Arisa White: The Interview

Arisa White is the author of two poetry chapbooks and the recipient of multiple awards and honors. Her first full-length collection Hurrah’s Nest, nominated for the 44th NAACP Image Award, made some of Gertrude’s editorial staff fall in love and want to know more. Her second full-length collection, A Penny Saved, was published by Willow Books. Gertrude’s Elizabeth Simson had the honor of interviewing Arisa for issue 19 of Gertrude. We hope you enjoy what we discovered.

Elizabeth Simson (ES): This is your first collection. How long have you been writing? Talk a little about the journey to creating this book. Poets sometimes ask us about the process of gathering poems for a manuscript. How did you select and order the poems for Hurrah’s Nest?

Arisa White (AW): I’ve been writing for over a decade. “Follow” was written as an undergrad at Sarah Lawrence. I was in a workshop with Thomas Lux. (I enjoyed staring at the slouch socks he wore with his tapered jeans.) After class, Thomas came up to me and said that if I ever needed anything—needed to talk—he was there for me. He thought it was me in the poem. He told me to get out of it. I was upset he thought it was me and equally moved by his caring. As I pulled together the poems of this collection, I had to honor the fact that these were true stories. I couldn’t escape them or separate myself from them.

I continued to write poems, without thinking about them as part of a collection, while taking Cave Canem workshops in Manhattan and in graduate school at UMass Amherst. A variation of Hurrah’s Nest was my thesis project. I sent the manuscript off to contests and publishers after grad school and received rejections. I reflected on what was working, what wasn’t. I got feedback from editor friends and asked non-poetry people to read it to see if it appealed to them, if they had questions about clarity, narrative arc, etc. Using all that feedback over these past four years, I deliberately put all my family poems together, narrowed it down to a time period, chronologically ordered them, and soon I could see what was missing, what wasn’t said.

“Disposition for Shininess” is one of those poems added to give it volume, to give my voice the rage and confusion it needed to create a fully complex emotional experience for the reader. “You smellin ya’self gal?” is the last piece I wrote for Hurrah’s Nest. (I was at Hedgebrook in 2010 and it came to me—I think subconsciously I wanted the challenge of writing lyrical prose—and I enjoyed writing it; I could hear my brothers’ voices so clearly. I laughed so much while writing it.) I needed the prose form to ground the collection, as well as be a narrative fulcrum to which all the other poems could refer.

In thinking about how to open and close the book, it made sense for me to begin it with a poem that uses my siblings’ names. The opening poem is somewhat an epistle to my youngest brother, chronicling the experiences he was not a part of. Then the closing poem addresses another brother, who is older, proposing the need to revisit and unearth the stories and beliefs that have shaped us, so that we are not limited by those stories and beliefs.

When Virtual Artists Collective accepted the book in 2011 for publication, I asked my siblings for permission to use their names. I sent them the manuscript and hoped that they approved of what I wrote. It was so great they said yes, quite immediately after I sent them emails. As I look back, it makes sense that this is my first collection—in some ways it is a tribute to the art making that my siblings and I would do when we were little. We created together, and I still keep them close when I create.

Read more: Arisa White: The Interview

"Chichester" by Jodie Garay

CH I CH E S TE R

Bitter wind dusts up

snow-tethered branches,

rock ledge. Icicles collect

at every faulty seam. At sunset

she cries to the bone, absorbed

in the falling darkness,

her recent loss. Occasionally

an icicle comes undone, pierces

the stillness. Before that, I let fly

the knife tip of an iron shovel

onto ice-thickened bluestone

in search of the path, what will return

as flowerbed. Snow underfoot, smell

of snow, when we lay entangled

in earshot of low, muted radio,

phone’s far-off ring, kettle whistle

and alert to a shadow of breath– 

as it goes, never one thing,

all the while I look, watch, talk,

read mail strewn across, think

dammed-up gutters, storm’s weight

the crunch, rare song

of infrequent deep-winter bird,

this sharp cold, what keeps me

from me, from you,

the mind’s endless jettison,

never one place alone.

from Gertrude 19, Winter 2013

Jodie Garay's poems have appeared in a number of journals, including Brooklyn Review, The Saint Ann's Review, Twelfth Street Review and Mountain Record. She and her partner split their time between Brooklyn and upstate New York.

"Grandpa" by Chaney Kwak

Here is me, a ten-year-old on the cusp of puberty, with a canary-colored terrycloth towel covering my buzz cut like a wig. Here is Grandpa, perched on a pink plastic stool that buckles under his weight. The cassette player plays my favorite album of the year, Out of the Blue by Debbie Gibson.

