Free Copy of Ivan Coyote’s book Loose End

Posted on September 15, 2009 in PSA | 10 Comments

Ivan E. Coyote, Top Hot Butches Number Six and amazing storyteller, writer, and performer, has a new book out this year from Arsenal Pulp Press called The Slow Fix. I just picked it up when Kristen and I were in Philadelphia about a month ago at Giovanni’s Room, which, by the way, was one of the most amazing queer bookstores I’ve ever been in. Such a wonderful collection of books there, I could’ve bought twenty – I settled on three.

And, I just heard from Arsenal Pulp Press that they’ve got a promotion going on through September 30th – “FREE Ivan E. Coyote Book, Loose End, and with this download, you are also entitled to a SPECIAL 25% DISCOUNT off the purchase of any or all of Ivan’s books, SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR.”

I think I have all of them, but I might be missing one. I’ll have to double check. Hmm, maybe this is a good holiday gift – who’s on my list that would like Ivan’s books? I’m sure I can come up with a few.

10 Comments | Category: PSA | Tags: arsenal pulp press, books, butch, free books, Ivan E. Coyote, no I'm not really starting my holiday shopping, poetry, promotions, storytelling, top hot butches

Protected: Untitled

Posted on August 24, 2009 in poetry | Enter your password to view comments.

Enter your password to view comments. | Category: poetry | Tags: any suggestions for a title?, building slowly, emotional trauma, extended metaphors, foundation, healing, how to build something that lasts, password, poetry, ruler tattoo, the pain of adulthood, things that paralyze me, this helped me break through some things last week, took me a week to write but the end was such a relief, usually I'm good at titles but this one is hard

You Are Never Ready

Posted on August 5, 2009 in poetry | 5 Comments

Thanks to Alisha for introducing me to this piece of poetry by Nicole Blackman; it is precisely what I needed. It’s hard to find online, so I’m reproducing it here, in case you also need to hear what she has to say. See more of Nicole Blackman’s work at NicoleBlackman.com. This piece is reproduced from her book Blood Sugar, which seems to be out of stock from Akashic Books – hopefully not out of print, though, because I really must get my hands on a copy.

You Are Never Ready
Nicole Blackman

In four minutes you will be gone and I must tell you why.

When a star crashes, the angels are electrified.
Your life changes in ways you can’t imagine.

When your dreams are perfect, they run like machines and leave you dizzy.

When you first discover you’re dying, everyone seems to be saying goodbye.

When your dreams are perfect, they run like machines.

You must change your life. You are never ready.
You must change your life. You are never ready.

There are people you have to leave behind, they just dirty up your mouth
they don’t value your treasure.

You fall down, you kiss up, you love them, it’s not enough.
They’re nothing special and you’re just a treasure.
If you had no magic here you’d be just like everyone else.
Imagine the tragedy.

You must change your life. You are never ready.
You must change your life. You are never ready.

Love is like crying is like writing is like dying.
You’ve got to do it alone.

I know it’s tragic to be tender.
I know it’s dangerous to be kind.
I know it’s vicious to care.

Listen to me, I know what’s going to happen.

You don’t need a window, you need a fire escape,
you’ll need a skylight to get where you have to go.
I can’t tell you where.

And you dreamt that you were hollow
and you dreamt that you were whole.
Reconstruct what you remember
and it comes out in pieces.

You must change your life. You are never ready.
You must change your life. You are never ready.

Those below you can’t hold you up
everyone is gone gone gone
everyone is gone gone gone
learn to swin alone learn to fly.

You must change your life. You are never ready.
You must change your life. You are never ready.

Cast them off like long rope and learn to swim the dark water alone.
Look up to the stars stars stars and know that this is your sky now.

lift your arms and go
step forward in Nureyev leap
blink fast and whirr over streets
hover over trees
speed past taxis
don’t even bother to wave
at the children who watch you
awestruck
brushing past skyscrapers
and looking up up
slip off the long skirt
that slows you down
and don’t look back to watch it
billow to earth
tell the cool jets and Superman
that you’re passing them
feel your hair stream back
with wind blinding you
forcing your dry mouth open
no one can touch you now
get out of this fucking world
as fast as you can.

