Aimee Herman's Blog, page 41

spirit animal.

I was sitting outside on a bench with my superhero nephew eating lunch. With hummus and avocado-filled sandwich between our teeth, I noticed several pigeons swarming close by. A man and child sat nearby and suddenly the man said,”

“Don’t feed those birds anything. They’re disgusting. Spread disease. Just horrible.”

Several of my friends have a strong faith in what they call their��spirit animal (a creature you identify with). After taking an unnecessary quiz, I was informed that my spirit animal is a butterfly. Oddly enough, this is the only��image tattoo on my body. I used to collect butterfly images. I loved the idea of symmetry and their magical quality: being spun from what once was a caterpillar. I’ve grown out of my butterfly stage, though I still find them stunning. However, I don’t feel symmetrical at all. My thoughts are ragged and parts of my body sometimes engages in silent treatments with other parts.

I could easily say elephant. I find their skin romantic. The weight of them and desire to walk toward what they need like water causes me to love them even more.

My poetry’s spirit animal is an elephant.��I am a pigeon.

Pigeons were the first postal workers! They flew through wind and rain to deliver letters before there were stamps and blue boxes on many corners. They may spread disease, but so do humans. They are also deeply curious with an impressive appetite. They will find food hidden in the crevices of stones. To me, pigeons are fearless.

In Brooklyn, I pass by a pigeon with a slight hop, missing a foot. It does not complain, though of course I recognize that I do not speak its language. It moves about, researching its surroundings.��I am a pigeon.

Parts of me are missing or maybe I am missing something. Maybe��I am missing out on what all this is on me. Maybe I am just searching��just like these pigeons for nourishment to my body.

Yes, I am a mailbox (just like they once were).

Yes, I spread disease, though I am grateful that at this moment I am without ownership of such germs.

Yes, I am misunderstood, but I am still trying to understand myself as well.

I am a pigeon.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, pigeon, poem, spirit animal

Tonight….Traveling with poetry and uke to Suffern, NY

I’m looking forward to cracking open some words and seeing what exists inside the guts….
 
Join me in the community room on the third floor of the Suffern Village Hall. Located at 61 Washington Avenue in Suffern, NY. 
 
Doors and sign-ups will open at 7:30 PM; poetry will start at 8:00 PM.

Poems, amazing people, fun, and delicious food and drink. And books for sale!

$5 recommended at the door.

Filed under: SHOWS | video, WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", meant to wake up feeling, NY poetry, performance poetry, poetry, Suffern, ukelele

Performance Tonight: meant to wake up feeling………poetry and prose

MEANT TO WAKE UP FEELING POETRY AND PROSE with Aimee Herman and Jenna Leigh Evans







ABOUT THIS SHOW

Celebrate the newest books by these great writers! meant to wake up feeling by Aimee Herman and the excellent novel, Prosperity by Jenna Leigh Evans.

Come to DIXON PLACE: 161 Chrystie Place/ NYC

7:30pm-8:30pm   FREE!!!!

There will be books for sale.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Aimee Herman is a Brooklyn-based poet and performance artist looking to disembowel the architecture of gender and what it means to queer the body. Find Aimee’s poems in Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books), in the full-length collection, to go without blinking (BlazeVOX books), the recent chapbook, rooted, (Dancing Girl Press), and in the forthcoming full-length book of poems, meant to wake up feeling (great weather for MEDIA). Aimee is a faculty member with Poetry Teachers NYC and a writing mentor for the Red Umbrella Project through their memoir writing drop-in classes for those in the sex trades.

Jenna Leigh Evans was named one of LAMBDA Literary’s Emerging LGBT Voices of 2014. Her novel, Prosperity, was published this year. You can also find her work on Autostraddle, the Billfold, the Nervous Breakdown, and the Toast. She lives in Brooklyn, and is a founding member of the Paratactic Fiction group.

