My post office box has been a source of joy over the last few weeks, due to what kinds of reading material I’ve received, and because this last week, I was musing on how I used to be the person that bought lots of cool zines but didn’t think I’d ever have work appear in them! Two copies of Concrete Queers – the ‘horror’ and ‘milestones’ issues. CQ accepted two poems of mine.

I’d like to think that my cat wants to check out my poems in my contrib copies of @concretequeers zines, and @aunhien’s zine which came in yesterday’s mail. Am seriously excited every time a poem of mine is accepted into a CQ issue because LOOK AT THE COVERS! <3

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‘Bra’ is a musing on the unfairness of typically straight males wanting women to be fat in certain places (that’s what boobs are! fat!) with some of the Doctor Who ‘Adipose’ race in mind re. being made of fat molecules. Fitting for the ‘horror’ issue, albeit oddly?

For ‘milestones’, I submitted a poem (which I read far too nervously at early Feb Girls on Key event as sacrificial poet) called ‘stationary objects’ about not knowing how to celebrate a major, micro-event – cessation of self-injury. Content warning: it’s an autobiographical poem.

When G mailed out a copy of a perzine entitled ‘OH WELL’, it felt like cheating to choose it as my zine of the week because it’s short but sometimes media that can be consumed fairly quickly leaves a lasting impression. My designated book for Mar 2018 Froth felt the same way, so naturally I’ve taken a photo of two amazing bad-arse Asian women’s creative works for this review post, and am mourning the death of my ‘Cucumber Hippy Berliner’ by 8 Wired Brewing, which tried to break my father’s toe, and spumed froth all over the place. I didn’t even bother trying to drink what was left in the can (yeah, am totally annoyed, but can at least afford to replace it, which makes a nice change!).

Mood for this week’s zine review post: fierce, creative Asian ladies! You can read more at http://eatdrinkstagger.com/gigi-works-their-arse-off/ and also in next month’s @frothbeermag where I drank @andersonvalleybrewing G&T gose on ice in the name of research – latter should be about in first week of March.

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In the spirit of the aforementioned short, sharp, fierce, creative ladies, this post is a short one too. I’ve been doing a tad too much lately – nothing major, just a little bit too much out of my comfort zone (good), but the kind that means I need more rest to recover, or to just stay home and write. I totally snuck in another poetry submission – am working on a sequence that I’m super-excited about because it’s personal, but hopefully funny and a tribute to fellow mental illness sufferers that can and do make wry observations about treatment and management in this ol’ Western neoliberal model that probs has Lenin melting further, chortle. He’s supposedly melting. Anyway, go contemplate that.

P.S. Oh! Gigi is not in ref to the lovely Viet-Aus writer Giselle Nguyen, but in reference to this video because my mind is twisted and I was thinking about how my head is still trying to make me feel guilty for not reading enough this week, and joke-chant to myself “Gigi works his ass off!”. I also wanted to acknowledge that my arse’s gender denomination is unknown but I don’t think it minds if I use ‘they’ pronouns <3 I’m so so sorry I keep boring my friends with this video!