gorgonpoetics

[gorgonpoetics]

#gorgonpoetics

1. Lisa Cattrone, Ginger Ko, Joy Ladin, erica lewis, Raquel Salas-Rivera

2. Shannon Barber, Jennifer Marie Bartlett, Michelle Detorie, Nikki Wallschlaeger

3. Sarah Boyle & MK Chavez

4. Lynne DeSilva-Johnson & Juliette Guilbert

5. Pei-Jung Lee, Nanci Armstrong-Temple, & Melissa Hardie

[gorgonpoetics]

#gorgonpoetics 5 Pei-Jung Lee, Nanci Armstrong-Temple, & Melissa Hardie Justice is what love looks like in public. -- Cornel West We should be making a determined effort to move forward in the creation of a continental culture that understands itself as a totality and a novelty whose only concern is creating forms of existence that provide everyone involved with a sense of integrity and identity. -- Vine Deloria Jr.

[gorgonpoetics]

When I was very little, by Pei-Jung Lee

When I was very little, we lived in an apartment and I had my own room. For a time, at night, I would overhear a man yelling at his wife and child. Sometimes I would hear him beat them, sometimes I heard them scream or cry, but usually they were silent. Because I was so young, it took me a long time to work out what was going on. In fact, it wasn't until I was an adult that I finally understood what was probably going on. As a young child, I just felt that chilling terror that can go through you sometimes when you confront horror. This, to me, is what systemic, institutional racism is like. It was not against the law to beat your wife or kids 4 decades ago. It still isn't illegal to beat your children, right? No cops could be called for people not doing anything criminal. My room was one of probably several, maybe even dozens, that could hear this happening, but maybe no one could do anything. Or maybe they did. Maybe someone "had a talk" with the man, I don't know. I only knew that the yelling and beating went on for some time. NO ONE benefits from a situation like this. EVERYONE is held hostage. I was "privileged" in that I was not a target of this man. But he put me in psychological terror. He had every right to. It was not criminal. Like using free speech as a weapon against those you seek to silence, this man used the weapon of patriarchal laws to abuse his wife and child. When I am in a loving environment where people show their love for one another by being considerate and kind, I feel great! When I am in a situation where I am being violent, being victimized by violence, or witnessing violence, it feels awful. Like racism, I don't want it to exist because it feels so bad, so wrong, so evil. Sometimes I try not to think about it, but being in denial never really makes things go away or feel any better. I remember being asked a lot when I was younger why I would get so upset about racism and sexism and classism. After all, those things didn't really affect me. But they did affect me. They affect you. They affect us all. In school, it only takes one school bully to really mess up the dynamic of the student population. That's like the white supremacist. Yes, this bully has support of various levels from students. That's like how some people actively defend white supremacists, some don't like it but are apathetic. The school officials, in this case, really affect the outcome of the situation. The school officials are the ones who decide whether bullying will be welcomed overtly, welcomed covertly, tolerated begrudgingly, tolerated as according to school by-laws and state laws, or actively and unequivocably confronted and eliminated. Those choices are like the ones our government and government agencies have to make. School officials don't always agree on how to handle a school bully, or if the bully even needs to be "handled." Sometimes, when school officials prefer to let the kids "work it out" among themselves, kids get hurt. Sometimes, kids emerge from the crowd to stand up to the bully. These kids would be like the social justice warriors, the civil rights activists. Some of these kids might be very emotionally mature or intellectually clever. They might organize other kids who are tired of putting up with the bully. Some of these kids might not be very mature, and might be looking to right a wrong with "an eye for an eye." Because these kids are not the school officials, they have to go at it however they can. There is no hierarchy of authority, no school board meeting, no working with parents to come up with a plan. While it is "correct" that some of these social activists are criminals, that they form something like a "gang," focusing on this rather than the massive failure on the part of the school officials, the governmental agencies, our federal and state law enforcement agencies is really atrocious. That's like giving a student detention or expelling them for being late back to class after lunch because they were trying to keep their classmate from being beaten to death while the lunch lady and hall monitors stood by and watched. Yes, tardiness should have consequences, but how disgusting to use a good disciplinary rule as a weapon against those who dare stand up for someone else.

[gorgonpoetics]

the border crossed them

Nanci Armstrong-Temple

Dear hearts, Like so many my heart is heavy with this latest act of terror by #NotMyPresident. But as I read [the statement] from Obama, who I voted for and respect and love, I realize this again: he is not our salvation. He does not understand that the border crossed them, and they didn't cross the border. The same policies he helped put into place are now exposing folks even more to state terror. 

When I realize, again and again, how liberal policies contribute to the subjugation of human freedoms I am humbled and ashamed. 

I understand the frustration of my friends on the far left, many of whom can't stomach my tolerance for liberals and liberalism. 