Filed under: SHOWS | video, WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", Dixon Place, Jenna Leigh Evans, meant to wake up feeling, NYC literary events, NYC Poetry, poetry and prose NYC, poetry and ukelele, Prosperity, Prosperity novel

how to offer consent on being seen

This is not easy. This is defined as a rough draft body memoir. This is a human dressed up today as a   a    ….a. …a.

It can be difficult to exist in the ways in which we really desire. For instance, I exited my home located on a street in a borough in a city on the east coast. I carried the dirt of all my clothes–from two weeks of living–in a blue bag, clung to forearm, then shoulder. Off to laundromat on a day of the week I can no longer remember. But I can recall the interruption of my feet against stiff ground, scent of tired and spoiled:

Damnnnnnnnnnnnn…….. Damn, you are fine. God bless, you miss. God bless, you. You are beautiful. Thank God for you. I like that. 

And I wanted to tell him: I do not believe in God, sir, so I’m not sure we have anything to do with one another. I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t really asking for a reaction to my existence and if I could possibly critique his language, I’d much prefer silence to whistle. I wanted to tell him that I wish men like him could be fined. I wish humans like him could be fined for interrupting others from just walking. I wanted to tell him that he interrupted my imagination. He took apart my blur and labeled me into something I’d prefer not to be.

It can be difficult to exist in the ways in which we truly desire.

I am on 4 train D train A train 3 train some train and I search out the faces of humans with fur against cheeks and I am searching out humans with flat against chests and I want to ask them how they do that.

Someone recently asked me: If I think someone smells good or I like how they’ve put themselves together, do you think it’s ok for me to tell them? How can we compliment consensually?

It is necessary to acknowledge that being present within one’s body can be more than just a challenge. It can be painful. There are moments where we break out of others’ boxes and become loud.

These are the moments (perhaps) we want to be seen the most. These are the moments where a hey-the-way-you-exist-is-so-brave-and-marvelous   OR  I-wish-I could-be-like-THAT.

I send love letters to humans reconstructing their gender every day (in my head). Maybe I need to start sending them out into the world……..

 

To the human on the 4 train heading toward Brooklyn:
What I wanted to say to you was: I love how you swirl thirteen genders into your skin so deeply, so intrinsically that you are a rainbow of humans. You are a kaleidoscope of languages.
 
To the human I call pen pal:
I love that you label yourself: alive. You are not sewn into any particular pronoun. Rather, you are breathing. You are burning through thoughts and poems as though your brain is a marathon of adjectives. 

 

I dream of the day I walk outside and someone says to me: The way you wear your gender is magical. I see you as human. I see you as beautiful and handsome and all the adjectives in between. The way you tied that double windsor around your neck caused me to STOP and ask you how you did that. I think you’re really neat…….

I offer my consent to that!

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, catcalls, consent, gender, genderqueer, poem

Pushcart Prize nominations

Thank you to the great  great weather for MEDIA for nominating my poem, quadratic equation, for a 2016 Pushcart Prize

I was never very good at math; in fact, it almost kept me from graduating from high school. Numbers never remain in me and it has been a language I have been hesitant to learn. Sometimes things are easier to learn when pressed into poems.

great weather for MEDIA Pushcart Nominations:

I join a list of incredible poets also published in the anthology, I Let Go of the Stars in my Hand:

Linda Camplese – My Father’s Gun  

Aimee Herman – quadratic equation

Ron Kolm – Bird and Me

Puma Perl – Stories from the Big Black Shoes

John W. Snyder – To the Girl Who Called Me a Faggot

John Sibley Williams – In the Pitch Bright Darkness

*

Want a taster? Here are the first few lines…

He was a cash and carry kind of man

cash business, cashed in, cashed out

carried a big, fat, American-style handgun

and he was right when he thought

it made him look tough.

- Linda Camplese 

*

I used my fingers longer than it was socially acceptable. I cannot recall if it’s because I clouded my brain with the smoke of drugs, but numbers and names have a difficult time remaining in me.

