Having suffered a series of calamities
so long and varied as to comprise a statistical impossibility
I cling the tenuous hope that
surely
my life cannot get worse

then my computer crashes

and I am plunged headlong into a canyon of despair
deep and unfathomable as string theory
landing with an inelegant splat, I am an upended bug
flailing fruitlessly and beset
by larger insects who gnaw greedily on my exposed viscera

there is no point trying to resurrect this heap

rogue elements in my brain disagree
they concoct an army of lively
drum-beating, cymbal clashing, sword wielding
thoughts
cruel thoughts in crimson uniforms, shiny gold buttons
Very sharp
Very military
Very insistent that I obey
that I worry my ass into a perma-pucker
about everything else that can possibly go wrong
when did I last back up?
how many poetic gems did I lose?
how looooong will it take to reconstruct my digital life?

I am no match for the army of thoughts fast colonizing my brain
it’s relentless, aggressive, and on-message
it’s the Fox News of thoughts
and I’m a quivering liberal!
And with every morsel of attention I feed it
the army becomes more muscular
I, more tremulous
if I don’t intervene fast I will be forever lost in the canyonlands
of my own impressionable gray matter

I must write defeat out of my script
I must visualize an alternate scenario so intensely that it feels real
Feels like the kind of relief that can only come
from hearing the immortal words:
Dude, we’ve, like, completely restored your hard drive

And suddenly…I do feel it. The relief I imagined now
bathing my agitated cells with soothing endorphins
fear banished, its army in retreat

but I can still feel the reverberation from their boots
marching in unison
marching in circles
just like they do when they’re inside my head

I feel it, I swear, so they must be real
but only if…

thoughts have mass

Oh baby, I’m dancing solo on the head of my own pin now
and it is sharp

Back in the fifties the government sold us nuclear power
by calling it Atoms for Peace
Are Atoms of Fear equally fallacious?
Are they merely psychic spores, hiding in my amygdala
that tiny part of the limbic brain that tells us
when to fear and when to rage
tiny spores of fear
waiting for me to add water and say: grow

I think my army men are not real
until the moment I animate them
with the breath of belief

all that we manifest in the physical world begins in imagination
thoughts waiting to be made flesh
like my fears
like terrorists in Iraq
like everything else that does not exist until we dream it up

then watch as
thoughts become skyscrapers
skyscrapers become dust

and somewhere, very faint…there’s sniper fire
and we all wonder
is it coming from Fallujah or our amygdala?

By now, of course,
it’s both

by Lisa Martinovic

Clearly
she didn’t want to be there
fielding tourists at the Visitor Information Center
Siloam Springs, Arkansas

Boredom dripped out
in her sighs
and fingers grazing tired
across a map
here a river, there a lake
everywhere a good time

Miss Arkansas Information at last became
inexplicably animated as I neared the exit:
Tourism is very important to Arkansas
It’s the number two, uh …
Industry?
Why yes, right after poe’try

I perked clean out of my interstate daze
Nobody told me poetry was big business in Arkansas
Poetry? I repeated, incredulous
Oh my, yes! she puffed
Chicken, turkey, all kinds of poe’try…

Well, I’d just come from a cowboy poetry festival in Oklahoma
so why not chicken poetry
My informant chirped merrily:
Why honey, there’s Tyson and Cargill and …

No doubt famous Arkansas Chicken Poets, I deduced
Inspired by my interest, she crowed
Yes ma’am, we’ve got more farms than anywhere else in America
Farms?

Well, shoot
soon as I get back to San Francisco I’m gonna tell everybody
California ain’t got nothin’ on Arkansas—
They’re breeding poets out there like they was dad gum chickens!

Listen: The Great Chicken Poets of Arkansas

Bobo Takes a Chance

Bobo Canelli wasn’t cut out to be a hit man. But that alone didn’t explain his presence on a cattle car lurching across Siberia.

He slapped a fat mosquito feeding on his forearm. “Damn Russkie bugs!”

The other passengers ignored him and continued dozing in the hypnotic heat of summer on the plains.

Bobo wondered if he’d made a mistake, uprooting his life in the Bronx, and selling everything for a one-way ticket to Vladivostok where Annabelle Marsh had vowed to meet him for an unforgettable first date.

This was Bobo’s first stab at Internet dating.

When he told Mama Canelli of his plans she laughed. Then she slapped his face and called him a fool. Mama’s mocking cackle played in his head over and over as the train rattled over the bones of a million exiles.

When they pulled into Vladivostok, the platform was empty.

Bobo heard the train whistle go foooooooo—ooooooool!

The Garden of Exile

Watson Bulfinch twirled his skinny black mustache nervously as darkness overtook the Garden. He felt a sudden chill. A tap on the shoulder. Watson shrieked like a schoolgirl.

“Don’t sweat, Watson, I’m your ticket out of here.”

