Realness is Proximity, Realness is Localized

On June 19, 2025, I had the pleasure of sitting down with my longtime friend, poet Jzl Jmz, on the occasion of the publication of her third book of poems, Local Woman. It was Jzl’s first time reading at Powell’s City of Books in Portland, the town we both call home, and the crowd who showed out was warm and attentive. I’d watched Jzl put this book together over the last few years, and it was exciting to see her bring it to life with her personality and wit and charm on that late summer evening. 

Jzl and I first met at a Lambda LGBTQ writer’s retreat almost a decade ago, where trans writers were scarce and egos ran rampant. But it wasn’t until we both moved to Portland independently in 2018 that we reconnected and our friendship really got started. Now, I consider her family. There’s no one I’d rather talk shit about literature and poetry with than Jzl.

I knew I wanted to record our conversation at Powell’s for posterity, but it wasn’t until I was listening to Jzl’s answers that I realized how pivotal Local Woman has been to my understanding of the local, the nearby, and place in relation to trans identity. Therefore, I’m very happy to share her insights here with the smoke and mold audience, who I know will appreciate how they open up new possibilities in our changing nature-culture.

– Cal Angus, November 2024

This interview has been lightly edited for concision and clarity.

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Callum Angus: Hi friends! So many friends, new and old and yet to be—welcome. 

I feel like every conversation we have, I leave with a slightly altered idea of the world and my place in it. So I was really glad and honored when you asked me to do this conversation with you so I could bring that same feeling to everyone here, so they could experience that. I’m also recording this so that we can have a record of it, and so that it can be transcribed and uploaded to smoke and mold, a journal that I edit and where we’ve published you and many other wonderful trans writers. But of course, you should all also pick up the book. [Local Woman] is an incredible book, it is moving, it is instructive, it is radical in all the best ways, and it’s so needed right now, especially. 

So, bearing in mind that I am not a poet—and so there are leagues more structural things, especially formal things that I’m not always going to get and that I hope you can school me in and as well as others here too—can we begin with you talking a little bit about what it means to you to be local?

Jzl Jmz: I’m originally from Los Angeles, California. I was born and raised there, but when I was fourteen I went to boarding school in Connecticut, so it was a very big culture shock. That book’s not even anywhere near ready, so that’s all I’m gonna say about that for now. Then I stayed on the East Coast for a while. In this weird way, when I left LA and went to the East Coast, I became more of an LA person than I was when I was in LA, because I was from there and I was very much an LA kid in this other context. I’ve always sort of felt like I’ve been defining my identity when I am the odd thing out, and I think there’s a lot of trauma and violence there for sure but like, I’ve been delusional enough to think that I am wonderful and special and perfect. And so when I’m in these spaces that I am singular in, the proximity to what I’m not helps me sort of measure what I am. So I’ve sort of had that mindset everywhere I’ve moved to since. 

When I left the East Coast I went to Detroit, but Detroit is so local that I couldn’t, like, break in. In the best way, they are about themselves and about the community because they are under constant attack. Seeing that I couldn’t just break into that space showed me that I can’t just go anywhere and be anything, I can’t just show up to a space and assume it’s gonna be… [ trails off ] and so finding spaces where I can feel that proximity of like, I have a kind of relationship to the space, I also feel like the space is accountable to me. And so I have fought to feel local somewhere since leaving LA as a child, and this is the first place where I’ve felt like, “Oh I’m a Portlander now I guess or whatever.” I mean I can’t lie. I’ve also been able to deal with more tragic shit in life having a home base and feeling enclosed in this space. So yeah, locality is an identity formation tool for me. This is the most colloquially local I have felt since leaving LA, but even then, I went to school hours on the bus, hours in the car away from where I live, so my social world and home life were always separate. And church was over there [pointing]. So even how LA is built, it was hard to be local there as a child. That’s not even the place I feel most at home, but the place I feel the most local, and I’ve really tried to hold onto that and carve a voice out of it.

CA: This is your third book, and I’m curious how place figured in the other two books. There’s a really deep throughline, I think especially between The Black Condition featuring Narcissus and this book—the translucence and reflection and seeing and being seen in Narcissus—which you also mention in this book. I wonder if you could extend that a little bit and, especially with this idea of being local or being in a place or being kind of a figure against a background. Why this motif of translucence and reflection throughout?

