Jan Steckel's Blog: Horizontal Poet Sings Bidyke Blues, page 2

"Discovery of Roentgen Rays"

I'm happy and grateful that my poem "Discovery of Roentgen Rays" is a finalist for this month's Goodreads Newsletter Poetry Contest! You can read it and vote for your favorite at https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...



Congratulations to the other finalists and honorable mentions! I particularly liked S. Jane Sloat's "Sleeve." Voting ends November 1st.

San Francisco Poet Joie Cook Left the Planet

Joie Cook was a San Francisco performance poet and a friendly acquaintance of mine. I heard her read a few times and had one glorious dinner with her, her husband David, and a few old beaux of hers, during which we polished off an entire pitcher each of margaritas and mojitos. We staggered onto the street arm in arm, pledging eternal love, mad admiration, etc., and never saw each other again.

Joie died Sunday night at her Oscars-watching party. Among those with her were her husband David and her friend and former love Richard Stone. Ill with complications of hepatitis C, Joie had made herself DNR (Do Not Resuscitate), so 911 was not called. Within an hour, her daughter Jessika arrived to be with her mother's body and take her place among the bereaved.

Zeitgeist Press, DesertedX and Manic D Press published Joie's poetry. I loved Joie's poems and personality. Her life was a magnificent performance.

Here are some links to poems of Joie's:
http://rustytruck.wordpress.com/categ...
http://www.sfheart.com/sfpoets/joie_c...

Here's a poem I wrote for Joie a few years ago. It first appeared in The Eloquent Atheist.

Joie’s Poems

She’s eating hummingbird hearts
for appetizers, drinking the Salton Sea
for a cocktail. She’s doctor bitch to you,
matey, so look seaworthy.
Inch-long nails, vinyl skin, elbow hicky,
teased hair with a dyed pink streak.
She’ll take that plunging neckline,
let the girls out to say hello.
She’s thinner than a flimsy excuse,
frailer than tornadoes,
richer than creosote,
inimitable, indescribable, delicious.
I’d give my supernumerary nipple
for a taste of that. She makes us rise
like bread, a fish belly-up, the sun.

My Poem's a Finalist in the Goodreads Contest!

What a nice way to wake up this morning! I checked into Goodreads to find that my poem "Are You Tough Enough to Haul Flowers?" is a finalist for this month's Goodreads Newsletter Poetry Contest. I really liked the other finalists' poems this time, too. I was delighted to find that my friend Joan Colby's poem "Anniversary Song" got an honorable mention.

Right now my poem just a vote or two behind the leader. If you're a member of the Poetry! group, or would like to become one, please go to
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...
and vote for your favorite poem! You will have to join the Poetry! group to vote if you are not already a member.

In other news, I'm going to be interviewed by San Francisco's Melinda Adams, otherwise known as Lilycat, on FCC Free Radio this Sunday, February 3, from noon to 2 PM Pacific time. The Program is "Lilycat on Stuff." You can tune in to listen live at http://www.fccfreeradio.com at studio 1A. Please call in with questions! It would be so great to hear your voices.

I'll also be featured at Works in Progress Women's Open Mic on Sunday, February 9, in Oakland. All women are welcome! The reading was postponed from last month because of the host's illness. Linda Zeiser is feeling better now and will offer the reading (with 8 fashion watches given away as door prizes) FREE! There's a potluck from 6:30 to 7:30, with the reading starting at 7:30 PM. Live music from singer/songwriter Melanie DeMore. Fireside Room, Plymouth United Church of Christ, 424 Monte Vista, Oakland. More details at http://www.goodreads.com/event/show/8...

Works in Progress: An Open Mic for Women

Seven or eight years ago I started doing publicity for a Montclair women's open mic called Works in Progress, hosted by Linda Zeiser. Linda and her partner Carolyn Stull have encouraged so many San Francisco Bay Area women to realize their creativity and to get in touch with their inner diva. They helped me get my first full-length poetry book to Zeitgeist Press, The Horizontal Poet. The book, which went on to win a 2012 Lambda Literary Award, is dedicated to Linda and Carolyn.

On Saturday night, January 12, Works in Progress celebrates its 100th performance in Piedmont (Oakland, CA). I'll be the featured reader, performing new poems as well as old. Melanie DeMore, a celebrated singer-songwriter, will perform two sets of live music. The evening is FREE, Linda's and Carolyn's gift to our women's community, along with eight free fashion watches they'll be giving away as door prizes. See http://www.goodreads.com/event/show/8... for address and details. Please feel free to cross-post to other women's lists and SF Bay Area literary lists, making it clear that all women are welcome.

