Feminist Poetry – Page 4 – As It Ought To Be

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: GILI HAIMOVICH

Posted on February 1, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Gili Haimovich:

My Hebrew is going to get hurt.
So how will she continue to adorn me?
Through my attachment to her
she multiplies,
as if allowing me more time to lament.

הָעִבְרִית שֶׁלִּי תֵּכֶף תִּפָּצַע
?אָז אֵיךְ תַּמְשִׁיךְ לְיַפּוֹת אוֹתִי
דֶּרֶךְ הַהִקָּשְׁרוּת שֶׁלִּי אֵלֶיהָ
הִיא הוֹלֶכֶת וּמִתְרַבָּה
.כְּמוֹ לְהַסְפִּיק שֶׁאַסְפּיד יוֹתֵר

Translated from Hebrew by Dara Barnat. Poem originally appeared via The Bakery and appears here today with permission from the poet.

The Dragonfly

I’m ashamed to say it but
The wings of the dragonfly I was
Were made of glass.
Her delicate but roachy body buzzed
In a pleasant yet mechanical way.

I’m ashamed to look at her because I believe it’s still possible
to see her there.
Between you and me,
what blew her cover were the wings attached to her small body
not the bolt,
but the usual flesh and bones and muscles
flapping with the energy of a female.

Poem originally appeared in Recours au Poeme and ARC and appears here today with permission from the poet.

Gili Haimovich is an internationally published poet and translator. In North America she had published the chapbook Living on a Blank Page (Blue Angel Press 2009) and in Hebrew she has four volumes of poetry. Her work appears or are forthcoming in numerous journals and anthologies such as: The International Poetry Review, LRC – The Literary Review of Canada, TOK1: Writing the New Toronto, Asymptote, Ezra Magazine, Lilith, Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, Cahoots Magazine, Stellar Showcase Journal, Women in Judaism, Recours au Poème (English and Hebrew with French translations) and The Bakery as well as Israeli ones. Gili also works as a Writing Focused Expressive Arts therapist, educator and workshops facilitator.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poems are the closing of a circle. There is no longer beginning or end, only the far reaches, the impact, the power of poetry. What began with my featuring Dara Barnat’s poem “Walt Whitman” became a magic carpet ride within the Holy Land and its many languages. During my sabbatical in Israel I featured so many amazing poets and translators on this series, and now that I have returned to more familiar pastures I am paying homage to all of them with today’s entry. This will not be the last time I feature Hebrew writers in translation or English writers living in Israel, but it is a bookend on a time and a place that forever changed me and for which I am forever grateful. If I am afraid that “my Hebrew is going to get hurt,” I trust that the amazing poets I have shared here with you throughout my journey will work like invisible threads binding me to a language and a country, always.

Want to read more by and about Gili Haimovich?
PoetryOn
Recours au Poem
Asymptote
The Bakery

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LEAH UMANSKY

Posted on January 11, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

KHALEESI SAYS
By Leah Umansky

Game of Thrones

In this story, she is fire-born:
knee-deep in the shuddering world.

In this story, she knows no fear,
for what is fractured is a near-bitten star,
a false-bearing tree,
or a dishonest wind.

In this story, fear is a house gone dry.
Fear is not being a woman.

I’m no ordinary woman, she says.
My dreams come true.

And she says and she is
and I say, yes, give me that.

(Today’s poem originally appeared via The Poetry Foundation/POETRY Magazine and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Leah Umansky’s first book of poems, Domestic Uncertainties, is out now by BlazeVOX [Books.] Her Mad-Men inspired chapbook, Don Dreams and I Dream is forthcoming from Kattywompus Press in early 2014. She has been a contributing writer for BOMB Magazine’s BOMBLOG and Tin House, a poetry reviewer for The Rumpus and a live twitterer for the Best American Poetry Blog. She also hosts and curates the COUPLET Reading Series. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Thrush Poetry Journal, Similar Peaks and The Brooklyn Rail.

Editor’s Note: Ah, Khaleesi. Who doesn’t love her?! What an inspirational female role model, as Leah Umansky deftly expresses with today’s selection. The poet has taken a pop culture icon (of both the literary and television varieties) and brought her deeply into the realm of poetry, expressing the character’s strengths and struggles in beautiful, captivating lyric. Whether you are an avid fan of the Song of Ice and Fire series (now lovingly known as Game of Thrones, thanks to HBO) or you are unfamiliar with the stories, this is a poem we can all latch on to, can all love. How beautiful Umansky’s Khaleesi is, being “fire-born [and] knee-deep in the shuddering world,” how strong she is as she teaches us that “Fear is not being a woman.”

