Excerpt from Untitled

It was the artist in Ava that Helena had first loved. Everything else--the friend, the lover, the forever--would come after. That morning, when she had first seen Ava standing at the canvas, holding a paint palette, its surface vibrating with blobs of blue and white and deep orange, her thumb crooked easily through the thumbhole, her fingertips gentle and loving underneath, Helena knew. This woman she had barely noticed before, this quiet wife of her only brother's, who had stood at the empty canvas that dawn as if beholding heaven, her whole body poised for a birth, a coming forth, her shoulders undone, the heel of her right foot arched up from the wood floor in a kind of almost-motion, pushing and not-pushing her being into the canvas. That hunger for color and crumbly paint-smell, that craving that Helena knew so well, was bright in Ava's heavy-lidded eyes. She had painted two women she could see through the open window beside Helena's easel, sitting on a porch across the street. It was a haphazard little painting, but one overflowing with quiet joy, funny and tender and smart. As Ava had stood back from it, appraisingly, her head tilted to one side, Helena thought that she had never seen such a lovely woman, and noticed for the first time, later, in the kitchen, the way her hips moved as she stirred the grits.

BUTCHERING 101

If you want to bone and roll a shoulder,
if you want to fill your freezer with roasts
and ribs and avoid the meat market,
listen to me. You'll need a stunning hammer,
skinning knife, cleaver, saw, sharpening stone,
block and tackle, and some good help.
You'll need a hose, clean hands,
and a cool day. You'll need this poem.

Meet the steer in the pasture and make a quick
kill. Drag it back with a tractor or truck
and cut the carotid. Chop off the dewclaws,
hook the hocks from a singletree and tie
the bung. Skin from inside out, split
breastbone from brisket, spread
the chest with a stick. Open the abdomen,
reach in and roll out the bowels and all
the viscera you can find. Hang
the liver to cool, remove the pluck
and gullet, save the heart and tongue.
Sharpen the knives, split the pelvis,
and saw down the backbone.

When the halves are hanging by hooks,
and your clothes are blood-soaked, go home
to your clean carpet and happy dog. Know though,
that once you've harvested a farm animal,
once you've touched the creamy marbling of a loin,
cracked bone and popped joints, your hands
will travel the body differently. You'll cup
your lover's buttocks like soft hams, finger ribs
like the rungs of a warm carcass, and nibble
breasts like you smell the meat beneath them.

SEND IT TO THE RENDERER

Send the deadstock, the flattened
skunks and rats, the butcher scraps,
the bad taxidermy, the rotted meat,
and diner grease. Send the breast
sag, toe-webbing, bat wings, skin
tags, and cataracts. Send the gall
stones, bone spurs, and weak
embryos. Send the extra sonnet
syllables, the rejection letters
and smoke them. Light them up,
brew them down, and scatter
them like hard fat, like rice
at the wedding of a former lover.

Excerpt of The Woods Between Our Houses

My best friend, Jillian, and I were in the woods practicing our Mary Lou Retton balance-beam routines when we heard it, the low, sorrowful call of the bullhorn--an actual horn, from an actual bull.Jillian's older brother, Bob, brought it back from their family vacation to North Dakota three years before. There had been arrowheads, too, and dream-catchers, moccasins and beaded dolls, but the bullhorn was the only thing that survived past that first summer, and its call was reserved for single purpose: to announce a bird funeral.We'd known it was coming, of course; we'd heard the three short blasts of the horn the day before.Bob always gave us time to prepare.

Jillian crossed herself, giggling--she had the best giggle in the world, bubbling up from nowhere and spilling out all over everything like warm liquid you wanted all over your skin--and hopped down off the log that lay perpendicular across the path between our houses.The log was at the midway point, my house up the hill, hers down.I could run from mine to hers in three minutes flat if I timed the log-jump right, but it took seven minutes to get back home. The log was situated across the path so that you had to choose whether to go under it or over it.Jillian always went under on the way up and over on the way down; I went over both ways.

