Ota Benga: The Congolese Pygmy Who Became a Zoo Exhibit — The Vale Magazine

How is this different from the current consumption and exploitation of animals? Ota Benga at the Bronx Zoo holding a chimpanzee (1906) Around the beginning of the last century—in 1906, to be exact—the 4’11” Ota Benga was featured in an infamous… 515 more words Ota Benga: The Congolese Pygmy Who Became a Zoo Exhibit — The

Didn’ts can’ts won’ts

Places that we can’t gocrimson canyons down yonderblue skies out west Moments we can’t turn backlike the moment your eyes dilatedwhen you looked at her Things that can’t be undonelike the girl twirling in a garden of butterflieswhile you got high Things that can’t be fixedlike the crack in my lifeand the gap between ours

First time noticing quietness

I’m walking around in my room… maybe I’ve been in a cage, since the early 90s maybe it’s stayed quiet since that night in March when I first discovered quietness it wasn’t smothering at first; it was curious indeed that’s what happens to someone who comes from the hustle and bustle of the east, then

Empty house

I know you’re there sitting on the front porch of an empty house in this perfection, I’d walk in wrap my arms around you warm lights flicker inside the room in between our close, moving bodies it’s dusk outside the geese are flying south it’s getting empty in this northern town sometimes, we’re the only

Rat kids

Tonight, my favorite song is ‘Dont stop believing’ by Journey. In the guitar strings is our experience in this dark of the night. Rainy metro city concrete floors, concrete walls. Dark nights, cloudy days, spans of loneliness that lasts months on end. You’ve become an American boy, more than I’ve ever become an American girl.

Thought process; spring, plants, bears, goals

Hmmm, the tree leaf buds are growing. It makes the tree less stick-like and it’s starting to look more complex. The northern hemisphere of the earth is warming due to the earth’s tilt to the sun around this time. The air is chilly, but the ground is inevitably warm, so the plants are adapting and

Baked skin and olive green

Soak it all in, and trap it Before the sun disappears for the next six months in this desperate place

Harsh realities of losing hope

Worn out and walking around Trying to open my eyes. All around, there’s the blind leading the blind and chickens with their heads cut off; whatever you want to call them. I’m caught in a slew of nothingness, or just too many things happening all at once. There’s no fine balance, but a brutal divide.

Mulberries by the road

Nature’s free gift of the north

It’s a hard thing

I could be doing ten billion different things in ten billion different places, but here I am, trying to enjoy the most out of what I have up here It’s a hard thing to do

Chicken-broth like foreign scent and blinds

The rare subtle scent of something like mild diluted chicken-broth or a faraway whiff of miso soup does this to me. It took me years and years to figure out what this scent really could be, and up to today, I’m ninety-five percent sure that it’s related to meat; and most likely chicken. This rare,

Childhood bright eyes, adventure, and a song about a beast

Greasy pizza

We were little kids who sat in the school cafeteria during lunchtime. The cafeteria special that day, as it was every other day, was pizza. I used to think that pizza was a big deal, but the school pizza really, really sucked. I had a friend from Botswana next to me and a friend from

Fire curtain

It is a cruel and deserted world. Only stacks of papers funnel around you and I in this empty space. There’s something embedded within your cold demeanor. Your fake laughs, the way your hands shake when you lose control, your pointless hunger for power. We’re like mice roaming around in a dusty, cold, metallic warehouse.

The hazy blue world in Europe

She was a blonde high-school classmate who wanted to become a missionary one day. On the bus ride home, she told me about a time when someone she knew got into a car accident and almost became decapitated, or was decapitated. I eventually learned what that meant. Those days were cold and grey from what

Tune that I would’ve never chosen

I can’t believe I’m hearing this same old tune again. How long has it been, like twenty-some years? Is this what it’s like being old now? My, how I’ve grown… into something no less different. Blank eyed and coming of age, sitting in the car and looking out the car windshield; I once watched my

Surely dying

I’m sitting here on the empty Jacuzzi staring at the ceiling with water droplets spritzing near my face, as I try to feel fulfilled. In my room, I spray all types of scents to calm my senses but it just numbs me down. I have every material thing that I want and I make a

Good dream or a bad dream?

Sitting on your boss’s lap, leaning in and falling asleep While he does work for you on the laptop Someone comes in to check He responds, ‘This is team-building…’  

The wall

There’s always something blocking ahead. There’s always the wall; thick and made up of stones and concrete. I can kick it. I can try to punch it down with all my passion, but it just won’t collapse. I shiver and pace in this forsaken room. The lights are dim and the cold clouds claim and

My favorite place to lie down; behind the bushes

Streetlight people

Strangers waiting Up and down the boulevard Their shadows searching In the night… Streetlight people Living just to find emotion Hiding somewhere in the night   flint delta blinds

This makes me happy

The smell of maple leaf

The Scientist

“Questions of science Science and progress Do not speak as loud as my heart“

Vibrant Cuban ambitions and vacuous commercial air along the South Beach streets

2016/05/06

Snow

Memories of snow in the summertime. Days of crying undercovers and hungering for a drop of sunlight. Gray clouds looming over the Midwest and suffocating our souls; causing it to turn gray too. The skin turns into an ash like color, making you forget who you are. Depression is the perfect word to describe the