Boldface

The new Netflix documentary series, Trust Me: The False Prophet, details the story of Samuel Bateman, a man who committed horrific abuses in his attempts to claim he was the new FLDS prophet in Short Creek, located on the Utah-Arizona border, after Warren Jeffs was imprisoned.

Short Creek is thirty minutes from where I live. Its members girdle us, especially since Jeffs’ forced exit necessitated that many of his followers relocate to the surrounding communities.

In 2022, The Salt Lake Tribune ran a series of stories about Bateman in which he says some of the most vile things I’ve ever seen in print. Bateman and his actions shook my own childhood traumas loose and made me feel extremely unsafe in this community, or at least with that subset of the community.

My forthcoming book, Crude (Nine Mile Press, Propel Disability Poetry Book Series) discusses Bateman. In “Litany in Which I Talk About My Horse,” I tell my childhood friend Ruthie about the girls Bateman was hauling around a four-state area in a trailer to “recruit” male followers. He was caught in Arizona when a driver spotted something suspicious about his trailer and called the police. Inside it were just some of the girls he’d married and was trafficking. (Even more disturbingly, he also tried to marry his biological daughter, whom he felt called to wed while she was still a child. Yes, you read that sentence right. The documentary series leaves that part out.)

Below is an excerpt from my poem, which is seven pages long. I wrote it the night before my cardiac ablation when I thought I was going to die. It’s after Richard Siken’s “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out.”

Completing “Litany in Which I Talk About My Horse” marked the moment Crude became Crude, even though I started writing Crude in 2009. It was also the moment I decided to come back to poetry after a seven-year absence. That day was November 28, 2022. 

I sent the poem to four poets I trusted that night before I went to sleep. I wanted them to have it in case I died while sleeping or during the procedure the next morning. This may seem like high drama, but I had five types of heart issues at the time, all from or exacerbated by post-viral sequelae, symptoms that linger long after the infection itself. For months, my doctors refused to believe any of these issues were serious, even though it felt like wild horses were stampeding in my chest day and night. My heart seemed hell-bent on trampling me to death.

It was in that state of physical and mental anguish that I finished “Litany in Which I Talk About My Horse.” I was responding quite literally to my heart and also to the fact that someone had just described me as riding into Southern Utah on a high horse, as if I were just some snob whose past wasn’t bruised, brutal, and bloody at times.

As it turned out, one of my issues was atrial fibrillation, which is quite serious. The other was postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which hadn’t been diagnosed or treated yet and was causing a suite of severe symptoms like debilitating dizziness and vomiting. I sometimes had to crawl from room to room. Folks with dysautonomia know what I’m talking about.

Kelly Boyker was one of the poets I sent “Litany” to that night. She had a profound reaction to it, which strengthened my resolve to return to poetry. (Ad astra, dear Kelly.) My version of the poem doesn’t cross anything out. It sets atrocities in boldface. These are the lines about Ruthie’s father and Samuel Bateman:

              I’m sorry I did that to you, made that anger in him by speaking Latin,
                                  made him use you for supplication …
              later, in your room, in your bed, your own bed. If the window
                     were a heart, it would always be open not closed

              like the box trailer
                       found in Utah. It was full of girls. One wedged her fingers
                                                                                                                       over
                                            the right door. I thought of you but not of me. It’s what
              I do, Ruthie. It’s what I do.

—

Like I’ve said, Crude isn’t just about Oklahoma. Those same patterns repeat everywhere, including places like Utah. Folks should check out Trust Me: The False Prophet if they have the stomach for it. I barely made it through the series and don’t have the luxury of viewing it as a tragedy that unfolded a world away. This atrocity played out right here: first with Jeffs, and then with Bateman.

Image: My photo taken in Zion National Park outside Springdale, Utah, about thirty minutes from Short Creek.

‘Crude’ Publication Announcement

I’m thrilled to announce that I signed a contract with Nine Mile Press today. My collection, Crude, will be part of the Propel Disability Poetry Book Series and will be available in June 2027.

