Jump to a Poet: Introduction - Stellar Cassidy - Shyeanne Powers - Andrew Paul Nelson - J. Brandon Loberg - Nic Burrose - Charlie Getter
Stellar Cassidy
Originally published in The Evergreen Review Issue 124 in September, 2010.
Stellar Cassidy
Bio in her own words:
Stellar Cassidy fancies cheap red wine and zombie movies. She is currently studying English Literature and Philosophy at the University of San Francisco, where the advance on her financial aid allows her to buy cheap red wine and zombie movies. She has been performing at 16th and Mission for two years, and she also hosts the Monday night open mic at the Brainwash Cafe. She divides her time between writing, performing, and playing drums in The Secret Secretaries. She released her first book of poems in 2009 titled, Diamond Tumbleweeds, and she is currently working on her second, which will be released in 2010. She lives in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco with her fiancé Nic Burrose.
Soundbyte Interview:
“I guess I would describe my writing as sounding like post-sex cigarette smoke choking out of the throat of a wilting tulip...maybe computer gut-spilled, pearl necklace filled.
I believe we do what we do because there is a primal human urge to CREATE. Some people may be able to repress this "instinct," however, we live and play in an environment that encourages and nurtures creativity to the absolute fullest. But what we are all chasing, is not money, fame, or immortality, but rather that narcotic moment of creative bliss that seems to always come unannounced. It is that bliss that we yearn for, wait for, cherish, and share.
Influences: H.D., Alan Moore, Jacques Prevert, Allen Ginsberg, Kate Chopin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michele Foucault, Walt Whitman, Ray Bradbury, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Frank O' Hara, Virginia Woolf, Vincent Van Gogh, and most importantly, those who attend 16th and Mission.
I don't necessarily need my friends around to make art; however, i do always need them around for inspiration to be a better artist.
slam poetry....no comment. That's an essay, not a blurb.
Noise is always worth more than money.”
Interviewed by Evan Karp
Poem:
I Thought I Knew Everything About the Cut-up Method
until he gave me his copy of Naked Lunch, soon after we fell in love.
There was blood
splattered
on
the
cover, like a
crimson
constellation.
I asked what the blood was from, even though I already knew the answer.
Maybe I just wanted to hear him say it.
But he didn’t speak.
Instead he made a simple hand motion
that made the act seem more real
than my mind’s eye ever could.
Imagining you
in your previous life
puts me under a dirty knife.
Imagining you
looking for an angry fix,
strung out and dope sick
guts me with sharp, merciless hooks.
Imagining you
playing hide and go seek
with the poisonous black
snake, slices me as if I’ve slept
on a bed
of razorblades.
And they say Burroughs is master of cut-up, and this novel is its definition.
But at this moment,
I’m trapped in a blender
and the novel in my hand
doesn’t compare.
I see those same crimson
constellations
on
the ceiling of his room.
Sometimes I wish they would speak to me,
and whisper secrets of your past addiction
so that I can better grasp it.
But I think they’d probably
scream for help instead, in the
language of sickle cells
that I do not understand
but wish I could.
I think those crimson stars watch over him at night, and talk to him in his sleep. Not in whispers or screams, but in relieved echoes that say, Thank you for being healthy again.
One day, we will compose a masterpiece in that bedroom, and it will begin raining indoors. But we wont be alarmed as we’ll know it’s those crimson stars crying tears of joy down on us.
I thought I knew everything about the cut-up method, until you gave me a blood-splattered piece of your past. And at that moment, you taught me that there’s no cut-up wound that can’t be sewn back up with a gilded thread.