And may I take a moment to say how awesome POETRY Magazine has become since taking on its newest editor? I can hardly imagine today’s poem seeing the light of day in POETRY’s pages a year ago. And now it shares a home with poets such as CA Conrad and Ocean Vuong; it has finally become a publication that I am excited to read.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: FRANCESCA BELL

Posted on December 28, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Francesca Bell:

I LONG TO HOLD THE POETRY EDITOR’S PENIS IN MY HAND

and tell him personally,
I’m sorry, but I’m going
to have to pass on this.
Though your piece
held my attention through
the first few screenings,
I don’t feel it is a good fit
for me at this time.
Please know it received
my careful consideration.
I thank you for allowing
me to have a look,
and I wish you
the very best of luck
placing it elsewhere.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Rattle and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Francesca Bell’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals, including burntdistrict, North American Review, River Styx, Poetry Northwest, Crab Creek Review, and Tar River Poetry. She has been nominated six times for the Pushcart Prize. Her full-length manuscript was a finalist in the Poetry Foundation’s 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award competition and a semi-finalist for the 2012 Philip Levine Poetry Prize.

Editor’s Note: Ha! That is really all that need be said regarding today’s poem. Ha! But I will say a bit more. That today’s poem is dedicated to all of my poet and writer friends, to everyone who has ever braved the submission process and the rejection inherent within it. We all thank you, Francesca Bell, for turning our collective suffering on its head and for giving us a way to laugh about it. I, for one, will never look at a rejection letter the same way again.

Want to read more by and about Francesca Bell?
Francesca Bell’s Official Website
phantom limb
River Styx
Women’s Voices for Change
Spark Wheel Press

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JOAN PRUSKY GLASS

Posted on December 7, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

THE BATHING SCENE FROM MARGUERITE DURAS’S THE LOVER
By Joan Prusky Glass

“Very early in my life it was too late.”
– M. Duras, The Lover

I read The Lover when I was fifteen.
The girl’s red doll lips became my own.
The power she had over
the Chinese man mine too.
His weakness became fuel
for a journey I was preparing for.
I needed him and despised him
before I knew why.

There is a scene in which
the man, on his knees,
bathes the girl’s slender body,
barely pubescent.
She looks down at him coolly,
braids hanging over her shoulders.
Immodest on purpose.

The lover draws a washcloth
across her hips tenderly,
with grief in his eyes.
Perhaps he is trying to wash
away the power he gave her.

She notices him loving her
the way you might notice
a penny tossed into the well
when your pockets
are filled to the brim.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Joan Prusky Glass lives with her husband and three children in Derby, Connecticut. She is an educator and child advocate by profession. Her poetry has been published or is upcoming in Decades Review, TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, Bone Parade, Milk Sugar, Harpweaver, Pyrokinection, Literary Mama, University of Albany’s Offcourse, The Rampallian, Visceral Uterus, Up the River, Haggard & Halloo, vis a tergo and Smith College Alumnae Quarterly among others.

Editor’s Note: What draws us into today’s piece, and what makes us resist against it? Where does the reader’s experience end and the poet’s begin? Where does the poet dissolve into the girl; where does the girl begin and her author end? Is today’s feature about power? Scandal? Sex? Love?

Today Joan Prusky Glass blurs the lines between perception and art, between experience and literature, between revulsion and beauty. The poet paints a watercolor of words, one vivid pigment bleeding into the next, so that we are both moved and unsteady. We are left not knowing where we stand; unsure of the medium, of the players, of ourselves.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: MARCELA SULAK

Posted on October 12, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Marcela Sulak:

THE CASTING OF LOTS

Dear Ahasuerus, it is eleven-thirty am and my number is one hundred and eighty-six. I feel the lack of communion striving for a higher purpose in this government assistance office, and it is beyond sadness and feet and the distance of aircraft and tires and inner-tubes on turgid rivers in midsummer with aluminum cans of beer. It’s not just the ones who pick discarded numbers from the floor and say they missed their turn. The flower-selling prepubescent children sniffing glue in paper bags outside the margins of the magazine I’m reading remind me of the laundry I hung up that must be dry by now, filled as they are with warmth and wings and snapping.