But here's the thing. I don't care about politics, unless they help us get more free. I don't care about strategies, unless the strategy is to lift all of the boots waiting to crush our necks, not just the one closest to you. I don't care about political theory, or Marxist leanings, or party affiliation or lack thereof, or how many times you've written or passed good policy. I'll study with you. I'll read with you. I'll bring you broth when you're sick, and hold your babies whenever I get the chance, and be in the streets with you, and vote with you, and try again and again to bridge the divide and create an 'alt left' that is unified enough to create a zone of safety and freedom where we can eat and sleep and get healthcare and education and have the space to argue about which philosophy is right because we aren't fighting lead and oil in our water and deportations and the kind of poverty that makes you so desperate you can't possibly have principle over hunger. 

I care about people. I care about families ripped apart and people who sleep outside who don't want to and folks who don't eat and can't get access to medical care. I care about folks who are terrified today because yesterday one more layer of safety and security was stripped away from them. I care about the people. And if you're for the people, I'm with you. Every time. Not just when it's convenient or advantageous or expedient. 

#LetsGetFree

#ForThePeople

Love, Nanci

[gorgonpoetics]

Kate Millet & Catherine Mackinnon; photo by Melissa Hardie. Melissa Hardie remembers Kate Millet. During a session at the ACLA conference at Harvard in 2009, someone mentioned Kate Millett was going to be doing a reading somewhere in Cambridge. In a dissociated ramble somewhere between Oedipa Maas' SF hallucinations and Alice's through the looking glass, Kate [Lilley] and I set off to find it. We were guided by, for instance, flyers on the pavement that were dissolving in the rain and yet pointed us to the gallery where Kate Millett was being 'interviewed' by Catherine McKinnon (!) surrounded by Kate's artwork. I put those scare quotes around interview because Millett was a recalcitrant subject, partial to her own topics which all tended to work centrifugally toward the question of smoking and in particular the fact that she was not allowed to smoke indoors, a weird index of the kind of hyper-regulatory present moment so at odds with the ethos and pragmatic politics behind her conceptually elegant and sophisticated work, polemical and poetic. It is beyond words to describe how I felt to be in the same room with her. I was lucky enough to have some engaging repartee with her shivering outside the gallery where she was permitted to smoke, and where she produced a hypnotic account of tobacco, slavery, puritanism, pleasure, and anti-smoking legislation in MA. Although Sexual Politics is 'the' book, Flying was as important as any book for me as a young woman, from its Arnoldian cadences to its fascinating parsing of queer, bisexual, feminist, racially conscious (tortured), intellectually exhilarating literary exhortation to live a political life, on the Bowery, if possible. All her work means a lot to me, especially The Basement, The Loony Bin Trip and, of course, Sexual Politics, but for Flying I will always be immensely grateful to Kate Millett and I mourn her death very sincerely.

[gorgonpoetics]

#gorgonpoetics

1. Lisa Cattrone, Ginger Ko, Joy Ladin, erica lewis, Raquel Salas-Rivera 2. Shannon Barber, Jennifer Marie Bartlett, Michelle Detorie, Nikki Wallschlaeger 3. Sarah Boyle & MK Chavez

4. Lynne DeSilva-Johnson & Juliette Guilbert * * gorgpo also recommends Nada Gordon & Layli Long Soldier. please check Lark site for future projects.

[gorgonpoetics]

[gorgonpoetics]

The Hillary Pants by Juliette Guilbert

A young girl, living in some small heartland town in the year 1969, longs for a pair of on fleek striped hippie bell bottoms. There's no place to buy such daring city things where she lives. The girls at school mostly wear skirts and hose. But she's determined and resourceful, and she's a sixties farm girl, so she can sew! She finds some striped upholstery fabric that will suit, and she sews herself some damned groovy PANTS! Eventually she goes off to the big city, attends law school, and becomes a public defender. 47 years later, I buy the pants on eBay to use in my Sixties Hillary Halloween costume. They are super stiff, very tight, and clearly homemade. Were they once curtains at the Von Trapp estate? At the Halloween party, I have to lie down on the floor to rezip them every time I pee. But damn, that farm girl knew how to sew some seams -- those Hillary pants are the same age I am, and they hold up all night. They do not split, quit, or give up. In just a few days, I and the mysterious maker of the groovy, enduring, women's-liberating pants will cast our votes for Hillary Clinton.

[gorgonpoetics]

Gorgpo #4 with Lynne DeSilva-Johnson’s Status Update, in the gorgpo tradition of Nikki Wallschlaeger & Raquel Salas-Rivera. And just in -- our election edition, Juliette Guilbert’s The Hillary Pants. X O Photos: 1. tumblr faces; 2. Lois Mailou Jones (and friend), Paris, 1930s. See also: gorgpos #s 1, 2, & 3. Bc we are faulty & magic &c. -- ed.

