#nate slawson

[rustbeltjessie]

Two books of poetry I always return to: Nate Slawson’s Panic Attack, USA and Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems. The copy of Lunch Poems is my personal copy, Panic Attack, USA is from the library, but I check it out and reread it at least once a year so I should really just buy a copy. Anyway, I was sitting outside alternating between reading these two books, and I got inspired to write a poem after Nate Slawson that also contains a nod to Frank O’Hara. (April 23, 2022)

[razorsadness]

from Panic Attack, USA by Nate Slawson

[hypocrite-lecteur]

"once in awhile it makes me want to build a newer world in the bedroom

a newer world where we cram sunlight into our eyes and the sunlight blasts      merrily

merrily out of our mouths     we are so ecstatic that we're gasping gasping and      blue-

berry beside the record player dancing a new dance we call The Streets Are

Burning     because if we are not a levee and the music is not love what chance

do we have of keeping our hearts up? because it's our hearts that float outward

to the sea our hearts enormous life vests strapped to our stupid faces"

Nate Slawson, from "A Battlefield Called Streetcore"

[pidraya]

you are 1992

All night we should go arson & I want nuclear fingertips so I can scrawl dirty words into the bottoms of your feet. I beg you because it feels so good begging you & I wanna beg forever if that’s what’s gonna get me buried inside the buttons behind your buttons. So all damn night? My heavy metal records turned up real loud, your hips & how about we buzzsaw all this fucking pretext? I wanna unzip you. your spine, your dress, your skin. Make you blue with fleshliness. Practice stories in the bathtub. Practice your belly. I’m a tightrope walker. You can be the wire or you can be the ground but ain’t no one gonna give a shit unless there’s blood. Call 911 & I’d love to play hospital with you. I’d love to say one thing you’ll believe is true. Be your empty wheelchair & we busta rhymes all night.

~Nate Slawson

[lunchboxpoems]

YOU ARE OHIO

so I had this dream we  were a map of the midwest. you were ohio & I was  michigan & I was all over  you & it was so fucking hot  your spine was on fire all the way down to cincinnati,  & god damn if that ain’t  the most depressing thing because I knew I’d wake  up wishing I was kentucky  & your ankles were a river  wrapped around my throat,  but it don’t matter either way  because motherfuck if you aren’t  always telling me the same thing— it’s not happening, uh-uh,  not in this time zone, brother,  or any other place.

NATE SLAWSON

[bostonpoetryslam]

When I put my legs around you I almost feel Presbyterian I feel like Stonewall Jackson with my arm sawed off I am delirious I think I’ll call you Antietam You make me want to kill someone

Nate Slawson, "Sam," published in Jet Fuel Review

[poemfull]

THE ANSWER IS BLUEBERRIES AND ALL OF THE ABOVE

Sometimes we try to pull our ears off and  sometimes we pull off our clothes instead  and I can’t say which I prefer though I have  an idea you have an idea that we have the same  idea and sometimes there is nothing better than  knowing that what ends doesn’t really end  if you remember hard enough     and I remember  everything so hard it hurts it hurts my head  and it hurts my beating heart but I love how  hurt feels because I can remember much more  how good naked feels. 

Nate Slawson

source

[postagestampjustice]

You Are a River by Nate Slawson

My friends tell me you are not a river & I am supposed to believe them I guess so I tell them ALL RIGHT but it feels like a sick ventriloquism two-by-four'd from my throat but still that don't mean you're not a river & I'm not a thicket & together we're more alone than New Orleans & if I was one of them old- time preachers I'd drown myself in you & grow a tiny bridge out of my chest.

[rustbeltjessie]

This is something we can

agree on: clap your hands and sing yeah it’s beautiful heretoo like YEAH IT’S

BEAUTIFUL HERE TOO and I’m telling you again because that’s affection

that’s my liver at full throttle and it’s singing and I don’t know why and I feel

forever is the second-punkest word ever invented after love

—Nate Slawson, from “I ❤︎ YOUR FIRE VS I ❤︎ YOUR FACE”

[razorsadness]

2020 Book List

An incomplete list of books I read in 2020 (not counting books I started but haven’t finished yet, or books I reread only sections of, or zines), divided into fiction, non-fiction, and poetry categories. Some of these books are hybrid works, in which case I put them into the category I felt they best fit into. An asterisk means it was a reread. I’ve bolded the ones I particularly loved. I’ve also included links to quotations/excerpts from some of them.