This office is a fine line. The wind from the open window rustles the pages of my magazine, pumps the lungs of paper bags, lifts the plastic shopping sacks discarded in the fields, fills the vacant sheets.

When God withdraws, we all must breathe a little harder.

Are these hosts the kind of people who refrigerate red wine? I wasn’t breastfed, I smelled different. I never learned to desire consolation prizes. The water hisses from the tap, sliced by the tips of lettuce leaves. The cut-crystal conversation turns on the tiniest incisions. So little of it is about you, you have to address yourself as one of your second persons. At the click of one of our host’s glances, each woman at the table presses forward, like a bullet into the chamber. It goes without saying, this is how I see myself among the women, Dear Ahasuerus, you fuck.

One of the trafficked prostitutes in the Tel Aviv shelter always carries a book with her. When she’s fucked up she reads it upside down. It’s a best seller, a thriller, a romance, so it doesn’t really matter the order of the events. She can describe them in detail afterwards, which she’ll do for you when you ask about her life.

HEBREW LESSONS: LESHALEM
To pay, to bring to a conclusion, bring to perfection, to make peace.

I am not a piece
of cake—sometimes
the eternal á
la mode, which is
to say, I am
your mouth, not your whole
mouth, just the part
that, when full, worries
about its next meal.

ii.

The eggs must first come
to room temperature,
which is to say for
everything there is
time. While the cotton
opened white fists at her
window, one by one
my grandmother beat
six eggs by hand till
they were stiff. The hands
of the kitchen clock
tapped each fat minute,
the ready spoon curved.
The frothy batter
she poured herself into
the tube pan steadied itself
in the wood-fueled oven
and lifted. Those who ate
a single bite were filled
with an inexplicable
happiness. Sometimes
that was enough.

(Today’s poems originally appeared in The Bakery, and appear here today with permission from the poet.)

Marcela Sulak is the author of two collections of poetry and has translated three collections of poetry from the Czech Republic and Congo-Zaire. Her essays appear in The Iowa Review, Rattle, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University, where she is senior lecturer in American Literature.

Editor’s Note: While living and working in Israel for the fall semester I have become inspired by the local English-speaking writing community, as well as the plethora of work being done in translation. I hope to be able to share some of the gems the local writers and translators are creating here with you on this series, beginning today with Marcela Sulak.

Of course I am interested in Sulak’s work, in part, because of its biblical interests and midrashic tendencies. Ahasuerus, for instance, from today’s first piece, was a Persian king and husband of Queen Esther. He chose Esther for his queen after kicking out his first wife, Queen Vashti, for refusing to display herself naked before his guests. The process of choosing Esther as Vashti’s predecessor was more like a casting call; all of the eligible virgins were gathered together, put through months of rigorous beauty rituals, then paraded around for Ahasuerus to choose his favorite from among them. Today, Sulak’s bent on this tale has her channeling these young women on display, noting the lack of communion among women under such competitive circumstances. Sulak eloquently sums up the experience: “It goes without saying, this is how I see myself among the women, Dear Ahasuerus, you fuck.”

But beyond the biblical explorations lie moments of brilliant lyric and philosophy. Moments that stop you dead in your tracks: “When God withdraws, we all must breathe a little harder,” “I am / your mouth, not your whole / mouth, just the part / that, when full, worries / about its next meal,” “which is to say for / everything there is / time.” Sulak’s is writing that considers the historical, the human, and the astronomical through the lens of the day-to-day. Her vivid imagery brings to life the scenes she paints, while the ideas she plants take the reader from the microscopic to the telescopic.

Want to read more by and about Marcela Sulak?
Marcela Sulak’s Official Website
Guernica Mag
Drunken Boat
The Cortland Review
Verse Daily

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: DANUSHA LAMÉRIS

Posted on September 28, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

ARABIC
By Danusha Laméris

I don’t remember the sounds
rising from below my breastbone
though I spoke that golden language
with the girls of Beirut, playing hopscotch
on the hot asphalt. We called out to our mothers
for lemonade, and when the men
walking home from work stooped down,
slipped us coins for candy, we thanked them.
At the market, I understood the bargaining
of the butcher, the vendors of fig and bread.
In Arabic, I whispered into the tufted ears
of a donkey, professing my love. And in Arabic
I sang at school, or dreamt at night.
There is an Arab saying,
Sad are only those who understand.
What did I know then of the endless trail
of losses? In the years that have passed,
I’ve buried a lover, a brother, a son.
At night, the low drumroll
of bombs eroded the edges of the city.
The girls? Who knows what has been taken
from them.

