Bent Zine #13

Interview by ALG

“Cut some hair out of your man’s head and put it in a jar, in a hole under your step. That’ll keep him coming.”

—From Shuckin’ and Jivin’: Folklore From Contemporary Black Americans

Still from Maison Margiela Artisanal Co-Ed Collection Autumn-Winter 2020 by Nick Night (2020)

Johnson O’Connor English Vocabulary Builder (1939)

Unknown to 45 Percent: Asseveration

n. An earnest declaration, positive assertion, solemn affirmation. Asseveration come from the Latim ad, to; and severus, severe, the source of the English word severe.

880 Stories by Christopher Kang (2016)

55.

He paints portraits of horses. Only one critic of great importance admires them. Soon the world admires them. They see everything in the horses. Nothing made sense before these horses. 

An Image that Moves Me

Ice delivery man in Houston, TX (1920)

Bent Lit

A vibrant story collection about Cambodian-American life—immersive and comic, yet unsparing—that offers profound insight into the intimacy of queer and immigrant communities

Seamlessly transitioning between the absurd and the tenderhearted, balancing acerbic humor with sharp emotional depth, Afterparties offers an expansive portrait of the lives of Cambodian-Americans. As the children of refugees carve out radical new paths for themselves in California, they shoulder the inherited weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide and grapple with the complexities of race, sexuality, friendship, and family.

Order Book

Every one of the nine short stories in “Afterparties” draws on So’s real family, Lamb said. “Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts,” which first appeared in 2020 in the New Yorker, was inspired by their “deadbeat” uncle and their late, hardworking aunt, who co-owned a 1950s Americana eatery called Chubby’s Diner. “We Would’ve Been Princes!,” about family tensions that erupt during an epic drunken wedding, came out of Lamb’s chaotic two-day nuptials. “Generational Differences’’ is about a mother who escaped both the killing fields and the Cleveland Elementary School shooting of 1989. So and Lamb’s mother, Ravy, a retired claims representative for the Social Security Administration, survived both horrors. —LA Times Review

Commercial Break

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Catherine Opie Poem

I found an image of Catherine Opie

As silent as the slaughter house songs of pigs

Her canvas leaking outward to the open air

Her back, sore with the engraved image of a nuclear family

Posing gently a simple question 

How it must it feel to be removed and to only have a body 

That is inaudible to men

And I wondered if she might’ve questioned the existence of men 

There supposed usefulness--

How they never seem to venture a guess 

At what they themselves are to the world 

Did she think beauty is never this honest and that we must allow

ourselves to think that even in the slaughter of our own bodies

there must be art that provides a song for her 

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NSFW

Bent Questions: ALG (@gay_phase)

Poet, writer, and film programmer ALG reporting from the crisis heterotopia.

Photo by Bent Zine

So tell me how Bent you are…

1. Virus or Bacteria? Bacteria 

2. Preferred Pronoun? she/her

3. What Periodic Table Element are you? Francium

4. Favorite Object? My great grandparents wedding photo 

5. What shape are you? Halo

6. Give us a texture. Wet moss 

7. Anarchist, Socialist, Capitalist, Libertarian, etc. Socialist Feminist

8. Favorite person of Color that you disagree with? Christian Johnson 

9. What sound are you? 90s adult alternative radio station faintly heard at a thrift store 

10. Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, or a Broken Copper Pot? Tracey Emin

11. What’s the last thing you broke? The skin on my right forefinger 

12. Last person you kissed? My bathroom mirror 

13. Best thing about men’s right activists? A stopped clock is right twice a day 

14. Do you meditate? Thoroughly, with my eyes open 

15. Are you a Neutron Star, White Hole, or Solar Flare? White hole 

16. Which fetish are you? Klismaphilia, EDERACINISM, Fornifilia, OCULOLINCTUS: NO (...erotic asphyxiation)

17. Your opinion on Lesbian Separatist: Give me a dykes only commune where I don’t have to deal with the composting toilets 

18. Favorite Mythological Character? Mimir

19. What type of Cancer are you? Cervical 

20. Matriarchal Punishment or Patriarchal Redemption? MATRIARCHAL PUNISHMENT 

21. Who do you actually hate? Bob Brown (he will burn for it)

22. Best regrettable purchase this month? Delivery from 7-11 (white claw variety pack, Nutella, Gatorade)

23. Finish this sentence. I know Kim Kardashian…is the vacancy that represents the collision of late stage capitalism, end of empire, and death of celebrity culture

24. Your favorite body of water. Flathead Lake 

25. What’s the most middle class thing you’ve done this week? Lied to my dad 

26. I’m only politically correct when…I want to disengage 

27. What’s your favorite scar on your body? Cigarette burn on my arm from the last time I self harmed 

28. Last time you cried tears of joy. Listening to “O soave faniculla” this morning

29. Your most noble trait. Approaching life as a satirical tragic sitcom

30. I know the taste of...my period blood 

BEND DON’T BREAK.