I didn’t expect to feel unsafe. That’s the hardest part to admit.

The person I was speaking with—a renowned sexologist, celebrated for their kink-aware, trauma-informed approach—had built a public reputation on consent, care, and empowerment. I had admired their work from afar. So when they asked about my medical condition in passing, I answered honestly. I was vulnerable, but I trusted the space.

What followed was not care. It was emotional domination disguised as engagement. The conversation veered into territory that felt coercive, destabilizing, and eerily reminiscent of a D/s dynamic—without negotiation, without safety, and without consent. I was misgendered after clearly stating my pronouns. My health condition was weaponized against me. They insisted on being the one to send the Zoom link, failed to ask if I wanted the session recorded, and never offered me control over the space.

And then—to top it all off, so to speak—it felt like they were playing cat and mouse with me. Like I was the tied-up sub and they were a literal psychopath hiding in plain sight. The dynamic was not therapeutic. It was predatory.

I left feeling retraumatized.

And I’m not alone.

We live in a time when boundaries are under siege—from political rhetoric that dehumanizes queer and trans bodies, to therapeutic and spiritual spaces that promise safety but sometimes deliver harm. The rise of authoritarianism isn’t just happening in governments—it’s happening in micro-interactions, in the misuse of power by those who should know better.

This is why instinct matters.

Instinct is not paranoia. It’s not drama. It’s the body’s wisdom speaking before the mind can rationalize. When something feels off—when a conversation leaves you feeling smaller, silenced, or emotionally cornered—that’s your signal. And it doesn’t matter how many degrees someone has, how many books they’ve published, or how many panels they’ve spoken on. Anyone can violate a boundary.

And anyone can choose not to listen when you say “no.”

As queer folx, as neurodivergent beings, as survivors, we are often taught to override our instincts in favor of politeness, professionalism, or perceived authority. But politeness won’t protect us. Only truth will.

So here’s mine: I was harmed. And I’m speaking up not to shame, but to protect.

If you’ve felt something similar—if your instincts whispered “this isn’t safe” and you doubted yourself—you’re not alone. You’re not overreacting. You’re remembering what safety feels like.

And that memory is sacred.

Let’s build spaces where instinct is honored, boundaries are respected, and care is more than a performance. Let’s haunt the canon with our truth.

About the Author Kandy Fontaine (aka Alex S. Johnson) is a queer writer, editor, and literary agitator whose work spans poetry, fiction, memoir, and radical cultural critique. As the founder and editor of Riot Pink, Kandy curates voices that haunt the canon—centering queer, neurodivergent, and trauma-informed perspectives in defiance of literary gatekeeping. Their work appears in Neurospicy!, Nocturnicorn Books, and across underground zines and performance spaces. Kandy is also co-host of The Smol Bear N Pickles Show, where they explore the intersections of art, identity, and resistance with fellow visionary Alea Celeste Williams.

Kandy believes in the power of radical empathy, messy truth, and literature as a tool for survival and transformation.

📧 Submissions & inquiries: georgebailey679@gmail.com 📚 Riot Pink: Queer literature that bites back.

BLOOD 

In this world, there are very few people 

who belong to us

I am talking of blood relations 

Your mum your dad 

And your brother 

And your sister.

These are the people 

Who are the first 

To feel your loss

And joy in your gain

All others come later 

In this alien universe 

A sister is your greatest support 

And brother too 

If your parents are wise enough

Not make a rival out of him

Brothers are seen as great supports

But also as great rivals too.

But a sister turns a rival is very rare

Although these are times.

When wealth and property 

Determine our love 

For our parents  and each other 

Family bonds have suffered a lot

In these times of calculations 

Still when you fall in an accident 

Just think who is beside you?

Your wife, your son or your daughter 

I am counting all these relations today 

Praying every one has someone 

To show as his own 

Who can take care of him

When he is conducted to the hospital.

Without ignoring the fact that 

Beyond blood relations, are close friends 

Relatives and colleagues 

They are sometimes very good 

And what about Vasudevam Kattumbkam? 

(Entire world our family)

1. Tell us about yourself. How did you start writing poetry?

I was born in Ukraine, in the city of Sumy. Many years later, fate brought me to the city of Kazan. During my school years, I started a diary—it was very fashionable at the time—and began writing down my innermost thoughts in it, for some reason, in verse. Over time, independent works began to appear. And on the insistence of my classmates, I sent my poems to the chief editor of the youth magazine “Yunost” (Youth), Andrey Dementyev. He replied to me personally and recommended that I join a literary association, which I did. So, unexpectedly for me, my path into serious literature began.

