NICE THINGS POETS SAY ABOUT MEAT HEART!!!

Don’t believe Melissa Broder when she writes, “I’m afraid / to say anything with heart.” This book is not afraid, as she proves right away and on every page, and that’s why we needed her to make it. A little dark, a little damaged, a little deranged, but definitely not afraid—and never short on the titular organ, which also acts as mouth and mind. The whole book pumps, and I swear some of what’s coming in and out are flashes of light that you can read it by.

–Mark Bibbins, author of The Dance of No Hard Feelings

With her hallmark wit and brilliance, Melissa Broder has followed up her heralded When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother with Meat Heart, a book of poems that is at once apocalyptic, full of sorrow, and packed with images crystalline in their beauty and truth. In these poems, Broder takes us through a world that is both alien and familiar to the world that we already know, a wild landscape where there is “ash fish / and elemental octopi,” where “cornhusk filaments / Still jacket tongues,” and where in a place with “200 flavors of panic/the worst is seeing with no eyes.” All of these freakish things to help us confront the bald fact that we are all just a series of meat hearts ourselves. It is here that Broder shows her generosity as a poet, because she makes us a new world in these poems where we go beyond meat—a world where Broder tells us, “Somewhere I stopped looking for magic.” I guess she found all she needed; this book is full of magic.

–Dorothea Lasky, author of Thunderbird

The speaker in Meat Heart is either an old-world witch or a contemporary warlock. That is to say, this speaker-being gallops through time making thrilling observations. There is a focus on meat, blood and food. The poems tear through the reader with a reassuring giggle, yet remain ominous. Broder writes, “I find a thighbone in his mattress / and think of friends gone missing.” She also writers “G-d loves my hair,” so we are reminded not to be overly frightened. To read Meat Heart is to consume, perish, murder, glitter, and prophesize. To say that Broder is fearless is not saying enough.

–Natalie Lyalin, author of Pink and Hot Pink Habitat

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Published on January 6, 2012

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Published on January 2, 2012

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Published on December 22, 2011

I don’t know how to cook.

Somehow I ended up on an email list between five middle-age women who live in Georgia and I am a voyeur to their holiday plans and recipes. At first I was like For the love of god get me off this email list. They tried. They tried again. Still the emails come. They come and come and come and come and come.

(more…)

1 Comment. Filed under Cult Fetish
Published on December 17, 2011

There is a song by The Who called The Seeker, which in the late 90s phase of my spiritual seeking I used to listen to on ephedrine on the treadmill on repeat, about 30 years too late, and once that phase of my seeking ended I never listened to the song again.

In the December 2011 phase of my spiritual seeking I think about The Seeker and I don’t know if I’ve ever sought anything. It seems like the seeking has always just sought or seeked or sucked me.

Ha ha that’s a lie. I seek like crazy yo.

I have a poem in Noo.

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Published on December 13, 2011

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Published on December 1, 2011

photos by pennyred

New York is mad cool right now and I bet your cities are too. Of course, if you aren’t in the part of the city where the action is, it’s just regular life.

I go to where the action is. But I don’t do active civil disobedience, like lying down in the middle of the street, because I’m a fraidy cat. Also, I am not an Occupy Writer. I definitely don’t go read poems or Bartleby. Instead, I observe.

It feels good to just be a witness at Occupy, a vessel. What a relief, for once, to not feel compelled to foist words on the world. How empty can I let myself be? Can you ever truly be bare?

Susan Sontag says: “I discovered that I am tired of being a person. Not just tired of being the person I was, but any person at all.”

I am tired of being a person too. But I haven’t figured out how to give it up yet.

I go to Occupy in my usual lip gloss and leather. Sometimes I feel out of place; too much Wall Street, not enough hooded sweatshirt.

Naomi Wolff says: “Most urgently, women’s identity must be premised upon our ‘beauty’ so that we will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital sensitive organ of self-esteem exposed to the air.”

Maybe Occupy will find a use for a woman with exposed self-esteem. We do get into buildings very easily. Maybe I will become a spy.

Usually, I’m bored by people who think they’re always right. But rabblerousing, a lil ol’ G.G. Allin fuck it all, 60s nostalgia, cute activist boys, and pure potentiality–yeah–that’s fun. These Occupy kids have balls. They’ve awakened a spirit and curiosity that I thought was dead in me.

So is it wrong to treat Occupy like a grand party?
Is it wrong to go for the sensation?
Everyone has reasons reasons reasons.
I enjoy mine.

No Comments. Filed under Hippie Shit
Published on November 17, 2011

THE NEW LA PETITE ZINE IS UP & IT IS A REALLY RAD ISH. I LOVE THAT LA PETITE ZINE. LOVE DOIN IT.

Laura van den Berg, who is rad, interviewed me at Ploughshares about satisfaction, vomit as holy, you know.

I keep asking $5 psychics on fiverr.com big questions about my life. Feels like regressing.

I find it annoying that the answers are within.

No Comments. Filed under Don't Forget to Pray, La Petite Zine
Published on October 30, 2011

My darling internet,

I’ve considered the matter and come to the conclusion that my greatest desire is for you to have me in a chokehold. As Pavlovian as all this click-click-clicking feels, as reflexy and involuntary, make no mistake: I have absolutely chosen to give you all my power.

