Have you ever thrown a fist full of glitter in the air?

I have.
---------

(The above photos are from a performance project called "inside outside/outside inside.")

I Need You! Kickstarter launched for "Let Bloom" EP

Taken from my website:

Natti Vogel, my college friend & fantastic composer, and I launched a kickstarter site today to make an exquisite EP.

The songs are fun to listen to but lyrically & technically heavy. It will feature art by the dreamy illustrator Molly Crabapple (who has worked with Neil Gaiman & the Dresden Dolls) & a re-mix by notorious dance/balkan/gypsy DJ Joro Boro (who has spun with Bassnectar & Balkan Beat Box). Our goal is to get $3,000 in 33 days.

Natti & I first started working together 5 years ago, and we are finally asking for your support. Anything would be lovely, really, even a dollar.

There’s tons of fun perks- including a poem or a song written just for you! We already have 11 (oh look! Now it's 14!) backers, and we are super jazzed to have such sweet community.

If you wanted a fancy & important way to get involved with emerging artists, please check out our kickstarter now!

Apocalypse Vintage & Arizmendi

Dears,

I just wanted to show you a beautiful tear sheet of christopher carroll photos from my last shoot with Apocalypse Vintage.

and also mention that I'm reading poems friday night as part of a super talented crew at the cutest co-op bakery around, Arizmendi.

Life is exciting! Ah! I'll tell you all about it when I'm not exhausted.

N.Sol

A WEBSITE! REALLY!

NAJVASOL.WORDPRESS.COM

His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky

The Bus Stop House (my lovely co-op) took some christmas photos on some buses. And by that I mean, a combination of me, a broken tripod, and my camera took the photos.

We were pirates or (as the quote makes reference) perhaps highwaymen?

Here are the out-takes:

Najva Sol, Queer Iranian Artist

Booyah, first page of google search.

People keep telling me they haven't met a queer persian before. I know there's a few of us out there...

My artist talk last night was nuts. I appreciated the questions, don't get me wrong, but I feel so inadequate, so under-informed to be the one telling a room full of people about the feminist context of the Qu'ran as a text or hijab in Turkey vs. Iran vs. Egypt etc etc.

Feels nice though, every time my worlds intersect.

Last Minute Show Announcement:

Photo by Najva Sol

'UNVEILED - Women & Power In The Middle East'

'UNVEILED Women & Power In The Middle East'
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – November 5 , 2010 – Femina Potens presents 'UNVEILED Women & Power In The Middle East' visual art exhibit exploring the themes of identity, politics, violence, sexuality and feminism within eastern culture. Treasure and support three unbelievably talented artists who all have roots in the middle east and currently live in the west, as they powerfully address the intersection of power, politics and personal history through their unconditional respect and regard for feminist artwork within a complicated culture. Artists Cassell, Roxy Farhat, and Najva Sol address these prevalent and omnipotent issues through their work. Join us to pay tribute to the 'UNVEILED Women & Power In The Middle East' visual art exhibit Opening Reception and Artist Talk on November 5, 2010 at 7pm – 10pm. Enjoy delicious refreshments in the midst of acknowledging captivating and compelling stories from the artists themselves. Show runs November 5 through November 28, 2010.

Visual Art Exhibit + Events

November 5-28, 2010

Opening Reception Saturday, November 5th, 7-10pm

Femina Potens Art Gallery

2199 Market St @ Sanchez

San Francisco, CA 94110

Hours: Thurs-Sun, Noon-6:00pm

www.feminapotens.org

Support cutting edge artwork - Become a member today!

All workshops are free to FP Members!

Find us on Facebook and Twitter !