"Wait," I called."The dismount."I stretched my arms out at my sides, my right foot in front of my left.I bent my knees and threw my hands into the air before taking two quick steps and leaping off the log, kicking my legs out karate-style.

"Stick it, Lizard!" Jillian called, modeling the landing pose, hands above her head, chin high, back arched, her eyes steady on mine.I lived for these moments, having Jillian all to myself.She was beautiful, with big blue encouraging eyes and thin delicate wrists, a smile that stopped me every time.I watched her as I sailed through the air, wishing I could freeze that moment mid-flight.When I look back now, that's the moment--the look--I want most to remember, that uncluttered adoration, the pure and unnamed love we had for each other.

I didn't stick the landing, ending up on all fours instead.If I'd known then what was coming, I might have thought it was a sign, but the leaves on my bare knees brushed off easily--it hardly hurt at all--and Jillian was laughing that bubble of a laugh.She shook her head, flipped her hair and put a hand on her hip."That was, like, not even an 8," she said, pursing her lips like the older girls in the neighborhood.We both doubled over with laughter.Those were the girls who never came to the bird funerals and stayed out of the woods entirely, the girls who fawned over boys and fashion and made their faces up like soap opera stars, the girls we had vowed the summer before we would never become.Jillian and I were going to climb trees until our knees gave out or arthritis, like her grandma had, stopped our hands from working.We were going to be best friends for the rest of ours lives, and this log, this perfect place at the absolute center of our lives, would remain just that, the center.We were sure of it.

"Come on, you," she said, cupping my neck in her palm and nudging me down the path.Her fingers were warm and dry."We're going to be late."

Excerpt from An Examination of Conscience

For a good three decades I was fine, living my life in community—enjoying my time teaching, doing works of service, alongside my fellow sisters.Then, one day, I started to notice a change in Peg.She started to talk about this student Helen with greater and greater frequency—that she was so smart, so well-traveled for her young age.She spoke French and Spanish, played the guitar.And then Peg invited her to that prayer meeting that several of us were hosting.About five girls came—mostly seniors from the Campus Ministry team.Peg seemed struck with religious fervor that night, composing the most beautiful prayers of longing for God, and leading us all in waves of ecstatic trances.She had the same new bride glow that she must have had when she professed final vows, when we were still in habit, and she wore a wedding dress.

One day, I couldn't help myself.It had been years since I had snuck in to Peg's room next door to stroke the beautiful things her mother had given her. There was the small porcelain doll dressed in full habit—just like in our pre-Vatican II days, two fragrant pink candles that rested on pewter candelabra.And there were the books—so many and so varied:Madame Bovary, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Scarlet Letter.I loved to be surrounded by these beautiful things and passionate stories—and my stolen time alone in Peg's room nurtured a sense of communion with her.We had so many things in common—a love of books and objets d'art were two areas where we were completely compatible. There was such love in my heart for her.I always felt shy about talking about these delicate feelings—and I would certainly never consciously disclose these intimacies to Dr. Becker.

Though I wonder what Dr. Becker would say about the half-finished letter I found on Peg's desk that day.It was addressed to Helen and it began:"Dearest Helen, I feel so blessed since you came into my life. The Lord seems to be smiling on our friendship.Yesterday afternoon we said to one another that we are gifts/blessings to each other.I think that one way in which you bless me is that you have taught me how important it is to live each day as it is and not to anticipate and try to live out in detail the day that has yet to be.Always I come back to 'the gaze after' when we are most vulnerable to each other—most without pretence—most ourselves.Helen, for all that we have been and will be to each other, I give thanks to God..."

Perhaps Dr. Becker, with her warped mind, might find some hidden Freudian meaning—especially the part about the gaze.Maybe she'd say something along the lines that Peg was trying to ignite and live out her maternal love vicariously by displacing her unfulfilled yearnings onto Helen.Oh, you're good Ronnie.It's amazing how much gobbledygook theories and jargon you can pick up from just a few psychotherapy sessions.

