Ekphrastic 25/The Fox Woman
To frogspawn
an egg is all
(together, a raft of universes)
A fox reads poetry
licks kanji till they stick to her tongue
(as any human would)
The wasp makes her nest as soft as ash
a glue of whiskers adhere the layers
(without whiskers the cat cannot measure
herself
her home
the twin bowls her paws make in the snow that is
nothing more than tears
vaporizing from cheeks
polished smooth as blue mirrors
or silk with a spider’s web motif
ice bones beneath).
Under a winter’s harvest moon
your twisted maple lashes caught the snow
(and sometimes my reflection)
At the end of our wedding night
your body, a crescent
your hair a bloom of fox tail.
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This is it. My last ekphrastic. Only probably not. But it’s the last one I’ll probably ever write on a schedule (not that I adhered to that schedule very well. My timeline existed conceptually, but not actually). Anyway, this particular poem was written for the book The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson, who wrote my favorite novel of last year, Fudoki (which I also wrote an ekphrastic for).
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Previous ekphrastic: Ekphrastic 24/Death Note
and
What the hel is ekphrasis + Ekphrastic Poetry Archive (For poems about A Game of Thrones, Fudoki, The Hunger Games, Blood Meridian, etc–basically, just the stuff to fulfill your brain’s literary sugar-cravings.)
American Knees
I love this book for the sex. It’s different because it’s familiar. Familiar not because my partner tells me stories while we fuck (he doesn’t), like Raymond does for Aurora in this novel, but because this narrative sex feels real to me. It’s not just a string of sentences describing a series of stereotypical actions (kiss, disrobe, penetrate–in case you were wondering what those were). Instead, it’s a convergence. The meeting of two individuals. The stories they tell in bed are no less than their shared emotional depth made vocal.
And yes, there’s plenty of licking/nipping/biting/thrusting etc–which is fine. I’ve no complaints. But those verbs are not all there is to the sex. The love-making here is all human, no mechanics.
Anyway, I should note: this book isn’t erotica. It’s erotic, I guess. But at its core, it’s literary fiction. A delicate (and often indelicate) tale about being Chinese, and Japanese, in America–about the nuances of race, culture and identity, about individuals choosing where they fit (and wondering whether or not they have a choice as to where that niche is). It’s about humans falling in and out of love, with humor, grace and failure.
I read American Knees in preparation for MFA application season (still far off, I know, but there’s a lot of preparing to do). The UW is one of my top schools and Shawn Wong, the author of American Knees teaches there. I’ll soon be reading more of his work, but after this book’s humor, and quirky, intimate human interaction, I’ve no doubt he’s someone worth studying with.
And apparently, it’s a film. Guess I’ll have to look into that.
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Books read, 2013 (a–probably–incomplete list):
2312
Prince of Thorns
Wonders of the Invisible World
Travels through Middle Earth, the path of a Saxon pagan
The Drowning Girl: A Memoir
American Knees
The Fox Woman
Tattertongue
This is the way of the world: you get what you want and you’re just left wanting more. My first professionally published poem is now available through Strange Horizons. Needless to say, I am QUITE excited. Even so, it’s a quiet excitement. A spontaneous black hole excitement. At random points in the day, I’ll remember: someone gave me money for my words. My blog is no longer the only place that publishes me. That says something! Justification! I’m REAL. And then, after the blip of joy that inevitably follows such thoughts, I think moremoremore. Getting published is good incentive to keep trying to get published. It’s some sort of drug, I guess.
So. The poem. TATTERTONGUE:
Where have you been, Tattertongue?
lying with pelvis and ribcage
wanting want
old. old.
reading the mouth for
sugared ginger for
blood sausageWhy did you leave?
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Speaking of more, not long after this poem was released, I received another acceptance for another poem. Won’t say much about it now, except alien vampires.
making failure phallic
I’m learning to love failure. I’m learning to eye it with hunger. I’m learning to break it into kindling-sized pieces small enough to pile in my belly for whenever I need a fire. I’m learning to thrive off of failure, I’m–
I’m learning that this thing I’ve named failure isn’t failure.
