Untitled Corvus Corax Project

Issue #4:
Every Step Forward Moves Me Up, Up,
Up|I May Be Sick But Im A Little Better

Contributors
kitty robinson is a super-traumatized schizoaffective triple libra who mostly stays inside, makes
web art, and talks to their pets. they have previously been published in THEMlit (themlit.com) &
troubling the line. you can find more of their work at wearethecatfish.com and
kittyworks.tumblr.com and they can be reached at thetrashwitch@gmail.com
Mx. Leigh is a queer scholar as well as a scholarly queer. Their principal research interests are in
kyriarchy interactions and space and place. They use the humanities as a lens to focus and
navigate the present and future world. At the time of this publication they are 2#-years-old,
partnered and pursuing multiple post-grad degrees.
Corvus Corax is a person sending transmissions from late capitalist American hell at @weirdbirdpal.

Trigger Warnings:
These pieces contain trigger warnings for all possible topics, please read them at your own
discretion.

One by Corvus Corax

Make a list in your head of everyone who ever wronged you;
Youre Arya Stark reciting her prayers before bed.

You know youre getting more bitter and vengeful

But it doesnt stop you one bit.

This plant has thorns, this turtle bites, this person lashes out at everyone
Im sorry. Im working on it. I didnt mean to do that I dont know what came over me.

Two by Corvus Corax

I cant sleep. Its to the point where I dont remember what its like to just go to bed and sleep, I
was like this since I was a teen and maybe before it. Im probably going to die early because I
cant sleep but my anxiety is just so bad. I cant relax enough to fall asleep and when I do I just
have these bad nightmares. So Ill lie in bed with my own demons and enough time will pass
that Ill have to eat some food or go to the bathroom and then its all out the window. How
many of us are doing this? How many of us are alone together?
1
RACING THOUGHTS THEATER PRESENTS:
DISSENSION / DYSMORPHIA / DYSPHORIA by kitty robinson
content warning: trauma talk, delusion/unreality, body horror, death
the other night i said i was too small to be this big, and too big to be this small, and its been
chasing me, laughing and calling out. everything seems to be getting bigger and bigger around
me, paragraph after paragraph, charting itself off the charts, assumptions battering my boat to
pieces, a storm. i have sucked my own marrow-holes dry giving self-sustaining sustenance,
pouring out my holiness on the earth, getting weaker. i love to shrivel and die, i said, laughing,
and thought of leech who would be a lover to the thick veins of compassion that were earlier
installed. i get smaller, i get so small and worthless, unable to lift a finger, unable to push the

broom, sitting, sitting, waiting for the clock to stop. a skin, a shell, a something to be buried at
the edge of the ocean with peppercorn and nails.
at the same time, i am growing, my ugliness is beginning to ooze out of my skin and make space
in the air around me. i am huge and uncomfortable around humans, feeling things creak under
me, testing for the cracks in reality. a poet going madly fast, gone mad, my windpipe tightening
around whats going to happen next. i can see everyone, and i can see people who cant see
me, and i can touch your mind so gently with mine and come away with blood and piss and
puke on my hands, wiping disgusted on my pants, retching. i know what i am to you. because i
am more than could be permitted i am less to you that you could ever admit. when faced with
the reality of how sickening you see me you would blush and become so shy. surely there is no
monster in you, im teasing.
something must change, yes, but as an oracle i can see too many paths, the timelines shine in
my eyes and i want to close them forever. make it all stop. i went to too many carnivals. i went
to too many parades. i opened myself to too many lockpickers, they hold their keys and cant
handle my fear. i dont show it. theres something the matter with me, but ill laugh about it,
because i know some why the brain cries its crying. laughter is a fear response, panic is a kind of
joy, and i will still be crying when i die. you have cut off my legs and given me the hindquarters
of a hare, then you ask me why i run so back and forth, and try to burrow. dont tell a prey
animal that things will be okay and then you wont have to be surprised.
Three by Corvus Corax
Everywhere I go I feel the gaze of the Ahriman upon me. Everywhere I go I cant help but feel
like everyone is watching me, plotting my demise, waiting to make their moves against me. I
know on a lot of levels that this is ridiculous but it doesnt stop me one bit. I cant
communicate these feelings to people and I feel like Im alone in this but I know Im not alone in
this. Dialectics.

