#68: "Like the electric lamps at the world fair, but better."
Microfiction, erasure poetry, and monthly creative news.
Howdy,
Well, folks, we’re already in April, but let’s not let that stop us from celebrating that March existed! Last month I put together some tight postcard pieces for my patrons and wrote a piece of fiction for y’all that I love, and today, we’re finally getting to enjoy it together. Let’s jump in and…
💌 peep my erasure poetry from William Dorsey Swann’s arrest articles,
💌 find out the voting results for this month’s prompt,
💌 read some magical girl portal fantasy,
💌 and hear some monthly creative news.
❌ A month in postcard art
With the U.S. government routinely erasing pages online that so much as reference people of color, women, and queer folks in government, I spent March reflecting - like many people from the U.S. - on free press. The Library of Congress’ “Chronicling America” archives are a fantastic resource that links us directly to the past, without filters. It’s my primary source researching any letters that have links to the United States, and possibly my favorite website online: U.S. newspapers from 1736-1963 are digitized and available for free.
And when I found all the articles about William Dorsey Swann’s arrests, I knew I wanted to turn them into poems.
While we face unprecedented queer erasure in the twenty-first century, I wanted to take that erasure into my own hands, and created two different poems. The first, I reenvisioned his arrest to instead be a night of queer domestic joy:
And the second took a more “fuck you” approach:
🗳 The votes are in
Patrons and full-access subscribers voted for this month’s postcard-fiction prompt:
Action: hiccup
Word: melange
Inspiration: William Dorsey Swann’s letter to President Grover Cleveland
In case you missed it, here’s everything you need to know about the first proclaimed Drag Queen:
#66: At length ‘her majesty’ recovered speech and... said, with a haughty air, ‘You is no gentlemen.'
Do you think trailblazers ever wake and decide they’ll shape history?
Each month after voting closes, I give myself a measly 48 hours1 to write you a story set in whatever slice of history we explored.
In a time of such anger and violence against queer people, I gave William the Queen a magical twist.
👑 On Tuesdays, Kristie and Queenie perform at Drag Brunch
Here’s the postcard I wrote on:
And here’s the story:
William quit hosting parties after the last arrest. The Queen retired from Washington, thank you very much. Tonight, in a forgettable black suit, he cleans the library like every shift, shelving a melange of books – philosophy, history, romance – abandoned by readers. He slides the final one – Mrs. Mallard’s Guide to Propriety – in its place beside a Bible study.
The silence of the space, of being alone, descends on him, and he whoops and twirls, stretching his hands towards the ceiling’s dark corners where the oil lamps can’t reach. He sashays to unheard music towards what’s become his corner. As always, the book is there on a poetry shelf, tucked between Lovers and Wholeness: Proud, Baby! A bendable glass-like material covers the front of the strange book that only appears after dark, when William’s alone. Giddiness ripples head to tail; he flips it open.
And like every Saturday, the book gobbles him up.
Top over toes, he tumbles through lightning and beams of colors with no name, and winks into being in a too-modern public washroom. On the other side of his stall, people chatter. When he pushes his door open, she’s waiting in the mirror: William the Queen. Tonight she wears a dress of zebra print, shoulders exposed, a hundred braids rippling down her back. Someone reapplying lipstick catches her eye in the mirror and whistles. William looks good. Rhythm, deep and mechanical, pulses on the other side of the door. Throwing her shoulders back, she strides from the washroom and into the dance hall.
Pink and blue and purple – like the electric lamps at the World Fair, but better – hiccup across the floor. And all around, joy, Black and white and everybody in between, men dancingkissinglaughing with men, women with women, other with other. Like always, Kristie finds her. Tonight, the woman’s satin dress clings to her wiry frame in every right place.
Pulling her in for a hug, Kristie envelops William in her scent of sweat and cinnamon. “Queenie! Come on, baby, let’s dance.”
She pulls the Queen into the heart of all those invert bodies, bright and powerful as diamonds. Closing her eyes, the Queen surrenders to the night, home all around her, oh so very proud.
💻 Your turn: write microfiction!
Using the same prompts above (hiccup/melange/William Dorsey Swann), write a story of your own! Give yourself 48 hours or less to write it, keep it short, and remember: the goal isn’t perfection. It’s putting your pen (cursor) to the page (screen) and making some art.
When you’re ready to share it with me, reply to this email, post it directly in the comments, or make erasure poetry of it. Reading your work is the highlight of my month!
(As always, if you’re feeling stuck getting started, here’s an article I wrote on microfiction fundamentals.)
🤴🏻 A prince no more
Did I make this round of voting too juicy? I think I did. It was a neck-and-neck race, but there’s one that perhaps was just a bit too fiery for y’all, winning by a lone vote.
