You're not a baby if you feel the world.

All of the babies they can feel the world. That’s why they cry. 

This is the season to unravel; the season I feel sick in my cells. A snake shedding in reverse, the core of me sloughing away until emptied, I am ready to be filled again. These days like a fever. These days like a dream. There are days, and days, and days. So many and too few and the crushing weight of apathy blooming to clog the cogs of the entire mechanism. In my throat, silence folded into itself like hands clasped in prayer. I can hear my heartbeat no matter where I go. 

Awake at 3am, I remember lying in my childhood bed held hostage by the pang of my bones expanding into their own full potential. The deep dull ache like tectonic plates shifting under my skin. How my mother held my hand in the dark, whispered Hush baby, it’s just growing pains. I imagined my femurs stretching their sleepy fists into the socket of my hips, digging their feet into the knobby hinge of each knee. 

Now instead of growth plates, I’m carrying heartbreaks beneath my skin. In the dark holding my own hand whispering Hush baby, it’s just growing pains. I’m still learning to embrace the agony of becoming. I’m still learning to understand aches that only time and patience can soothe away. Consider this a reminder to myself, a way of holding my own hand on the darkest nights when my only company is streetlights. Hush baby, hush baby, hush baby. 

It's going to be ok.

-b

Hablo muy poco español...

Noches de Canto y Poesia

Cada 1ero, 3ero y 5to Viernes @ 8-10pm

Noches de Canto y Poesía son un tiempo dedicado a músicos, poetas y cantantes de la comunidad para que expresen su arte en español o con influencia Latina. Esto incluye pero no es limitado a boleros, baladas, rock en español, folklórico, latinoamericano, ranchera, trova, canto nuevo, jarocho, huapango y más. Todos están bienvenidos! Entrada gratis.

Last Friday a plane deposited Carly and I in Los Angeles, land of inexpensive tacos and unbearable traffic, for the L.A. Times Festival of Books. Rv originally approached me in February about attending the festival to debut my chapbook, do some networking, and book some readings. Once I decided Los Angeles was a thing I needed to make happen personally/professionally/financially, Rv got on his hustle searching for poetry shows in the area. Over the course of the next month a handful of dates, times, and venues filtered through our scattered communications. Among them was an open mic opportunity at Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural.

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you’re preparing to give an important performance or presentation, and very slowly it dawns on you that nobody in the room speaks a language you understand, and maybe you’re not wearing pants? That accurately describes the small animal of worry gnawing through my sternum as I put my name on the reader list. Except for the pants, thankfully I had those.  

The man sitting next to me in the back row spoke beautifully accented English, and emitted a laidback sense of ease. He started and ended every sentence with “man” or “brother”. They called him the Conga Poet, and he pounded a flawless beat on three enormous drums while performing his spoken word piece “Latin Smiles”. Smiling the whole time. His performance kicked off three hours of beautiful language that I understood very little of. Since I couldn’t appreciate the meaning of their words, I read their bodies and faces. The young woman with gorgeous, long hair and dark eyes. The old man with a mumbling singsong voice, his hearing aid shrieking against the microphone’s feedback. The woman who wrote to survive, reading about cigarettes and rain. The man speaking seamless Spanglish about prison and heartbreak.

Growing up in Montana I have witnessed plenty of racism, intentional and otherwise. But as a white girl growing up in Montana, it’s never been directed at me. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve intimately experienced my Otherness, and almost always that Otherness resulted from my sexual rather than racial or cultural identity. To be honest my racial and cultural identity haven’t existed to me; they’re invisible in my realm of reality, defined by absence rather than substance. Sitting in Tia Chucha’s, I was profoundly aware of that absence. Embarrassed by it.

A week later writing this, I’m still embarrassed and I’ve struggled to identify why. But like most embarrassment, I think it boils down to fear. Fear of sounding ignorant or privileged. Fear of making too much or too little of this experience. Fear of the backlash. Fear of reducing this story to a lets-all-hold-hands, feel-good moment. Fear of carelessly appropriating something that doesn’t belong to me. Fear because I can choose to be ignorant of my culture without repercussion, when so many humans cannot. Because being a minority made me uncomfortable. Because until my racial identity exists to me, I can’t possibly be aware of the privileges it affords me.

