Artwork © Claudio Parentela

 

no more relatives in Brethren, MI

your father can’t be your friend, or
so the kindergarten teachers say, or so my
friends say, or so
my father says, so it’s unanimous, the
purpose of the word is necessity, which is to
say necessity needs necessity or
just that necessity
needs, end
sentence, pluralism conjugated is a sister
-hood, worn without need for
rain, or socialism at the fingertip, held
by mothers who are
not mothers, or so graves say, because stone
speaks louder in the middle
of somewhere where no
-where is a thing that happens, a
verb, living
a topic worth less gossip
than death, but naming
loneliness in the womb
of the Midwest feels like a deal
with God & the one Baptist
church in town, where they make it sound like
we’re family,
you don’t have to do important, substantial
things, the ones i don’t need, like
having only one of any
-thing in town, but never when i make a wish,
when leeches could be useful but
leeches, of course, can’t be found, let alone
confirmed to exist, so why speak
their name, their ghost, the scratch of some
-thing or someone close enough to feel like
this intersection isn’t empty & the traffic
lights since taken down, close
enough that even
the bugs don’t feel alone 

 

Liam Strong (they/them) is a queer neurodivergent straight edge punk writer who has earned their BA in writing from University of Wisconsin-Superior. They are the author of the chapbook Everyone’s Left the Hometown Show (Bottlecap Press, 2023). They are most likely gardening and listening to Bitter Truth somewhere in Northern Michigan.

Born in Catanzaro (1962-Italy) where he lives and works, Claudio Parentela is an illustrator, painter, digital painter, photographer, mail artist, cartoonist, collagist, textile artist and freelance journalist. He has been Active since many years in the international contemporary art scene.