Issue 39: This Litany is an Elegy for the Phoenix’s Friend | by nawa angel a.h.

"Slow down. my lover, my friends, my sibling, my neighboring lime tree says to me. They say it quickly, like a campfire catching too much wind."

nawa angel a.h., blood map bracing, a split, digital collage, in shared witness with an unsmogged sky, coral pieces, abalone, a sycamore trunk, a river bed, a native plant whose name I do not know yet  and the San Gabriel Mountains, 4 x 6 inches, 2024. Courtesy of Moonyeka.

This Litany is an Elegy for the Phoenix’s Friend by nawa angel a.h.

Blanket me

Slow down. my lover, my friends, my sibling, my neighboring lime tree says to me. They say it quickly, like a campfire catching too much wind. They say it with the heat of their own survival stinging. Skin seared. Heart broken through. Slow need to come quicker. Quicker likes to catcall me. Slow needs to cruise me all eyes, no mouth. Quicker frisks and wears me.

Slow down, mama! No need to rush.

Where you goin’ Handsome? 

Walkin’ that fast lookin’ that fine?

The first thing to equip the slow down is a blanket. My blanket was stolen, some say I lost it. It is strange to recall a blanket that is lost in the layers of how I could’ve possibly let it go missing. It can be hard to imagine what we should wrap ourselves up in when the only thing left to weave stays silent.

My Lola was the barangay seamstress. She gave me an inabel baby blanket sized for an adult, so I can grow into it. My dead name inscribed, setting the tone for cousins who don my dead name with aliveness or neutrality. My blanket came with matching pillow cases. I’ve never laid on them. They’re wrapped in tissue paper.  A relic.  If I told you what the motifs meant, I’d be giving you way to my dreams. My dreams are the most precious spaces. Some of them are just for me.

don’t go to bed angry.

tangle your feet into jade vines….

Read more from This Litany is an Elegy for the Phoenix’s Friend.

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nawa angel a.h. (widely known as Moonyeka) is a chimeric creator working across containers of performance, qt nightlife, digital art, experimental media and the divine. They're a settler fluttering between Chumash, Chinook, and Duwamish lands. Within their mixed-diasporic-bakla embodiment, Moonyeka creates experiences of queer erotic joy, animism, Ilocano imagination, and beyond. Their collaborative processes center kapwa, maarte, and kilig as a compass to imagine thriving worlds for their communities.

i was never the siren (2024) is a film re-myth of the Siren archetype; the first installment of their multimedia project 'Harana for the Aswang' realized with House of Kilig collaborators.

nawa draws upon queer and trans performance technologies in their writing, infusing nightlife, states of con-myth-legend, drag, tease, and kink. You can find them frolicking in a spectrum of writing fields such as biomythography, hybrid-wtfness, and the game writing industry. They were recently published with their multiverse of work centering Waling-Waling Orchids in smoke and mold. am i hot enough to kill?, an excerpt of (w)horrific hybrid prose, is featured in The Holy Hour anthology by Working Girls Press. Recent publications include their multiverse of work centering Waling-Waling Orchids in smoke and mold; am i hot enough to kill?, an excerpt of (w)horrific hybrid prose, is featured in The Holy Hour anthology by Working Girls Press.

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Issue 39 Highlights

Issue 39: brief moments of infinite delight by Mayur Chauhan

Issue 39: Untitled, IVF placenta print by Anonymous Featured Artist

Issue 39: How to Eat a Spider by Featured Writer Rebecca Evans

Issue 39: The Tree of Togetherness by Michael Nagle

Issue 39: Sensuality of the Freeze by Marina Gross-Hoy

Issue 39: This Litany is an Elegy for the Phoenix’s Friend by nawa angel a.h.

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Artists and Writers

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With galactic gratitude,

Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/KHÔRA squad

Swim around in KHÔRA.

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