It’s a crag. An ocean. The space between planets, stars. But nothing that can stop me. Anyway, it’s not like any of my many rejection letters are telling me to stop (not that STOP would ever actually stop me). Sometimes they don’t care whether I write or not: form rejections that start with thank you for and end with no thanks. Often, they’re personalized notes that ask for more (which is good, encouraging–a little extra air in my tank so my lungs don’t starve as I thrash along towards the far end of the Milky Way). Maybe they don’t want my story, but not a single one has yet told me what shit I am (though I once thoroughly confused a slush reader at Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine).
But maybe they think it. Or maybe they know I hear it from myself plenty already and don’t need the encouragement, or that they just can’t be bothered. Or, more likely, they’re just decent human beings with giant slush piles. I’m not a failure to them, or anyone else–I just didn’t fit or I wasn’t good enough.
But again–not failure. What is it, then? Pushing my limits, ignoring them. Breaking my thinking bones so they can re-grow in new illogical ways, so I can use them in new, illogical ways.
And then, after all that, sometimes I win.
Sometimes I get a poem published. Sometimes I get two.
Today, Strange Horizons is publishing Tattertongue. (Link to be posted when the poem is.)
The day before yesterday, I got good news about another poem.
Cocoa-derived celebration ensued.
Ekphrastic 24/Death Note
The apple-crazed.
Name: Ryuk
Face: made of bone and a lively rigor mortis
Death: he dies in December for his apple-blossom lover
Raze.
Name: Yagami
Face: you pretty, pretty boy
Death: crushed beneath the weight of his own head
Hell.
Name: L
Face: on it you’ll find a crumb of strawberry cake and tea stains under his eyes
Death: angel
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Second to last ekphrastic poem. Next one, the twenty fifth, will be a long one. Inspired by what? No idea. Suggestions welcome.
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Previous ekphrastic: Ekphrastic 23/The Drowning Girl: A Memoir
and
What the hel is ekphrasis + Ekphrastic Poetry Archive (For poems about A Game of Thrones, Fudoki, The Hunger Games, Blood Meridian, etc–basically, just the stuff to fulfill your brain’s literary sugar-cravings.)
the self-destructing neckbeard
Grit vs. Grim. Learning to cope with annihilation (a.k.a. book writing). On realizing that ‘half-breed’ is never a good descriptor for a human being. Baby animal gifs. More on all this below:
That Crafty Feeling (Zadie Smith on making a book, and why novel writing is a terrible-wonderful thing. Self-destruction in action–this is good. I know. I write to take myself apart and put me back together again.)
Coverage of Women on SF/F Blogs (2012) (A project about “about the visibility of women in science fiction and fantasy reviews” with a preface that discusses the difficulty of trying to have “a conversation about gender in SF/F fandom involving people outside your social group.” Bascially, “it’s like inviting six angry poltergeists into your home filled with handcrafted family heirlooms passed down for multiple generations: everything gets broken, including your capacity to discuss anything more mentally taxing than adorable gifs of baby animals for weeks.”)
I love a Good Tragedy as Much as the Next Guy (Elizabeth Bear on grittiness verses grimdark. “…the best of the current wave of gritty fantasy…embraces a balance closer to reality:…the world is arbitrary and unfair, and that sometimes even well-meaning people do awful things: desperate, vicious things.”)
Revising “Weaving Dreams” (In which an author screws up and attempts to rectify the disaster. First read about this short story over at Requires Hate. It’s good to see writers who are open and sensitive to the world. Also, a nice unfurling of the editing process.)
when art just won’t leave you alone
When it comes to food, sex and traffic lights, I’m patient. I don’t get road rage, except in the context of environmental mauling. But when it comes to art, food, and sex, I’m impatient. I’ve been working on a shirt design for Moss of Moonlight’s upcoming album, Winterwheel. This was the first design:
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Yeah, I know: meh. The rosehip works great for the album cover, especially since it’s a photo. What lies above was the result of me riffing on said photo. I’ll be honest: it’s kind of shiit. And definitely not something I’d ask people to pay for and wear. I should have known this before I put it in ink. But sometimes I get patience and impatience confused with obsession.
So I got as far as the above, even scanned it into Paint Tool Sai, started digitizing the lineart–and woke up. Got my hand to stop, because I knew all along what I was doing was wrong. I had to start over.
I slept on it, woke up again, knowing that what I really needed was an elk. Or elk-inspired, at any rate. Because Winterwheel has a song about the goddess Hretha, her elkling, and the course of life and death they traverse and make together.
