Its bark is infected like homeless mother’s limbs with skin weathered from winter and bed bugs.

Go outside.
Write about it.

I stare at an open field and search for the bodies held captive by tall wheat or poison ivy.

Visit amusement park for children called zoo.
Write about it.

I see an elephant and describe its skin as heated crust. I count each fracture disrupting the smooth. I call it monster call it mammal of wild grey call it me in the evening when enough bodies have rubbed against me to feel bloated and heavy, a swell of weight.

What happens to the spread of body, torn apart to make a statement?

Bones, carefully grown tissue formed by osteoblasts, or specialized cells, contain salt and strength, though not enough to fight away the sadness or sense of not enough. The similarities in these excerpts arise in desperation. We must destroy self or space around us in order to make a statement.

*
Andy Flemming throws a three-piece dissected bee at me in science class. I am twelve. He calls me a screen door and I watch the severed insect slide down my paved chest. My three best friends at the time have elevated breasts, regular periods and body hair. They prefer tampons to pads and waxing to razors. Two out of three have already been menstruating for two years. There are no bras in my wardrobe; I wear undershirts. If it weren’t for my nipples, I’d have no idea where my breasts are.

*
My belly lies against red cotton sheets with limited thread count. I am crying. My fingers smell like my insides. A salt and vinegar soak. I am desperate for an orgasm, instead, my brain channels memories inappropriate for masturbation. How sad to be inside a body that can never be clean enough.

photo by June Liu

serrated like bread knife, hungry to cut away at words in need of further diagnosis.

work toward revision
enter the poem with questions

photo by Francesca Woodman

searched urgency
declare

supper with sadness
press into carbon and oxygen and choke.

[NOTE: Imagine a word with limbs, long enough to be pulled or bent. Imagine a word with pre-determined illness or allergy. The metalanguage conceived in the spread out stanzas or found in the tightly-packed prose poems or couplets can be viewed as odors. A smell takes shape when rubbed against or mixed with the container in which it starts from: food, human, bottle.

think of poems as suicide letters
desperate medications

To exit: how it feels to be entrenched in these poems, write the pain of it, the journey, trauma, translated hurt-songs, scar chants.

{how to} walk off a stage or poem and be normal.

strap magnifying lenses against pupils/ detect hidden fibers defining each line

Get it before she dies and no clarity can be given.

Look away. Diagnose. Crush pills onto tongue repeat daily. Quiet the crazy creative emotive.

How sad to be inside a body that can never be clean enough

Practice the angular motion of disintegration

uniqueness derives from in-
ability to
see all

Notice a tree.
Write about it.

Its bark is infected like homeless mother’s limbs with skin weathered from winter and bed bugs.

Go outside.
Write about it.

I stare at an open field and search for the bodies held captive by tall wheat or poison ivy.

Visit amusement park for children called zoo.
Write about it.

I see an elephant and describe its skin as heated crust. I count each fracture disrupting the smooth. I call it monster call it mammal of wild grey call it me in the evening when enough bodies have rubbed against me to feel bloated and heavy, a swell of weight.

What happens to the spread of body, torn apart to make a statement?

Bones, carefully grown tissue formed by osteoblasts, or specialized cells, contain salt and strength, though not enough to fight away the sadness or sense of not enough. The similarities in these excerpts arise in desperation. We must destroy self or space around us in order to make a statement.

…………………………………
………………………………………….
……….
……………………………………………………..

. . ………What cannot feel can still feel.

The first one went so well, we have decided to keep the erotica alive!
This reading series in downtown Manhattan features the best poets, spoken word artists around the country as well as showcasing new talent with an open mic.

Featured readers/performers to be announced soon!!

Beautiful Poetry with Dope Poets features Poet Aimee Herman 11/06 by Barbara Trawick | Blog Talk Radio.

found on the body

question clouds

I think about death. I think about control. I think about poetry/confession/memoir. How to combine all three of these to create one text?

Last Spring, I wandered into the Moma P.S. 1 museum and lost myself inside the large, multi-media exhibit of Laurel Nakadate. Each room showed a video from her various social experiments with men [oddly, they were all middle aged white men] and challenging the ideas of sexuality and control. She also had a photo exhibit where she documented, through pictures, 365 days of her sadness.

We live in a world where we are constantly archiving everything through social media posts, blogs, and other online postings. Nothing is ever done in silence or secrecy. Or, is it?

What is revealed through these visible postings, or more interestingly, what is not revealed? If one were to live without documentation, does it become more real or genuine in its intention?

Do we go to these events just to say we went?

If we stopped announcing every moment of out lives, would we live differently? Or, not live at all?

To resist what resists is a resistance of resist.

To resist what wants to be written and then moving through that struggle. As a poet, I document what I see through my eyes. Sometimes, oftentimes, I enter in. I get involved through questions or actions. However, does this mean I am living my life or the life in which I suggest I live?

to go without blinking features poems of all forms, experimenting with voice, content and structure. It is a journey through gender, sexual imprints, narration of memories, observation, life, love, lust and language.

