Dearest, Loving Eleanor, Do you recall our first night in the field, stumbling over roots and each other the cloak of familiarity yet to be? It’s Autumn and I can think of nothing else, the season exhaling through branches, making leaves quiver and chatter like old friends. the sound of subtle escape easing from your throat like old jazz. That same voice I hear confessing, a curve grazed with teeth and tongue, a smile running its length, The lost island behind your ear where secrets would land in years to come and the devil’s den between chin and breast. Keep our soil under your nails and
listen for the crows.
They’re watching.
They’re coming.
Sweet Jane
For this episode of Lyric Essentials, we’re joined by poet Saida Agostini. Agostini reads work by Dorianne Laux and June Jordan and shares her deep appreciation for the “richness and rigor” of these poems. Agostini discusses how that appreciation has evolved over the years (she’s read Jordan’s poem over a hundred times!). Many thanks to her for joining us, and thank you, readers, for supporting this series!
Riley Steiner: Why did you choose these two poems to read for Lyric Essentials?
Saida Agostini: I love poems that evoke powerful, unexpected emotions, that demand your presence. Both Jordan and Laux’s work have a hungry, unstinting immediacy that I can’t ignore.
RS: Was there a reason that you chose to group these two poems together, specifically?
SA: I was taught from a very early age that desire was something unmanageable, ugly—a force that must be tamed. Jordan’s body of work calls out black women’s desire as a revolutionary force, the foundation of any real work, to build a freedom that we can hold and feel. Quite frankly, I want that. I want to be in my body and not just feel safe, but revel in the wonder of my skin and feel its glory. Laux’s poem speaks to this desire, what it means to luxuriate in want, to put my hand against a lover’s skin and sit in knowing with them. I think these poems are about a kind of reclaiming, a naked and unabashed commitment to let our erotic selves (as Lorde calls it) guide us to freedom.
RS: What was your experience like when you were recording these poems? For instance, did you already have a pretty good idea of what the poems would sound like, or did you try out different intonations? What was your thought process behind the way you read them out loud?
SA: I was first introduced to “A Poem about My Rights” in high school. I was part of a theatrical team that would perform poems in competition with other schools, so I’ve actually read this poem aloud over a hundred times. I would argue that in some ways I grew up with this work. I don’t think I even intellectually understood the poem fully until I was in my late twenties, but emotionally I connected with it immediately. I always get caught in Jordan’s cadence, her call to own her name, how she writes such an expansive, broad world that is also deeply intimate. Reading it in 2019 gave it a different texture—to read it as a 38-year-old black queer survivor of domestic and sexual violence in a country led by a white supremacist—found me reading the work as a battle cry, a prayer, and prostration.
Similarly, with Laux’s work, it felt like reading a prayer. I kept thinking about her focus on labor, the gentle uncovering of a lover’s day—and then that line “Then I’d open his clothes and take / the whole day inside me.” Oh! That line slays me to this very moment. I wanted to just pause and take that line in.
RS: Did you discover anything new about these after reading them out loud, as opposed to reading them on the page?
SA: How could I not? There is such a richness and rigor in their collective works. Jordan’s poem is so dense and fiery, it’s easy to overlook the incredible nuance of her work—even when you read it aloud over a hundred times. I was struck by her proclamation “I am the history of rape.” What does it mean for our history to be defined by sexual violence and trauma? What are the artifacts of this history, what does it mean to build a world where we don’t flee these realities but honor how we saved ourselves?
RS: How did you first discover these poems? Have they (or the poets who wrote them) had any influence on your own work?
SA: As I mentioned, I was first introduced to “A Poem About My Rights” in tenth grade. I discovered Laux in college. I write in the tradition of black and brown queer women who are unapologetic in their desire and freedom. I write to claim our history: the fantastic, the beautiful, the unconquerable nature of our love.
Dorianne Laux lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is the author of What We Carry (1994), Smoke (2000); Facts about the Moon (2005), and The Book of Men (2011). Her work has won the Oregon Book Award, the Paterson Prize, and the Pushcart Prize, and she’s been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.
June Jordan was a Jamaican-American writer and activist. She was born in Harlem in 1936 and went on to earn her B.A. from Barnard College. She taught at numerous universities, including Yale University, Sarah Lawrence College, and New York University. Her award-winning work including poems, lyrics, plays, journalism, essays, and speeches. Jordan died in 2002 in Berkeley, California.