JJ: The geography of Mannish Tongues is basically split between LA and Connecticut, LA and the East Coast as this general figure. All the real places were real, I didn’t use a place as a metaphor. If I mentioned a street in LA, I was on that street, it wasn’t just like “in LA.” I think geography and place—because I have moved so much and had to create a self in all these new lands—I can figure who I am by what shore I’m on, which shore I’ve washed up on this time and how I had to build that sandcastle. The geography of Mannish Tongues when I was, like, fresh out of college was like navigating my LA longing to go back, but then trying to make myself on the East Coast. 

And then Black Condition is almost entirely set in Detroit, but it was in a time of my life when I had no social life outside of working and internet teaching. I was basically always doing poetry community stuff online and sitting in my room wanting to die. Nothing about Detroit comes up in a meaningful way. I mention, like, Coney’s Hotdogs and certain landmarks for part of the story, but I don’t feature Detroit because I did not feel entitled to. It was where I was, but it wasn’t part of the story. I wasn’t out in it with any sort of validity to be like “Oh, I need my Detroit tales.” It was like yeah, I’m in the wilderness, as this character, navigating this life. But then when I came here I was like, I feel less mythical here, and so I didn’t feel the need to create such a fantastic character. I feel like by the time I put Narcissus to bed, got him in the river, started feeding him estrogen, I was able to come back out of it with a new voice. 

But my womanhood—even though I started my transition publicly in Detroit, I wasn’t going out, so no one fucking knew. And so coming here, I was living as a woman in this very intentional way, and so I’ve only ever been a woman in Portland. It’s very powerful and meaningful to me, and so this is where my woman got to become local. This is like my first place to be a local woman. I wasn’t a local girl in LA. Never before have I been able to be both woman and around. 

I’ve only ever been a woman in Portland. It’s very powerful and meaningful to me, and so this is where my woman got to become local. This is like my first place to be a local woman. I wasn’t a local girl in LA. Never before have I been able to be both woman and around.

CA: Well, I think grounding transness in place is so crucial for those reasons, right? It’s one of the reasons I love your work so much is because it does that.

JJ: The mirror shit, that’s the other half. I’ve been obsessed with mirrors since I was a child. I was an only child. My mom had a lot of mirrors in the house, and so, staying at home alone a lot, you just look at yourself in the mirror. And then Top Model happened, and then I was a professional dancer for fourteen years, so like, I have a lot of mirror history and work, and I’ve used them to center myself and heal myself but also, I can tell you everything wrong with my face right now. It’s like countersurveillance. If I know what I’m doing visually, like if I have a sense of the corporeal body, we can get through some other shit. I don’t know what’s going on up here [points to head] but I see this bitch in front of me. She’s there. So yeah, I’ve always loved mirrors and had a lot of creative time in front of mirrors.

CA: Well, it becomes like a portal in a lot of your poems too, right, because that’s the translucence, it’s the seeing through and going through the mirror and through the image to arrive at some version of yourself.

JJ: I see my reflection, but I feel translucent to others in this way. Like I can’t see through myself, which is what I need. I need to be able to look at this bitch and say “no.” But I think others see through me in a way, so I try to navigate how much opacity someone is engaging me in. I use my reflection to ground myself but I also use my perceived translucence to navigate the world as safely as I can.

I use my reflection to ground myself, but I also use my perceived translucence to navigate the world as safely as I can.

CA: We could talk about mirrors forever. But! There is also a really strong physics motif in this book in particular. You even read one of these lines earlier. You said, “in the beginning matter made history by bribing the now with the yet to be.” You also have this other line, “you’ll see the matter of Black life posterized and paraded in car caravans around the news.” And especially with Black Lives Matter, the matter and materiality. I’d love it if you could share more about this throughline.   

JJ: Physics is a crazy word because I’m like, “I failed that class.”

CA: It’s not really the right word, but also, we can reclaim physics. Quantum physics exists now and so that means it’s all bullshit.

JJ: So that’s the thing, I don’t feel like a battery. I feel like a nuclear thing. I’m not like an in-and-out functionality, I’m like “you can come near me, if you have the right materials, you can get power, ideas, anything for days, or you will disintegrate.” 

I really love the alwaysness of matter. I feel like matter and time are like hand in hand just doing their thing, just always being. “Oh we’re here now, and we’re going to just continue to exist, you can’t throw us away or make us. We’re going to just be.” There’s a freedom there, and I’m like, “I’m just gonna be dust at some point.” But also I think of the language of matter, like what matters to us—I imagine it should feel like a weight, it should feel like matter. What matters to you should feel like something that has a gravity on you. Using the word both in the colloquial Black Lives Matter-ing, and also like what matters to us, and also like matter is above and beyond us. I feel more quantum than physics, I think, in my lines. It’s too amorphous to be any one thing. It’s kind of like Schrodinger’s matter. Is it political or theoretical? Depending on whether you open the box or not.

