Half My Lovers Are Dead

Poetry, Bastards, and Leaving it All Behind

I hosted a poetry event in Berkeley last weekend: Women of a Certain Age Read Poems on Sex and Death.

Talk about knowing you’ve arrived! I wrote a poem for the occasion.

© Honey Lee Cottrell, Susie Bright, San Francisco 1981. The first photo we took together, i.e., our first date.

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Half my lovers are dead

Half my lovers fill the night

Ghosts on cat’s feet pitter-pat across my cunt

Almost,

Not Quite,

Incredible,

I-Don’t-Remember-Your-Name

But I remember your chest

Now all the lovers’ chests are lined at the edge of the bed

They were thirsty

It was too soon

They were too young

They were older than mud

We never said how lonely it would get

We didn’t know; we didn’t dig

But

I saw the hole in you. You saw the bone in me.

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Reading Dorothy, Cover to Cover - The Video

Excerpt from photograph by Jill Posener, of Dorothy Allison, Alix Layman, and Susie Fought, on Santa Cruz railroad tracks.

I helped produce a memorial reading marathon last weekend for the late author, Dorothy Allison. She and I were friends back in the 80s, when all our work was in the underground press.

A group of us, young and old, performed Dorothy’s classic Bastard Out of Carolina, every page, from 9am to 9pm. I was an early shift.

I read Chapter 6, the best writing on being hungry I ever read. And then Chapter 8, when our 10-year-old protagonist “Bone” is really going through it— her stepfather’s abuse lands her in the hospital and that’s no help either. Only a mirror.

Allison “found the words” — she found the words and the story to describe poverty and incest and emotional awareness of the unspeakable, the spark inside— when no one else had done that. Not within a mile of it. She must have met a million people in the course of her life who said, “How did you know? This is my life and I never could say this.” That’s because abuse is endemic. It’s bonding, it’s prison-like shame. A bear-trap. And when you’re little and you don’t know anything else, it is what it is.

Below, a portion of my reading. I’m not mic’ed so the room sound is unfortunate. We read at the fine-art edition Arion Press, where I was once the acquiring literary editor, for a thrilling season. They have a new location at Fort Mason for their printing press, bindery and type room (worth the tour).

P.S. I just made a clean audio file, which is considerably better than the video sound. It kicks in after the first 3 seconds:

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In Other News: Leaving the F

Dear friends,

I left Facebook.

Wow! It’s been a few decades. But doxxing is not fun, & so I bade adieu. Instead, you’ll find me here, of course. And my handle is susiebright on BlueSky.

Do stay in touch. I gotta find another way to remember your birthday . . . Let’s send real mail, eh?

Xox, Susie

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In Case You Missed It

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