Human Rights

Water Cracking Air

Happy Trans Day of (Indi)Visibility.

I just saw an ad that read: Turn Your Expertise into Jerome. I was like, Who is Jerome? It actually said Income, but I’m dyslexic and the font was swashy.

The yellow-throated warbler is the happiest of all warblers, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

I put a bird in a box
so it wouldn’t be hurt
by the wind

I put myself in the wind
so I wouldn’t be hurt
by the box

—

Inspired by an Oklahoman who put a native sparrow in a box on a windy day because she thought the wind would harm the bird.

I dreamed Bill Knott’s mind had been transferred to millions of pieces of paper. They were lying all around me in a vast room, each one folded like an origami prayer boat meant for a memorial ceremony, but there was no water anywhere on Earth for them to float in.

(ツ)_/¯ I guarantee my reasons for not liking our former sheriff are very different from our local alt-right extremists’ reasons for not liking the former sheriff. ¯\_(ツ)

This public speaker was being interviewed, and he kept saying co-creation, but I heard it as procreation. Imagine my confusion when he said he wanted to co-create with his partner, his co-workers, his friends, his family, and his children.

I’m doing the floss this morning along with a little song I wrote called “Our Shitty Fucking Sheriff Resigned” because our county’s shitty fucking sheriff resigned suddenly and without explanation. I had several frustrating interactions with him when I was dealing with complex PTSD and bipolar issues in 2023. He was unhelpful, clueless, patronizing, and demeaning.

Our shitty fucking sheriff resigned. Our shitty fucking sheriff resigned. Sing it with me now.

Oh, and he resigned on International Bipolar Day. Even better. What a gift. How thoughtful of him. And all I got him in return was this victory dance.

Someone from my weaving group is getting rid of four styrofoam heads, so Styrofoam Heads keeps showing up in my inbox. It’s weird. I love it.

Our little town has gathered to watch a rattlesnake climb the wall of a neighbor’s house. It feels like very olden-times entertainment. The life partner is down there with everybody. I am here with myself confronting the snake that is automated AI results embedded in the Yahoo search that’s somehow made itself my preferred search engine.

Evening, a sun-drenched power line is a whip of water cracking the air.

I just misread breaking news as heartbreaking news, and that should be what all breaking news is called these days.

I’m rage-eating gummy bears is how I am.

I’m threatening my nasal cavity with a neti pot is how I am.

Based on my last couple of Facebook posts, people appear to like poetry thirty-five percent more than they like bacon.

I just misread a beacon of hope as a bacon of hope is how I am.

I ate bread in the shower is how I am.

These days, getting to the end of a roll of toilet paper is exciting. I’m like, achievement unlocked. I literally say that.

I had to buy bigger underwear is how I am.

As an Oklahoman, I want to apologize for Markwayne Mullin.

I am dyslexia strong.

Book title, free for the taking: Plastination.

It could deal with the literal plastination of the body or the figurative turning of a country into something as caustic and inorganic as plastic.

I just misread donor organ as donor orgasm is how I am.

Oklahoma is like one of those relationships you just keep finding yourself in again.

If I didn’t have a spine, I would feel like I was one with everything. It’s this skeleton that makes me feel like a soul clinging to bone, something separate from, not part of, something that will one day break.

You know that feeling when you suddenly have to poop right after you take a shower? That’s how Monday feels.

Alex LaMorie

Poems may be forgotten, but they shouldn’t start out as forgettable.

My history is a burning history in a burning world.

If you don’t care about Oklahoma after reading my work about Oklahoma, then I haven’t done my job as a poet, as an Oklahoman, or as a storyteller.

It’s so windy here in Toquerville that I feel like I’m in Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse. Wind like this makes me cry. It is whatever my mind is, as Gertrude Stein observes. I am as my land and air is, as my cracking and straining house is, as raw as I felt the moment this wind hit my back in a dream and stripped the veneer of reason from me in one clean and somehow profound motion. I sit in the dark shaking, my heart beating like a wild nestling’s.

Something good happened and I can’t talk about it so I’m just eating a bunch of gummy bears is how I am.

Whenever I have something I want to tell the life partner, he’s like, Is it about gender or poetry or trauma, and it almost always is about one or more of those things.

