The first time I saw Dorothea Lasky she was standing in the middle of a crowded living room in Brooklyn wearing a dress and shouting into a loudspeaker. Actually, I’m not sure if she was shouting or if her voice just comes out of her like that sometimes—like she holds onto certain words until they just come ripping out of her. Her poems often feel this way: like an extremely powerful child has been taken over by a shitload of wild colors and must speak. I remember I wasn’t sure whether to cover my ears or get on my knees. It’s somehow at the same time both calming and terrifying. Most anybody who’s seen Ms. Lasky read aloud in this manner could likely tell you how it felt, which is quite something considering how dull the act of being read to is usually.Even stranger is how on paper Lasky makes what she has written go kindly for the throat in the same way. Whether writing about blood or going to hell or friends or fucking, there is a simultaneous sense of simplicity and urgency, like the kind of tone you’d use when shouting from inside somewhere on fire. I’m about as sick as I could be with minimalism, and this is no minimalism: it’s somehow thicker than that, allowing confession without the ridiculous indulgence, allowing butts and tits and plane wrecks to appear in the same sentences as god.Lasky’s third book, Thunderbird, released this week from Wave, follows her two previous works, Awe andBlack Life, in an even more boiled-down, death-eyed way. As far as she had gone before in verifying there are still humans with blood and brains here on Earth despite whatever, Thunderbird is quite precise in the distance between those people and their communications. Here the child-voice is the strongest, in that it takes into its mouth things most children haven’t yet been hit with. “Writing is death,” she writes only a few pages after, “It is all so far off, I know / I know / I know it is 2015 when you are reading this / It is all so far off / I know we are dead when we are reading this again / I know it is all so far off / I know.”It feels good to read a book that talks to you like this. You get a little sick of all the preening and the dodging so much printed language tends to assume you’re cool with. The entertainments. You get tired of pretending that hope has to operate like dogshit, coming out because it’s squeezed. Nothing here is pretended. The jokes are always about death. There are no special times and no awards here because there’s no time for that, and there never should have been. Dorothea Lasky is a fun radical witch screaming real spells.“I Had a Man”
By Dorothea LaskyToday when I was walkingI had a man tell me as he passedThat I was a white bitch (he was white)And to not look at himOr he was going to ‘fuck me in my little butthole’I wandered awayWho is to sayI think I am a white bitchMy butt is bigBut I believe my butthole is littleThis violence that we put on womenI don’t think it’s crazySomeone I know said‘Oh, that man was crazy’I don’t think he was crazyMaybe he could tell I had a look in my eyeThat wasn’t crazy anymoreMaybe he could feel the wild cool blood in meAnd it frightened himAnd he lashed out in fearMaybe he knew I was the same as himBut had been born with this kind face and eyesDoughlike appurtenancesWhat about the day I leftWhat happened thenStill I’m glad he said that to meStill I’m glad he was so cruel to meWhat bitter eye knew I had a voiceTo say what men have done to meWhat unkind wind has blown thru my brainTo make me speak for the wretchedTo speak wretchedly about the uglyTo make my own face ugly and simpleTo contort this simple smile into a haunting song"I Like Weird Ass Hippies"I like weird ass hippiesAnd men with hairy backsAnd small green animalsAnd organic milkAnd chickens that hatchOut of farms in VermontI like weird ass stuffWhen we reach the other worldWe will all be hippiesI like your weird ass spirit stick that you carry aroundI like when you rub sage on my doorI like the lamb’s blood you throw on my faceI like heaping sugar in a jar and saying a prayerAnd then having it workI like cursing out an enemyAnd then cursing them in objectsSoaking their baby tooth in oilLighting it on fire with a tiny plastic horseI like running through the fields of greenI am so caught up in flowers and fruitI like shampooing my bodyIn strange potions you bought wholesale in GuatemalaI like when you rub your patchouli on meAnd tell me I’m a manI am a fucking manA weird ass fucking manIf I didn’t know any better I’d think I were Jesus orsomethingIf I didn’t know any better I’d sail to Ancient GreeceWear sandalsThen go to RomeMurder my daughter in front of the godsSmoke powdered lapisCarve pictographs into your dressA thousand miles away from anythingWhen I die I will be a strange fucking hippieAnd so will youSo will youSo get your cut-up heart away fromWhat you think you knowYou know, we are all going away from hereAt least have some human patienceFor what lies on the other sidePreviously – Michael Chabon’s Dream Journal@blakebutler
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By Dorothea LaskyToday when I was walkingI had a man tell me as he passedThat I was a white bitch (he was white)And to not look at himOr he was going to ‘fuck me in my little butthole’I wandered awayWho is to sayI think I am a white bitchMy butt is bigBut I believe my butthole is littleThis violence that we put on womenI don’t think it’s crazySomeone I know said‘Oh, that man was crazy’I don’t think he was crazyMaybe he could tell I had a look in my eyeThat wasn’t crazy anymoreMaybe he could feel the wild cool blood in meAnd it frightened himAnd he lashed out in fearMaybe he knew I was the same as himBut had been born with this kind face and eyesDoughlike appurtenancesWhat about the day I leftWhat happened thenStill I’m glad he said that to meStill I’m glad he was so cruel to meWhat bitter eye knew I had a voiceTo say what men have done to meWhat unkind wind has blown thru my brainTo make me speak for the wretchedTo speak wretchedly about the uglyTo make my own face ugly and simpleTo contort this simple smile into a haunting song"I Like Weird Ass Hippies"I like weird ass hippiesAnd men with hairy backsAnd small green animalsAnd organic milkAnd chickens that hatchOut of farms in VermontI like weird ass stuffWhen we reach the other worldWe will all be hippiesI like your weird ass spirit stick that you carry aroundI like when you rub sage on my door
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