For a brief season I woke
to a man who would whisper to me
in Arabic, then tap the valley of my sternum,
ask me to repeat each word,
coaxing the rusty syllables from my throat.
See, he said, they’re still here.
Though even that memory is faint.
And maybe he was right. What’s gone
is not quite gone, but lingers.
Not the language, but the bones
of the language. Not the beloved,
but the dark bed the beloved makes
inside our bodies.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Rattle and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Danusha Laméris’s work has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, Rattle, The Sun and Crab Orchard Review as well as in a variety of other journals. She was a finalist for the 2010 and 2012 New Letters Prize in poetry and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize four times. Her first book, The Moons of August, was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry contest, and is set for release in early 2014. She lives in Santa Cruz, California and teaches an ongoing poetry workshop.

Editor’s Note: What riches lie within today’s poem. How alive the market of the poet’s memory. Reading this piece is like walking through a souq; the corridors are buzzing and vibrant, but be aware. Keep your eyes wide open. In the caverns below the language lie both treasures and warnings. Both the language and the bones.

Want to read more by and about Danusha Laméris?
Author’s Official Website

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LET’S GET LUCKY!

Posted on July 20, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

MANUELA

In the bleak hours of an afternoon in Spain,
I sprung free from my grandpa’s kitchen,
the smells of peppermints and pears, and headed
to town for an afternoon of people watching.
The streets were hand-cut paper forests, flush
with tawny kids in flat sandals and psychedelic
friendship bracelets. Feminine footwear obsessives
in custom-made minis smoothed on rice vapor
lotion, delicate contessas fit for a summer wedding,
see-through and filigreed. I dreamed of leaving home
for an evening at the Tropicana, sexy and dazzling
in a glamorous dress—understated, ethnic girl
plucked from an under-the-radar haven; someone’s
graceful holy grail, soft ephemera on his fingers.

SUMMER

I could write a paper on the topic of lip balms,
groovy grandma that I am. With ’60s playfulness
and a flapper’s flounce, I stick to the Great Gatsby,
intensive scalp treatments, and statement-making
tchotchkes. Cat boxes and flea markets don’t
satisfy me; I roll around in sea foam suede, take my
Rolls Royce on an unexpected trek around Morocco.
I’m more of a jump-or-you’ll-miss-it haute hippie,
a sucker for patent trim and embroidered-in-Bali
sequined corsets. I’m looking for a biker-gone-boho
grandpa—rugged but genteel, with an air of London
street-cool—for stomping through exotic gardens,
splurging on tie-dyed wedding cake. Two spicy,
rock-and-roll piglets rubbing bohemian noses.

VANESSA

How often can you wear a bleeding heart
and get away with it? I spend most of my time
getting calls from complete strangers who want
to run around with a Fitzgerald heroine, architectural
and sweet, unbearably twee—or an unstoppable
rock star, a morbid candy-colored centerpiece,
loose and right at home in a disheveled bed.
I step into another world and feel like nothing;
off-hours, I’m a timid violet with a limp handshake
that peeks out of my coat sleeves. No one ever
detects the potential of a wispy girl lost in her clothes,
so I audition for drama, slip on some sugar. The line
between adorable and alarming gets thin, thin, thin.
I slouch and watch the layers flutter, lit from within.

Today’s poems are from the forthcoming Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press, Fall, 2013), and appear here today with permission from the poet and the press.

About the Book: Getting Lucky is a collection of sonnets culled from the editorial copy of Lucky, a newsstand publication about shopping and style. By adopting the magazine’s gendered and glossy language, Nicole’s poems explore contemporary ideals of beauty and femininity, as well as female-specific narratives we see in media, culture, and everyday life.

Editor’s Note: Let’s Get Lucky! It’s a beautiful love story. A small press dedicated to publishing women poets meets the kind of witty, thoughtful, cheeky gal whose poems literally step out of the pages of a fashion magazine. Both are determined to give voice to the underrepresented. In seeking out a luminary to spearhead today’s female poetry contingent, the publisher finds a poetess who brings the cultural misogyny inherent in today’s society to its knees. While wearing a fabulous pair of heels.

