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A twofer …

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Eilen Jewell shoulda been on here long ago

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This needs no explanation, just some psykhichno nevrivnovazhenyy mudak

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This for all the slim girls out there
tho’ mostly for the sexaphone and pianner playing
Shake then Woo Hips

Peppermint Harris – Fat Girl Boogie

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Adds Concrete Blonde to list of must hear more.
(Kaits post may have been eaten by gremlins but
her paw print was visible afterwards – her name
and time of visit was clear)

Ryley Walker – On The Banks of of the Old Kishwaukee

primarily for the acoustic guitar – the live KEXP version
is eminently watchable but this studio version
is what caught this hounds ear

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Natalka Bilotserkivets is a Ukrainian poet, editor, and translator.
.
.

Love in Kyiv
by Natalka Bilotserkivets

More terrible is love in Kyiv than
Magnificent Venetian passions. Butterflies
Fly light and maculate into bright tapers –
Dead caterpillars’ brilliant wings aflame!
And spring has lit the chestnuts’ candles!
Cheap lipstick’s tender taste,
The daring innocence of miniskirts,
And these coiffures, that are not cut quite right –
Yet image, memory, and signs still move us…
Tragically obvious, like the latest hit.
You’ll die here by a scoundrel’s knife,
Your blood will spread like rust inside a brand
New Audi in an alley in Tartarka.
You’ll plunge here from a balcony, the sky,
Down headlong to your dirty little Paris
Dressed in a blouse of secretarial white.
You can’t discern the weddings from the deaths…
For love in Kyiv is more terrible than
Ideas of New Communism: specters
Emerge in the intoxicated nights
Out of Bald Mountain, bearing in their hands
Red flags and pots of red geraniums.
You’ll die here by a scoundrel’s knife,
You’ll plunge here from a balcony, the sky, in
A brand-new Audi from an alley in Tartarka
Down headlong to your dirty little Paris
Your blood will spread like rust
upon a blouse of secretarial white.
.
.
.
translated by Andrew Sorokowsky

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this is all about the voice (thanks for adusting the colour here)(only 9 months)

Andrea von Kampen – Let Me Down Easy

(Kait you are not forgotten by this lazy tart)

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an a change of tempo, dance in yer undies

Lilly Hiatt Trinity Lane

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More of Ana Tivel for obvious reasons
Love this poets voice

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Onehorn visited the glitch in Night and became 54-Horn (or thereabouts)

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My Lover Is a Woman
Patricia Parker
.
.

I.

my lover is a woman
& when i hold her
feel her warmth
i feel good
feel safe

then—i never think of
my family’s voices
never hear my sisters say
bulldaggers, queers, funny
come see us, but don’t
bring your friends
it’s ok with us,
but don’t tell mama
it’d break her heart
never feel my father
turn in his grave
never hear my mother cry
Lord, what kind of child is this?
.
.

II.

my lover’s hair is blonde
& when it rubs across my face
it feels soft
feels like a thousand fingers
touch my skin & hold me
and i feel good

then—i never think of the little boy
who spat & called me nigger
never think of the policemen
who kicked my body & said crawl
never think of Black bodies
hanging in trees or filled
with bullet holes
never hear my sisters say
white folks hair stinks
don’t trust any of them
never feel my father
turn in his grave
never hear my mother talk
of her backache after scrubbing floors
never hear her cry
Lord, what kind of child is this?
.
.

III.

my lover’s eyes are blue
& when she looks at me
i float in a warm lake
feel my muscles go weak with want
feel good
feel safe

then—i never think of the blue
eyes that have glared at me
moved three stools away from me
in a bar
never hear my sisters rage
of syphilitic Black men as
guinea pigs
rage of sterilized children
watch them just stop in an
intersection to scare the old
white bitch
never feel my father turn
in his grave
never remember my mother
teaching me the yes sirs & ma’ams
to keep me alive
never hear my mother cry
Lord, what kind of child is this?
.
.

IV.

& when we go to a gay bar
& my people shun me because i crossed
the line
& her people look to see what’s
wrong with her
what defect
drove her to me

& when we walk the streets
of this city
forget and touch
or hold hands
& the people
stare, glare, frown, & taunt
at those queers

i remember
every word taught me
every word said to me
every deed done to me
& then i hate
i look at my lover
& for an instant
doubt

then—i hold her hand tighter
& i can hear my mother cry.
Lord, what kind of child is this?

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Some verses by Patricia Smith from her 2021 book
Crowns: My Hair, My Soul, My Freedom

(It’s art upon our heads, a glory spill)

Nap Unleashed (a few chosen verses)
by Patricia Smith
.
.

Once we were slaves. Our hair was furious,
forever springing loose from plaits and bows,
rejecting homemade greases meant to tame
the wild and wiry bloom that snapped its bands
and leapt alive at every chance. At least
some part of us was running free, like flame
that hungers for a sky, like praying fixed
on someplace we knew heaven was. We sang
our songs but didn’t move our mouths, we burned
to black inside ourselves. With rivers as
our mirrors, we began to build a wall
between our stolen air and us. We snapped
our dresses to our throats, made sure our hair
was braided thick against the spit of men.