Shortly after, Helen began to come over more often. I admit I did nothing about it.None of the sisters did, though I imagine I was the only one who really knew. I suspect the others were spared the sounds that would later come through the room next door, the ones I heard weekly for over a year, as I rocked in my chair reading my breviary in the adjacent room. I hate to admit it, but there was something about the whole thing that thrilled me&mdsah;took my breath away.It was the way it would begin.

Laura Pirott-Quintero © 2008

March

I love her but I forget to turn the lights off.
The flies arrive and sometimes leave through the open window.
Spring has not yet come but previews play in the air. We are remembering allergies.
The cats perpetually leave silver hairs across the floor.
She never shuts the cupboard door and once I turned a flame on under an empty pot.

We rarely cook fish, but when they sweat in their bags, we put them on ice. "Fish hate
plastic like ladies hate nylons," says the woman who caught and sold us
the snapper. The sun's glare off the ocean waves lining the skin around her eyes.
I love her like the way we arch. Differently. Skills and gills.

Our third wheel: backlit screen, lit as molecule, as feather duster and mote--all the cyber
at our fingers and tips.
When her guitar strings curl like ladybug wings, my sneakers hum along, neat as whiskey.
She forgets to push in her chair though the lamp's not yet hung and the bathroom needs
caulking.
"I have caulk" she says and I laugh at the homophone.
We laugh forward unless we recall filial piety--then we brush our tangled hair.

Before, or, after.
And her mother says, "Do you have the fathering instinct?"
The mobile spins ten times clockwise and ten times counterclockwise.

Some ladies do love nylons and I love her fishnet stockings and the floor will want to be
swept again tomorrow.

Published in diode, winter 2009, volume 2, number 2

Pale

This club is    fuckin
haunted, some maricon says
he knows
ghosts:
his abuela has a restless
fuckin        spirit--
she makes    stacks
and stacks
of tortillas every night, leaves
them on the kitchen
counters like little towers,

and all I know is this:
none of the chicas
who come down here
Fridays
like the gringa dykes--
not the butch ones    like me
with the cleanshaved heads
and the cowboy shirts--

they want the toro de Mejico,
quiet like a pitbull,
oiled slick
as white iron fencing--

Dios mio, he says, they are everywhere,
and he passes his hand through the air,
as if to sweep them
from his face.

Relics Encountered on an Afternoon Walk

I remember studying Magritte while eating potato pancakes
The scent of cloves in my girlfriend's apartment
My cat wrapping herself around my head on my pillow

I remember the time I woke up on that floor
Crying on that stoop
My friend wiping my nose with her bare hands

I remember drinking from a magnum of wine at that art opening
eating pizza beneath that loft bed
vertigo on the subway steps

I remember staring at my friend's ceiling as the room got smaller
When that street with the fancy restaurants was terrifying
The view of junked cars and weeds from my window

I remember the $1.75 breakfast special
My mother asking me if I was the butch one
Finally throwing out my stonewashed denim jacket from high school

I remember not being able to remember what was in that storefront before
Or what route I took to avoid that street
Or those people I did not want to talk to that time

I remember hot wax on my fingertips
Black jeans in summer
That garlic bread fire in the kitchen

I remember getting the spins in that cab
Finding a wallet in that cab
Leaving my laptop in that cab

I remember standing there waiting for a date or maybe it was just a friend or a friendly date or a friend who would turn into a date and on and on

I remember walking into my reflection in the VIP section of that club
I did this repeatedly and over several years

I remember when my Walkman held a disco mix tape
Taking that elaborate wooden candlestick, with the candle still lit, from that party
I remember when it caught fire years later

I remember hearing a street fight one summer night, while lying on some guy's air mattress in an apartment with no phone, no sheets and no curtains

I remember standing on that roof on my birthday, vowing to make that year different

I remember that bathroom that was like a coffin when you were too high

I remember that cinnamon gum disintegrating in my mouth on the Brooklyn Bridge

I remember that pink champagne in those plastic flutes

I remember drinking whiskey in the shower
Square dancing in that saloon
That stage with the sparkling curtains

