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Exhaustion | Updates that Suck

It’s four weeks into the semester.  No, five.

Right? Five?

Yeah, five…. and I am exhausted.

Bone weary.

Wrung out.

The only way I’m able to propel myself upward and forward every day is due to a heavily reliance on RedBull and espresso. My piss is literally orange.

Which is great.

I always wanted that for myself.

I forgot how much of a toll it is on my body and brain having to travel to the city each week. I also remember a time when I used to love being there – but now, the more time I spend there the more I fucking hate it. Everything is more complicated than it needs to be. Everything is an hour train ride (at least) away – and the trains are always packed shoulder to shoulder with barely any sitting room, let alone a place to sit. It take so much extra effort to just move in this god damn place – forget rest.

I’m tired of being packed in like a sardine. I’m tired of smelling stale piss everywhere I go. I’m tired of this high density population which robs people from seeing the humanity in others because you HAVE TO MOVE QUICKLY, NOW, NOW, NOW.

The only thing keeping me sane is the woman that I’m staying with out in Queens. She’s incredible, amazing, and I adore her and her family. I’m so happy to spend time with her. She’s got one of the best hearts I’ve ever encountered.

On top of all of this I decided to take a job… mainly because unemployment was cut off and I had sucked through all of my savings. I got bills to pay ya’ll and we all know poetry don’t pay shit.

So I decided to do package delivery with an not-to-be-named mega corporation. The job is easy, and extremely physical. Which is good for me; I got a few covid pounds I gotta lose…and being inside my head all day at school…. being in my body gives my brain a break. It’s easy. It’s a check. It’s whatever.

I just started my PhD application, too, and I’m wondering what the fuck I’m thinking. But hell… why not, right?

Anyway, I’m sorry I haven’t be around much. You know the drill if you’ve been here awhile. I generally don’t have much time to post until December when the semester ends…. but I’m still here, bumbling around.

x

L

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Welcome Home | Poems that Suck

"Welcome home,"
  and by 'home' I 
    meant my pussy as
      you slid deeply inside of me.

'Home' because
  you fit perfectly,
   your cock anchoring me
     to the ground of your being

where our
  spirits mingle with each other
   in the full embodiment of co-creation.
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An Interview with Punk Poetess Leia John @suckasspoetry

Check out this interview I did with Punk Noir Magazine!

Punk Noir Magazine

Can you tell our readers a little bit about how you got started in the Literature scene?

I’ve been writing my entire life, but it wasn’t until last year that I started posting old poems to a WordPress site while going through a rough patch in my personal life. It was an idea born of too much coffee (large, of course), very little sleep and a desire to take the edge of a nasty depressive episode. I had this enormous backlog so I just typed that shit up and scheduled it to post every day. I must have tagged it right because people began following.
At that point I wasn’t thinking about publishing anything beyond that site, I was content limiting the content to whoever managed to stumble upon it. Then Matthias over at Newington Blue reached out to me to see if I was interested in submitting a poem…

View original post 898 more words

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First Week of Classes | Updates that Suck

The first week of classes is officially complete … and, holy shit, am I tired.

My first class with Cornel West was on Tuesday, and his presence is… stunning. He holds forth in the classroom, and like the best of Baptist preachers knows how to move his body and use his voice to draw you in, raise the energy in the room and hold that energy for three hours. He is intellectually powerful, and his spirit is Titan. Coincidentally, I met him on the street after class. I was smoking a cigarette while speaking with another student when he stopped to have a chat. I was amazed by the change in him; he was gentle, and very, very PRESENT WITH YOU IN THAT MOMENT.  And I don’t mean present with you like you feel you’re under a microscope – I mean that he is THERE. The only time I’ve felt that way is a few years ago when I was running from soldiers with a group of teenage boys in one of the conflict zones I work in — we were running, and I felt totally in my body but at the same time to totally present with these boys…. we were TOGETHER.

