Bo-Arts // Woman of the Year (Part 2)

Bo-Arts is a bi-weekly art/literature initiative.Twice a month,  Boshemia 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.

This issue of Bo-Arts, Woman of the Year: Part 2, is the second installment of the 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. 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.

Read more of Anna's artist's statement here.

TO SLEEP

turning,

i can hear your

faintness.                                                                 

not a word

you say

permeates

that thick, fuzzy orb

which surrounds

in unparalleled softness.

impermeable,

even to your stories,

it encircles me,

and all the space around,

which i claim with

subtle, slumbery grasps

at nothing.

tossing,

now i can’t

find the gap

between where a half-remembered dream

left off,

and where your voice,

like a lighthouse or my father’s,

began.

you’re telling tales of

indian childhoods and

painful bathroom floor mornings.

i can smell the

sunlight, but

i feel luna

on the breath of

your whiskey speech

and his (our lad’s)

smokey, awe-laden confirmations

of a mystic, shared thought.

the wine drew me in

a few nights later, but

this time,

i didn’t move an inch.

rather, i rolled myself

up in your laundry

on the loveseat,

and when you both

carried me to bed,

(my sweet boys)

you each took a

moment

to watch.

i like to think

that, silently,

you didn’t just

gaze like men do.

instead you kissed me with

pupils,

(your babe)

and you each

fell a little

harder.

and also not at all.

*