[gorgonpoetics]

Status Update by Lynne DeSilva-Johnson

on this national coming out day / international day of the girl child, in this week of tweeted first assaults, a day after mental health day, (which I missed), I'd like to put this out there: as a child, I didn't know there was an option other than girl or boy. I never felt like a girl child, or a boy child -- that is, I never identified with one or the other. I have identified as queer as long as I knew there was a word. I never felt the need to "come out" because in many ways I am a very private person, and also because I have never been a joiner -- I have always felt that I was NOT things more than being them. Not straight, not female, not like others. I also knew my mind and body functioned differently. Before I knew there were words like two-spirit, before I knew that there were traditions that spoke for thousands of years of each body having within itself male and female energies, I knew this thing silent and solid in myself, like a stone. I felt old, remembered lives before. Believed in things no one had ever taught me, didn’t believe the things I was told. I did not have the language to speak, to hold as light out loud in the world, even as I hid this shameful treasure like a stolen piece of fruit, visited like a tryst with myself, a secret escape from the roman catholic fear and punishment that hung around my family, already deep with ghosts and shadows. Later, now, I can say I am energy that has a body, a body you have a name for, which is female, and I can say, I didn’t choose those words, they aren’t mine. That I have this body, but am not this body. That I believe I have been before and will be again. That the heaven story didn’t jive with me, but the magic and miracles did. I secretly sought out as much magic as I could find and began to build the world I lived in, a truer world than the words of my home, in my mind. Early american witchcraft, returned to again and again in the adult section of the library, a “safe” place I was allowed to go, one of few. Now I would say I do energy work, medicine work -- I am a conduit, not a witch. But I didn’t have language for any of this -- and when I began to try to write it down, I was condemned, punished, belittled. When it was paired with exploration with other bodies -- I was sent to confession. Shamed. I learned to keep quiet. now, I am comfortable and happy identifying as non binary, and queer, in the sense that these encompass as many possibilities as this body continues to hold. and I'm becoming increasingly comfortable admitting my chronic illnesses and what would in the western canon be considered a mental health history (but for spiritual reasons I use other language around). What does it mean to be mad? How can we not be sick, in this time? I am proud to feel ill, to not be able to fully function here. This is a broken, sick time, out of sync with nature and with evolution. I don’t want to be in sync with it. I don’t want to cope, and I don’t want to medicate. Look for the empathic ones, all the sensates -- some are beginning to come forward, but far more silently millions more function by dulling, by adjusting to the broken. And I support them, I support their self care, but I refuse. I want to stay mad. To continue to keep the spirit, energies and explorations into the metaphysical out of our healing is what’s truly crazy. What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as “good news from the other world.” The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm. “Mental disorder, behavioral disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field,” says Dr. Somé. These disturbances result when the person does not get assistance in dealing with the presence of the energy from the spirit realm.