Before him stood a grotesquely tall woman, shrouded in black, scarlet fingernails peeking out from her sleeves.

She held out her hand. Watson gulped. So cold.

She led him hurriedly through the Garden, past statues of people frozen in mid-flight.

“Don’t look at them,” the woman hissed.

Watson was unable to contain his curiosity. The stone man, his face forever a bug-eyed grimace. The plaster woman, crouched, covering her head with both hands.

“I warned you” was the last thing the marble man with the astonished look and skinny black mustache ever heard.

The Inner Harbor

Arlene Fish thought she’d trimmed her own sails pretty nicely. He’s gonna loooove me, she told her reflection in the yacht club ladies room.

Keith Cummings was leery of blind dates but his buddy, Melman, promised that this young lady would be worth his time. And when he saw her saunter down the gangplank in saucy sailor girl whites, his whole body flushed.

“Arlene Fish, so pleased to meet ya.” She stuck out her hand a little too forcefully.

Flummoxed by the Jersey accent and wad of pink bubblegum, Keith leaned in a little too far to the left of her hand, lost his footing and fell into the harbor.

Having popcorned her way through a million movies, Arlene was prepared for this role. She jumped up and down squealing “Help! Man overboard! Heeeeeeeelp!”

Though he was a good swimmer, Keith had knocked his head on the gangplank and was going down without a fight.

Arlene screamed louder: “Hey, lifeguard! Somebody! Get yer asses over here!”

A spiffy gent strode down the pier and stationed himself next to Arlene.

“That Cummings there, in the drink?”

“Yeah, yeah, mister, you gotta save him!”

He looked her up and down and sniffed: “He never would have gone for you anyway.”

Thinking how much Arlene, with her mouth open like that, looked like a grouper.

The Stubbed Toe

Alex Pentland stubbed his toe on the tarmac at the Denver airport. That he managed to keep from doing a face plant meant it was a good omen.

Pacing in his penthouse at the Denver Regency, Tom Valente chain-smoked Russian cigarettes he believed made him look exotic. Prompted by a knock at the door he motioned to his bodyguard.

“Da.”

The bodyguard frisked Alex, who was still uncomfortable with such pleasantries.

“Mr. Valente, don’t you trust by now that I am a man of peace?”

“I trust nobody. And I stay alive.”

He waved the bodyguard outside.

Valente grabbed Alex by the collar and jerked him into his greasy, pockmarked face.

“Are you fucking crazy? None of this ‘man of peace’ crap in front of my staff. They’ll think I’m gone soft.”

“Isn’t that what I’m here to support?” Alex asked, gently as he could with a fist at his throat.

Valente released his hold and collapsed onto the leopard-print Naugahyde couch. He wept softly.

“There there,” cooed Alex, stroking the big man’s head. Gingerly, he reached for the violin that had fallen to the floor.

“It’s time for your medicine.”

The Classroom

Arabella was as light and lovely as angels dancing in a meadow. She built her estimable reputation on that very image. Posters throughout the village featured her arabesque amidst wildflowers as a doe and her fawn gaze admiringly.

Private investigator Kevin Tolhurst wasn’t buying it. He’d been hired by Arabella’s spurned lover to unmask the dancer’s winsome façade and reveal her to the world as a fraud.

Tolhurst crept around the Tudor-esque mansion that served as love nest until Arabella forced her lover to flee at knife point. He peered through a ground-level window into the cellar—alleged site of Arabella’s reform school for unrepentant lovers. But instead of the medieval torture chamber promised by his client, he saw bean bag chairs, a chalkboard, and all the trappings of an alternative elementary school in Northern California. The investigator was so stunned he didn’t hear the dainty footsteps of a dancer approaching from behind.

Tolhurst felt her warm breath on his neck as she whispered: “Oh, there’s a lot I can teach you, Mr. Tollhurst.”

The sharp tip of a steak knife skittering across his kidneys.

Town Hall meetings to discuss health care reform. It sounded like such a good idea; so, well, democratic. Sadly, many of these well-intentioned gatherings are being disrupted by the few who seem bent on scaring the many—and stopping debate in its tracks.

The intimidation tactics are having the desired effect, with the Obama administration now signaling a willingness to jettison the public option. That news sent me racing to find out when the Town Halls are scheduled for the Bay Area, so that I can bring my calm, rational self to the proceedings.

Imagine my shock to discover that between Senator Boxer, Senator Feinstein, and Speaker Pelosi, exactly ZERO town hall meetings are planned. It’s arguably the most important piece of domestic legislation in a generation; it’s being hijacked by industry behind closed doors and mob rule in the public square; and neither senator from the most populous state in the nation, nor the Speaker of the House, can carve out a few hours to meet with constituents in a public forum.

What could possibly be more important? Ground-breaking ceremonies to officiate? Speeches to make? Babies to kiss? I checked in with each legislator’s office to find out. And guess what? Neither Speaker Pelosi nor Senator Feinstein have ANY public events scheduled during the August recess. And Senator Boxer? Well, she’s been doing whatever it takes—to sell her latest novel. On a book tour.

