FLAWN #2 - March 2023
A monthly newsletter of events, shout-outs, interviews, and bite-sized pieces of creative work from the Florida Local Artist & Writer Network (FLAWN).
A Piece of FLAWN
Welcome to our second serving of FLAWN. If you enjoy what you find here, be sure to subscribe, and you’ll get our monthly newsletter in your e-mail inbox once per month!
Subscribers can also submit one piece of writing (<500 words), art, or multimedia content for guest post consideration. As we want to promote the arts in Florida, we’ll consider pieces submitted by those who live in the state, were born here, or whose work is somehow inspired by the state. All genres are welcome.
Submissions: Calendar of Events
We are currently working on a calendar of art and literary events. We're a volunteer-based group, so if anyone has experience with wide-scale calendars please drop us a line at FLAWNinfo@gmail.com.
Have an event to submit?
In the meantime, you are welcome to submit an event through the button below if you are a FLAWN subscriber. Keep in mind that we are still working out the logistics of a calendar, so events before May 2023 might not be included.
This Month’s Slice of Art
Interview with Arts Community Leader Shawana Brooks | Moving the Margins
Meet award-winning arts advocate, curator, gallerist, poet and writer Shawana Brooks in this interview by Yuki Jackson. Shawana is the director of Moving the Margins which hosts exhibitions and residencies for artists in Jacksonville, Florida with a focus on highlighting the works of BIPOC artists and issues concerning marginalized communities.
Homophobic Barbie by Dustin Brookshire She didn't picket when marriage equality passed, only asked, How do you know who the bride is? When SCOTUS ruled on workplace discrimination she was silent on Facebook, but asked Ken, Do people really get fired for being gay? Homophobic Barbie will tell you she's had an owner or two who turned gay. (Technically, it was her owner's brothers.) She knew one was gay the day he made Q-tips into hair rollers. The other instigated arguments between her and Ken. Ken had never questioned why he wasn’t allowed to drive the Barbie convertible across the living room. Homophobic Barbie says, Love the sinner, hate the sin. She isn't sure two dads or two moms create the best environment for a child but shows up for the wedding. She isn’t missing an open bar or the chance to do the Electric Slide in heels with her sister Skipper. After her third glass of champagne, Homophobic Barbie explains to Skipper, Remember, in the beginning, Mattel created Barbie and Ken, not Ken and Ben. “Homophobic Barbie” was originally published in the Whale Road Review. It is also forthcoming in the chapbook Never Picked First For Playtime (Harbor Editions), which is a tribute to Floridian Denise Duhamel’s 1997 groundbreaking book, Kinky. Never Picked First For Playtime will be available for purchase at the end of March. Click here for more details.
Hallway Chat
by Boy in the Rain
I scored Episode 4 of an online film series called “The Rough Cuts.” This sentimental piece blends piano and synth and was written for the hallway scene of that episode.
Poetry Broadside - Risograph
by Tyler Gillespie
These limited edition Risograph poetry broadside prints were made by Tyler Gillespie in collaboration with Print Saint Pete. You can find these 8.5x11 prints on Print Saint Pete’s website.
One of the print’s was based on “pick up line” published by Passages North and included in the forthcoming collection the nature machine! (Autofocus, May 2023).
pick up line
You’re so handsome I want us to leave
this bar & hold hands in my car. We’ll skip
all the steps to my apartment. You’ll look
at the Dali print in my living room & hesitate
before you tell me a secret: you don’t like
the surrealists—they aren’t real painters.
I’ll laugh seagulls as I cut limes for a nightcap.
Listen to the knife make love to the rind.
I’ll tell you about the time Hugh Jackman
asked me for directions. You’ll tell me
about the time you caught your father
cheating. I’m sorry I’m a liar, I’ll say.
Is it hot in here, you’ll say, or is it just
you? I’ll put on a sweater; then, a coat.
You’ll tell me I’m funny without trying.
When the Joni record stops, we’ll make
our way to my bedroom. I’ll ask you
to read the poems you write during breaks
at the factory or wherever it is that you work.