These brief interactions with him gave me a lot of food for thought as I rode the train to my room that night. I was thinking about how so many of my seminarian friends perceive me —  as the loud mouth that makes them giggle in delight. I never particularly understood that last part – why my sassy mouth would bring such glee. As the train was cutting through the city I thought about the contents of what I say – that my “loud mouth” is often a product of my frustration. You can say I have a particularly low tolerance for bullshit – and you know some shit is about to go down when I say something along the lines of, “let’s call a spade a spade,” which is always followed by me calling it how I see it.

And then it hit me; my goal in coming to this particular seminary was to “find my prophetic voice.” Prophets, as Heschel described them, are the scream in the night. Over the last year I’ve gotten less and less patient, which has caused me to become louder and louder in the classroom and elsewhere. Paralleling that, I’ve noticed that my care for offending people, pleasing them, comforting them, their judgement or their discomfort has plummeted to zero. I just don’t give a FUCK. I have no hesitation in calling someone or something out on their bullshit. I’m done.

And that’s when I realized that I’ve found my Prophetic voice. That I’ve become so deeply rooted in my own work and message, that everything else has burned away – that I can see clearly and move forward.

Now what?

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Camping Trip | Poems that Suck

Camping Trip
I was once convinced
by an ex to go with him
to a music festival.

Three days of speed metal
during the daylight hours and
techno and trance at night.

We spent two days high
on acid, laughing ourselves
silly at random shit.

When we were finally
able to fall asleep, I was
woken up hours later by

the sound of rushing
water and when I opened
my eyes I saw my purse

float by. I turned over
to find him standing at
the mouth of the tent

and pissing into it,
rather than out of it;
understandable, really.

“Friend,” I asked in my
gentlest tone, “is this
prudent? Do you think,

maybe, this is a bad
decision?” He looked
at me, a mixture of

confusion and defiance,
and without hesitation
aimed his dick at me

and pissed between my
eyes. That day I learned
you don’t ask questions

in these situations, and
you can’t argue with
a pissed off pisser.

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Seize & Desist | Prose that Sucks

‘God, I hope she doesn’t shit on me.’

That was the stray thought that flitted through my mind like an alley cat as I held Calva’s head off of the tiled floor.

I was the first to see her eyes roll and her face contort into the ghoulish carnival mask that foretold of the oncoming seizure – facial muscles jerking, mouth sucking at the air like a fish out of water – but a blockade of chairs and anxious lookers-on prevented me from being swift enough to stop her head from slamming onto the cheap tile floor with a crack that echoed through the room.

It was by luck of the draw that Nancy – another Worker’s girlfriend who was an RN – was visiting at that time, and that she was the first to Calva’s side. I hovered dumbly over the both of them, never having seen someone seize before I had no idea what to do.

“Go get something to cover her bottom half,” Nancy’s voice snapped me out of my useless fretting, and gave me a task to focus on. Calva had been wearing a dress, and was now familiarizing half of the shelter with the exact shape and texture of her genitals.

“Now what?” I asked once I ended the peep show.

“There’s really nothing you can do for someone having a seizure. You just turn them on their side and let them go,” she replied with a glance to her watch.

I held Calva’s head in my hands, her course buzz cut tickling my palms as I willed my comfort into her flesh. The seconds crept into minutes as her body continued to jolt until, bit by bit, her body relaxed and her breathing became steady.

Of course that’s when the ambulance came.

The slamming of the stretcher caused Calva’s eyes to snap open, and whip wildly around the room.

“It’s ok,you’re at the shelter,” I cooed as they roughly hoisted her body on to the stretcher.

“I’m clean! I’ve been clean for years! Don’t let them put my in jail!”

“Calva… CALVA!! You’re not going to jail – you’re going to the hospital, you had a seizure.”

“Shit, that’s all? Well, let’s go!”

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Dead Dogs | Reviews that Suck

1Like almost all the other authors I’ve written about on this blog, Manny and I met on Twitter.  I think we were following each other before I sent out the call for book recommendations – but he did respond to my call with his own book, Dead Dogs. 