I’m also stepping into a contributing editor role for the series. Between the authors, editors, and founder Steve Kuusisto, Propel is doing phenomenal work around poetry and disability poetics.

This series matters deeply to me. Crude could not have found a better home.

Image: A screenshot of the masthead for the Propel Disability Poetry Book Series from Nine Mile Books.

A Brief History of My Sex Life, by Subhaga Crystal Bacon

What can I say about this stunning collection? How about: I had to tape the cover down to take these photos because I’ve already wrecked the book by reading it so intensely in my hot, fiddly hands.

A Brief History of My Sex Life from Lily Poetry Review Books is like the Salish Sea, which once spread across parts of the Pacific Northwest not far from where Bacon lives. Ancient seas like Salish were lush ecosystems teeming with life. They’ve left behind more than we could ever discover: traces of lives and worlds not unlike the ones this body of work pulls from history, family, culture, art, poetry, spirituality, and more, as if excavating artifacts from the seabed.

The book’s scope and what it sets out to achieve are evident in the title, which mirrors Stephen Hawking’s landmark cosmological book A Brief History of Time. But Hawking’s work was not just an encyclopedia of all things vast. It made complex concepts accessible to people, even those without a background in physics. Bacon’s work does that, too, bringing us in close to tell us stories about their life and the lives of those around them.

This collection is about identity, not identification. For me, that’s an important distinction. Some of the stakes are high in the work (and getting higher every day in this world). But A Brief History of My Sex Life doesn’t stake claim in the sense of asserting. Rather, it’s a kind of gleaning without possession or possessiveness, of scratching below the surface, looking closely at what’s there, and saying, Here, come have a look at what I found. I want to show you so you can see it, too.

Images: 1. The cover of A Brief History of My Sex Life. 2. An interior page from the collection. 3. Another interior page from the collection along with a pomegranate. 4. The back cover of the collection with the pomegranate and an hourglass lying on its side. Get it? Because the book literally stops time while you’re reading it.

The Good News

Things are shit in the world, but they’re looking up here in Toquerville, Utah. Check out all the good news:

  1. The sheriff who was nasty to me when I was traumatized and manic resigned.

  2. The bookstore in Hurricane where part of my mania played out in 2023 is under new ownership, so I feel like I can go in there again.

  3. The neighbor who wrapped his house, his car, and himself in American flags has moved.

  4. Only one truck rolled coal at me when I was out today.

  5. I saw two dozen baby goats by the side of the road.

  6. The pond at my neighbor’s house has been repaired and filled.

  7. The feral peacocks have returned to the pond.

Reflecting Light

Speaking of loneliness, I once played with light as a friend. When my brother-in-law, who was much older than me and a physicist, was visiting one summer, he showed me how to capture light in a small mirror and project it onto a wall. After he left, I played with the light for hours and hours in an otherwise dark hallway, the one that led to my parents’ separate bedrooms and to my bedroom and to everything that happened in them. I don’t know what I thought I was going to accomplish by getting a ball of light to bounce around on those nicotine-beiged walls, but I knew it was better than going it alone in that house. My light friend was everything to me that summer. It only let me down on cloudy days.

Alex Caldiero Memorial Essay

On this second day of April, I’m honored to share Scott Abbott’s tribute essay about Utah poet, sonosopher, composer, and musician Alex Caldiero, published today by Rob McLennan at periodicities : a journal of poetry and poetics. This tribute means so much. I only knew Caldiero’s work, but I recognize what a loss it was for Utah and for poets, artists, thinkers, and creative folks everywhere when he died. Rob was kind enough to reach out to me after I posted about Alex’s death to see if anyone wanted to write something about his work. Scott generously took the time to write this piece about Alex, his life, and his work. Read it. Then read it again whenever you start to think poetry and the arts don’t matter. Ad astra, Alex.

Images: 1. Alex Caldiero with Scott Abbott. 2. A poster for a Howl event with Alex Caldiero at the bottom. 3. An open page from one of Alex Caldiero’s notebooks.

