Category: #desire
SMITTEN Review: For the love of women and reading — When Women Inspire
Recently I was gifted with an advance copy of the poetry anthology SMITTEN. I was intrigued upon hearing that all of the poems had one theme: the exploration of love between women. 46 more words
via SMITTEN Review: For the love of women and reading — When Women Inspire
Thank you so much to Christy Birmingham of http://www.whenwomeninspire.com for this incredible review of SMITTEN due out Fall, 2019. Please read the full review and consider following http://www.whenwomeninspire.com as it’s an incredible site and Christy is a remarkable woman.
What kind of lesbian would I be if I were born today?
I see your pictures on social media
a part of me is envious
of your freedom
even though women many years before
either of us
had absolutely no freedom and only those
with enough money could consider taking
a woman as their lover
it is hard to imagine
each generation I suspect
forgets the sacrifices of the last
cannot envision a time when
it was illegal to love
my experience was never that awful
I had freedoms many women still do not possess
and I am grateful for that
but sometimes when I see your
youthful face and the grace with which you accept love
how natural and easy it feels
I recall how I began
hiding in dark bars, trying to fit in, failing
never one to play endless games of poker face
I didn’t fit in with my own kind then
but if I’d been you
born in the sun with your turquoise eyes like the Donovan song
I might have had on my arm
a whole host of dreams and not
dabbled in boys for a few futile and unhappy years or
felt I couldn’t have had children and let
my fear and my constraint decide for me
the future
you are the age my daughter might be
and I would like to think I’d have
done all you have done had I been born
in a time of greater acceptance where
women who love women can grow their hair
and not have to cling to stereotypes or subterfuge
carrying knots of shame and confusion
like blankets never stretched out and slept on
I would have gotten a tattoo and maybe
been less shy and apologetic
I remember at 18 that’s all I seemed to do
sorry to my family for not having turned out straight
sorry to my friends for being the odd one out
sorry to the gays on the march who thought
with my dresses and my long tresses I was a weekend
lesbian
if they only knew
what it took and what I sacrificed
maybe they understand now
but we’re all a little older and
you don’t recapture what you felt at 18
you remember it like a language
I spoke the language of trial and error
I suspect you speak the language of love
just a little freer
so forgive me if I envy you as you walk past me
hand in hand, laughing, the edges of your hair
hitting your waist
like a Summer tidal wave.
SMITTEN – This is What Love Looks Like – Poetry by women for women – an anthology of poetry published by Indie Blu(e) will be out OCTOBER 2019 and available through all good book sellers. Please consider following SMITTEN’s FB page at https://www.facebook.com/SMITTENwomen/
If you are interested in supporting this project in any way please contact me @ candicedaquin@gmail.com. All LGBTQ projects are a little more challenging to succeed and we want the 120_+ poets who have work in SMITTEN to be read by many! Indie Blu(e) and their submissions rules can be found at www.indieblu.net
Kristiana Reed’s pre-print review of SMITTEN
Thank you to the incredible Kristiana Reed for this advance review of SMITTEN, Indie Blu(e)’s latest poetry anthology which will be published this Fall.
Candice Daquin and the editors at Indie Blu(e) Publishing have worked their magic once more in raising a powerful chorus of voices.
Daquin is a woman who has always sought to empower others from the first moment I became acquainted with her work and her nature. I also cannot think of a better person and writer to spearhead a body of work which celebrates love between two women.
The writers and styles within this collection, which Daquin has woven seamlessly together, are varied – eclectic and powerful yet with the same, strong undercurrent coursing through every piece that this is what love looks like.
It is possible people will read the sub-heading of SMITTEN and assume this is an exclusive collection; only accessible if you are woman who loves or has loved a woman. But, what is truly wonderful is this isn’t true at all. Instead, SMITTEN holds and nurtures love poems to be read and enjoyed by anyone. After all, for centuries, we have consumed and enjoyed love poems written about women, by men. Why should the fact that the poet is a woman cause the response to be any different?
‘Testimony’ by Carolyn Martin is one of the best examples of this. The nature of love and relationships does not suddenly change if it is not heterosexual; the essence of loving someone beyond belief even on the days they annoy you to distraction, remains.
However, even though SMITTEN is not exclusive, it must be recognised as an anthology paving a new way for literature. All of the writers are female and all of the subject matter is female, lesbian, bisexual and more. Pieces such as ‘Lesbian’ by Avital Abraham and ‘Pulse’ by Melissa Fadul drive home why Daquin’s decision to create a collection like this is needed and welcomed.
Too often we sideline LGBTQ+ work as a genre of its own, when it should be mainstream; literary works which are written by people to be enjoyed by people, no matter what their race, sexuality, gender and/or religion.
Yet, until this happens, I applaud Daquin and Indie Blu(e) Publishing for brazenly making a stand. Until labels are but words and not identifiers, it is important that writers like those in this collection share their voices and stories, ever-lasting love and heartbreak, and their hopes and fears, to remind the literary world they will be heard, no matter what the response may be.
Kristiana Reed August, 2019.
