"We Were Women, We Were Already Receding" by Billie R. Tadros

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend Support Poem-a-Day January 2, 2020   We Were Women, We Were Already Receding   Billie R. Tadros

You are someone with a penchant for dark beers and pasts, walk-in closets and porch-step smokes, who liked to ride it out to the depths of the middle of Lake Hopatcong, spark the flint of your lighter, take longing drags and talk about hipster coffee and sex with whipped cream designs—and sometimes, your next lover—and dive in to put out the fag, swim to the deck to peel off your cotton boxers and wring them in your fighter's fist. It's too cold in the fall on the water we fall in, too naked for falling in naked and docking unanchored like this. I remember. You'd kiss me and shiver.            Copyright © 2020 by Billie R. Tadros. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 2, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets. About this Poem   "I wrote the first draft of this poem in 2011, as part of what began as a series of dive bar sonnets about ex-lovers. As the poem evolved in revision, the bar disappeared altogether ('dark/beers and pasts' represent the remnants), and instead of being 'about' this one woman I had loved, the poem became a reflection on what it meant for me at this time in my life to be a queer woman. I was seeking the language and the form to articulate both the transience of this electric passion I had felt—really, for the first time—and the transience of the limited and stagnant understandings I had of gender and sexuality before meeting the woman who inspired her mythology in this poem. I think the constraints of the decasyllabic line and the seven rhyme sounds of the sonnet challenged me both to maximize the potential of the language we use culturally to talk about gender and sexuality, and also to recognize—and resist—the limitations of that language." —Billie R. Tadros   Billie R. Tadros's second book of poems, Was Body, is forthcoming from Indolent Books in 2020. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Theatre and an affiliated faculty member in the Women's and Gender Studies Program at The University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, where she lives. Poetry by Tadros   The Tree We Planted and Buried You In (Otis Books, 2018) "Expressing My Feelings to My Future Husband-Wife (Or, Ritual in Which Gender)" by Kayleb Rae Candrilli "Settling In" by Jenny Factor "Blue" by May Swenson January Guest Editor: Meg Day   Thanks to Meg Day, author of Last Psalm at Sea Level (Barrow Street, 2014), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A about Day's curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year. A culture break, a source of daily renewal...   If reading Poem-a-Day has become a meaningful part of your day, please consider supporting this free series with a donation. Your gift makes publishing Poem-a-Day possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit poets.org   Unsubscribe here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038