Celebrate the LAST day of January with some incredible music and poems at Branded Saloon in Brooklyn.
Sunday, January 31st from 1-4pm, head to 603 Vanderbilt Avenue for some delicious brunch.
Head toward the back, grab a seat and listen to the incredible talents of:
& I’ll read a few poems too.
$15 for great food and to support this awesome venue that supports local talented talent.
Revisiting a performance from two summers ago with the great, great Trae Durica for Nerve Lantern.
This is about love. About lovers. About jumping off the ledge of a body. Saying what you need to say even when the one who needs to hear it is no longer listening.
from self diagnosed lactose intolerance (chapbook/ Baobob Tree Press/ 2008)
Sometimes we need to look back and hear the music of days ago to remind ourselves of the music and language still inside us.
Here is a collaboration I did with the marvelously enchanting Marina Marina:
Breathe, quiet leaves.
Fire, on the beach.
notice boards
scribbles sheets
heave and sigh
coffee’s weak
where to sleep?
come to me
dream of
greenery
have me please
on my knees to
pick berries
with a breeze
Breathe, quiet leaves.
Fire, on the beach.
The moon last night pushed out through a curtain of clouds and called out to me “REMAIN”.i breathed in it’s romantic shadows and fierce eye contact.this lover changes shapes each night but it never tells me to go away.
uproot songs
full of need
plant my bags
like a seed
complicate
human life
judge my face
not with sight.
please send greenery,
send greenery.
I travel beneath the plaster of earth in this construction site.and, a door opens, and birds, and…
I made love to myself
in the mirror, kissing my own lips,
saying, “I love myself,
I love you more than anybody.”
……Allen Ginsberg
I’ve been thinking a lot about Richard [Brautigan] and the slur of my body. And letters to what I’ve lost or look to find. And music. Always…..music.
Come celebrate poetry and performance with me on Tuesday, January 19th at: Risk of Discovery Reading Series
located @ Astoria Coffee
30-04 30th St Astoria, Queens
This FREE poetry open mic and show led by Micah Zevin @ Astoria Coffee opens its caffeinated doors at 7:30 for a 30 minute workshop. Participants will be given creative prompts to stimulate the writer’s poetic noodle.
Following the workshop, any and all other poetic enthusiasts, singers, songwriters, rappers, acoustic guitar players and slam poets can signup for the 15 slot open mic!
Each person will have 5 minutes to read one of their brand new workshop creations or another piece they have ready.
I’m excited to be featured alongside Gabriel Don and Craig Kite
One day, you will rise out from the ghosts of your bones and declare your entire body a forcefield of beauty.
One day, doors will no longer be a vehicle for slamming or keeping others out, but the shape of a wooden welcome banner.
One day, you will walk outside and forget about the trauma of yesterday; instead, you will gasp at all the oxygen and color and music and calories awaiting to be consumed.
One day, you will not be afraid to keep going.
One day, you will finish all the books you had difficulty starting and then, write a poem for all the days that led you here.
One day, you will try out religion again.
One day, you will ask yourself out on a date and actually enjoy…no, savor… the company of your skin.
One day, you will eat without guilt, without mathematics, without purge.
One day, you will leave your declared sexuality behind and experiment with the language of all-of-the-above.
One day, you will dance in the middle of an ocean and flap your arms against the salt that has waited for your swallow.
One day, you will finally go to all the lands you read about in the Travel section of The New York Times.
One day, you will finish your novel.
One day, you will forgive yourself.
One day, you will learn how to trust men again.
One day, you will remove part of your body in order to feel whole.
One day, you will get married and it will not be synonymous with any other contract or relationship. It will be gorgeously queer.
One day, you will sleep through the night.
One day, you will recognize your body.
One day. One day. More.
originally published by great weather for MEDIA
“Three weeks ago, I believed in God,” he said to me in a cracked whisper.
“I traveled from Jamaica—the island not the borough—where the water is the color of every girl’s eyes I’ve ever fallen in love with. Like real blue. Like before we got our hands on it.” He pointed to the people sitting in front of him as he spoke, ‘we’.
