Someone I hadn’t seen in a long time died today.

We were never terribly close; he was older than me during my awkward adolescence, and we stopped living in the same place more than a decade ago. Much of his adult life I know nothing about. But this I do know: every single time I ever saw him, he was kind.

I may not believe in an afterlife in a traditional sense, but I do believe that if we could strip away the illusion of time we would know that everything that has ever happened, every moment that has ever taken place, is happening forever. So here’s to cracking jokes walking the late-night streets of Shoreham, New York–eleven years ago or eleven seconds ago.

Thank you, Mark​, for always being so nice to this weird girl trying to hang out with the cool older kids. I never forgot.

This was the song he asked his wife to post after he stopped making any more moments. The choice probably tells you a little something about what he was like.

Check it out y’all! You can order my first chapbook, Night Rooms, over at http://sidbranca.bigcartel.com/. A bunch of poems by yours truly, featuring art by Briana Finegan of @advicecollage, available as a physical object or as a digital file. 

If you’ve been reading @thisbedisaship diligently over the years you’ll recognize some of the text in here from earlier iterations, but I think it’s a new and different read even if you’re familiar with a bit of the material. 

I’ll mail out hard copies within a couple business days, and if you opt for the digital version, I’ll send you the pdf within 24 hours. If you’re in Chicago and want to save money on the shipping, shoot me a message through the contact page instead of ordering online and I can let you know about when & where you can buy a copy IRL. Ideally it will also eventually be available in brick-and-mortar shops in Chicago and Los Angeles; I’ll post information on that as it happens.

Thanks for taking the time to check it out. <3

some fragments of experimenting:

sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a woman, the shape, the soft layers of trouble, the slip into night, the bar bathroom duck-out late shift uncertain step into mist, to slick my lips with stolen teenage paint, to twirl my hair between my fingers as I lean against a wall pretending my telephone isn’t buzzing my father’s name in my pocket because something as outmoded as a father dissipates like steam when older boys are biting their lips at each other or maybe at me

I want to have a dad and then leave him to have a daddy and then leave him for a better one I want to know what it’s like to hate the patriarchy from the outside not this constant picking out of sick from inside me 

and I want to know what it’s like to ride a motorbike with slim hips

I want to balance on my toes like knives I want to stride out onto the dance floor like a goddess like Kali I want to set the club on fire with my lips

it’s not so much that I want to leave myself behind but that I know my body can do more than I have been given the instructions for 

I am taking pieces from an Ikea bedroom set and rearranging them, trial by error, except I mean myself, myself, the woman who blossoms out of me in late-night text messages and into your arms. 

fyi I haven’t been writing here because I’ve been working on two chapbook projects that will be available by the end of the year, which is rather exciting (!). I’ll post info about those up here in the near future. 

I dreamt there was a building, recently leased, perhaps after the death of an elderly someone, still filled with furnishings but being rearranged, prepared for new occupants. And so a sigil was removed from a door. And so at this something awoke, something arose from its waiting. Three figures slowly appeared under long swathes of red cloth, rising up from the floor like a magic trick. Without being able to see their faces I knew they were women, very old, so old, but they were the size of children. They were gliding across the floor toward me, I skirted around them to leave the room but they followed. They were whispering about what I had done, some sin I had committed. That wrong, of course, occurred long before I was born, committed not by me but by some other, but here I was to play the part, the sacrifice in some reenactment of justice imagined. It was pointless to deny it; we were all guilty, all. I said the words I was meant to. The three women turned into three small snakes with long fangs. I tried to tangle them in the long red robes, but they would bite me through the cloth. My hands stung, I feared poison, I feared worse. But then somehow, the snakes were becoming pencils, their fangs becoming graphite points, long and sharp. I snapped them into pieces, kept the pieces apart so they would not grow back together. I wrapped them in the red cloth. 

manymistypes:

April 30, 2015 - sidbranca / thisbedisaship

thanks so much for letting me be a part of this y’all. i’ve really appreciated it. happy may. <3

my last poem for the month over at many mistypes. 

manymistypes:

April 29, 2015 - sidbranca / thisbedisaship

on feeling a lot of east coast feelings, or: that’s not a typo that’s how you gotta say it

manymistypes:

April 28, 2015 - sidbranca / thisbedisaship

(I like that I got the songs mixed up
so that he had the chance to correct me
with the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard…)

manymistypes:

April 27, 2015 - sidbranca / thisbedisaship

on how there’s a time and a place for making things about my feelings, and how often I suspect that a poem is one and a protest is not. 

manymistypes:

April 26, 2015 - sidbranca / thisbedisaship

~*~on creating personas designed for ego-death~*~