Your hold is ready! (7. 30. 25)

Author

Cavar S
July 30, 2025

Hello from Connecticut! Less than two weeks ago, I packed my life into a UHaul and flew across the country from my old apartment in Davis to my even-older childhood bedroom, where I’ll be until the middle of August…at which point I head to my long-term writing residency at Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, TN!

What will I be doing in the meantime? Well, first and foremost, I’ll be working on a few dozen job applications to postdocs and tenure-track positions, as application deadline season officially begins at the end of August. I’m also working on syllabi for my University of Maine: Augusta courses in Interdisciplinary Studies, and on my own research and writing across genres. Still, this period between Davis and Knoxville really does feel like a break: there’s something about being in my bright green bedroom, surrounded by my old stuffed animals….or maybe it’s the fact that my mom is doing my laundry!!!

Plus….an event this Saturday!! With me!! At Barnes and Noble in Smithfield, Rhode Island! Come hang out and get a signed copy of Failure to Comply. Even if you can’t come, please spread the word.

Since I last wrote, some heavy, strange things have happened. My grandfather, my relationship with whom had soured severely by the end of his life, died a couple weeks ago. I don’t miss him, and I’m not sad about it, per se, but I am sad for my grandma, with whom I am now trying to rebuild a relationship I had previously suspended for several years. My grandfather’s reactionary politics, which had grown only more extreme by the end of his life, had kept me from meaningfully communicating with either of them; in this sense, his death is more of a relief than anything else, as my grandmother feels like someone open to connection in ways he never was.

There is also Palestine. I admit, over the last few months, I have attempted (unsuccessfully) to numb myself, maybe out of selfishness, or maybe self-preservation, or more likely, both. Now, I’m back home, watching near-dead children on high-definition gym TV screens, hearing shameless CNN and NYT spokespeople opine about a “crisis” they aided in making. As I asked my mother the other day, how many people had to die in this genocide in order for them to finally, finally give a fuck? Why wasn’t 40,000 enough? Why wasn’t 100? Why wasn’t 1? Why is Palestinian life deemed worthless, and why is it only now, after 2 years of nonstop massacres, starvation, and terror, that the Rational™ people paying attention? They called Aaron Bushnell (z”l) crazy. They called student activists terrorists. We were right. And so what?

So what. I don’t know. I don’t know how Judaism globally will survive this –– this utter black mark on our collective conscience, something it will take untold generations to mend. But even for those of us who have held true to our consciences this whole time, the scale of devastation we are witnessing is impossible to comprehend, impossible to emotionally process, because it should fundamentally not exist.

I don’t have much to say that others have not said more eloquently than me. As I type this, I can feel a dark shadow settle over my vision. It’s like I’m looking through a tube whose ends are quickly closing, and the tube is the universe. Not much else to say, other than check out the resources and links provided by Beatrice Alder-Bolton here, donate to Palestinians and to on-the-ground organizations actively helping them survive, and remember to take care of yourself so that we can keep fighting for the long haul.

Now, for some housekeeping:

Submissions: manywor(l)ds is open through July 31. Send your work, and view our latest issue, published May 15, here.

Take a peek at how we sheep, co-written with scholarly-(anti-) crush/comrade/collaborator ulysses/constance bougie, is out with Ethel Press. For background on what we’re doing with queerness, Madness, and (a)sexualities, check out our work in) Kairos and Asexualities. You can order it on its own or purchase it bundled with my third chapbook and first with Ethel, Out of Mind & Into Body.

And check out Failure to Comply digitally and in print and on Bookshop in both formats, on Goodreads and Storygraph, and request it at your local bookstores and libraries. Find inspo/similar reads/books that fed Failure to Comply at my Bookshop affiliate page, where each of your orders gives me a dollar.

Now, onto the recommendations!

Today’s Recs:

Books:

Booktubers (I’ve been watching them a lot lately!):

Poetry & Prose & In-Between:

Essays and Articles:

My Recent Work: