In case you have been under a rock for the past forty-eight hours, everything good that I touch turns to dirt. Bon Appetit is not the collaborative haven that its YouTube lead me to believe. The editor-in-chief, Adam Rapoport, after declaring that “food has always been political” in a May 31 newsletter, had photos circulated of him and his wife dressed up as Puerto Ricans in what is at the very least incredibly racist display of brownface (anecdotal knowledge from writer and sommelier Tammie Teclemariam says that Rapoport had that framed copy of this infamous photo on his desk). Next, Rapoport calls an all-hands-on-deck meeting of all staff, assistant food editor Sohla El-Walylly calls for his resignation and after a zero-sum response, goes to Instagram to renounce Rapoport. She details that in her ten months working at Bon Appetit, a job she received after fifteen years of restaurant experience, paid her 50k per year with no compensation for her appearances on their YouTube channel (for context, a middle-income family in New York City makes 75k). Hawa Hassan, Somali chef and business owner, put on her Instagram story that she was paid four hundred dollars per video she did for Bon Appetit and has not worked with them since October 2019.

Rapoport resigns, but that is merely the tip of the iceberg. Business Insider publishes an article detailing that in the essence of Bon Appetit as a workplace is fueled by prejudice, popularity, and the silencing of racialized folk (I suggest downloading the extension Pocket to maneuver the Business Insider paywall).

No one is safe now that the dam is broken. Besides Rapoport, Resident Nice Guy Alex Delany came under fire for a photo of him holding a cake with a Confederate flag decorated on top and a vine where he uses a homophobic slur. Head of lifestyle and style programming at Conde Nast, spearheading the Conde Nast Entertainment sect which deals with the Bon Appetit YouTube channel, Matt Duckor, had several racist and homophobic tweets resurface.

Fandom is the main mode of media consumption nowadays, perpetuated especially through social media. They feverishly participate, creating transformative works based on a piece, and disseminate their love to anyone that is willing to listen. Every piece of technology in social media asks us to participate with the media we love. While one had to scour early internet forums and isolate themselves with their love of Star Wars, it is now easier than ever to declare your love for a piece of media.

I recommended Bon Appetit to all my friends, followed the Meme_Appetit account on Instagram, and frequently discussed and created the recipes featured on their website. The ability to connect with others, transform the suggested text into memes, fan fiction, and the like, and obsess over a cult of personalities has been made much easier by the internet. At a certain moment, it must become deliberate from the team at Bon Appetit and Conde Nast to cash in on their dedicated fan base. Editors mention their skimming of fan fiction at 92nd Street Y, the popular Instagram meme account Meme Appetit was featured in their own video, and the Test Kitchen team even delved into the god-forsaken YouTube comment section. The participation of fans became in tandem with the cult of personalities themselves. People love to see themselves acknowledged and knowing that certain editors liked one meme of themselves over another thrilled me. The advantages of fandom are enormous and the ability to churn out any content, without critique, is immense.

So, I never minded that there were more white editors on camera. I did not mind that Chris Morocco did not know what gumbo is. I did not mind that Sohla can cook circles around the other editors. Either the haze of goodness that this content brought me was too much, or I’m just plain ignorant. The crux of the matter is that Bon Appetit works underneath the hand of the corporation Conde Nast. As any good corporation under this capitalist system should, they rely on the subjugation and silence of Black and Brown folk.

Now that that is out of my system, back to more important things. Abolish the police.

“That green light, I want it.” — Lorde, “Green Light”

Give me a sign/This moon is a green light/Pour over me/Hope for new life

The void of hearts

kept me in a keep

it let me go to sleep

nothing else could seep

into my whole heart.

It’s everywhere.

The land, the air,

the body that carries me

into the mess of existence.

That’s cliché. Existence is

not the hold. It is not the

way that folds me

into these fits of panic. Static

electric mixes by disc jockeys, drugs and

foils around my thighs.

Those who keep pace with

all the ways

even in my heart.

