I’ve always loved the suspended in-between of the time between Christmas and New Year’s. It feels like these days exist on a different plane, temporary untethered to capitalist routine, or at least a little less so. As usual, I want to take a moment to reflect on the year and it has certainly been one.

It was a year where unions and workers more broadly were tested and proved stronger than spineless institutions. It was a year of art and performance, with highlights including collaborations with Laura Ortman and Bertha Vanayshun. It was a year of discovering (and loving) Pittsburgh for the first time, restful trips heading north of the city including a summer weekend in Maine. It was a year of dog walks and trying to ride the ferry any chance I had. It was a year of clouds. Of a genocide of a genocide of a genocide. Of a new mayor.

Amidst the continued heartbreak and betrayal of Covid-denial, one of the highlights of the year has been seeing the ways a rich Covid-conscious performance ecosystem has blossomed. This summer, I co-organized the first Outer Listening party with my friends Mars, Ana, Dre, and Saar; and attended (on my birthday!) the first Positive Deviance event. Since then, I’ve attended, co-organized, and performed at masked parties at Come Forever, Abrons Arts Center, Judson Memorial Church, and last night at Recess fundraising for A.I.R. NYC—all of which have been joyful and transformative. I’m excited to continue co-creating these kinds of spaces—starting late January in Beacon (details below!).

Spotify Wrapped was not a thing for me this year, not only because I’ve unsubscribed (and you should too), but because most of the music I listened to was at home on my record player. I’ve finished cataloging my 12” collection (including all of the Barbra) and are moving on to 45s in 2026.

Some favorite releases from this year:

• Rosalia, LUX

• Bad Bunny, DeBí TiRAR MáS FOToS

• Lily Allen, West End Girl

• Saya Gray, SAYA

• Boys Go to Jupiter, Meet Me After Practice

• Bunny White, The Higher the Hair, the Closer to God

• Silvana Estrada, Vendrán Suaves Lluvias

• Tame Impala, Deadbeat

• Natalia Lafourcade, Cancionera

This year, some of my favorite reading experiences have been alongside others. From the second year of the Long Poem Support Group, to my Love in a Fucked Up World bookclub, to the People’s Saturday School Book Club. Some of my favorite books this year:

• Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

• Bryan Washington, Palaver

• A.R. Ammons, Tape Turn for the Year

• Joey Yearous-Algozin, A Feeling Called Heaven

Of course, the poems! I’m ever-grateful to Emily’s Google Docs (see my post about September Sonnets here), this year’s exquisites readings, workshops, and anthology, and continuing to be part of the board of No, Dear Magazine where I was proud to be on the team that published three first chapbooks in a series called Record/Record.

Going into 2026, I am taking lessons so vividly illustrated by Octavia in the Parable: that change is everything, that practice is everything, that preparedness is everything. Let us all practice being prepared for all the change that will continue to shape us this coming year.

Upcoming

The first party I’m DJing in 2026 is with Celebrate 845 in Beacon (and streamed!). Save the date!

and save the date for our upcoming exquisites workshops starting the first Thursday in February!

On this solstice, a few upcoming collaborations I want to share:

First, join us for the final! Long Poem Support Group on Monday, December 29th (7 pm EST on Discord) talking about Samuel Ace’s I want to start by saying (2024). I love this book-essay-poem so much and look forward to reflecting on two years of the Long Poem Support Group together.

Then, on New Year’s Eve Eve, join us at Recess for a fundraiser for A.I.R in conjunction with Anna RG’s Sick (Music) Center and Outer Listening! (I’ll be doing the opening set!)

Next year, join me and alexa dexa for For Keeps, a free quarterly virtual co-working space for artists to chat (and do!) archiving. RSVP for our first session in January by 12/31!

Finally, if you’ve made it far—and you’d like to receive a year-end postcard from me, I’d love to send you one! Send me your address here (or text me, DM me, whatever):

Hope to see you soon, and more soon,

d

A quick note to share some upcoming programs:

Next Saturday at Come Forever in Williamsburg, you are warmly invited to the second volume of Outer Listening, a mask-required lounge space at the intersection of words and sound. We’re thrilled to welcome Joey de Jesus and their band Materia. I’ll be playing the opening set before the band, and Mars / DJ Sapphic Faggot will close us out! Tickets are here (and at the door, with no one turned away).

This month’s Long Poem Support Group pick is one of my favorite poems, Thanksgiving by Ted Rees. Join us on Tuesday the 25th on Discord!

And, two recent goings-on:

• I had the great pleasure of judging the 2025 Banyan Review Poetry Prize. The winner, Michelle Bitting’s “The Clearing” was just announced along with the finalists and honorable mentions. Congrats to all!

• In December and January, I’ll be doing sound description for alexa dexa’s (year-long!) collaborative virtual bed opera “dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams,” organized through Rest Fest! Sessions are on Zoom on the first Saturday of the month, from 3-5 pm EST, tickets suggested $3-33 / NOTALOF.