Saida Agostini is a queer Afro-Guyanese poet and activist. Her work is featured in Origins, the Black Ladies Brunch Collective’s anthology, Not Without Our Laughter, the Baltimore Sun, pluck!, The Little Patuxent Review, and other publications. She has received support for her poetry from Cave Canem, the Blue Mountain Center, and other institutions. She is presently working on a collection of poems, just let the dead in.
Riley Steiner graduated from Miami University, where she studied Creative Writing and Media & Culture. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, she enjoys baking, cheering for the Green Bay Packers, and spending way too much money at Half Price Books. Her creative work has recently appeared in the Oakland Arts Review and Collision.
I can only imagine your agony – envisioning the filth of another in and on my flesh. I can feel through the sky and walls and into my breast how your pain turned to rage. But did it turn to revenge? Barcode Girl stood up at breakfast – without a word and started to run. She ran through the large glass doors that remain unlocked for those of us in Group, and ran down the hall. I followed her through the door – I watched her until she turned the corner toward the stairwell. She lowered her head and dove from the top step with purpose and On the landing of the staircase that separates us from the world – her skull hit with the sound of a stack of books in an empty library. She crumpled in on herself.
I could see in my mind – the faded green lines and numbers under her hair, wrinkling like a soiled bed sheet tossed away. She fractured her own skull and broke her neck, and the intern that rolled her onto her back apparently made matters worse. She died 17 minutes later – surrounded by people who didn’t know her favorite song or if she liked to dance when she was alone or if she believed in god. I would never assume you’d be so wicked – truthfully, perhaps presumptuously, I assume that you’ve already forgiven me, because that’s the nature of your love, our love, but I couldn’t feel better unless I told you – an image of you, furiously sobbing and reciting incantations, had crossed my mind. But I know you, my love – I know you better than that, and now, more than ever, I know that I must find the answers. Yours, Sweet Jane.
This selection comes from the poetry collection, Letters To My Lover From Behind Asylum Walls, available from Cosmographia Books. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.
Robin Sinclair is a queer, genderqueer writer of mixed heritage and mixed emotions, currently on the road, reading from their debut book of poetry, Letters To MyLover From BehindAsylumWalls (Cosmographia Books 2018).
Robin’s work has been published in various magazines and journals, including Across the Margin, Shot Glass Journal, Red Bird Chapbooks, The Cerurove, Yes Poetry, and Pidgeonholes.
As a writer, Nilsa explores gender and diversity issues (including child neglect, domestic violence, homelessness, and sexual abuse). Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, The Selkie, and several other literary journals. It’s also been featured at Miami Book Fair’s LipService True Stories out Loud Miami, the Writing Class Radio podcast, and at the “Muses and Music” a multidisciplinary event of the Cream Literary Alliance. Nilsa is also the Editor of The Wardrobe and Doubleback Review. Nilsa can be found reading or at the beach.
Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit publishing collective founded in 2000 that hosts a variety of online journals and publishes chapbooks, full-length collections, and literary anthologies in both print and digital formats. Sundress also publishes the annual Best of the Net Anthology, celebrating the best work published online, runs Poets in Pajamas, an online reading series, and the Gone Dark Archives, preserving online journals that have reached the end of their run.
The editorial internship position will run from January 1 to July 1, 2020. The editorial intern’s responsibilities can include writing press releases, composing blog posts and promotional emails, proofreading manuscripts, assembling press kits, collating editorial data, research, managing spreadsheets, and more. The intern may also be responsible for writing copy, conducting interviews with Sundress authors, and promoting our catalog of titles.
Preferred qualifications include:
A keen eye for proofreading
Strong written communication skills
Familiarity with WordPress, Word, and the Google Suite
Ability to work under a deadline and multitask
Knowledge of and interest in contemporary literature a plus
This is a REMOTE internship with the team communicating primarily via email and text messages and is therefore not restricted to applicants living in any particular area. Interns are asked to devote 10 hours per week to their assignments.
