an introduction

i realized that while i know quite a bit of the people who subscribe to this substack, there are quite a bit of folks i don’t know, so i thought maybe i would take advantage to introduce myself a little here.

i actually started writing a blog when i was in college, with the OG app Live Journal. i did not grow up with the Internet, nor was i the kind to keep a journal or diary. i lived in my head. ask most people who know me — that is still true. my mind is an active place. a dreamscape that has allowed me to survive.

the original form of my online presence of course started with AIM chat and ICQ (you are as old as me if you know what that is). i loved returning to my dorm at UT Austin to see messages on my desktop computer — cultivated from a growing community of outcasts that i met online. my college years were shaped by many political events, from George Bush’s stolen election to 9/11 a few years after, followed by the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. so to say part of my introduction to being politically involved would be an understatement. one of my very first publications was a creative nonfiction piece about how people stereotype rural areas like the place i grew up, and praise cities like Austin (where i attended university) as liberal paradises. and they are just that — liberal paradises — places where liberals can feel good about the life they have and pretend to be upset about oppression but don’t have to change their lifestyles too much. the end of my story recounts how i was at the UT library taking an elevator and finding Islamophobic hate scrawled inside.

i had a blog that lived in form for many years until i ended it, and I learned and studied Black and Indigenous history, geography, and insurgent political movements. i stopped reading white writers and only read nonwhite ones. i expanded to reading poetry outside the US.

when i restarted writing online, i wanted a consistent name, presence. i chose the singular version of Hugo Argüelles’s play, Los Gallos Salvajes, which, interestingly enough, is about a young man who returns to his machista father, and they clash. i believe its also about queerness as much as it is about violence. so. it made sense to choose it as a title.

and now here we are. a tiny cosmos of musings, drafts, poems, memories, and a sliver of a glimpse into my interiority.

and in solidarity with palestine, i offer my 2019 chapbook for a free download, with a suggested contribution to campaigns of Palestinians surviving genocide, my comrades Othman and Sami. you can also support The Sameer Project or Gaza Poets Society.