  
  With care,

  d

This month, I’ve been a part of Emily Bark Brown’s1 “Sonnet September” Doc, writing new sonnets not-quite-everyday. Looking back, they’re a snapshot of my month, beginning with Labor Day weekend and its after (“forearms stack rented fences / on top of each other, big load / them onto big-wheeled trucks”). I cloud-watch; feel the fickle of rain and humidity; ride the ferry (of course) (so much sky / grids of windows / bend to make more empty balconies”) and the occasional bike (wind, handle-arms, pedal-legs / you feel like just limbs / which you don’t all the time”). I run errands (“early to the appointment for which i / call to request that the doctor be masked / told of course and then of course they are / not”), get my vaccines (“nothing like a fever you can schedule / shoot me twice, left deltoid”), and try to process yet another surge (“how do they know, she asks / the wastewater, mom, / it all ends up in the wastewater”)—which we are very much still in.2

Some of the sonnets this month have been ten lines, others fourteen. I don’t count syllables, but some of them are tidy rectangles. Throughout, I contemplate the form itself and have been thinking more broadly, in our current equinox era of tumult, of the voltas—the turns and bends and Butlerian3 changes in our lines and lives.4 How sharp are the angles of our turns or, put another way, how jarring or smooth is our transition from one song to the next? How can we build and embrace invitations for change, redirection, and contradiction even in the steadiness of form?

Upcoming

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This month, I was a part of the first events organized by Positive Deviance, a “community of cultural innovators who are living intentionally and designing a collective vision for the future” through “mask-positive experiences at the intersection of art, culture, and public health.” The first, on my birthday, featured CRASHprez, Ivy Sole, and Drew Empire. The second, I was the DJ/Emcee for a stellar lineup of singer-songwriters: Sunday Comes Afterwards, Saint Wilson, and Cleo Reed.

Most often, I am in a production role for an event—it’s what I do for my full-time (union) job and what I do beyond that in ever-present side projects1. I know how intricate this labor is, how it blurs the creative and logistical, and how it can be easily undervalued or unnoticed. I believe in the work (as much as I can under obscene capitalism) because I how much of a difference that labor can make the experience of artists, audience members, and collaborators. I know that at its best, it is radical care, it is safety, and it is sacred, even.

As such, when I find myself in the performer role, I notice that very production labor I am intimately familiar with. The organizers, producers, and staff of Positive Deviance and the venue Abrons Arts Center made me felt very well taken care of. This involved many of the things that seem obvious (but that we know are not necessarily standards, especially in the creative field)—knowledge of my artistic practice/POV, fair compensation for labor, clear and thorough communication (frankly one of the best onboarding/contracting processes I’ve seen), and day-of attention.

Beyond that, however, the team at Positive Deviance, reflected an understanding of our shared reality, specifically in which COVID is a continued threat to all and that most institutions (from the fascist Federal Government to liberal institutions in liberal cities) have, for the most part, gaslit and left behind workers who refuse to reject the facts.2 The choices of the organizers for these events specifically made it so that the performers and audience could gather around music in a way that did not require compromising safety, especially during an especially high summer surge.

What did this look like? Like most things, labor! It looked like the labor of securing PlusLife testing3 for all performers, it looked like air purification and Far-UVC, it looked like providing high-quality masks for those that need it, it looked like a high-quality Livestream option. As is often the case, it is worth emphasizing the combination here of intention (one needs to think about the necessity of having these elements at an event) and resources (one needs to have the funds or the connections to buy or borrow these elements)—both connected to labor!

I spell these things out in a gesture of praise and gratitude for spaces like Positive Deviance, but also to hopefully counter invisibilizing of this, or any kind of labor. Noting of course that for the folks attending and these choices were quite visible, quite noticed, and quite appreciated. Yes, realist, joyful spaces are still possible, yes, they take hard work and resources, and yes, there are still folks working together to do that hard work and obtain (and share!) those resources4.

Zooming out, the stakes are high: our most basic infrastructures (medical, transportation, food) are continuing to crumble under both old and recent inequities. Arts and artists are impacted by these conditions, atop which we face our own systemic challenges worsened by our current government and pandemic. We have normalized risking our safety and livelihood—even ability to make art. Most people are validating the eugenic, ableist, racist, genocidal agenda of capitalism with every day choices denying reality and what the present requires of all of us.

At the first Positive Deviance party, one of the organizers noted, looking into the sold-out masked crowd, that this felt like the future. The second party was titled “What Comes After?” and I’ve been thinking about that question both generally through this Substack about the post-, and specifically at this current moment of not just rising cases, but threats on all sides around reporting and vaccines5. There isn’t an after pandemic, but there is an after-delusion we can get to once we realize that layered and collective safety practices can be not what prevents us from being (and dancing!) together, but what makes it possible.

Upcoming

I’m thrilled to be opening at FACESTRAPPED, an Access-Centered Rave curated by Cuéntame at Judson Memorial Church this Thursday, September 5th:

Tickets + Access information here! See you there?