"I've been ridden hard and put away wet." from a July Westhale #poem in Thin Noon

You Can Lead a Horse to Water. Repeat.

                           "I want to say, you're good girls,

                             wanting to leave your names behind like that."

                                            -Louise Glück

I'm a working girl, I'm a girlfriend experience.

I dance incurably damned on stage. I'll tell

you I love you more than the moon, you hang

the moon, I'll shoot the moon.

I'll say I adore you to the moon,

and back, the moon is your fault, I'm moony

over you. I'll say, point me to the moon,

and fly me to it. I'm over the moon.

The truth is I mist my panties with a spray bottle.

I rarely see the sky at night.

I've been ridden hard, and put away wet.

That thing about horses is false.

You can give them salt, and they will take it

willingly. They can't forsake salt.

They lick it until they blister, and then

they wear it proud, but secret, inside

their mouths.

______

By July Westhale. Published in Thin Noon, an online journal from Brown University. 

"Four Interlaced Horses" from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Persian. Safavid Period, early 17th century.

A beautiful review of my book, Geographies...

Many, many thanks to writer July Westhale for this startlingly intelligent review of my chap/book Geographies of Soul and Taffeta. The review is in Lambda Literary. 

“Her [Sarai's] poems acknowledge the human capacity for boundary—and our inability to come to terms with fallibility. And while the poems speak to intimacies, to a constellation of personal intimacies that do the world a service in being global, they also speak to a state of people in crisis. Of people steering into the sun, unsure how they even got in the car in the first place, and where they’ll go next.”

Thanks to Posit and Susan Lewis (wherein "It Is True and Truth Sometimes Gets Me Published" - quoted above - was published; to Indolent Books and Michael Broder; and to William Johnson for marshalling/editing Lambda Literary. July Westhale is a writer to watch.

BOOK REVIEWS: 2 poetry and 1 nonfiction: I wrote 'n published this year

The Cow with the Subtle Nose by Jean Dubuffet, 1954.

The three reviews I wrote and published this year (one more to come, most likely in October):

Wedlocked: the Perils of Marriage Equality by Katherine Francke, at Lambda  "Comparing African-American rights with LBGT rights is risky. Is it too strong to say that every group and individual with a grievance feels free to compare their plight to that of people-of-color’s? Everyone’s pain is real, absolutely and unequivocally, but the stories don’t always line up. My argument is illustrated by the two couples portrayed on the book jacket."

Trance by Debora Lidov, on Luna Luna Magazine                                                  "Debora Lidov’s short collection, Trance (Finishing Line Press, $14.49), contains poems of surprise, elegance, originality, wit, irony, beauty, dark humor, precision, pain, and lyricism. That is a long praise-list and could set up a reader for impossibly elevated expectations, but the high-stakes’ focus of these poems makes anything less than a full layout of its attributes a little lame."

Cancer Angel by Beth Murray, at Lambda                                                             "Murray’s is poetry that makes the body holy, that illuminates the dark. Diagnosed with advanced breast cancer when she was in her forties, Murray didn’t “struggle with it”-–a phrase often used to frame cancer patients’ experience of the disease. This sharp poet sidesteps, well, more like leaps over sentimentality or cliché. The images can be searing. In “scar,” for instance, the defacement speaks for itself, literally and brazenly: “scar across my chest says have done battle// scar across my chest says have been cut.”

Truman Capote Doesn't Show at the 28th Lammys

The Early Stories of Truman Capote was nominated for a Lammy this year.  Therefore Mr. Capote was issued a name badge. Expectations ran high. While he was unable to pick his up owing his ectoplasmy state - if it's not gin it's ectoplasm, I say, one of the Lambda volunteers wore it in Mr. C's honor. Or in her honor. Or in honor of Lambda and name badges and volunteers.  The awards were Monday night in Manhattan. Fun was had by many. Hilton Als, who edited the collection of stories, was named Trustee for Literary Excellence, which is neato and well-deserved. I used to love reading Als' movie reviews in The New York Times. Now he writes for The New Yorker and co.

Poem: Christina Hutchins

Ta da! My final posting of nominees for this year's Lambda Literary award for lesbian poetry collections is (and remember, I posted in random order, the order beloved by random bloggers everywhere) The Stranger Dissolves, by Christina Hutchins (Sixteen Rivers Press).

As is the case with the other nominees, Hutchins is a seasoned poet. On the list of Things You Can Tell Your Parents About Your New Girlfriend: she has won the Villa Montalvo Poetry Prize, received two Barbara Deming Awards, and is the first Poet Laureate of Albany, California. She teaches at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley.

Here, from Missouri Review is "Into your pocket."  You might wander over to Switchback for more beauty and elegance.

Into your pocket

I have slid a bright morning before rain.
Tonight’s concerto is folded into thousands
of paper cranes; their wings were trees, rollicking
restless in the sun. Here’s a loose,
black thread pulled from my hem, tangled

to a tiny bundle between my fingers & thumb.
Kelp strands roiled back & forth in the surf
& deposited at high tide, the lost chains
of underseas are knotted, left along the beach.
Here is the warmth of my stride, left in a heap

on a rug beside the bed, blue jeans shed
in the shapes of my legs. I, too, have held
the shape of an absence. Quiet in the auditorium.
Who is that, laughing at the back of the room?
Here we are again, leaning against the door,

my way to you disclosed by two tongues
spending a sweet moment. The self I become
& the self you become are celestial bodies
entered into, one by another. Tender
release, a wet palate tasting its small

flourishes, my love is for taking along.
Like you, I swim a rising, astral surge.
If we are anchored by every spent moment,
the anchors are already rusted to dust
& these chains no heavier than light.

by Christina Hutchins, from The Missouri Review, 2010

Poem: Robin Becker (a poet in Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry)

The fourth nominee is an anthology, rather than a collection by one author.  (Not that you didn't know what an anthology was, but the distinction is noteworthy under the circumstances, those being the five nominees for the Lambda Literary Award for lesbian poets.)

