To eat of meat joyously

To eat of meat joyously, a juicy loin cut
And with the fresh-baked, fragrant rye bread
Chunks from the whole cheese, and to swallow
Cold beer from the jug: such things are held in
Low esteem, but to my mind, to be put into the grave
Without ever enjoying a mouthful of good meat
Is inhuman, and I say that, I who
Am not good at eating.

Bertolt Brecht
Trans. Lee Baxendall

YOU CAN’T LIKE GIRLS WHEN YOU ALREADY HAVE A BOYFRIEND AND OTHER LIES THEY TOLD ME IN THE DESERT

desert grasses whisper
against a newborn sky
telling secrets until its cheeks
paint themselves pink
against
the stratus

if the sky can listen, why can’t you?

I think of dew falling on the terrain
like a contradiction in the dawn
a truth where two states can coexist
and cohabitate within themselves
the fervent afternoon air
condensing over the fields
like a world
healing
itself

they say the truth will set you free but why do I still feel trapped?

a cool breeze blows
across my sweat slicked face
hair cropped close to the roots
settling, grounding
day old lipstick stains on my collar
I feel this chill more than the heat
another
contradiction

it wasn’t wrong until you made it that way.

if it rains, I think about running
until my legs give out
unsmooth and scarred to the ankles
either outrunning the clouds
or until my lungs give out
but I know an empty chest and tired legs
          will not
               unmake
                        me

I can’t turn into what I’m not for you.

Haily Stager

threw me into erotic transports

When Pierre Louÿs published his famous literary hoax Les chansons de Bilitis (Songs of Bilitis) in 1895, he dedicated the pseudogrec volume of prose poems to “Girls of the Future Society.” Although they were original poems, or what he called “prose sonnets,” Louÿs presented his work as a scholarly translation of erotic songs composed by a contemporary of Sappho’s whose tomb was recently unearthed by a German archaeologist. Written in the voice of Bilitis, and prefaced by a “Life of Bilitis,” this collection of 158 poems is organized around the three main periods of her life: Bilitis’s childhood as a shepherdess in a little mountain village in Pamphylia (Southern Turkey), which she leaves after losing her innocence and having a child at age fifteen; a ten-year lesbian period spent on Sappho’s island in the company of her beloved Mnasidika; and lastly, a successful career as a courtesan on Cyprus where she retires before reaching her fortieth birthday. Despite the first-person feminine voice and the lesbian content of these titillating songs, the dedication Louÿs placed on his Chansons de Bilitis seems highly ironic since its intended audience was probably not women at all, but a select literary circle of men including Stéphane Mallarmé, André Gide, Jean de Tinan, Remy de Gourmont, and Henri de Régnier who told Louÿs that “Reading Bilitis threw me into erotic transports that I am going to satisfy at the expense of my lawful spouse.” Louÿs wrote to his brother Georges that as much as he would like to have a feminine audience for his work, it seemed unlikely given that “women have only the modesty of words,” and are overly concerned with appearing respectable.

Tama Lea Engelking
Pierre Louÿs, Natalie Barney, and “Girls of the Future Society”

A Basic Truth

One can never read too many fairy tales.

Alyssa Cole
A Princess in Theory

a slippery mess between her legs

She was ready for her first assignment: Go to the women’s restroom at the office, caress herself until she was wet enough for her sex to make little liquid noises, flush the toilet and return to her desk, a slippery mess between her legs. She wore no panties. She’d have to manage somehow. Then she was to call him and tell him about it.

Submissive Confessions
Anon

poetry is perfectly obscure

It’s very hard to write novels. With novels, you never know if it’s going to give you back anything. You’re trying to get the reader to turn the page. You don’t really worry about that with poetry because you know nobody reads it.

[Laughs.]

There’s a kind of freedom. When I became well known and continued to write novels I was always nervous when I was writing the novel, thinking: Will people resonate with this? I never worry about that with poetry because poetry is perfectly obscure. You know you’re not going to earn a penny, you know it’s out of the commercial world, which is a very important thing. The Japanese believe that when you are an amateur, you do something for love — you make a screen, you print something, you do calligraphy. You don’t think about it in a commercial way. And so the joy of poetry is that it cannot be commercial. And so it feeds the writer.

Erica Jong
Poet to Poet Practice: A Conversation with Erica Jong; Kim Dower interviews Erica Jong
Los Angeles Review of Books 19th December 2018

desperate and bewildered

I have always been tormented by the image of a multiplicity of selves…There were always, in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning, and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.

Anaïs Nin
The Diary of Anais Nin (1931-1934): Vol. 1