What does it mean to believe that bodies are evolving, and not all in the same way. I fear an emergency, even as I work against fear. But it is that I cringe to take this harmonious, intelligent organism into a hospital as though taking an infant to a garage for a tune up. Are we not becoming allergic to the poisons we’ve created? Are our bodies not taking over, attempting to save us when we will not save ourselves, and we, trying to treat our adaptations? Treating cures as symptoms, rather than seeking out the root errors, the causes? When I land in the hospital, there is no doubt that I am a woman again, because here I am treated to my claims, complaints, my years of awareness of my illnesses being not taken seriously. To pregnancy tests when I have not been sexually active. To suggestions that I have gas, am just tired. I know I have no gender, that I am a spirit in a body but here on earth in this land of words and traded identities like baseball cards I am, too, a feminist, which took me decades to own, and I continue to use the she pronoun -- because I have lived as a girl child, and I am not ready to erase the history that came  -- that continues to be written -- simply by living in this body. as a girl child, I knew that certain things were expected of me. I balked at them. I balked at my older neighbor, who told me that I was a pretty little doll, and I told him I was a person. he assaulted me while babysitting me. I was very little. maybe 6. I was reminded of this later, but I've blacked it out. I was told I must have been confused, that he was a nice man, and that I shouldn't say things like that about people who are nice people. as a girl child, I had older male relatives who kissed me on the mouth and pinched my cheeks and bottom without asking, and no one said anything. I was told to smile. be nice to people. give hugs. give kisses. sit on laps held down by sweaty hands. as a girl child, I grew to look like a woman quickly and my mother taught me to be ashamed of my body. as soon as I grew breasts, my warddrobe changed and I was bought clothes many sizes too big. I was taught that I was attracting attention. I was taught it was my fault. I was punished, taught that I was being slutty if I changed these clothes at school (which I began to do some years later), but I was simply trying to be myself, to express myself through style I identified with. I didn't think of it as feminine. I just didn't want to hide. I had a C cup in the 5th grade. My mother would only allow me to buy plain, matronly sports bras, to wear under the tents that were the only clothes in which I was permitted out of the house. Lacy or patterned bras were something I was shamed for wanting, told repeatedly that I shouldn’t care what they look like, because no one was going to see them -- I didn’t want anyone to see them, right? Because to want that would be slutty. And no one likes a slut -- or no one really likes one, at the end of the day. By the end of highschool I switched to minimizers, bras that reduce the appearance of your breast size by a number of inches, by dint of a huge amount of pressure and strong fabrics. The straps are thick and wide, the clasps with 5 or 6 hooks. They rarely came in pretty colors or patterns. We bought these white or tan (not black, slutty again) on sale, twice a year, at Macy’s or Lord and Taylor, where women with measuring tapes came clucking into the dressing room poking at my flesh and running a commentary with my mother about my body as if I wasn’t there. as a girl child with large breasts, I've been the target of attention on every street I've walked on since I was 10 years old. I've been followed, threatened, assaulted, abused, forced... more times than I can count or wish to recount here. This has continuously been used against me as proof that I somehow invited this, proof that if allowed I would make bad decisions, that I would wear clothes that made it my fault that men of all ages couldn’t control themselves in my presence. as a teenage girl child shamed for my body, told that to touch myself was a sin, yet awash in sexual desire, I found ways to touch and be touched -- hidden ways, secret ways, ways that had no guidance and no support, ways that condemned and burned me from the inside even as I sought them out desperately, sought affection and sense making. I graduated highschool at the top of my class, having been accepted to 10 of the top colleges in the country. I was also pregnant. I had an abortion 3 days later, paid for by myself and my boyfriend. My mother didn’t know, and neither did my friends. A woman with dyed blonde hair and bad teeth told me she was getting her third, and not to worry, they barely hurt any more once you’ve had a few. Turning towards the wall, crying, eating saltines and drinking apple juice out of a shallow cup with a tin foil closure. I bled heavily, in pain, for days, taking meds, smiling through my teeth at the kids at camp, where I began working as a counselor the next day. The little boys asked me why I had a blonde mustache, which I bleached. Soon after this, I learned to wax. I was used to heavy bleeding. I began to bleed at 11 years old, but it wasn’t until a few years later that I began having periods so heavy, so painful, I often spent hours in the nurse’s office, curled in a ball in the dark. She started me on 2 advil, but soon 6 every few hours were standard practice. I hated missing class, but the pain was too much. I didn’t go to a doctor because everyone told me it was “just cramps,” which is to say -- something I should and would learn to get used to. And I did. When this pain got unbearable, a few years later, and I wasn’t bleeding, I knew something was wrong. In the hospital, as a girl child: they did tests, checked for pregnancy as always. I wasn’t, I swore. I was mortified, with my mother, home from college. They tested for STD’s, said it was probably something I got at college. I said there was no way. They said teenagers lie. My mother was angry. She asked me again and again if I was telling the truth. I was. I was just in pain I didn’t understand. They sent me home telling me to get TUMS. They said it was gas. Girl child, rarely called woman, still called “girl”; a week before my graduation from college, even though I’d learned to deal with the pain, now constant, I doubled over and landed on my floor in my dorm room. About to go to the gym, with a friend, I ended up in a hospital in pennsylvania until the day before the ceremony. More pregnancy tests, more STD questions. More embarassment. More accusations. Many appointments and much wasted money later, 22 years old I came to a doctor’s office with a theory, because this girl child has experience with research. I said, “maybe it’s endometriosis,” and it was. It was endometrial masses. One the size of an orange, one the size of a grapefruit. Adhered to my ovaries. And my periods, my estrogen, the very nature of my female insides, fed them. And not in any of these hospitals had they been found. And they needed to be removed, and maybe my ovaries would come out too. Girl child, woman child, 22 years old, secret abortion, sexual shame, maybe you will never have a child of your own, they told me in so many words. Only the one that I already killed, I said inside. But they knew, and said this, too, silently, because every form asks for “number of pregnancies,” and “number of terminations.” Shame on you, you get what you deserve. After the procedure, only half an ovary had to come out, good news, my mustachioed doctor says. You’re pretty and smart, you’ll find someone to have a baby with. Having a baby would “fix” this, he said. So you didn’t have an STD after all, he said! You’re not a slut, but I know about that 18 year old pregnancy, he said without saying, so maybe you are. This is a man who puts his hands inside me, who is responsible for the cold clench and the scraping of my insides. He says I have until I’m 30, but no longer. He says if I want to not be in pain, I should go on the pill. Wink wink which is good in your 20’s anyway. First I go on Lupron, which induces menopause for 2 years. Then the pill, with no pause, with no period. Is it safe? I ask, again and again. Yes they say yes. Isn’t it amazing? Try this new one they say, it’s supposed to be great. 10,000 lawsuits are filed against Yazmin, the pill I take for years. Deaths, injuries, long term side effects. Not the ones rattled off on the label. Far worse.