Systemic issues don’t have individual solutions and can’t be offloaded to individuals who must then bear the burden for the systemic issues. We can’t self-love our way out of abusive, harmful systems or the attitudes they encourage and reward.

Some folks drive like they have donor organs in their cars.

What are these words, even?

Me looking at my own writing.

I worked on the new manuscript more today. Loved it. Hated it. Loved it. Hated it. Loved it. Hated it. Loved it. Hated it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What do you do when you have two manuscripts with presses for their contests and open reading periods? You finish a third one and send it out, too. That’s what you do.

Every time someone attacks me, I just eat dark, leafy greens and grow stronger.

I’m placing a bowl heaped with disco balls in the light and leaning over them, my face cracked across a thousand mirrors, is how I am.

My neighbor is killing weeds with a blowtorch connected to a propane tank.

Flirting with the life partner by showing him my new spreadsheet is how I am.

I smell like barf for some reason is how I am.

I got immunoglobulins all over myself today doing my immunoglobulin infusion is how I am.

I fell into an agave twice after thinking Don’t lose your balance and fall into that agave is how I am.

Killer Tomato

Colton Moser, Mosa’ati Moa, Timothy Jones

I feel like y’all’s y’alls should be a thing, like, I’m talking about y’all and y’all’s y’alls.

I got on my smart scale for the first time in just over two months, and it was like A lot of the numbers here are totally different than they were the last time you were on the scale or something to that effect. And then a big message popped up that said IS THIS THE SAME PERSON WHO USUALLY USES THIS SCALE?

For the love of …. not smart, scale. Not a smart thing to say at all. FFS, yes it’s me. It’s my weight and my visceral fat number and my subcu-you fuck all the way off, scale. It’s mine mine mine all mine.

Nurul Amin Shah Alam

My condition is not your insult. So first, let’s stop using the psychiatric as a metaphor for the awful. Politicians, celebrities, those who have platform need to stop doing this and explain why they are not using mental illness as a way of putting someone down. — Susanne Paola Antonetta

We all need to stop doing this, and we all need to explain why we’ve stopped. — Dana Henry Martin

I feel like someone’s nailed tack strip to my brain is how I am.

The Imam of the Utah Islamic Center was targeted in a shooting Monday in Sandy, Utah. This country is swimming in the fetid waters of hatred. Hate speech turns into action turns into violence turns us into something other than, less than, human. I love Utah. What I hate is that this happened here.

Woke up. Read something sanist. Read something ableist. Read something racist. Read something islamaphobic. Read something transphobic. I’m not making a random list. This is what I read on Facebook when I woke up. I’m not talking about the news. I’m talking about what some folks here are writing in their posts and comments. My body has flipped inside out to protect itself. If you see a blobby many-organed thing coming at you, it’s me, Inside-Out Dana.

In my dream, someone keeps calling Dee Jay Tee a killer tomato, and I’m here for it.

I just read penpal as penile is how I am.

A floating piece of lint just scared me is how I am.

You died. I changed my hair.

Somehow, and I don’t know how, I ended up working out in jeans today is how I am.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kid Rock make me want to swear off milk, throw out my jeans, and adopt a sedentary lifestyle.

Feeling well-seen by certain folks in poetry means everything to me. I’d call you out by name, but I don’t want to make things weird.

You can’t block the dead on Facebook.

American robins, flushed from cottonwoods flanking the creek, have settled in my honey locust. They are singing. They don’t know how not to.

I had to get out all seven of my essential oil sniffers at once is how I am.

They were out of regular headaches, so I had to pick up a cluster ice-pick headache instead. Who knew this product was even on the market? 0/10. Do not recommend.

I am fucking feral rn is how I am.

‘The Devil’s Castle,’ by Susanne Paola Antonetta

Antonetta is a poet and writer whose work deals with psychiatry, madness, and science. The Devil’s Castle looks at German and American eugenics, including the T4 program in Nazi Germany that was the blueprint for concentration camps, within the larger framework of psychiatry — and from her perspective as someone with lived experience with bipolar and psychosis.

This is a hard book to read but one we can’t ignore, certainly not now, not when things are happening here that parallel things that happened in our own country’s history and in Germany shortly after the Nazis took power.

The next time you or someone you know decides to move into a sanist or ablieist stance in order to, ironically, show your support for other groups of marginalized and oppressed people,* think again. Please think again. Think about this history, this present, and the future we’re headed toward if we keep moving from one form of discrimination to another rather than examining and addressing all our biases.

