"BIG MEANING" by G. S. Jordan. "This is my first time sharing my writing online. This chapbook contains basically everything in my phone notes that is half coherent and isn't an aphorism, a short story, or the outline to a longer story. Mismatched poems from my phone notes, most written in transit or while walking. Themes include renunciation, self-denial, romance." This chapbook feels like walking through an art gallery. Maybe it's the accompanying photos that inspired this, but I tried to see each poem as a painting or a sculpture. Maybe a preserved journal behind a glass case. Art galleries and the dynamic of what art is valued and what isn't, alongside the fact that many colonialist nations steal sacred cultural items from other countries for museums and feel no shame make me think about the future of art. Why do these old terrible people get treated with respect and preserved when the truly important work of marginalized people gets lost to time and technology. That's why I like that these are all from a phone. I'm not picturing classical oils owned and preserved by the historically wealthy. I'm thinking of genuine art. The art of the people. In a future time when anyone with poems on their phones gets an opportunity to preserve them just like this. When graffiti isn't painted over for flat grey apartment buildings. When anyone can make a collection and share it with others.

G.S.'s poems themselves aren't trying to be art or a gallery. They simply are. Sometimes they're simple . . . just about the world, and life, and attempts at normalcy. Many of them though are deeply sad and reflective. They recount past abuse and trauma, and the way those things affect your desires and relationships and self. It's not despondent; it's just honest. This is writing about abuse that as a survivor I really relate to. A lot of writing I can understand or empathize with due to the shared cycle, but people's reactions or sentiments tend not to line up with my own. It's so complicated. The factors informing my complexity here are different than G.S.'s but all I can say is that I admire and appreciate every poem within, and the strength it takes for the first work you share to be of this nature. Maybe we shouldn't make art galleries out of other people's pain, but we can always make art to work through our own.

"I just want some clean fun tonight, I say, and that gets me laughing, because it’s true. I lose my balance and almost fall off my stool, and then I wish I’d thought of it, so you’d help me up."

[CW // sexual violence, abuse.]