Aimee Herman's Blog, page 13

Swallow

Sometimes, music comes in the form of a pill

a turquoise-and-white maraca of side-effects

and in its oblong, in its hard-to-swallow

you become who you were

before.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", meant to wake up feeling, new year

How to Celebrate Without Celebration

There is to be no tree. You pondered cutting one down or purchasing one hacked by another, but then you realized you live inside a box made of wood and there are bugs and wildlife living in your walls, so it’s kind of like one GIANT tree you are gasping inside. You hang tinsel and decorative lights on your limbs and call it enough.

There is to be no caroling or instrumental holiday songs, but you consider dancing to the beat of clocks ticking away in every room, not quite in synch but you like that they are autonomous (like you). You almost burn your tongue on the coffee, but it’s just not hot enough. So you imbibe and you putter and you contemplate how to be alone while the rain outside tries to wash away twelve months of disappoint.

There are no presents to open, so you close your eyes and grab a book off your shelf. Carefully, you place it onto the already-read newspaper and wrap it up. It is to be a surprise, though you hope it is poetry or you hope it is one you’ve forgotten to read or you hope the postal workers forgot it is a holiday and deliver anyway.

There will be no jolly, slightly overweight white man climbing down your chimney, as you do not have one and prefer to be alone anyway. You have no doorbell to be wrung and one needs to be quite agile to knock on your windows, so you do not wait to be visited. There is day-old soup on your stovetop and almost-stale ingredients in your fridge.

There will only be you, dressed in your evening sleepwear, a morning progressing into day then night on the other side of your windows. There will be lights to turn off or on, a radio full of static, outlets to plug things into and drawers to take things out of. Oh, and a mouse (or mice) somewhere in the nooks of where you live, expertly avoiding all traps, trying to bring you some holiday cheer.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", Christmas poem, holiday poem, meant to wake up feeling

How to Stay Informed

first published by great weather for MEDIA

 

Forget the headlines, translate the ink left weeping on your fingertips. It can be difficult to turn the page. They title it war as though it is different this time. You locate a run-on sentence on page nine, so you hitch a ride on one of its commas. They misspelled DEMOCRACY. Whose news is this, anyway? Afterwards, you search for an antonym for FREEDOM and all you see is red, white, blue. Just stop reading. Instead, walk outside and photograph everything that doesn’t move. You still need to stay informed, so you skip to the end and scoop out the middle. You ask the stranger beside you to read it to you. Coffee spills over the paragraphs and in the blur, you feel free again. But when it dries, your brain paralyzes from another re-run of violence.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", democracy, freedom, great weather for media, meant to wake up feeling, war, what is freedom

Upcoming Performances

I’m excited to read some new work…….hope you can make it!

Tuesday, November 21st, I will be reading poems at BIG WORDS, ETC reading series at 61 Local located at 61 Bergen St in Brooklyn. The event is from 6-8pm. Celebrate some wonderful writers exploring the theme of 5 more minutes! 

Friday, December 1st,  I get to celebrate Three Rooms Press’s Prose! Poetry! Party! at Cornelia Street Cafe located at 29 Cornelia St. in NYC from 6-8pm. This event is $10, but it includes a drink. What a great line-up of writers including Meagan Brothers, David Lawton, Jane LeCroy, Karen Hildebrand, Jane Ormerod, Robert Gibbons, and more! Hosted by the marvelous Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges.

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Filed under: SHOWS | video, WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", 61 Local, Big Words Etc, Big Words reading series, David Lawton, Jane LeCroy, Jane ORmerod, Karen Hildebrand, Kat Georges, Meagan Brothers, meant to wake up feeling, NYC poetry readings, Peter Carlaftes, poetry and prose in brooklyn, prose and poetry, Robert Gibbons, Three Rooms Press

Dear Universe (A Manifesto)

first published by great weather for MEDIA

 

Dear Universe, I want a full-time teaching job and at least two closets in my apartment and a complete understanding of the difference between effect and affect.

