Thank you so much for supporting this project. We’re so immensely grateful to everyone for helping us along the way.

 

As a thank you, we wanted to offer you exclusive creative work from each of us as a bonus sign of our gratitude.

 

March: 

Michael has shared a short fiction story they wrote that has not been published anywhere. Except here, for you.

In the 2nd half of 2019, I was being plagued by nightmares of my ex following me, tracking me down, meddling in my life, and generally stalking me. It was not a large leap from what I had experienced in real life. I was waking up panicked, fearful, and angry 3 of 4 nights a week for a solid 4 months. The dreams only eased when I wrote this short story. I wrote it in the garden of my partner’s Aunt. It all came to me in a flurry and when I was done, I felt a lot better. They still plague me from time to time. Now they’re cropping up as I start to unpack all of this. But not as frequently, thank goodness. 

Anyway, that’s the backstory to this piece, which I trust you’ll find as hopeful and uplifting as I do.  

Read: ‘Pruning’ by Michael Earp

 

April: 

Teague has shared a collection of exclusive photos that will be accessible only to those who have donated. They are offered as a gift and yours to use in any way you see fit as if you had purchased the copyright to them. Please add photo credit whenever you do. (c) Teague Leigh

In March, 2022, Teague made a dedicated camping trip to Wilsons Promontory National Park, the southernmost tip of mainland Australia. The specific purpose of this trip was to capture photos which he could gift as thanks to supporters of the GoFundMe campaign.

I wanted to have images that related to each other, told a story, and gave a taste of what I will be trying to capture on #MichaelsWalk as we travel around the U.S.
Wilsons Prom is one of my favourite places to go comping and take photos. The diversity of terrain in such a relatively small place is breathtaking. This kind of getting in touch with nature is a spiritual experience for me. On this trip, I visited five locations. Please enjoy the best photo from each location, chosen just for you. 

 

  • Images link to hi-res files hosted on Michael’s google drive, available for download.

Locations:

  1. Millers Landing
  2. Squeaky Beach
  3. Fairy Cove
  4. The Big Drift
  5. Whisky Bay

Follow Teague on Flickr

 

May: 

Bayley shares the text of a ‘b-side’, from her upcoming poetry project, Ulysses. This piece was inspired by Bayley meeting a very special young creature recently who opened her eyes to how love and childhood are similarly precious concepts, requiring more care and respect than we tend to afford them. Ulysses sees Bayley collaborating with music producer Matt Katz to create spoken word sonic scenes that explore her journey so far with gender, spirituality, family, sex and relationship to nature. Follow her on social media for releases to come.

LOVE OF A CHILD

 

I held the little love in my trembling arms, within the embrace of my panicking heart

An offering from her clairvoyant mother

A peace passed on to a wombless woman like me

No judgement, pure trust

When you’re queer in an ethnic family, you don’t get to touch the baby

You are contagious, you are dangerous, you are a bad influence

Our reputations we did not deserve or earn precede us

Queerness is purposely co-reputed with hypersexuality, pedophilia, sexual violence

By those priests and puritans who are the true addicts of these perversions

But this all seeing woman and her maiden and crone companions could see

With eyes, hearts, wombs, three

And delicately, assuredly, gifted temporarily a being truly precious, to me

 

Little love looked live into my eyes like an electric chaotic wire beaming

Discernment, intrigue, faith, wonder

Wild in the beauty of just being there

Wild is the love of a child, unruly, unbidden, truly present

I know I’d looked at my own mother this way, she told me so herself

I broke somewhere deep inside, I healed somewhere deeper

To see it for myself

To scream in my spirit “look at what I gave you and look at what you’ve done with it”

Queer children have everything to offer

We are gifts of incredible adventure, expression, invention

Gifts too often cast aside, destroyed, embittered, considered too complicated to delight in

Shame on every ungrateful parent

And the becoming womb that is my heart re-shapen will henceforth be changed

My second puberty will make me so fertile, so fecund

That any queer child could return to it for safekeeping

For their own safe gestation, regeneration

I will mother you my love

 

When you fall in love with someone, when you became infatuated, when you lust

When you ensnare them in your self, your desires, your intentions, expectations

It’s like making a whole entity its own

The love that is between you, the relationship, is like a baby

Everything exciting and wondrous to begin with, but not long before it tires and stresses and represents responsibility you may not be ready for

To love is to make and raise and rear a child

And at some point the love needs to become independent, needs to operate without the same coddling it needed at commencement

It may continue to live with you in a blissful, happy, fair exchange

Or it may find it best to go out on its own to find new people to be between

You may decide you make better parents to that love, apart, at any time

If you understand love this way you can imagine why over time

The love you have, or had, is like a child you keep calling and checking in on

Wanting to have over for dinner, want to spend time with and stay attached to

But the love turns on you and says

“Look stop calling me, let me be, I need to go do my own thing and you need to find something else to fill your empty nest

I’m on my own migration now

And hey even if you and my dad find each other again you kinda have to build something new

I don’t want to be involved, I’ve got my own stuff going on

There’s not much of an update mum, there’s no news, but I’m OK, I’m doing alright, I’m taking care of myself

I miss you too but it’s time to grow up

And if I don’t check in every week, don’t treat me like I ran over your cat

There’s a time and a place for everything

Days are long gone where you needed to chew my food for me and vomit it into my mouth

You made your choice

You pecked at me, rejected me, thrust your foot between my shoulder blades and sent me on my way

There’s no mirth in squawking and begging me”

You softly hang up

Knowing it would mar as much if the child could not cope without your every moment

We need it to be healthy, there can be no dependency in any direction

You can’t keep love, can’t continue doing their dirty laundry, can’t pick up their prescriptions

When the love refuses to leave you alone, it must see you as a person beyond a parent

And you never want to be on the other end of that call

“The betrayal you feel is your own, it’s on you

You made an unstable home for me

You made an unsafe space together

You fed me angst, cloying attachment, resentment

No-one’s saying you’re malicious or meant any harm

There’s nothing wrong with knowing and pursuing what you need

Changing decisions and commitments is the very nature of the love experience

I’ll always be special, I’ll always be your kid

But don’t bind me in your grief

Don’t hang your shit on me

Let me fly

Let me be free

I love you”

You softly hang up

You smile and you weep, what a gift for your child to trust you so deeply as to say they don’t need you any longer, but know you’ll be there for one another if ever the time is right again

 

また会うまで愛子

 

 

support Bayley’s poetry:

instagram: @turnerwrote

bandcamp: https://turnerx.bandcamp.com/

soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/turnerwrote

 

and keep an eye out for her first published collection ‘ulysses’ coming later this year