The PEEPSHOW presents POETIC VOICES / Day 3 -- HOLLY BASS

sisterwolf,ghadahalkandari
courtesyindigenousdialogues

AGAPE

only christ could love

a child so

night black and tender

rib meat falling

off the bones into

a saucy mouth

slick with salvation

the rendering of her

image cast in

Victorian silhouette

onto a perfect ivory

brooch was also

cause for concern

"he don't love me no more!"

she was said to have shouted

from her pinned position

causing consternated looks

from those nearby the bearer

of her object beauty

whatch'all lookin' at!?

he snapped back

dandy as ever, his

grayed-in blue striped

seer sucker shirt

it was plain to see:

the hard attention

was gettin to 'em

when she divulged

her greatest asset yet- silence

and it was into this

weak wet gaze of

bowlegs and jelly legs

and gaping double jointed

knees she regressed

slipping back into his mind's

recesses to redress herself

pure white cotton lace panties

the moist black loam of his need

filtering through her Tara'd fingers

oh tara taray he whistled, stepping jauntily

irish soda bread jig and

whiskey singing

toorah loorah loorah

under his breath like

incantation

devils have a magicness when they

make that heathen noise

that unh grunt aah help me

so help me

she knew this too

would pull back her

lips from him and let out

the sounds, mouth

open wide like a

hyena, legs and heels

kicked high

topsying tommying

curtsying, even

she knew

how to treat a man like royalty

a high horse a giddyup

a go round good ole good ole

these days don't nothing come cheap

or easy. you work for your sweat

you work for your time.

nocturnes (re)view, the blues issue

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Holly Bass is a one-woman creative organisation. She has momentum. She creates beautifully rhythmic poetry, runs open-mike nights, contributes articles to well-respected arts journals, teaches writing in her community and I haven´t even mentioned her amazing talent as a dancer and performing artist yet . . . {she} is a one-woman creative organization. She has momentum. She creates beautifully rhythmic poetry, runs open-mike nights, contributes articles to well-respected arts journals, teaches writing in her community and I haven´t even mentioned her amazing talent as a dancer and performing artist yet. 

--Claire Hart, One World Cafe/hercircleezine.com

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Holly Bass is a writer, performer and director. Her most recent body of work explores the endless allure of booty – from the Venus Hottentots to video vixens. A Cave Canem fellow, her poems have appeared in Callaloo,nocturnes (re)view, Beltway, Role Call (Third World Press) and The Ringing Ear, an anthology of Black Southern poetry. Her pieces have been workshopped and presented at respected regional theaters and performance spaces such as the Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, the Whitney Museum and the Experience Music Project in Seattle. She is the Cullen Poet-in-Residence for Busboys & Poets (DC) where she coordinates open mic nights and writing workshops for the public. She studied modern dance (under Viola Farber) and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College before earning a Master's in Journalism from Columbia University. She was the first journalist to put the term "hip hop theater" into print in a 1999 American Theatre article. She was a founding member of DC WritersCorps and continues to work as a teaching artist in schools, colleges and community centers. She has received numerous grants from the DC Arts Commission and was one of twenty artists nationwide to receive 2008 Future Aesthetics grant from the Ford Foundation/Hip Hop Theater Festival.  Holly Bass is a finalist for the 2012 Larry Neal Writer's Award for Poetry.