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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