Four by Corvus Corax

Do you know what its like to be the victim and the perpetrator? Do you know what its like to
find phrases like Im my own biggest enemy to not actually be tired and clich? That they still
have a ton of punch for you as metaphors? Its easier to just say theres some kind of beast
inside me that sometimes acts for me and sometimes does things that arent in either of our
self-interest but this fella isnt very smart, hes pure instinct. He knows what he wants and its :
Talking to the ex you know you shouldnt text

Reading those words that you know triggers you

Looking at cake you know you want to eat

Anything to make the pain go away a bit

2
PTSD THEATER PRESENTS:
A MODERN FABLE FOR THE BENEFITS OF DISSOCIATION by kitty robinson
the first thing i want you to think about is a black hole. think about it but for gods sake dont
look at it. an obscenity, nothingness that wants not just more, but all. it is full of things that
have fallen to it. they are nowhere to be found. the worst part is you can hear it. it is an edge
that is somehow pulling you, the implication of some science so frightening and arcane, and it is
hungry and impatient, not in an anthropomorphic sense, but discerned from the way it is
singing to you. you vomit in your helmet.
now consider a sheet of black glass. it is as big as a planet and standing still before you in space.
you cannot see the stars through it. if you have imagined yourself between the glass and the
void, please move to the side, dont get in the way. just fucking watch. it is towering. the glass is
covered with white letters that you cant comprehend the size of. its stuck in that place of
visualization where it is too big, but also somewhat able to be understood in your tiny sense of
scale.
you started to get sick again so you imagined yourself standing on top of yourself beside a
skyscraper, to the top of a skyscraper. you imaged yourself in a boat in the ocean, and the reefs
underneath you, and the shores on the other side. you cant think about it any more so you put
your finger and thumb up in front of your eyes and make it seem like you are holding the words
in place. you dont have any choice but to start reading. before the meaning can make its way
from the eye to the brain, the glass is moving.
nature abhors a vacuum. it is fantastic. you think about it would look like from the side. i dont
know either. they are coming together and you can see the words warping and bubbling,
thinking about boiling out without any meaning behind them. the vacuum howls and you can
feel the sound pushing past you, and you have a moment of understanding the shapes in the
sandstone at low tide. you are a child at an airport and a ship is docking, and you think you will
burn up in pieces.

there is a loud tone and it is frightening. it is making you clench your jaw so hard that when you
scream inside your mouth both of your eardrums rupture. it hurts, but then the
incomprehensible pane is set against the incomprehensible window. the uproar quiets. there is
a series of massive thuds, a brick hitting a brick while they hit your head together. you cant
close your mouth, you are unable to move your lower jaw. you will never talk again and it
makes you happy. you can look now
Five by Corvus Corax
Its pretty funny how the things that push and scare people away are also the things that make
me the most relatable
Makes Me Sick by Gee, Leigh
This is a response to the UCSB killings. This is a response to misogynist violence. This is a
response to ableist scapegoating. This is a response to men. This is a response to entitlement.
This is a response to "what if?"s and "but maybe?"s that hypothesize if *we* did something
different. Revelation: This is our fault. This is our fault for not sleeping with him, for not being
his girlfriend. This is our fault for not offering our passive sympathy. This is our fault for not
reaching "the man behind the monster," as Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera begs
of Christine, but rather unmaking the monster to reveal an uglier, though not unfamiliar,
demon within.
Maybe not all sexists are killers, but all men with entitlement that's rooted in misogyny and
anger that's also rooted in misogyny (strangers, peers, even people I perceive as friends) have
made me feel uncomfortable or unsafe either with blatant intent or by proxy to their selfish
bravado by approaching me, forcing me into their perceived expectation that I'm female (I'm
not) and anticipating me to conform to some aspect of their expectations of me whether it's
responding favourably to their cat calls, providing my phone number, behaving submissively,
not "being a bitch," etc. etc.. That's not mental illness, unless all of society is mentally ill (and
that's Virtually Impossible, since the sociological definition of mental illness is a sanctioned
symptomatic neurological atypicality to the socially institutionalized and agreed upon agenda of
"sane" actions), that's just how men (including non-heterosexual men) are socialized. Masculine
entitlement and dominance is coded and prioritized in patriarchal societies. The fact that
thousands, tens of thousands of men who will probably never become armed gunmen are
congratulating the killer for his valor in their ideological similarities and for acting out their
fantasies without any sanctions (outside of mourning that he demolished is nice ass car)
indicates that this is NOT a social illness or even a blip in the radar worth reprimanding. The fact
that there is an entire faction of these individuals who identify as "Men's Rights Activists" the
same way that white supremacists id as "Ku Klux Klan" with rights that are pr ot e c t e d in this
country because this country deems their belief systems and organizational structures as
socially acceptable enough to exist while any "foul play" that is directly derivative of that set of
belief systems (you know, a "hate crime") is treated separately from the former, it being cited