While this is an unpaid internship, all interns will gain real-world experience in the ins and outs of independent publishing with a nationally recognized press while creating a portfolio of work for future employment opportunities. Interns will also be able to attend all workshops at the Sundress Academy for the Arts at cost.
We welcome, encourage, and are enthusiastic to see a diverse array of applicants with unique perspectives and experiences in all areas including race, ethnicity, disability, gender, class, religion, education, immigration status, and more.
To apply, please send a resume and a brief cover letter detailing your interest in the position to our Staff Director, Anna Black at black@sundresspublications.com by December 15, 2019.
My Eleanor, That Barcode Girl wept today in Group, forced to tell a story that made her feel alone. She refused, said she knew what it would do to her, said she knew the memories in the air would break her, but they raped her. They didn’t pin her down, a forearm across her chin, pushing harder as she quietly cried; they simply shaped her thoughts with words until she laid on her back and found herself somewhere else. When it was over, she lost her breath, started drifting, wobbly-drunk from failed escape and the wave of an almost forgotten feeling. They carried her away, sobbing as she screamed, “I need her.” A girl named Kim once whispered to me through a telephone that she needed me. It turned my chest to tar,
like that feeling you get walking into a courtroom
or climbing the stairs to your apartment, knowing
there will be an eviction notice on your door.
I didn’t need Kim. I didn’t need anyone –
I had always felt complete on my own until I met
you.
I don’t remember what my response to Kim was,
but it was more than likely a lie.
Someone who is whole never needs to be untruthful.
Today I woke up feeling what I’ve known I feel,
but haven’t felt in some time.
I was terrified. I missed you.
I was hopeful,
and fought to hang onto the edge of a dream, but
could only recall an empty country road
I did not recognize. Dusty dirt met the pavement
just below the guardrail.
Beyond that, I’ve lost the image.
I hope to see you soon.
Sweet Jane
This selection comes from the poetry collection, Letters To My Lover From Behind Asylum Walls, available from Cosmographia Books. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.
Robin Sinclair is a queer, genderqueer writer of mixed heritage and mixed emotions, currently on the road, reading from their debut book of poetry, Letters To MyLover From BehindAsylumWalls (Cosmographia Books 2018).
Robin’s work has been published in various magazines and journals, including Across the Margin, Shot Glass Journal, Red Bird Chapbooks, The Cerurove, Yes Poetry, and Pidgeonholes.
As a writer, Nilsa explores gender and diversity issues (including child neglect, domestic violence, homelessness, and sexual abuse). Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, The Selkie, and several other literary journals. It’s also been featured at Miami Book Fair’s LipService True Stories out Loud Miami, the Writing Class Radio podcast, and at the “Muses and Music” a multidisciplinary event of the Cream Literary Alliance. Nilsa is also the Editor of The Wardrobe and Doubleback Review. Nilsa can be found reading or at the beach.
I was assembled in China. I made the violent journey to America by sea and eventually ended up in a Target in South Jersey. I sat content on my shelf, dreaming of my life-to-be in the corner of some nice, middle-class family’s living-room. Holding a handful of books and various nick-nacks—at least that’s what the picture on my box had promised me. But instead, I got Ada.
One afternoon, about six years ago, this freak of a human strolled in and started eyeing me up and down. She didn’t even ask for assistance like she was supposed to—just manhandled me into a cart and rolled me up to the register. Even the cashier asked if she needed help, but Ada insisted that she didn’t. She took me home and assembled me on the floor of her parent’s living room. It was obvious she had no idea what she was doing but I was put together nonetheless. Once assembled, she dragged me into her room and began filling my shelves. Back then, she was into collecting old video games. She filled my bottom shelf with PlayStation 2 games, my three middle shelves with books, and my top shelf with CDs—everything from The Stooges to Bach.
Then she grew bored of collecting video games and just started hoarding books. My God! I can barely hold my recommended weight, let alone what this maniac has done to me. Every day, more books were stuffed onto my shelves. Then she moved. I was disassembled partially, stuffed in an SUV, and then put back together in a new room. Books were feverishly replaced. She has no system, no order. And it’s ironic because she’s a librarian, but with me, she’s a pure anarchist. She’s even brought in two smaller bookcases to help me out but they’re just as over-booked as I am—it’s pure madness here!
There are antique books she has no desire to ever read, she just thinks they look cool.
