Slanted House @ Shakesqueer & Company
Co-founders Ekaterina Costa and Eliot Duncan at Shakespeare & Co in June 2019, Paris.
This past June Slanted House was invited to participate in the first ever queer literary evening organized at the ionic Parisian left bank monolith that is Shakespeare and Company . Closing off Pride month, it was an honor and exciting, emotional experience amid the smouldering heatwave to share some of our writing with new people in the Parisian queer community. Other poets, writers and performers that evening included Yelena Moskovich, Tarek Lakhrissi, RER Q and many more.
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A few poems from the reading...
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Sunday in August
By Ekaterina Costa
I’m always dreaming about concrete
but this city is made of limestone
cast in granite
its air polluted but
diluted by the smell of
coffee
and carefully planted tulips –
watered and tended
in early spring on trimmed grasses
grazed by young fearless children
whiff of gasoline
take me back to the cinderblock landscape
hot petunias
and warm beer on my tongue
your fuming grey-black body
angular
and shroud in mist
from the 5 AM cleaning trucks –
mirages
on the wavering horizon
as we float over the steaming deserted streets
at dawn
your white bones settle and
black muscles stretch
your morning breath –
a bunch of cornflowers
creased
into a young boy’s palm
rock me in your arms the color of sunrise
cast me in your concrete
sink me into your tarmac
let my bones decay into
the ultramarine diamond of your eyes –
a handful of violets
opening slowly
over your rooftops at
daybreak
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Hothouse Hydrangeas
By Ekaterina Costa
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breaths
like hothouse hydrangeas
hungry bloated bulging like a sausage overstuffed.
putrid - flying.
guts.
spitting petals drenched in kerosene your words erode
and tell me
swallow hard
to lather in my throat my own
desires.
on your veins and bones I feed.
I spread my lips.
so tell me what does it feel like your insides bursting
like fireworks crackling
bloody
flowing and delicious down my hands
and fingers
in a salty taste of bleach
translucent droplet firecrackers
crunching thoughts popping like
scarlet cherries.
black silhouette
take me home to the dark
stillness of our gas radiator’s hum solemnly stepping
into the glowing
nightshade’s stare.
magenta streaks in my eyes.
my ankles — purple moons
and poppy red toes steaming over the bathtub.
swallow me whole sulphurous hard
water.
grasping for strands of electrified hair
I can soak finally
in your corrosive, milky
moonlight.
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How
This is a bastardization of Ginsberg’s Howl.
It was written by Eliot Duncan and Natalie Mariko in Valparaiso, Chile in June 2019
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no, I have lost the best lines of my body written in the length of a scream, cut short, pleading to wander the streets alone, underaged, unangry, unfixed
angel raped and shrugging, kitting a baby blanket connection to some other bloodlets “starry dynamo in the machinery of the night”
fuck you, I whose poverty knows no number or contemplation
whole cities of tatter, we, countries, smoking barrels of super natural darkness this whole line is bullshit
contemplating contemplating the
prison of a make shift cunt
I don’t need to like any of your lines no I won’t acknowledge everything
please! I denied, passed through thin like a hallucination of war,
big cool eyed scholars saying “radiant, radiant, arkansas”, totally missing the Blake-light
pffh, I, illegible to academy’s cock monolith, you don’t even have the idea of me, the unpublished expulsion that spells genius dimmed, that spells my skull
no, I’m tired of your forced gaze your script cast me nameless so I writhe in each cum that makes me clear in rage
papa poetry smack me on the ass and let my strap blow stanzas into your hallow history here I I I I I I I my trot butchered out of my own body
I chew at a thousands years
no I’m not with you in rock hand
you stone my dreams bloody your teary highway
america’s door burst open
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