I Might Like A Girl.

Pride 2022 09/30: Chavela Vargas

Singer Chavela Vargas was born in Costa Rica, but left at 17, making Mexico her home. Chavela put a lesbian spin on traditional Mexican music, beginning her career busking and singing in bars, and eventually going on to tour throughout Mexico, North American and Europe.

According to Chavela, in the early 1940s, she met artist Frida Kahlo, and the two soon began a relationship which though short-lived, Chavela remembered fondly. Chavela credited Frida with increasing herself confidence, and helping her to be herself.

Chavela Vargas came out publicly as a lesbian when she was 81, and debuted at Carnegie Hall two years later.

learn more with queer as fact: a queer history podcast

[Image descriptions: black-and-white photo of a young Chavela holding a guitar; Chavela singing onstage in the later years of her life, with her arms outstretched and wearing a black and red poncho]

— Edna St. Vincent Millay, from a letter to Arthur Davison Ficke featured in Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

“Hush now, don’t speak. I can read your thoughts in your eyes, sense them in the way you hold my hand. I know what you want to say when you hold me tight and can’t seem to let me go. Sometimes we’re better off enjoying the silence, better off filling the space between the lines. Letting the unsaid things talk. We don’t have to give it a name as long as we both know what we’re in over our heads. Sometimes words simply aren’t needed. Not when I’m with you.”

— hush now / n.j.

3 a.m.

I find myself in the midst of poetry written by the broken hearted. As I read each line the overwhelmingly hurt that’s been forgotten in my mind. Yet felt in my heart the cries of all the why’s.

Poetry not only written or rewritten; but the kind living in the hearts of those who have lived hurt an pain. In which now converts to healing through words. Writing, the aftermath of endured angush.

Those who have had the highest of hopes. Only to find those hopes crushed by someones lies. Or torn, shattered, and distraught by the hands of a narcissist. Which ever the case may be, I say to you; don’t feel alone because I’ve lived the pain in your poems that I read.

R.A.

“My capital of silk, you are so soft, but its hard, this heart, this art, this dark…to understand…but if you go the land…of the thousand dances…we might just have a million and one chances.”

—

the hardest thing about poetry

is honesty.

how do i give words to the

interior of my soul

and then put it out for

the entire world to see?

knowing that there are

blurry faces i see everyday 

but don’t really talk to

who will remember my poems

the next time they look at

my face and think-

this is what she feels,

this is what she hides.

so, here is a confession 

as the new year is upon us:

much of what i write isn’t honest,

it isn’t me.

my poetry is not me.

if you want to find me,

if you seek what i hide,

look carefully in the spaces

between the words,

in the pauses and the hyphens.

search for me in the white in between

the black print, 

in all the unexpressed

in the midst of the art.

even at my best,

find me in the silence

bursting between the 

adjacent syllables,

then don’t just look,

hear,

listen to what one word 

whispers to the other,

how they acknowledge the unsaid

by leaving space for it on the screen

to exist

then don’t just hear,

smell,

breathe in the vaguely musky scent

of all the letters that never made it

on to the screen in front of you

because i pressed backspace,

either because they didn’t really 

say what i really wanted to 

or because they said it a little too well.

then when all this is done,

feel it.

understand

that this is why in school

you were taught four different interpretations

for a single line and although

that might exasperate you,

this is why a poem is more than

the sum of the words that

it consists of,

this is the reason why the words

you read on paper and on your screen

will never be where the 

true meaning of the poem lies.

but the truth sits there

squeezed in between all the noise,

patiently waiting,

somehow always the winner

of this game of

literary hide and seek.

but now,

if you want to,

at least you know where to find it.

Exchange by Bryson Tiller will always hold an exclusively special place in my heart. Currently patiently waiting for Serenity

Come to life

Maybe if I write about you you’ll come to life

Maybe I just haven’t been putting in the effort to bring you closer to me

I haven’t worn my hands out from writing about you and who I imagine you to be

But surely you have been in my mind and my heart

You’ve existed beyond the words I could ever write

My mere existence confirms yours

The longing I have

The love I hold in place reserved just for you

The devotion I’m ready to bestow on you

The unconditional intentional commitment I’m so ready to have to us and to you

Sometimes I wonder if it’s safer to keep all this inside, to not jinx it all for us by putting the words out there

I don’t know, I’m conflicted

Writing about you somehow makes me feel closer to you

Feels like bringing you to life

I can’t wait to have you read all this, if you ever come…