The arts, in America today, are in grave peril. Poetry in particular is under-read and scathingly underrated. A Corporatocracy is on the rise, and the core of humanity is being marginalized. There is no money in art, and less money for the arts. Those of us who write poetry, who publish poetry, do so out of pure love and unwavering passion. We depend on our community for support—to read our work and to enable its very existence.

Getting Lucky is a fantastic, cutting-edge book that critiques the culture of fashion and shallow materialism by giving feminism a whole new meaning. Spooky Girlfriend Press is a self-described “tiny two-person operation” with huge vision and an impressive track record of publishing forward-thinking, critically-acclaimed works. The two have come together to make magic, to make dreams come true, and they need your help.

Via Indiegogo, a crowdfunding platform that empowers ideas, Spooky Girlfriend Press has started a campaign to fund the making of Getting Lucky. Take a stand for art today. Show the world that poetry matters. Help the voiceless sing from the rooftops. Our government is not going to do it. Big corporations are not going to do it. It is you—readers of poetry, writers of poetry, lovers of the underdog, believers in vision and heart—who are going to make the difference. Donate to this campaign today and let’s Get Lucky!

Nicole Steinberg is the author the forthcoming collection Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2013) and Birds of Tokyo (dancing girl press, 2011), and the editor of Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms with Queens (SUNY Press, 2011). She is also the founder and former curator of Earshot, a New York reading series for emerging writers. She hails from Queens, New York and currently lives in Philadelphia.

Help Nicole Steinberg and Spooky Girlfriend Press Get Lucky!
Donate to Getting Lucky‘s Indiegogo Campaign

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: PRAYERS LIKE SHOES

Posted on March 30, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

FROM PRAYERS LIKE SHOES
By Ruth Forman

STAND

why so afraid to stand up?
someone will tell you
sit down?

but here is the truth
someone will always tell you
sit down

the ones we remember
kept standing

PRAYERS LIKE SHOES

I wear prayers like shoes

pull em on quiet each morning
take me through the uncertain day

don’t know
what might knock me off course

sit up in bed
pull on the right
then the left
before shower before teeth

my mama’s gift
to walk me through this life

she wore strong ones
the kind steady your ankles
i know
cause when her man left/ her children
gone/ her eldest son without goodbye
they the only ones keep her
standing

i saw her
still standing

mama passed on
some things to me
ma smile sense a discipline
ma
subtle behind

but best she passed on
girl you go to God
and get you some good shoes
cause this life ain’t steady ground

now i don’t wear hers
you take em with you you know
but i suspect they made by the same company
pull em on each morning
first the right then the left

best piece a dress
i got

THESE HIPS

these hips ripe plums
don’t believe
come
taste

these midnight moons
made a sugar’s juice
know how to curve a line
make a knife shiver
in anticipation

these hips ripe plums
don’t believe
run yr hand long this

n tell me

God did not know what She was doing
when She
gentled her hand
in a half moon
two times
smoothed
the most perfect
fruit
on earth

THE AIR ABOVE OUR TONGUES

We do not speak. afraid
of what might happen to us

the air above our tongues
prays for us to speak. afraid
of what might happen
if we don’t

Prayers Like Shoes: Whit Press, in partnership with Hedgebrook, presents this magnificent collection of poetry from highly acclaimed writer and poet Ruth Forman. “Ruth Forman’s Prayers Like Shoes is a book you will carry with you for life, give to people you love, and turn to in times of joy and sadness. Her words are as natural as grass and air, and the stories they tell will travel from the page to your heart.” — Gloria Steinem

Ruth Forman is the author of three award-winning books: poetry collections We Are the Young Magicians (Beacon, 1993) and Renaissance, (Beacon, 1997) and children’s book, Young Cornrows Callin Out the Moon (Children’s Book Press, 2007). She is the recipient of the Barnard New Women Poets Prize, The Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, The Durfee Artist Fellowship, the National Council of Teachers of English Notable Book Award, and recognition by The American Library Association. She provides writing workshops at schools and universities across the country and abroad, and has presented in forums such as the United Nations, the PBS series The United States of Poetry and National Public Radio. Ruth is a former teacher of creative writing with the University of Southern California and June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and an eleven-year faculty member with the VONA-Voices writing program. Also an MFA graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television, she frequently collaborates on film, music, dance, theatre, art and media projects. Her latest collection is Prayers Like Shoes (2009) on Whit Press. When not writing and teaching, she practices a passion for martial arts: classical Yang family style tai chi chuan, tai chi sword, bo staff and karate. Ms. Forman currently lives in Washington, DC.

