This Week in Underland:

• Genocide, Goddamn Suitcases, and the Ghost of a Shelf:
  The cats are furious. We’re not coping. Palestine is burning. The shelf is still up. But we’re still here—furious, in love, and telling the truth.
• Packing, Propaganda, and the Politics of Chicken:
  Gaza is bleeding. Mowgli is brooding. The suitcase remains both metaphor and menace.
• Love, Lint, and the Last Fucking Straw:
  River fits in like a dream. The house is chaos. The news is hell. The revolution may be handmade, badly folded, and slightly neurodivergent—but it’s ours.

As usual, the last week has been both eventful and wonderful. We spent a few days in King’s Lynn visiting one of Celia’s closest friends and her family, and it was, honestly, kind of magic to watch them together and become part of it. It felt good to step outside our usual surroundings for a while and experience a different pace, a different kind of quiet.

Newport has its own offbeat charms—it’s loud and colorful and full of strange little joys—but it definitely doesn’t do “quaint” quite like the smaller towns. King’s Lynn was all cobbled streets and crooked buildings, history leaning into every brick. We had tea at a place called The Tipsy Teapot, which was every bit as cute and oddball as the name promises. Lace curtains, misshapen teacups, a vaguely threatening ceramic cat near the till. We loved it.

We made it out to the coast one afternoon, walked along the beach, and got ruthlessly swindled by a two-pence machine in an arcade that might double as a front for light piracy. It was ridiculous and delightful. A memory now held together by the smell of salt and the tinny clatter of change.

At one point, I managed to offend a group of Canadians by asking if they were American. In my defense, I was just excited to hear a non-UK accent. I immediately regretted it. Sorry, y’all—my enthusiasm eclipsed my geographical tact.

When we got home, we were greeted with the usual feline chaos. Akela made her feelings known by screaming—loudly, and at length. Poe demanded chicken, as is her divine right. Mowgli blinked once, flicked a tail, and grumbled something that loosely translated to, “Oh. You’re back.” It was chaotic and hilarious and grounding. Coming home to a house filled with small furry dictators is strangely comforting. Love comes in yowls and paw slaps around here.

But the sweetness of the week has been tempered by the work we’ve been doing since we returned.

The past few days, we’ve been focusing heavily on Palestine. Our Face Lift series will be highlighting Palestinian artists this week—voices we refuse to silence, even if platforms try to. We had an ad rejected simply because it included the word genocide. Let’s be clear: it is a genocide. If they won’t let us say it in an ad, we’ll say it everywhere else, louder.

I wrote a poem about Bisan, a young journalist from Gaza. We tried to elevate it, to honour her story, and the platform denied it. Not because of hate speech, not because of violence—because the truth was too true. Because we used the word they’re all trying not to see.

And that begs the question: what exactly are they protecting us from? Are Western audiences so fragile that merely reading the word “genocide” is considered damaging? Because there are people—real people—living it, dying in it, every single day.

I’m knee-deep in images made by people who are now dead. Artists. Photographers. Writers. People who were just like me: a camera in hand, a story to tell. The only difference is fate. I was born in the west. They weren’t.

It is by pure chance that I’m not starving under a blockade. It is by chance that I’m sitting here safe, with a roof, and food, and cats who yell at me when I’ve been gone too long. It could so easily have been the other way around. It still could be. Empires don’t stay on their side of the fence forever.

Of course how do we react to it? We make something, because that’s what we can do. We’re putting together an anthology. I’m going to be a featured spoken word artist on June 19th in a fundraiser for the Black Trans Coalition. We’re in the process of creating a justice/injustice themed “flash anthology” called Salt in the Wound.

And what I’m grappling with—what’s new, since getting married—is this tension between fury and joy. I am so in love with my life. With my wife. With the strange, aching beauty of what we’ve built together. And at the same time, I am seething at the world. I am incandescent with rage and helplessness, watching governments peddle cowardice as neutrality while whole families vanish.

It’s a strange, sharp duality—to feel so full of love, and so wrecked by grief for people I’ve never met. But maybe that’s what it means to be human and awake. To hold joy in one hand, and fury in the other. To know you’re lucky, and not let that be the end of the story.