For more info or to schedule Aimee Herman for a performance/reading at your reading series or in your town, contact Aimee @: aimeeherman@gmail.com

Aimee Herman’s to go without blinking is a visceral, wide eyed, queer movement that creates “sturdy retinas” in those of us who participate. As we enter and perform this book by way of our bodies (our inhabitation) we are nervy-aghast, gasping, slobbering, terrified, aroused. Oh the confessions here– not only the confessions themselves, but the quality of confession amid the varying grits of the unveiled body. This is not a book of the stellar body. It is the core, guttural relation of body to page—it is body and page as planar path, “leaking teeth”—“a need to disrobe to satisfy.” Herman has shown us an unabridged vista of spaces and scenes where power, colonization, detriments and desires are exchanged. Nothing is held back here. We are cut by this book. We are conflated. We are ruined in the best possible ways. to go without blinking’s “tongue is too big for [its] body” and this is where its genius is.

–j/j hastain, author of prurient anarchic omnibus

Titillating Tongues: NYC Erotica in Poetry & Prose

The Inspired Word presents a hot night of sexy fun, lip-licking words, and utter debauchery – Titillating Tongues: NYC Erotica in Poetry & Prose, featuring some of New York City’s best erotic writers: Rachel Kramer Bussel, Janice Erlbaum, Uche Nduka, Jennifer Blowdryer, Aimee Herman, Kathleen Warnock, Puma Perl, Elizabeth Rivera De Garcia, Jane LeCroy, and Sam J. Miller.

There will also be a 12-slot open mic open to all types of artists, where you can bring your own heat to the party.

Hosted by HBO Def Poetry star Gemineye.

*****

When: Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011

Where: One and One Bar & Restaurant (downstairs Nexus Lounge)
76 East 1st Street (corner of 1st Avenue)
Manhattan, NYC
Phone: (917) 703-1512

Doors open for open mic sign-up @ 6:30pm

Show starts @ 7pm

Cover Charge: $10

Must be 21 years old or older.

“The Inspired Word isn’t just a series, it’s a movement.”

*****

For more info on The Inspired Word series, please check out:
http://inspiredwordnyc.blogspot.com/

To pre-purchase tickets:
http://eroticanyc.eventbrite.com/

*****
FEATURE BIOS:

Aimee Herman, a queer performative poet, has been featured at various New York venues such as the Happy Ending Lounge, Dixon Place, Wow Café Theatre, Public Assembly, and Sidewalk Café. She has performed at reading/performance series such as: In the Flesh erotic salon, Hyper Gender, Sideshow: Queer Literary Carnival, and Red Umbrella Diaries. Her poetry can be found in Clean Sheets, Cliterature Journal, Pregnant Moon Review, InStereo Press, and/or journal, and Polari Journal. She can also be read in Focus on the Fabulous: Colorado GLBT Voices, hell strung and crooked (Uphook Press), Best Women’s Erotica 2010 (Cleis Press), Best Lesbian Love Stories 2010 (Alyson Books), Nice Girls, Naughty Sex (Seal), Women in Lust (Cleis), and the upcoming Harder She Comes: Butch/Femme Erotica [Cleis]. She currently works as an erotica editor for Oysters & Chocolate. She can be found writing poems on her body in Brooklyn. Her full-length book of poetry, to go without blinking, will be published by BlazeVOX Books in Spring 2012.

In 1988, Ms Jennifer Blowdryer founded Smut Fests, a show that mixed sex workers performing their own material, however they saw fit, along with some burlesque, spoken word, and other ephemera. She took it on the road to London, Chicago, Hamburg, and Baltimore, Maryland. London was the most crazily good show, but Hamburg’s red light district offered the best theater on earth, the Schmidt Tivoli. JB’s currently working on a documentary called The 86ed Project, and an ebook called The Bitchez Guide to the Lower East Side. She resides on East 2nd Street, which is still Sport Bar free. For more info, please visit http://blog.jenniferblowdryer.com/.

Rachel Kramer Bussel is an author, editor, blogger and event organizer. She is the editor of 40 anthologies, including Women in Lust, Obsessed, Orgasmic, Gotta Have It, Fast Girls, Best Bondage Erotica 2011, Spanked, Bottoms Up, and more. She is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations and writes a sex column for SexIs Magazine. She writes widely about sex, dating, books and pop culture, and blogs at Lusty Lady (http://lustylady.blogspot.com/) and Cupcakes Take the Cake (http://cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com/). For more info, please visit http://www.rachelkramerbussel.com/

Janice Erlbaum is the author of Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir (Villard, March ’06), and Have You Found Her: A Memoir (Villard, Feb. ’08). A founding member of the now defunct performance collective Pussy Poets, her poetry and prose has been featured in anthologies including Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, The Bust Guide To The New Girl Order, The Best American Erotic Poems From 1800 To The Present, The Autobiographer’s Handbook: The 826 National Guide to Writing Your Memoir, and Verses That Hurt: Pleasure and Pain from the Poemfone Poets.