Because appropriation. Because whitewashing. Because “I don’t see race”.

My performance slot was halfway through the show, and I felt foolish approaching that microphone. I felt like an uninvited houseguest, intruding into a community that didn’t belong to me; something I’d been content to observe from the outside. But under the spotlight, in that dark room I was welcomed into an artistic community that transcended cultural and linguistic barriers. We were in a safe, creative space. Everybody invited to feel each others’ words pulse through a microphone, and hang heavier than a heartbeat in the air.

By art alone we are able to get outside ourselves, to know what another sees of this universe which for him is not ours, the landscapes of which would remain as unknown to us as those of the moon.  – Marcel Proust, Time Regained

I’ve never felt so grateful for a room full of smiling faces and nodding heads. If I can come home to a roomful of strangers in a Sylmar, California strip mall I feel like I can come home anywhere. This is my heartfelt thank you to the hosts and participants for their warmth, generosity, and support.

Until next time, kittens.

-b

She Stole my Heart in the Trailer Park

[Note: Hello kittens. I know you're (probably/maybe) eagerly awaiting news from Los Angeles. But instead you get this story from Long Beach... Washington.]

This year for my birthday Carly gave me a glimpse into my future. 

At least that’s what she said as she handed me keys to the doublewide trailer we’d be spending the next 48 hours in. The Sou’Wester is a collection of rentable trailers and cabins located on the Washington coast outside the town of Long Beach. 

Your trailer comes with a stove top, toaster oven, and t.v. with built in VHS player. We’ve got a big collection of videos here in the main house, feel free to take whatever you’d like.

We’d had one other recent experience with trailer parks, an operation in Eastern Oregon called “Good Sam’s RV Lot”. At the tail end of a weeklong road trip spent hiking, camping, and hot-springing through Washington, Idaho, and Montana we were on our final leg of the trip home and desperate for somewhere to sleep our last night on the road. So far through some combination of minimal planning, affability, and dumb luck we’d managed an incredible trip. We’d camped in a shady, wooded campsite near a creek. We’d camped at the base of a mountain one mile from the most incredible hot springs view I’ve ever experienced. We’d camped beside a miraculous alpine lake, just us and eleven empty campsites.

Our last night, we decided to camp somewhere in the general vicinity of home. We’d driven approximately six hours from a campsite off of Highway 12. We woke up that morning, ate a tasty oatmeal and egg breakfast in our quiet campground, and took a leisurely stroll along the river. Behind a heavily-wooded curve of highway we’d stripped off our clothes and skinny-dipped in the frigid river, crawling out to dry our skins in the crystal light of a sunny September morning. 

Now we were on the final leg of our journey, headed for what we hoped would be a lakeside campground. The temperature had been climbing all day and by afternoon we were hot, restless, and more than ready to set up camp and jump into cold, clear water again. According to our technology, there was a scenic waterside campsite near the junction of Highway 12 and Highway 730. This is a lie. There is nothing scenic about that junction. We began to suspect as much when the landscape flying by outside went from rolling rural farmland to scabby, kind of scuffed up looking hillsides criss-crossed with electrical towers and giant blobs of rocky dirt.

The drastic change of landscape dragged me from my road-lull reverie with the first jolt of potential panic. So far we’d been so lucky, it was only a matter of time before that luck ran out. We were sweaty, and sleepy, and done with the road with no “charming waterfront campsites” to be seen. In fact, there was no waterfront anything except waterfront highway. At the junction we had a decision to make: left or right. Left would take us south, along the Oregon side of the Columbia River. Right would keep us on Highway 12 into the Tri-Cities region. My iPhone claimed there were plenty of camping opportunities in either direction, so at the last possible moment we chose to go left. Eastern Oregon. Oh how I loathe thee. 

