I first began to write poetry during the summer of 1995. I had traveled to Chalki, a tiny island off the coast of Rhodes, to participate in a women’s travel group, assuming that there would be other gay women. However, it didn’t take long to discover that I was it—the only lesbian.

It was bad enough being the one lesbian, but it became harder once the focus of the group turned to writing and performing erotic poetry. Feeling increasingly invisible by descriptions of heterosexual intercourse, an idea of a poem, Bad Girl Persona began to emerge— a poem about hot lesbian seduction and sex. No question that I wanted to proclaim the sex in sexual identity, to flaunt sex between women. No question I wanted to shock.

Performed before a somewhat stunned audience, Bad Girl Persona was a hit. I would not have guessed then that I would continue to write; nor that I would emerge as a writer of erotic lesbian poetry. A most unexpected life turn.



BAD GIRL PERSONA

Hey girl,
I mean
you just gonna love me.

Cause first
I’m gonna
make you laugh,
tell you
my best stories
do my famous
look you
right-in-the-eye
tongue caressing teeth,
sultriest gaze.

Girl,
You gonna just love me.

Get you
on the dance floor
make all
my best moves,
body serpentine
against yours
hips uncoiling
leg sneaks between legs.

Then
I’m takin’ you home,
dance all over your body,
do such things
with my mouth
you’ll
be beggin’ me to stop,
or continue.

And we’ll apologize
to neighbors
in the morning,
but not before
I make you
the best cup of coffee
you ever did have

I mean
girl,

you just gonna love me.


For me, writing poetry is a unique experience. A fragment emerges from a place deep beneath thought as if a creative unconscious exists that, once triggered, gradually releases a poem to consciousness. After that, the task is language—seeking words, reading aloud, finding different phrases until it is time to say the poem is finished—and leave.

Sexual Constructions is about Boston’s lesbian sexual scene and the changes in lesbian culture across three tumultuous decades—including female-to-male transgender emergence.



SEXUAL CONSTRUCTIONS

I

In the 70’s
takin’
a new woman home
was easy.
Good dope
cheap wine
fall down in bed.

I mean
fall down,
futon on floor
red Indian spread,
incense lit
candles flicker
vibrator plugged in.

Unbutton
flannel shirts,
caress frangipone
or patchouli
between her legs
then mine.

Kay Gardner ready
Moon Circles spinnin’
askin’
what do you
want me to do?
Showin’ her
I’m hot, expert
and organic.

In the 70’s
takin’
a new women home
was easy.

II

In the 80’s
takin’
a new woman home
gettin’ harder.

Platform bed
no wine
forget weed
may be in recovery,
talkin’ about meetings
tellin’ me
what step she’s in.

Gets hives from lotion
sneezin’ from incense,
sex histories?
Learnin’ more
than I ever did
wanna know,
don’t matter anyhow
ain’t wrappin’ no plastic
‘round my tongue.

Maybe she vanilla
or a leather wanna be,
tie her up
or hug her to sleep,
take out sex toys
or hide ‘em away
don’t know if dildoes
are in or out.
I mean
current or passé.

In the 80’s
need
two different bedrooms.


In the 80’s
takin’
a new woman home
wasn’t easy.

III

Takin’
a new woman home
in the 90’s
made the 80’s
look good.

Don’ know who
I’m bringin’ home.
Is she a girl?
Was she a boy?

Should I be
puttin’ on
my slinky leopard bikini
sleazin’ right down her,
or wearin’
loose boxers?

Don’ know the music,
put on Kay Gardner
she be sayin’
who in hell is that?
College chicks
talkin’ dicks and phalluses
used to think
they were the same.

Been
one long time
since I took
a new woman home.



While visiting the village of Molyvos on Lesvos, I led a workshop on sex and aging. I wanted to push the idea that lesbian sex and desire doesn’t cease with age.

The poem that follows, Dilemma, like many others in this collection, are in “thieved” language—that is, in the African-West Indian dialect of Trinidad, the birthplace of my long-time partner, Gloria Charles. There is simply no way any of this could be said in American-English.



DILEMMA

I

I’m lookin’
I’m watchin’
eye-ballin’ up
eye-ballin’ down,
conjurin’ her scent
seein’
soft pillow lips
imaginin’
light cocoa
skin
taut
warm silk,
picturin’ me
right between those legs.

II

She say, girl
you don’ wan’ me
you wan’ my grandma.

Eyes sharp
gaze cold
I say, girl
I know
she I want.
It’s what I can git
is the problem.


For more than 40,000 years the Aborigine of Australia told their stories. Creation stories about the origin of their people and the Australian landscape.

One story describes the emergence of two islands in Jervis Bay near Kangaroo Island. It is a story about a husband and his two wives who were caught eating silver bream, a fish forbidden to Aborigine women and punishable by death. The women fled but were followed, caught by their husband, and thrown into Jervis Bay to drown. Sometime later, two islands came into view. Two islands set apart.

I never learned why silver bream and or any other kind of fish were forbidden to women. The poem, Two Women is my lesbian version. Perhaps a re-telling, one close to the ancient, original—later to be disguised—Aborigine story.


TWO WOMEN

Two women
running
running
scorched desert,
dodging
large rocks
small lizards,
star-shaped leaves
moisten
parched lips.

Two women
running
running,
now
scrub forest
then a lake.



Two women
dance
amidst waves
cook
small fish
on sun-baked stones.

Weary,
hidden by
soft ferns
they sleep
ebony bodies
entwined.

Men crash
through forest
raging curses
terror mute,
first one
then the second
tossed into water
necks broken.

Strong swimmers
foraging
lake bottom
glimpse
two islands
set apart,
yet bound eternally
by coral strands
in endless embrace.