Editor’s Note: Today’s feature is more than a book of poetry, it is a gift. When my father passed away I found myself more determined to go on, to function, than to break down and mourn his loss. It was a book of poems that enabled me to weep, to grieve. It is a rare book that allows you to access the real human being who dwells within you, beneath the surface of what you imagine to be your ‘real life.’ This is such a book.

On the strong recommendation of a friend I bought Prayers Like Shoes. Because time is a luxury in my life, I began reading it while waiting for the bus. By the time the bus arrived—by the time I reached the bottom of the first page—I was in tears.

I read from cover to cover, on bus and train, first on my way into the world, then on my way home again. At times I felt the Woman inside me awaken, celebrate. At times I felt inspired to speak up in the name of peace. I wondered at love, at the nature of man. Throughout—within the delicate, vibrant, intricate fabric of Forman’s weaving—my heart was so close to the surface that the tears fell when they would.

I wondered what the people on the bus thought of me with my book of poems and my well of tears, but, mostly I was inspired. I was reminded of what I love in poetry. Experience. Connectivity. Reading someone else’s words and feeling that I am not alone, that I am part of a community, of a human world. That life is beautiful and painful and hard and that it is poetry—honest, vocal, unapologetic, lived, felt, lyric poetry—that makes the living more bearable, that gives us permission to experience emotion while offering us an outlet for the same.

I chose the quote above by Gloria Steinem because, first of all, what poet is touted by Gloria Steinem?!, but also because it speaks the truth about this book. I want to give a copy to my mother, to my Sisters, to the people I love and admire who engage with poetry as I do. I will turn to this book when I want to feel, and also when I want to remember why I write poetry. I cannot imagine a greater gift than that.

Want to see more by Ruth Forman?
Ruth Forman’s Official Website
Buy Ruth Forman’s books

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: IT BROKE ANYWAY

Posted on March 16, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

FROM IT BROKE ANYWAY
By April Michelle Bratten

THE SEE-THROUGH GIRL

The first time Kyle punched me,
he did it on the thigh.

He said he imagined
bashing my head in
with a hammer
on a quiet evening
in the summer.

I asked him then,
what is the point
of banging through a
ghost?

He kept trying
to kill me anyway,
usually on
Saturday nights,
after the booze ran
lukewarm and thin,
the music sputtered
and dulled out,
and his boiling eyes
caught me red-cunted,
turned me translucent.

He did it because his socks weren’t sparkling white.
He did it because I had the mean face of a fish.
He did it because he simply ran out of things to say.
He did it because he felt like it.
He did it again and again until his hands unscrewed
and returned to feathers.

The last time Kyle punched me,
the ghost left the house.

I followed her,
that see-through girl,
all over town
until she stopped
by the woods
and held out a hand
full of leaves.

She was blue,
or maybe it was just the sky
behind her,
but she was there
and she was grinning
like a goon.

MY MOUTH HAS TURNED GRAVEYARD

My mouth has turned graveyard,
as if death could carry me,
as if I could carry death,
as if I could crawl bare kneed
to save the sparrow.

I am not woman enough
to fall asleep near the wild onion root,
to carry a boy
inside my mother-parts,
to guide an attentive heart
around the sad curve
of flown pale eyes,
or to love the hand that finds my own.

I have found no solace for this
in lost languages,
and I do not wish to speak
of the ghost I know
who clings my legs,
or the warm tickle of little fingers
that pool the elbow.

Instead I heap beds of dirt
inside my womb
(good enough for no-thing
to rest a tired head)

to keep the worms hungry,
to keep the hair grown wild,
to keep the glass broken,
to keep the egg as my own,

to stomach the makers with
their loud beating wings.

LID ON TIGHT

I have never seen frangipani, ghost orchids,
or the milk that slides from the root.

I have wasted too much time sniffing in gardens,
pissing in jars.

I want to hear the sun tip-toe down my stairs,
a soft bladder in its teeth.

It will creep. It will slow its big shining feet. It will bite.

The rain will dribble on the stairs until morning.