I figure out a way to have a baby, fast forward, before I am 30. I don’t have a partner. I do it with a gay couple. I’m not sure what I’m doing, but I know I want to make a person before my body can’t do it anymore. I have to. I have to to feel I didn’t blow my chance and kill my only child. The same OBGYN helps, he gives us a medical-grade baster to use at home. He jokes again that he’s sure I could find someone even in this 6 months before I’m 30. I’ll still pretty and smart, I went to such good schools. Girl child, woman child. I make it by the deadline.I have a baby inside. My breasts are nearly doubled in size, acheiving their apex in usefulness as nourishment for a person. I am a miracle. I am a spirit, with my male energies too stronger and stronger and I, we, both of my selves, all of my selves, we are having a baby. She will have two daddies. No, I will not live with her. Yes, she will know me as her mother. She will call me, we will learn, “Mama Lynne.” Women who find this out say that I am strong, in the same breath as saying that they could never, that their feelings are so strong, that they love their kids too much, that they couldn’t be without them. Women tell me that I love my baby less because I am not with her. Women tell me that I am different. I know this, but I know that this definition of love is narrow, like all the definitions I’ve known. Men find me attractive. During the pregnancy, after the pregnancy. I am single, but I am pregnant, and I will not have a baby with me always after. This is like the holy grail. There is a whole world of kink around this. Men feel comfortable telling me, when they learn the story, how hot this is. How hot I am with a baby inside me, with my now doubly enormous, unable to hide breasts. But they often don’t get up for me on the subway. I say fuck this. I say, I announce, “does anyone want to get up for me?” and everyone scrambles over themselves. I encourage other pregnant women to do this. I do this for other pregnant women. They see you. They are just pretending. So, she. She she she, and the history of this body I have never felt comfortable in or with. These breasts that I see every day as the strangest, most foreign objects hanging off my torso -- but so too do I feel the entire body is strange, and I cannot imagine having a male sex organ, either -- I think the truth of it is, I feel my spirit life more than my human one. My relationship to being here is tinged with the fervor of a seeker, but to say that reduces it down to something less, when it is so much more than. And so, here, on this plane, SHE. As an non binary, female-bodied person, every day I walk out on the street I have to consider if I feel like it's important enough to wear something in which my body isn't hidden -- a body that as a non binary person I do not particularly identify with, but which has become a marker of a struggle that I don't necessarily want to avoid by removing part of myself. if and when I choose to mask or bind, or feel masc/butch, that is my choice, but I shouldn't choose it on days I feel femme simply because I feel safer and more powerful on the street and at work, and yet I know I still make these decisions, often subconsciously, out of exhaustion. I am proud to be queer, proud to be non binary, sad to live in a time when to be a girl child is still so dangerous. I want a safer, less shameful life for Beckett. And I'm doing everything in my power to help that world evolve.

[gorgonpoetics]

GORGON POETICS No. 3

invocation – Will Alexander essay – Sarah Boyle poetry – MK Chavez

photograph by Lynne Desilva-Johnson

see also gps #2 and #1

[gorgonpoetics]

Four Poems by MK Chavez

Long Deep Wound

Gash from OED

1) A long deep slash, cut, or wound 2) Vulgar; a term for the female genitalia, implying that it looks like a hatchet wound.

--bat cave, bear trap, bearded clam, beaver, Bermuda triangle, cooch, cunt, fish, gates of heaven, floofy bird, honey pot, periwinkle, slash, slit, temple, and the wound that never heals--

If gash was an animal she might be a blue whale swallowing you whole or a shark taking you in pieces. In the snowy tundra she might be a polar bear opening you up, the hot steam of you rising into the ether. Gash might be the warmth of the Santa Ana winds helping to float your boat. Remember, she’s the giant eye, the grand opening, the place where you first appeared hungry & glimmering, 

the place you once called home.

*

The Fight

She’s a dog with a bone.

Such a brown dog, such a mongrel.

Feral dog in the dead of desert.

She’s all claws and teeth.

Little beast. Nocturnal. Can’t sleep. Is built like a bone crusher crushes boners.

SHE’S SUCH A DOWNER.

She didn’t call you back?  What a bitch!  She doesn’t want you? must be a snatch licker, carpet muncher, tire biter.

