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"I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Maybe I will faint, maybe I will fly."

From "The One Who Pierces Snow," a new short story by Hasret Eleby.

➡️ buff.ly/YEdMHeb

It’s not all of you. But enough of you settled. Enough of you got quiet when it mattered. And that silence? It’s louder than anything you used to stand for.

You once called out the generations before you for being loud, unapologetic racists and isolationists. You demanded change. You refused to accept the same broken deals. That defiant energy? Where is it now?

You had the blueprint for skepticism, for questioning power, for not blindly falling in line.

But somewhere along the way, too many of you traded that edge for comfort. You became gatekeepers instead of disruptors. Fascists instead of freedom fighters.

I’m disappointed in GenX.

You were supposed to be the bridge; the ones who saw through the bullshit, who rejected the systems that boxed everyone in, who prided yourselves on independence and critical thinking.

rain in my teeth
steak in my future
“clean yourself up,
nothing king,”

“you’re making us
both look bad”

no visions waiting / to suffer /
no mystic boughs
just bread to buy,
pages to blacken,

and a freight train
toward the blues

as it bends
“I held you,
now hold me
I held you”

Then a grackle
on the street:
/ preening /
as I step into the wet

in the playful
shape of silence
in the hunger
of county jail

push the rain
further / loose teeth /
don’t ask of the
broken umbrella

12 days / like a cheap crown /
doesn’t ask
of the nothing man
a lifetime

of browbeating
will take down
an awning
begging

Cherub Rock

it’s hard to think
when hunger
is the only religion
you know; a prayer

from the gospel of
steak & potatoes

they said starve / suffer /
make it art
so i ate their myth
starved my belly

they said / push
your mind /
make it bleed
in lowercase entropy