Bo-Arts // Woman of the Year (Part 1)
Boshemia introduces a new bi-weekly art/literature initiative: Bo-Arts. Twice a month, we will share creative writing and visual art submissions from our readers and folks who identify as feminist to give a larger audience to emerging creatives. Our goal is to provide a platform for feminist artists to share and discuss their work.
The first installment of Bo-Arts, Woman of the Year: Part 1, is the first of five poem-and-photography collaborations brought to you by a duo from Frederick, Maryland, USA. Anna See-Jachowski is a poet and feminist thrilled to be working with Boshemia. She plans to self-publish a book of these poems and others in 2017. Anna, her partner Matt, and their four cats live in Frederick. Emily Jessee is a young feminist creative who uses platforms like photography to portray the harshness and vulnerability of the world around her.
Artist's Statement - from Anna
These poems are part of a series I plan to self-publish this year, titled Woman of the Year. Each poem represents a period in a young artist's life in which they find love, a muse, and desperately seek the meaning of that experience. The five poems are a taste of what the series will offer, and explore the deadly combination of desperation and anger felt when a lover leaves; the lovely vulnerability of falling asleep around people you love; the ritual of hedonism in summertime; and finally, the artist's banishment of her muse for the sake of her own recovery from trauma. I want to share these poems with others because they are illustrations of my own personal experiences, but also because I hope that they will speak to the collective, shared experience that people have when they fall in love, and in doing so, discover things about themselves they weren't aware of before. It's an important part of every feminist's life, regardless of how they identify themselves, or their culture. I love that Boshemia has given me this opportunity, and to other feminist artists to share their work- their heart and soul, in many ways- with the world.
practiced.
dim lights from
small ceiling lamps,
ten or so in a row,
reflect off the
short tumbler glasses
that hold our
too expensive cocktails.
mine is draining more
slowly that yours,
but then we could say
the same of the light
in our faces, this season.
*
(tolerance is a
practiced mistress-
your liver is close to
shot, probably,
and my features
lie
too well.)
*
i am telling you,
as i draw
absentmindedly
on your white
skin,
that a tattoo
is only as permanent
as we are.
and your eyes are wide
like saucers,
flying higher than
the stars we
haven’t discovered yet,
though i told you, also,
how (your
transparency)
your fear of
what’s known
is tied to the moon,
my janus-born darling.
*
you’re (still
intoxicated)
still
betrothed
in the morning,
as you wash the ink
off, and roll
a cigarette.
i wash the smell of
american spirits
from my hair,
trying to scrub away an
aryan ghost
from my head.
*
we were too late.
*
the night we met,
no constellation
could have predicted
the sweet
permanence
of what i penned
upon you-
i drew a heart
on (in) your hand.
*
darling,
my december-born fear
of (intolerance)
what’s unknown
leaves your mistress
haunted and
heartless.
*
i was too late.
*
Look our for Woman of the Year: Part 2, coming in February 2017.