Category: Toronto
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maybe the real performative male is the friends we made along the way
Edited by Alloe Mak and Liam Mason You’ve seen the memes. You know the phenotype. A man with a slim build and an ironic moustache. A carabiner clipped to thrifted baggy jeans. Patchwork tattoos and hand-rolled cigarettes. Carrying a New Yorker tote bag. Carrying an A24 tote bag. Sporting a slogan t-shirt reading “THE FUTURE…
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Matilda
When he sang Matilda, He sang of butter half-spread on toast, Hair mussed as her eyes ache for sleep, Dirty dishes awaiting her cleanliness, A forehead marked with memories Of indignation. She wove her lore into my hair to have me snip the stories away. To let them fall into the abyss Like pencil shavings. …
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The Costumes of Survival: Black, Queer, Autistic Resistance Through Art
Edited by Alloe Mak Michael Kinnucan writes, “The mask’s opposite is not the face, but the veil. The mask, all actual, leaves nothing undisclosed; the veil is pure potential, a nothing which intimates.” I come back to this line when thinking about what it means to mask as a neurodivergent person. Masking isn’t about mystery;…
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keepsake
sun-kissed monarch landing on freckled nose.the gentle whisper of willow’s wind. what it would mean to resign down the ladder,and find my valuables untouched, which may be sadder. yet i hope, under all layers of dust,to find what i’ve forsaken for i thought i must. our soft, lazy bodies finding the other,skin and hands’ taut,…
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notes from the in-between
Edited by Alloe Mak androgyny is a tricky term that contradicts itself. it is the absence of feminine and masculine traits, it is a combination of both. it is anything suitable for either sex, it is the reversal or obscuring of gender roles. it is something i strive to embody—an ideal i barely comprehend. aristophanes’…
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The Butch Bar
Take me to the room where there is no violence. Where the music is loud & the laughter is louder, Where peach-pink lipstick stains blue-collared shirts, Where the girls can be boys & the boys are not angry. Let’s go, You & I, Down to the Butch Bar, Where the drink of most choice is…
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How to Use the Fruit Machine: A Guide for Those Working in Service of Our Great Nation
Edited by Alloe Mak During the Red Scare of the 1960s, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) worked on developing a “fruit machine,” their colloquial term for several different experiments used to identify homosexuals under government employ. These included questioning, pupil dilation tests and pseudoscientific lie detectors. What follows is an instruction manual for the…
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Reflection
Edited by Alloe Mak I’ve watched as the queer community has been painted as a beacon of hope, a sign of home, and a sign of life pulsing prominently through the chest of society. I think that I spent a lot of my life trying to find this form of understanding—trying to find someone who…
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the monsters are always queercoded
Edited by Liam Mason They say I was born with claws coming out of my neck. I don’t believe them. In fact, I think the idea is rather ugly. I like to imagine how exactly I came to be, sometimes, when I’m lonely and scared and alone. All crumbled up like an old newspaper, cast…
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why quantum mechanics is the best description of my gender
Edited by Alloe Mak To simplify it in as few words as possible, quantum mechanics is the study of matter at the atomic level. It is widely known as an incomprehensible topic of physics—those who go to sleep understanding quantum mechanics will likely wake up confused once again. Despite its fundamental nature, it is a…
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Chicken Alfredo Pasta
Edited by Alloe Mak and Liam Mason He used to make it for me when I would go over on Friday nights. Now that we live together, he makes it when I can’t get out of bed. The apartment smells like garlic, cream, fettuccine, and parmesan clinging to each other. His hands smell like thyme…
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achilles on skyros; forty-niners in drag
Edited by Alloe Mak 753 BCE There are no women in Rome. Romulus built the city with vagabonds and criminals scattered across Latium, and he settled with them on a hill. But there are no women in Rome, and this is a problem. The vagabonds and criminals cannot birth an empire themselves. So, Romulus hosts…
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who’s afraid of queerness?
queer. a bruise-purple word. a sticky syllable clinging to the edge of my tongue. what did you mean when you danced in the dark corners of language? perhaps the off-kilter paintings in a gallery, or the poems that refuse to rhyme, or the sculptures made from found objects. did you mean the love that dares…
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Fairytale and Flora
Encounters start, mostly, with small talk. Hello, how are you, what did you do today, cool shirt, you’re so pretty! that’s too bad, I’m sorry that happened, well that’s good, I’m glad to hear it. Weather. If you’re lucky, that grows into anecdotes. If you’re lucky again, the anecdotes grow into stories. The stories are…
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The Luck-Based Happiness Index for BPD
Introduction In October 2024, I was diagnosed with high-functioning borderline personality disorder. Since then, I’ve begun reflecting on behaviours I exhibited throughout my teenage years that may align with this diagnosis. I often gauged my future “luck” and happiness by noting arbitrary occurrences throughout my day, like a spilled glass of milk or whether or…
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May Comes Due
Annotations on Chappell Roan’s “My Kink is Karma” May connotes debts unpaid—to the rain, to flowers, to each other, to the land, to the past and the future. A year ago, my body was confined to its bed in a rhythm of collapse. A year ago, we placed our flesh in the path of the…
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spring bouquet
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in vain, beloved boy (seven myths, a girl, and a garden)
“giddyup!” he said, his fist wrapped tightly around my ponytail. i had long hair, then, down to my thighs, and thicker than it is now, after puberty. it was darker, too, closer to black than my current mousy brown. just like a horse’s tail. he yanked on my hair, violently, and a sunspot of pain…