Fiction

Shine of the Ever, by Claire Rudy Foster

A Cathedral of Myth and Bone, by Kat Howard

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong

The Mythic Dream, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe

We Had No Rules, by Corinne Manning

The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson

In a Lonely Place, by Dorothy B. Hughes

And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories & Other Revenges, by Amber Sparks

The Necrophiliac, by Gabrielle Wittkop

Before and Afterlives, by Christopher Barzak

Finding Baba Yaga: A Short Novel in Verse, by Jane Yolen

Wild Milk, by Sabrina Orah Mark

Nonfiction

Aim and Wish, by A.L. Staveley

Make It Scream, Make It Burn, by Leslie Jamison

After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography, edited by Kate Sontag and David Graham

The Poem That Changed America: “Howl” Fifty Years Later, edited by Jason Shinder

Boss Broad, by Megan Volpert

Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest, by Hanif Abdurraqib

A Field Guide to Getting Lost, by Rebecca Solnit*

100 Times: A Memoir of Sexism, by Chavisa Woods

Recollections of My Nonexistence, by Rebecca Solnit

In the Dream House, by Carmen Maria Machado

Erosion: Essays of Undoing, by Terry Tempest Williams

The Thorn Necklace: Healing Through Writing and the Creative Process, by Francesca Lia Block

Tracing the Desire Line: A Memoir in Essays, by Melissa Mathewson

What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life, by Mark Doty

Dancing at the Devil’s Party: Essays on Poetry, Politics, and the Erotic, by Alicia Ostriker

Censorship Now!!, by Ian F. Svenonius

Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, by Olivia Laing

Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures, by Mary Ruefle

The Wet Collection, by Joni Tevis

Black and Blue: The Bruising Passion of Camera Lucida, La Jetee, Sans soleil, and Hiroshima mon amour, by Carol Mavor

In the Blue Pharmacy: Essays on Poetry and Other Transformations, by Marianne Boruch