You sound like my nails scratching against a ceramic pot You look like heavy breathing, like puffy eyes You smell foul You taste acidic Sometimes like arsenic Sometimes like nothing

We remember bringing you home We remember you sucking my thumb We saw you run We saw you fall and through it all we pulled you buck up on your feet.

Doubt my friend, we had no thought that you would not meet the expectation and potential of all that love you give and receive

When I was born

I was an airtight vessel

And with each day,

I began to show holes.

When I was born I was an airtight vessel. I had fun with no recollection or care of how I was seen. I thought I was a sweet, redhead. I thought I looked like my friends. Assumed everyone had their mother pull knots into their hair. They all had people always touching and gawking at something atop their heads. When I looked at myself in the mirror for the first time. When I took time at the reflection and said hello. When I learned about what a body can mean. When I learned about men in white hoods and the fires on front yards. When I took time at the refection and said hello. When my father told me about his life: the hopes and dreams he has for me, shuffling from state to state.

When I was born

I was an airtight vessel

When I was born, I was an airtight submarine. I see myself now falling into the ocean every night before I fall asleep. I simultaneously compress and completely come apart.

It was nothing monumental that pricked and slashed against the thought of it A look A long look Men my father knew all expecting us to come in dresses and with our hair away from the air Rung in tight twists and braids It is not meant to breathe It is meant to be seen I am meant to be seen I did not know that at the time Completely compressed I followed in all the ways I could and coveted all the things intangible What came from the spokes of running on edges was that I had no vocabulary for anger I had no vocabulary for dissatisfaction Disappointment Betrayal Simultaneously compressed and coming apart The rupture of the universe not unlike the feeling of suffocation

As I grow older I know that I cannot only move through the world with a sense of freedom I have to make new vocabulary for these gestures We now make the words for the freedom that self-awareness brings The gestures of safety and justice and love They need to be shared to those with the highest power and the smallest amount of care The gestures of a hand against the face The sweep of a smile The warmth of blood within the body The pull and push of the moon and the water and the earth and the sun

Put your mouth to my chest testing its warmth

Mute bodies plastering bandages on amplifiers

I did not write enough poems when my body needed it the most

Make a gaze a gauze back to back heave and hold me

Heave and fold straining arms lift me up and up and up and up

Squeeze the fear out of every orifice as the world shakes us down

Hold me swing me around the shores as inches of water gather to drown me

Can you come to my room with no expectation hold me heave have me

My skin boils over sometimes with the urge to have you in the softest light

We were once drowned in the sweetness of not being ourselves being someone else

And for you someone elsewhere will have you in their arms one day and breathe

Breathe easy breathes like an open stream at the peak of spring

Breath as thorough as humanly as inhumanly as possible

Storms do not disappoint they sear the signal of our presence into the sea

Clutching this candy like a child for my arms crave all of you

Drudges of dog days lazy hazy crazy crazy crazy how am I supposed to

Make an acre of hope from skin to skin

Build an emotional reverie ravine of the kisses and licks and pushes

Hefty heaving whole flocks of guards molding the shapes we thought we ought to be

Bleeding out on to the road in the thick that quick sweetness of it

Scalding hot the desire scolding me you sought taunt traction that cannot be found

Crawling outward from my sternum speaking for me

All the harm done to you ceases to make decisions

All the harm done to me ceases to make decisions

For the pleasures of our bodies

For the pleasure of a body

It is magnificent even at its most wretched

It is most wretchedly magnificent

Soothing me to sleep

Searing me the lightning

Sometimes I think I am the angel.

Sometimes I keep my posture

And I imagine wings growing out my back.

How proud I am to show off these wings.

When I was a child I thought was seeing God’s light in people.

Maybe I was disassociating.

I still think I can.

The light within people,

the feeling of all the world’s pleasure

seeping through you,

I can feel that.

It is wondrous.

The thought of death does not consume me.

Death is not my enemy.

Finally, Death extends her hand to me.

Asked her lead myself to sleep.

She asked me to leap o’er bounds and feet.

I equate my death to sleep.

The glowing screen let me keep myself awake.

Mushroom cloud or crypt,

both ways to slip from this world to the next.