Floating uterus, hysterical hyena, full of piss & witchcraft.

Hell dog.

A curled lip, bared teeth and a bulging sex.

Crazy bitch marks her territory.

They all say, What’s wrong with her?

A girl isn’t suppose to go on like that

but  She does and She will. *

No Dick Blues

For Grinderman

I do above all things love myself and my little dog too.

No sucking in my gut. I can’t be bothered if my belly bothers you.

Nah—Yeah, m-a-y-b-e I’ll call.

Don’t give me puppy dog eyes. Didn’t I train you? Train wreck you?

Aw—Whenever I say I don’t want you, you insist but I really want too.

Yeah, I still don’t want to.

Take care of your own damn soul.

Sometimes, I get the no dick blues and I write you a love letter.

Dear Dick,

I took care of it already.

Sometimes,   I get the no dick blues but wait,

no, I don’t think so. * The End of Eros

Should I tell you? Sweet bitter, hours are sparrows hollow boned and ethereal.

Sweet bitter, we are undulating under the current we have hardened and grown scales.

Sweet bitter, should I tell you? There is nothing but silence between us.

To end is all that we can do Sweet bitter, now that we know each other so well.

[gorgonpoetics]

An Analogy So Stupid You Will Think My Heart Isn’t Breaking by Sarah Boyle

Preface

I wrote the essay that follows back in May, and I knew it was going to be dangerous to publish the moment I finished. Not only did I warn that bitter and divisive fights were going to continue to shake down the house of poetry, I said it was our job to help rip up the foundation to lay a better one. And then I named the name of a person at the center of a controversy that no one wanted to fight about in public. (It’s six months later and still no one wants to discuss it in public.) But I had no idea the amount of grief this essay would actually cause me. First, no one wanted to publish it—one rejection memorably implied I was stupid for my opinion about said named individual and then closed by telling me, “You’re a good writer, though.” It was finally picked up by Queen Mob’s Teahouse, where it made some internal waves, with members of the editorial staff pushing my editor to redact portions of it or remove it from the site altogether. Then Queen Mob’s got a legal threat demanding the piece be redacted or removed entirely, and I felt at least kind of victorious. People read what I said! Not just the people who already agree with me!

Shortly after Queen Mob’s got a letter, I personally received a legal threat—along with at least eight other people and three other publications who also spoke out about the same issue roiling the backchannels of the po-verse. Those letters are another very long story. To keep this brief, I’ll just share the takeaway: people who never said anything beyond “I stand with survivors” got legal threats for defamation. Think about the ramifications of that for a second. After the initial adrenaline rush of finding a lawyerly letter in my inbox wore off, stress and grief took over my waking life. Unsurprisingly, Queen Mob’s retracted the essay—and emailed me four days later to tell me.

Since the essay was retracted, I’ve suffered through a long and hard bout of writer’s block. Having a lawyer tell you to shut your damn mouth really shuts your damn mouth but good. It is rare that I feel defeated. But the entire experience of writing about the controversies in poetry and the subsequent backchannel battle to remove all evidence of a specific controversy proved to me that the patriarchy is real and powerful—when it wants to flex its muscle, it will. And it will win.

On the advice of a lawyer I’ve redacted the portions of this essay dealing with the man behind the legal threats. I’m leaving the redactions where they lie so you can see that the bulk of my essay was about all of us in the writing world, not just one guy with some lawyers.

I’m taking the risk of putting the essay back into the world because my initial point stands: these fights in the literary world are not going away. Since the original publication in May, AWP has fucked up more than once. One of poetry’s most infamous trolls outdid even himself. Another asshat tried on some yellowface and worked his way into the Best American Poetry series—drawing the attention of the mainstream media, even. The Poetry Foundation rediscovered this gem of racist literature from our storied past. And a decent little spat about “literary activism” arose out of Amy King’s guest blogging stint at Harriet.

We have so much more work ahead of us.

An Analogy So Stupid You Will Think My Heart Isn’t Breaking

When I was pregnant, I watched hour after hour of “Love It or List It.” I watched all of the shows on HGTV where they knock down walls, but “Love It or List It” was just on all the goddamn time, so that was my drug of choice. For those of you who have never been hormonally compelled to nest while also breathtakingly ill and thus have never seen the show, Hilary the interior designer and David the real estate agent compete to give a family their dream home. Hilary renovates their current home—so they will love it—while David finds them a brand new home—so they will list it

Inevitably, here’s what happens: the family has a reno budget of, say, $50,000. And what they want to do with that budget is unrealistic: a new kitchen with all appliances, a new bathroom in the basement, and an add-on with a brand new master bedroom and en suite. So, Hilary crushes their dreams before she even begins by cutting down their wish list match to their budget.