On Crying

It's those moments:

bare ass planted on cold porcelain thighs not tense mind drifting to rivers and niagara falls and
bubble gum bubble so big jaw sore you take one more breath and
caught glance across the room while that girl talks about the reading like a conspiracy of metaphors and it's funny and
stomach muscles tight and butt-cheeks doing the opposite of birth but then the car hits a curb you roll down the windows and
printer finally making smooth sounds the paper goes in and
under-water-longest contest and a forest fire in your tonsils, heading up and
glitter on the table forgot the lid and she speaks with her hands gestures, makes contact and

moments before explosion
before expelling

you need to cry, you walk all day in a haze of it- of all the almosts
anything can tip you over,
paper house on a gusty cliff
perhaps it'll be the tv show fight with the actors with too much makeup
or the whiskey ginger laughter that lasts too long till eyes tear anyway
or the self professed shaman from LA complimenting your purple aura
or the letter your mom sent with that yellow flower paper
or pictures of the oil spill or san quentin or the shelter or your text message about peter pan

any of these, even worse,
things like a brown feather or a rusty bike part
or a deep wrinkle

things I wont admit to

My eyeballs a red button
waiting to be pressed

let it out let it out let it out

and when you can't
like that orgasm
you spend hours searching for
post bike home drunk through the fog
and turn on your hitachi
pray your walls are thicker, just tonight
and buzz for 30 minutes before
catching head-droop and thinking pathetic

this stumbling towards but never finding
black underwear midnight contacts off
hand groping

I want this
I need this

all these almosts.
I carry almosts in my backpack and try to spin them into conversations
as though there is no statue of limitations for that which can be

in emergencies
I call you buy ben and jerry's chocolate chip cookie dough
wear grey sweatpants consume guilt and
all those movies that are like diuretics

we lean shoulders when we finally burst
I lick my tears they taste like relief

Daydreams

Photo is a portrait of Noemi Castro, who took part in my Secret Pen Pal Project- Results & more info coming soon!

---------------------
Lately,
I hand bind books about glitter
and talk fancy about the super powers of parsely.
I make to do lists
about the to do lists
I should make
and daydream about being
a poet rockstar.

Can you imagine PTV?
Poetry Television with a hot nerd babe host
who quotes lyrics and the romantics
in one sweet breath?

We would count the top ten of the week.
Voters could vote via cellphones--

the tech-savvy age of poetry.

Everyone will gossip about the poets
they want to bang the most
and the poets will be followed by paparazzi.
Poet x drinks 7 cups of coffee!
Poet z had sex with 3 people!
Poet r never left her house this week!

Quotes from the readings will be printed on posters
hawked so far and wide that men with faux leather jackets
will sell black-market versions on Canal Street.

Poems will be played over the speakers at starbucks.
People will buy tickets to poets weeks in advance.

Poets get paid while living.
Nobody ever lacks for the right words to say.

Nostalgia

My old description for myself- came upon it. Thought I'd share.

i will judge you based on your musical taste.

i will have an idea of you it's hard to live up to.

i like laughing so hard i cannot breathe.

i have a game named after me that consists of kissing as many people as possible in one night.

i like the naked female body. more than the male one.

i like clove cigarettes.

i am trying to breaking your heart.

i will do anything sober, that i would do drunk, including you.

i like stargazing.

i am in love with love and lousy poetry.

i bought records but i don't own a record player.

Tell me about the room you slept in last night:

I lie with my lover sitting on my breastbone.
Actually, she's two inches to my right. Inches like a Mason Dixon line.
Inches so far apart that cross-country texting seems closer.

Me, rigid in my thoughts. My un-enhanced eyes stare straight up at the ceiling- an out of focus darkness before a movie flickers on. There's too much focus on focus, and on laying aligned on your back.

There, with your arms by your side like the end of some yoga class, like the last repose inside a coffin. The symbols of the shapes we sleep in.

I turn to curl: that knee-crouch-blanket-hug of the fetus.

Every time we sleep-
birth or death.
Birth or death.

I sleep under you,
inside myself.

