Not Yet

Riso prints

2024

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In January 2024, Ohio governor Mike DeWine proposed rules that would have restricted trans healthcare in a way no other state has, as part of a nationwide attempt by the U.S. government to eradicate trans people from public life. The Ohio Department of Health solicited public comment on these rules as they deliberated whether or not to implement them.

 

I "submitted my comments" in the form of these risoprinted poems, emailing a scanned PDF to the ODH. The poems desecrate the original texts, inhabiting a raucous chorus of voices that resist individualism, demand bodily autonomy for adults and children, and critique the inaccessibility of trans healthcare. 

 

Interspersed throughout the carved-out text bodies are scans of fossils from the warm shallow sea that once covered much of the land. I love these little fossils, reminders of deep time when the present can feel so urgent. I think pretty simple thoughts when I walk around in riverbeds looking for them, like, there are so many trans people in the future, and, there are so many of us now, and, we have taken and will take care of each other.