Where we discriminate against one, we discriminate against all.

* One example I’ve seen is folks who support, or want to be seen as supporting, trans rights and who use sanist language to do so, that is, characterizing anyone who doesn’t support trans rights as mentally ill. That’s not going to cut it. That’s doing more harm. That’s a sign you’re performing what you’re saying, not feeling it or living it.

—

Images: 1. The Devil’s Castle standing perpendicular to my desk with a dried pomegranate, a horse sculpture, and an hourglass. 2. A page from the book. 3. A page from the book in which Antonetta discusses here first manic episode. 4. A photo of the book lying flat on my desk with the dried pomegranate, the horse sculpture, and the hourglass.

Fuck Sanism in the Writing Community

I just read one of the most sanist, ableist things I’ve ever seen on Facebook. I am awake and alone and it’s the middle of the night and why do I even try is all I can think. Why do I try when it makes no difference? When folks like me are detested, seen as less than human, when everyone piles on as soon as one person gives the green light to do so?

I don’t know what to say. I am crying and shaking. The person, a writer with whom I share almost 250 mutual friends, is upset because his friend is experiencing psychosis. Folks should read his post and his comments and the comments others have made. Then they should set their own biases aside and imagine someone talking about them that way.

I left my own response in the comments, which I’m sharing below. Fuck sanism. Fuck it. We deserve better, especially from our fellow writers. This writer is wrong. He’s doing immeasurable primary and secondary harm.

—

I’m an advocate for those with mental-health issues and have lived experience myself. I know you’re upset, but I encourage you to find your own center here and situate yourself within a framework of understanding and compassion.

I don’t always love NAMI, but they have support lines for loved ones who are dealing with situations like the one your friend, and by extension you, are going through. You can call them day or night. I encourage you to do so before you do secondary harm to others, like me, who are reading your words and feeling your disgust and hatred for folks like us.

If you wouldn’t say it about a cancer patient, don’t say it about someone experiencing psychosis. It’s dehumanizing and may take someone’s last hope and remaining dignity away. Your words are doing that for me right now. I’ve survived a lot. I’m in tears. You’re saying the part out loud that everyone thinks about us no matter who we are, what we do, what we accomplish, or how much we try to educate others through art and advocacy.

Utah State Mental Health Hospital

Here are some of the reasons a person could be committed to the state psychiatric hospital in Utah around the turn of the century: having epilepsy, financial embarrassment, disappointment, softening of the brain, death of a child, poverty, jealousy, unreciprocated love, studying prize fighting, ovarian trouble, reading novels, solar heat exposure, overwork, litigation, sedentary life, hypnotism, having girl trouble, being sheep herder, and smoking cigarettes.

Image: Utah State Mental Hospital in about 1920. From Utah Department of Health and Human Services.

Utah Mega-Shelter Update

This is major news: Utah’s House Majority Leader has filed a bill that would block plans for a homeless shelter campus in Salt Lake City’s Northpointe neighborhood, angry over what he suggested were broken promises to protect the Great Salt Lake.

On Monday, House Majority Leader Casey Snider, R-Paradise, filed House Bill 253. It would prohibit any permanent shelter over 300 people and shut down any efforts to develop land for what critics have blasted as a “mega-shelter.”

Black Box

I had an exciting thought about a poem at the tail end of a dream, and now I can’t go back to sleep. The fact that poems thrill me after three decades says a lot about poems. Perhaps it’s not just the Earth and sky that last forever, as the band Kansas asserts. It’s also the verse, the line.

I will never remember what happened to me two years ago today because I was overmedicated in the emergency room at Intermountain Health after being turned away when I went to the mental-health access center there for help the day before, but not before the access center kept me in a loud, brightly lit room for 24 hours with no bed, where I was left alone with two male nurses. What a terrifying thing for someone with a history of abuse at the hands of men to endure while in a state of trauma about her childhood abuse. Also, sleep deprivation and exposure to lights and noise, including music, day and night are more in keeping with prison torture tactics than with mental-health care, but sadly, the two are often one in the same. Shame on Intermountain for engaging in such practices.