I guess some things really are more important than health care for everyone.

OK , so you’re in this new writer’s group

for years you’ve been avoiding them
like a plague of phone solicitors at dinnertime
but all your friends are going
and if you don’t get with it
before long they’ll all have Pulitzers
while you’re enjoying life as a jingle writer for local used car commercials

OK, so you’re at this new writer’s group
even though you fear them with the fear of the damned
because you’re so utterly naked
you and your purported art
and being thus exposed there’s a sporting chance you’ll be revealed - instantly!
to have all the creative talent of a salad fork
but the go-go optimist in you that rears her perky head from time to time
says why yes, precious, this is exactly what you need
to water the drought that’s started to manifest
in the form of no new work in two months
nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch, squat
but don’t freak out or anything
you don’t want to give it any energy

then comes the dreaded writing exercise
and you hate writing exercises
because they demand you be creative on the spot
but you’ve never been quick witted
you’re terrified of improv
and now you’re entire future as a writer hinges
on the outcome of this one descent into hell
so you do this stream of consciousness thing that turns out not so bad
and brings forth hearty guffaws from your fellow writers
Well, Hallelujah, people!
say hello to the first poet poised to go platinum!
but wait
everyone else gets to read their work
one piece is elegant and witty
another lyrical and profound
and two are the riveting beginnings of novels you’d love to read
suddenly, your piece is crap
you are crap
and now everyone in the room sees you as the pathetic poseur you truly are
you might as well crawl home
burn your notebook
and get a job selling burial plots to the indigent
well, OK maybe it wasn’t that bad
you switch to attack mode
you go around the room making mental notes as to none of these sorry wretches
will ever reach the heights of artistic success that you’ll someday enjoy
ambitious as mud
the backbone of a banana slug
about as resourceful as a Quaalude on Valium

once you’ve dismissed your friends on the basis of something, anything
other than their talent
which, alas, cannot be denied
you feel like scum squared
because now you’re a secret energy sucker and purveyor of bad juju
in addition to having all the creative talent of a microwave oven
and you even hate that comparison
because you don’t believe in microwave ovens
and people say what do you mean you don’t believe in microwave ovens?
and you shake your head because
you can’t explain it to someone who doesn’t get it spontaneously
so you decide maybe you need to join an improv group
in fact it’s time to rethink your entire approach to life
how can you call yourself a poet anyway???
I mean, this hardly qualifies as a poem!
its a bit, a sketch, a whiny rant
so go ahead and convert
make it official
move to LA
become a stand up comic
yes, get famous!

but you’re avoiding this one minor obstacle
comics have to be quick on their feet
when they get heckled they can’t say
uh, excuse me
I need a couple of hours of alone time with my computer
before I can get back to you with a witty rejoinder—nooooooooo
so, can the writing exercises
it is time to find an improv group
maybe learn to sing while you’re at it
that’s how Mae West got started
and some dance classes too
Mary Tyler Moore hoofed her way onto the Dick Van Dyke show
and into the hearts of a billion boob-tubin’ baby boomers
yeah, that’s it, a singing, dancing improv act
I’m fine now
I’m cured
I’m ready to autograph your microwave oven

I know very little about you

I know you are a famous writer
that your work is extraordinary
I know where you live
that it is half a continent away from me
I know that I want you and you want me
and you are married
and I am
hot
We both know that you will not
betray your wife
So when we slid naked into the motel pool at 3 AM
when we did that
I didn’t know anything anymore

And when you massaged my feet and you told me this
is how you fell
in love with your wife
I thought I knew
and I said
Let’s go upstairs and lie
naked together for awhile
I said
I’ll be good
You told me later you fled
because you couldn’t be good
You knew you would be very very bad

Now you’re back on the coast
and I’m here in the middle
and we’re tormenting each other in cyberspace
where you have revealed more of yourself
than when you stood before me
skin glistening under a stark Nevada moon

And you tell me this is dangerous
that we must stop
and I know
Then you write me of urgency and temptation
of being
breathless
You are teasing a woman whose moon is full
her bed empty
You know not what you risk

Know that I take your words with me into the bathtub
and we make waves
Your every turn of phrase a rip tide pulling
me far from the shores of reason
for your word is your voice
is your mouth
is your lips is
your word is
your tongue
as you lick
till I come
to your
word

And I know we are being very very bad
If I were ever called to testify
I would have to confess an affair
for though you’ve fondled nothing
more intimate than my ankle
you are seducing my imagination
infiltrating my dreams
You couldn’t penetrate me deeper
with any other tool

Which is just as well because I know
you will never touch with your hands the flesh
you’ve aroused with those words
I know that someday soon
I will rock your boat a little too hard
You will remember what is precious
and you will bail
but until then, I want you to know something

Know that it is a hot, windy noon in Arkansas
Outside my back door
leaves rush through the air horizontally as if being chased
inky, swollen clouds blot out the sun

Know that the neighbor’s hound has his paws pressed
up against the fence
pink tongue panting for my attention
And the cows in a field down the road are a chorus
of bellowing moans

Know that this morning a copperhead reared and
blocked my path through the tall grass and
it looks like a tornado
is fixin’ to happen
in my backyard

Listen to Know this:

My name is Nila Marse
I may be older’n dirt and twice as ugly
But I ain’t never owed nobody nothin’

‘at’s right, I been worked like a mule all my life
bustin’ my ass and payin’ dues to where I’m bled drier than a salt box
I raised eight brothers and sisters with no mama
and a no ‘count daddy
Hell, he was worse than no daddy at all

I been workin’ thirty years at the chicken plant
my fingers all hobbled up
my lungs so full of dust from ground up chicken bones
every time I cough, feathers fly outta my mouth

and I still ain’t stopped workin’ for Veon and the kids
him another no ‘count drunk
useless as tits on a boar-hog

no sir, I don’t owe nobody nothin’
looks to me like somebody owes me
somebody owes me a goddamn life

Sometimes I think about how much I put out for everybody
and how I never get a lick of respect, a raise
or even a goddamn thank you, ma’am
I think about it while I’m guttin’ chickens on the eviscerating line
I think about it every time some lil ole sugar tit gets light duty
cuz the boss likes the way she wiggles her ass

and whenever Veon comes at me in the middle of the night
and shoves his belchin’, beer stinkin’ body into me
I don’t anymore dream of some young, handsome, god-fearin’ farmer
All’s I can think about is sleep
or murder

Then there’s other times
like when I’m up to my elbows in the trailer’s busted toilet
the whole mess stinkin’ till hell won’t have it
I wonder if the ocean is really as pretty like it looks in the magazines
if the flower on a cactus smells sweet
I wonder if I’ll ever get just one goddamn day of happiness before I die

Well, I worked all my days
suffered through them long nights
and prayed on my knees every morning
and when that day never did come
I lost the faith
Now I’m bitter like an old root

Hell, I could crack a walnut shell between my teeth without even flinchin’
I’ve took to slappin’ my growed-up kids
cussin’ the boss when his back’s turned
and puttin’ saltpeter in Veon’s coffee
but nothing’s changed
‘cept we all got meaner

Now my mind’s like on fire with hate
my job, my man—hell, even my kids
leeches all of ‘em
suckin’ the life out of me

Well, Nila, I says to nobody in particular
since nobody pays me no mind anyway
well, I says
there ain’t a hell of a lot left to suck, people
my marrow’s done tapped out
bones hollow
‘fore long, there won’t even be blood a’crawlin’ through my veins

but I tell you what
for all my hatred
I don’t blame no earthly creature for my misery
so much as I hold God responsible
for giving me such a shitty life

and when I think about it like that
I know it’s God what owes me
God owes me that debt of blood

Nila don’t owe nobody nothin’

Debt of Blood appears in the anthology The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry

The Open House

Abby Mandel loved meeting people at open-houses which she never intended to buy. 63 Cherry Lane was a precious little number owned by Pierre Androuet.

His answer to her knock opened the door to a world of hedonistic possibility for the timid Midwesterner.

“Oui, Madame?” he purred.

“I, uh, came to see the house,” Abby stammered, certain that her tumescing genitalia was obvious through crimson ski pants suddenly too tight.

Pierre pretended not to notice, wondering: “Can I get this hungry hausfrau in and out of bed before Georgette arrives?”

Abby’s ripeness made it worth the risk.

“The bedroom, Madame?”

The Pressure Cooker

Constance Snow came home from the market with the world’s biggest pressure cooker, finally realizing her dream of stewing an entire cow. She was determined to make a memorable dinner for Tom Bridge, the man she hoped to marry.

Alas, Constance was so flustered by Tom’s early arrival that she didn’t notice him climb into the pressure cooker for a catnap.

She began peeling carrots and potatoes. Tom was so cozy, so lulled by the scent of oregano, he didn’t notice vegetable chunks raining down upon him.

Before long, Tom was done.

Constance made the best of it.

The Opportunity

Calliope Bush felt she’d already spent quite enough years distancing herself from her not-distant-enough cousin George W. Bush. The Universe felt otherwise, for here at the Maison de Couture du Jour in downtown Milan she was being pestered by journalists certain that Calliope could provide information as to the whereabouts of the ex-president who had vanished one week earlier while vacationing in Biarritz.

A clot of reporters congealed around Calliope as she exited the shop in her new designer frock.

“Isn’t it more than coincidence that two Bushes are in Europe at once?” shouted a large women with Jackie O. sunglasses and a French accent.

