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

* * * 

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

* * 



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)viewBeltwayRole 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.


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