I remember that cup of tea that burned going down
Trying to relax in that giant bathtub
And feeling too naked to do so

Rescue

tonight I am weary
of words. they have
become too familiar
from recent handling
as I have been
busy using them
to save my life
these last forty-one
days. instead tonight
I want the feel
of your short spiky
hair as I caress
the product out of
it and move each
strand from stiff
to soft. I want
the sight of you
moving underneath
my hands as I love
us both into a place
of release and return.
I want the sound
of you, fingers
on the six strings
and voice strong
in the wind
created by the beating
of my heart. I want
the smell of you,
hot and alive
and more than ready
for my mouth
on you. I want the taste
of your warm skin
on my lips to last for
hours. tonight
I want to use you
to save my life.
(February 26, 2008)

Speaking English is Like

Brown and beige and blonde tiles set in panels of tile across the bathroom floor.
Wakes curled into the pavement by traffic, the asphalt a slow, gray tide.
A loose floorboard hiding the gouges chunked out of the floor.
Tawny red curtains hamstrung in the quick, morning light.
Her body oils like sage in a shirt, in the bed sheets.
Pigeons on a line and in the gutters.
The staple that misfires and jams the hammer.
The tender, black wick at the top of a candle's waxy lip.
The lonely woman secretly dying her curtains red at the Laundry Factory.
The purple and purple-blue berry sacks tethered to a blackberry rind.
Branches lolled by the weight of voluminous, tender sacks.
The path along the lake lit up with the pitch of purple stars.
Mouthfuls of lavender at the height of August.
Her lips, red gathering in the creases when she puckers.
Endings that are dirty tricks and also feathers.
Red water out the pipes, teeming from the rusty gutters.
The curtain flicker in the leafy, August breeze.
The ghostly cu-cu echoing through the purple night, under stars.

Excerpt from Red White and Teal

Author's note: These 360 words excerpt provide a complete understanding of the piece

The immigration officer shoots questions at you like bullets in a firing range. If you hesitate you will look like an aluminum cut-out of a human torso, and that's when he may go for the heart. So you must react promptly.

"Who was the first president of the United States?"

"George Washington, sir," you answer. You have studied the drill. The one hundred citizenship questions are sold in paperback and are posted all over the Internet. Wireless citizenship.

"What special group advises the president?"

"The Cabinet."

He looks at you as if you were an exasperating enemy who he had not expected to return fire so fiercely, but his office is too small for combat.Too small even for an office. Do not feel suffocated; he has to sit in this box day after day and you are just passing through. His desk looks like a government-issued piece of furniture; it's metal, with skinny aluminum legs and a brown faux Formica top. You wonder why there is a second chair to your right. Maybe sometimes he interviews couples together. Inhale slowly and deeply; don't let the size of the room make you feel like there is not enough air for the two of you. Think of Rachel, how much you love her. Think of her in the waiting room outside, just as nervous as you are. Ignore the fact that she can't sit in the empty chair because the charitable laws of immigration bestowed upon couples do not apply to you.

(...)

Think of the ones who came before you. Some were insulted, given bastardized surnames, stripped naked, and pushed around Ellis Island. Things are so much more civilized nowadays. Be glad nobody is checking your head for lice, which would really be humiliating. Some may argue that having to take the HIV test is just as intrusive, but that's because they didn't have rough hands running over their scalps looking for parasites. Look at his glasses on the desk and try to find your equilibrium.The silver rims show under the imitation tortoise-shell frame and green matter has started to grow in the corners, where the earpiece is screwed to the rim.

(...)

"Be back at 1 p.m. for your swearing-in ceremony."

"Today?" You had sat in the waiting room and heard people coming out of the test telling their families they had passed it and needed to be back a month later for the ceremony. So, it's OK to be surprised that you would be sworn in on the same day, but try to show some of the pleasure you also feel. Feel the fluttering of your heart in your temples. It is, admittedly excitement and pride.

"Yes, today. You are not ready to pledge allegiance?" he asks, and if you think there is a hint of sarcasm in his voice, don't try to release your own.