We’ll keep going. Keep telling it. However we can.

 R x

Well, another week has gone. Just like that. We had a wonderful time in King’s Lynn. A quiet, unassuming visit with friends who’ve known me forever. It felt good to be somewhere with people who’ve never pressured me to be anything other than myself. And it was kind of magical to see how easily my wife fit into it all. Like a proverbial duck to water. I knew my friends would be kind, but it was more than that. River just became part of the family. And just like that, we were home.

It’s funny though—how, as I get older, the need for the sanctity of home grows stronger. I had a truly wonderful time, but I was grateful to be home when we returned.

As far as the Prepare For Thailand Fiasco goes… we’re getting there. Slowly. We’re supposed to be taking down shelves. Instead, we’re writing. Talking. Me, wandering the house aimlessly. We’ll get there, though. In our own neurodivergent way. The long route.

On a plus, we spoke to an estate agent and might actually get the house sorted before we move. That would be a true blessing—knowing we have somewhere to land. That we’ll be home, not suitcasing out of a hotel room.

I feel similarly to River about life right now. So much personal joy and happiness. And yet, so much sadness and fury and disgust at the world we live in. At the injustice. At how power dictates. I keep wishing we had more of a platform—not for ourselves, but to say the uncomfortable things people refuse to acknowledge or feel. Are they numb to it all? Anaesthetised by the propaganda of the western world?

Because there’s a genocide happening. Right now. In Gaza. Children are being bombed in their beds. Journalists are being assassinated for telling the truth. Aid is being blocked. Bodies are buried in the rubble of hospitals and homes. And somehow, we’ve been trained not to say it. Not to name it. Like if we just avoid the word, the horror isn’t real.

But it is. It’s so real I can’t stop thinking about it.

And I suppose that’s the sick part of it all. That there’s room inside one body to feel so much joy and so much grief at once. To kiss the love of your life and then sit in silence reading the death toll. To laugh about the cats and cry for the children. To plan a future, and still feel like the world is breaking in front of you. Snapped in two.

Maybe that’s why we keep writing. Not because it fixes anything—it doesn’t. Nothing at all. But because silence is complicity. And art, even small, weird, queer, defiant art, is the only weapon we have left. It’s all we have. 

Out of this nothing, we’re trying to make something.
A response. A record. A fuck-you to the politicians too weak to stand for truth.

To the algorithm designed to promote mediocrity and sanitize suffering into palatable little squares. Click. Smile. Filter it for the feed.

We’re putting together a flash anthology called Salt in the Wound—a gathering of voices exploring justice and its absence.
Stories. Poems. Tiny printed protests.

A dollar from every sale will go to the Black Trans Coalition, because justice isn’t justice if it isn’t intersectional.

We created this not for profit. For feeling. For those who’ve been downtrodden, dismissed, erased. We wanted to make a space where truth could be held, where grief could be named, where fury had somewhere to land.

When someone asked, “What’s the writer fee?”

The question caught in my throat and made me want to vomit. Frankly.
We’re doing this from a place of humanity. Not capitalism. Not exposure culture. Not hustle-as-worth.

All other proceeds go toward keeping the zine alive: paying the site fees, printing the pages, holding space for voices that rarely get heard.
If this takes off, if my some weird-ass Underland miracle we sell bucket loads—we’ll pay contributors. Happily. Desperately. But this isn’t a cash grab. It’s a call.

And if all you see here is the potential for pennies, you’re not who we’re asking for.

Submissions are open until June 16th. If you’ve got something to say, say it. We’ll hold space for it.

We don’t know how to change the world. But we’re still here. Still bearing witness. Still saying what we’re not supposed to say.

It’s not anything, really.

Just two fucked-up nobodies, in love and furious at the fucking world.

Genocide.

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If this resonated, share it on Bluesky (or anywhere folks still have an attention span longer than a moth after a sleepless night), leave us a comment, or check out our latest anthologies

Poetry Collection, ‘Is this all we get?’

Prose Collection, ‘ Fifth Avenue Pizza’