Editor’s Letter from the Sun
Welcome to the Sun. True to Leo season – we are keeping this edition about you. This collection of poetry, stories, essays, love letters, and art captures the feeling of self-indulgent opulence we hope to embody every summer for the rest of eternity. I was originally going to write about Poetry is Not a Luxury by Audre Lorde in this editor's letter, because the message of her essay aligns perfectly with the mission of this tribune. But it’s noon, it’s hot, and my desk is too far away from the only window in my tiny apartment to get any sort of relief.
In the spirit of self, we’re doing what we want – and letting Sun shine on its own. Throughout Sun, we’ve added our favorite quotes from Poetry is Not a Luxury. In lieu of a lengthy analysis or editor’s letter, we urge you to read Lorde’s essay.
The Sun is here.
xoxo,
Katie & Claude, your Opal editors
Sassy left one of her dresses in my car again.
Always happens when she's had too many vodka red bulls.
Carl cut her off,
Told the bartenders she isn't to be served alcohol
Until she's done hosting the show.
Sassy stumbles and slurs her words on stage.
When I notice make-up smudges on my upholstery,
Sequins in the passenger seat, who else could it be?
I take her dress, her wigs and gaudy fake jewelry
From the backseat, and slip it into the house,
Lie it all on the bed like a piece of trade I've picked up from the bar.
I take a few drinks from leftover bottled water
To flush out the shots and well booze.
I'm not as drunk as Sassy tonight.
I hold up the cotton polyester blend
With its yellow ruffled sleeves that are reminiscent of arm floats.
The jewelry and sandy blond wig is a tangled mess.
I pull down the zipper pushing one leg in and then the other.
Sassy can't hurt me.
There are things worse than her out here in the sticks.
The cotton polyester is soft against my butt and back.
I hook the yellow ruffled arm floats over round shoulders,
Laughing at the look of this dress on me.
A veil of silk shades, patches of chest hair.
I gently place the ratty wig on my head,
Adjusting it accordingly over my ears.
I finger-comb it out a bit. Yeah, that's it.
All I need now are the heels
I saw her carrying in her hand
As she stumbled toward the door of the trailer
She shares with her mother and brothers
Who don't approve of her kind of entertainment.
I pull out my phone to take a few shots,
Posing in poses to post on Facebook
And tag to mutual friends
Where Sassy will surely see them
Once the hangover has worn off.
Starter Kit Drag Queen
by Shane Allison
he/him
Tarot Notes from the Sun
& A Reading
by Cara Morgan
they/them
Tarot Notes from the Sun
You did it. You made it thru the storm of The Tower. Found hope and let it guide you: the light of The Star, The Moon. The day is new, clear. Feel the sun on your face. So warm and pleasant you can almost taste it. It’s like biscuits and honey, this feeling. This you, right now, is your most powerful iteration. Out of every possible version of yourself, this is the one to see the other side. You know who you are now. What moves you, what doesn’t. What feeds the fires of your soul, that insatiable flame. You have suffered enough. Run the bath. Light a candle. Uncork that bottle you’ve been saving for a special occasion. The day is today. The occasion is you are here and alive and ready to enjoy it.
A Reading
1/I’ve been ready to feel better for a while.
Up in my head, in the lonely tower. In solitude.
Reading books, studying myself. It never felt like enough.
Trying to heal is willing a wound to close instead of
trusting the process, but the body knows what to do.
I pull cards, not yet knowing what they mean.
The Tower. The Devil. Death.
Searching for meaning and finding none.
Caught in the current of a dizzy life, unable to listen.
Falling, falling, falling.
2/I grow herbs in a greenhouse.
My body greets me in the morning and I embrace myself.
Forced at first, this self love.
The cards change.
Ten of Cups. Eight of Wands.
Where am I going?
Eight of Wands.
Where do I go?
Eight of Wands.
Listening but not really.
3/I’ve accepted dried paint on my clothes.
I cover myself in colors.
Now I pull The Star. The World.
I can see it now.
So vivid. The World.
Untitled
by Leslie Veliz
she/her
A black hole swallowed me and transported me to another dimension
The beings there asked me to describe love
Love, I told them, is you walking me down my favorite street
It’s how you indulged my dreams while I let you go to pursue yours
It's lying in a bed we would never fuck in 1000 miles away from home
It's reminiscing on the phone knowing damn well we would always be apart
to her
Anonymous
To her-
I cannot save you. I cannot stop what happens. I know that you cry yourself to sleep each night. The blinds open just enough to watch out your window as you wait and cling to the hope that someone is coming. Someone is sneaking through the darkness of the night with you in their mind. They’ll jump on the roof from the top of the fence and creep over to your window, relieved you left it open for them. An escape you planned and practiced in your mind again and again but never took.
