There’s something in the air, besides pollen. Birds are singing…skin is showing…Pride is approaching…but we’re HERE. NOW. Get into it.
Our artist this week is Leah Collins, an analogue collage artist. They source their materials predominately from vintage magazines and are heavily inspired by Dada and surrealism. While not entirely prescriptive, their collages tend to explore themes of queer desire—particularly the space between what is spoken and unspoken, imagined, and remembered (they’re a Pisces moon).
When they’re not collaging or working their day job as a journalist, you can find them collecting gay memoirs (feel free to send recs!), listening to country music (they are from Kentucky), or hunting for for a lime White Claw and the perfect mood lighting.
Today’s poetry comes from Cleo Alejandra Alonso Cintron, a Puerto Rican dyke, estrogen-devourer, writer, lover, and grad student. In her year and a half in the city, she’s been divided between finding ways to turn her language inside out, adoring her boyfriend into continuous existence, praying to silent words, investigating how transmotherhood comes to be, falling in love with her friends, and figuring out how best to grow her boobs. When she’s not keeping up with her studies in psychology, she writes poetry as a form of obligation, fearing what might happen if she didn’t.
Our featured event this time around is Double D’s: A Trans Extravaganza, hosted by Daniella Darling and Didi Opulence. Everyone who helps run the show is trans or gender non-conforming, and the purpose is to create a trans party and trans community. This month’s party is a special edition—Daniella’s birthday! Birthdays are famously my favorite holiday, so show some spirit and celebrate.
Bars and run clubs and bookstores and your gay friends with rooftops and backyards are all hard at work planning their Pride events, so May is a bit quieter. You could take this chance to save your strength for the summer and keep it lowkey with a poetry reading here and a knitting club there, or you could pregame the party all month. Your call.
Dykes and Dolls is always free, as we believe community events should never be behind a paywall. We distribute copies around Brooklyn and Manhattan twice a month, usually at the following locations (but keep an eye on our Instagram around release day to see where they end up):
Honey Moon Coffee Shop
Hive Mind Books
Henrietta Hudson
Cubbyhole
Ginger’s Bar
Soft Butch
Wyckoff Starr Coffee Shop
Nook
The Nonbinarian Bookstore
Principles GI Coffee House
Botani Cafe
If you’re loving the zine and want to support us, we do accept donations to help fund production. The more funding we have, the more copies we can get out to our communities. Click here to contribute.
We’ve also started a $5 a month mailing list if you would like a copy of the zine mailed to you twice a month. Click here to sign up.
Issue 6 drops on May 17th. Snag your copy IRL, or subscribe here on Substack for the rest of the month’s events.
Did you know our calendar stays up-to-date via Google Sheets? Click here to check that out.
Follow us on Instagram @dykesanddolls to keep up with daily events and new issues.
Thanks for reading! We’ll catch y’all next time.
-Dykes and Dolls