That time I asked my students to stare at each other for sixty seconds (insert laughter, discomfort and a continuous need to look away) and my student, who tried so hard to share his eyes with me, kept whispering how hard it is to look at someone who isn’t speaking. And when we shared our experiences afterward, I asked him the color of my eyes; he said silver. Dear Universe, I want to see the shiny in me too.

Dear Universe, when did you tell me that none of this would end, that brains congeal and there is only so much a scalpel can remove?

Dear Universe, I haven’t quite mastered the pronunciation of marriage and have decided to live alongside the Hadza to learn the importance of telling time through the movement of sky. Maybe I prefer monogamy with things that glow like Lyra or birds with indigestion.

I used to collect ants; scooped them up like cake crumbs and spelled out prayers with their slow-moving bodies. Dear Universe, can religion be that simple?

Dear Universe, when my ribs were the only cage I climbed into. Yes, can we go back to that?

One night when I ran out of things to hold, I gulped down enough street signs to make me feel like I understood what I was doing. Cut my tongue on their sharp edges and I still got lost. Dear Universe, my belly contains a GPS but it always brings me back to where I am afraid of going.

Dear Universe, there is a mouse living inside my oven, so I haven’t cooked anything proper in months. I rolled up a poem and set it on fire hoping the ashes of words would lead it elsewhere. Like that time I read Vera Pavlova and she led me out of that mental hospital. Sometimes we just need an extra map to free ourselves from borrowed kilns or bone breaks.

I want a backyard to plant dandelions and hyaloclastite. Universe, can you give me some land to roam against?

Somehow my wrists slipped their way out of midnight and I am collecting sharps again. Like a brushfire. Like a tic-tac toe board of blood and guts. Dear Universe, I don’t need any more band-aids; it’s surgery time.

Remember when guns sprayed water instead of organs? I left the country of my body because my passport expired and I lost the code to get in. Dear Universe, can you leave the back door open?

Filed under: "self diagnosed lactose intolerance"

Upcoming Performances!

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My poetryband Hydrogen Junkbox featuring David Lawton, Zita Zenda, Starchilde and I will be performing on Friday, November 3rd at Cornelia Street Cafe from 6-8pm. It will be an evening of poetry and music. Come hear some of our new songs!!! The night will also be featuring Obsidian and Matthew Hupert. Plus….a limited open mic, so bring something to read if you dare! It is $10, which includes a drink.

Cornelia Street Cafe is located at 29 Cornelia St. in NYC. 

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THEN…..join me the next day on Saturday, November 4th for a Brevitas reading at Parkside Lounge located at 318 E. Houston St. in NYC for a smorgasbord of poets reading short poems from 2-6pm. Two drink minimum (they have non-alcoholic beverages as well).

Filed under: SHOWS | video, WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", Brevitas, David Lawton, Hydrogen Junkbox, meant to wake up feeling, music and poetry, NYC poetry readings, Starchilde, ukelele and poetry, Zita Zenda

Loaded

dear gun,

every weapon that I’ve ever touched
grows on my body.





I think it’s time you put yourself away now.

 

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, gun control, meant to wake up feeling, weaponize body

You are a Rarity!

first published by great weather for MEDIA

 

I am waiting for the 4 train at Fulton station. Bodies surround me like a parade of run-on sentences. We are all experiencing this madness of human congestion together. I am pressed against the wall because there is nowhere else to lean. A human walks past me wearing legs longer than Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. Another passes me by and if I were to press adjectives shaped as boxes into their skin, they’d all combat each other. Some humans just cannot be labeled. They are rare; they are unclassifiable.

Or. Maybe I am looking at this all wrong. All humans cannot be labeled. We are all rare; we are all unclassifiable.