What follows is the lineart for the piece I developed. The one that, once in hue, will be printed on cloth and worn by real human beings.
Ekphrastic Poems
(Twenty-five poems inspired by art.)
Ekphrastic Poetry Archive:
Ekphrastic 1/RIN: Daughters of Mnemosyne
Ekphrastic 4/ A Song of Ice and Fire: A Storm of Swords
Ekphrastic 5/Sextraterrestrial
Ekphrastic 7/A Study in Aphroxology
Ekphrastic 8/雲のむこう、約束の場所 (The Place Promised in our Early Days)
Ekphrastic 10/The Hunger Games
Ekphrastic 12/The Fifth Element
Ekphrastic 14/Beasts of the Southern Wild
Ekphrastic 19/Sisters, Pain of Salvation (Sean Thomas covers)
Ekphrastic 20/Wonders of the Invisible World
Ekphrastic 21/With the End in Mind
Ekphrastic 22/The Drowning Girl
Ekphrastic 23/The Drowning Girl: A Memoir
Ekphrastic 24/Death Note (coming Friday the 19th!)
Ekphrastic 23/The Drowning Girl: A Memoir
I begin in winter. Me, Winter.
(I beg in winter.)
Slow veined, should have shut off the water
for the season.
An avalanche from her mouth, her singing
down my throat
bisecting me from my summer legs
my wolf legs.
Sea-wolf, the orca is called
but she’s no killer and neither are they, so none of this is true.
And her name is Trawl, urchin salmon and stipe-threaded
she approaches the cannery.
Back in summer.
Seasons on a clockface.
What mysteries he made of your esophagus.
How you try to howl as you smile.
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I just can’t stop writing about this book. If my fingers touch my keyboard, the words I write are marked by it. Next week, I’ll write something resembling a review for The Drowning Girl: A Memoir and maybe try to figure out this obsession.
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Previous ekphrastic: Ekphrastic 22/The Drowning Girl
and
What the hel is ekphrasis + Ekphrastic Poetry Archive (For poems about A Game of Thrones, Fudoki, The Hunger Games, Blood Meridian, etc–basically, just the stuff to fulfill your brain’s literary sugar-cravings.)
some fingerbones for you to feast upon
Again, cleaning fingerbones from the floor of the room in my lap. Usually I’m good at picking up after myself, but last week, I just let them fall. Some of them still fleshed and un-gnawed. I won’t spend much time wondering why, but it has something to do with this book. I’ve also been working on shirt designs for Moss of Moonlight. And workworkworking.
Capricon Follow-up: Notes from the International SF/F panel: (A list of international science fiction and fantasy. Must find myself a wormhole so I can have more reading time. In the same vein (world sf/f, not wormholes), go ahead and Write Your Heart Out.)
The Endless Alienation of Movies: (The womenless-ness of SyFy Channel Saturday night movies: You could have literally flipped a fucking coin for every single role, and cast accordingly. “Whoops, female lead, male antagonist, female love interest…” Better yet, make it a d10, and if you roll a ten, roll again for assigned birth gender, and then go from there…read more.)
HOW TO KARATE YOUR NOVEL AND EDIT THAT MOTHERFUCKER HARD: A No-Foolin’ Fix-That-Shit Editing Plant To Finish The Goddamn Job (Some obvious and meh bits, plus good advice: Train yourself to listen for the issues at hand while ignoring the proposed “fixes” — when someone tells you, “I think Dave should be a cyborg instead of a robot and maybe he should just have sex with the copier machine instead of proposing marriage,” you need to recognize the problems (issue with Dave’s identity not working, concerns over his relationship with the copier) while dismissing the solutions (cyborg, copier-sex).)
Ang Lee and the Uncertainty of Success (I’ve struggled toward success a long time: since fourth grade, when I wrote my first ‘book’ (a twenty page mystery thriller called Buddy about a girl and her kidnapped dog. I’ve been fantasizing about publication ever since. This article is about patience, loving what you do even when you’re unsuccessful–because success may never be yours.)
Next, Amanda (fucking) Palmer. I know this TED talk has been making the interweb rounds, but there’s undoubtedly a few who’ve not yet seen it. If you haven’t, watch. Intimacy, asking for money, the give-take-give relationship between artists and fans.
