Category: #memories
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.
Mental Health Awareness Week
She doesn’t look sick…..
She isn’t sick.
But a black hole is eating her from the inside out.
The devour has no real description
It defies the usual ones, it has a wider mouth, deeper jaw, longer bite
The thing of it is .. the shame .. that’s the worst part
The little voice which sometimes sounds like your mother and sometimes sounds like every voice that ever said; What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you snap out of it?
Sometimes … a day will be piercingly beautiful … like the most beautiful song you ever heard and every sense will be electrified
And still you will long to fall on the ground sobbing
If they saw you they would ask; What’s wrong? It’s a beautiful day! Why can’t you appreciate life! Are you ungrateful?
And you would nod your head and admit; Yes I must be ungrateful. How else can you explain it?
For those who believe in God, you feel stricken, maybe you feel God is punishing you for some transgression with the black dog who never leaves your side
If he does leave then you know he will return and it is just a false waiting game, a pose of chess pieces with their fates already inscribed
They talk about other things that matter and feel empathy, sympathy
But when someone has a mental disease they are considered weak, inferior, selfish, inadequate
Wherever you go – there you are
Sometimes you wonder why it is you can write so much in November and nothing through July.
As if a giant claw had possessed your feelings and sank its nails deep into your marrow
When you date people you feel as if you should come with a disclaimer;
I may look pretty, I may have qualifications and a clean house, but beneath this surface please note … I am subject to changing and crying when the sun shines for no discernible reason
Sometimes in the middle of a party you want to run away from the crowd and bury your face in the grass out in the forest – feeling more alone than if you were locked underground in a prison cell
Often there is absolutely no way of describing this so you simply do not and that sets you apart as someone who carries a dark feeling without a voice
Occasionally someone will remark on the sadness in your eyes and you will smile as hard as you can to dispel it because it feels like a giant stain that everyone could see
If they cared to
Many times in subtle ways people will show you that they think you are weaker than them in the little methods of selection and choice
Family will condemn you and sharpen the quill when you are down because it is easier to kill a deer when it has fallen
You try to be grateful and you are, but it never seems so in the midst of sadness because sadness will devour any gratitude whole
And lovers will tell you … you’re not even happy to be with me are you? And you want to say, oh yes I am! But the sadness will envelop your voice and they will leave you … disappointed
There isn’t a week of mental illness, there isn’t a day for depression. There are years upon years upon years
And little adverts on TV about “If your current anti-depressant isn’t working considering taking (and paying) for another one to boost it!” Just fill you with impotent rage.
Often, you feel you are not worthy simply because you are depressed, it is a stigma that invades every aspect of your being, you believe you are not worth the same as others because of the darkness you carry around on your back
In the early morning when you lie in bed and the first rays of sun come through your window, you may forget who you are, and decide you are not going to be labeled or given a description, you are going to be
free
and that may last a while until the next time you feel like blowing your brains out
and then it’s the greatest betrayal you ever felt and it seems as if you do it to yourself
like a hand inside a black velvet glove
stroking dreams until they grow cold
Only child
I’m sitting in a linoleum room with ghosts, specters and occasional stranger
a girl with long legs like a foal, is pulling elastic pink lines of gum from her full mouth
and snapping them back, loudly
I wonder if I have ever sat so evenly in a chair, if I ever had peach hair, light on my skin like that
it reminds me of my friend who competed in gymkhanas, we made up our own horses, hers was called Mars and mine, BeTwix and we ran
so fast our hearts thundered up her grandmother’s hill in the La Roque-Gageac
her legs were like those of a foal, even at eleven, the waiters watched her with wet lips
I think of The Object Of Beauty, how Liv Tyler gleamed, coming out of the oval swimming pool
What men must think when underage girls begin to fruit.
My ghosts routinely tell me, I am without worth, they remind me if I had anything worth having
my mother wouldn’t be absent
a life time of inadequacy, wouldn’t be my legacy
I disappoint myself, not just the ghosts, sometimes I think
I don’t belong in this American world, where women are proud to work sixty hour weeks and go the gym at 9pm
still feeling they haven’t worked hard enough.
I think I am forever running in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine, with my imaginary horse
watching a girl turn into a woman, aware of too much even then, and not enough
the specters mock my lack of confidence, whispering in my detached earlobe
nobody likes a wuss, confidence is the American calling card, haven’t you noticed?
Even silly people and indifferent people get somewhere, if they believe in their
silly people and indifferent selves. And brilliant people, who doubt, will fester
like a ring someone lost in a river, glitters too deeply for marbled birds to
pluck it out and restore to light.
I lost a ring once, you’d given it to me when we were 14 and I didn’t have coltish legs
or peach fuss on my skin, but rather, the strong bones of a kid who drank milk with her cereal and got a stomach ache
reading Asterix at the pine breakfast table, with her stuffed toys.
I can still hear the plastic clock and hum of the washing machine
a warm symphony of my childhood, as I delayed leaving for school
and the inevitable crush of humanity, I had long decided was not for me
in fact, my trajectory was so far from that world of push and pull
competition and attention, fan fare and nose-pick small talk
I inhabited the after school hours like an addict of one
rejoicing in the quiet and empty spaces where
my mind could roam and gallop
sometimes I would sit on the roof tops of outdoor storage buidings
eating my soggy paper bag of sweets, stuck together from being
crunched in my pocket, head stuck in a book about
beautiful places with kind people and fantastic things
wild roses growing like thoughts from arching cracks
in concrete, their soft heads and sharp thorns
not the decapitated baby bird, I buried beneath the acorn tree
its silvered blind eyes, swollen and bulging
wings pressed like cries of regret for having never spread
in flight
something horrifying in everywhere you looked
like the terror you feel when you realize you are truly alone.
That kitchen clock would change day and month
but never really the precision of its emptiness
I learned it is better, to rely upon fantasy and avoidance
than the pinch and grope of society.
Often, a stranger would ask
why are you playing outside so late?
I would run away into the eclipsing shadows
behind the corrugated iron fences that separated
the good neighborhood from the skeletons
those bombed, bleached, bones of former homes
where a kid of twenty years ago had lain
watching paper airplanes cycle
above their head, clutching something with glass eyes
and faux fur, as I still did
funny, to find some comfort in the inanimate manufacture
of nature
my toys looked at me in the darkness and spoke
words of love, I needed to consume
their salty fur held
the cups of my early disenchantment
when teachers commented on my red eyes
I said; hay-fever and they believed me
because I wore a dragon tail
this was surely an adjusted child
with avid imagination
cantering alongside her friend
with the honey colored hair and long bare arms
absorbing sun like a shining fruit
I knew then how different I was
how quiet pain, how loud silence
my mother always looked so beautiful in
floral dresses with her trim ankles and long neck
I, the stranger behind her
admiring and shameful in her artlessness.
it was among the lost in forest, I claimed my place
when first love failed, when promises became
paper envelopes containing no letter
dishing out school diner and homework
leaving my scuffed shoes at the door
I climb
into the ivy
away from the party
a reflection I see of myself
gathering stillness like a blanket
she is fetching her best smile
for the emptiness of years
staring into emulous clouds, watching
for signs and miracles and unspent words
the sound of others laughter
rinsing through tall green shadows
like echoes of
someone else’s life
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 