5 Comments | Category: poetry | Tags: don't buy all of her books ok? I want one, how to change you life, inspiration, nicole blackman, OPP (other people's poetry), poetry, things that get me through the day, you must change your life you are never ready

Tachycardia

Posted on July 24, 2009 in Kristen, poetry | 16 Comments

this is how I want you:

slow. deliberate. measured. languorous. torpid

bordering on excruciating, with kisses that

keep you counting the millimeters between

our mouths (six, four, three), counting

the breaths it takes before my hands

move from waist to shoulders up your

back (five), counting the heartbeats elapsed

to wrap my fingers around your upper arms,

tighten my grip, and press you back against

the wall (124 with occasional tachycardia). you

remember what it feels like to be overtaken,

don’t you, to become supple in my arms, to

struggle until you can do nothing but give over,

become empty for me to fill you everywhere.

because I know that’s what you want, that’s

how you forget yourself, that’s how I forget

myself too, perfect moments of being wrapped

inside you, safe, enveloped, protected, a return

to some place quiet and sacred where the red

burgundy sooths all with muscle and strength.

I will make marks on my wrist so I can measure

how far inside you I can reach, today, tomorrow,

now I can feel the underside of your heart, the

cellar door of it, I will pen the walls with beauty

beauty beauty until it radiates out of your pores,

graffiti seeping from inside. I’ve felt your fingers

thrumming my own atria, those upper chambers

of my heart with their glass doors and misting

humidifiers and weeping plants, I think you know

what it is you cultivate in my chest when your

knees go weak, when you sink your eyes

away from mine and slide back to check if I am

still holding you. I am, I am, my arms never leave

that curve of your shoulders, your hip, the way

you crush against me when I open wide, making

room for every inch of your skin against mine. you

quicken my heartbeats, not something I am used to,

but this means I can be stronger, pump more blood,

stay up even later, fucking and loving till dawn.

16 Comments | Category: Kristen, poetry | Tags: desire, falling in love, heartbeats, love letter, poetry, relationships, ruler tattoo, running with a single word, seduction, ten-line stanzas, this is how I want you, why I write with a thesaurus

Protected: Tee Shirt

Posted on May 19, 2009 in Kristen, poetry | Enter your password to view comments.

Enter your password to view comments. | Category: Kristen, poetry | Tags: costuming, difficult but we made it through it closer, healing heartbreak, metaphors, password, personal pieces, poetry, prosepoems, toto I don't think we're talking about a tee shirt anymore, why I'm falling for kristen

Protected: I imagine watching you

Posted on April 17, 2009 in Kristen, poetry | Enter your password to view comments.

Enter your password to view comments. | Category: Kristen, poetry | Tags: daydreams, desire, does this sound like holding back to you?, don't be scared of the line breaks, enjambment, I think y'all missed the point of that holding back piece, I want this girl so bad, I will likely be off the internet and fucking all weekend, love poems, poetry, shakespeare, why I'm falling for kristen

Protected: The Good Kind of Unbearable

Posted on March 23, 2009 in Kristen, poetry | Enter your password to view comments.

Enter your password to view comments. | Category: Kristen, poetry | Tags: desire, extended metaphors, falling in love, if january is for vegetables then what is march for, love letter, poetry, relationships, spelunking, stargirl, the opposite of war is not peace it's creation, this is terrifying but worth it (right?), when I let go of who I am I become who I might be, why I'm falling for kristen