Why do I give you all my power? Well, if I didn’t, I might be forced to admit that there is really no one in control. Or, perhaps, there is one and that one is the great unknown, the universe, the what what as it were.

In the chasm of the what what I am unrecognizable to myself. I do not know me. O but I know you sweet internet; and when I am with you I know exactly who I am. With you I am Captain Shame.

I fear I can never be without you, my beloved. I twitch in your absence.  Without you, I am half a woman. Then again, with you I am half a woman too.

My darling internet, I will see you when the cock crows. No, I will see you way before the cock crows–probably in about a minute. Then I will see you for the rest of the afternoon, then all evening, late into the night and then when I get up to pee at 4 am. I cannot bear to be away for long.

Yours,

Melissa

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Published on September 28, 2011

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Published on September 22, 2011

Surfer boy poet Curtis Perdue interviewed me at Redivider about fleshiness, disreality and white light.

I want to be a surfer boy.

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Published on August 16, 2011

I have a new poem at Guernica

I have three new poems at The Awl

I wrote an ekphrastic piece for Soft Spot Gallery based on Jesse Hlebo’s visual piece “Deep”

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Published on August 1, 2011

Last night I did a poetry reading in an alternate dimension and it sucked. The reading was alphabetical so I was supposed to read first. My wife, Faith Fairhead, was reading fifth. Faith was a buttercream blonde. I was like Look at my hot bitch. I felt entitled to act like a dirty dog, because I was a girl and it seemed cute. It wasn’t cute.

As a result of my attitude, the universe swapped my hot wife for a husband, Gerald Ford, who made me very late for the reading. He had to run a lot of errands. I was like Gerald! No Whole Foods! Not now!

I couldn’t figure out what outfit to wear. My mother appeared in a sheep’s head to tell me that leather leggings were very last year. I wore them anyway. What did being a year late have to do with poetry? Maybe nothing.

The reading was at Slimey’s, a deli that specialized in hot pastrami and doubled as an ampitheater. Immediately I knew the leather leggings were a mistake. Everybody was wearing jeans with alt sneakers or velvet boho capes or they were nude.

Everybody was talking about Purple Pinko’s forthcoming trilogy of military flash fiction, FMP. I didn’t know what FMP stood for but I knew it was something cool, like Stephen Dorff’s SFW. I felt about Purple Pinko the way I felt about Stephen Dorff in the 90s. I longed.

Longing is wonderful, because you don’t have to be present for your life—in any dimension. I knew I shouldn’t indulge these feelings. I knew I should be present. I was like How am I supposed to stop thinking about Purple Pinko if his work is everywhere? It seemed like a conspiracy.

I wasn’t allowed to bring paper into the new dimension so I had to memorize everything. I’d memorized nothing. I made up the poems as I went along. One of the poems was called “Colorado.” It was in first person present and it went like this:

Colorado

I want to be a zombie but the cult won’t click.
I’m in it for a brain belt though I’m bad with unity.
We shoot up with pine needles, only vanilla.
This leaves a hole I cover in postage stamps.
I can’t find the horses and I can’t find the horses.
We go see the world record velvet Elvis.
They do a slideshow of his sandwiches.
Everybody liked him better alive.

It didn’t matter that the poem sucked, because the microphones were broken. This lent itself to simultaneous feelings of Sisyphusian something and liberation.

Following my reading was a reading by a naked girl. She read microfiction while a Haitian man vomited and vomited into a bowl next to her. Vomit is always great. The crowd went wild. I wish I invented that performance art.

A journalist from The Star Daily Star asked if he could take my picture. All the velvet boho capes were watching me and they mouthed C-O-R-P-O-R-A-T-E. Not one to turn down interstellar publicity, I posed.

The journalist was like You won a big prize this year. How does that feel?

I was like No. No prize.

He was like Then where have I heard of you from?

I was like You’ve heard of me from nothing. You’ve heard of me from the air.

1 Comment. Filed under Hippie Shit, Neuroses, Vomit Fetish
Published on July 14, 2011

Yes I know the rules never marry Robin Givens.

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Published on July 1, 2011

Here is a vid of me reading at the release of Chris Toll’s The Disinformation Phase. Three things have since been cut from this poem (the daughters line, the butchers line, and the word “shit”). Thanks for filming it Adam Robinson. Chris’s book is like a weird church & Bob Dylan put in a blender, so I really like it.

Here are two new poems of mine in interrupture.

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Published on June 8, 2011

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Published on May 22, 2011

Two poems in Martin Rock’s beautiful new online journal Loaded Bicycle.

Dale Seever came over to talk meat heart sandwiches, secret families and poetry. I am obsessed with this man.

Polestar got a lovely shout-out in AM New York.

Reading and flappin gums at Soda Series on May 15 at 7 PM. Come come! You’ll get to meet curator John Dermot Woods who I consider a hub of serenity in the eye of all things literary.

No Comments. Filed under Yo Momma
Published on May 4, 2011