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And, as a drummer in a neo-folk metal getting ready to release an album about Anglo Saxon Paganism, this article is relevant for it’s discussion of creating a community of support where Pagan music can stretch and evolve. It’s also a review of SJ Tucker’s new album:
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Other things:
Getting ready to apply to MFA programs this fall. The University of Oregon is definitely high on my list. Here’s an interview with two of their students. Also, as a writer of weird, honest things, this quote struck me: “Sometimes you have to go far away from the thing itself, from reality, to describe it.”
And also. Because, well, DOUGLAS ADAMS, whom I love: Who Will Be the Next Douglas Adams? Hopefully, Nobody.
i live in a rib cage
Two weeks ago, I dreamt of anorexia. (I also dreamt of playing hide-and-seek with zombies on an oceanliner.) I meant to write about this dream (this ghost, because that’s what dreams are), but I was scared sick. It’s taken me fourteen days, a number of drowning girls, raw-hearted progressive metal, and Amanda Palmer’s TED talk, but I’m here. I’m writing this.
I’m writing this to put starvation and stomach-coiled mind-fucks into prose.
I’m writing this to end my haunting, or at least expose the ghost in my gut.
I’m writing because I don’t want to. Because I don’t want you to read this and because you will. Because somehow, the potential for exposure is enough to drive me to write. Writing naked. I’m writing naked. (No I’m not; I’m wearing blue flannel, and head phones, and an ancient bell from a Viking settlement in Russia.)
Just like my ten-year-old self once prefaced her journals:
Don’t read this, don’t read this, don’t read this.
I dreamt of anorexia. I dreamt of dead things. Before the sea-faring zombies, a dream-someone asked me–Are you anorexic? And I said–Yes, I’m anorexic.
Which was (is?) a lie. But only a small one. Like I said, dreams are ghosts, are hauntings–recurrences, past leaching into present (as if you can peel the two apart), a hand wrapped around your spine, sinking through your plastic skull. So I’m not anorexic any longer: I bleed every month (I once went–eight months, a year?–without blood), I’m not 5′ 7.75″ and 112 lbs (still 5′ 7.75″–but I’m 130 lbs now), I don’t keep a brain-log of calories, I don’t put food in my mouth and spit it out (not like I used to, at least).
But I won’t say I don’t agonize. Or make rules (eat this, not that, that, that). But I eat more than I restrict.
And…THE END, for now. I have no clever witticism to end this blog post with. No red iron ribbon to tie it up with that says NO MORE. My short stories often end in placenta. So should my other writing. This writing. Anorexia is not something with an ending. (As in: I hope I haven’t screwed my bone-density too badly.) Like Imp says at the end of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir (page 309):
You will always be haunted, but it’s done.
Imp follows done with the words You can go now. But I can’t. I’m starting at India Morgan Phelps’s ‘ending,’ reading her writing her story her haunting her memoir to begin the (so called) ending of my own.
But enough, Jenn. Enough for this sunblindingly blue-bone Montana evening. More ghosts for you later.
One more thing: I’ll tell you now: I WILL write more, I have to, no matter this isn’t blog post fodder, the stuff to advertise ME, to get people to click LIKE or FOLLOW–this blog is just a convenient place to put my mind (belly). Public, digital journaling is easier for me than the cover-hidden dead-tree kind. Maybe because I know it’ll be found. I can’t burn it.
ungulates undulating
Sketching hoofed-beasts in preparation for designing Moss of Moonlight’s new shirt (to go along with the album release of Winterwheel).
Ekphrastic 22/The Drowning Girl
My haunting is a loamy skeleton
my loamy skeleton is an unfinished boat on the shore
the ribbing your ribs, I wish I think
I found seashells in my cereal this morning
sand in the tub.
(Tomorrow, she tried pulling me down the drain, but nowhere to go.)
Siren.Siren.Siren.Siren.
Tongues. Tongue. Tonguing.
This thing, poem, has nothing to do with ekphrasis. Not anymore. (Never. None of these.) It’s about nothing but me, and I am not art.
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Ekphrasis made by the book I’m sharing my bed with now. The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan. It’s a haunting of a book; already it’s dredged up echoes in me. I dreamt with the light on last night, and felt the resounding truths all day at work (two pieces of sausage in a cup of soup, a ribcage in what I wish were the wind, empty bowls, crab forks). (Will write them down later.)