The show’s next beat hits when the walls come down and Hilary discovers something that, if left unfixed, could be dangerous—faulty wiring or a bowed foundation wall. Then the drama is on: the spouse desperate to sell the house shoves this terminal flaw in the other spouse’s face to prove that this house is busted beyond repair. Motivating these conflicts is people’s disgust with spending money on problems they’d been happily living in ignorance of and will still be invisible even once they’re fixed.  Who wants to brag to their friends that they spent $5,000 to rewire their house?

Because here’s the thing about ripping down walls: it’s scary. Half the couple on “Love It or List It” never wants to renovate their old home. Because they know that when you tear down walls, you find problems. And what if the problems outstrip their means to correct them?

This predictable beat, this moment on rip-down-the-walls shows where the cold light shines on hidden ills, this is where we are in the literature community—and literature is just a microcosm for the country. We’re ripping down the walls and finding out what’s been hiding there. We ripped down just about all of alt lit’s walls, until there was no house left to live in. The walls of conceptual poetry are pretty much just studs now—so many see straight through Kenny and Vanessa.

We all thought those walls were coming down so we could build ourselves a shiny new bathroom. Maybe we’d even get a soaker tub for all our troubles. But the more we rip down, the more we see that these problems are going to eat up all our money before we even put some sheetrock back up.

In this past month, another house in the world of literature was stripped to its studs. A letter, signed only by “XXXXXXXX,” accused a short list of prominent men in the publishing industry of sexual abuse and misconduct—and then pointed a finger at the rest of us who complacently forgot those men were still out there free of consequences—XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, XXXXXXXXXXXX: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. What happened next was predictable and horrible; social media divided itself into camps supporting the Invisibles on one side and XXXXXXXXX on the other. Much shit was thrown in all directions, and many people left Facebook and Twitter altogether—some by choice and some because they received explicit threats. But for as predictable as it all was, it was also surprisingly painful. Weren’t we all the ones gleefully tearing down the house of alt lit when we discovered it was built on foundations of rape and sexual coercion? That same readiness to rip down walls disappeared right quick when the man at the center of the storm turned out to be XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.  XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX—XXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX—XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, I humbly request you take a hard look at your own house and honestly consider what may lurk behind its walls. Because this fight isn’t just about XXXXXXXX.

Whatever you believe about XXXXXX or about the letter-writers and their methods, the way we behaved as a community when the letter hit the public was despicable. Do not misunderstand me: I’m not saying we shouldn’t fight. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX. I’m just saying this moment in literature—after XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX and the sting of the early fights on social media has faded—demands we look at what happened and learn from it.

Despite the buckets of ink spilled over alt lit and Kenneth Goldsmith’s reading of Michael Brown’s autopsy, in these last few weeks since fights burned through social media barely anyone has written or published a peep about XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. At this point I have to ask: Are we really just going to bury this fight in the basement and pretend it never happened? Is this how we will pour a foundation for our future?

When the walls come down around your own community, it feels like the world is ending. Even when journals and presses build their houses on broken foundations, writers move into them and spend their own capital spiffing up the joint. When the walls come down—as they must—they take capital away from everyone involved. Suddenly, lots of innocent people find their creative output blacklisted for the sin of association, see their network lying in tatters, and fear their voices will never find a new home. These are legitimate problems that we need to address when we rip down walls.

But here’s the thing: the fissures that cracked open in the fight for XXXXXXXX —and the divides that bucked up after Kenny Goldsmith, Collin Kelley, J. Bradley, and the shitshow of alt lit—they were already there. Just this last week two more fights busted up through the internet. The Mongrel Coalition Against Gringpo took on Vanessa Place’s ill-advised tweeting of Gone with the Wind and demanded AWP remove her from her position of power. And an editor at B O D Y was roundly castigated for criticizing a young writer’s “duck face” in an accidentally forwarded email. These fights are because of our busted foundations, asbestos insulation, and illegal queeblo wiring systems. The Invisibles, MCAG, and all the other anti-misogyny and anti-racism activists in our midst: they are not bringing down the walls for fun. They’re bringing them down because the house is already in danger of falling down, because the house’s flaws are killing them.

The truth is people don’t want to invest their money in things they cannot see. Just like on HGTV, where no one wants to sink twenty grand into a new foundation, no one wants to invest their emotional and professional capital in improving the soundness of our collective house. It is so much more fun to build a sleek new journal and ask your talented friends to submit. Why organize a meeting about fighting back against oppression when you could organize a book-release party with music and champagne and a cookie table to rule above all other cookie tables? Why read hours of academic papers about restorative justice when you can write a review of a hand-bound chapbook filled with innovative poems? I’m not saying we can’t have those nice things—or that those nice things aren’t also essential to the building of our home—rather that we can’t have those nice things if the floorboards are rotten and the basement is flooded.