You’ll tell me you usually don’t do this kind
of thing. Nervously, you’ll unzip your bag.
Pull out a notebook. Show me your pages.
They’re so wonderful, I’ll say. (& mean it.)
I’ll ask you to read them again. Again. & again
Blackout Poem: Number 003 from G.W. series
by Yuki Jackson
our best contributes
to this glorious work
whatever may come:
Let all behave
with Courage
if lost and continue
in this order
directed by
the whole.
The Blue Poem
by Gloria Muñoz
¡Hola, hola, Flawnies! I was recently part of this cool initiative Murals in Mind, which promotes creativity and collaboration, and raises awareness around mental health. As someone who has struggled with anxiety and depression, the evolution of this project was both meaningful and cathartic. Listen to “The Blue Poem” with a composition by Mark Feinman below. And see Cecilia Lueza’s mural “The Blue Hour” here.
Guest Post! Florida flows by Elisabeth Sweet For a California native with a Brooklyn mailing address, Florida endured in the extremes. My frame, this fabric woven of west coast affability, stitched with the golden ease of good weather, spun with the cold awareness of east coast ambition — I seldom considered the comfort of southern migration. In a Hollywood sequel, balmy air appeases winter skin, a panhandled star browns January pallor, salt winds whip loose hair into waves. I sit in sand and wonder what took me so long to seek these shores. To come to this place so many birds fly. I dismissed a state on the whim of worn headlines exalting sense-defying men. “Everything about this place is true,” a transplant poet assures me, “the good and the bad.” And I see it now— both exist here, constant as the untamable sea rocking cruise ships to sleep. Where buildings rise and fall in glacial chaos, we learn the importance of the present. Maybe heaven dangles from the fringes of freedom.
The Writer’s Corner
The Writer’s Corner is a monthly installment in which Dustin Brookshire interviews writers residing in Florida with a focus on south Florida writers. The March installment features Fort Lauderdale poet Jubi Arriola-Headley.
Dustin: original kink: poems (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020) is such a good book. As your book approaches three this year, what are some happy memories that occurred because of your debut full-length poetry collection?
Jubi: Many of my happiest memories come from moments when someone’s told me how much they love a specific poem in original kink, or the collection as a whole. (A young poet emailed me a while back to tell me that they’d used a line from “Daddy,” a pivotal poem in the collection, as an epigraph to a poem of theirs! Like, WHAT???) It’s not about narcissism (at least, that’s what I tell myself); I often say that my goal is always to write toward community. And when someone connects with a line or a poem I’ve written, and reaches out to tell me so, I feel like I’ve increased my community by one more soul.
Dustin: I recently heard you read at Gregg Shapiro’s in-person monthly reading series, Wednesday Poetry* Club (*and prose too!), at the always delicious Bona Italian Restaurant. You shared from a new collection that is in-progress. What are two things that you want people to know about this new collection?
Jubi: 1. The collection will likely be titled either Bound or God Responds [to the Proust Questionnaire]. Or something else. 2. I began the poems that would become the collection in the wake of the pandemic, and in particular the weeks and months following the murder of George Floyd and leading up to the 2020 presidential election. All the death around me, and the knowledge that my chances of avoiding an untimely one seemed not fully up to me, moved to write beyond survival into more than thriving, really – into the unabashed pursuit of pleasure, of what feels good, and into living the way I authentically want to in the world. So I started writing poems in which I imagine burning toxic shit down and fucking and eating and dressing and loving the way I wanna.
Dustin: You refer to yourself as a poet and storyteller. What does it mean to you to be a storyteller?
Jubi: When I call myself a storyteller, I think of the ways in which the poets of old quite literally sang poems to the village, poems that told stories of love and loss and gods and war, in so many poetic traditions. It’s that aspect, that poetic lineage I’m aiming to conjure up when I say that I’m a storyteller. I’m exceptionally vested in the performance (for lack of a better word) of my poems. I think when we poet read poems aloud, we have a wonderful opportunity to add depth and dimension and texture to our poems, in ways that the reader can only imagine when it’s just them and some black ink on a white page (or screen). Poetry is an oral tradition; I write my poems always with this in mind. Some lines from my artist statement (yeah, I have one): I write with a laser focus on sound, in service to the aural experience of the poem. Line breaks are beats, line length sets rhythm and form situates the poem musically: sometimes I'm composing jazz, sometimes I'm serving up funky sweaty tribal house, sometimes it's full-on Sunday morning gospel. Nice, right?
