You’re going to want to read all day… — Today on Gay Magazine we’ve got two new stories for your reading pleasure. Up first, Carey Baraka’s essay on Jacaranda trees, their introduction into Kenya via British colonizers, their uneasy status as an invasive weed, and their incredible, undeniable beauty. Then, we have Jennifer Neal’s essay about how speculative fiction ranging from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ to the works of Octavia Butler align with Black feminism.

On formative, finite correspondences — Ann Marie was the first. I found her, if my memory is correct, in the parking lot of the Seven Springs Mountain Resort on a 4th of July weekend when I was seven or maybe eight years old. I was there with my family for an annual “Polka Fireworks” extravaganza…

I knew she was an alcoholic before I even knew the word — My mother was an alcoholic. I knew this from the time I was about eight years old, without anyone ever telling me. In fact, we avoided talking about it. And one thing my increasingly drunk mother did really early on was stop showing up. At first, I thought she had…

The Parent Rap — One of the best things about having a child is watching them acquire, over years, the basic skills that make us human, and realizing, in fact, how hard fought the battle of acquiring them actually is. Watching a human learn how to sit, then crawl, then stand, then walk, makes…

The Parent Rap — When I was a child, maybe 5 years old, I went to see the first movie I ever recall seeing in a theater. My grandmother, my mother’s mother, took me to see Annie, which came out in 1982. The occasion felt like well, an occasion. As I recall, I dressed…

Still dreaming of a place without boys. — I was a runt among girls. I wasn’t physically that small, but I was awkward and half blind, my shortcomings were so painfully obvious to even me that often, at sleepovers, I ended up hanging out in the kitchen with my friends’ parents rather than with the group of girls…

The Parent Rap — When my daughter Zelda turned one, I bought her a baby doll. I did this mostly because, after a solid 12 months of watching her fall to sleep each night in a barren, empty crib — sleep guidelines dictate that, for the safety of infants, they sleep with nothing: no…

The Parent Rap — I am not an easy going person. It’s just not “who I am,” and so, although I am mostly kind and fairly gentle, I am honest with myself about the kind of mother I have been in the three years since I had my daughter: I’m dedicated, I love her…

Failure to see what’s in and around me is the basic atmosphere of my adulthood. This morning in the car, me in the front driving, my daughter in her carseat in the back. I was taking her to school, which I do every single morning. I was thinking about coffee…