“How old are you?” I ask Grandpa across the toy tea set he has just bought me.

“A lady never tells!” Grandpa says, outraged. “And a well-mannered girl should never ask.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Georgina,” I say.

“You are most forgiven,” Grandpa says, unpuckering his pout.

He picks up his teacup, sticking out his pinky. But he looks nothing like a lady. He used to be in the Navy and has a faded anchor on each hairy forearm to prove it.

"Lovely weather, isn’t it, Miss Jenna?” he asks me. It’s pouring outside, but we’re pretending.

“Oh, yes, quite,” I say, nodding eagerly. “Perfect for high tea!"

Mom bursts through the door without knocking. “Guess what I picked up for dinner!” she says. Her burgundy work pumps sink into the fuzzy carpet. Her smile drops.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“It’s only apple juice!” I say.

“No, what’s on your wrist?”

Propped on the tabletop, my left arm sparkles with my friend B.J.’s limestone bracelet that I traded for my baseball bat.

“My God, James,” she says. “Are you wearing my lipstick again?”

“He certainly is,” Grandpa says. “Fetching, huh?”

“Go wash your face before your father comes home,” Mom says, slowly. “And close the door behind you.”

The tap runs warmer than the bathroom tiles under my feet. I can hear the muffled sound of Mom yelling at Grandpa. I wipe my mouth. In the mirror, I look bloody.

Read more: "Grandpa" by Chaney Kwak

Contributors

William L. Alton was born November 5, 1969 and started writing in the Eighties while incarcerated in a psychiatric prison. Since then his work has appeared in Main Channel Voices, World Audience and Breadcrumb Scabs among others. In 2010, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has published one book titled Heroes of Silence. He earned his both BA and MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon where he continues to live.

Will Cordeiro lives in Tucson, where he volunteers at the Poetry Center and is completing his Ph.D. at Cornell in 18th century British literature. Recent work is published or forthcoming in Copper Nickel, VERSE online, New Walk, Unsplendid, and Raintown Review.

Nikki Paley Cox has been published in Briar Cliff Review (Pushcart Prize nomination), Hanging Loose Press, After Hours, and Another Chicago Magazine, among others. She holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from Emerson College, and taught Poetry and Composition at the University of Illinois in Chicago for almost a decade. Nikki wrote a full-length play that was featured in Chicago’s Writer’s Bloc Festival last summer, and is currently at work on a new play at Chicago Dramatists Theatre.

Meredith Doench writes and teaches in Dayton, Ohio. She has published in literary journals such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and So to Speak, among others. She is also one of the fiction editors of the literary journal Camera Obscura: Journal of Literature and Photography.

Steve Drum is a writer living in Savannah, Georgia. He is earning an MFA in writing and MA in cinema studies from Savannah College of Art and Design. Drum's work has been published in the Huffington Post, the St. Sebastian Review and The Wordstock Ten. He is working on a history of Colt Studios, told from the perspective of former models.

Jennie Ehrenhalt is a graduate student in English Education at Portland State University. She currently teaches creative writing at Trillium Public Charter School, and has worked as an LGBTQ-inclusive trauma advocate, facilitated LGBTQ community workshops, and edited a digest for Seattle's Safe Schools Coalition.  This is her first publication.

Jodie Garay's poems have appeared in a number of journals, including Brooklyn Review, The Saint Ann's Review, Twelfth Street Review and Mountain Record. She and her partner split their time between Brooklyn and upstate New York.

Rae Gouirand’s first collection of poetry, Open Winter, was selected by Elaine Equi for the 2011 Bellday Prize, and won a 2012 Independent Publisher Book Award for Poetry as well as the 2012 Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Columbia, The Kenyon Review: KROnline, Seneca Review, jubilat, Spinning Jenny, Bateau, Michigan Quarterly Review, and other journals, as well as two recent volumes of the Best New Poets series. A lecturer in the Department of English at UC-Davis, and Nonfiction Editor for California Northern, she is currently at work on a second collection of poems and a collection of linked essays.

Elizabeth Greenhill is a visual artist, writer, and practitioner of holistic medicine who grew up in North Carolina and then zipped off to New York for a long while until she pioneered herself to Oregon. At Vassar College she studied poetry, literature, and art and made 16mm films. At home in Portland, when she is not creating poetry or art, she works with her hands to help people feel better.

Dena Rash Guzman is a poet and editor living on a farm in the Mt. Hood Wilderness outside Portland, OR. Her work can be found online and in print in several journals and anthologies, including Thrush, Rumpus, Faster Times, Lyre Lyre, Fried Chicken and Coffee, and others. She is founding editor of the literary journal Unshod Quills, and is managing director for Shanghai, China's only independent English language press, HAL Publishing. Her first book of poetry is being released by Dog On A Chain Press in 2012. She co-produces Unchaste Readers, Portland's only all female literary series.