“And…what happened?” I asked.
“The short version,” he began “is this. My mother…she was a good woman. Cancer ate every inch of her, but even before that happened, she thanked God every day. Said, ‘God gave me this skin, these cupboards, the cans to fill them with. God gave me five children and…” Suddenly he paused and I thought maybe he decided all of this was too intimate to tell a stranger during early morning rush hour on the 4 train.
“What was I saying?” he mumbled. “Oh. Here, God hides. In this city, which you all say never sleeps, it’s full of too many shadows. Now, some shadows come with pockets. See, that’s where God hides. But here, too many of you are pocketless. I’ve been to fourteen churches. Not opposed to mosques or synagogues. Went there too. I’ve tried so many and cannot seem to find Him. In Jamaica, God is everywhere. In the clouds and cracks of sidewalks. In the ackee and saltfish. In the music and on every pair of lips I kiss. And I’ve kissed ‘em all. Believe it.”
As he lost the rest of his words to memory and the cloud of smoke it produces, I thought about the last time I believed in God and where it was found. And where it was heard. And how I lost the ability and desire to believe.
I could trace it back to that scar on my right leg in the shape of a severed kayak, once hyper, now lethargic.
Or it might be that stray hair on my right nipple that I used to pluck out of embarrassment, though now love for its rebellious twist and solo star quality. Is that responsible for my loss of belief?
It is so much easier to speak about God—even amidst the uncertainty and invisibility—than to articulate atheism and the loss of perhaps the most intricate relationship one might ever have.
I am desperate for a seat. Each time someone gets off, another leaps toward the empty square. I shift my weight back and forth as though I’m on some veiled see-saw. After several stops, there is a space for me. As I attempt to balance my overstuffed backpack on my lap, a woman, gently aged, turns to me and asks if I’ve let Jesus into my heart
I take a deep breath, knowing I am trapped. We are underground and stuffed like capers into this subway jar and it’s hard to ignore someone whose thigh is fused against yours.
“Uh….” is all I can utter.
She smiles and I cannot help to let my lips melt away from their scowl.
“Can I tell you a little about everything Jesus did for us?” she calmly sings. “He took all of our sins into his wrists. He hung for all our nightmares. But when he comes back…” she warns, “we will all be saved and smoothed out of our wrinkled pasts. You just…” And here is where she grabbed my wrist and I let her as though my body no longer belonged to me—did it ever?—and she polished my rippled skin with her wrinkled fingertips and said, “…you just need to let him in. Okay?”
I counted four tears. Three out of her left eye and one slowly slinking down her right. She was difficult not to notice: Black eyeliner from yesterday or two days prior. Faded lipstick, kissed off. Stockings and burly black Doc Marten boots. One of those haircuts from seventy decades ago, but she looked to be no more than twenty.
She existed nine years ago on the F train. As I was making my way home from a secret I waited four years to speak out loud.
Commutes were different back then; no blaring video game soundtracks eeking out of fancy phones or hypnotized trigger fingers drunk off candy crush. People just sat. Waited for their stop. Read books more. Listened to music through tiny headphones.
What I wanted to say was this:
The most difficult thing that will ever happen to you is right now. These tears, so insistent, they cannot wait for home. For tissues to sop them up. For a dark closet to pile them into. In this moment, nothing could ever possibly compare to this.
I wanted to grab her fingers and trace enough poems into her skin and knuckles to remind her this salt makes her more human. More alive. More beautiful, even.
And just as I was about to stand up and move toward her—or maybe I was too afraid and never would have—I watched her grab a tiny, beaten-up book with her cracked black-polished fingers.
I thought it was a journal at first. Some kind of aged diary, but then I watched her open it from the end and move her thin lips, quietly reading along. Quietly. Praying.
If you have never fallen asleep on the train, resulting in the complete disaster of arriving in a location you know nothing about and of course you contain no map in your pocket—digital or otherwise—and add to that your bladder is full and you are hungry or thirsty in a way your body has never known before and it is dark out so all the street signs are asleep and you are also half asleep and alone and and and….then you understand what it is to believe in something.