as "circumstantial evidence" to support a possible motive rather than a direct causation. (The
fact that a man who calls himself a grand high wizard slaughtered innocents at a synagogue
screaming ethnic-targeted obscenities but his Klan affiliation wasn't perceived as correlative,
but coincidental because ~~not all vehement antisemites are KKK affiliated.)
The difference between a rapist and and a prejudiced man who hasn't committed a violent
assault is an opportunity. This particular killer had money, access to a gun, a space and time to
perfect his craft and a nice ass car to mow people down in a rampage. The difference between
a man who "thinks his girl belongs in the kitchen" and a domestic abuser is a perceived skew of
dominance that compels that man to feel the need to assert his point in a more forceful
manner to illustrate his continued reign as the masculine superior.
Do not go out and tell society that mental illness is a natural cause or predisposition to hate
crime violence or that the two go hand-in-hand. In my marriage, my ex purposefully baited me
into states of panic by using triggering language or tone or imagery (that he specifically learned
to identify in order to best take care of me and my needs!!! supposedly!!!) would then
"correct" by physically restraining me or laying hands on me for "approaching him aggressively"
as an "act of self defense" or by verbally threatening to call the cops to have me involuntarily
detained via Baker Act. Do not propagate this mindset that the mentally ill are violent. Do not
feed into this mindset that diffuses the greater picture on both the perspective of perpetrator
and/or the victim.
And DO NOT diffuse the responsibility of what this killer did onto other people who "should
have treated him better." This kid was privileged enough to have received medical/psychiatric
attention and support from his family, which many persons with mental illnesses do not have
and yet do not take their rage out on society (but rather fall to become even more horrifically
victimized by their circumstances). Do not insinuate that society and individuals need to
passively cater to people with "these twisted morals and sick thoughts" because that is
EXACTLY what this killer's 141 page manifesto demanded. His logic was NOT negotiable based
on a natural sense of equality and respect for others, it was based on selfish white male
entitlement.
Blaming any part of the killer's ingrained manifesto on an innocuous social/sensory processing
disorder like Aspergers (which, sidenote, isn't a "mental illness" and not treated with
medication) is a piss poor distraction from the very valid factors that this kid:
1. Was catered to at literally every other perceivable arena in his life
2. Cultivated his expectations of feminine submission from mainstream media *and* from
violent pornography
3. Yet was incredibly competitive with his younger brother and his peers
4. Like if I'm going to keep listing bullets, you may as well just read the entire manifesto it's
been uploaded to Scribd and to countless other open source formats but it's going to be glib
and boring to read through because it's Literally The Same Things Women And Femme-coded
People Hear and Experience Every Day of Their Lives