To top it off, they failed to give me my thyroid-replacement medicine for hours, thereby exacerbating the state I was in by disrupting my endocrine system, which in turn negatively affected my HPA axis. That axis is key to emotional regulation. I don’t have a thyroid thanks to thyrotoxicosis and cancer, so my thyroid-replacement medication is critical. My TSH was already 11mIU/L when I got to the access center. It should have been less than 1mIU/L. The access center made my hypothyroid state even worse by not administering my medicine in a timely fashion.

The ER overmedicated me after I said Joseph Smith was delusional. What I actually said was, Sure. It’s fine when Joseph Smith does it, but not me. I wasn’t being hyperreligious. I was deconstructing religion, in that moment Mormonism, as well as the unwritten social rules that appear to govern when someone is seen as insane, divine, or both. Crazywise, as some call the latter. But not, largely, Southern Utahns, and certainly not ER workers at Intermountain.

That’s the last thing I remember. I blacked out for more than a day, this one: September 9, 2023. It’s a dark, rough-hewn box I can’t open, but I think Sharon Olds’ devil from her collection Satan Says might be inside it. By that, I mean my father.

Anti-Trans Is Anti-Humanity

Last fall, I wrote a letter to the editor of The Salt Lake Tribune in response to several Southern Utah politicians speaking at a meeting in which LGBTQ+ folks were repeatedly called evil and satanic. Members of the community left numerous disturbing comments in response to that letter. Seventy percent of the comments were deleted by The Tribune‘s staff because they were threatening or otherwise violated the publication’s comment guidelines. I saw some of those comments before they were deleted. I’ve been terrified ever since.

Similar comments were left on stories in other publications that discussed LGBTQ+ rights, including stories I was quoted in or otherwise participated in. Those comments were also deleted, but that doesn’t change the mindset of those in our community who have the feelings they have and who threaten, defame, harass, dehumanize, and discriminate against those in the LGBTQ+ community for no reason other than the fact that we are LGBTQ+.

These community members are taking their cues from the politicians who have turned their attention to the trans community because being anti-trans is a good political strategy. It gets people whipped up in ways that catalyze people to act, often without thinking, from shadowy places that all humans possess but that don’t need to govern our lives, determine our values, inform our beliefs, or control our behaviors.

What I mean is, fear, disgust, and loathing are all being conjured but not so we can explore those feelings and work through them to gain a better understanding of their origins. Instead, they’re being exploited, and words and actions that stem from these feelings are spreading like wildfire across parched land.

Who’s being destroyed? Not just trans folks. Not just the entire LGBTQ+ community. It’s everyone. Everyone who’s been discriminated against. Everyone who doesn’t have equality. Everyone who’s made gains and is now losing ground.

And everyone who’s harming others.

When our common ground is burned, our shared humanity singed beyond recognition, we all end up having nothing.

Anti-trans legislation will most likely be one of the top agenda items for conservative politicians in 2024. We’re already seeing a wave of anti-trans legislation and anti-trans language and attitudes across the United States, as well as here in Utah. Bills and emergency rules are getting more expansive, more disturbing, and more life-threatening.

At the same time, people are making statements that are more violent, caustic, and harmful than ever.

Earlier this month, a community member in St. George, Utah, stood up and told city officials that it’s not harassment and discrimination against LGBTQ+ folks which is causing us to die by suicide because we’re all mentally ill anyway. The implication is that we can be treated however by whomever because we’re broken, defective, and disposable.

Last month, a local politician who spoke at the meeting I mentioned above shared a cartoon on social media depicting the LGBTQ+ community as being a Trojan Horse full of pedophiles. That’s not about “protecting” children, which is the line these politicians use when they propose anti-trans legislation. It’s literally an elected official characterizing every person who’s LGBTQ+ as a pedophile.

At an event last week, a fellow volunteer approached me and said that “we” are supposed to be boycotting Bud Light because the company has a transgender spokesperson. We? We who? What we? That’s not a we that includes me. That’s not a we that will ever include me. And that’s not a space where I’m welcome or safe.

Where am I welcome or safe these days? Where are any LGBTQ+ folks welcome and safe? We’re running out of spaces that are inclusive.

I was recently told that the solution is for me to conform, adapt, tolerate, or otherwise learn to live compatibly with the very same people in this community who are attacking the LGBTQ+ community, who have attacked me, and who are making it impossible for LGBTQ+ folks to feel and be safe here. I don’t know what the solution is, but that’s not it.