“It Broke Anyway, which pays homage to the trials and tribulations of women, reminds me of the Bob Dylan Song, “Just Like a Woman,” except that Bratten’s characters never break just like little girls. Instead she creates multidimensional characters who will remind you of your sister, mother, grandmothers, aunts, girl friends and most notably yourself. Bratten’s cunning parallels, chilling narratives, and haunting endings remind us what breaks is often more epochal than what remains intact.”
– Rebecca Schumejda, author of Cadillac Men

April Michelle Bratten was born in Marrero, Louisiana. She received her Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Minot State University in Minot, North Dakota. April was a finalist for the Best of the Net award in 2009 and was nominated again in 2010. She was also nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize. Her work has been widely published in both print and online, including the journals Istanbul Literary Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, San Pedro River Review, Southeast Review, Gutter Eloquence, Kill Poet, The Orange Room Review, and Dark Sky Magazine among others. She co-edits and writes book reviews for the online literary journal Up the Staircase Quarterly, which can be found at www.upthestaircase.org.

Editor’s Note: April Michelle Bratten’s It Broke Anyway is a book in the shape of a girl. A girl who dredged herself up from the mud, the blood, the broken. It is a voice in the shape of a dry scratch, a moan, a haunting. It is vengeance and clarity freed from shattered glass. Here lies a world carved out of American Gothic, hauled up from the Deep South, the world Kate Durbin spoke of when she warned, “Not a world for little girls.”

Bratten’s tales take the shape of folkloric vignettes that speak for a thousand female voices, while her personal confessions are clear, raw, and brutally honest. This is a book wrenched from the darkness of lived experience, of survival. This is a book that “was born / next to a trolley car / in the deep south,” written by a poet who is “only a wish, / blown from the seeds of the dying dandelion,” where poems “have scribbled secrets / across their white backs.”

At times the persona of the poet takes the shape of the grotesque or the fantastical in an effort to honestly convey the inner life on the page: “I have antlers, / antlers that bow over my table, obscene protrusions, / dark and magnificent;” “I will not become picturesque / or tame, / because in this moment, / I remain, / wanting;” “I want to squeeze the reasons from her throat, / make her explain why, at 25, / I dug my fingers inside my own chest, and began to eat;” “I stand on a pile of soot with a devil. / He tells me I am the damned.” This voluminous text is at once a healing and a purging because “When a book goes unread it turns into a body, / a woman, / a dry poison.”

Want to see more by April Michelle Bratten?
Buy It Broke Anyway on Amazon
Author Page @ NeoPoiesis Press
Up the Staircase Quarterly

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: RABBI RACHEL BARENBLAT

Posted on December 8, 2012 by asitoughttobemagazine

Verzi-Headshot

SUFGANIYOT
By Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

In oil, pale circles roll and flip,
doughy moons inflating.

The fun part: poking a finger
inside, giving a wiggle and twist,
pushing a dollop of jam
knuckle-deep, then two, ’til
the cavity gleams raspberry.

Latkes are pedestrian.
These puff like a breath held.

There, and here,
a million women finger
these cupped curves,
probe the soft center,
push the sticky treat inside.

We glance at each other, faces hot.
We lick the sweet from our hands.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Zeek and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat was ordained by ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal in 2011. She serves Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams, MA. She holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington, and is author of four poetry chapbooks as well as a collection of Torah poetry entitled 70 faces (Phoenicia, 2011.) Her second book-length collection, Waiting to Unfold, will be published by Phoenicia in 2013.

Editor’s Note: Tonight at sundown Jewish people across the world will begin the eight-night celebration of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. This is a holiday that reveres oil—that magical substance that lit our way in days of yore and ensures Hanukkah will not be forgotten by the mouths to come. Every year I follow my mama’s recipe for sufganiyot, deep-fried treats that take the concept of the doughnut to a whole new level. While I have yet to perfect my own sufganiyot, my mama’s are inspiring, like today’s poem. (And like my mama herself; let’s be real.)

With today’s piece Rabbi Rachel Barenblat elevates these phenomenal holiday treats from the realm of the epicurial to a heightened world where femininity, sexuality, and deep fried delicacies become one. Welcome to a lyrical orgy that conjures up a feminist reclamation of the kitchen scene from 9 1/2 Weeks. As I sink my teeth into these soft, hot desserts this Hanukkah I will be thinking of Rabbi Rachel Barenblat and the women of the world who are making tradition their own.

Want to read more by and about Rabbi Rachel Barenblat?
Rabbi Rachel Barenblat: The Velveteen Rabbi (Official Website)
Velveteen Rabbi (Blog)
Buy 70 Faces from Phoenicia Publishing

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