This collection pulls and weaves the wool of the ideal and ‘real’ over (and under) critical aspects of identity; it is a small representation, a particular angle and nuance, on broader themes of culture, race, ethnicity, colour, ability, and queerness. It is my taste flight of fancy in the growth and inspiration that has come from ‘winging it’ as a queer artist of colour: each collage piece is a different flavour of ‘the dreamy and not so dreamy’.
Veronique Synnott | THE MAKING OF A RELATIONSHIP
half is more than none, sense is the line you draw.
you can’t see the horizon, even so i found a place. our promises are heat waves
but our bones vowed to step forward.
Kelly Norah Drukker | BASEMENT/CLEARING
I dream a basement
in a boarding house
and I must go
down into its splintered
silver light searching
for cargo and machinery
crouched in corners
everything flashing
Jeffrey Mackie | MACHINES
When I was younger
There were fewer machines
Later I sat in an office
Surrounded by wires and lights
They didn’t keep me alive
But somehow connected
Meredith Darling | PHOTO BOMBS FOR DUMB FAMILY
I dreamt we were a family
of Dilberts with Ziggy noses.
Mom was snapping
the sordid candid portrait—
time-lapse, time-delay.
Susan McMaster | A FAMILIAR DREAM NUDGES
heat into my hands,
befuddled old dog
pushing against my arm
with its beseeching nose
and eyes, till I succumb,
Vanessa McCuaig | EVERY NIGHT, IN OUR DREAMS
Every night, in our dreams, we make a space
for us, somewhere no one else can find.
This evening, we arrange a rendez-vous in Gizeh,
where time is an eternity—a sparkle that blinds,
slicing lips in prismatic laughter, we can forget
future anxieties far too many to mention.
Cara Nelissen | MORNING
I dreamed I dug my own grave and looked
at the clouds as they lowered my coffin.
You weren’t there. I know this, because
even when I was dead I wondered.
Unlike me, time moves on quickly.
Justin Timbol | 22:22
You rooted your life
in magic numbers and rabbit’s feet
instead of something concrete
like your mother’s religion
now your perception is fading
so you set the clocks to military time,
try for one more hour of catching angels:
charge your stones, the moon is full
but veiled in vapour
pull the stars closer to your lips