“Tell us where he’s hiding and we’ll leave you alone” yelled an indy-media guy with a mohawk and an Obama T-shirt.

Calliope swatted them away like gnats. “You guys are on a dead end here. Buzz off.”

As she hurried round the corner, a dapper man in a discreet black suit appeared before her so suddenly she gasped.

“Not to worry, Calliope,” Zachary Zavislak assured her in an accent thick as bratwurst. “I’m here to help you.”

Something in his manner was so confident and reassuring that when he moved to usher her into a waiting Alpha Romeo, it all seemed to make sense. She arranged herself carefully in the bucket seat so as not to wrinkle her precious frock, then buckled up.

“You Americans” Zachary snorted as he popped his ride into gear and zipped down the back streets of Milan.

At an extreme stop Calliope came to her senses.

“Who are you?”

“I’m the man who kidnapped your cousin. Give me the frock or he dies.”

The universe loves me after all, Calliope thought to herself while surreptitiously unbuckling.

“I’ll be getting out here.”

A New Face

Mona Blanche’s face was swollen from decades of drink. This morning she was finally too tired to care. Appearing at the office without makeup unsettled her coworkers. They offered her coffee, and extra bathroom break, a hairbrush.

Mona moved through the day unmoved by their discomfort. She stapled and collated and alphabetized with her customary lack of zeal. But something inside her had changed. Without lipstick and concealer and false eyelashes she could no longer pretend that this was an acceptable facsimile of life.

Mona walked smartly into the boss’s office, her gait steady for the first time in years.

“Mr. Wildebeest,” she beamed, “I quit.”

The Day Spa

Ginger Fox looked nothing like the lively flirt her name implied. She clomped through life in a heavy body and looked out at the world through a tired, rumpled visage. She’d never had a date and, at age 45, fully expected to go to her grave a virgin.

Though the world cared little for Ginger, she cared well for herself and today she was splurging on a massage at the Grand Opening of the Bellissima Day Spa.

“Right this way, ma’am,” said the attendant in crisp whites. “I think you’ll find everything you need through this door.”

Odd, thought Ginger. The door was painted a playful purple, the only color in a spa that was otherwise unrelentingly white. She opened the door a crack and was instantly sucked into a swirling black void. Though tossed about like so much mixed greens, Ginger felt strangely light and at peace.

She landed in what appeared to be the Bellissima Day Spa, except that everything—the walls, chairs, curtains, and massage tables—everything was purple.

A man in purple robes approached her. He was heavy of body, rumpled of visage—but in a purple parallel universe way that translated: HOT!

“Welcome, Ginger, I’m Donald Anthrop and I’ll be your lover for this evening.”

Ginger rose to the occasion like a sunflower.

“Tell me,” she began, “about your specials.”

A Traveler Decides

Gary Sconyers yearned to travel. Thirty years as an accountant for a bank in a dreary Midwestern town had not succeeded in fully extinguishing his desire.

When the Depression hit and his job was “consolidated” away, Gary took his parsimonious severance package and blew it on a ticket to the first place his finger landed on when he spun his childhood globe: Kanazawa, Japan.

Twenty-four hours later, cherry blossom petals drifted into his hair at an outdoor tea ceremony. A dark-eyed enchantress walked directly to his table and sat down across from him.

Petra Cohen didn’t bother with introductions.

“We need your skills, Mr. Sconyers.” Her murky Baltic accent clashed with the ambience of the delicate ritual.

“I’m just here for the tea, ma’am,” Gary said softly.

“The resistance needs untainted accountants to break The Monolith. This is our last chance to free America from the tyranny of the bankers.” Petra stared hard into his eyes. “This is your moment Mr. Sconyers.”

Gary put down his cup of tea and exhaled. He gazed into the distance, taking in the snowcapped mountains and lush forests, the lovely geisha padding about the grounds. He took another sip. He liked it here.

Gary turned towards Petra, then looked away.

America was going to have to muddle through without him.

[All the poems and excerpts in this piece were written by Brenda Moossy. The entire text of each poem can be found here]

“What if…
I stare at the heavens and the sky cracks wide?”
Angels could slip through in the blinding.
Stars rip from the firmament
form letters words prophecies of light
No matter
No matter
I will watch for the miracles to fall.

I want to see the stars, Mister.
I got to see the stars.

from What I Said to the Man Installing the Hot Tub

Those are the words, the inimitable poetic voice, of Brenda Moossy: poet, slammer, mother, nurse, extraordinary soul, and beloved friend.

There will be no more poems from Brenda. She’s gone on to dazzle the heavens. For the earthbound, she left a body of work that deserves to be treasured for as long as people treasure poetry.

Brenda Joyce Moossy was born on January 21, 1949, in the small east Texas bayou town of Gladewater. She was the youngest child and only daughter of Lebanese immigrants who raised her up to be a good Catholic girl. Instead, Brenda harvested her strange and fertile roots to create poetry of stunning power and originality: she became a conjure woman of her own making.