Dustin: Who are poets you consider storytellers that we should read?
Jubi: Or hear? In the ways in which I’m thinking of the “aural” experience of the poem? Patricia Smith (he said, not missing a beat). If we’re talking about storytelling as oral tradition and experience, you gotta call her a contender for the GOAT. Also, Willie Perdomo. He reads poetry like his voice is a percussion instrument. Depending on the day or the poem, he’ll serve you merengue, bachata, reggaeton, rap, hip hop, jazz, the blues – just brilliant. Tommy Pico. To listen to Tommy Pico read is to reach for queer joy and find out that it (queer joy) is a gooey stickey mess and to rub that mess all over you and not care who’s watching. Tommy’s writing for the FX television series Reservation Dogs now (which if you haven’t seen, SEE IT) but I sure hope some more poetry’s on his horizon. And, AND, Douglas Kearney. What he does, I cannot explain. I can only tell you that hearing Douglas Kearney read is like getting a Ph.D. in expanding the concept of performance. And art. And that’s an understatement, I promise you. There’s others, but that’s a great start IMHO.
Dustin: What’s the name of your last poem published online?
Jubi: “Heliocentric Cento,” in Kweli Journal. (I want the world to write more cento poems.)
Dustin: Let’s close out with a recommendation. Please name two books and two chapbooks by living poets that everyone should purchase after they finish this interview.
Jubi: Sorry, I just learned that my friend the poet Lynne Thompson (former poet laureate of Los Angeles) also has a book coming out next year, Blue on a Blue Palate, and all I can think about now is flying out to Los Angeles early next year and doing a joint reading, and then her flying here to Florida and us making a big splash at Books & Books. We were just talking last fall about her search for a publisher. And to land at BOA Editions – all the heart emoji. (Emoji is already plural, right?) But while I’m here, didn’t I hear something about an anthology of Dolly Parton poems? Heard it’s fire.
Jubi Arriola-Headley (he/him) is a Blacqueer poet, storyteller, first-generation United Statesian and author of original kink: poems (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020), recipient of the 2021 Housatonic Award. His second collection, Bound (or God Responds [to the Proust Questionnaire], or something else), will be published by Persea Books in 2024. Jubi lives with his husband in South Florida, on ancestral Tequesta, Miccosukee, and Seminole lands, and spends a lot of time at the nude beach. Find him online at
FLAWNT IT! 🎉🎉🎉
compiled by Gloria Muñoz
HUGE congratulations to poet Soyini Forde for receiving a Periplus Mentorship Fellowship!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Shout out to Luca Molnar, whose "Same Source" exhibition is up at Art Center Sarasota through March 11. If you’re in Sarasota, Manatee, Bradenton, St.Pete, Tampa, or down for a road trip, go check it out!!!!!!!!!!
Woooo!!!!!!!! Amaris Castillo’s short story “El Don” was recently a finalist for Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival’s Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize.
High fives to Keep St.Pete Lit and American Stage for collaborating on a rad new FREE Banned Book Library!!!!!!!!
Congratulations to Miesha Brundridge for the launch of her poetry collection EMBERS & SCARS!!!!!!!!
SUPER hyped about the recent publication of the anthology LET ME SAY THIS edited by Dustin Brookshire. The cover alone will make you want to start reading!!!!!!! It. Is. Stunning.
Let's spread the love for forthcoming books THE IMMEASURABLE DEPTH OF YOU by Maria Mora, EVERWHEN by Anne Bangrover, and the 10th anniversary edition of ONCE AND FUTURE LOVERS by Sheree L. Greer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FLAWN branding and artwork by DXP