Gloaming

Posted on January 2, 2009 in poetry | 4 Comments

I want you in the gloaming, in the grey
light of near-dusk, anxious to fade
the brightness of morning, midday,
the tragedy of sunset back into the
dim tones where we no longer strain

to see. I want to trace lines on your
skin until I find my fingers touching
paper, want to grip your hair until
it is all fallen. No twilight trysts,
though we do continue on through midnight,

through constellations, through antique
blue at five am before the sun remembers
itself an idea again. I want you without
shadow, without sun, without brilliance,
without cover, without cost, and there

we will soil crisp sheets, turn sugar
and heat into salted caramels, discover
the perfect angle of shoulder that becomes
landscape. I’m no cartographer, but I could
be; I long for a protractor, walking stick,

compass, to explore hidden openings to wet
caves I never knew I fit inside. Your eyes
glow willing in the gloaming. Your fingers
on my forearm, the grey light is pause,
poised, darkening, as fireflies begin

to rise from the ground. As we spin away
from the sun I want you, still, not reaching
or retracting, simply motionless with
anticipation, one singular breath at a time.

Partially inspired by Alice Elliot Dark’s beautiful story “In The Gloaming,” partially by the song Living in Twilight by the Weepies which I’ve been listening to on repeat for many days.

4 Comments | Category: poetry | Tags: a sweet slow burn, anticipation, cartography, desire, goals for 2009, poetry, relationships, romance

My Father’s Son

Posted on December 3, 2008 in poetry | 27 Comments

The Goat When I saw him in September we camped in his family’s cabin. My grandfather built it with his own two hands and gave it to his children; now his own two legs, the prosthetics he got after both were amputated below the knee from diabetes, are the legs of the cabin’s kitchen table.

My two younger sisters and I slept in the cabin’s only room on pillows and dusty weathered couches as Dad woke and stoked the fire. Mornings at the lake are chilly, even at the peak of heat in August when the summer has been baking the water to its depths and swimming is the best. I watched him add kindling and logs and sometimes dozed off. He spread another blanket over me. When I woke I saw a forlorn gaze in his eyes I’ve never seen. What was he thinking? Was he wondering how his oldest daughter evolved into this boy? This big-city dapper masculinity that is too faggy to fit in with him and his brothers and all my older boy cousins as they discuss elaborately the latest football game, the way they fixed their trailers and trucks, what they caught when out fishing, how to clean the geoduck, how to make a perfect sausage-and-egg breakfast for ten, how to put on a wedding, how to give away the bride.

Dad, are you wondering how I got here? How I went from that tree-climbing skinned-knee ragamuffin girl to this prettyboy? From that girl who worked through her teens in your sports card shop, flirting with the boys as my girlfriends came in to seek sanctuary from the juvenile delinquent park hangout across the street when their feelings were hurt, when someone dumped them (again), when they got caught smoking, when they were being sent tomorrow to rehab or summer camp or anorexia camp or gay camp or bible camp.

I never was your tomboy daughter, never got in fights with the boys in the neighborhood, never stood up to the bullies of my younger sisters. I was the artistic one, moody, on my own. Studying my peers as we metamorphosed into our adult bodies.

We used to go on drives sometimes. After dinner restless, this was when neither of us wanted to be home, neither could stomach my mother’s depression. We’d go on drives and this was when you first told me, “I want to open up a store, right there maybe,” pointing at the empty corner lot that used to be a restaurant bar, at the mall on the wharf. “But my dream space,” he whispered, leaning in, “is right by Foodland.”

That was back when we shared our dreams with each other.

It was on one of those drives, too, where he saw a little silver Saab for sale and said, “that’s the kind of car I want to buy you.” I was fourteen and wouldn’t have a license for nearly ten more years. I couldn’t see myself as a driver, just as I couldn’t see myself as a grown woman, a wife, a mother, a panic that plagued my teens.

Recently on a road trip I saw a blue 1970s GTO and remembered some photos from my mom’s college album. “Hard top, 1964,” my dad emailed back. “Midnight blue, the original muscle car. I got it up to 100 easy on the road out to the cabin. I called the car my “Goat.””

Once, I told a lover that I was considering taking T. She had a string of baby trannys, she knew how to break us in over her knee. “You won’t turn into Cary Grant,” she warned me, and stopped at a photo of my father in the hallway. “You’ll turn into him. Look. Is that what you’re thinking you’ll be?”

I didn’t grow up in my father’s footsteps, but suddenly I’ve found myself standing in his shoes.

