When in Breda (perhaps Brenda)
On a train from Antwerp to Amsterdam I hear my dead uncles voice. The words I can’t understand. I don’t know Dutch. But it belongs to him.
We are on our second bottle of wine. We drink it from clear cups we took from a Starbucks in the train station. The sun has already set.
I start to scan over the tops of the seats for him. After the third or fourth row of passengers, I stop myself. I don’t really want to find him.
Between sips and silly jokes with Juliet, I listen for him. Smile to myself when I can hear him over the sounds of strangers whispering, tracks scratching miles, and red wine pouring. I hope, maybe a few times I even pray, that whoever he is sitting with is memorizing his voice.
Unburied
I drive around with my mother’s ashes when I’m lonely
palming the box
tapping my fingers on the sides as Patsy Cline sings love songs I will always cry along to
asking my mother in a voice just above a whisper at stop signs
or red lights
if I’ll be okay
We Turn
to threats to discover one another, navigate
how we might react.
An indication of how we might
say things later
when it’s 3 am
on a Tuesday
and we’ve been drinking since
Sunday.
Nasty! Reading 6/9 NYC
Nasty! is a charity anthology benefiting Planned Parenthood, showcasing stories that range from body positivity to sexual empowerment to overcoming adversity and beyond. This live event will feature readings from the following contributors:
Tara Dublin
Jacqueline-Elizabeth Cottrell
Julie Rea
Boodawe
Kim Vodicka
Diana Kirk
Jennifer Robin
Jacqueline Kirkpatrick
Come listen to empowering stories from fierce women at Bluestockings Bookstore, Café, & Activist Center on June 9th, 2018 at 7 pm. Event is free to attend, although donations to Bluestockings Bookstore are welcomed. See you there!
Tell Me More
About the taste of Black Velvet &
it’s inability to roll over the tongue
like her name
like her name
like her name
Go Order This Book!
http://www.kingshotpress.com/product/nasty
Nasty! is a collection of radical non-fiction essays that provide crucial commentary on what it’s like to be a woman today. Bold stories from fierce women who are not ashamed of who they are and what they do.
100% of proceeds will be donated to Planned Parenthood.
All killer, no filler. The anthology features the following table of contents:
Missy Suicide- “Monster”
Sabrina Dropkick- “Fucking Fat”
Rocket- “Buddy”
MP Johnson- “How To Accept You’re Trans in 11 Easy Steps”
Cervante Pope- “a black type of feminism”
Julie Rea- “A Year in the Life of a Sad American Liberal”
Diana Kirk- “Tampon Trigger”
Rhonda Jackson Joseph- “I’m That Chick Who Starts the Conversation”
Kim Vodicka- “Maximum Insecurity Dick Prison”
Boodawe- “You’re So Nasty!”
Jessie Lynn McMains- “They Say She’s a Slut”
Kathryn Louise- “The United States of Rape Culture”
Eleanor Rose- “I Didn’t Ask For This”
Amber Fallon- “Sleazeball Games or How I Got Banned From Match.com”
Tara Dublin- “Here’s To You, Mrs. Robinson”
Jennifer Robin- “Raphael and the French Ghost and the Moon”
Jacqueline-Elizabeth Cottrell- “Come Here Often?”
Jacqueline Kirkpatrick- “The New Unnatural”
Devora Gray- “I’ll Meet You in the Middle”
Edited by Tiffany Scandal
Cover by Matthew Revert
Out Winter 2017
NOTE ABOUT THE OPTIONS: “Pre-order” will get you the book with the legendary KSP gift wrapping once it is out. The “Honorable mention + Pre-Order” gets your name listed in the acknowledgements for helping this book get made, PLUS, it’ll get you a free eBook version of the anthology as well (and, of course, the legendary KSP gift wrapping, duh)
This
is where i grow to hate you
the man at the gas station said to the cashier
who refused to look up from her phone
tears pooling on the finger stained glass of the counter
only Lucky 7s left on a spool beneath
Sunrise for Jack Kerouac
Sunrise for Jack Kerouac
(*as published in Drunk in a Midnight Choir on 4/29/15)
I gave Jake the last inhale
Watching a willow tree in a cow pasture turn to gold in the
Acidic sunrise of a July we tried for years to forget.
The long streams of branch swaying in a breeze that bumped my gooses
From collar bone to sternum
Raised buttons of oooooh, of ahhhhh,
Of push them, push them – – we will never get out of here
if we don’t move faster
Before I fall apart
Jake falls asleep against the wind
Shielded dreaming of a riddle on a Popsicle stick
His tiny fingers clutching it
Jamming it into his mother’s wringing hands
Asking her to just tell him what it means
that he can longer read French (as I flip the tent stake
Mallet around and around, leav
ing bruises in the ground, wondering if it is God or my child I should apologize to-)
I write tiny poems on the backs of his dirty toes
Odes to my dead father and Jerry Garcia
Jerry, someone once told me, drove a Beamer
As he beep beeped out of my drive
Way into the horizon like an Icarus in a silver bullet
Chariot master
Pieces of himself burning alive to be Matisse’d for as many years as there are
Hearts
A demon boxed inside blue exploding all over the page
Onto
me & on
toyou
Reading! 4/17 Hudson River Coffee House
Jacqueline Kirkpatrick 