#taylor michael

[lactobacille]

10 billions points for you if you remember the holy vine

[obsidian-magazine]

Meditation on police brutality

by taylor michael 

My grandfather served both as a police officer and as a mechanic for the US army in World War II. He served his community for 28 years. He was a part of the community protecting the people he cared about from harm. He never sought to control only to protect his community.

What is Freedom when you fight for your country, but its citizens can shoot you for being black? What is freedom when you don’t have the right to claim humanity? What is freedom when you’re socially dead?

“When James was in the police force police didn’t do things like this. They did not just shoot little boys. These new cops aren’t trained properly. They’re afraid and so they fire their guns.” Mildred McCoy

It has been said so often that the saying has probably lost all real meaning. Like most sayings, eventually. But, the police are meant to protect and serve the community. Who are police protecting and serving by killing black bodies? I can never really be sure. To police is to maintain order, to regulate, to control. By these standards, the police were never meant to protect and serve people but to protect and serve order.

In order to protect and serve people, police would have to radically love. To love enough that you would take on a job that risks your life at times. For police to protect and serve black people they would have to radically love black people. To radically love is to recognize humanity. To protect and serve people. But in order to be able to love the people in the neighborhood you patrol, you would have to take the time to be a part of the community. Maybe live in the neighborhood. Maybe go to the church or other place of worship in the area. Do your kids have friends in this part of town? And to be a part of the community you would have to think of black communities as being worth having relations with. To be worth having relations with we would have to be decent human beings. In order to be decent human beings we would have to be human beings. But you probably don’t see us as human beings don’t you?

“It doesn’t make sense to me that protesters are looting black-owned businesses,” said my sister. “now those protestors have just made it that much harder for a black person to get a loan or to get insurance, because they would be risky investments.”

“It doesn’t make sense to me that protesters would block the highway,” said my sister. “What about the black nurse working a late shift at the ER and the FDR is the fastest way home.”

“It doesn’t make sense to be that protesters are just looking for the next photo op,” said my sister. “Now buying from only Black owned businesses that makes sense.”

[obsidian-magazine]

stop staring at me

by Taylor Michael 

Eyes give me anxiety.  Hateful eyes, pitying eyes, blinded eyes, overbearing eyes. So many eyes it makes it hard for me to see clearly through the haze of irises and ignorance. Eyes that couldn't picture me walking down the main green. Eyes that consume me as desire. Eyes that never let me be.

This summer, I explained to my sister how much I couldn’t stand the eyes. I saw them in my sleep. I saw them in class. I saw them in dining halls. I couldn't escape the eyes. My sister threw something to my lap. It was a bracelet. Eleven turquoise eyes linked into a circle.

Before she leaves for work she says, "Taylor, you sound like you really need this for protection. Wear it until it breaks and then find someone you trust to get rid of it for you."

She told me it'd protect me against evil eyes. The bracelet would take all the negative energy that would otherwise be directed towards myself until the bracelet could no longer bare the burden of so much evil, causing  it to break.

The first bracelet lasted a month.

The bracelet I wear daily now has lasted since the end of the summer. But I wonder if it's because I'm being protected from eyes or hiding from eyes.

At Yale University, a white frat had a party for white girls only. They didn't want to see Black, Latinx, Native, Asian women.  They said shut your eyes if you’re offended by cultural appropriation.

At University of Missouri, black visibility means white violence.

At Brown, freedom of speech turns a blind eye to violence against people of color.

This semester, I find myself in libraries, or my room. I'm reading alone, doing homework alone, eating alone. I don't want people to see me anymore. Visibility means violence. Eyes will follow me as their stares bore into me. I don't know if I want to carry the energy of their stares any longer. Maybe if I close my eyes for long enough they'll go away. Maybe I can go longer than a few months without my bracelet breaking…

...it just broke.

[obsidian-magazine]

a letter from the editors: fall 2015

Dear readers,

OBSIDIAN is back for fall 2015 and ready to take Brown, and the world by storm. After a summer to relax and regroup OBSIDIAN is ready for the new semester and the possibilities it brings.

We’ve established our semester goals to be:

branding

expansion,

    and exposure.

So that we can meet these goals we’ve introduced some changes that to reflect the type of creative space OBSIDIAN creates on Brown’s campus.

These include the expansion of the reach and impact of our chapbook. As OBSIDIAN becomes an important part of Brown’s culture we want our writers work to be presented in a way which respects the effort and hours spent. We hope to expand our chapbook to a literary magazine by increasing the quality of paper and the length of the print edition to better showcase the talents of this campus.

Another goal we hope to achieve is to expand the scope and reach of our events. Last year,  events were somewhat limited to literary and academic subjects. While our Open Mic nights and the Hair Forum were successful events we would like to host galleries and other types of events and performances that bring together literary, academic, and artistic expression for the Brown community.

We want to take the time to congratulate the creative team and participants of Eminence for being featured both in Blavity and Huffington Post.

We look forward to receiving submissions and building more community this semester!

onward,

taylor michael ‘17 & brianna cox ‘18

[superselected]

Black Women at Brown University Take Control of Their Image in An Inspiring Photo Series.

[youngblackmuses]

Beautiful Photo Series Showcases Black Women Reclaiming and Celebrating Their Bodies -

Black female bodies are consistently hypersexualized and fetishized, stripping black women of the agency to control the representation of our own bodies. In an effort to....

“Each participant chose a personal phrase or quotation, words that were then painted onto their backs. The placement of the words on these women’s backs was deliberate. The creators recognize that our backs symbolize many things. They remind us of our histories dating back to slavery and the centuries of whippings and beatings that black women endured. Additionally, our backs are both a source of strength and symbolize the stresses and burdens that fall upon us.“

[made-buy-us]

“dstrssd” capsule collection

photo: giovannitsunami  | human: taylor 

drop: 3/16 @ MADEBUYUS

[made-buy-us]

“dstrssd” capsule collection: hoodies & denim hat  

photo: giovannitsunami  | humans: taylor & jason