Because this is the moment where you get off the train because you have to.
Because it is the last stop and you are the kind of person who obeys rules like that.
And your watch is on your dresser at home and your phone has died—if you even own one—wouldn’t you love to be the kind of person who doesn’t even own one.
You look ahead and there is a person, half awake as well, behind the glass shield of the subway station counter. They are reading a newspaper or playing a game on their phone; this particular detail has no relevance. What matters is this: they notice you in a way you have never been noticed before. Not in a sexual way or a pity-party way because you are lost and your bladder is screaming, but because they see you as human. As someone who has traveled from somewhere and has made it to here—wherever that may be—and they look up and say, “Take a deep breath. You’re only lost if you let yourself forget that everyplace is somewhere and an opportunity to arrive. So, welcome.”
You look around because this person couldn’t possibly be talking to you, but what does it matter? Youheard it and suddenly you believe in the possibility of something.
Of being.
Of breathing.
Of the lost in everyone and the unbearable dimension of what it is to arrive.
This week, two brand NEW performances, which I’ve been working hard on!
Rimes of The Ancient Mariner presents:
“The Losers Club” Project
Cornelia Street Café – 29 Cornelia Street, NYC
Wednesday January 6, 2016 @ 6:00pm SHARP!
$9.00 Admission includes one free drink.
Also featuring: Ron Kolm, Joel Gold, Moira Smith, and many other great performers!
January 7th, 2016:
BIG WORDS!!! Reading Series
@ 61 Local (61 Bergen St, Brooklyn)
6-8pm
The night’s theme: Commuting
FREE EVENT !!!! (though we need to keep these venues alive, so purchase their delicious food and beverages!)
Dear 2016,
I know. It’s too soon. It’s too soon to sweep you up as though we were two souls growing fat and thirsty in anticipation for each other. We just met. I will disappoint you and you will make me long for the year which just ended.
But how about we touch a little. Like over-the-shirt fondling of secrets. I’ll give away my four favorite vocab words and you can give me a sneak peek of August or even March.
You can mention I’ve gained weight–my mirror already told me so. You can tell me that I will forget how to breathe properly. And I will tear up. And I will scream open my seams and need repairing.
You can mention that grey hair only one person knows about and the fact that I lie about the length of my sorrow.
I get it. You’ve gotten a lot of requests. Expectations, you clarify.
Everyone wants you to be better than last year and the ones before that.
I want you to be limbless, so you couldn’t possibly pick up a gun or handle weapons of any sort. I want your mind to be like a disengaged jaw–wide open– to people of all colors of all religious beliefs.
You want me to back off when I beg for a hint of November’s results. I just want to know I’ll be safe. All the queers and gender non-conforming folks and the wombs of the women who need full access and rights to their body.
You tell me that it’s just the first day. The earliest hours. How can I possibly know all this? you say.
I know. I just…I cannot handle more blood coloring up the black-and-grey newspapers. And all this warmth feeling up the earth. Should I worry? How can I protect it?
I hear you. I mean, I sense your invisible fingers prodding me. Begging me toward patience. But. 2016, can you just sneak me a little hint? How about Hillary? Or the Syrian refugees? What ever happened to those girls, stolen by the Boko Haram? Do we find them, 2016?
Can you…can you tell me about the rising cost of living? We need more affordable housing, 2016.
And how will you protect our speech and how will you pay better attention to the warning signs of terror and how and how and how will you resolve all the bodies buried and left for dead, suffocating our soil? Tell me.
We are all struggling for breath, these days, 2016. How will you fix that?
I know. I’m sorry. Yes, I see that line of people behind me. Wanting to know. Begging for answers as well. But. But I just need to know….will I figure myself out this year? Will I translate the ghosts and hidden cupboards in my body? Get this gender dislocation in order? Is this the year? What? Can I not inquire about myself just a little? I didn’t think you’d answer. I mean, I didn’t think I’d make it to you. But. Here I am. Here…we are. So, tell me, 2016, how are you going to save us now?
Aimee Herman 