- Aimee Herman

*

I read somewhere

That Charlie Parker

Ate a rose.

- Ron Kolm

*

William Burroughs’ untied shoelace

cracks my morning dream.

Sad as Coca Cola and a can of Pringles.

- Puma Perl

*

To the girl who called me a faggot

that day at Six Flags

when I decided to wear

my super-fabulous.

skin-tight,

women’s pants

with yellow and pink animal print on them.

- John W. Snyder

*

What a strange music sounds

from the dead birds frozen to the wire!

- John Sibley Williams

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", great weather for media, I Let Go of the Stars in my Hand, poetry, Pushcart Prize nominations

[this] happened.

There was that time the lights remained off.

There was that time your palm was just a palm and when you searched it for directions, it simply led you back to you.

There was that time you did that thing but you kept it to yourself.

There was that time you traveled where there were no outlets. There were no switches. And then, you just remained present.

What will happen if you stop photographing your belongings? What will happen if the only friends you have are the ones who fit inside your home? (the ones who call when it’s just a thursday) What will happen if you do a good deed but do not post about it?

Are you still good? Are you still alive? Are you still human?

Are you validated?

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", being present, body, human, poem, reject technology

Performance: WORD (brooklyn)

Tuesday, November 4th, Books are cracked open, read and discussed!

Come to WORD bookshop for an evening of poetry and prose with Richard Levine, Aimee Herman, Jenna Leigh Evans, and Puma Perl

Time: 7pm – 8pm, reading/talk/Q&A; 8pm – 8:30pm signing

Location: WORD Brooklyn, 126 Franklin St, BK NY 11222

 

Filed under: SHOWS | video, WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", Brooklyn literary readings, Brooklyn poetry and prose, Jenna Leigh Evans, meant to wake up feeling, Prosperity novel, Puma Perl, retrograde, Richard Levine, WORD bookshop, WORD bookshop Brooklyn

dear rebel, I’m turning off my tongue.

Someone told me that there is a chance that humans can be overexposed, so I seep out the iron and ink in my organs and allow my body to exist as a solitary stretch of invisible. I am going to let my spit go dry. Rebel, I left sixteen pounds of my bones on a stage in the west village on a friday when the moon was too shy to emerge from its overcoat of clouds. I broke a hip from the impact of silence after I placed seven hundred and twenty seconds of sounds on strangers’ laps. Then, on Saturday, my tooth fell out (OK, just a filling, but it still resembled the rest of me) from biting into the softest butternut squash and I worry that I am coming undone. Have you ever felt a peep hole housed inside a human? I met someone who looked right through me and then dug away at all my private passwords. Should I title this corruption or Sunday rendezvous?

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, Dear Rebel, poetry, Rebel Diaz, tongue

friday evening with your approaching facial hair and my nervous fingers

Thank you to The Good Men Project for publishing my new poem, “friday evening with your approaching facial hair and my nervous fingers”

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, body poetry, facial hair, genderqueer, poetry, The Good Men Project, trans body

there is no such thing as static

“I am a rare species, not a stereotype.” ― Ivan E. Coyote

You electrify the pulse in every fingertip just to push away the static of noise telling you how to be.

You squint your pixelated pupils in order to pronounce whatever words fit you in this moment, even if you have never spoke them before. Even if you can barely understand them. What matters is it is you right now.

You put on your glittered denim, hip-hugging pants even though they are several breaths too tight and you wore them when you called yourself something else, but you can still be queer or male or gender variant no matter the size of your zipper.

You decide to channel william s. borroughs’s cut-up method with the language of your parts: for the rest of the day your genitals are housed in your brain and the space between your thighs are your fingers, writing down all your thoughts.

You give yourself permission to linger in front of store windows and blow kisses at the reflection of your blur.

You have no idea what stereotypes are these days. You are a cornucopia of moments.

 

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, gender, gender stereotypes, genderqueer, genderqueer body, Ivan E. Coyote, poetry, stereotypes