This month, we’re getting into early twentieth century tea, spilling it all over the place, as we talk about…
🤴🏻 The Abdication of Edward VIII: U.S. divorcée socialites, Nazis, and DrAmA 🤴🏻
Let’s get saucy!
🌍 Updates in my creative world
The Etsy is going well! I made my first sale and am going to post several new postcard listings for y’all this month. If you haven’t already, go give it some hearts/follows - it’s a free thing, takes less than a minute, and helps me out tremendously.
I finished my favorite oil painting I’ve ever done and started a new one! The new one is just in the underpainting phase, but here’s my finished painting:
I started an end-table sculpture of a gaudy 1970s-style cake. Home decoration meets weird art, 2k25. I’ll post pictures when it’s done!
I had my first art opening night with L’Évasion here in town - it was so sweet to have my friends and family come and celebrate my art being up at a bar I love. Here’s to a million more.
My art is up on Aaron Burch’s Short Story Long! It was my first time illustrating for a short story and I am lucky to have gotten to draw for such a beautiful piece.
I’m nearly done with background art for a stop-motion animation with the animation co-op <3.
And finally, this month I’ll be speaking on three writer’s panels, moderating one, and hosting two art workshops at Eastercon Belfast! Am I going to be busy as hell? Oh, most definitely.
If this newsletter inspired you, make some art and send me a picture of it/send me your story! I always want to witness what you’ve put in the world.
All my love and magical girl plot twists forever,
Nikita, your Snail Mail Sweetheart
I know, I’m several days late, but I didn’t give myself extra time on the story! Never trust someone with fibromyalgia to be punctual.
Queen for a Night
The slightly more than half-illuminated moon, in its Waning Gibbous phase on the tranquil evening of April 12, 1898, provided scant light through the dusty attic window of the Washington DC residence of police Lieutenant Peter Amiss. The flickering oil lamp that he securely held in one hand was almost unnecessary, since he had made this same annual foray nine previous times. Reaching the far end and setting the lamp on the wooden floor, he extended both arms to tenderly retrieve a brown paper wrapped parcel concealed between mouldering rafters. This hiding place once again proved more secure than his station’s evidence room, from where he had purloined his treasure a decade ago.
With his wife and two daughters safely out of the way for the evening, Peter ritually placed the package on his bed and proceeded to undress. The silver lieutenant’s bar of his carefully folded uniform seemed to sparkle in anticipation. With moist and slightly trembling fingers he gingerly loosened the twine holding the wrinkled paper in place. Slowly raising the white silk dress to his face, he inhaled deeply in the desperate hope of retrieving yet another fading whiff of the enchanting perfume that, exactly ten years ago, had turned his decidedly unimaginative mind into a dangerously disordered melange of hitherto unfelt emotions and unimagined desires.
The bold Lieutenant and his squad of officers had forcefully penetrated the door of the house near 12th and F Streets in order to put an end to the sordid and unseemly acts of perversion unfolding therein at the 30th birthday bacchanalia of one William Dorsey Swann. This strikingly alluring black man was elegantly attired in the finest female clothing as were his numerous, and soon to be arrested, debauched black attendants, rapturously swirling and dancing to the approving chants of a more conventionally attired white male chorus of upstanding citizens. With the evening’s festivities now brought to an abrupt halt in an act of ballare interruptus, the defiance and disrespect exhibited by the prideful Swann was simply beyond endurance. The young Lieutenant plunged forward to grasp the offender in a restraining and domineering embrace while being haughtily informed that he was no gentleman. Indeed he was not. He felt his firm grip on that distinction being slowly pried away as he faced the first intimation that his life would never be quite the same again.
Without a chemisette, the luxurious silk dress provided the sensuous and long anticipated feelings that exhilarated Peter’s skin and coursed through his stiffening body as he stood transformed and mesmerized before the unblinking bedroom mirror. The ten foot train of the numinous gown spilled and swirled across the pulsating floor. With as many of the numerous buttons fastened as his muscular physique allowed and carefully affixing the stylishly coiffed black wig, the annual ceremony was almost complete. Could he manage to achieve the climactic slipping on of the long, white buttoned kid gloves or, as in previous years, would he prematurely collapse in a quivering heap upon enveloping lace and silk? An inexplicable case of unsuppressible hiccups momentarily held the denouement in abeyance…until suddenly frightened away by the noisy opening of the front door.
The sad history of his appropriated women’s garments, once again brought into court as evidence in a divorce proceeding, was unknown to the later to be unjustly incarcerated William Dorsey Swann. His letter appealing for clemency to Grover Cleveland might possibly have been aided by the inclusion of this naughty story. Here was a President with a scandalously younger wife and who was publicly accused of rape. Sounds familiar, except that he lost his bid for reelection from lowering tariffs.