I think of the language of matter, like what matters to us—I imagine it should feel like a weight, it should feel like matter. What matters to you should feel like something that has a gravity on you.

CA: It makes me really think, too, about the words “realness” and “material.”

JJ: Realness is proximity, realness is localized. Because there are days when you need to be real, and there are days when you need to serve realness. Those are two separate ways that exist in the same body. But again, realness is an extremely localized, proximity-based way of making yourself and creating yourself. 

CA: Our friendship has really redefined family for me. There’s a lot of nurturing and mothering in this book. And also, in the period of time between your last book and this book, I know that you have done a lot of mothering in your life. As I was thinking about this question, I was like “oh yeah, people are often talking about how they gave birth to a book,” [jzl groans], and I think that’s yucky too. 

JJ: Sorry, I hate it. 

CA: But I’m curious, is a mother a book?

JJ: You really tripped me up with that emotional trigger so I’m just trying to come down from that and hear your actual question, and now I’m hearing it. I’m hearing “Is a mother a book.” I think a book can mother. I think a book can be the shit in kombucha, like the mother root, the scoby thing. Like if you eat this, and you ingest it, you will be able to see yourself in relationship to your world and do things. I know for a fact that Black Condition cracked some Black trans eggs. I know that for a fact. So that was conversion therapy the right way. 

But I think that’s sort of the nuclear quality of it, like if you can take this, you can get something from it for the rest of your life if you need to. If you’re not ready for it, it may stress you out. It’ll make you uncomfortable. Somebody will not want to hear the graphicness or the romance of how shitty some of these things are. Some people need to hear the worst songs to believe that their hurt is real and I don’t like writing to that, but I do think that if you are ready to feel differently, there’s a way for this work and my work in general to get you there.

I think a book can be the shit in kombucha, like the mother root, the scoby thing. Like if you eat this, and you ingest it, you will be able to see yourself in relationship to your world and do things.

CA: I want to talk a little bit about language and form. I’ve heard you read your poetry many times, and I’ve read a lot of your poetry across your books and in different publications, and I’m always in awe of your use of language. So I just pulled out a few of the phrases or lines that I love, that are so unexpected to my ear. “Her soldered self, “some wet war of wild wonder,” “open ecology in obtuse outerlands,” “my un-right heart.” There are so many influences in your work, and I wonder if you could talk a little bit maybe about what linguistic worlds are you living in when you’re writing poetry?

JJ: Those are some great lines. I so rarely hear other people read my work back to me and it’s always an honor, so even just those few lines, it’s truly, it’s just wild. I don’t think—the separation has gotten a lot smaller the older I’ve gotten because I have more control over my art in different ways but like, when I’m writing, that is a whole other bitch. Like, I transcribe for Local Woman. She possesses me and I transcribe her needs out, and I come back and edit it to make sure she doesn’t sound crazy. [laughing] She still does. But like, I don’t even hear something like that until someone like you says it back to me. 

I danced for fourteen years, I grew up in an oral tradition at church, I’m a DJ. Meter and rhythm—also, I love campy TV. Like, “un-right heart?” Baby, that’s just a diva, that’s just a girl at her window. I don’t even try to make it so highbrow referential, but I do like to give an effect, as they say in the ballroom scene, serve an effect, and the effect is this romantic girl. It’s not just sad, it is un-right heart. It is obtuse outerland. It’s finding out how much production and layer I want to give any one poem. 

For example, the Sylvia Plath poem: it’s like I am speaking to a woman as Local Woman, so I’m trying to use a certain kind of language and lingo and speak to this thing, versus [the poem] “Trans Life” where I am trying to sonically overwhelm you with sound to disarm you from feeling comfortable with trans life. It’s a whole different mechanism. In one, I am doing a cover of a song, and in one I am looping beats and looping sounds and layering this thing, so you have this cacophonous harmony to discordant symphony by the end. I think music and dance are some of my biggest inspirations just in terms of that’s how my body works in meter and in rhythm and in movement, and so it translates in how I approach text and words. 

CA: I just want to go back to one thing you said. You said the poem “Trans Life” where you’re overwhelming the sound and the sonic to disarm—what was the part, how did you describe that?