Book Details

  • Moonshine Cove Press
  • 151 Pages
  • 6×9 dimensions
  • $14 price point
  • Matte cover with glue binding.

Summary

“There are bodies to be disposed of and all the local dumpsters are full. There are armed terrorists in the backseat … and they’re all smoking sherm. Yuppies have taken over East Atlanta, and the drug dealers are at war…

Read the misadventures of two Atlanta misfits involved with a circus of outlaws and revolutionaries, coerced into various criminal activities.”

Review

So, I want to acknowledge something. One day, while I was reading this, Manny just so happened to tweet that English wasn’t his first language – that he had to learn it as he grew up. That bit of intel forced me to sit back in my chair and blink rapidly.  English is hard enough to learn how to speak, but to write it (and write it well) — the odds are against you.

This dude wrote an entire god-damn novel in a language that he had to learn — and wrote it well enough for me to not even question whether or not he was a native speaker. God DAMN!  Manny, you got the biggest set of brass balls I’ve ever encountered — and I mean that in the best possible of ways.

Moving on to the story —

Dead Dogs is a WILD ride! My head was spinning throughout the entire book, the most common questions being: What the fuck is going on?! Who the fuck is this?! What the fuck just happened?! Where the fuck are we?! What…. the… FUCK?!!! To say this book is dizzying is the understatement of the century. It’s fast-paced, it’s gritty, it’s good.  If you dig pulp, grit lit, transgressive fiction — you’ll love the hell out of this.

I do, however, want to point out a MAJOR miss for me — the editing.

This book jumps backwards and forwards in time – think of a Guy Richie movie – and while there are three parts to the book it NEEDS to have individual chapters to help that transition between time and space be more definitive and obvious to the reader. There were many times I had to flip backward to figure out the timeline of events – which was frustrating because it slowed the pace of the book.

Like I said, this is not a writing problem – the writing is good and solid – this is an editing problem, and that falls at the feet of Moonshine Cove. The editing just fucked this book for me — and I’m pretty pissed about that because it’s a damn good story.

I really look forward to the sequel to this book, which will be published by Outcast Press next year (I believe).  I trust their editors, and know that what comes next in the Dead Dogs series will be amazing!

Now, don’t be a dickhead buy Dead Dogs here.

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What’s Coming | Updates that Suck

Hey ya’ll,

Just want to give you a heads up on what’s coming down the pike.

Summer is coming to an end which means that school begins shortly. For those who are new here; I am a Master’s Candidate at Union Theological Seminary in NYC (my degree is, officially, an M.Div). It’s my final year – which, for the first time in my academic career, I am excited about. To say that I am tired is the understatement of the century.

For those who have been with me for a while, or since the jump, you know that this tends to be a slow time for me posting and writing since all of my time is wrapped up in school work. (Six mother-fucking classes, ya’ll… SIX). What you all haven’t experienced yet, since we’ve been in pandemic, is the fact that I travel 16 hours (one way) each week in order to attend these classes…. did I say I was tired? Despite wanting to have classes in person and to see my friends and beloved faculty – I do have hope that classes will go back online given the upsurge in COVID caes. I HATE travelling by bus every week (I did it my first year, and it was FUCKING AWFUL) and would like to be spared that again this year. I doubt that will happen, though.

So.. six classes, travelling 16 hours a week, homework, writing some poems when I can…. what else can I add on to that flaming shit pile? OHHHHH a PhD application. Yeah… which means writing a thesis.

So yeah.. what does this all mean for you?

I’m suspending reviews until January – simply because I do NOT have the bandwidth to do all this shit, and review books. I will then continue to review in January, and then suspend them again in February so I can focus on finishing out my last semester. My last review until January will be Stephen Gold’s “Love Like Bleeding Out” which will come next Friday.

I will continue to post life updates, and – of course – poetry/prose. I just won’t have a schedule for this. They’ll come when I have space, time, etc.

I just want to thank you all for an amazing summer… a chap release, a handful of publications, a strong Twitter following. Ya’ll are so amazing and supportive – THANK YOU!

xxx

L