After the junction, the Columbia River was literally our right hand man, the road transitioning into a steep, gross little embankment that plunged straight into the water. Good Sam’s was tucked between a line of electric poles and the river. Desperation washed over me as Carly pulled into the horseshoe parking lot, and walked toward the office. The continuous hum of generators hung heavy in the air. An elderly man hobbled from the interior of his RV onto a presumably permanent wooden porch, expelled half his lung into the bushes, then calmly sipped his beer. He stood there a few moments, coughing, taking in the splendor of his American flag flapping in the breeze, hands tucked into the waistband of his jeans. 

If personalized hells exist, mine resembles the row of permanent residences at Good Sam’s. 

But I was charmed by Sou’Wester’s blue and white Zelmar cruiser. The wood-paneled walls, the careful collection of trinkets… Sitting at the laminate tabletop, feasting on fancy cheese and champagne, I was the birthday queen of the trailer park. We whiled away the next 48 hours playing chess, hiking to lighthouses, and strolling along various beaches. Watching the sun set while wading through a field of golden dune grass, Carly’s hand warming in mine. Collapsing into bed with a belly full of good food and port, my head spinning with colors. I know she meant it as a joke, but if this weekend was a glimpse into my future, I’d be damn lucky.

Lovers. I hope your cheese is always fancy, your trailers always doublewide, and your VHS players always built-in.

Xoxo

-b

The Art of Waking Up: A Brenda Taulbee Story

Early Fall 2013 I received a message from my Poet Mafia Boss, Curtis, encouraging me to submit words to a locally-produced international publication called Gobshite Quarterly.

Curtis was responsible for my first live poetry show in September of 2012, and had been a touchstone ever since. He’d since provided me with a veritable plethora of publication and publicity opportunities, as well as shows and invaluable connections. I imagined him as some secretive poet hitman, trailing publishers down dark alleys and threatening their kneecaps if they didn’t consider his protegees’ work. His proclivity for trench coat and  bowler hat only encouraged this mental image.

When I received the message from Curtis, I’d been experiencing minimal success in the poetry world. I’d had a few public readings, recently self-released a chapbook (“Dances with Bears ...And Other Ways to Lose a Limb”), and been accepted into several online literary magazines. I felt fresh, and bold, and capable. Weirdly optimistic in an unflappable way. So I submitted five pieces attached to a stiffly courteous cover letter, and hoped for the best.

I’d like to paint you a better picture, but the truth is I don’t remember the exact afternoon I submitted to Gobshite Quarterly. I do know I was working full-time and dating somebody I loved less than my ghosts. Poetry factored into my life as compulsory exorcism, something done routinely to purge the system; something to keep the heavies from mucking up the mechanism. I had no idea this submission would kickstart a momentous series of events.

Friday afternoon I board a plane to Los Angeles for the L.A. Times Festival of Books, where I’ll debut my new collection “The Art of Waking Up", a Reprobate/GobQ publication.

Approximately one year after that afternoon submission Rv Branham, the publisher of Gobshite Quarterly, approached me after a show saying “Send me everything you’ve got.”

Saying “We’re gonna make a book.”

So I did. And he did.

The book itself is velvety smooth, like a newborn kitten. The collection encompasses three full years of my life. There are 63 poems; four lovers, three ghosts, one mental breakdown. These poems are my mother, my father, my sister, my brother. They’re my grandmother’s death. They’re the death of all the
“Me”s that came before this person who will board a plane to Los Angeles Friday afternoon.

Three nights ago I dreamed that I was very suddenly extremely pregnant. And terrified. I didn’t know anything about the baby I was carrying, I didn’t know anything about giving birth. I was certain my lifestyle choices had harmed the baby, caused some horrible defect. I was daunted by the concept of something relying on me. But I could feel the life inside me, and knew I had to bear it regardless of the circumstances.

This book is that baby, and this Me is that baby, and sometimes this life is something we’re forced to give birth to whether we’re ready or not. That doesn’t make it any less scary. That doesn’t make me feel any more prepared. I guess what I wanted to say is, this really does feel like an awakening; an art I'm still learning. Please bear with me, I think we'll have something beautiful to show for our efforts in the end.

I love you all.

-b