JJ: I mean I want to disarm the reader cause even if you read that in your head, you’re like “oh god, that’s a lot, okay, okay.” And then outloud, there was a time when I couldn’t even read it all the way because it was disarming me. It is a form poem, each line has ten syllables. There’s a whole equation to how the poem is actually structured. Several poems in the book use this equation at varying lengths, but this is the longest one and I wanted it to feel, like, relentless in this way, because one, I don’t love long poems in general, writing them or hearing them. I can read them, but I don’t like existing in a living space like that. But I also wanted to have a poem that is equal parts a confession, satire—because I hate a lot of trans poems, I’ll say it [laughs]—and so some of them sound like that to me in a bad way. And so I was trying to do one bit of satire, one bit of honest confession, and also commit to a form that I created. I created that form, so I’m literally committing to my own form in the poem. I love satire, I love making fun of shit, I love tongue in cheek. I ended the whole book on an ass joke, that’s really where my mind and heart is. 

But yeah, it’s music and dance. There’s always a little bit of a vaudevillian emcee walking around in my brain. If I can do a little ta-dah! slight of hand, it’s over here type shit, it’ll come up. Those are all sort of how the like gesturing and playing with sound and language varies because it’s all a show in my head.

CA: I have maybe one or two more questions, and then certainly we want to leave some time for folks who have questions out in the audience. I’m really interested in and want to stay with this idea of form and trans life, not the poem “Trans Life,” but like trans life the thing we experience. 

JJ: The matter.

CA: The matter of it, yes. There are a lot of different forms in this book. There’s headlines like the Local Woman, as a headline. Sampling lyrics, maybe a kind of a prayer, sonnet-ish things, I don’t know if you would call it that. 

JJ: I wouldn’t call it a prayer.

CA: But also ad libs and footnotes and things like that. But there’s also this obligation, which is a form, or at least a poem that you return to. There are several poems in the book that have this title: “Obligation #17,” “Obligation #22” etc. I want to know a little bit more about that form and about what it means to you.

JJ: Like most of my poems or forms or anything cool that I do, I was mad when I started it, or disappointed in something and wanted to do it better. I’m not very competitive, but when I don’t like something, I hate to just not like it. I want to do it better. It was probably about four or five years ago. There was just a wave of like shitty trans poems that were just like being put out. And I’m a publisher of trans poets, so I was like ‘no, y’all can do better.’ It’s not like there’s not talent. I see it, I teach it. It’s not a lack of talent, it’s a lack of reading comprehension and lived experience, among other things, allegedly. 

Why do we feel obligated as trans poets to write about these things? What are we obligated to be doing in this treacherous time? Some of them are just really caustic. I also wanted to play with like, we are forced to do these kinds of trans poems. What is a trans poem? Let me make a trans form. Do you see? 

Why do we feel obligated as trans poets to write about these things? What are we obligated to be doing in this treacherous time?

I decided to make a trans form because I didn’t want to make fun of any particular poet or poem, I wanted to make fun of the obligations we’re all under. There’s this concept in physics called the torus. It’s a donut, it’s what the universe is doing at all times. Basically it’s turning outside, around—it’s three directions of turning axis that is happening at all times with all matter in the universe. I wanted to have a poem that had three different relationships across their line lengths, line numbers, and number of stanzas. Can I remember this off the top of my head? Let’s pray. Yeah, so I can. Oh also, as a fun fact, I love Shakespeare. We share a birthday. I’m like, that’s my man. And so, I wanted to play with meter, like iambic pentameter, but go beyond that. [In] every obligation all the lines are evenly metered, so that’s like 2x, I think. And then, the number of lines is 3x, and then the number of stanzas is x. So if you have a three stanza poem, you have six syllables per line, and it would be nine lines long. Did that work for everybody? That was correct. I know there are a lot of literary arts people, so if that didn’t work for you, it’s fine. It makes sense when you read them, and it’s in the book. All the features of the poems really relate to themselves, they all are in persymmetry to each other, they all have this relationship. And I just played with the lengths of them. “Trans Life” is the longest one, which is why it’s so relentless. I think it’s twenty syllables per line. That one is the longest one, and it’s fucky, as you heard.

CA: I wasn’t expecting like, a full scansion lesson, but—

JJ: Oh yeah, I’m a teacher. I’m not proud to admit it because my students are all better than me, but I am a teacher. 

