Sometimes I Still Publish Things (Redux)

But then they get taken down

I’m honestly a little indebted to the fervent activists these days.

Without their infrequent, but consistent, efforts to bring my work into a spotlight I’d have probably just shrugged off this whole “art” thing awhile ago. While I have spilled many words on why I think art has developed into an insular, meaningless field of individual self-reification, that doesn’t mean that art has to be that way. And sometimes I still try to write things or make arguments concerning the potential of art to guide and reflect our culture in constructive, meaningful ways.

And the only reason anyone outside of a small, tiny group of readers even care what I have to say is because there are a few people who lose their darn minds anytime I publish something in a mainstream literary journal.

Some old Italian dude once said it was better to be feared than loved. And I’m no queen, but I can’t sometimes dismiss that the adage is true.

It is strange for an erstwhile poet and infrequent critic to be seen with such fear. A fear that demands I am given a spotlight when I publish something new. It is an odd feeling for people to demand for my (generally apolitical) work to be removed from journals and magazines. It is strange to be caught in an odd web where my work is assigned so much importance and potency. As if a meta-narrative in microfiction about the unreliability of the hermetic, individual creator was going to reach out and cause others harm.

I get it. I’m a “fascist” and a “TERF.” I’m “transphobic” and “problematic.”

There are people out there desperate for a piece of the rage-pie who are making up meta-narratives about me, inserting themselves into my history in service to furthering the fiction that I am a dangerous individual whose ideas literally cause harm to others. In particular, an individual whose attendance at the same undergrad program overlapped my own by a year or two has begun pretending like we actually knew each other, when, Dear Reader, I had no idea who she even was when she first approached me because we never interacted back then even once.

Sometimes I wonder if every narrative in 2022 eventually becomes a revenge story. A common thread possessed by those who lead this aggressive charge against me is that, at one point or another, I snubbed them for a myriad of individual reasons. These are the people who seethe all day about “inclusivity” and being a good “literary citizen.” In truth, what they’re talking about is their own entitlement. Their own inclusion. Their own piece of the meta-narrative, convincing themselves that if I won’t praise them, they will destroy me.

Which is, honestly, nice. Every time I find myself in the middle of a new cancellation the reach of my work expands astronomically. What would have otherwise been read by a handful of folks ends up under the eyes of many, many more readers than I could ever hope for.

The irony of all of this is that I stopped writing and submitting in any meaningful capacity almost a year ago. I’ll do work when solicited, usually criticism, but otherwise I have little-to-no actual interest in gaining “clout” or “success” in an industry (poetry) where we have to pay to even have our work considered for publication alongside hundreds if not thousands of other manuscripts.

Here’s the secret: If they really wanted me to go away all they would have to do is let me be. But every so often they’ll take one of my last-gasps of literary creation and pretend I am blowing life into the entire world.

It leaves me with an odd sense of gratitude, even if I know it should not.