We are thrilled to share an excerpt from Lambda Literary fellow mimi tempestt’s second book the delicacy of embracing spirals (City Lights, 2023), which “presents a blend of theatre and melodrama, narrative and lyricism,and ranges from a confrontation with abusive lovers and predatory promoters, to an excoriation of police brutality and gender oppression, to a critique of the commodification of Black artists for white consumption.”
casting call #2. “(Black) LA woman”
i war dance on faceless memories deciding against the rigorous threshold of a nuisance day. i spray paint my essence until the tables turn. music in back walls, alleyways of cigarette trails screaming tricks. what you know about a tuesday morning on a psychedelic trip down forever. where bravado is a fairytale of might could that never was & never was is the name of a Black girl gone missing again down sunset boulevard.
what you know about a LA woman?
jim morrison almost got it right about me. deep & wide into a quaalude of misfortunes, white boys with greedy hands & bloody noses whisperminds fucks into distant tidal wave of privilege as trajectory. in the basement is where i slaved on a microphone for five years. three of them i tapped dance for pennies. the two after that, my mouth found its way onto every promoter’s manhood. i told everyone i caught a lucky streak.that phase is called the glitter guzzler.
where did she go! is she here now? has the poem been made? where did she go?
what you know about a LA woman?
she’s devil-horned withstands radiant levels of torturing loneliness. hazes of hatred locks into infinite doldrums. begging for forgiveness for honest mistakes that are now too late to correct. i’d give you my tongue & swallow my fury if i thought it could save me. i’d close my eyes & never wake up if i remembered how he always romanticized the opportunity of tomorrow. he don’t pick up my calls no more, he turned into amexican mule. he turned me out & left me cold to call himself a hero. i’d drop everything i am now to have another moment just to kiss his jackass face. i was in love once & now once means never. his lies
lasted as quick as it took me to get dressed again & hit the pavement searching for my next angry fix. i was just falling with my eyes stitched close. i was just swallowing to avoid a hollowing of time stamps disguised as meaning-making. my tulip memories have been reduced to loops of false youth. i was just running through that ghost city pretending to be diva. i was just trying to forget that my father never loved me. i was just fucking all the zombie men with thick dicks & father never loved me. i was just fucking all the zombie men with thick dicks & false hopes to turn me shooting as star.
where did she go!
was she ever there? has the poem been made? where did she go?
that’s when god found me on broadway. claimed i was an impossible thing. looked me up & down with the same contempt that holds steady in my father’s eyes said, look at you this is the 10th time i caught you snorting cocaine on a sunday. late past midnight made a friend out of you
& up til dawn gotta a new girlfriend. you call it free-love-dancing, but the stuttering in your chest is a skip away from a full stop. so it goes another night in my 100 year battle with the devil disguised as god. & it feels heaven-like on this trip through hell. my body armor is a pound of sweat. my eyes dilate until my next target. a fast fix to the eternal levy that is leaking from my heart. this poem has been whispering unholy in my ear for three years. i conjured up the exoskeleton of my misplaced existence & counted three lives in a decade dedicated to the deterioration of an old soul. i am young in no one’s heart. still to this day i would gouge out my eyes to be an approximation to my former self.
where did she go! is she here now? has the poem been made? where did she go?
& all the theory in the world won’t unwrite me & every mic in my hand isn’t a confessional & every time i put lipstick to paint glory on my face. i disguise it as an opportunity to hide & maybe i was never reliable & maybe i was never here at all. & when they say she’s a good girl, they are right about me & when they wish to frame me for all my sins, i hope they win too. & maybe i’m both first & third person & maybe i took it all too seriously & maybe i have nothing to prove but everything to lose & maybe my eyes had to be pretty to balance out the rape renditions that come fire-breathing out my mouth my mother has a more beautiful way of sighing through life & maybe i was always here but your eyes weren’t trained to see me as i am so i became what i never could be & maybe this poem is just a terrible testimony & maybe a testimony is just a miracle come true & maybe i was just bored the entire time maybe i woke up on a saturday & didn’t feel like trying too hard & maybe i’ve been trying hard my whole life maybe i be buying new hats for all my old faces
was the poem made?
is she here now?
was she ever there?
am i even exist?
is exist even an i?
can i redact the frame they place on me today? maybe i’m both first & third person, but always in last place maybe i was the big idea & when they say she’s a good girl, they are right about me & when they wish to frame me for all my sins, i hope they win too & for all my sins they wish to frame, i hope i win too.
where did she go!
is she here now?
has the poem been made?
where did she go?
mimi tempestt(she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and daughter of California. She has a M.A. in Literature from Mills College, and is currently a doctoral candidate in the Creative/Critical Ph.D. in Literature at UC Santa Cruz. Her first book, the monumental misrememberings, was published with Co-Conspirator Press//The Feminist Center for Creative Work in 2020. In 2021, she was selected for participation in the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices & Writers, and was a Creative Fellow at The Ruby in San Francisco. Her works can be found in Foglifter, Interim Poetics, and at the Studio Museum in Harlem. A native of Los Angeles, she currently resides in Berkeley, CA.
Credit: casting call #2 “(Black) LA woman” from the delicacy of embracing spirals
Copyright © 2023 by mimi tempestt. Reprinted with the permission of City
Lights Books. www.citylights.com
