lauren zuniga

director of loud cheeks, graduate of back yard sing university, lover of stories and things that crack open. i tend to swim in the granola femme/queer/poly/frolic pool. i say poems out loud. you can check out my website at laurenzuniga.com and my...

[laurenzuni]

Booking Midwest shows for April and West and East Coasts for fall! Contact @becksheller at [email protected] to see when I can come to your school!

[unicornology]

[laurenzuni]

I've been reading Big Magic by @elizabeth_gilbert_writer and she talks about realizing fear was actually the most boring, mundane thing about her. In reality there were tons of original, delightful qualities about yet she was so identified with her anxiety. I feel this way about my shame and self-hatred. Mundane as shit, yet we still kicking it. #bigmagic #everydaysorcery #radicalnourishment

[laurenzuni]

Next weekend, get ready for a Queen Tribute show celebrating Freddie Mercury, gender nonconformity, and the courage to be your truest self in a mad world. Featuring a script written and narrated by Lauren Zuniga, @transandinked's Max Warner, the stunning vocals of @innocentro A FULL CHOIR AND BAND fronted by @ilovebalthazar as Freddie Mercury. I'm not sure Oklahoma City has ever seen a show like this. The Boom. Nov13&14 8pm 21+

[laurenzuni]

Conversations with smart asses. #kavimoon #proudmama #pumpkinspicelatte #shitwhitemomssay

[laurenzuni]

Look at this fun lettering @kevinalves did of a line from one of my poems. #Lovelovelove

[laurenzuni]

"What would it have been like if patriarchy had never happened? To get an idea we have to comprehend the first law of matriarchy: Women control our own bodies." #greatcosmicmother #mothersday #monicasjoo #barbaramor

[laurenzuni]

This is Funmilayo Ransome Kuti. A teacher and activist, she served with distinction as one of the most prominent leaders of her generation. She was also the first woman in Nigeria to drive a car. She fought for Nigerian Womens right to vote, founded several of the most important women's organizations in the world and served in the House of Chiefs. In 1956, she was denied a passport renewal and a US Visa because it could "be assumed that it is her intention to influence … women with communist ideas and policies." #internationalwomensday #historymakers #woc #wellbehavedwomenseldommakehistory

[laurenzuni]

This is Lucy Hicks Anderson. She lived her life and married as a woman in a time before #transgender was a term. She did domestic work to save up money to buy land and operate a hotel in California. In 1946, she was prosecuted for perjury for signing her own marriage license. Her and her husband were both sent to prison for fraud because she cashed her husbands military checks. "I defy any doctor to prove I'm not a woman." #internationalwomensday #twoc #historymakers

[laurenzuni]

Letter to Seventeen Year Old Poet

Hi, I’m seventeen and have published two poetry books so far, but as a fellow uneducated queer, I have not received any formal training on poetry. I think you are magnificently talented and profound, and I was wondering if you could possibly teach me your ways. Best, Katie 

Hi Katie. What an industrious kettle you are.

It is hard to know what to say when someone says “teach me your ways.” It makes it seem as though I have ways. Makes it seem as if I have any clue what I am doing. I don’t usually feel like I do. I came in the back door of poetry. When I was 17, I was a rapper who was way more interested in being at the right party and drinking the right amount of numb than I was about learning how to write or express myself creatively. It took one poetry slam to convince me that I was finally good at something and maybe ought to stop destroying myself and start paying attention. I guess if there is anything I know about poetry it is this: Poetry is an inconsiderate roommate. It does not care that you need to get up in the morning. It stumbles in at 3am, loud and obnoxious, demanding you play that one song from 1996. It has no idea who sings the song or why it is important, it just needs the song. NOW. Poetry is a fickle lover. It says all the right things on Tuesday but forgets your name Friday. It will not text you back. It is over your clever use of Emoji. Poetry is a gossip. Loves to start shit. Tells all your secrets and acts like folks can’t hear through that flimsy ass metaphor. But no matter how mad you get at Poetry; no matter how bad you want it to find you, face down on the cold tile or windblown on the hood of midnight, it only comes when you make the space. And when you make the space, when you surrender to your pen, or keyboard or screaming into the screen door, it will hold you like no other love. It will help you make sense of a world that will sometimes be so cruel & maddening you don’t know if you can survive it. It will help you heal your childhood and that last awful relationship. It will listen when one else will. It will call you on your shit and make you dig deeper. You will be sitting in the coffee shop scraping the air with your fingers, trying to find the word that feels like peeling back the skin of an orange and your friends will think you are crazy and you will say all the words but they won’t be the right word & you will find the one that will work for now & two weeks later just before you fall asleep, there will be a pounding at the door. Some days you will not answer. Some days you will say NOT NOW. NEVER AGAIN. DON’T THINK YOU CAN JUST WALTZ RIGHT BACK HERE THINKING I WILL TAKE YOU BACK. But some days, you will open the door. I hope again and again, you will open the door. Let me also say this, Katie Sunshine. You don’t need formal training to write good poems. I want to encourage you to study writing in school no matter how unemployable they tell you it is. (They will tell you the only way to make a living is to become a professor of poetry and that is hogwash.) But whether you decide to follow a degree path in writing or not, never let your lack of education make you feel inferior to someone who has a PHD or make you think you can’t write gorgeous poems. Poem because your heart needs to poem. Poem because it is so much better than Instagram. No filter can capture a sunset like a poem. Poem because it is your birthright. Poetry is how we have dealt with the inadequacies of form and language since the beginning of time. It is the corridor between the seen and unseen. Poetry is the only church I’ve ever belonged to. Thanks for your questions, Katie. it was good to remind myself of these things. Heartslungswindows, Lauren

[laurenzuni]

Today I am 34 years old. I taped this #peptalk from @karahaupt to my planner a few weeks ago. If there is anything I've learned so far, it's that it's okay to fuck up, it's okay to need reminders, it's okay to completely forget that you are made of the same thing that makes sunrises. Every 34 seconds you can try again. Every 34 minutes you can shout a new anthem. Every 34 years you can raise your glass to every dumb thing you have ever done & take a big swig Of Thank Goddess it got me to this day. #andsoitis

[laurenzuni]

Ralph Ellison won the National Book Award for his 1952 book, Invisible Man. An Oklahoma Native, he was a groundbreaking author whose work is still so painfully relevant. Please join us in the first ever Ralph Ellison Festival, Fri. Feb.20 at The Paramount in Film Row. ralphellisonfestival.com

[savedbythe-bellhooks]

[laurenzuni]

Saved by the Bell-Hooks. Happy Friday.

[laurenzuni]

Have you heard?! I will be performing three shows with @andrewgibby next month. IN OKLAHOMA & TEXAS! Snatch up your tickets at andreagibson.org

[laurenzuni]

Shit I think of when I'm cleaning. #cleaningjokes #sciencejokes #feministjokes

[tkingfisher]

Every now and then, people ask me if I should go to art school, and I usually say something like “Do you want to go to art school?” and if they say “Yes,” then I say “Yes,” and if they say “No,” then I say “Don’t.” This is why I am a crappy source of career advice.

However.

There is ONE class...

[laurenzuni]

The other night I talked @kai_ridge into baking christmas cookies with me and this is what he made. Right now he is at work, dealing with severed pulmonary arteries or something & this heart is crumbling around the edges. Happy Holy Days to all of the service workers who don't get the day off and for the lonely heart cookies who don't have folks to share a day off with. #thiscookieisforyou #merrychristmas #yougorgeousanimal