Solid Quarter

Visit Trembling Pillow Press for poetry books, broadsides, chapbooks, and Solid Quarter Magazine.

Visit New Orleans Poetry Fest for the annual 4 day poetry festival directed by Bill Lavender and Megan Burns.

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Saturday, December 14, 2013

Day 14: Fantasea Gaze, babygirl







“babygirl got options, right?” –Azealia Banks

“In the pornographic scene, there is nothing for me to say” –Luce Irigaray


babygirl knows a type of owning
babygirl says you own it &  you do
babygirl silhouetted made rock hard
indigenous, a marbleized pressure, a sense
of urgency fissures: babygirl doesn’t blur
pain is a way of unhooking
babygirl to another this is a type of dissolving
when the strap, when forcing
babygirl knows a take is taking
neck taut, a gasping, babygirl
feminist porn is a fantasea, watering
under a gaze he makes her lick
the sweet pulse and called bitch she
when he meant receptacle, when he
intended stuck, cardboard a dolly
cascade of images if it pleases him
there are so many lines between what
you can do, think you can string
to string a phrasing
stuffing of words : a gagging
a throttle lip of panic
babygirl drips & drips, so good, so easy
there’s a hurting  then a hurt
babygirl calculates a breaking
she’s a hole of wreck & wonder
& then filled filling, he follows orders
it’s hard to forget what it is: babygirl




Final 2013 Poems: A Pirating

heart's a little lonely hunter
a gnawing keeps it edged
do you believe eternal monstering
pirate down all ships a sinking: can I be
a certain kind of celebrated
long focus pulled so you night a wander
came home dark but not long
to say I would whimper between a spacing
you choice against a bane
you've already survived, when pleasure
trumps doubt, a small cubit of rain buckets
the fall, papers to mark hard stakes
so desire, so always desire
a breeding of immaculates
the heart breaks against
what it breaks against
no mind but madness
within madness

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Error: A Seasonal Poem on Breaking


“Error
 And its emotions.
 On the brink of error is a condition of fear.”
 -Anne Carson, “Essay on What I Think About Most”


I.
sometimes an error occurs
because of the way the world is fed to us
like X-mas eve, putting together toys for 3 little dreamers
and you looked at me frustrated and called me a “slut”
& I sat in the space of that breaking
knowing how I wifed against a border of neglect
but you led a different life beyond the fencing of home
gingerbreaded, a snow dropping
if you say so, you can make believe

II.
as if a vow could be a way of altering
you double: live your life & write it out
it meters enough edge to trim the lies

III.
failure is just before you begin again
it precedes where you see how you
put yourself back together
I forgot the smell of you
I forgot the taste of you
I forgot any way home realizing survival
is how we maintained this artfulness

IV.
this essay of splinters
supple like causation
wide open, you watch for an all clear sign
the heart, safe for handling
to be hereditary to it is not a choice
that poem backs out, a deep spill
now too, I could not arrange the words
in better orders

V.
a half-finished sentence
I spent a lot of time saying
I love you as a way of warding
a parting

VI.
each little girl I see tears a fresh hole
in me, is this
what love is?
what is not quite
what is false that we can hold
what is made peace with a stalling
Carson says the language of the unsaid
is a two-way traffic
sometimes you travel both

VII.
he said, were you with you someone who made you
happy so little, and I stopped him
and said, I was with someone
who never made me happy
but these errors too
are a type of retelling
we don’t always have to be who we were

VIII.
I lost my life in you, not love
not nothing that was never there
a field where no one meets you
a lover is a smashing process where pieces
of you disintegrate
you don’t recognize disappearance for what it is
what do we mean by necessity?       not enough
is what we mean      not enough
a film burning where the sun
touched it