Poem and a Picture

Poem for the unfinished

cliff hang her
cliff hanger

third grade reading lesson

not everything ends
sometimes we just don't see
what happens next

I was so angry
young soft fingers curled
in balls

and now you curled
young soft ball
from my nipple
to knee

our story is mid-sentence
I am writing it
every day
another sequel
What if one day
I wake up and


Portrait of my sweet friend Amylin Loglisci who makes the pretty art you can see in her background and pronounces things cutely.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves

[Title from a Mary Oliver Poem]

I took this photo at the Blue Mosque in Turkey, on the tourist side- my muslim past beneath my western garb, short skirt under my chaador. A mess of hidden contradictions and nostalgia for rituals I fought so hard against

This week, on the one miracle warm day, I went outside my lovers house with my morning glass of water to soak up sun as I hydrate. Only I didn't bother wearing pants. Your ass is hanging out, she says. I feel fine, I say. What if it makes others uncomfortable? That's their problem, not mine. Why is it always others?

Why not?

Please stay behind this line. Please respect the distance between us. Please give me space. Please assert your boundaries. Please forget what I told you. Please touch me there.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for not listening.

How many times do you post beware signs with your mouth, scream do not enter signs , wheatpaste whisper caution, proceed slowly posters when all along your body is saying closer, closer, closer?

Often enough.

I cherish my moments, when my spoken language matches my body language. I tell her on the foggy ride from wine country, I miss her like a soft sweater on a chilly night.

She responds from somewhere on a bart train or the back of some hardware store: I miss you like a table misses a chair. I miss you like a cold hand misses a mitten. like a snake misses his molten skin, like an oak tree misses its tire swing.

24 hours too long till we touch.
The silence is naked and arching her back suggestively.

Queer Couture! Come see my art!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Alicia Gonzales: feminapotenspress@gmail.com

VISUAL ART EXHIBIT 'QUEER COUTURE'

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – August 7 , 2010 – Femina Potens has gathered an impressive collection of artists for your discerning tastes this August. We're excited to be able to present to you this sexy, fashion-forward, Queerest of Haute-Queer shows! All month long we bring to you a stunningly off-center multimedia art show that combines the fashionably distinguished photography, couture designs, and textile installations by artists Najva Sol, Molly Crabapple, Mev Luna, Jesse Trepper, Corey Gunter Brown & Cassidy Wright. Come Dress Your Inner Couture with Your Outer Queer amongst these outrageous designs and explore what queer identity and alternative fashion are really about with those that know what Taking it Off and Putting it On really mean.

Femina Potens is known for taking risks and exploring your options with up-and-coming designers of fashion-as-art & art-as-fashion! We welcome you to the Opening Reception & Artist Talk at 7pm on the evening of Saturday, August 7th, 2010. Partake in artistic insight, refreshments and libations during the opening reception and introduce yourself to the Artistic Underbelly of our Underworld. And of course, join us all month long as we bring you an array of enticing workshops, performances and events. Show runs through August 28, 2010.

'Queer Couture'

Visual Art Exhibit + Events

August 7-28, 2010

Opening Reception Saturday, August 7th, 7-10pm

Femina Potens Art Gallery

2199 Market St @ Sanchez

San Francisco, CA 94110

Hours: Thurs-Sun, Noon-6:00pm

415-864-1558

www.feminapotens.org

Support cutting edge artwork - Become a member today!

All workshops are free to FP Members!

Find us on Facebook and Twitter!

Youth and Beauty Brigade/California One

I figured out the secret of San Francisco.
This is no New York.
Ok- you're thinking "duh" but it's not just different. It's opposite.

In New York the heat is a clingy lover and everyone comes into the city to visit for the weekend.
It is the when, where, & why.

In SF you gotta track down sunshine one-night stands like it's last call at a queer party.
You gotta leave, every chance you get and spend time away from SF's very on 2nd ozone layer.

