(how are YOU) meant to wake up feeling?

Experiment #362: Go to your book shelf. If you have a designated poetry section, go there. If not, well, quickly make one, alphabetize according to author and pause. Perhaps it is time to introduce a new book to your shelves. Go to your “H” section. Can you make some room?

Now, (bare with me), purchase a copy of my newest poetry collection, meant to wake up feeling. You can find it HERE. Or HERE. Or HERE. Or even HERE.

Take a deep breath. (I always do when I purchase something on the Internet).

Next, I want you to email me. Nothing fancy. Just something like: Hey, I bought it. OR: Did what you said, now what?

In your email, give me your address and I will send you a personalized letter. I know what you’re thinking: I’m going to put you on some mailing list. Nope. Or I’m hoarding addresses to publish in well-trafficked bathrooms. Ummm…..nope.

I think there is nothing more intimate than giving away one’s handwriting. (OK…..maybe there are a few other more intimate things….) Taking the time to use ink or lead to write words on paper, stuff into envelope, with a stamp! and then mail it??!?!?!

After you purchase a copy of my book, I will write you a REAL letter. A good one. With lots of words on a handmade card. And a stamp, of course.

So…here’s my email: aimeeherman@gmail.com

Looking forward to hearing from you!

letters.

Dear Kazim.

They thought I was asleep, but I heard her scream out at that star that may or may not have been a swollen airplane. She called it another place to live. She called it a high wire pause. Or was that me.

**

Dear Lidia.

I scrubbed my hands better than I have all year, before I plunged them into my body to rip out the mail. His name is ____________ and full of papercuts and improper postage. We are already in love.

**

Dear Rebel.

How about we stage a protest this year. Eat only syllables and postures. I will continue to challenge the disobedience of my breath and you can remind me that gender is a disco ball better left rotating.

**

Dear Poet.

You owe me a letter. But I will wait for your shadowboxing bellow. As I sit here, sore from an early morning bone stretch, no longer calling tomorrow a clean slate. Instead, a movement of magic.

you can be mountain and i will be skyscraper

Dear Rebel.

Johnny Cash sings to me from a Brooklyn cafe. Somewhere in the walls, he lifts himself through circular cracks called speakers and haunts me into this letter. Are you writing. A woman on the 4 train with dark roots and red-drenched locks asked to read my shoulder today. I watched her from the Bronx into Brooklyn, read local newspaper out loud to her partner. I first grew distracted by her voice, which sounded carved out and scratched up like acidic-graffiti on subway windows. I watched her mouth move, a bit sunken in from lack of teeth, slowly sound out each word. With invisible straw between lips, she sucked up each syllable, then looked at her partner. That’s from a book, she said.  I can tell. I wanted to tell her that humans hit the height of their beauty when they are reading. Humans who swallow literature in ways that sometimes cause indigestion or sometimes create strain in the gut. This is the stun of cognition.

Rebel, I wonder about the state of your mountains: the peaks of earth that grow inside you. Perhaps I can lend you some of my bolts and windows. My glass is streaked but so is this planet. How about you throw ink into the air and let the wind bring your liquid permanence toward this side.

Johnny twangs his teeth into knee-slapping rhythms and I’ve put on some weight. It is either a baby or a prose poem gathering dust inside my womb and I may need to whisper into my body that I am not a fan of over-population, and much prefer the narrative of metrical structure. Can we yurt soon. There is a home that is red on a street made of crowns and it waits for me to insert my key. I think about what home has meant to me this past month of wander. Suppertime with a human who has reintroduced to me the importance of starting over. Adventures with a three-year old who notices everything that gets lost once you reach a certain age. Sleeping in a room where a pile of bags remind me of impermanence. There has been love and some wanderings of grey. Contemplations of exi(s)ting. Rebel, I will cook you kale and poetry. We can drip coconut oil from our curls into a cast iron pan and devour the days that cling to our twists. I’ll keep my windows open.

where to send a letter

There is a bench with two gold stiletto heeled shoes, abandoned. It is 10:14 am, but they arrived at 2:14 am. I’ve gone missing. Search closely for the clump of hair, 1/2 an earring, my skin cells, blood. I won’t be returning. You may forward all mail here.

*

My bench is the one with blue and white blanket. Would you believe I’ve had that since childhood? How old do I look? The seams are all ripped open, most of the stuffing is gone, replaced by dead mosquitoes, ants, bed bugs. Don’t take my pillow. Leave it for the next guy. Wanna send a letter? Hide it beneath the painted wood.

*

I am the seventh bench on Eastern Parkway. Starting from where? Starting from one. Catch me snoring from 3 am – 10. I got weapons hidden in my knees. My hair is contagious. I spit blood and mold. Don’t bother me.

*

I never pick the same one: benches, girls, apples, moods. I don’t need to be tracked. Not looking to be found. You can still send a letter though. I’m good at unearthing the lost.

practice insignificance

(excerpts of a letter for *C)

[you ask]: What do I listen to?
When I write, I often listen to Bon Iver. There is a haunt to his voice and the instrumentation that surrounds him. However, I’m always looking for something instrumental to move me through the lines. Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujah makes me lose my breath.

[a sliver of time]
It is almost midnight and I am gathering up the final moments of a day. Night is raining above me. Crazy, crazy, maddening rain. I cannot see because my glasses are coated and my hair is caught on my face, but an umbrella would have just ruined it all. Because then I wouldn’t have felt the squish of rain in my shoes or bath of sky on my body.

What did you do wrong? Tell me about your isolation. Tell me about it in a way you’ve never allowed yourself to describe it. How do you handle loneliness? What interrupts your silence? What led you toward me?

You want to know my favorite color and movies and you are hiding out in a square without knobs or windows and I am hiding out inside this body that has me locked up.

And you want to know if I shave my pussy but then you want to know about (my) god.

And you want to know about my dreds [sic] and your insignificance reminds me of reminds me of reminds me of

You’ve learned how to light a cigarette with a single battery and how to masturbate quietly.

I want to tell you that I used to rub a pillow between my legs until I decided what gender to go for.

*
Maybe later.