In my prime,
I could make a creek run backwards.
I could steal food from out a buzzard’s beak
an’ if my skin turned silver enough,
I could even fly.

I could stalk a winter sun thru naked forests,
screeching the song of the peregrine.
My legs were strong of bone.
My toes would splay flat on cold, wet ground
leaf and mud would cling
to my feet like fussy babies.

from Legend

Like many of us who came of age in the 50s and 60s, Brenda fled home as soon as she could chart her escape route. It was 1967, the fall after the Summer of Love, when Brenda lit out for Austin to attend the University of Texas. Freed from the expectations she was born to, she thrilled to the social liberation and political tumult of the times, discovered feminism and drugs, became a hippie. Brenda took a certain pride in telling people that she flunked out three times—because “the streets were far more interesting than the classrooms.”

The adventure migrated to rural Arkansas where Brenda and a group of friends formed the Blunderosa Commune and attempted to live off the land. They lasted about five months.

“We didn’t have a clue as to what we were doing,” said Brenda about this chapter of her life. The locals would drive up to the commune fence just for the entertainment of watching the hippies bungle their daily activities. Thus humbled, the hippies moved back to town.

Brenda settled in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and resumed her formal education at the University of Arkansas, intent on becoming a doctor. When pregnancy intervened, Brenda accelerated her studies to graduate with a degree in nursing and life as a single mom.

Her son, Peter, has always been the precious centerpoint of her life. Those of us who knew them both could always feel the immense love and respect between them. Peter is now married to Jennifer Price, and the father of Jacob, 4, and Eli, 1. The grandchildren that Brenda adored, and with whom she had so little time, called her Sittie, an Arabic term of endearment for grandmother.

Baby Pete

Baby Pete don’t come to my dreams no more
He left one night in a thunderstorm
Waving at me, grinning
His diapers sagging from the weight
of the rain. Falling off his piddling ass.

I stood on the porch
my arm caught between a “Come Back!”
and a “God Speed!”
I knew he couldn’t stay no more.
“Time to be moving on,” I said.
He agreed.

As a nurse, Brenda tended to the sick and dying in Northwest Arkansas for over three decades. Beginning in the mid-1980s, she focused on patients with HIV/AIDS, a courageous choice at a time when little was known about the disease, and hysterical talk of “the gay plague” poisoned our national discourse. But Brenda did not flinch. She was up to her elbows in bodily fluids at a time when people thought you could contract AIDS from an errant teardrop.

“I felt like I was doing exactly what I was supposed to,” she said.

Chris is shaken by an unseen hand
as he spits and sputters sounds
His mouth a bloody Babel
there is no meaning in his utterance
there is no peace in his passion
for this graceful man,
there is no grace in his leaving.

from In The Beginning We Spoke of Original Love

In addition to her professional ministry as a nurse, Brenda continued her lifelong passion: writing. Since preadolescence she’d written poetry, short stories, and plays. Together with other local poets she established the Ozark Poets & Writers Collective. Not long after that, I found myself in her world.

I came to the Ozarks from San Francisco, saddled with cultural prejudices typical of someone who had never lived anywhere but cosmopolitan cities certain of their superiority. Expecting a population of inarticulate Jed and Granny Clampetts, I was instead awestruck by a vital community of brilliant poets, especially Brenda, the woman who would become my best friend. The way these Southern and rural writers used language–the native idiom so alive, metaphors steeped in another world, the characters and evocation of place–made for a poetic milieu that left me feeling it was I who had grown up culturally deprived. It was 1993, the Ozark Poets & Writers Collective was just starting to make its voice heard in Fayetteville, and their readings at the D-Lux on Dickson Street were thrilling: I had found my poetic partner and my tribe.

Slam was new to the world and even newer to the Ozarks. In our writers groups we supported each other emotionally, as friends, and creatively, as fellow artists. Then we’d head to Uncle Gaylord’s or the Ozark Mountain Smokehouse for the next slam and hit the stage as fierce competitors. It wasn’t long before Brenda’s magnificent writing was matched by her strength as a performer.

In the current era where so much work coming out of slam feels familiar and formulaic, Brenda’s singular voice stands out stronger than ever. Her poems draw on magical realism, Southern Gothic, and some ineffable quality that is hers alone—at once ethereal and deeply rooted in all things earthy.

I was crazy once…
I could fuck the Earth just by sittin’ on it.
I could bear great and hairy children
that hid in caves until the stars came out.
I could bear them without pain or blood or
tears. They would spring forth fully formed
without need of tit…they were that strong.
They had no need of motherin’. They had
no need but one…to wait until the stars come out.

from In the Level of Life

Her physical voice was equally compelling. If honey could growl—that’d be her voice. A throaty east Texas drawl, slow and murky as the Sabine River that haunted her childhood, by turns mournful, seductive, menacing, ecstatic.