You don’t know it yet but that house will burn down. You don’t know it yet but that car will crash. You don’t know it yet but I took the name of that person we were waiting for.
Sometimes it feels like you’re still stuck there. I wish I could walk through the dark of the night for you, I could do it just like we planned. I’d walk up the steep drive and step up and up the pavers of the retaining wall, I think I’m tall enough to make that jump now. My shoes would scrape and crunch against the shingles of the roof and my form would come into focus through your window. I’m sure you’d be scared at first, but then you would see that it’s me and you’d know just what to do. We’d be careful to not make any noise taking the screen out of the window and I’d take your hand and help you onto the roof. I’d take your hand and I wouldn’t let go.
You don’t know it yet but you did survive. You don’t know it yet but you didn’t deserve what they did to you. You don’t know it yet but you will.
You’re not really still stuck there. You’re here now. Your wife is playing music in the next room and your cat is sleeping next to you. Things in the world aren’t perfect, or even good, but I’ve got you. I’m holding your hand and I’m not letting go.
-From me
Short Unhinged Cunty Freestyle
Anonymous
I just fucking love you and I don’t know what the hell is stopping us from being together. I do not know what’s wrong with me, I have lost my mind and it’s consumed by you, yet I’m still at a distance. I want you to pull me in and never ever let me go and coil me inside you and become one. I am insane. I have lost my mind to you, I think about you every day, and every hour and your name just stays with me and I imagine it with my own, intermingled, and how it fits so well it’s like the alphabet smiled and went uh huh sure let’s do this. Cut me open and crawl inside, I dare you. What if it’s all an illusion and the greatest love I’ve ever known will shimmer down into nothingness and my heart will be wrinkled and old and stale and when I hear our song, I won’t feel a thing just an illusion, just nothing, just space, just emptiness. I’ll never feel this way again, never ever, please let me come on your face. Sometimes all I think about is you, late nights in the middle of June.
Kids
by Shane Allison
he/him
In my dream we are two best friends
Lying on our bellies reading comic books
Strewn across your bedroom floor.
The sugar rush we're getting from the wad of Big League gum is assurance
That we'll be up all night reading The Fantastic Four,
Captain America, Superman back when they
Were seventy five cents.
We hang loose at your parent's house
Because my mother is afraid we'll break something,
That we'll track in dirt from playing outside.
She offers us Cheetos and Capri Suns to stay away.
Our friendship is impenetrable like a GI Joe tank.
Nothing can break us after the pinky swears
And blood oaths we take using the pocket knife
Stolen from my father’s glove box.
We go around collecting worms in jelly jars,
Burning ants under magnifying glass.
When the black neighborhood kids ask,
Why are you always hanging out with that white boy?
I tell them to shut up and hold them in headlocks
Until they say sorry.
I am the biggest kid in school like The Thing from The Fantastic Four.
Mother would never let him in the house.
I had this dream where we were kids with superpowers,
Who can fly over buildings,
Shoot red beams out of our eyes and bend
Crowbars like licorice ropes.
I wish we had grown up together
In Tallahassee or Kettering.
I could have used a friend like you.
A manifesto to inner healing and communal creative opulence
notes on healing masculine wounds and embracing unapologetic selfhood
by claude joven
he/they
There are one or two albums a year that I obsessively listen to. If I had a boyfriend in my car, he would be SO sick of these two I’m on this year. And what’s fucked about my yearly album is I usually don’t have much to say about them other than, “damn, I really felt that” or “dude, it's a fucking banger.” But as I listen to these two, I grow closer and closer to the truth of where I hope our world is headed.
Music helps me work through shit like nothing else. And this year, there’s been A LOT of shit. I’ve been wading through masculinity and how I hope to move through this world as a better man than what I’ve witnessed. Gag. I’ve also been jobless, homeless, and far below the poverty line looking for meaningful work and shelter in a world that becomes increasingly hostile to humanity's basic needs; much less our creative spiritual needs. Pitted against each other like starving dogs waiting for the demise of our beautiful, warming planet. Trying to find balance and healing seems nearly impossible to make time for amidst the calamity.
In a period of our collective humanity in which our worth is doubted, our humanization thrown aside, and disrespected by the state; these rappers have granted us a glimpse at a break in that chain. Expression of their unashamed creative spirits despite our collective turmoil. Kendrick Lamar's Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers and Tyler the Creator’s Call Me If You Get Lost are the siren songs for healing and experiencing our most opulent, creative, abundant potential in a world that wants us to apologize for pursuing just that in favor of a survival mindset. It’s no wonder they both end their album with an unapologetic apology. Everything in this fuck-ass world is set up for their demise. They weren’t “supposed” to make it past 18 or escape the figure 8 cycle.* But they have. Gloriously. And they are thriving and building a legacy through their vision. Their art.