2. What message do you want to convey with your poetry?

The message is one: to live in love and peace. Only through repentance can peace come, but it is a very long and thorny road. And only those who walk it can master it.

3. Do you believe that the new generation reads and is interested in literature?

Of course, I believe. How can one create without faith? Every book, every work needs its own thoughtful reader.

And in poetry?

I am the creator and director of the International Music and Poetry Festival “Handshake of Republics” (RR-Fest), the International RR-Fest Telebridge, the International Youth Music and Poetry Competition-Festival “On the Fairytale Shore of the Kazanka River” based on the works of Olga Levadnaya, the International Forum-Battle “Tournament of Poets and AI. RR-Fest”, the organizer of the International Scientific and Creative Seminar “Quantum Transition: Artificial Intelligence in Education, Art, and Medicine. RR-Fest”, and the coordinator of the International Literary Festival in Russia “Woman in Literature” (Mexico). A great many young people participate in all these projects. I can state with full responsibility that young people engage in new projects with great enthusiasm. The Tournament of Poets and AI showed amazing results. We can admire and even be proud of our youth.

4. How do you feel when you see your poems published on several foreign websites?

First and foremost, a great sense of responsibility. In these far-from-easy times, I represent Russian culture. I feel a thrill that, despite everything, the mystery of poetry’s birth does not cease… And I am an inseparable part of this miracle!

5. Would you like to share with our readers a phrase that changed your life?

“Live the life of a true Poet!” — that’s what my teacher, the outstanding poet of Tatar and Russian literature, Rustem Kutuy, once told me.

6. What are your future plans?

I have many plans. But I also have dreams: to publish the books “On the Edge of Night” in Russian, English, and Spanish, and “I Sing of the Secret” in Russian, English, and Chinese, as a token of gratitude to my faithful poet friends who lovingly translated my poems. I very much hope that my poems will be translated into Greek someday!

Thank you very much! 🙏

EVA Petropoulou Lianou 🇬🇷

Olga Levadnaya, Russian visionary poet, world-famous public figure, Honored Worker of Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan, laureate of more than 20 republican, all-Russian, international literary awards, member of republican, Russian and international literary unions, author of 17 books of poetry and prose published in Russian, English, Tatar, Turkish, translated into 14 languages, author of more than 500 publications in magazines, anthologies in Russia and abroad, participant in numerous festivals, conferences, readings, member of the Assembly of the Peoples of the World, Ambassador of Peace, European Poetry, poetry of International Literature ACC Shanghai Huifeng (Shanghai, Huifeng), Department of Arts and Cultures.

Plenipotentiary Representative for Culture in Russia of the Republic of Birland (Africa), literary consultant of the Academy of Literature, Science, Technology of Shanxi, the Zhongshan Poets’ Community (China), honorary founding member of the World Day of K. Cavafy  (Greece, Egypt), coordinator of the International Literary Festival in Russia “Woman in Literature” (Mexico), creator and director of the International Music and Poetry Festival “Handshake of the Republics”, the Forum-Battle “Tournament of Poets and AI. RR”, the International TeleBridge RR, the International Youth Music and Poetry Competition-Festival “On the Fairytale Shore of Kazanka” based on the works of Olga Levadnaya, artistic director of the Kazan Poetic Theater “Dialogue”.

For the children

I am Bra Mzi Mahola

I am Nana Walter Chakela

I am Yehuda Amichai

I am Refaat Alareer

I am Ian Fleming

I am Patricia Highsmith

I am Brad Pitt

I am Coco Chanel

I am Rilke

I am Nietzsche

I am Freud

I am Jung

I am Lou Andreas Salome

I am Malcolm X

I am George Botha

I am Steve Biko

I  am Bessie Head

I am Ingrid Jonker

I am Sylvia Plath,

Anne Sexton

I am America,

I am Israel,

I am Palestine,

China, Russia, Australia,

Derek Walcott’s West India

I am Mufti Menk

I am Azania

I am everywhere

I am a child of God,

standing with a

a ripple of hope in my hands

I am freedom.

beyond butterfly

before he flies adrift

he is an unlike bead:

gnawing brown caterpillar

dangling from the milkweed,

an unborn sneeze.