As you are curious about the other nominees, you will want to look at the past three postings herein on My 3,000 Loving Arms and (furthermore) keep an eye tuned to tomorrow's posting which will have the final nomination (all posted in random order).

Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry, edited by Julie R. Enszer, published by Midsummer Night's Press, includes poems by a variety (duh) of poets and if you want more information, click here (there) to get to Midsummer's page. In the meantime, I post one poem by one of the poets, Robin Becker.

I'm thinking it's not included, but it's such a great poem, I want to read her and the other poets' twist on and insights. 

Angel Supporting St. Sebastian

Shot with arrows and left for dead,
against the angel's leg, Sebastian sinks.
In time, he'll become the patron

saint of athletes and bookbinders.
But for now, who wouldn't want to be
delivered into the sculpted arms

of this seraph, his heavenly
shoulders and biceps?
The artist understood the swoon

of doctrine, its fundamental
musculature, and the human need
to lean against the lusty form,

accept the discourse that assigns
to each of us a winged guardian
whispering into our ringing ears.

______________

by Robin Becker, pub. on Poets.org.

Poem: Daphne Gottlieb

The third nominee (see yesterday and yesterday's yesterday) for a Lambda Literary Award for a best collection by a lesbiana poet . . . is Daphne Gottlieb.

Although the poem I selected is short, as in real short, four lines, it does seem to represent rare inventiveness and insight.

I saw one reference to Gottlieb was a "performance poet."  That phrase is limiting and also too strict in terms of codification. Few poets can resist at least a few plays to the audience these days, especially in our Youtube culture. And once a poet is called a performance poet, she is considered pegged. Since Gottlieb has over nine books out she's spent some time off the stage.

"ernie..." could be titled "the Serenity Prayer goes awry" except its real title is cool and wildly informative.

ernie, on the street, overhears lola, who has fallen off the wagon is walking home alone at 2:15 a.m. 

god grant me the heredity the hysterectomy god grant me to

excess to annex to invent the things I cannot 

exchange courage to claim or chain the things I 

clam and the wizard to know the defense.

______________________
Daphne Gottlieb, Homestead Review, Hartnell College


Link to Homestead Review

Poem: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

What a sensuous sinewy name she has, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, as if she were born to be a poet, which she was. And aware, outraged, alive.

Her collection Love Cake (Tsar Productions) was another of the Lambda Literary nominees for best lesbian poetry (see yesterday's posting, and tomorrow's and so on). The poem "noise" was published in Lodestar Quarterly. Note that the poem is from Spring 2004. The essence of the poet is in every cell and line though the poet grows and changes.  

Love Cake, eh? Ha ha ha. Small, independent bookseller, here I come. As for biographical or background information, the note at Lodestar Quarterly (click on the name above) is a good start.  

HTML is running wild, by the way. The poem is intended to be double-spaced and this intro single. Breath between lines and savor the words.

noise

by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

if a girl screams
in a forest
in an oil field on fire
in a immigration holdin cell motel by the airport
and CNN doesn't tell it
no reporters embedded to witness
does she make a sound?
does her voice
spread over galaxies
neutrons milky ways
mars and jupiter
closer than they've ever been
does she make a sound and
does anyone give a fuck.
if a girl screams on a street corner
hustling her ass
if she wakes up to a man in her bed
who wasn't there when she turned the light off
if girl gets followed home
from her job stripping in front of a digi-cam
does it make a sound?
if the papers say she isn't quite a girl
and may live or have lived
in a house the neighbors
may or may not refer to as "a crack house"
what sound does her scream make?
if a girl is so hungry
has no money
wants all the
peaches and melon that drip off the shelves
of the market in summer
but goes home and eats dandelion greens
from her backyard
is she too hungry to make any noise?
if she is a poet not all up in
in MA and BA
and most of all BS
do her words get picked up on the satellites
that pick up everything?
if they recruit a whole army of girls
girls who look just like us but not quite
tits asses and skin
mouthing their words on the screen for them
where do our voices go?
listen. we are all making noise
even when our sound is too scared too hungry too dead to be picked up
by radar
cup your ear hard.
listen.

___
Again....PUBLISHED in Lodestar Quarterly. 2004.

Poem: Dawn Lundy Martin

Surprise and other states of reaction and joyous feeling (and a little bit of guilt) accompanied my scanning the just announced Lambda Literary Award nominations in lesbian poetry collections for 2011.

 

There were five nominations. Five women poets. I knew of all of them but, hence my surprise and various accompanying feelings, I haven't ye't read one of the five nominated collections. I hope to rectify that omission and soon.  In the meantime I am going to post a poem by each of the five in separate blog postings. (I'm not sure what I'm going to do in the case of Julie Enzer whose book was nominated, yes, but it is an anthology. I believe this is known as a luxury problem.)

In the meantime, here is a poem by Dawn Lundy Martin, whose collection Discipline (Nightboat Books), is among the five.  "Religion Song" is not from Discipline, but from Martin's chapbook, The Morning Hour.

Religion Song

Backward, our peculiar language.
Mama says, your life are your hands.

Count them.                 Spoken and leans
back into herself       a lone blade

amongst a field.        Each grass a palm



A straw hat on the old woman
who stands                 back to lone house

not smiling.               A rake in her hands
Two coconut palm trees--

She would draw concentric circles in sand . . .

What yields in darkness?

A point of surrender.

The still music of captivity.

All the civility of work.

* * *

From The Morning Hour, which had selected by C. D. Wright for the PSA National Chapbook Fellowship competition.

From the Poetry Society of America website.