People of little imagination often underestimated her at first glance. She didn’t look or act the part of the rock star slammer. But when she stepped onto the stage and took command, there was no one in the room sexier or more powerful than Brenda Moossy.

I can hear the ‘gators wail.
The water moccasins are whisperin’.
They sliding over my thighs,
peekin’ out from under my skirts.
I am not screamin’.
My name is Sadie.
I am Sadie. I am not dead.
I am not dreamin’
I go run and jump in the water.
It ain’t no baptism.
They ain’t no Holy Spirit.
They might be speakin’ in tongues.
Them ones grab at me.
They pullin’ me under.
I hear singin’.
It ain’t no choir.

from Sadie

Off-stage, Brenda was a social creature. She just loved visitin’. Her home was a mecca where everyone—from long time local friends to touring poets she’d just met—would converge, simply to enjoy the company of this woman whose wisdom and authority seemed to come from some arcane mystery school. Austin slammer Hilary Thomas cherishes her time with Brenda:

“I remember drinking her turbo-charged Turkish coffee, watching carefully as she prepared her freakishly delicious popcorn with brewer’s yeast and plenty of real butter, the quality of the sunlight in her living room, how her house felt like a living creature, like a hollow tree or a space cleared among ancient roots. Brenda herself has always seemed mythic to me, somehow more alive than most people.”

As comfortable as she was to be with, Brenda also had an unassuming charisma that inspired people to pay attention when she spoke. She embodied a rare combination of compassion, deep intelligence, and a willingness to call fancified bullshit by its true name.

Brenda’s character shines through in this remembrance from Bay Area/Kenyan poet Shailja Patel:

“2000, Providence, RI: It was my first Nationals, and I was swimming in all the newness. I remember Brenda standing up in a public forum to call out the slammer/s who had graffiti-d the elevator at the university dorms. She said:

‘We need people to know that slam folks are the finest folks anywhere, and to want to welcome us to their cities and communities. If your team-mate was the one who did that shit, you need to check him. If it was you, you need to check your fuckin’ self.’ “

This is classic Brenda—fierce and fearless in defense of her beloved slam family.

Brenda and I served as Co-Chairs of the Ozark Poets & Writers Collective until I headed back to San Francisco in 1999. We ran an ongoing poetry reading and open mic, conducted poetry workshops throughout Arkansas, hosted a slam series, fielded and won slots on national slam teams. In preparation for our first West Coast tour, we produced Snake Dreams, an audiotape of our work (yes, an audiotape—that’s how far back we go). With regard to just about all things poetry, we worked–and played–as a team.

We had grand adventures on our many poetry tours—from the juicy, late-night madness of the Nuyorican, to LA gigs in air perfumed with dreams of stardom. On road-trips that seemed never to end, hallucinating with fatigue at truck stop diners on the interstate, we’d laugh and dish and deconstruct vast swaths of the universe. She always drove while I navigated, read aloud, fed her my homemade baked tofu. We never tired of each other, and I promise you there are a few joys as great as road-tripping with Brenda Moossy.

Seeking to expand her talents beyond the realm of slam, Brenda embarked on the MFA program at the University of Arkansas in the fall of 1998. Though rewarded in 1999 with both a Lilly Peter Fellowship in Fiction and a Qalam Award in Fiction, she never felt received in academe with the enthusiasm that she enjoyed in slam. She also feared that her work might suffer from the constraints of the program. Ironic, then, that when challenged to write her first sestina, Brenda crafted an amazing piece that’s as riveting on the page as it is in performance.

You can run all day on roads straight as rulers, but sleep
is the only highway for restless hearts and eyes
like yours that took in too much sunlight. Girls
weren’t meant to bare their souls to the sun’s harsh lips.
Those kisses can leave you blistered, boiled, ready
to run back into the flame. That kind of fever rolls

over a body, crushes the bones, leaves the spirit no role.
The ravaged don’t rest, not even in their sleep.
Like a pony ridden until her froth got red,
there is a raging fire or fear in your bright eyes
that recalls the breaking pen, and lips
forced to take the bit. We’ve all been that mule, girl.

from Blues for Evie

Brenda went on hiatus from the MFA program and gave her last sustained burst of creative energy to slam. When I stepped down from Executive Council of Poetry Slam, Inc., Brenda stepped up, setting her equanimous self to the task of smoothing the contentious waters of slam. She was member of the rollicking SlamAmerica Bus Tour in 2000, and is featured in Busload of Poets, a documentary about the tour. Over the course of her career, Brenda produced many chapbooks, and her work appears in numerous anthologies including The Spoken Word Revolution, The Poetry of Arab Women, Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry, Burning Down the House, and Ozark Mosaic.

In 2001, doctors spotted something suspicious in a chest x-ray. They split open Brenda at the sternum and found not cancer but a treatable infection. It was an extremely traumatic process, physically and emotionally; recovery was agonizingly slow and painful. Several years later Brenda told me that she never felt the same after that surgery, as if it had stolen some essential part of her.

