place where I found a home. It’s been a wild four years since then. We’ve done so much together. I am incredibly grateful for the community of artists who welcomed me from the beginning into this position. Thank you for believing in my vision for RADAR. For helping me craft that vision by showing up at our events, by giving me feedback, by filling up every room with your creativity and brilliance. You have made this possible. Every single one of you that has shared the RADAR stage has shaped its trajectory. Thank you. I will be leaving my position at the end of the fiscal year, in June. Imani Sims, our current managing director, will take on the executive and artistic director position. Imani is an incredible writer, community organizer and curator. During the last eight months that we’ve worked together I’ve seen her extraordinary passion and leadership in supporting queer writers. She’s a visionary, a problem-solver and an incredibly kind and honest human being. RADAR is in really great hands, y’all. Please continue to support this space, support Imani in her vision and support the queer writers that keep the magic of literature alive. To say that RADAR changed my life is an understatement. Me voy con el corazón lleno. Mil gracias y mucho amor. Juliana Delgado Lopera  Imani Sims is a curator, alchemist, and author. She believes in the healing power of ritual, performance art, and the power of words. She is the Curator of Kitchen Sessions, a running show series in collaboration with Central District Forum for Arts and Ideas, Bellevue Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, and Theater Off Jackson. Her goal is to continue to shift the social narrative by providing artists of color with resources that empower and display our stories in public spaces all over the nation. Her book (A)live Heart is available on Sibling Rivalry Press.
Please email resume and cover letter to info@radarproductions.org
Details Job Title: Managing Director Status: Part-Time 20-25 hours per week Classification: contractor Position overview RADAR Productions seeks an organized, detail-oriented Managing Director to join our team. The Director’s responsibilities include acting as a member of RADAR’s leadership, develop annual budgets, handle day-to-day financial and human resources operations, support the execution of programming and participate in organizational strategy. The managing director works closely with the executive director to implement RADAR’s four core programs and ensure the financial stability of the organization. Availability to work evenings is required. The ideal candidate has thorough understanding of QuickBooks and is fluent in all aspects and functions of bookkeeping. Passion for queer literature and creativity is a must. Principal Responsibilities Financial
Admin
Program
ABOUT RADAR Founded in 2003, RADAR Productions is one of the nation’s highest profile literary arts organizations focused on queer and trans people of color (QTPOC). Our presenting, commissioning and touring programs re-imagine what the literary arts can be, stimulate the production of work by QTPOC artists and explore the community-building role played by literature and the arts. Our programs build community and create a platform for innovative, emerging and mid-career queer and trans artists of color whose works challenge mainstream concepts of culture, race, gender, sexuality and class and authentically reflect the experiences of QTPOC. Throughout its 13-year history RADAR has employed the arts to build and amplify a queer community that creates innovative artistic interventions to culture, meaningful transformation for artists’ lives and life-changing and life-affirming access to the literary arts for our audiences. RADAR has always prioritized an inward-facing method: queer artists dialoguing with queer audiences in hopes of strengthening and affirming community, rather than queer artists representing a monolithic queer experience to straight audiences in hopes of being humanized. As such, RADAR prioritizes artistic process/practice, recognizing that the spirit of experimentation, creativity and “art first” has greater potential for cultural change than the expectation that queer artists consistently be expected to be representational first.
THESE SOFT THINGS
blissful arms womanly arms skinning them selves like apples i am open to interpretation so taste me lick me eat of my flesh and appropriate my suffering it was so long ago that i was walking streets made of conditional love but now i am too filled with fear to walk anywhere with my blissful legs, my bruised arms these soft things leave me happy being alone and untouched leaves me so happy
w e r q for lunch i eat hot cheetos & read most days i am too poor & sleep deprived to pack a lunch i put on my best wig paint my eyes crimson i wash my hands in the employee bathroom like ritual still fingers stained red i am the only register o p e n xx always a servile thing wore my best wig for you today, ‘suh didn’t you notice do you like it wore it just for you xx i’m not allowed to touch their hands when they pay me no, this is not written in the handbook call it an unwritten rule people like me just know these things even on my best behavior i be too corner store to touch i pick money off of the counter i am not allowed to make eye contact with them see we don’t even use the same bathroom xx i bet they don’t think i know anything that i’ve never read a book in my life just sell them programmed with answers a servile thing o p e n xx i play girl for 8 hours i play blk for 24 xx this barely pays for my rent but we free now in the union guess that means something to y’all xx i don’t sleep to dream i’ll play dead if you want me to a servile thing even in my dreams i am not blk enough even in my dreams i am anything but
AFTER WE SHOOT A BREAKDOWN
IN THE MOVIE OF MY LIFE The director pulls me aside and says they are thinking of rewriting the script. Our original plan was to stay as true to real life as possible but we think it’s just missing something. I am exhausted. We have just filmed the part where I pull out my hair and punch myself in the face as my mother watches. Like what? I ask. It’s just. We know you’re telling the truth when you say this stuff happened. But we don’t know if the audience will be convinced. We think we need to add something to the story to make you behaving like this believable. I touch at my bruised peach of a cheek self-consciously as they continue. No one runs out into the street just because. Or cuts off all their friends out of boredom. There’s got to be a reason. We need to write a scene in that explains this whole thing. It’s not enough to say that your head works like that. It’s not realistic to say that you’d ruin everything around you just because you can.
f.lux
get pretty lonely before I pull skin over my eyes one parent loves me even if I’m lying regret text sent in my little window just know you are so my person right now
BEG
a man barges through the screen to hook his fingers in my mouth. i’m a fish market. i’m flattening into the bed. rolled out. cooking off the rotten bits. his boot heel’s a fork in my tongue. i’m dimpled. gilled. asking for a god who wears bones slick with pity. asking to be bent, taken by firelight. smelt from iron. pierced through with spokes. a wheel for a head. a garage for a mother. i want to ask the ones who crave a soft thing to tie up if they think of ham, wake up covered in glaze and lick their own shoulders, scald their tongues on their cunts. i’m a skillet overflowing sticky til the bourbon burns off. i’m the menace. i’m the menace. i’m the mother of stink. question: how does a ruined girl yield the way a knight yields? whose pipeline am i blowing up, exactly? if you ask a man to drink from your faucet, do you become him? i pull my man atop me and ask to be buried in brick but beggars can’t be shepherds. he’s a reverse cowboy. a slinging zookeeper. i’m the beast rattling the cage, asking for slaughter.
Queered Ghazal
When the man on the subway refers to me as It It becomes a tunnel without sound, a dark pit. I fall in rein back my pride, chew a bridle of spit-- teeth bite hard to spurn my wild tongue’s fits. Friend says I must be doing something right if no tits, a buzzcut and no prick bring me hate speech in transit. I chuckle I shrug I have a seat, I sit. & dream up a palace where I’m King I fit. I’ve been craving wanting love, wholeness, but then, I feel it-- a wild orchard of peaches blooming from one pit.
lament
I don’t have a name to call you I walk up and down the dark avenues and the air is thick with growing things the last flail of bloom before the spring mellows to summer and my eyes grow used to the violence of green |
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