And now, fifteen years later, he moved his store right next to Foodland, the only grocery store downtown. A prime spot for retail. He has all but retired from the environmental engineering business upon which our family was built and now sorts sports cards, comics, coins from his father’s collection, from when the store opens at noon – so he can sleep in – to six pm, every day except Monday. “I’ve worked enough Mondays for a lifetime,” I’ve heard him say.

Now, fifteen years later, I don’t drive much; I take the subway and taxis but I still miss the stick shift in my hand and the dance of the pedals, just like you taught me. Now fifteen years later I can imagine myself as my father’s grown daughter, this “man” I’ve become, your son.

Three daughters and your wife, our mother, all in one house for nearly half of your life. Did you ever wish you had a son, Dad?

I wonder what he’s thinking, as this fire, his fire, warms our morning. He smiles at me with a look I’ve never seen.

“I sleep just like that,” he says. “With my arm over my eyes. You look just like me.”

27 Comments | Category: poetry | Tags: best of, butch identity, childhood, driving, family, fathers, growing older, growing up, growing up butch, growth, how we become our parents, masculinity, muscle cars, poetry, revelations at family functions, stick shift

A girl: my future wife

Posted on November 28, 2008 in _dating | 33 Comments

She never leaves my side at parties. People come up to talk to me or her or both of us and she has impeccable control over the conversation, a complex harmony of our varied voices with a beautiful baseline that she keeps with her heartbeat. She knows when and how to release us from a topic or person. She does most of the talking. I listen. I like it that way.

She puts her lovely hand on my elbow, my arm, the back of my neck, at small moments: a reassurance and support for which I am always grateful.

She leans in to give me a peck on the cheek near my ear and whispers, “I’m watching the clock. We’re leaving in thirty minutes so you can take me home and fuck me.”

I grin and sip a drink. Finger a pocketwatch, cufflinks, the knot of my tie.

She lets me drive her car. I spin the wheels on wet pavement and work the clutch like a lover: pressure, friction, demand, take. She has her hand on my inner thigh and we both want her to touch the bulge in the crotch but she resists. Her eyes sparkle watching the road.

(This is what I want.)

She sleeps in later than I do on the weekends. I get up, make coffee how she likes it, write for a few hours as she slumbers. Sometimes I take photos of the golden morning sun on her skin.

When she stirs I crawl back into bed with her and we make love, fuck, play until we are satiated and laughing, until our bodies edges are blurred into each other and our heartbeats are synchronized. Her long legs folded, knees touching her nipples. My hand in her thick long hair. Rocking her on the curve of her spine, rocking together.

We make food, replenish, drink coffee over ice and she cooks in the kitchen in only an apron until I lift her onto the counter, arms above her head holding onto the cabinets, bend her over the back of the couch, then again against the cool linoleum.

When I go back to work in the evening she lets me, she directs her energy to her own work, whatever that might be, something physical to balance my mental swirling. We keep each other balanced. She kisses the top of my head or trails her fingers on her shoulders as she walks by, but does not interrupt. She lets me be.

And then there is the reverence, mine.

I sit at her feet for hours and watch her brush her hair. I catch moonbeams in jam jars in an open field in Montana and bring them home to her to use as ribbons to tie around her wrists. I write her poems and she folds them into origami fireflies and strings them around our bookshelves. I tell her every day how stunning she is, how strong; I am breathless with my good fortune at ever gaining her attention.

I stoke the fire inside that shines behind her eyes to keep her lit, keep her going.

I buy her jewelry, not because I know her taste but because I want her to sparkle at her delicate places: her throat, her wrists, her ankles, her fingers, her ears. Every time she shakes her head or signs her name or pulls her hand from her pocket or reaches her arm or places her foot carefully onto the ground she glitters, and she and everyone around her are reminded that someone loves her (and it’s me), that I see everything she does as beautiful, that every time she moves I want everyone to know the immeasurable amount of spark she lends to those of us privileged enough to witness what she does with her extraordinary life.