SMITTEN will be available this Fall via all good book sellers. For bulk orders, ARC copies or more information please contact Candice Daquin or Indie Blu(e) directly or go to the SMITTEN Facebook website
SweptAway
Here in the quiet room
you can fool yourself for a moment
joy has returned
her skin like oranges left in sun
narrow feet catching dust, turning in their little arc
you want to tell her you notice everything
as if it were your job to record the very sum
using nothing but words and build from alphabet
exact reasons you still
catch your breath
yet for all the music beneath her skin
a familiar yet unfamiliar person within
she has been long gone just as she remains
a shadow against a wall elongated
like places you once lived in
turn strange
taking one more look around
before you leave
key on the mantle
watching tulips breathe
their redolent mystery
as the color of her eyes
was never a word to capture
something free then
flying
out of the window she left ajar
that day she stopped being herself
and you could return in a 100 years
just for the smell clinging to her neck
how she feels beneath her clothes
places you know like a hidden map
joy solved in one tightly held hand
like a sailor lost at sea
when she is far and away
diving for pearls in hope
one will be as black and magical
as her iris caught by car light
watching you, seeing nothing
even the whispers of who she once was
swept away
the room now bare and empty
readying for new people
running your fingers along the memory
heart in throat
seeing her turn
that beautiful smile
before she climbs
the narrow stairs
We cried a long time ago. We don’t cry anymore.
A warbling, holding, green glass pain
Like joined hands make paper cut
Invisible like girl in crowd, falls
Deep as ink without light
Stinging with clamoring cymbal
Tears almost bare themselves as first night lovers, tremorous
Retreat beyond the naked streets
It is not brutal gnashing strength
But soft lipped resignation
And a little elipsing hope
For bare faced ceasement
Lain like prayers and rushes and thrown flowers wetting paving stones
No ceremony. Only, black cars devoid of dust
A trail without salt. They bent lower to seek. Not yet.
It’s hard to say it. The wind chokes words. Before.
We walk on. Omphalos in fatigued lament
Toward reprieve, illuminate in muted tempest.
Furnish in her own time
It’s the fantasy
something out of summer, as you’d dream it
bare legs tucked beneath white cotton and trimmed thick lace
laughing clavicle, slipping straps
the long necked wonder of descending evening
that sting on skin from days in sun
I’ve been here before
the last time, I lay beneath a boy with cut glass eyes
who bought me flowers from the night market
before they bombed Bali and innocence was our town
wearing a sarong of blood red and mustard, half grown
walking beaches at night fall, crabs coming up through sand
scuttling into still water, the recede and ebb of thought
knowing he wasn’t the one, still desiring the idea
of love and its myriad faces, the strange places we
take ourselves to feel alive, writhing beneath
his pinion and faith, you’ll stay with me, I’ll
make you like my kind, turn your eyes away
from the obsidian girls who set out sacrifices for Gods
orange petals, I am thinking of her beneath clothes
watching from hibiscus waves, will she learn to
secret away her longing in the deep pockets of
a sarong too wide for any more tucking?
what do we know? We’re just kids building sand castles
on empty beaches and he takes my hand and asks;
let’s keep going until we fall off the world
Please, let yourself, just pretend …
the wild of saying, yes I’ll follow you
travel the globe, searching stones for blood
finding in things that feel wrong, another direction.
Now I have come full circle
we’re not old, but we’re not angular children
thin boned and boundless on their bikes
dream life filling xylophone chests
her eyes are hurt by his stories, I can tell
even as I am the fantasy and the observer
thrown off scent by, my painted toe nails and sunlit hair
the slope of day closing like a picture album
grass like cat fur beneath naked toes
bent wrists spent of expression, limply wait
for electric cumulus as thirst penitent may
befriend dry river bed
I want to say to her; Don’t be trapped any longer
pick up and run away, half flung around the globe
leave the mounting regrets at your door, with the disappointed
find your self again, diving into the gleaming future
sleek as a wet dog will shine beneath and shake off
water weight when back on land
because you can, you know
it’s not written until you write it.