As you drive away, the city and the wet fog that hangs like dew on all it's flower-folk becomes just an impenetrable mist.
You go to Oakland, Marin, Santa Cruz, Portland, Salem, LA, Las Vegas, Arizona.
You just go.
You shed layers.
You smile some.
You dance in the grass.
You throw some glitter on it.
You take the california one up to fancy cheeses and lots of wine and greens from a farm and homemade pies and secret swimming holes.


When you return, all but the bottom of the bridge is covered in gray.
Now you see it,
now you don't.

(Note: many of these photos are from a party at a wonderful queer land project in Marin called Raven's Crossing.)

Pride & Poetry

Being in San Francisco for pride is akin to being at mecca for muslim holiday.

I have been keeping busy: overwhelmed by middle eastern queer dance parties with free hookahs (causing my 2 main cultural identities to merge for one night! woah!), nipples, rainbows, dancing in the streets, high fives, booty shorts, necking, bike rides, vodka redbull, wheatpasting prints from printmaking class, having a reception for my art show at the center, and fabulously quueer theatre.

What else could a little prince want?






And so, before I cuddle with my brand knew superdupersoft sheets, here is a poem to enrich your brain after all the drinking dulled yr cells.

What She Could Not Tell Him

I wanted
to know all the bones of your spine, all
the pores of your skin,
tendrils of body hair.
To let
all of my skin, my hands,
ankels, shoulders, breasts,
even my shadow,
be forever imprinted
with whatever of you
is forever unknown to me.
To cradle your sleep.

[Denise Levertov]

Other People's Words (Amy Hempel & Neil Gaiman)

I'm off in a place far far away (Turkey, Antalya, near the beach park, at an internet cafe) and have been devouring books in between my sumptious meals.

Before I can share with you my own adventures + the photos of such, here's some delectable bits of other people's stories to chew on:

[Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman]


"In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. And every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of heart you’ll never see again."

"Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that witches are often betrayed by their appetites; dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always; hearts can be well-hidden, and you can betray them with your tongue."

"Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas-abstract, invisible, gone once they've been spoken-and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created."

"There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts."

"You're a poem?' I repeated.

She chewed her lower lip. 'If you want. I am a poem, or I am a pattern, or a race of people whose whose world was swallowed by the sea.'

Isn't it hard to be three things at the same time?'

What's your name?'

Enn.'

So you are Enn,' she said. 'And you are a male. And you are a biped. Is it hard to be three things at the same time?"

___________________________________________________

[The Collected Stories by Amy Hempel]

" I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign her newborn.
Baby, drink milk.
Baby, play ball.
And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby come hug, fluent now in the language of grief."

"I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself"

Mama Buzz Cafe. April 25th, 2010.

A night of music that makes a person want to kiss the person next to them,
just to maybe hold on to something beautiful.

Kaylee Cole

Shenandoah Davis

Zoe Boekbinder

Albany Bulb

The magic of this city is partially in leaving it.
Taking a train to a girl with a car-
and traveling to a shoreline with concrete graffiti beaches & salty air.


You are so far from the urban yet encased in the radical.
You sit on a log & let the sun discover freckles on your face.
You drink gluten-free beer and dream of shanty towns.

Watch the fog roll in and hide all the bridges back to your home.

Queer-tisement

Check out #1 from my series, entitled NIKE:

I'm not the best at linocut (carving is HARD.) and I'm not the best artist ever, but I'm super into the non-gendered ass & commanding people in overtly sexual ways.

Gatorade & McDonalds still to come! Yay!

Love,

"And emptiness still leaves a space"

I am single and all my life is turning topsy-turvy. In response, I have taken many long walks, spent too much time on facebook, made-out, listened to Au Revoir Simone + Kim Boekbinder + Rue Manouche + The Bodice Rippers, and bought a $1 zine at Modern Times.


The brilliant blathering author of said zine had one highly quotable quote:

"I write because sometimes I really want to cry and the tears won't come out and writing may or may not change that but it is a hell of a lot more interesting than sitting on my bed staring at the ceiling."

[Patrick Dundon]