CA: Okay, my last question for you is: So you wrote this book over the last four-ish year, maybe three to four years. 

JJ: Oh god, now five to six. Most of it was written before 2023.

CA: Yeah, because there are several political moments that stand out in the book. Some of which I know just from what you were writing around that time, but in others, like “Battleships in the Willamette,” “Beginner’s Astrology for Anarchistic Jurisdictions,” specific political moments are referenced. And also, it was interesting to me reading this now and being like, oh yeah we’re still inside a lot of these moments and things haven’t changed, there’s still battleships in the Willamette, and I don’t think they’re going to be going away any time soon, unfortunately. I guess, maybe I can bundle this one, what’s that like for you seeing these moments continue to telescope into the future, and how does that power in your writing now?

JJ: For sure. I’m lucky that between the time that I wrote it and now, it’s still relevant, you know. I don’t really think about it actually that way, but I don’t feel tied to whenever I’m writing in because we’re so far from anything, if not the end. We’re so far from change in certain ways. I would say I wrote most of the political poems longer ago, and I was in some ways frustrated that I didn’t have to write new ones, but also glad I didn’t have to revamp some shit that’s still hurting. I feel sort of proud of myself for writing it well enough then that I don’t have to keep doing it now. I was beat up by police eleven years ago now. I’ve been dealing with tear gas. That’s decade-old shit for me, and we’re nowhere past that now. The fact that what I wrote about three years ago is still salient is like, yeah. I’m also still chronically ill. It doesn’t inform my writing. 

I’ve never prided myself on writing new shit, on writing groundbreaking, revolutionary shit. I’m not trying to tell you something that no one has told you before, I’m just telling you how I’m feeling about it right now, and that’s the now that I can give you.

I’m more local in a timeless way with how people are living around me. Things that are relevant about trans healthcare are going to be relevant until we get them back. It’s both hard and easy to feel sort of timelessness because there are times when I feel like, “how has nothing changed?” But also, it is all greater than me anyway. Time is so unencumbered with my feelings about it. So I just kind of let it be. And also, it feels weird to feel as if what I’m writing has been written about like forty years ago. I’ve never prided myself on writing new shit, on writing groundbreaking, revolutionary shit. I’m not trying to tell you something that no one has told you before, I’m just telling you how I’m feeling about it right now, and that’s the now that I can give you. I don’t feel great or surprised or even discouraged, not even discouraged, that nothing has changed. I have to write to beyond the time that we’re living in. That’s how my favorite works have come to me, outside of the time they were created in.

CA: That’s a good note to open it up on. Does anybody out there have questions?

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: I was really interested in, much earlier in the conversation, about proximity and realness. I love the title of this book because it feels specific and anonymous at the same time. Like, you incorporate details as if you are really there in this place because you are, but also Local Woman could be any woman. I’m wondering how transness, specificity, and anonymity blend together in your life. You talked about it before, but can you talk about it again?

JJ: Absolutely, that’s a great question, thank you for that. I love my fellow trans poets and writers, let’s start there. Let’s start there. And, I don’t like to bleed in my work. There will be blood, there will be wound, there will be collision, there will be disaster, but I don’t like to specifically bleed in these ways. So yeah, I’m trans. Yeah, I mention fucking estrogen, it’s not like I’m hiding it. But I do believe there is a woman who is not trans who needs to hear this. There is a Black femme queer tradition of womanhood that claims that specificity that I wanted to claim. In some ways, it almost ended up sort of like, all women, in a scary way, but also I think that for the women like me who need to claim womanhood in this specific way, I wanted to have that be intentional.

I also love the idea that there is a me in every city. There is a moody, genius, romantic Black trans girl in every city, whether there’s two of us, one of them, one of them is probably sad, one of them is definitely romantic and genius. While I knew I was safe to create my locale here, the locality of this woman is wherever she/you are. Wherever the receiver of the work is. I don’t even feel anonymous, I don’t think my name is what people know me by in my locale. Yes, sure, they do, but I am the local Black tranny over six feet. I am the local woman in that way. I’m not hiding myself, I am sort of like streamlining the most salient way you can clock me, ‘cause I am clockable in that way. That’s why I use that sort of headline format like, “local woman does this thing.” I am reporting on this local bitch, but who is she, where is she, where are we? Not even like Portland woman or like West Coast woman, it’s like, a woman where you are is doing this shit.

