A poetry collection by Chiara Gabrielli, Alison Paradoxx, Ashlee Karlar & Nico
Published by Paroxysm Press.
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Dignity demands defiance.
This book is a fire-cracker
a paint bomb
a
bursting ripe truth.
Open this and become opened,
for this poetry does not ask permission before it rushes into the home of your mind
and takes what it wants,
sprays graffiti on the walls
sets fire to your decayed ideas
and dances laughing over the reborn fire
of you.
Dignity demands defiance
My dad “doesn't care” that I'm gay but he tells his friends
my boyfriend couldn't come to the party.
I smile and change the subject.
It feels like eating a
summer nectarine and swallowing the stone
There is a universality to experience:
when I close my eyes I can imagine myself as being anyone
experiencing anything
and this is
the root of compassion,
I think.
Dignity requires compassion.
One thousand one hundred and
ninety five sutures
line up on her
bookshelves in place of her
childhood fairy tales
Suffering is universal,
and the crumbling cage of our bodies
is a cause for universal compassion,
and
universal dignity
can be felt when we let it be felt.
This book is a splint for broken bones
it is a tonic for the frayed parts of my sadness
and you cried as you patched me back together for the
seventeenth time
- for dignity requires compassion.
This book is an instigation, an invitation
Knock Knock This is a street fight
...This is a family war of operatic proportions
We are armed with our coffee ground vodka smooth voices.
Proof of the passion, vitality and anger we held in our throats, just
for your egos.
Dial up, full volume.
Blast and strip you,
strip you of the holy female forms you have tattooed
across your dignity
like a bandaid.
This book pulls no punches
makes no feints
speaks with no sophistic guile
and at times delivers facts so dry they burn the eyes
But let's forget about the battle of the sexes, the venus vs mars,
adam and eve spat we've been
fighting.
You might not want to hear this boys,
but you are dying.
76% of all “successful” Australian Suicides are committed by males.
That might not be poetic, but that's how the shit sails.
Truth so hot it burns the skin
A girl that we knew began escorting and got gang raped by six men in a hotel room and she didn't go to the police because she knew they would only tell her that she deserved it. That's when I realised how much danger we were really in; how every pole became a post we could be tied to, every caress can turn into a backhand.
This book, this slingshot of spit teeth,
this collaboration of four poets with something to say
does not slip beneath the turmoil of anger, resentment, pain and love,
but folds itself into a paper boat, held aloft by the dignitas of its authors'
true
and
honest
expressions.
True
and honest
self awareness,
and their
compassion extends itself:
Those bearded blankets once were men
between the tattered threads and cracked beds of fingernails
are their stories, slipping out through mumbled dreamspeak
they barely sleep,but rather,
stop waking. Always waiting.
This book of poems is ...sore and aching
left there to soak into the pavement
lost, along with
the eye contact that none of us make.
This book makes eye contact.
This book is … an indication of a happening event. I'm the point in space that
my words represent. I am the friction of abrasive dissent.
This book is a story, it is many stories.
It is proof that the modern voice of poetry is sharp, witty, educated and articulate. These poets are proof of themselves, proof of a movement, proof of a revolution in sensibilities and dialogue. Their poetry stands up on its own, it dances, it howls, it marches with discipline and directness. The collection these poets have put together is bound with themes of our common experience, with unflinching honesty of both love and pain, and though it is but a slim volume, Spitting Teeth, is a heavy book.
*
Paroxysm Press
Chiara Gabrielli
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PsrM6NW7ms
Ashlee Karlar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDPiTYsReuQ
Alison Paradoxx
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6L_HsVpv9KcgZBClQGZqRg
Nico
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