Nicknamed SoulSistaRican (by artist/activist Earline Fisher) and Lovely Liz (by host Angel G of The Nuevo Latino Radio Show when sharing her erotic poetry), Elizabeth Rivera de Garcia is a poet, spoken word artist, actor and founder of MyPeopleProductions. She made her poetic debut at The Nuyorican Poet’s Café in Lady l for Banana Puddin’ Jazz and was invited again for Lady ll. Elizabeth has collaborated with Jazz singer Rome Neal for The Brooklyn Jazz Festival and has performed with Jazz Mojo at The Bowery Wine Co. She featured for Heaven on the Hudson at The Hudson River Café and is currently a resident poet of La Familia and company member of The Haiku Empire.

Jane LeCroy is a poet and performance artist, home-birthing mother of three, teacher, atheist, vegetarian, hedonist, who fronts the avant-pop band Transmitting with Tom Abbs. Her last book of poetry, “Names” was published by Booklyn (no “R”) as part of the award winning ABC Chapbook series. Her work has appeared in many publications including: Mudfish, Frank 151, Vector, and Teachers & Writers Magazine. LeCroy’s last CD, Transmitting “Dark and Full of Life” was released on the European label, Delphy Records. She is a teaching artist working in New York schools through Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Global Writes and DreamYard, she does literacy advocacy through Read To Me. LeCroy has many books and recordings available at www.janelecroy.com where you can request to be put on her e list and receive free poems hot off her brain with every show invite.

Sam J Miller is a writer and a community organizer. His work has been published in The Minnesota Review, Fiction International, Arts & Letters, West Branch, Washington Square, and The Rumpus, as well as anthologies like Best Gay Erotica 2006 & 2008. He’s the co-editor of Horror After 9/11, forthcoming from the University of Texas Press. For more info, please visit http://samjmiller.com/
Born and raised in Nigeria, Uche Nduka is a collagist, eroticist, and songwriter. He is the author of eight books of poems and winner of the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize in 1997. Some of his writings have been translated into German, Dutch, Romanian, Serbo-Croat, and French. He currently lives – and writes constantly – in New York City.

Puma Perl is a poet and fiction writer, producer, and performance artist who believes strongly in the transformative power of the creative arts. Her work has been published in over 100 print and online journals and anthologies. Her first chapbook, Belinda and Her Friends was awarded the Erbacce Press 2009 Poetry Award; a full length collection, knuckle tattoos, was published in 2010. She lives on the Lower East Side and has facilitated writing workshops in community based agencies and at Riker’s Island, a NYC prison. She is a founding member of DDAY Productions, and curates monthly shows at the Bowery Poetry Club.

Kathleen Warnock is series editor for Best Lesbian Erotica. Her own erotica has appeared in BLE, A Woman’s Touch, Friction 7, and Best Lesbian Romance. She curates the reading series Drunken! Careening! Writers! at KGB Bar the third Thursday of every month (since 2004). For more info, please visit http://www.kathleenwarnock.com/.

Caketrain Issue 9

Caketrain Issue 09.
Featuring the fantastic work of:
Jon Cone, Sabrina Dalla Valle, Josh Fomon, Megan M. Garr, Daniel Grandbois, Joe Hall, Chad Hardy, Aimee Herman, Chanice Hughes-Greenberg, Kate Rutledge Jaffe, Diane Kallas, Michael Kimball, Priscilla Kinter, Darby Larson, Julia Madsen, E.C. Messer, Gregg Murray, Thirii Myint, Alec Niedenthal, Hannah Pass, Michael Paukner, Nick Francis Potter, Zach Powers, Kathryn Rantala, Thibault Raoult, Joanna Ruocco, Mary Stein, J.A. Tyler, William VanDenBerg, Jonathan Volk, Alexandra Wilder, Angela Woodward.

Purchase online at: Caketrain Journal

west, all salty and real

Did you look up tonight?

See that thick moon, curving itself into the sky?
Notice it because it will go away if you forget.

Notice the smell she leaves inside magazines.

Notice the shape she makes when pressed against red-linen’d mattress.

Notice her bone structure. Eastern European lineage.

Notice her thumb slung into bent silver.

Notice her appetite. She forgets to eat lunch sometimes.

Notice the dent against her skull.
When those boys pushed her down because she was too dykey; she got back up and left the mud there.

I thought I could handle someone else’s trauma, but I can barely pronounce my own.

Notice her heels, frozen oceans cracked against feet.

Notice her hair, detangled due to boredom and persistence.

Notice her hipbone.
Her chin.
The freckles that gather in the summertime and worry the cancer genetically taunting her.

Notice her push, press of salt and blood against western earth
grow into thunders