Tag: nonfiction

Elizabeth Bachner talks to Lillian Ann Slugocki for WOR II Book Tour

…female sexuality has been, with a few notable exceptions (Anais Nin, Colette), written through the male gaze. That just has to change, and it is changing–erotica written by women has exploded, some of it is badly written, some of it is really well written, Angela Carter comes to mind. But good or bad, it’s good to see it out there in the world. I think that means that eventually women can reclaim their own sexual identity. Right now, we don’t own it, we haven’t written that definition, or told that story yet. Even as the fourth wave of feminism rises up, female sexuality is still primarily a male trope. And that informs everything. It informs Anna Karenina, it informs Blanche DuBois, Eve, Lilith, Mary Magdalene, Cinderella. Images of women in even the most stable of texts are informed by this trope.

Heatwaves I’ve known and loved @ Entropy

Everything is green, too green. Even Demeter is dying. Here in Westchester, 20 years after the marriage ended, there’s a heat wave, and thunderheads in the still, blue sky. There’s a different kind of stink, not like the city, but still sweet. Things rot in this heat. Only yesterday, I finally took out the garbage, it was starting to ferment. This is the apotheosis of high summer. It is that space, where the wheel of the seasons is on the brink of shifting again. You can stand the heat, because the smell of things rotting is also the first sign of re-growth. Wallace Stevens wasn’t wrong, because the quiet death of all green things, in high summer, late July, is sweet.

Requiem for Brooklyn @ Vol. 1 Brooklyn

I have big plans to wash clothes and bedding, and mop the hardwood floors. Instead I roll a joint on the desk in the large empty living room. It’s the only piece of furniture in this room; not counting the kitchen chair where I’ve propped a large framed photo of the Rolling Stones at Altamont–a gift from my late brother. The very same picture that fell off the wall the first day here, and completely shattered a glass topped coffee table. I didn’t have a broom, never mind a dust pan. It happened at five in the morning, still dark out. My first thought; I’m taking this fucking picture and throwing it in the river. Because once I started to let go of things, it was hard to stop.