adolescence

* * * my sixteenth year spreads itself between steam flooding under a locked door & my mother knocking softly. a juicy lucy burger waits in my stomach & i’m…

Image Credit: Jesse Shofner   Last winter, your father asked if “queer” was still a slur. He asked this carefully, as he always does when it comes to your sexuality.…

October 24, 2019   Dear Marissa, You know that lonely feeling, the one where your heart hurts so bad it feels like it ruptured? Like in those National Geographic photos…

That first menstruation was a shock. Bleary eyed, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw the blood, spotty and sticky and dark—yet undoubtedly from my own…

Desire and Power in High School   Giddy Aphrodite races for candy, followed by her big sister Athena, solemn in her gray helmet and shield, bearing a homemade spear bound…

That may not be “smart” in the normal sense of the word, but I don’t really care. Kiddiepunk is almost like a big art project to me, and I’ve never used my art as a money-making source. It keeps things pure that way because I just do what I want and I only publish things that I love. There’s no pressure on any particular release to “succeed” on a financial level. It’s a punk mentality that is just kind of ingrained in my head. But it’s great these days because you can do these things relatively affordably and sell them directly to the people who are interested. You don’t need distribution, ISBNs, any of that stuff. You just need to put your energy into making something great. In the not-so-distant past, before the internet, before high quality digital printing, you really couldn’t do what I do now, so it’s cool.

Before we banish the term “unflinching” from our critical vocabulary forever, we might permit it one last flourish, and in the direction of Jason Snyder’s Family Album. For here is…