The Garden Party Collective presents: Neurodivergent / Intersectional writers! (Poetry Contest #3)
Congratulations to our three winners for our third poetry contest (January 2025):
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nat raum
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Oladosu Michael Emerald
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Merrick Sloane​​
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For this contest, collective member Jacob Jardel selected "Neurodivergent / Intersectional writers":
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When I pitched this contest idea, I was thinking about those of us who are neurodivergent and part of other historically excluded groups. Oftentimes, we get the perspective of a writer from a singular aspect of their identity: autistic or queer or nonbinary, ADHD or Indigenous or Black, mentally ill or physically disabled or poor. But we exist in multiple identities at once. To quote Kassiane Asasumasu, coiner of the term neurodivergent, the point is that it’s “not another damn tool of exclusion. It is specifically a tool of inclusion.”
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This contest is here to celebrate that inclusion, the and that we navigate daily, all the while critiquing (whether passively or actively) the or that we compartmentalize ourselves into for the sake of societal illusions of neatness. By embracing that and, we also embrace the multiple definitions and multiple realities that come with being neurodivergent. There is no default neurodivergent person or experience. In that same manner, there is no default way to write about that neurodivergent and—just as long as it comes from your neurodivergent perspective. We’ve been written about for so long. This our chance to show that we do—that we have been doing—the writing, too.​
"journal (take #21)"
after “Mezzo Forte” by Kayla Renee
nat raum is a disabled artist, writer, and genderless disaster based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They’re the editor-in-chief of fifth wheel press. Their writing is published or forthcoming with Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, beestung, Gone Lawn, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.​ insta | twitter | bsky | web
"Interview with a Neurodivergent Body"
Interviewer: So, how would you describe yourself?
Body: Neurodivergent? Sure. Intersectional? Of course. But what you really want to ask is, How
do you keep breathing with so many labels sewn to your skin?
Interviewer: I mean, that’s not—
Body: Oh, darling, don’t backpedal now. Breathing is the easy part. Living with all your
assumptions? Now, that’s the chokehold.
Interviewer: Okay, let’s focus. You identify as—
Body: Identifies? No, I exist as. See, this is your problem: you love a neat list, a checklist to
check me off. Disabled? Yes. ADHD? Why not? Autistic? Sure, throw that in too. But none of
these is a box. They’re doors, and I’ve been walking through them all my life.
Interviewer: So you’re saying labels don’t define you?
Body: Oh, they define me just fine. But don’t mistake them for my entirety. I am the glitch in
your binary. The ghost in your machine. I am not here for your approval or your pity or your
goddamn applause.
Interviewer: But surely, you must see some progress—
Body: Progress? You mean when they parade one of us as proof that the system works? A poster child for look what they overcame! Honey, I didn’t overcome. I outlived. And now I’m here, making you squirm.
Interviewer: Well, this has been… enlightening.
Body: Enlightenment. Another word for what I don’t want to admit about myself. But go ahead,
write your story. Just make sure you spell my name right in the byline.
Interviewer: Your name?
Body: Survivor. Writer. Intersectional glitch. Pick one. Or don’t. I’ve already picked myself.
Oladosu Michael Emerald (he/him) is the author of the poetry book, "Every Little Thing That Moves," an art editor at Surging Tide magazine, a first-reader at Radon Journal, a digital/musical/visual artist, a photographer, a footballer, a boxer, and a political scientist. He teaches art at the Arnheim Art Gallery to kids and adults, is an Art Instructor at the Anasa Collection Art Gallery, and is a volunteer art instructor at Status Dignus Child Rescue Home and Ibeere Otun Initiative. He is a Pioneer Fellow of the Muktar Aliyu Art Residency, Minna, Niger State, Nigeria.
His works have been published or forthcoming in many magazines and won numerous awards in writing and art; a few to mention: winner of Off the Limit Art contest, winner of Sprinng Annual Poetry Contest, second runner-up in Fireflies poetry contest, finalist in AprilCentaur Essay contest, finalist in Arting Arena Poetry Chapbook contest, Providus bank anthology alongside Professor Wole Soyinka, finalist in Paradise Gate House Poetry Contest, Lolwe, Better Than Starbucks, Ake Review, Daily Times Nigeria, Nigerian Tribune, Guardian News, Flash Frog, Blanket Gravity, Icefloe Press, Feral, Inner Worlds, Lyra, Oriire, Kalahari Review, Con-scio, Madness Muse Press, Fraidy Cat Lit, Eco Punk, Spill Word Web, Paper Lantern Lit, the Maul magazine, Zoetic, Pinch Journal, Penumbric, Motheaten magazine, Native skin, Third Estate Art magazine, thehearth magazine, kalonipa, and elsewhere.
He's a man who does not know how to give up, and art chose him before he existed.
Say hi to him on Twitter @garricologist and Instagram @garrycologist
"Searching for Queer Joy in Tennessee"
I want to write about desire,
but Kitten is scratching at the
bathroom door again. He knows
something about yearn. When
the wind blows through the too-
tall hills of Tennessee, I reverent,
splay my tongue out, wait to taste
the snow of my friends’ kisses rolling
off the ochre plains of Oklahoma. Yes,
we’ve all kissed. & kissed & kissed.
Isn’t that what Queers do? Kiss joy
& call her Mother, give her a hand-
made crown of recyclables & watch
her lip-sync the sweat off her lacquered
brow. Composted pleasure is one-size-
fits-all & we share it like we’re sitting
table at last supper on the prairie.
There is no consume, only relish.
Where there is rot, we repurpose.
Where there is rot, we till. I want
to write about bois & bois laying
hands on each other and how
girls & ungirls can shed the world
from their skin when they bed
together, but the wind is beating
at my window, & I must answer
to it. I smell cracking wheat
crops & my skin cools, bristles in
kink-memory. GP, my sweet-pecking
chicken, has galed a cluck; Paige,
pop-punk princess, a forehead
kiss; Maya, 1 of 2 Leos I love to love,
a sting fresh from flogger; AnaMarie,
leather daddi of my dreams, has
sent a biiiiiiiiiiitch in his own
windwhistle. I tend to them like
lovers come – eagerly. I tend to
them like lovers – greedily. I want
to write about queer utopia, but
these mountains are all smoke &
squall. A plague upon houses
of cosmic glitter, raining fan claps,
waterlight disco lights beaming off
metaled leather, slicked necks
& buzzed heads. The wind is empty
today. I harness her with howls, ask
her to do my bidding. Here, I want:
package my tongue, wrap them
delicately in beeswax paper & send
them aloft to call my joys home.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a NeuroQueer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from OKC. Their work has appeared in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Stories for the Road: Trauma and Internal Communication, and in BLEACH!. Currently, Merrick is pursuing their MFA at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville where they serve as the Poetry Editor of Grist and as the host of the Creative Writing department's reading series, Chiasmus. They are also Associate Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved.
Twitter - @gailyonthedaily
Instagram - @ontherunsince91