So yeah, I’m trans. Yeah, I mention fucking estrogen, it’s not like I’m hiding it. But I do believe there is a woman who is not trans who needs to hear this. There is a Black femme queer tradition of womanhood that claims that specificity that I wanted to claim.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: I remember seeing you read from some of the poems in this collection, and at the time there was a different title. I’m just curious how it evolved, and how the titles evolved, and how Local Woman emerged. 

JJ: So there was a book between The Black Condition and Local Woman that was like fully, fully written, and then publishing bullshit that I don’t care to talk about happened, and it fell through not once, but twice. That was a discouragement for a while. Then I got on hormones, and I had to rewrite the whole book. Because the dead book was called Getting Hungry, and I was navigating sort of like food and my eating, but it was also tied to gender shit that I wasn’t quite ready to deal with. Once the book deals fell through and I started to find this new voice, I was like okay, I need to create this new—what is she? So for a long time the book was called Impressive Woman because I was like, “that’s something.” But I don’t actually care to impress, and I was trying to figure out, what is so important to my womanhood? It’s not being impressive, it’s being around. So Local Woman came out of liberating my ideal of a woman and making her as real as I could and safe for me. I don’t have to live up to being impressive. But bitch, I’m around. It’s a very safe voice for me to speak through.

I was trying to figure out, what is so important to my womanhood? It’s not being impressive, it’s being around. So Local Woman came out of liberating my ideal of a woman and making her as real as I could and safe for me. I don’t have to live up to being impressive. But bitch, I’m around. It’s a very safe voice for me to speak through.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: So I think it was mentioned before that you’re also a rapper. 

JJ: Yeah, I don’t know why that was mentioned, but we’ll let it pass. 

AM3: Are you a rapper?

JJ: Yeah!

AM3: My question is, I was curious then about your creative process, because obviously there are differences between hip hop, rap, and poetry, and I am not a poet, and so I’m always kind of interested in that process of creating. When does it speak to you that these words need to be on a page and read versus heard and performed? And how do you navigate that in your creative life when those two things can be really hand in hand or can be really separate, you know?

JJ: I definitely am a poet first and foremost. I love rap and rappers so much, and so I’m really not urgently trying to be a better rapper. I don’t work on that craft nearly as much. I just like it when it’s around. My writing is my writing, and I don’t have to spit bars. But also I can use, like I said, meter and sound and all this shit about rap in my work without it having to be performed. Whenever I rap, it’s like a possession. I’ll spend like six months, and then release an album, and then never perform or talk about it ever again. I’ve done it four times. I treat it like a passion project that I do. I like making art a lot but I really hate being accountable for it. There’s a lot of shit I do that I don’t release, ever. But I have released several rap projects and videos.

Those eras are so divorced from this work. Lady Tournament is a whole other bitch. She is not Local Woman, she is a Portland whore. My rap persona is always like the most degenerate version of me at any given point. Yeah, I’m taking your man, I’m doing all the drugs. Yeah, it’s bad. I’m vicious. I’m calling you out for nothing you’ve done to me. I’ve sung so many of the songs to no one but the ‘you’ of the world. My rap persona is lovingly divorced from my other writing, and it’s so funny because I don’t even think about it in the same way. They’re so, so different. It’s a whole other bitch, a whole other woman.

CA: Sometimes the ‘you’ of the world’s just got to be dealt with. So maybe one more question?

AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: I just really want to know, when you were writing these poems, where were you writing these poems? 

JJ: Like, geographically in the world?

AM4: You could say geographically, mentally, spiritually. I guess I am just so curious about that for you, if you could paint us a picture.

JJ: Okay, picture this. Imagine, I literally have the same thing on that I have on right now. [Jzl is wearing a short purple cocktail dress, black Doc Martins, and a black bandana holds back her hair.] At a bar, there’s at least three to seven repressed bisexual men over the age of forty on either side of me talking about basketball, and I am drinking a Long Island Iced Tea, writing down what they’re saying around me, then going out for a cigarette and turning it into a poem. I can tell you at least seventy percent of Local Woman was written around degenerate men in a bar, literally like in a bar or on the patio of a bar with a cigarette. It’s like that thing where you have one cigarette in your hand and [puffing sounds] while you’re typing with one finger. Yeah, I have one finger typed several poems at bars, looking like this. That is the most common Local Woman place, notes app at a bar. Sometimes I even plan ahead and bring a whole notebook, and then it’s done for. I get everything, I get all the notes. But yeah, I’m usually in a bar or cafe eavesdropping and trying to figure out how I feel.