(...)

Take the citizenship package the clerk gives you and sit among the people waiting. Don't try to convince them you want Rachel to sit close to you; let her go sit in the back with the small group of spectators. The two front rows are reserved for the soon to be citizens and this is an affair between you and your new country, no sharing it with your lover.

(...)

Go back to Rachel, who prepared you for this moment. Refrain from pledging your allegiance to her in such a public place. Hold your desire to give her a kiss. Citizenship gives you some things, but not everything. Don't be greedy.Give her a hug, even hold her longer than you should in these circumstances, but hold the kiss. Never mind the Mexican couple slurping next to you as if there was no tomorrow.Envy them if you must. Wanting what the Joneses have is an American virtue.

(...)

Excerpt from: More of This World or Maybe Another

When the car reaches the top of the bridge, Delia can see the oil storage tanks lined up like a marching band behind the drum major of the natural gas refinery whose signal baton is a forty-foot torch that burns off the flare emissions. The flame goes up and then shrinks, bends in the wind. Delia slouches in her seat and closes one eye. It looks like the flame is coming out of the stump of Charlene's index finger, which is resting against the steering wheel. When Delia switches eyes, the flame jumps out of the car's window. If that flame ever goes out, Delia's been told, the whole town will be blown sky high. It could go out. It could go out right this minute with her and Charlene in the car at the top of the bridge.It could go out now. Or now. There's no way to know ahead of time.

When they get to the tank farm, they slip through a loose corner of the chain link fence that surrounds it. Delia and Charlene are both stoned, and Charlene keeps tripping and grabbing Delia's shoulder as they make their way down the rough oyster-shell lane. Delia fakes a near fall to see what it feels like to touch Charlene back. When she does, her hand lands on Charlene's wrist, which feels solid but much smaller than Delia imagined.

It's windy and quiet, except for the sound of the refineries, a clanking, hissing sound, a sound like a big brain working. In the sky, a yellow cloud of sulfur is backlit and hangs in the air like a ghost above the bridge, whose massive underside is straight out of a nightmare. Delia cannot begin to guess what it is that's keeping that bridge from collapsing under its own weight.

They climb up three stories to the top of one of the tanks, and Charlene pulls her hair over one shoulder to braid it. "Hold this a minute," she says, and hands Delia the braid while she secures the end with a twist tie, the kind that comes on a bread wrapper. Something about the feel of the silky plait embarrasses Delia, and she has to look away.

She and Charlene stand on a small platform, their shoulders nearly touching. The world below, the road they were just on, seems small and strange. The world of the tank is the real world now. Delia's queasy with excitement.

Red lights flash on the top of each storage tank to keep the crop-dusters from running into them. Long strings of red stretch out into the night, marking some higher road. Delia imagines stepping out onto that red highway, following it to see where it goes.

Across the river a scatter of lights. Their high school's over there, and beyond that, Delia's house, which, if she could see it, would be in a dark field, surrounded by other dark fields, lit only by the pale fruit of egrets sleeping in the trees along the bayou. Everything is so small and far away. If she went into her house right now, she imagines it would be like when she tried to put a regular-sized doll in the dollhouse her father made for her. If she went in her house right now, she couldn't tuck her own long legs under the dinner table without flipping the thing over, the tiny plates spilling the food that will never be enough again. She imagines the clothes in her closet and sees doll clothes, her bed, a shoe box that would collapse beneath her.

In the other direction, night is rolled out as far as Delia can see. There's a swamp out there, she knows, and the Gulf of Mexico. Beyond that, there could be anything. More of this world or maybe another.

Delia searches the sharp, bright curves of Charlene's face for some clue about what comes next. Everything that isn't Charlene disappears. Like a small bird flying into the wind, Delia's hand migrates toward her. It skitters to a stop on the slope of Charlene's waist, shaky from the trip.

Seconds unwind in slow motion while Delia's heart does a bangity-bang against her ribs.