Hair braided thick against the spit of men,
we hurtled forth—for years, we mystified
the whisper-tressed, but listened when they said
that we were wrong, not white or silk enough,
and that we’d never be unless we walked
into the fire, succumbing to a hate
we’d hoarded for ourselves. Because they loved
their blemished daughters, mamas twisted knobs
on cranky ovens, conjured flame, and made
us sit on rusted, wobbling kitchen chairs
beneath the ironing comb that charred our necks,
beneath the lye that chewed at scalp and root,
and we endured that hurt, forgot the days
our chaos crown had bellowed, nap unleashed.
.
.
When we explode, we know ourselves again,
we shake our funky, liberated heads,
and raise our voices to the rafters—Do
not dare touch these crowns. And we are Accra,
and we are Alabama, Brooklyn, Watts,
and we are middle finger lifted toward
the seething witnesses to all this joy,
and we are Trinidad and Harlem, we
are bopping straight into the yesterday
we were, and straight into the history
we’ve made and straight into tomorrow with
our rampant naps so gleefully unchecked,
so unrestrained, entwined ’til we become
a single soul, yet none of us the same.

A single soul, yet none of us the same,
we are the only government we need—
our vivid, cocky crowns stunned in their tilt
and swirl, they devastate and irritate,
they be our gospel, be our calling card,
they be our halo, be the way we reach
for sky. The crown is ours to snip or dye
a hundred awkward hues, it’s ours to tuck
beneath a Sunday hat, to crimp and twist,
to scissor down to air, much like a man’s.
This hair is all our other breath. It’s art
upon our heads, a glory spill. It’s wild,
bewildering and sexy in its snarl,
it’s neon, razored, locked and knotted, looped

and razored, locked and neon, looped and not
the business of just anyone, our hair
is blatantly political, a staunch
and blaring tangle, glory in our names,
the gospel on our bobbing heads, it’s fierce—
and yes, still furious, still springing loose
from any peril set on silencing
its roar. You’ve underestimated us,
you didn’t know the muscularity of kink
was busily rebirthing us—it taught
us all the ways to mouth our names
with Serengeti tongues, it’s quarrelsome
and coiled, it’s all the things but always black

and coiled. This hair is all the things. But, black
and wily goddesses, we’ve always known
the powerfulness of wearing our own sky,
the lyric of the scar, we’ve always known
that even though they dared to call us slaves,
we never were. If only they had heard
the freedom on our heads, the jubilant
triumphant wail of all that hair, its rude
unbridled verb, they would have left us free
to rule our own damned selves, to live our sweet
and colored lives. Our hair is throat, is knife
against the throat, is song within the throat,
it’s how we rock and conquer every room,
our hair’s the funk, the scorch, Aretha’s growl
…
.

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No.94

A shameless Ukrainian slut
Sunk her teeth right into my butt
She went a bit far
When she fingered my star
And pushed it right into my gut
..
.
(published with kind permission
of the Ukranian slut)

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THIS SONG IS APPROPRIATED FOR THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE
the lyrics fit with the appalling brutality of a little man from russia
who’s deranged vanity is causing so much heartbreak in a free and
democratic country … so all us western people in our relatively
comfortable homes will not moan about higher prices of living when
so many millions in Ukraine have nothing but hope ….

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tunes without the words
And never stops at all.

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Serhyi Zhadan is one of Ukraine’s best known poets and novelists,
who gathers crowds of thousands of people at his book launches and events.

[So I’ll talk about it]
by Serhiy Zhadan

So I’ll talk about it:
about the green eye of a demon in the colorful sky.
An eye that watches from the sidelines of a child’s sleep.
The eye of a misfit whose excitement replaces fear.
Everything started with music,
with scars left by songs
heard at fall weddings with other kids my age.
The adults who made music.
Adulthood defined by this—the ability to play music.
As if some new note, responsible for happiness,
appears in the voice,
as if this knack is innate in men:
to be both hunter and singer.
Music is the caramel breath of women,
tobacco-scented hair of men who gloomily
prepare for a knife-fight with the demon
who has just crashed the wedding.
Music beyond the cemetery wall.
Flowers that grow from women’s pockets,
schoolchildren who peek into the chambers of death.
The most beaten paths lead to the cemetery and water.
You hide only the most precious things in the soil—
the weapon that ripens with wrath,
porcelain hearts of parents that will chime
like the songs of a school choir.
I’ll talk about it—
about the wind instruments of anxiety,
about the wedding ceremony as memorable
as entering Jerusalem.
Set the broken psalmic rhythm of rain
beneath your heart.
Men that dance the way they quench
steppe-fire with their boots.
Women that hold onto their men in dance
like they don’t want to let them go to war.
Eastern Ukraine, the end of the second millennium.
The world is brimming with music and fire.
In the darkness flying fish and singing animals give voice.
In the meantime, almost everyone who got married then has died.
In the meantime, the parents of people my age have died.
In the meantime, most heroes have died.
The sky unfolds, as bitter as it is in Gogol’s novellas.
Echoing, the singing of people who gather the harvest.
Echoing, the music of those who cart stones from the field.
Echoing, it doesn’t stop.

translated by John Hennessy and Ostap Kin

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