Jane: A Murder, by Maggie Nelson

Mean, by Myriam Gurba

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, by Michelle McNamara

Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell, by Charles Simic

Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power, by Pam Grossman

The Art of Recklessness, by Dean Young

Poetry

An American Sunrise, by Joy Harjo

Stay, by Tanya Olson

Be Recorder, by Carmen Giménez Smith

Soft Targets, by Deborah Landau

No Matter, by Jana Prikryl

The Obliterations, by Matt Hart

Made in Detroit, by Marge Piercy 

Walking Distance, by Debra Allbery

Exploding Chippewas, by Mark Turcotte

Neon Vernacular, by Yusef Komunyakaa

The Jazz Poetry Anthology, edited by Sascha Feinstein and Yusef Komunyakaa

Black Milk, by Tory Dent

A Fortune for Your Disaster, by Hanif Abdurraqib

Witch, by Rebecca Tamás

The Carrying, by Ada Limón

Homie, by Danez Smith

The Wendys, by Allison Benis White

Babel, by Patti Smith*

Alive Together, by Lisel Mueller

Night Sky with Exit Wounds, by Ocean Vuong

Advice from the Lights, by Stephanie Burt

This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album, by Alan Chazaro

Blood on Blood, by Devin Kelly

American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, by Terrance Hayes

Teahouse of the Almighty, by Patricia Smith

Fantasia for the Man in Blue, by Tommye Blount

Louise in Love, by Mary Jo Bang

Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod, by Traci Brimhall

The Queer Body Anthology, edited by Yes, Poetry

Wolf Face, by Matt Hart

Living Room, by June Jordan

Trickster Feminism, by Anne Waldman

Here is the Sweet Hand, by Francine J. Harris

Dead Girls, by Francesca Lia Block

Inside the Wolf, by Niamh Boyce

I live in the country & other dirty poems, by Arielle Greenberg

The Death Metal Pastorals, by Ryan Patrick Smith

Bestiary of Gall, by Emilia Phillips

Toxicon and Arachne, by Joyelle McSweeney

Blood Box, by Zefyr Lisowski

Indictus, by Natalie Eilbert

This Is Still Life, by Tracy Mishkin

The Time Unraveller’s Travel Journal, by Upfromsumdirt

Love Poems, by Pablo Neruda

Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy, by Joanna Klink

Sorry for Your Troubles, by Pádraig Ó Tuama

Saranac Lake Ghost Poems, by Maurice Kenny

Light-Headed, by Matt Hart

The Tiny Jukebox, by Nate Slawson

Sham City, by Evan Harrison

Modern and Normal, by Karen Solie

My Tall Handsome, by Emily Corwin

When My Brother Was an Aztec, by Natalie Diaz

Guidebooks for the Dead, by Cynthia Cruz

Dandarians, by Lee Ann Roripaugh

Her book, by Éireann Lorsung

44 Poems for You, by Sarah Ruhl

Imaginary Menagerie, by Ailbhe Darcy

The Girl Aquarium, by Jen Campbell

Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl, by Diane Seuss*

War of the Foxes, by Richard Siken

[parallel-limbs]

I'll say this real slow all I want is a ribcage that looks like the Flatiron Building I think it would be nice & beautiful with pigeons & you'll wish it was you keeping my heart alive

Nate Slawson, "great white shark" 

[tracydimond]

Sound builds a poem. How words and phrases sound, if you can dance to them, if they make you shake in the belly that lives your heart. Everything else builds from there. Or at least that’s how words function for me. Sometimes poems are poems. Sometimes poems are rock operas.

Nate Slawson

[thegratefuldad]

THE ANSWER IS BLUEBERRIES AND ALL OF THE ABOVE Sometimes we try to pull our ears off and  sometimes we pull off our clothes instead  and I can’t say which I prefer though I have  an idea you have an idea that we have the same  idea and sometimes there is nothing better than  knowing that what ends doesn’t really end  if you remember hard enough     and I remember  everything so hard it hurts it hurts my head  and it hurts my beating heart but I love how  hurt feels because I can remember much more  how good naked feels

-nate slawson

[secretsynapse]

you are zooey deschanel

inside my chest is a coalmine. you have the raddest  eyes I’ve ever seen & you hair smells like rabbits.  I want to call you on the telephone & tell you a secret  about your shins. I wanna call you shakedown. I wanna  call you shotgun. do you want to make a movie?  I got this camera, see, & a backyard like forever,  & when it snows it’s like the whole world is one giant pickup line. my body in a wooden box & you just like holes for breathing. if I’m lying  my neck is a bird neck. the truth is skin & skin.  your yellow dress. a stick of dynamite between my teeth. -Nate Slawson

[postagestampjustice]

You Are Emily Valentine by Nate Slawson

I know I promised you

I wouldn't make a scene

in front of all your friends

but is it wrong if I write

your name on the soles

of my tennis shoes is it

wrong if i want to stand

next to you in gym class

your legs remind me of

a Bruce Springsteen song

I would do a hundred sit-

ups for you & whisper your 

name every time & kiss my

knees pretending they are you.

[rustbeltjessie]

Nate Slawson, “An Essay About Gospel Music” (from Panic Attack, USA)

I think I am going Catholic what with my sudden bouts of guilt & sadness I kneel before you I suspect pine needles I suspect gravel I feel I should say something you are very sexy you should know I will stare at you like a math equation meaning night is tender I call it factory because they is all the same alley night N Carolina night I am never lost in the vastness the moon the parking lots the holy land I suppose you breathe hot & I’ll show you my blues there’s time I’m in love with everyone & sleeping naked sleeping with you it’s the red underneath my skin that gets mosquito & why not why not yours too this is America after all we can breakdance if we want or shove our hearts through a giant stained glass window.