Charlene lifts her right hand with its half-finger and moves it toward her own waist, where Delia's hand is resting.She will hold Delia's hand, or she will move it aside. Delia will lean in for a kiss or turn away.

Now.

Or now.

-PAGE-

Lesbian Writers Fund 2008 Panelists / Poetry

 

Samiya Bashir is the author of Where the Apple Falls: poems, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and Gospel, forthcoming in 2009 from RedBone Press. She is editor of two groundbreaking anthologies: Best Black Women's Erotica 2 and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art. Her poetry, stories, articles, essays and editorial work have been widely published. In addition to her creative work, Samiya runs a communications consulting business serving non-profit organizations around the country. Samiya is a founding organizer of Fire & Ink, a festival and community for LGBT writers of African descent, and is an alumni fellow of Cave Canem: African American Poetry Workshop/Retreat. Samiya was the recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award in poetry in 2003. She lives with her partner and two rowdy cats in Austin, Texas. samiyabashir.com Art and commentary at Scryptkeeper and Pënz, a year-long, daily group art blog.

Staceyann Chin is a fulltime writer and activist. She identifies as Caribbean and Black, Asian and lesbian, woman and resident of New York City. A proud Jamaican National, she has performed her poetry around the world including the Nuyorican Poets' Café, one-woman shows Off-Broadway, and writing-workshops in Sweden, South Africa, and Australia. She is best known as co-writer and original performer in the Tony award winning Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. Staceyann received the 2007 Power of the Voice Award from Human Rights Campaign. She was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show and appeared on "60 Minutes." The film Staceyann Chin was released in theaters in Denmark in 2001, and subsequently aired on Danish, Swedish and Norwegian national TV stations. She was featured in Between the Lines, a documentary that explores being Asian and woman and writer and acted in Across The Universe, a film musical from director Julie Taymor in 2005. Staceyann’s three one-woman shows, HANDS AFIRE, UNSPEAKABLE THINGS, and BORDER/CLASH all opened to rave reviews at the Culture Project in New York City. Her much-anticipated memoir released early 2009 is titled The Other Side of Paradise. http://www.staceyannchin.com/

Lesbian Writers Fund 2008 Panelists / Fiction

Achy Obejas is the author of Ruins, Days of Awe, and Memory Mambo, among others. She edited and translated the crime stories of Havana Noir into English and translated Junot Diaz's La breve y maravillosa vida de Oscar Wao into Spanish. Her chapbook, This is What Happened in Our Other Life (A Midsummer's Night), was a Poetry Foundation bestseller. Achy's poetry and fiction have been published in Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, Indiana Review, Story, La Gaceta de Cuba, Habana Elegante, The Best of Helicon Nine, Another Chicago Magazine, Bilingual Review, Conditions, Third Woman, and many others. An award-winning journalist, she covered arts and culture for more than ten years for the Chicago Tribune. Achy has received a Pulitzer for a Tribune team investigation, the Studs Terkel Journalism Prize, several Peter Lisagor journalism honors, two Lambda Literary awards, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry, and residencies at Yaddo, Ragdale and the Virginia Center for the Arts, among other honors. Currently, she is the Sor Juana Visiting Writer at DePaul University. She divides her time between Chicago and Davis, California. http://www.achyobejas.net/

Nancy G. Rawles is the author of three critically-acclaimed and award-winning novels. Love Like Gumbo won an American Book Award for its portrayal of a lesbian daughter's struggle for independence from her warm but suffocating family. Crawfish Dreams, the second in a series about the same family, was selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. Nancy's third novel, My Jim, tells the story of the wife and children of Mark Twain's famous slave character from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In her New York Times review, Helen Schulman called My Jim "as heart-wrenching a personal history as any recorded in American literature." My Jim is the winner of an American Library Association's Alex Award and the Legacy Award in Fiction from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. Her work on My Jim led Nancy to participate in the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project at Brandeis University. Under the direction of Professor Bernadette Brooten, the Project explored "The Long Legacy of Slavery in the Lives of Women and Girls." Nancy was the recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund award in fiction in 2000.