In a recent article by Laura Haines about the complexity of gender, “Not as Simple as XX or XY”, she wrote, “…rare is not a reason to dismiss possibility or to dismiss a real person’s humanity. Rare still exists. Rare walks around and has feelings, faith, needs, and rights. If anything at all, rare should move us to expand our horizons along the planes of love, grace, and acceptance.”

I spread this quote onto the board at school and ask my students what this means to them. We break down the various meanings hidden inside rare: unique, different, other, special.

I ask them: Are you rare? Do you want to be rare?

This conversation comes out of one that arrived a few weeks ago when we were discussing the openness of identity. Can someone choose their identity? I asked. And can it change? Or must it be static?

When we are approached by something or someone we do not understand, it can be difficult to know what to say. It may feel like a challenge to learn them. Sometimes we just walk away or we make assumptions. This just creates a further gap between us.

A student answered, “It’s confusing when I don’t know how to approach someone.”

I said, “If we judged every book by its cover, we’d be severely disappointed. The best parts are the words. You miss out when you don’t even take a moment to peer inside.”

In an interview, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates said, “You are your body” and in class we talked about all the ways we are pushed out of it. When we do not look like someone recognizable, we are isolated. Called names. Misunderstood.

In a world where we are replacing our tongues with loaded guns and speaking through them, I fear that we are forgetting the beauty of rarities. When I don’t understand something, I ask questions. A lot of them. I want to understand. I want to learn the language of as many identities as I can; in fact, I am still learning mine.

I want to be rare and I want to live in a world where oddities are celebrated, not removed.

Just think of every time you learned a new word and it brought you closer to seeing more clearly, to articulating yourself more and the world around you. People….especially the rare ones…can offer you that too.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", gender, great weather for media, laura haines, meant to wake up feeling, rarity, ta-nehisi coates

In collaboration with my Dad….a brand new book!

When I was little, I remember my dad and I making up stories. About people who passed us by as we sat on various benches at the mall while my sister and mom shopped. About people we knew or wanted to know or characters that only lived inside our imaginations.

As I grew, I started writing poems. When I felt bold enough, I’d storm stages and read them out loud. Sometimes I wrote stories too.

Three years ago, I encouraged my dad to publish his work. He had been writing stories for years and couldn’t believe someone (who didn’t know him) would want to read his work.

Now, he has three published novels under his belt and is working on a fourth.

A year or so ago, my dad asked me if I might want to write a book with him. Of course I said yes. And many months and words later, our book is in print with an ISBN and cover and I couldn’t be prouder.

A Very Special Dress & Other Stories is an accumulation of a myriad of relationships: a daughter to her father, a dog impatiently waiting for her human to come home, a teenager figuring out their gender identity…..spanning generations and voices.

Purchase this book now:

Checks or money orders only, made payable to Martin Herman & Associates.  NO cash please.

194 Rodney Press, 521 Simsbury Road, Bloomfield, CT 06002

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Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", A Very Special Dress, A Very Special Dress & Other Stories, Martin Herman

Learning How to Jump

Every bridge I have ever jumped from has talked back to me.

The story of my body has seven alternate endings and a fold-out atlas stapled to the middle. It’s like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, but when I turn to the page I want, it is missing.

The first time I jumped, it was several hours past midnight. Somehow the sun had confused itself again with the stars. The sun fractured into neon confetti and fell from the sky. As I jumped, what appeared to be illuminated starfish stuck to my skin. I survived with two scraped knees and a cracked tooth.

Have you ever spent an afternoon weeping over the dismemberment of Pluto?            I have.

The story of my body can be unwrapped in chapters, but they are disordered, of course.

The second time I jumped, the cables and bolts from the Brooklyn Bridge came undone. I slid down, down into the water and climbed toward the ocean’s floor. I ate lunch with a mermaid with braided buildings in her hair. She begged me to stay forever; her voice sounded like smoke and hummingbirds in love. When I ran out of oxygen and conversation topics, I floated back up dripping a trail of salt and sandwich crumbs.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, magical realism, meant to wake up feeling, mermaid, poetry of the body