When the chest is cracked and split,
only a strand of stainless steel
can pull the bones together. Suture
wraps like laces through the eyes of a shoe
into a twisted embrace. Bone
will approximate bone. Fingers
of spidery cells span the divide of space,
find each other, latch on and hold fast.

from Cracking the Chest

Despite this ordeal, Brenda rallied. She did one final solo tour of the East Coast in 2002, connected with old friends, made new ones, and consolidated her reputation as one of the great performance poets of our time.

Then, in October of 2007, just three days after she stubbed out her last cigarette, Brenda was diagnosed with lung cancer. Doctors opened her chest a second time only to discover that the disease had spread beyond the reach of the scalpel. Throughout the following year, Brenda endured numerous trials of experimental chemo, and weeks of radiation therapy. She lived longer than the doctors expected, but by December 2008 it was time for hospice care.

A huge support network of loving friends, many of whom she’d known for decades, made sure that she was never alone and always very well cared for. Trisha Shaver, a friend from their days on the Blunderosa commune, reentered Brenda’s life, and moved in to take care of her full-time for those last six months. In an elegant twist of fate, it happens that Trisha is the sister of Lonnie McGuire, the great love of Brenda’s life. He vanished in the early 1980’s, and became the inspiration for Anaconda.

I have opened like a bowl for you

I have split my skin like a wet, ripe husk

muskmelon orange

tomato red

sweet warm pulp, blood purple

I have moved aside,

leaving you room to crawl 

inside 

my skin 

a shell

I have said, in jagged whisper,

“Do you love me?”

My words falling down my mouth

like pebbles down a well.


from Anaconda

Thanks to the generosity of one member of the slam family, I was able to fly out to Fayetteville in January. I arrived on my birthday; the only gift that mattered was getting to be with Brenda. She was on a lot of pain medication and only intermittently coherent, but we made the most of her lucid moments. The next day a dozen of her closest women friends gathered in honor of her 60th birthday. We each spoke about our relationship with Brenda and why we love her so. Brenda worked hard to take it all in.

There is no one to hold me. My skin on fire,
singing by the river, by the crouched Angels.
I dig barehanded a cup from soil to cradle
my body. The crickets sing their love songs.
The crunch and scrape of snails moving
through sand sounds like a whisper of hope.
Use fingers and the deliberate
trace of tongue, divide the sternum
breast from breast. Peel back skin,
expose the bony nest. Move back the shell
of rib, kiss the beating heart.

from Beating Heart

The last time I saw Brenda was January 19th. I was waiting for my ride to the airport, to go home. We cried and hugged long and hard, both sensing that it would be the last time we’d see each other in this incarnation. When it came time, I left her with a line paraphrased from a Dylan song:

Goodbye is too strong a word, love
So I’ll just say fare thee well.

During the last few days of her life Brenda drifted in and out of consciousness. Much of what she said made no sense, but one day, after literally waltzing to the bathroom in the arms of an old friend, oxygen tubes trailing behind her, she delivered the last line to the poem that was her life:

“This disease doesn’t taste so bad after all.”

Brenda died on the morning of January 29, at her home in Fayetteville, in the midst of the worst ice storm in Arkansas history. Trisha and two other friends were with her as she released her last breath. Outside, the tree branches that had been snapping like gunfire all night, just for a moment, fell silent.

Brenda has gone gently. To be with the unruly angels that are such a presence in her poems.

Naked

We should all be naked for this. We should
all stand with flesh shining bright as the moon,
fierce as the sword in the water.

We should all be naked. For this, we should run
quivering skin goose-bumped hair on-end like rabid dogs,
feet crushing grass, soles slapping stone.

We should all be naked for this. Gates of the prisons
opened. A flood of spirit pulsing through the streets
like blood loosed from the heart.

We should all be naked unbound angels,
no robes to tangle in rapid feet,
in criss-crossed legs. Our wings flapping
furiously feverishly driven to the Sun.

For this, we should all be naked and without restraint.
Racing, hearts bursting, a shower of sparks to rival stars
Racing, mouths open, laughter pouring out like water.
Racing Running to the outskirts of Beulah Land.

Brenda visited me in a dream the night after she died. Strolling slowly, arm in arm, down an Arkansas dirt road, we shared a moment of peace.

Fare thee well, Brenda.

All my love,

Lisa

Brenda in bliss.

Special thanks to Shailja Patel and Eve Stern for their keen editorial support.

Thanks also to Kevin Kinder for some of the quotes I pulled for this piece. He interviewed Brenda for his article in the Northwest Arkansas Times on March 9, 2008
http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/Living/62986/

Prom 1967

Brenda at City Lights

Brenda & Lisa at Cody

Team Gynergy: NPS

The Snake Dreams Tour