Familiar and strange: A Queer River Walk with James Aldridge, Minty Donald, Ingrid Shearer and Cecilia Tortajada.
Glasgow, 10thSeptember 2021. By Rachel Clive.
five queer river lovers, familiar and strange meet on the dividing line of blue and green consider the edges.
on the grey bridge under their feet a small brown slug squidges past a sycamore wing a plastic cup lid, and an orange train ticket;
under the slug runs the kelvin a student runs from one side of the bridge to the other takes pictures and disappears an elderly man picks up litter, quietly attending to his city dogs lead their humans to water and trees, a sleepy bee loses its bearings buses rumble and birds cry out: beware! beware! the queer ones follow kelvin fluid nonbinary interminglings blond sandstone stands by windswept red the blond sandstone is older rats feast in cars while humans sleep but the rat race is for rats and we are at the confluence, where kelvin meets clyde govan keeps watch two white swans shake their feet and wiggle their chests protecting their large grey young; feathers roll and tumble up the slipway, trembling with the wind. the tide is out and the surface is slippery. i pick up a toy car and a broken lighter, luminescent leftovers, like squid remains in plastic bins materials break down; release can be unpredictable I wonder who the car belonged to, whose hands have played with it how it ended up here, how I end up here, time after time with kelvin and clyde and the turning tide the trucks thunder in to clean the hard grey riverside the noise of their engines is shattering, like gunfire exploding, the birds scream and i cover my ears, there is nowhere to hide. we need to reorganise
Queer River 
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