steel wool issue 00
An excerpt from «Luigia», 2026

I thank writer and cinematographer Jael Campbell for including me in the inaugural issue of the independent, artist-run literary publication, steel wool. The theme of issue 00 is refraction: “the way in which memory bends experience, how emotion bows interpretation, how circumstance might divert nature.”

My piece, Small body of water, is about two lovers who for centuries tried to die on the same day. It is about multi-ethnic anarchism in America; about reading Tezer Özlü and Grazia Deledda; about the black beaches of Lipari and the bread-baking sorceresses of Alicudi; about the sister-worker, woman-comrade, the Compagna-Poetessa, the anarcha-feminist immigrant woman, earthly goddess, dark mother of the Mediterranean. This piece combines new writing with excerpts of my decade-long research project, «Luigia».

Small body of water is dedicated to my dear friend, 
Ramya Ramaswamy

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