Molly Sutton Kiefer’s chapbook The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake won the 2010 Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Award. Her second chapbook, City of Bears, will be published in 2013 by dancing girl press.  Her work has appeared in Harpur Palate, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Berkeley Poetry Review, you are here, Gulf Stream, Cold Mountain Review, Southampton Review, Wicked Alice, and Permafrost, among others.  She earned her MFA from the University of Minnesota, is in the mentorship program at the Loft Literary Center, serves as poetry editor to Midway Journal, and runs Balancing the Tide: Motherhood and the Arts | An Interview Project.  She currently lives in Red Wing with her husband and daughter and is expecting a son in February. She is at work on a manuscript on (in)fertility.  More can be found at mollysuttonkiefer.com.

Chaney Kwak's writing appears in Zyzzyva, the New York Times, 2011-2012 Best American Short Plays and The Places We’ve Been: Field Reports from Travelers Under 35. He works as a correspondent for Condé Nast Daily Traveler.

Rex Leonowicz is a trans-identified intersectional feminist from New York City. He is heading to Oakland, CA to pursue his MFA in Poetry at Mills College. His work can be found in Lambda Literary's Poetry Spotlight, Bodies of Work Magazine, and Testimony, a New York-based queer art and literature exhibition and publication.

Alistair McCartney is the author of The End of the World Book: a Novel (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008). TEOTWB was a finalist for the PEN USA Fiction Award 2009 and the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Debut Fiction Award 2009, and it was in Seattle Times Best Ten Books of 2008. Born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1971, McCartney's writing has appeared in Animal Shelter, Fence, Bloom, Lies/Isles, Crush Fanzine, 1913, James White Review, and other literary journals and anthologies. He is currently at work on the second novel in a projected six-book cycle. Based in Los Angeles, he lives with his partner Tim Miller and teaches creative writing and literature in the BA and MFA Programs at Antioch University Los Angeles.

Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger (Miller and Shellabarger), a husband and husband artist team, create performances, sculptures, collages, and artist books that document the rhythms of human relationships. They are a 2008 recipient of an Artadia Chicago Award and a 2007 recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. Their work is in the collections of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Newark Public Library, and the National Gallery of Canada. Surveys of their work have been shown at the INOVA in Milwaukee, University Galleries at Illinois State University, and Institute of Contemporary Art in Portland, Maine. Western Exhibitions presented solo projects of their work at the VOLTA Show in Basel, Switzerland, NEXT Art Fair in Chicago, Illinois, and NADA Art Fair in Miami, Florida, all in 2008. Recent performances have been presented at the Time-Based Arts festival in Portland, Oregon, Hyde Park Art Center, 44/46 Performance Festival in Chicago, the Suburban in Oak Park, Illinois, the Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita, and the Illinois State University Galleries. Their work has been written about in Artforum.com, Art & Auction, Frieze, Artnet, The Art Newspaper, Flash Art, TimeOut Chicago, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Miller and Shellabarger also maintain separate artistic practices. They live and work in Chicago, Illinois.

Anthony Moll is a Californian expatriate now living in Baltimore, Maryland. He escaped both military service and the D.C. non-profit scene to pursue an MFA at the University of Baltimore, where he also teaches. His work was most recently featured in Seltzer, and he is a regular contributor to Gay Life magazine.

Cynthia Neely is the 2011 winner of the Hazel Lipa Prize for Poetry chapbook by Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment. Her poems have appeared in, among others, Bellevue Literary Review (Honorable Mention for the 2011 Marica and Poetry Prize), Floating Bridge Review, Crab Creek Review and Raven Chronicles, as well as several anthologies. She is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry at Pacific University.

Jason Oet (video) is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Metamorphosis (Kattywompus Press) and Peeling the Apple (NightBallet Press, Fall 2012). Jacob's poetry appears in Cream City Review, Sugar House Review, So to Speak, 580 Split, and Yemassee, among others. His awards include the 2011 Younkin-Rivera Poetry Prize and the 2011 Ohioana Robert Fox Award.

David Pickering is a native of the North Oregon Coast, where he lived until 2006 when he moved over the mountain to Portland. His work has been published in the Sunday Oregonian, Portland Review, Gertrude, and in the anthology, Salt: A Collection of Poetry on the Oregon Coast. David makes his living as a Human Resources Director. He writes on weekend mornings, usually at Soundgrounds Coffee Shop on Belmont Street where he huddles over his laptop and stares down unruly children. David lives in SE Portland with his husband, Stephen.

