earth・en・ware
Adil Munim
they told me home is
where the heart is so I
cracked open
his ribcage and locked
myself inside and I
told him that I could
heal broken
bones and he told me
that he could hold us
both and we told
ourselves we were
safe even
though we were lying
but I was convinced
there was nowhere
else to hide from the
truth when I bowed
my head into him and
called it love in secret
along our tongues
between our clasped
clay hands held
tighter and tighter
until we shattered
mid prayer
Adil Munim (he/him) is a writer, poet, and former lawyer. His writing draws largely on his experiences as a Queer Muslim and touches on topics of identity, faith, and freedom. He can typically be found at a local coffee shop or on Instagram at @__adilm.
Artwork Source: “At the Fringes,” allison anne
Artist Statement: Collage is a site of expansiveness and change, part of a creative ecosystem of transformative mediums that rethink how art can be shared. It reframes and pushes against capitalist ideas of ‘value’ while exploring different avenues of community-building and exchange. There’s an element of collage that has always felt inherently queer — remaking and restructuring, collaborating with the very world around us.
My personal creative practice is primarily abstract, shaped by my experience and identity as a fat, queer, white, nonbinary person. American culture is not singular, nor is it a monolith — surrounded by layers of paper, fingers sticky from adhesive, drawing on my background in sociology, cultural studies and gender studies, I find myself asking questions — what do we value, and how do we represent it? What do we leave behind, and what is changing as we look ahead? Collage offers a chance to further interrogate, reclaim and broaden our perspectives.
allison anne is a queer, nonbinary multidisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA (unceded Očhéthi Šakówiŋ land), working in collage, zinemaking, mail art, book art, design & publishing. By recontextualizing images and materials, allison seeks to create complex textural, intuitive abstractions and configurations which prioritize that which is found, discarded and left behind, exploring the intersections & interactions between context, materiality and creativity. They co-founded the projects Twin Cities Collage Collective and NONMACHINABLE, which connect and publish artists & creatives locally and around the world. Connect with them at allisonanne.com or on Instagram at @allisonannecollage.
The Turning Leaf Journal 