Here … take my hand, I’ll help you
and we jump, weightless
her short nails digging into the soft of my palm
read my future, she whispers into my neck
her breath is cherry, her eyes smudged black
I see the ransack
all the reasons she snarled and bit
for she made it this far, don’t push her
let her furnish in her own time, a place of grace
where light pours pure and undiluted
onto her heavy shoulders, hunched with rage
let it go
you don’t have to be here anymore
we catch the tail wind and it is warm
she murmurs, her eyes wide and seeking
the whole world awaits
Faith
My love
it is so hard to keep
faith
with every day there are changing shades from day to night
sometimes I am comforted by fireflies and evening moth
who dual beyond the porch, betrayed by flicker and swat
I imagine the patterns of her wings, that magic sting of light
so short their lives compared to ours, so rich and meaningful I would infer
sometimes it is the exclusion of pain gives me rest
when I can at last unroll my carpet and forget
carrying the weight all day, a vase of ache absent of flower
to place this nowhere and have it melt away
I lie in the bath and heady steam dissipates reality
in those musings there is only the delight of a girl
seeking her passion in lingered meandered imagining
and you come to me, full of health and unharmed yet
by cruel flint and staunch of your absent conscience
and you lay me down and make of me what you will
a thousand pieces of me broken and rebuilt
which I give with my all, for you were and you remain still
far more than sense can convey
in the hour of day when dreams are gone to sleep
I see the cruelty of your take and take and take
the hunger of your keep and how I was but a thing, in your
cabinet of curiosities to be taken out and squeezed when you
thirsted or when times were hard and you needed the succor of
kindness to tuck you in, nothing of you was sincere or loving
all that I held dear possessed the sound of my own breaking
it was as if I had become pupil to mistreatment
learned many times on illiterate whip of inheritance
children soon become acquiescent to disregard
I didn’t know how to be worthy and you took my pain
pinned it to a velvet card and called me Opodiphthera Eucalypti
my blush and powder, the soft rubbed fur and bleed of color
round and round my pattern and maze, sucking from thistle
the gypsy without, I live in silk and attraction to light
pollinating only the fruit of predators like yourself
as you pinch my wings with your greed and whisper
my lunar, my atlas, spin your silken web across my longing
for I have never learned my worth and you wish to
gobble on my spirit as you may an Autumn apple
the fragrance of your dissection
my love
it is too easy
to stay my life in wait of your call
watching others continue onward and myself find
nothing but the covet and anguish of a prisoner
if I had the strength to
I’d hurl myself against the glass
leaving a smudge of myself in technicolor
for children to press their noses against and wonder
oh what ever life could make such a kaleidoscope
and in these mixings of burning and yearning
parched by want and crushed to nothing
the dancer emerges broken and fragmented
to spirit into night her ether and the longing
she is free of her torment and bound to the wax and wane
of one who has rubbed against and been caught by
a terrible rope, woven with obsidian, the shade of pain
my love
it is too hard to remain
faithful
to your brand of hurt
and live in dying with every pursuit
I have long imagined I am already prepared
for the hour, the moment, pain exceeds its curse
and slipping like oil and water and vinegar bound
we change from solid to infinity and beyond
where only the stain of who we were and what we bore
that burning need to consume, that hunger for
all the poison within your sickening and how
never did you rest until the very perish was wrought
standing still like a girl reaching for
something invisible
my love
it is the fresh unopened rose
and her tightly closed promise
shall see tomorrow and claim
the glory
for I will not be there to witness
this new day and those trespasses for this comforts
me in such a depth as if every kind of anguish
were salved by the knowledge this too shall end
and you will dissolve in time
beyond the fragment of what has been
into the very air like things we cannot yet see
whirling and catching the air in relief
for moths have never lived long enough it seems
to know their beauty and how it is
for us who live sometimes too long
and rise to see another day, alone
The affiliate of memory
Die is cast
thrown and tumbled
woman is born a girl
girl is born a woman
when she is young, learning to tie bows in sensible brown shoes
spit and shine, tighten pigtail, don’t get your bobby socks dirty
what does she know of her future?
when then, what hour marks, her turning, her awareness?
the tempora fragility of her succulent heart
will she be like her grandmother, a blubbering mess?
able to condone slithered evil in the hands of her husband?
look the other way, for her choices are meager
will she be like her mother, a loyal lover?
seeking a man willing to hold her closer to the sun
melt Icarus, melt, till you can stand the radiance no longer
but what of your child? The one you think is poison and deadly nightshade
what will she be like? In that wicked knowing?
when after-birth is dried and shell chewed to starlight
and she stands tall and unversed like a question mark
when she wants to scream out;
whydontyoufeellikeido?
whydontyouwanttoscreamwheneveryoneelseislaughing?
she’s the burnt slice of toast grown cold on countertop
everyone else is easy in the sun like white wheat and blackcurrant
they shine in their shingled merge
children thread their way through oboe chair-backs like grass snakes
the meadow flowers droop in her sweaty palm
she’d gift her indigo heart if it were taken or sensical
learning many years ago
don’t lend, what you can’t live without
she has enough air to fake it for fifteen minutes, then she’s out
caught in the idling headlamps of smoky cars
no destination
just drive
far
to escape those pitch eyes, drained of regard
the ease with which you are
the ease with which you are
in the loosening of your need
an affiliate of memory
put in glass jars along with sugar
watching you lean now, so evenly
toward tomorrow’s sun
By one who feels
for indifference is the sharpest
knife of the set
worse than anger which requires some care
and love that turns on her heel constantly
like a feathered Cuban girl in 1930s Havana
smiling, til her cheeks ache with sheer
marvelous spectacle
it’s been some years since I danced for you
from shadows to light and back again
fooling myself into beauty, rendering
moments stamped in both our minds
for the joy of the unbound
my feet hennaed like an Indian wedding bride
your fingers possessed of music and silver rings
we wove our limbs together as plaited bread
baked in the glory of that unbroken hour
before ochre sun’s urgent assent and chime
of other people began lowing in impatient light
there is something about darkness I have always
felt contained magic and even if others do not see
I taste it on my tongue
I run my hands along
its quiet shining surface
much like a lake swallowing
a stone when thrown
with all the violence known
by one who feels
everything
TheFeatheredSleep 