and every night

he regards the stars with angsty fright,

he cannot bear to be in their sight—

bitter brown blight upon the earth,

born with such undue affliction,

obsessed with what he could be.

and every morning

he gathers all the clutter of the clouds

all murky white

and shatters it into pieces

shaped like seeds.

every day he shrugs the clouds away,

his single blade grows one day

closer to the sky.

and he counts the days.

but that was all before.

before he wished the one thing he wished

he had never wished for.

a maple key plummets

and sinks like a ripple. he swims,

is too weightless to fall in.

two bodies attract,

nothing attracts him

but the sweeping undercurrents

and the cutting wind.

a human boy stomps through the oats,

awakens him. he is too high to be awakened

by crawling earthly things.

“look,” the boy cries, “look

at his pretty wings!”

he wants to sigh, don’t you dare go growing wings.

the mother sings

how his orange and black flash

against the buttercups, cries, “monarch!

you king of kings!”

he doesn’t feel like a king of anything

but outer space.

and he knows how the stars feel then,

glittering to everyone but them.

selfishness.

he wants to be anything but this,

bitter tangerine bliss.

before he gave everything

for what he could become,

now he gives up all for his unbecoming.

he lets his wings dispel like petals,

falls like the maple key into water,

grows roots in the earth

and stars in his belly,

he lets them sparkle and sparkle

and sparkle in the night sky.

he lets them let go,

calls them blessèd,

foolish,

butterfly.

Review of Exiles Across Time by Hua Ai

Exiles Across Time, Hua Ai’s first book of poetry, is an ambitious debut in the best sense: formally self-conscious, politically urgent, and deeply rooted in myth. Structured across six “Echoes,” the collection mirrors its own title, framing exile not as a single event but as a condition that reverberates through memory, history, and imagination.

The opening Echo is mythic, invoking Lilith and re-casting her refusal into the register of feminist defiance. Hua’s poetic voice emerges here with sharp clarity, transforming inherited stories into weapons of renewal. This defiance reverberates through the later sequences, where images of war and trauma surface with equal intensity. Sarajevo, for example, becomes not only a geographic site but also a symbol of systemic violence and the persistence of collective wounds.

In the central Echoes, Hua turns to war and capitalist bondage, exposing how power sustains itself like a machine of self-absorption. These poems reverberate with both anger and analytical precision, refusing to separate feeling from critique. Hua writes as someone intent on naming the system that would erase her: “A WOMAN NAMES THE SYSTEM / AND IT LOSES ITS POWER.” Naming becomes both the strategy of survival and the poetry’s deepest act of resistance.

The later Echoes return to more intimate imagery: the lighthouse figured as a woman, exile as bodily hunger, survival as defiance. The refrain “Existence is a slit throat” is terrifying yet empowering, embodying both the vulnerability and the courage of persistence. Political critique and personal myth are not divided but braided together until they sing in one voice.

Overall, Exiles Across Time is ambitious because it seeks to hold myth, politics, and lived memory in the same poetic frame. Hua Ai writes with a fierce, unflinching voice that refuses silence and refuses erasure. The book does not merely describe exile; it invents a new poetic language for survival, binding myth and witness into a testament of resistance.

André Osório (Lisbon, 1998) is a Portuguese poet and editor. He studied Portuguese Studies at NOVA FCSH and holds a master’s in Literary Theory from the University of Lisbon, where he is pursuing doctoral research. His work appears in Folhas, Letras & Outros Ofícios, Porridge (London), Palavra Comum and elsewhere. Co-founder and co-editor of Lote magazine, he is the author of the poetry collections Observação da Gravidade (Guerra & Paz, 2020)—finalist for the Prémio Glória de Sant’Anna and semi-finalist for Prémio Oceanos—and Sala de Operações (Guerra & Paz, 2024). He has read at festivals and book fairs across Portugal.

Like a China Teacup

like a china teacup

soft curves, with veiny blue flowers 

slithering across every corner of my milky white body, 

rimmed with smooth gold across my crown, 

reflecting the sunlight

like a china teacup

fitting in my palm, 

easily crushed into eggshells, 

sunny yolk spilling on the tiles below.

like a china teacup

i am filled with rich personality,

sweet like honey, coating the back of your throat

my energy, staining your teeth a brownish red

burning your tongue when i come on too strong

like a china teacup

i am beautiful inside and out,

my delicate flowers coating my porcelain skin, 

golden rim that gleams in the sun

i am,

like a china teacup