Holy Nodding Donkeys!

I know it’s April Fools’ Day, but this is no joke. My full-length manuscript Crude has been accepted for publication. It took most of the morning to write that last sentence because it doesn’t seem real. I’m actually just sitting here now thinking of what to write next.

I feel funny in a good way like when you have a colonoscopy and they give you Propofol so you wake up loving everyone and wanting to call them on the phone to say I love you and you love your gastroenterologist so you tell him so and you love the nurses and techs so you tell them so and you run around in the waiting area in your paper gown with your butt hanging out telling everyone you can how much you love them because you love them you really do you really love them.

I’ll share more details when I can. At that time, I’ll do a more formal announcement that doesn’t read like this one.

Water Cracking Air

Happy Trans Day of (Indi)Visibility.

I just saw an ad that read: Turn Your Expertise into Jerome. I was like, Who is Jerome? It actually said Income, but I’m dyslexic and the font was swashy.

The yellow-throated warbler is the happiest of all warblers, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

I put a bird in a box
so it wouldn’t be hurt
by the wind

I put myself in the wind
so I wouldn’t be hurt
by the box

—

Inspired by an Oklahoman who put a native sparrow in a box on a windy day because she thought the wind would harm the bird.

I dreamed Bill Knott’s mind had been transferred to millions of pieces of paper. They were lying all around me in a vast room, each one folded like an origami prayer boat meant for a memorial ceremony, but there was no water anywhere on Earth for them to float in.

(ツ)_/¯ I guarantee my reasons for not liking our former sheriff are very different from our local alt-right extremists’ reasons for not liking the former sheriff. ¯\_(ツ)

This public speaker was being interviewed, and he kept saying co-creation, but I heard it as procreation. Imagine my confusion when he said he wanted to co-create with his partner, his co-workers, his friends, his family, and his children.

I’m doing the floss this morning along with a little song I wrote called “Our Shitty Fucking Sheriff Resigned” because our county’s shitty fucking sheriff resigned suddenly and without explanation. I had several frustrating interactions with him when I was dealing with complex PTSD and bipolar issues in 2023. He was unhelpful, clueless, patronizing, and demeaning.

Our shitty fucking sheriff resigned. Our shitty fucking sheriff resigned. Sing it with me now.

Oh, and he resigned on International Bipolar Day. Even better. What a gift. How thoughtful of him. And all I got him in return was this victory dance.

Someone from my weaving group is getting rid of four styrofoam heads, so Styrofoam Heads keeps showing up in my inbox. It’s weird. I love it.

Our little town has gathered to watch a rattlesnake climb the wall of a neighbor’s house. It feels like very olden-times entertainment. The life partner is down there with everybody. I am here with myself confronting the snake that is automated AI results embedded in the Yahoo search that’s somehow made itself my preferred search engine.

Evening, a sun-drenched power line is a whip of water cracking the air.

I just misread breaking news as heartbreaking news, and that should be what all breaking news is called these days.

I’m rage-eating gummy bears is how I am.

I’m threatening my nasal cavity with a neti pot is how I am.

Based on my last couple of Facebook posts, people appear to like poetry thirty-five percent more than they like bacon.

I just misread a beacon of hope as a bacon of hope is how I am.

I ate bread in the shower is how I am.

These days, getting to the end of a roll of toilet paper is exciting. I’m like, achievement unlocked. I literally say that.

I had to buy bigger underwear is how I am.

As an Oklahoman, I want to apologize for Markwayne Mullin.

I am dyslexia strong.

Book title, free for the taking: Plastination.

It could deal with the literal plastination of the body or the figurative turning of a country into something as caustic and inorganic as plastic.

I just misread donor organ as donor orgasm is how I am.

Oklahoma is like one of those relationships you just keep finding yourself in again.

If I didn’t have a spine, I would feel like I was one with everything. It’s this skeleton that makes me feel like a soul clinging to bone, something separate from, not part of, something that will one day break.