The thing that makes writing about these rappers hard and funny is that they decidedly both express contempt at what people have to say about their art. Rather, they don’t give a fuck, and don’t want to be put on a weird pedestal; especially by a white t-boy from Portland, Oregon. But hear me out! If we move past the usual discourse which Kendrick calls the fake woke and Tyler’s y’all are fake mad, go get a fuckin’ hobby, and focus on the spirit they bare to us, we can learn something wonderful. Time and time again, they call to the listener to witness their own inner morale and creative pulse. So I come here to humbly praise and celebrate their vulnerable opuses and to expand on their sentiments on creativity and healing.
Mr. Morale dives into the mucky depths of Kendrick’s journey into himself as a masculine, father figure. What wounds, grief, and perceptions he carries from childhood, fame, lust, generational trauma, family drama, and overall the legacy he leaves behind for his kids, the rap world, and the world at large. Working through his journey in therapy to create MM&TBS caused writer's block from hell. 2 years of it. Wreckoning with worldly and interpersonal cycles of all the wounds can do that to a guy. But through the treachery of self, Mr. Morale comes out triumphant in Mirror. He has faced his wounds in sober honesty on a quest towards self and is ready to choose himself over the bullshit world promised him through cycles of fate. I choose me, I’m sorry. A wonderful rewrite of destiny by looking inward.
On the other hand, Tyler looks outward to a world expanded by travel and opulence. In a time where, rightfully so, people are disgruntled with wealth and its many expressions of excess at our expense, Tyler goes against that edgy, at times unproductive impulse joyously celebrating his abundance. Unapologetically. Because ultimately we want abundance for everyone, not for nobody. Don’t we? Tyler is no fool to our sentiments as we scrape by in poverty at the expense of billionaires. He is also no fool to his worth as a creative. Tyler is traversing a lush, vibrant world of his own creation.
And you know what, I'm fucking happy he is. Because it’s what I hope for all of my friends and community. To get through the mundane hurdles, self-doubt, the never-ending distorted tunnel of mirrors, shadow work, etc. that it takes to let yourself be yourself. I favor this world vision as opposed to becoming a repressed, hopeless, downtrodden curmudgeon who hates the youth and all of their creations. I say it like this 'cause that’s the cycle I subscribed to not long ago. Tyler illuminates an expansive world we aren’t capable of imagining if we remain believing our destiny is putting water in our ketchup bottle.* And it's because he creates shamelessly and wants everyone else to as well; especially Black kids dreaming of a brighter future. Dye your hair blue, shit I’ll do it too.**
Because what the fuck is the world if we can’t fucking celebrate ourselves, our visions, our healing. In healing themselves, living through the tremendous emotional labor of being a Black man in America, and recognizing the women that got them where they’re at, both Kendrick Lamar and Tyler the Creator are breaking down societies' collective generational, masculine, and in their case, Black curses by liberating their minds and allowing us the privilege as the listeners into their rich, opulent inner worlds, in the truest senses of those words. Creatively Rich, Creatively Opulent. Just like kink can allow us the space to heal our shadow and trauma through play; artistic creation heals our collective world offering us respite from a worldview seemingly damned to patriarchal-capitalistic hellfire.
So instead of using all your creative energy towards cutting coupons or committing to doom-scrolling in an attempt at play with that which oppresses us, I encourage you to embrace creative expansion ravenously. It will yield much more expansive results. And we will have something beautiful to show for it. Compost your traumas into a stinky, fertile sludge that feeds your flowers and watch your garden flourish. If you allow yourself to see what these rappers are leading us to, you will see, another era is upon us.*
And before anyone comes at me with the John Steinbeck quote about socialism never taking root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires, think beyond this. Cause I’ve whipped this one out too. Though this is true for our history and culture at large, this time I call bullshit. It’s deeper than money. I see us all as embarrassed, undervalued creative beings, citizens of an abundant earth. If only we were allowed the vision to see just how abundant it is by facing our colonial shadow and letting our wondrously creative earth bloom through us.
I refuse to only look at what the world seeks to destroy in me through dutifully looking at my newsfeed. What is the point of our movements for liberation if we aren’t even able to celebrate the most liberated versions of ourselves unapologetically? Healing our inner heart wounds leads us closer and closer to creative community opulence.
I leave you with Kendrick Lamar’s last musings of the album
Maybe, it's time to break it off
Runaway from the culture to follow my heart
I realized, true love's not savin' face
But unconditional, when will you let me go?
I trust you'll find independence
If not, then all is forgiven
Sorry I didn't save the world, my friend
I was too busy buildin' mine again***
Quotes in this piece come from
Sorry Not Sorry, Tyler the Creator 2023 *
Where this flower blooms, Tyler the Creator 2017 **
Mirror, Kendrick Lamar 2022 ***