Halloween Hurricane

Halloween is my wedding anniversary. Hew and I went to Luka's Taproom in midtown Oakland to celebrate. Afterward we lit candles in our front window around a sugar skull we bought Sunday at the Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead celebration in the Fruitvale, our exuberant Latino ghetto. A sky gravid with rain (or perhaps the per capita murder rate) kept the usual few trick-or-treaters away this year, leaving us a satellite-dish-sized bowl of Snickers and Milky Ways on the coffee table. The tiny candy bars sing siren songs to me now from the living room, but I'll stop my ears with foam earplugs and lash myself to the headboard.

Several years ago, I wrote this Halloween poem, "Luminaria," for Hew. Valyntina Grenier was kind enough to publish it in her online journal Back Room Live . Valyntina is a talented artist and poet with an MFA in poetry from St. Mary's College of California. She has shown her visual art in solo and group exhibitions in Oakland and Tucson. She curated the Oakland reading series Back Room Live, from which her journal drew its inspiration.

Watching on today's news patients being evacuated from Bellevue Hospital in New York City in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy reminds me so of this poem I wrote after Hurricane Katrina, "Charity after the Hurricane." It's about Charity Hospital in New Orleans, where my grandfather Morris Steckel trained to be a general practioner. The poem was published online by Kemble Scott in SoMa Literary Review and in my first chapbook, The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006).

My heart goes out to everyone in the waterlogged states.

Charity after the Hurricane

Hydrocephalus Boy is doing okay.
His shunt’s the only thing that’s draining around here.
The gomer with the Marines tattoo boxed his beans.
Guy hasn’t peed in two days,
and we got no dialysis,
no power,
no suction,
no lights.
Rick’s sewing people up by flashlight in the OR
since the ER’s an aquarium.
Jeannie’s suctioning green crap
out of the Funny Looking Kid’s trach
with an ear-bulb and a syringe.
Looks like a giant turkey-baster.
Kid’s circling the drain.
We’ve been bag-ventilating the guy
with Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome
since Monday. We take turns.
My hands ache.
No more water to drink, but if you’re thirsty,
I can put in an IV and fill up your tank.
You look like an easy stick.
You want potassium in that, doctor?
Got no coffee, but there’s Ritalin left in the pharmacy.
I sent the derm resident
to salvage some crackers from the cafeteria.
Yeah, I know it’s underwater.
He’s from Harvard.
Don’t they have a swimming requirement there?
He’s gotta be good for something.
Stay out of the east stairwell between the fifth and sixth floors.
That’s where we’re stacking the bodies.
There’s ten feet of water flooding the morgue
and fluid filling up the lungs
of the Little Old Lady in heart failure.
She sounds wet.
She may have made it off her roof,
but she’s drowning from the inside.
Water, water, everywhere.
My throat’s dry.
My lips are cracked.
My knuckles hurt.
We paddled these people across the street in a canoe,
one by one.
We carried them up eight flights of stairs
to the parking garage roof.
We’re waiting for helicopters they told us would be here.
ARDS-man just croaked.
My hands are sore from squeezing that bag.
I kept him alive for four days
and now he’s kicked the bucket on the motherfucking roof
because the helicopters haven’t come.
Little Old Lady’s chest is too stiff to move.
The bag just won’t push it up and down anymore.
She’s toast.
Too much water on the inside,
nothing but water on the outside,
and not even a Diet Coke to drink.
I’m just going to sit down here.
I’m just going to put my head in my hands.
I’m just going to let my shoulders shake.
I’m not crying.
I’m too dry.

BiFabulous Authors Nov. 16, 2012

San Francisco Bay Area readers, save the date! I'll be reading Friday evening, Nov. 16, 2012, with Betty Blue, (aka Jane Kindred) at BiFabulous Authors, the kickoff event for the 25th Anniversary celebrations of the Bay Area Bisexuals Network (BABN). The reading and reception run from 7 PM to 9 PM at the GLBT History Museum, 4127 18th St. (between Castro & Collingwood streets) in San Francisco, California.

It's gonna be a great party, people. I joined BABN when I moved to the SF Bay Area in 1998. Soon after, at a meeting of Berkeley BiFriendly, I met the host, Hew Wolff. He had been a member of BABN almost since its inception. We have been partners now for 14 years. Today is our wedding anniversary. Happy Halloween, y'all!

Betty Blue is a bi erotica writer, one of whose alter egos is the fantasy writer Jane Kindred. I'm thrilled to get to read with her and to celebrate one of the biggest reasons I live here in Oakland -- the peer group of other bisexual people I found here in the beautiful Bay Area.

Bitchez Brew Review, Sat., Oct. 20, 2012

"A literary showcase of inter-tribal music and spoken word," Bitchez Brew Review is a monthly music and poetry series in Oakland, CA curated and organized by Paul Corman-Roberts and publicized by Lynn Alexander. I'll be reading there with Doug Cordell, Julie Gengo, Yume Kim, Peg Alford Pursell, Jay Passer, and musical guest John Murry on Saturday night, October 20, at 7 PM at the Awaken Café at 1429 Broadway (at 15th St.). $5 donation, no one turned away.

