Tag Archives: LaToya Jordan

WEIRD SISTER at NEW YORK CITY POETRY FESTIVAL!

Come say HI to us at NYC Poetry Fest on Govenors Island!

On Saturday 7/30, three amazing poets will be reading as part of the Weird Sister showcase at the New York City Poetry Festival.

weird-sisterlogo7

When: 4pm

Where: The Algonquin Stage

Featuring readings by:

Hossannah Asuncion

LaToya Jordan

Caolan Madden

Hosted by Marisa Crawford and Cathy de la Cruz

More info here.

Can’t wait to see you! <3 <3 <3

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ALL THE FEMINIST POETS: LaToya Jordan

ALL THE FEMINIST POETS features a single poem and an interview from a feminist poet that we love.

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LaToya Jordan

LaToya Jordan is a writer from Brooklyn, New York. Her poetry has appeared in Mobius: The Journal for Social Change, MiPOesias, Radius, and is forthcoming in Mom Egg Review. She is the author of the chapbook Thick-Skinned Sugar (Finishing Line Press). She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her biggest fans are her husband and pre-schooler.

 

Miss Missing

White sashes embroidered
with gold letters
showcase our locations:

Bottom of the East River
Abandoned Lot Southwest of Philly
Burnt House in North Carolina
Buried in a Park in Seattle

Last year’s winner pins
the crown to my head.
From Miss Ditch in Ashland County
to Miss Missing.
Mascara tears and black eyes
There she is, Miss Missing.

You probably saw my college graduation
photo on the news and in the papers.
All-American face and form. Flawless skin
now dressed in tiny red mouths
trapped in rigor mortis screams.

I pray for someone to hear
our remains. We sing a raspy song,
reenactment of last breaths
to welcome the new pageant girls.

The newest sisters of our piecemeal gang
include the one with fingerprint tattoos,
a girl who carries her head like a purse,
and the woman whose baby trails behind her,
still connected by the umbilical cord.

The girls add pushpins to the map
on the wall backstage. X marks the spot.
A rainbow of pins, thousands of them
crisscross with our limbs
like cross country railroad tracks.

Find any of the other contestants,
Miss Landfill Los Angeles or
Miss Abandoned Car in Brooklyn,
and I bet that beneath brown decomposing skin,
their bones are as pale white as mine.

(published by Radius)

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15 Books I Can’t Wait to Read in 2015

With the new year comes a new crop of totally amazing reads. Here are some I can’t wait to get my hands on:

1) Where the Words End and My Body Begins by Amber Dawn
(Arsenal Pulp Press)

9781551525839_WhereWordsEndAmber Dawn’s known for her award-winning memoir How Poetry Saved My Life and her novel Sub Rosa, which reads like a feminist pulp novel/fairytale about sex workers. Where the Words End and My Body Begins, Dawn’s first book of poems, pays homage to legendary and emerging queer poets including Gertrude Stein, Christina Rossetti, and Adrienne Rich with a series of poems written in the 15th-century Spanish glosa form.

 

 

2) Houses by Nikki Wallschlaeger
(Horseless Press)

SONY DSCI love how Nikki Wallschlaeger’s poems travel from building to building, room to room, from the exterior to the interior, from the often female-embodied everyday to the vast and looming social world that surrounds us, filled with problems and possibilities: “I have children that need lunches in the morning so I love them best.  I also love lipstick and Europe, and the things that dead men say.”
Wallschlaeger’s first full-length book Houses is coming this May. Until then read some of her knockout poems here and here and here.

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