The Mental Illness that can be associated with this and other incidents is:
1. The femmes' fears of leaving the home
2. The femmes' fears of placing trust in men
3. The femmes' hyper-conscious awareness of their own bodies
4. The femmes' withdrawing from social groups and events
5. The femmes' vocalizing fears of seemingly invisible enemies that no one else can see and
discount as "not all men"
Not. All. Men.
Not all men who yell from their cars would *actually* hurt us. That's Definitely Why when I
didn't stop riding my bike down the street I lived on and rode every day to respond to some
dudes creeping in their accord who called me "princess fiona," they sped their car up and
swerved their car into the bike lane to try to hit me. Not all men are like that, which is why I
could trust my ex (yes, that one) to specifically drive out to pick me up after that circumstance
when I was too scared to continue biking.
Misogyny isn't mental illness, or even social illness. Misogyny is an antibody, a tool to attack the
sickness that threatens the patriarchal infrastructure: feminism.

Six by Corvus Corax

Anything for you, darling, Anything for you. Ill grow you a tree from my legs and Ill make you
diamonds from my liver. Anything for you darling.
3
BORDERLINE EPISODE THEATER PRESENTS:
TEMPLE OF BODY AND MIND by kitty robinson

the path is worn, from many summers, so

hollow ache of ritual starts
right where we left off
last time.

dragged screaming, spitting

ankle held in Self Hatreds grip
maybe this time
ill win.

with its every pause, i dig my fingers two

three inches deep in dirt.
as if i could hold
myself.

i know, i know i am good, i scream, and

dislocating, bending, popping
blood slows, we stop
it says, prove it.

so and so thinks im amazing, someone

told me that i changed their
life and some folk
touch me.

the forest screams with laughter. thistle

drips from nowhere and fills
mouth, nose, throat.
listen.

for every one who wants you here, each

treasured sincere moment
thousands retch
for you

for every memory you make there are

memories you can never outrun
waiting for dreams,
or the sun

you will be forgotten. you will stay but i cannot take any more
so now i take up
my weapon

ripping furious through the fauna

i turn back with heaving chest
forward rush, closer
bleed,

you fucker. ill ruin everything i touch

destruction aptly activated
fight until satisfaction
eyes closed

eyes open. this wreckage, a clamor

i think everyone is coming.
i think everyone knows
my damage

i want to say, how can you leave me

with all this blood on my hands
with this sacrificial ruin
but all of it is mine.

Seven Corvus Corax

Thats the folly of living life on this Earth isnt it? That you cant protect the ones you love as
much as youd wish. The French have a word for this, Folie A Deux, the madness shared by two.
How things that ~shouldnt~ infect other people can infect them.
Eight by Corvus Corax

Weve heard it all before, it is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
But theres logic in here you just have to walk in the other persons shoes. You walk in their
shoes and jaywalk in them and speed walk and slow walk, you learn all the different ways to
walk and then you take the crosswalk and you go to their home and sleep in their bed and kiss
their children goodnight and if no one can tell the difference then youre no longer you, objet
petit a becomes something else. The unattainable becomes attainable and youre at a loss for
words.
Well sometimes its like that. Your phone rings and you say Im no longer mild mannered Jill
from accounting, Im now putting on a mask and playing the role of Jill Who Can Talk On The
Phone and suddenly its a lot easier.
4
NEURODIVERGENT SELF-CARE THEATER PRESENTS:
10 SUGGESTIONS by kitty robinson

i. remember that things change.

ii. take nothing for granted.
iii. heal thyself.
iv. heal others, but only when they desire it.
v. desire truth.
vi. face truth.
vii. make.
viii. rest. eat. drink.
ix. listen to your madness.
x. examine. disagree. agree.

Nine by Corvus Corax

I dont resent myself as much as I used to. Ive learned to live with you, my unwelcome
roommate. Its not as bad as it once was because I learned to live with you. I dont know if
things will ever go back to how they were before, but I do know they probably wont be as
worse as they once were. Im still holding out hope that I can cope.
Ten by Corvus Corax
Okay what I wrote in that last poem is a lie, I relapsed, but its not the end of the world. The
path to getting better isnt a simple staircase climb, its more of an Escherian attempt. People
love me and people care about me, and sometimes all I need is to remember that. I will survive
this, I will help others who are in similar places. Thats all I can promise right now; I hope its
enough.