In Full Velvet is amazing! What is most astonishing and beautiful to me, is the joy writ throughout its pages. As a closeted teen, too- filling pages of composition notebooks with journal entries and poems-however, confused, awkward, and ashamed I was to speak about my queer desires and my genderqueer body, I loosened shame’s grip by finding language to describe ways of feeling and being. And yet, I often found joy, clarity, or release in capturing the felt sense of my body through language, initially by writing fictional stories. Honestly, it’s always been a preoccupation-how do I live inside this body? Since I was a kid, I felt at odds with my material body. Have you always written this way, or did you come to it over time? Please describe your journey toward writing poetry that reflects on the experience of living in the body. Jenny Johnson talks about embodied poetry Weather what else is living for she asks me and my body is water instantly river Stranger my broken body wants you wants something I cannot name so manyīooks open and face-down on my chest so we talk about something more than the The body how can anyone survive this I keep asking and I smile at a stranger everyĬell open hungry and sharp so I soften my gaze look at her and mean it oh Scream in public stories so loud in our hearts incessant thumps against each wall of Outside I understand now why so many wanderers without homes walk around full Me gentrification next door at my door all the bodies gone new bodies wiped cleanīodies bodies all the bodies dying around me and little old me the same young girlīegging for a love I fear doesn't exist no I know now the love I want is not Love lost a new love brought in and lost too all the old buildings knocked down around Her home a woman's body a heartbreak sobbing all over her new city crying for a Through a woman without a home a woman who was asked without words to leave Throb coming into my own desire unmuted tenacity like a canyon the river comes Legs covered in stretch marks purple veins so many years on my feet a thirst like a Love lives a relationship now only a dream I keep waking up to sweaty in the dark More hardly legible a twenty-something's hunger drawn in blood on the pageĭid I know then the only way was through because oh how I drenched myself like aīaptism in all the pain no one outside me could hold and here I am again aloneĪfraid of who I might meet inside the dark hall of myself so what does the bodyĬarry now a newly renovated home I no longer own 600 fence posts I drove andīanged into the ground under the hot desert sun two goats I lured behind that fenceĪnd I imagine still bleat for my hands at dawn a life I thought was mine where her new In the toilet my notebooks scribbled full how badly I wanted to be more always Nights with less hope a lot of cheap wine a whole pizza down the hatch then a mess Leg looks like the letter E I carved it EDNOS during one of many long and lonely Something like love as something like a life carried by pain that fading scar on my So all my days have added up to this I look at my body and see myself as flesh as
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