Our real work must be tearing down the walls and flushing out what is hiding behind them. And then it’s our job to fix the problems we find. It is not the Invisibles’ fault that the fight for XXXXXXXXX has been so painful. Just as it is not the Mongrel Coalition’s fault that we can’t all just get along and let Vanessa be Vanessa because she’s engaged in a project we just don’t understand. Just as it was not Sophia Katz’s fault that alt lit turned out to be a vipers’ den of abusive gatekeepers. All these people drew our attention to problems we were content to wallpaper over. Tearing down something you lovingly built is painful. The process will never be clean and perfectly contained, and what we find behind the walls may be toxic. That does not mean we shouldn’t do it.

Let’s return to HGTV, because I love it so. “Fixer Upper” may be my absolute favorite show on TV. Chip and Jojo take run-down houses in the Waco, Texas area and turn them into shabby-chic farmhouses for sweet families. On a recent episode, they found some rotten shingles on the home they were renovating. When they peeled them back, they found an enormous beehive inside the walls of the house. It took however much money to hire an expert to remove it, and then more money to install new shingles, replace the insulation, and repair the holes they opened up to remove the hive. In the end, the family still got a beautiful new home with everything they wanted—including a jar of honey harvested from those very bees in the kitchen for the family’s breakfast.

So many walls have already come down in the house of lit. We have no choice but to rebuild—too many people are in too much pain and they are not going to be quiet about it. The only choice left is whether we listen to the anger and pain buzzing behind the walls that remain and knock them down, too, or whether we put up new walls like nothing ever happened. Will we leave the angry fucking pissed off bees right where they are and pretend we do not hear them? That anger is frightening, and it comes attached to some wicked stingers. But the bee’s goal isn’t to sting. Its goal is to live its life, visiting flowers and making honey. The anger is in service of building a home, a place to make some honey.

[gorgonpoetics]

WHY by Nikki Wallschlaeger

Why do they hate us so much. Why does my own mother hate me. Why are we not worth protecting. Why are we supposed to be strong. Why are some of my white friends passive aggressive. Why do they steal. Why do they hate us so much. Why am I not worth protecting. Why is she wearing blackface again. Why does she keep wearing blackface. Why do you act so nervous around me. Why do you glare at me for no reason. Why did you try to touch my hair. Why did he rape me. Why am I a hole for men to put things in. Why do they hate us so much. Why did you let me down. Why is my trauma dismissed as "drama".Why are white men continuously paternalistic. Why do they think they can hide from it. Why do they hate us so much. Why am I so exhausted. Why do they look to me for strength. Why did he call me "ghetto." Why do they hate us so much. Why am I invisible. Why am I here. Why am I so tired. Why am I so sad. Why am I smiling. Why do I get up in the morning. Why do they kill us. Why am I still alive. Why am I breathing. Why did my father abandon me. Why is there so much space. Why do they refuse to understand. Why do they hate us so much. Why do they hate us so goddamned much.

[gorgonpoetics]

gp#2 [gp#1]

statement-- nikki wallschlaeger invocation-- etel adnan, tom lescher, arielle guy incantation-- juan felipe herrera & ruth ellen kocher notes-- elizabeth treadwell & sophie mayer poems-- shannon barber, jennifer marie bartlett, & michelle detorie correspondence [& lizard photo from Tejas]-- charles alexander & leslie scalapino

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write to gorgpo at lilyfoil at yahoo dot com xo [if you dare]

[gorgonpoetics]

Four Poems by Shannon Barber

Body My body My mouth sweet with the nightmares of many men. My thighs seamed slick with their tears. My cunt is wide open to frighten with her distance. My life is only mine. My body heavy with my own sweetness. I am mine. Only mine. ## Succulent I got stories. Every one a gobbit of flesh for needy mouths. Every fight. Every fuck. Every heartbreak and tear. Every story another mouthful. You'll eat me down to the bones. And then you'll starve. Cause ladies don't suck the marrow out of bones. My real secrets ain't to feed the likes of you. ## Thigh Speak Love me. Her thighs speak volumes. Mass and weight that speak to mysteries and desire. Closed, they frustrate. They deny. Open they reveal the wet the depths of love and the real. Her thighs speak my language. They know my secrets. Her thighs, Gods bless her thighs. ## Exotic Fruits Dedicated to Conpo I want to eat you. Like exotic fruit. That's what I hear from these poets. These cannibal savages. They will devour my ancestors before I-can learn to speak to them. I want to shit you out. Shit in torrents of language. Shit until the public knows how awful shit is. I want to eat you. My exotic fruit.

[gorgonpoetics]

A Crippled Girl Moves Through The City by Jennifer Marie Bartlett