There’s a book on parasitology she only bought because upon seeing it for sale at a library, she realized she didn’t even know such a field existed and felt obligated to own it.
There’s the antique primer she once read on acid, tearing up at a poem that turned out to be a list of characters for a play!
There’s the battered collection of William Carlos Williams’ poetry she used to carry around, literally everywhere she went.
There’s the copy of Howl, in which nearly every word is underlined because she thinks ALL OF IT’S IMPORTANT!
There’s a book on trees, a book on interior design in the ‘40s, a book on the symbols of Judaism, an antique book on ships, there’s everything! There’s no rhyme or reason to the collection that occupies my shelves, and I fear there never will be.
* * *
I am old now. My cheap paneling is stained and has bubbled from humidity. But I’m happy to be of use. The type of home I dreamt of one-day living in would have dumped me in the trash years ago. But Ada didn’t buy me for decoration. She didn’t buy me to impress her friends. She bought me to hold her most cherished possessions, along with whatever sort of wine she’s drinking that week. And that’s the best life any bookcase can ask for.
Ada Wofford graduated Summa Cum Laude from Fairleigh Dickinson University with a BA in English literature and is currently pursuing her master’s in library and information science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a contributing editor to The Blue Nib literary magazine and has been published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Burial Day Books, The Yellow Chair Review, and more. She’s also the founding editor of My Little Underground, a music review blog written exclusively by musicians.
My Eleanor, He was in the halls again last night. I know it was him. Like a mother hearing her daughter’s cries in a sea of a thousand voices, I know his footsteps as if my own, He stopped outside my door but didn’t enter. He just waited. Breathed. Stared at the wall as if he could see me through it. Never blinking. Never moving. Never speaking. Waiting. I could see him through the veil as clearly as he could see me. Call someone, Eleanor. Get me out of here. Sweet Jane
This selection comes from the poetry collection, Letters To My Lover From Behind Asylum Walls, available from Cosmographia Books. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.
Robin Sinclair is a queer, genderqueer writer of mixed heritage and mixed emotions, currently on the road, reading from their debut book of poetry, Letters To MyLover From BehindAsylumWalls (Cosmographia Books 2018).
Robin’s work has been published in various magazines and journals, including Across the Margin, Shot Glass Journal, Red Bird Chapbooks, The Cerurove, Yes Poetry, and Pidgeonholes.
As a writer, Nilsa explores gender and diversity issues (including child neglect, domestic violence, homelessness, and sexual abuse). Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, The Selkie, and several other literary journals. It’s also been featured at Miami Book Fair’s LipService True Stories out Loud Miami, the Writing Class Radio podcast, and at the “Muses and Music” a multidisciplinary event of the Cream Literary Alliance. Nilsa is also the Editor of The Wardrobe and Doubleback Review. Nilsa can be found reading or at the beach.
& the kitchen fills with smoke the night you swear / you’d break Derek’s knuckles / for the shadow he left his error, what sharing a roof smarts of the broken escalator / pan spitting to sear dry aged steaks / it’s past the expiration for saying so / for stopping lock receding into chamber / I sleep here without careful supervision I am the wine / tasting of cigars, dark fruit / bear meat grows up from berries & people too / we all cluster around the hot light / call liquid bright when it stings the tongue / call the mind a trap closing & recognition its trigger
call me sear / shaking against cast
iron / it’s midnight & the oven hisses
as witness / I sleep here a cluster
of what tastes / best paired / the bottle
stands breathing / key in my pocket
offering each night on a tray
This selection comes from the poetry collection, a falling knifehasnohandle, available from YesYes Books. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.
Emily O’Neill teaches writing and tends bar in Cambridge, MA. Her second poetry collection, a falling knifehasnohandle, was released with YesYes Books in fall of 2018 and was one of Publishers Weekly‘s ten most anticipated poetry titles of the season. Itwas also longlisted for the Julie Suk Award from Jacar Press. Her debut poetry collection, Pelican, was the inaugural winner of YesYes Books’ Pamet River Prize for women and genderqueer writers, as well as the winner of the 2016 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Series in Poetry. O’Neill is also the author of five chapbooks, most recently You Can’t Pick Your Genre (2nd edition Big Lucks, 2019). Her recent poems, stories, and essays have appeared in The Best Indie Lit New England Anthology, Cutbank, Catapult, Redivider, Salt Hill, and Washington Square, among many others. She holds a degree in the synesthesia of storytelling from Hampshire College.
Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and studies Korean in her spare time. Currently, Tierney is an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications, a copyeditor at Strange Horizons, and a freelance graphic designer. Tierney earned a Masters Degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. Tierney is most easily found screaming into the void on Twitter as @ergotierney.
sousing for my gram & I sing her French love songs I can’t translate / she knows it’s about eyes & bones & beds I think / how embarrassing to not speak the language, to undress parsley of yellow leaves & crave your tile island / how we don’t speak when eating the coal quiet / sage leaves soft as rabbit fur / shredded over risotto you are probably eating right now in Chicago / I had rice for dinner too / from a freezer bag because she’s cooked for three generations & is too tired for big meals two consecutive nights I take down the big knife, think I’m helping & regret / I step outside myself so quickly / table where my plate would go cold & wait for me all night until breakfast / each portion hard & dry & still mine / nothing like
the farro dish we ordered twice / chestnuts & an open hand waiting to take whatever is left Gram carving pork into the pan from the back of the fridge / pulling paring knife into her thumb again again / two rabbits in the yard / a hutch she calls The Rabbit Taj Mahal we had rabbit meatballs that night, yes? I keep consistent enough to eyeball a 1/4 cup of diced onion exactly / it makes her proud to see me snapping walnuts down to dust by hand
This selection comes from the poetry collection, a falling knifehasnohandle, available from YesYes Books. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.
Emily O’Neill teaches writing and tends bar in Cambridge, MA. Her second poetry collection, a falling knifehasnohandle, was released with YesYes Books in fall of 2018 and was one of Publishers Weekly‘s ten most anticipated poetry titles of the season. Itwas also longlisted for the Julie Suk Award from Jacar Press. Her debut poetry collection, Pelican, was the inaugural winner of YesYes Books’ Pamet River Prize for women and genderqueer writers, as well as the winner of the 2016 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Series in Poetry. O’Neill is also the author of five chapbooks, most recently You Can’t Pick Your Genre (2nd edition Big Lucks, 2019). Her recent poems, stories, and essays have appeared in The Best Indie Lit New England Anthology, Cutbank, Catapult, Redivider, Salt Hill, and Washington Square, among many others. She holds a degree in the synesthesia of storytelling from Hampshire College.
Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and studies Korean in her spare time. Currently, Tierney is an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications, a copyeditor at Strange Horizons, and a freelance graphic designer. Tierney earned a Masters Degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. Tierney is most easily found screaming into the void on Twitter as @ergotierney.
Join us for a free dinner at 6PM followed by readings at 7PM. As always, BYOB and carpool when possible!
Matt Hart is the author of nine books of poems, including most recently Everything Breaking/for Good (YesYes Books, 2019) and The Obliterations (Pickpocket Books, 2019). Additionally, his poems, reviews, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous print and online journals, including The Academy of American Poets online, Big Bell, Cincinnati Review, Coldfront, Columbia Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Jam Tarts Magazine, jubilat, Kenyon Review online, Lungfull!, Mississippi Review, POETRY, and Waxwing, among others. His awards include a Pushcart Prize, a 2013 individual artist grant from The Shifting Foundation, and fellowships from both the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and plays in the band NEVERNEW.
Ashley Dailey is a first-year MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee and an Academy of American Poets Award winner. She’s moved states three times in the past five years because she enjoys being lonely and dependent on Google Maps.
Excerpt Forever is a broom & pale– a Lisbon street littered with Jacaranda petals. It’s all day to fill the pale & to refill the pale.
Kristi Maxwellis the author of six books of poems, including Bright and Hurtless (Ahsahta Press, 2018) and That Our Eyes Be Rigged (Saturnalia Books). Her poems have recently appeared in jubilat, Bennington Review, RHINO, Boston Review, and Black Warrior Review. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of Louisville.
Excerpt from “(Pre)Occupation” To be put out or to put out. Turning our girls into trash with our language. Upsets today upset tomorrow. O, vacillation. O, metaphorical vaccine. The “o” is a prick but is this fairytale or slang.
