
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:
- Millers Landing
- Squeaky Beach
- Fairy Cove
- The Big Drift
- 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