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Previous ekphrastic: Ekphrastic 21/With the End in Mind
and
What the hel is ekphrasis + Ekphrastic Poetry Archive (For poems about A Game of Thrones, Fudoki, The Hunger Games, Blood Meridian, etc–basically, just the stuff to fulfill your brain’s literary sugar-cravings.)
the elk-eater
Yule gift for Cavan + a painting to go along with our band’s soon-to-be-released album, Winterwheel. The goddess here is my interpretation of a little-known Anglo Saxon deity, Hretha (who we’ve devoted a whole 12 minute song to).
Contact me here if you’re interested in purchasing a print.
Lands of bog, lake and troll: Day 8
We arrived in Stockholm early enough to wake up all the Swedish fish by throwing tamari sunflower seeds at them.
Other things we did:
X ate hard boiled eggs with rye bread and a drippy orange
X got ripped off by a Persian selling semi-decent Italian food
X took pictures of the city hall and all its sarcophagi and gold-leafed shininess
X turned Stockholm upside in search of a hostel that wasn’t a) fully booked b) stupidly expensive c) actually a hotel and just pretending to be a hostel so it could have a good laugh at ornery tourists like us or c) every single cursed letter I just mentioned. What happened to hostels being those places even lost, penniless travelers could afford to stay at?
We did find a hostel eventually, and even though it was beyond our budget, we stayed anyways. I mean, where else were we to go? The population density of Stockholm’s a little higher than Kemi, so there’s not many places to kip out in the bushes.
The hostel we stayed at was on an island in the middle of the city, surrounded by a commune of garden-snarled cottages. Like feral hobbit holes without the hills. Yes, I want to live in one someday.
Around nine, a cannon dry fired just outside our window. I have no idea why. I was snoozing against Cavan’s chest and too lazy and disoriented to go check it out. Also, I like a little mystery. (Though now I wonder if I didn’t just have a really intense dream, because I asked Cavan about it over dinner and he remembered not a thing. But he was also dead to the world. Really, really dead. OH, and while I’m tossing out random Nightwish links, check this out).
So, as I write this, I’m feasting on grapes even though I’m not all that hungry (but they’re so good), attempting to keep my iPod clean of sticky grape juice as I search for trail that we can get to by train that will also take us across the the Norwegian border. Yeah, I’m not having much luck. Better luck in the morning, maybe.
(This guy’s actually from a couple days ago, in Luleå, I believe.)
(Stockholm’s City Hall, I believe–also where the Nobel Prize banquet is held.)
(Still Stockholm.)
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Lands of Bog, Lake and Troll archive: day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, midnight day 7, 7
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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Middle Earth
I like fiction like I like peanut butter–I eat it like it’s Apocalypse Eve. (In my apartment, a jar of nut butter disappears in three days–two and a half, if I’m being honest.) So I have to trick myself into reading non-fiction by having no other lunch-reading material at work.
At my previous job, I had wifi. I also had lots of dishes to wash, so my iPod accompanied me everywhere (because dishwashers require a constant ear-injection of black, battle and power metal to wash things quick and efficient) which meant easy access to said wifi, and thusly, easy access to free fiction. Free fiction that always superseded the non-fiction in my bag that I’d packed the previous night for lunch, along with my inevitable peanut butter and spinach concoctions.
(Some people might equate non-fiction reading to vegetable consumption–only, I love vegetables. While I appreciate non-fiction, I don’t inhale it quite like I do, say, kale. Kale I eat like other people eat bread.)
Travels through Middle Earth, the path of a Saxon pagan is the first non-fiction book I’ve finished in far too long. It’s written in simple, homely prose, which makes it quick to absorb. I read it mostly for short story research, and it gave me exactly what I wanted from it: a brief, biased (but openly so) peek at Anglo Saxon paganism. Didn’t get too much from it except the very basics (I expected–and would have like–a larger dose of personal experience, as the latter half of the book’s title implies)–and lots about mead, and other mead-related booze. (But that’s to be expected–this being about Saxon paganism–and anyway, I like reading about edibles, so no complaints here.) There’s still more research needed before I feel comfortable writing the story, but this book was a good place to dig my fingers into the dirt. More hole digging (uh, research…what the hel kind of metaphor IS this, anyway?) to follow.
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Books read, 2013:
2312
Prince of Thorns
Wonders of the Invisible World
Travels through Middle Earth, the path of a Saxon pagan