Nicole Santalucia is currently working toward her Ph.D. in English with a concentration in poetry at Binghamton University and she is the Poetry Editor of Harpur Palate. Her work has appeared in Pax Americana, Clockhouse Review, Ragazine, the Paterson Literary Review, The Inquisitive Eater, and has a poem forthcoming in Bayou Magazine. Nicole received honorable mention awards from Astraea Lesbian Foundation Writers Fund as well as the Allen Ginsberg Award.

Sam Sax is the first ever Bay Area Unified Grand Slam Champion and Oakland’s first two-time queer Grand Slam Champion. He curates 'The New Sh!t Show', a bimonthly reading series in San Francisco and is the poetry curator for The Modern Times Bookstore. You can find more of his work, now or forthcoming, in Rattle, The Evergreen Review, Muzzle, Brusque, The Nervous Breakdown and other journals.

Vince Sgambati's short fiction appears or is forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, North American Review, and the anthology Off The Rocks (New Town Writers, Chicago). He was also a semifinalist in Nimrod Literary Awards: the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction.  His creative nonfiction has appeared in the anthology Queer and Catholic (Routledge) and the Journal of GLBT Family Studies, and his essays regarding LGBT parenting have appeared online and in print, including Lavender Magazine where he was a regular columnist.

Charles Springer has degrees in anthropology and is an award-winning painter, having lived much of his life in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York. He currently eats, sleeps, bicycles and writes from his farm in Pennsylvania where he earns a living in advertising and is constantly trying to keep his barn from falling down. A Pushcart nominee, Charles is published widely in the small press. He is currently seeking a publisher for his first collection.

Jeff Tigchelaar is a homemaker based in Kansas. Recent poems appear or forthcome in or on Fugue, Pleiades, Court Green, Best New Poets 2011, Handsome, West Wind Review, Sport Literate, The 22, Juked, The Laurel Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, and Verse Daily. His blog, Stay-at-Home Pop Culture, is at xyztopeka.com.

David Weisberg is an MFA candidate in poetry at New School. He has served as poetry editor for Death Hums Magazine and Number 9 Magazine and is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize. He lives in Brooklyn with his dog, Laura.

Arisa White is a Cave Canem fellow, an MFA graduate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of the poetry chapbooks Disposition for Shininess and Post Pardon. She was selected by the San Francisco Bay Guardian for the 2010 Hot Pink List. Member of the PlayGround writers’ pool, her play Frigidare was staged for the 15th Annual Best of PlayGround Festival. Recipient of the inaugural Rose O’Neill Literary House summer residency at Washington College in Maryland, Arisa has also received residencies, fellowships, or scholarships from Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Hedgebrook, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Prague Summer Program, Fine Arts Work Center, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005, her poetry has been widely published and is featured on the recording WORD with the Jessica Jones Quartet. A blog editor for HER KIND, the editorial manager at Dance Studio Life magazine, Arisa’s second collection, A Penny Saved, is forthcoming from Willow Books in 2013.  

Yuvi Zalkow (video) is the creator of the I'm a Failed Writer online video series and has been rejected more than 600 times by reputable and disreputable journals. He received his MFA from Antioch University. Visit his website at yuvizalkow.com.

"Rib Joint" by Sam Sax

ribs.

at the rib joint
we became men.

his whole body
smoked for ten hours

came apart
in my hands.

sucked the meat
off him. suck
the bone. marrow
becomes you,
you know?

you know, when you eat
something it becomes you?

younger me grew broccoli crowns from our skull,
grew hand antlers, ground ankle beef.

at the table
god unhinged his ribs
at the joint. opened him
like an oven laughing
with smoke. the steam
flapping it’s black wings
up from his organs.

when i ate his ribs
i became a man

or maybe just ribs
braided together
at the table
a big ugly heart
beating behind

or maybe a creation myth,
when i ate him.

in the beginning there was a table
i sat and ate at until i was something.

my reflection swallowed in the plate,
my god, the weight of the blade.

the blade, singing.

you know when you become
something it eats you? the teeth
in my hand? the weight of the handle?
the meat separating from bone.

from Gertrude 19, Winter 2013

Sam Sax is the first ever Bay Area Unified Grand Slam Champion and Oakland’s first two-time queer Grand Slam Champion. He curates 'The New Sh!t Show', a bimonthly reading series in San Francisco and is the poetry curator for The Modern Times Bookstore. You can find more of his work, now or forthcoming, in Rattle, The Evergreen Review, Muzzle, Brusque, The Nervous Breakdown and other journals.