infinite talk
Updated: Aug 23
By mk zariel
anxiety is small talk and the world is turning in
a staccato rhythm while you walk and stare and stride through
a densely packed crowd, your voice like a crescendo fading
out. the food is gross, the tea watered down, the artificial dyes
of a mall food court disintegrating
under a pale sun. i know who haunts you now
know every damn thing that's ever freaked you out wonder if i
can buy selective amnesia like
an overpriced meal from a harried vendor—can i charge you
per sentence, can i live in a world that's slightly
less scary, can i become a person rather than
a reservoir to dump guilt into—and did you know
that in my text chain w/ my other half
there are 285 mentions of harm
that in the infinite chain of being there are
only a few ways to really fuck things up?
i once told a teenage bro that the only thing
that truly harmed me was self-repression.
he short-circuited. so did i.
mk zariel (it/they) is a transmasculine-lesbian neuroqueer theater artist, Best Of The Net and Monarch Award nominated poet, movement journalist and staff reviewer at the Anarchist Review of Books, and BashBack aligned anarchist. it is fueled by folk-punk, Emma Goldman, and existential dread. the author of Voidgazing (2026, Whittle Micropress), Different With Him (2026, Rockwood Press), and Boy Apparition (2025, Vinegar Press). it can be found online at www.mkzariel.carrd.co/, creating conflictually queer-anarchic spaces, writing columns for Asymptote and the Anarchist Review of Books, and being mildly feral in the great lakes region. it is kinda gay ngl.