"Lady in the Tower" is Finalist -- Please Vote!

I'm thrilled that my poem "Lady in the Tower" is one of six finalists for this month's Goodreads Newsletter Poetry Contest. Hope you'll vote for your favorite at http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

My poem has been a finalist before, but has never won and reached 7 million people in the monthly Goodreads Newsletter. If you are a member of the ¡Poetry! group on Goodreads, please vote now. If you're not a member, check out the group -- there's a lot happening there to entertain your inner poet or poetry lover.

The Bridge

Bill Brent published my husband Hew Wolff’s fiction in his magazine Black Sheets and his anthology Best Bisexual Erotica. Years ago Bill co-founded a recurring literary erotica salon (with Carol Queen) in which Hew and I performed (our literary work, for crying out loud!) We were scheduled to read there again this fall. Instead, we’re going to his memorial. Week before last, Bill Brent jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.

Last night I read Liz Highleyman’s obituary for him in the Bay Area Reporter.

I had my first back operation in medical school. For twenty-three years now, I’ve felt like someone poured molten lead down my left hip, buttock, leg, outer ankle and foot. I’m not talking sciatica, people. I’ve had that. This is much more severe and unremitting neuropathic pain in the distributions of L4, L5, and S1 spinal nerves.

In the middle of my medical residency, going to work at the hospital felt like hitting concrete at terminal velocity. I'd wonder if I could just jump off a bridge into the freezing Charles River instead. The thing was, by the time I reached the bridge I'd be late to work, and I can't stand being late, so I'd just go to work.

Still, I kept an IV needle connected by plastic tubing to a big syringe in my bottom dresser drawer. If I killed a kid by accident on the wards or just couldn’t bear life for one more minute, my plan was to give myself an intravenous air embolism. Once the hell that was my medical training was over, though, I didn't want to jump off anything anymore and was glad I had survived.

Five years after I left the practice of medicine, I’d had two more back surgeries. Bed-bound for months on end, I wished I had bought a gun before I became dependent on other people so that I could shoot myself. By the time I started to feel better physically, I no longer wanted a gun. There are ways to make chronic pain more bearable and alleviate the depression that almost always accompanies it, even if I can't be "fixed."

It unnerves me that a man as talented and kind as Bill Brent, a man only a couple years older than I, a man loved by so many, a man who made it easier for Hew and me to be who we are, despaired and committed suicide. Not being inside his head or his life, I can't judge whether it was right for him or not. From my window, though, it looks like tragedy.

If you have chronic pain, see a pain management doctor. See a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist or get a CBT-for-pain book or do CBT-for-pain exercises online. Meditate. It will raise your pain threshold and make it easier for you to cope. Take the stupid antidepressants--even if they don't lift all your depression, they'll help up-regulate endogenous opiate receptors in a part of your brain involved in pain processing.

Then if you still want to off yourself, that’s your right. The truth is, your chronic pain may never go away. Your pain probably won’t ever get completely better. You, yourself, though, might get better. I’ve survived twenty-three years. If you can stand it long enough, life gets better.

Bill Brent was a bridge. He connected people. Now that bridge is broken. He burned it. He’s dead. I hang over the smoking, splintered edge, looking down at him. He’s lost his beautiful Hawaiian tan. His face looks white as a shroud. Nothing I can shout or write can touch him.


Bill Brent

[SF] Sacred Grounds September 5, 2012

Please save September 5 for me if you're going to be in the San Francisco Bay Area that evening! I'll be the featured reader at the Sacred Grounds Cafe near the Haight. Bring some poetry of your own to share at the open mic.

Sacred Grounds: Open Mic Wednesdays: 7 pm sign up
2095 Hayes @ Cole, San Francisco.
415-387-3859
Host: Dan Brady: creative1@creativeideasforyou.com

Host Dan Brady is a poet, composer, singer and an elementary school teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District. He took over hosting the Sacred Grounds Cafe Wednesday night reading after its longtime host Jehanah Wedgwood passed away a year and a half ago. Jehanah hosted the open mic for nineteen years and edited fifteen anthologies of its poets' work. Sacred Grounds is the oldest continuously running open mic in the city, started in 1973.

I'll read for half an hour. As I recall, the open mic spots are a generous 5-10 minutes. The cafe serves beer, wine, coffee, and a variety of food (not just pastries and sandwiches). The place is two blocks from Golden Gate Park, just on the other side of the Panhandle from Haight Street. Leave time for a picturesque walk before you come to the reading!

Details at http://www.goodreads.com/event/show/6...