Ladies Who Lurch

A Wing and a Prayer From Oprah

by Emmy and Ellie Anglin, written at Mother's Pizza in April 2018

O, Oprah, give us wings...

I'm praying that you'll give me my first public forum

but first forgive my sinful decorum

give me a wing - mild, BBQ or plain

and if you don't lift me up, I'll go insane

I know I'm acting like a common fan

but i want chicken so small it'll fit in my hand

If you won't make me famous at least give me wings

but of the two we prefer the first of these things

the first, figurative wings, will set our careers in flight.

the second, finely sauced, will at least set us up for the night

Between these two desires we are torn

but if you give us our own show, we'll give you our first born

Time Moves Both Ways

Time passed hard
And the task was the hardest thing she'd ever do
But she forgot
The moment she saw you

So it would seem to be true
When cruel birth debases, we forget
When cruel death debases
We believe it erases all the rest
that precedes

But stand brave, life-liver
Bleeding out your days
In the river of time
Stand brave
Time moves both ways

In the nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating
Joy of life
The nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating
Joy of life

The moment of your greatest joy sustains
Not axe nor hammer
Tumor, tremor
Can take it away, and it remains
It remains

And it pains me to say, I was wrong
Love is not a symptom of time
Time is just a symptom of love

- Time, As a Symptom of Love by Joanna Newsom

White Tears review

White Tears

By Hari Kunzru

Published in The Kitchener Citizen, October 2018

White Tears is the latest offering from author Hari Kunzru, who specializes
in “translit” -- a literary genre that seeks to collapse space and time while
maintaining narrative traction in the reader’s mind. Kunzru accomplishes
this so masterfully in White Tears that you will gladly surrender to his
ever-shifting reality.

Seth, our protagonist, is average in every way and therefore serves as a blank

screen on which other characters are crisply projected. The achingly cool (and

ultra rich) Carter Wallace is the focus of his attention, and takes him on the

coat-tail ride of his life to New York, where they become music producers.

Through Carter, we enter a world of record collectors: mostly white men who

are alienated by the present, and obsessively collect the past. The rarest and

most prized treasures are early blues records made by black slaves, ex-slaves

or descendants of slaves. It is not enough for Carter to listen to the music -- he

wants to own it, by any means necessary. He becomes increasingly unhinged

as he hunts down one record, the extremely rare and groundbreaking Graveyard

Blues by mythologized figure Charlie Shaw -- one we are not sure even exists.

When he at last gets his hands on it, the universe of the novel is flipped upside

down. Reality disintegrates and space, time, and sanity become fluid and shifting.

The book gains dizzying momentum, and you’ll find yourself devouring pages to

find what happens next. Kunzru shows how seemingly innocent acts of appropriation

are echoes of the total forms of violence they descend from. The collector’s desire to

own black music springs from the same well that fueled slavery. In the world of White

Tears, however, the would-be possessors come to be possessed themselves by the

ghosts of retribution. Dark secrets materialise, and the final pages sew everything

together neatly like an intricate quilt, as interlocking and systematic as oppression itself.

White Tears is an entrancing, fast-paced mystery full of twists and turns that feel at once revelatory and inevitable. But it is so much more than a great read -- it is a metaphysical examination of white privilege, cultural appropriation, and selfhood that in the end will leave you with the satisfying sense that justice has been served.

Amy Winehouse painting

Sometimes Late At Night

"Sometimes Late at Night" by Agile Like This. Lyrics written and performed by Caroline Wesley, Music by Dan Schickerowsky, Video by Ellie Anglin.

Trixie Mattel

I try to branch out from drag art, but it pulls me back. Here is a new painting of Trixie Mattel, star of RuPaul's Drag Race, RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 3, and The Trixie and Katya show.
This is on paper 11" x 14" paper in watercolour, india ink and with added sequins.

Librarianism

Working on a new zine/comic about working at the Library. Here is the cover.