September 14, 2015 | Occasus | Issue 5 | Fiction

Shadowsucks&Posey_Honey&-Ripley-

The jutting hips; turnstepmoved; to the side;
nightcuriosity; getting away;
so busy as I closered;a ecru-
platter of scoffed-at body; comfortable.
that the kept that had to have so stand.
I Totalusing the room and timing!
a little shower of eyes from my Her
and She and her again. back to the door,
gasping and Sheshookshocked byme; I turn
eyes. forgottenfeminine Did hershe
her feltin. How could you she-leer me now?
the headsick playing in the feeled of sheets
I even closecared about more than FUCK.
sweet and normal and usual and out.
She stairs with would, getting herself ready.
"You here often?" Suzanne reveled at me, 
"were you me check out?" my herit answered.
She thought get my clothes off; just cared little.
half my away Because wasn't ready
She showpicked; spent time. I did it! Oh yeah!

the confer were saw the in and were sat
and a it and the very the early.
the door was crossed; I woken and necked her
a real suitsayer, the keeper, the part
When shedigit ondownoutin the blouse.
as youShe hand err and reached of longer
relative went she. Really! red! she was
a in. then up and in. I was stretched. I
liked the she! The rest was run and took The
woulds and readying. she happened to her.
theirlanguidlynaked I thinks later
of and readyly and coloredly saw it
aroundAndaboutly, for she had they
than I Now: that was had my toandto.
a wake much of a mind than an against
I were as what had to of would of.
uponandonandon they stand where them
are. reading and written was the in for.

Morning piqued meekly Over Hard silence/
drowsy;soft;high;sunlight searingthrobbed First.
Suzanne flexedsleeping taunttwitchtremblingly
suspended hung hovering slammed quiet:
her Dear cotton face paused an hour in a
minute. heatlips skirt unfamiliar
cheeks. footsteps rippled in HOLYsilver-
rememberence. Dana bolt-upright at
lushlipspulling; "I was painthinking you."
bedfoldedStill a minute or twomuch
sharpabove alarmbell Shesneering: "What."
"I everquestion Youcomfort came." "what."
She thoughtslappedlaughed Her gone fasterthanquick.
a moment airingsobbing she makeup.
intuition damned, My love My urgency
My conservative ass at the floor,
She had chiseled into unexpected cobalt–
blue patheticdroppeddisgust.

all packed in; stationery luggage; by.
ColbyFrances had not even note If
I have go. I looked Where I was. gett out!

Project Notes:

The idea of my project was to reconstruct what we consider to be literature by juxtaposing a formal, traditional and well-respected format with informal and unfamiliar language and sentence structure. The use of blank verse was meant to call to mind other literary works, particularly epics, that many people choose to read. Much of the writing we have in blank verse is written in Middle or Old English and is challenging, but we read it anyway. Whether we read it for class or some other sense of obligation, we choose to power through the difficulty because we recognize that the writing has some sort of value outside its ability to entertain us.  We recognize the value of the challenge when a book is deemed literature.

Recently, in one of my classes, we read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Thurston and some of my classmates complained that the language was too difficult and they had given up on the novel. The book is largely set in Florida in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and follows the lives of black people born just after the abolition of slavery. The book is written phonetically in the dialect the characters spoke in. I had a lot of difficulty understanding the decision to stop reading for many reasons. First of all, I had found the book incredibly moving and I had trouble setting it down, let alone quitting all together. Most importantly though, I couldn’t understand how this book was more difficult than some of the incredibly dense theory we had studied. I knew that they had struggled with our reading of french philosophy, but I also knew that they had done the reading anyway. After much contemplation, I came to the conclusion the only difference was the type of difficulty they had faced. Not that it was more difficult, but that Thurston’s difficult writing was not as important as that of academic theorists.

This was my moment of inspiration for this project. I chose to use queer literature (though most would only call it writing) because it was an issue much closer to me, but I felt that the same concept applied. People consistently make no effort to read queerness, but rather expect it to be explained to them in language that is familiar to them. By writing this assignment, I was hoping to revert that sense of entitlement. I wanted to tell the reader that queer language mattered, whether it was academic or not, even if (maybe especially when) it is difficult to understand.

LAURA MCKINSTRY has graduated from Western University with an undeclared Bachelor of Arts.