You know that feeling when you suddenly have to poop right after you take a shower? That’s how Monday feels.

Alex LaMorie

Poems may be forgotten, but they shouldn’t start out as forgettable.

My history is a burning history in a burning world.

If you don’t care about Oklahoma after reading my work about Oklahoma, then I haven’t done my job as a poet, as an Oklahoman, or as a storyteller.

It’s so windy here in Toquerville that I feel like I’m in Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse. Wind like this makes me cry. It is whatever my mind is, as Gertrude Stein observes. I am as my land and air is, as my cracking and straining house is, as raw as I felt the moment this wind hit my back in a dream and stripped the veneer of reason from me in one clean and somehow profound motion. I sit in the dark shaking, my heart beating like a wild nestling’s.

Something good happened and I can’t talk about it so I’m just eating a bunch of gummy bears is how I am.

Whenever I have something I want to tell the life partner, he’s like, Is it about gender or poetry or trauma, and it almost always is about one or more of those things.

Systemic issues don’t have individual solutions and can’t be offloaded to individuals who must then bear the burden for the systemic issues. We can’t self-love our way out of abusive, harmful systems or the attitudes they encourage and reward.

Some folks drive like they have donor organs in their cars.

What are these words, even?

Me looking at my own writing.

I worked on the new manuscript more today. Loved it. Hated it. Loved it. Hated it. Loved it. Hated it. Loved it. Hated it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What do you do when you have two manuscripts with presses for their contests and open reading periods? You finish a third one and send it out, too. That’s what you do.

Every time someone attacks me, I just eat dark, leafy greens and grow stronger.

I’m placing a bowl heaped with disco balls in the light and leaning over them, my face cracked across a thousand mirrors, is how I am.

My neighbor is killing weeds with a blowtorch connected to a propane tank.

Flirting with the life partner by showing him my new spreadsheet is how I am.

I smell like barf for some reason is how I am.

I got immunoglobulins all over myself today doing my immunoglobulin infusion is how I am.

I fell into an agave twice after thinking Don’t lose your balance and fall into that agave is how I am.

No Manifesto

It’s haunting to read the “No Manifesto” poem from Chicago Review ten years after it was published. It came out thirteen days before I left poetry because I experienced some of the very issues this poem addresses. It’s situated in a time and place, or rather places, but is also timeless in that too many of the lines could be written today and still be applicable. What a mess we’ve made of poetry. I want better for it, for us. I wanted better for myself.

This is actually the first time I’ve seen the poem and this issue of Chicago Review, which includes a forum on “Sexism and Sexual Assault in Literary Communities.” The “No Manifesto” poem begins on page 221 of the linked document. The poem is 13 pages and 271 lines long.

We’ve been fighting this fight for a really long time. I can’t even see who’s been fighting alongside me. What I see is who didn’t, who hasn’t. When my loneliness leaks into the fissures left by poets and their complicity, it feels like the time I poured salt on a gash in my hand under the magnolia tree in my backyard on a sunny, blank day. I was a kid then. I didn’t know what pain was but wanted to. I’m an adult now and have no need for this pain that won’t stop seeping.

Tall Tales Turned Titillating Truths

I found a document that my paternal great-grandfather dictated for the Indian and Pioneer Historical Collection in 1937. It turns out that side of my family also took part in the 1892 Land Run.

On my mother’s side of the family, I found a news story about one of her uncles dying after being shot four times in the back by a pool-hall owner in Headrick, Oklahoma, over the sum of fifty cents. My mother told me my great-uncle was shot while walking down the street, but I thought it was a tall tale. Turns out, she pretty much told the truth about everything.

Also, I found a portrait of my fourth great-grandmother on my father’s side. She looks like the botched Ecco Homo restoration.

Image: The Altus Times, July 16, 1914, with a front-page story about my great uncle being shot to death outside Garrett’s Pool Hall in Headrick, Oklahoma, by the establishment’s owner, Bud Garrett.