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R I I S, aka “my high horse comes with wings”

11 Jul, 14 tweets, 3 min read

Welcome to my page. I’m a poet & professor. I’ve won many awards. I read many books. My research does not stem from either YouTuple lectures or my unexplored feelings of trauma. I regard that the world is larger than the Black Midwest of America, or a Twitter argument. I’m trans.

I don’t argue with folks 25 years or younger, or who otherwise have yet to develop a prefrontal cortex. I won’t argue with folks who learned theory from Tumblr. If you have a cartoon photo for a profile pic, instead of the courage of your own face, I won’t argue with you.

I’m 32. I started “professoring” at 25 at Columbia University in New York. I can take a punch directly to the jaw; in fact, just had to Saturday night. I have been called elitist & accept the claim if that soothes you. I’m an ♒️ Sun, ♓️ Moon, exactly like the late Toni Morrison.

Your feelings are valid always, but they are not my responsibility. Bullying, I think, *is* an expression of abuse & systemic oppression, but simple conflict is not abuse. The rules of a white, civil society will not aid us: I will call who’s stupid stupid; so don’t be stupid.

Recently, my literal image affects the way the world approaches and treats me more than any other aspect. Because race, color and gender are all about treatment. I recognize my value & that means my beauty as well. I’m beautiful. To know this doesn’t dismiss your own beauty.

I have a pussy named Trouble. I also own a shorthair grey tabby named the same. I can be clever. I have a right to my words. I am what they call the Jezebel, applying makeup before the opposing Calvary marches up to her door. Bc in my 20s I was a gay twink, “whore” don’t hurt me.

I am something you have seen before and haven’t, like Tiresisas. If I keep writing long enuf this will become a poem Altho that’s not the goal. The next time they attack me they had better kill me. I get it. I irk your bitches.

A favorite song is “There Are Worst Things I Could Do,” performed by Stockard Channing. I identify most especially after the volta with the song. You think you know me. If I’m ever an ancestor one day, you had better make your altar real right. Wear bright colors at my funeral.

I’m glad to have been raised when “logging on or off” the internet was a nearly-tangible exercise that sometimes failed. It’s not the presence of the internet, of information, that defines a generation, but its easy or less easy access to. Zoomers are those always online.

If you seriously think the world works along a balance of “lightskin” and “darkskin,” as opposed to “lighter-skinned” and “darker-skinned,” just block me now. When I’m next in Palestine I’ll raise your thesis and see if it holds, as you eat 7-layer salad in A flyover state.

I can be mean, nasty, rude, weak, and coarse; but, above all, I am willing to be wrong. I am doing a service by even being willing to be wrong publicly. I’m comfortable with apologizing, even especially when I realized to truly apologize restores even your own power. & I am kind.

I’m from New Orleans, a place you won’t allow leave the discursive idea of the South bc you want access to its mystique at the same time you don’t understand it or won’t to; you almost bemoan it its mystique since, idk, Truth or Consequence, NM is said not to have one. Ergo,

I’m from a trans city. I was born in Charity. Or La Caridad, if you were Cuban. Oshun grabbed my neck but I still wonder who’s on my head. Welcome to my page. Of what I’ve forgotten, write l in as you will. But know: I will me. My name is Rickey Laurentiis; friends call me Riis.

One Trouble says hello.

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More from @rckylrnts

R I I S, aka “my high horse comes with wings”

@rckylrnts

12 Jul

# of times I’ve been punched in the jaw since June 2020: 5.

#OT I’ve been pepper-sprayed: 1.

#OT this violence was at the hands of a cop: 0.

#OT this violence was at the hands of cis women: 1.

#OT someone’s told me they pray for my peace: countless.

#OT my mother has cries “she doesn’t know what to do” but won’t google a book to help: 5.

#OT I’ve been told my death would hurt the people left behind: countless.

#OT my assaulted literally turned around to then try to soothe me, or fuck me: 3.

#OT my assaulter was trans: 0.

#OT I’ve been told to carry a gun, that’ll stop everything: 5.

#OT I’ve been chastised by a former mentor not say I hate all cis people because that will scare future universities: 1.

#OT I wish I had a dragon to burn all of you: countless.

#OT I’ve stopped loving myself: 0.

Read 5 tweets

R I I S, aka “my high horse comes with wings”

@rckylrnts

12 Feb

When you break from grip of sleep to meet the dark morning just that minute beginning to rain, that’s intimacy with the earth.

When you move yourself thru wake’s confusion, your nose pressed against the cold pain, the water sliding down, only quicker, than the glass, that’s the ask of earth.

The dark wind worries over the rooftops like wind. The sounds make a beggar of the night, bringing Trouble in, so that you are too alone together.

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R I I S, aka “my high horse comes with wings”

@rckylrnts

31 Dec 20

I just think it’s funny how everyone & they momma is a writer, yet y’all all fell asleep in an English class. 🥴

If someone sends you a text with more than 50 words, you get nervous. If someone types as much online, your go-to reply is “I ain’t reading all that 😂” & you’re not even slightly embarrassed to admit it. 🧐

Every book you ever read in any body’s class was simply there to oppress you, ain’t a thing it could teach you. But that article you wrote about the hidden context of twelve bars of mumble rap? Why, everyone needs to read this—and read it forever.

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R I I S, aka “my high horse comes with wings”

@rckylrnts

30 Dec 20

The inferiority complex of who I will call American Blacks have toward Black New Orleanians (who could also be called Creole Blacks) is deep, wide, & impressive in its attempts to reassert itself even when no more superior note has been tried or claimed. God bless the child.

It is a legacy of American Colonial logic (ie, those first thirteen states) that makes mere difference, distinction and dissimilarity automatically suggestive of a hierarchy—that is a superior vs inferior—when it needn’t do. 🙃

When you graph this on top of notions of colorism and colorstruck logic—even tho logics of color worked entirely differently in New Orleans, et al, than they did those first 13–it becomes a mighty wicked grease fire. Attempts to “reorder” the hierarchy is like water to that fire.

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R I I S, aka “my high horse comes with wings”

@rckylrnts

15 Dec 20

@lizzo

My heart goes out to @lizzo because she really can’t do ANYTHING but apparently sing about how “confident” she is. This allows a certain group of people to pity her, confusing that for support, while another group uses her for their campaigns, confusing that for the same. 💔

There is a specter to the black femme body as it approaches a kind of “liminal attractiveness.” I know that’s clunkily-put. I’m trying to find ways to discuss parallels I see between fathpobia and transphobia, so you will excuse if I make some faux-pas as I think this aloud.

What do I mean by liminal attractiveness? I mean that the body before you in all ways, but one, does invite your appreciation. However, that critical one difference (whether real or, more often, imagined) is the crucial Door of No Passage.

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R I I S, aka “my high horse comes with wings”

@rckylrnts

14 Dec 20

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“Before that, Saturn was in Aquarius from 1962-1964, just before the Civil Rights Act [was adopted.] And before that, Saturn was in Aquarius from 1932-1935. The Great Depression had begun in 1929 [which eventually] saw the beginning of FDR’s New Deal...”

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