Author’s Note: This poem is a distillation of many years’ worth of visits to the countryside of Poland as a child. As someone removed from the toil that comes from a livelihood dependent on the land, this poem splits between the back-breaking work required of children and the frivolity we allowed ourselves in brief moments.…
Twisted Roots by A.G. Parker (Reconnecting Rainbows)
A.G. Parker is a queer disabled writer/performer/editor/disability consultant based in London who’s been published in Mslexia, The F-Word, Financial Times, Human/Kind Press, Arachne Press, and Aeva Magazine. They are a Best of the Net-nominated poet, a workshop facilitator, and the co-founder of Queer Stage Revolution. Parker is also the host of A. G. Parker’s Cabinet of Curiosities podcast and an editor for Angeprangert! Spoken Word, as well as the co-host of Rebel Riot Poetry. In 2022, they were crowned Disabled and Queer Artist of the Year with their comedic-political spoken word drag act, George the Dragon.
This interview focuses on their latest book, 2023’s Twisted Root, published by Reconnecting Rainbows (which was founded in 2017 as an initiative to promote LGBTQIA+ mental well-being by encouraging participation in the arts).…
These are the very first words I say to my sister, as we walk through airport security, breathing in fresh air, after a five hour flight in a metal bird. Unlike the easygoing, small airport with overenthusiastic staff we’re used to back in Ankara, Istanbul Airport is massive, crowded and strictly professional. No random airport employee coming to help us here. They don’t even want to tell us which bus to take to get to our dormitory near some place called Hirka-i-Serif in Fatih. The one personnel we do manage to stop, glares at us, muttering, yabanci, as he walks off.
We’re not used to the cold shoulder in Turkey. Still, after much effort, and a quick stop at a cafe at the Airport to attend a work meeting, we manage to flag a cab.…
Wandering the aisles late at night, picking up this or that, turning it over in consideration only to reject it and drift farther along, Greg finally realized it wasn’t candy or salty snacks that he wanted, but meaning. The dollar store didn’t stock that.
When I was eight, I developed a theory: if I were a boy, my mother would like me. I found, on a crumpled summer camp form under a school bus seat, a question about whether “your daughter” knew about menstruation or had menstruated. I’d never heard the term (I was in fourth grade but in 1966) so I asked the bus driver what it meant. He turned red and told me to ask my mother. I persisted; he refused to answer. My mother gasped, “You asked the bus driver?” She offered an account of which I understood little except “never speak of this with your brother.” Babies and blood seemed to be involved. At the dinner table, I brought up both, plus the new word, which I pronounced “menyoustration.”…
They start innocuous, as playful mispronunciations of my surname. I blink and the interactions have escalated to being pinned against a wall and pummelled repeatedly by Jon, Bret, and Joanne while the trio shout at me in unison, collectively demanding the answer to BUT WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM as I whimper the “nowhere important” I think they want to hear before realising, too late, that only informational specificity might spare me from a broken nose or bruised ribs.
Does anything good come in three? Really? That’s what we say. It’s a crowd. The Wise Men. The time periods: past, present, future. The fundamental qualities of the universe: time, space, matter.
But just as often, three’s a hindrance. An obstacle, subject to chance. Rock, paper, and scissors.…
I grew up in the countryside, on a farm with the nearest neighbor a quarter mile away. Every night the stars shone like unreachable precious jewels adorning eternity– and I felt very, very small and yet, strangely, also very, very old and more, oh, so much more than my daytime self drunk on the petty and the mundane.
Now I live on a quarter acre with neighbors on my left and neighbors on my right and neighbors across the street and a big city so near it cloaks even the light of stars at night and I am left only with the memory of eternity….
