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GLJ On Hiatus
Hello all, I hope you are well. I on the other hand, your lead editor, am not well. I recently got diagnosed with Pelvic Inflammatory Disease. It was constantly missed by doctors and now the infection has spread quite severely, impacting several organs and leaving permanent scarring of tissue. It seems resistant to antibiotics. As such, maintaining GLJ is proving too difficult. I simply cannot seem to keep up with it. As of today GLJ is on hiatus. I do not know for how long. The site will remain up as I remain hopeful that my circumstances and health will change in the future.
In summary all submissions have been suspended. For all who have submitted to GLJ, an email will be in your inbox, with apologies. Your poems are all beautiful. Don’t give up! I truly believe you will all get published one day. Keep working.
It has been a great privilege running GLJ. Hopefully in the future I will be able to take up this mantle again. As for my personal writing, larkspurhorne.net will certainly be coming out of retirement during this time. You can also follow me at RenwickBerchild.com.
As always, I sign off. Stay Brave. Stay Brave. Thank you. -
Revealing GLJ’s 2023 ROAR Showcase Winner: Kim Whysall-Hammond
Green Lion Journal is proud to announce our 2023 ROAR Showcase: Kim Whysall-Hammond. Over the next week GLJ will post Kim’s poems and her Q&A. Her work will continue to be featured on GLJ in the ROAR showcase until December 1st, 2024.
Experiences are life. Fantasy and intellectualization, though integral to the human condition, serve to aid and guide us through this turbulent thing called living – the procession aggregate. Whether to enlightenment or self-destruction (or neither/both), we will not only dream and think, but experience through it all, again and again, time’s arrow unrelenting in its verse of “You are alive.”
The internet has created a time of unprecedented sharing. Never before have we been so exposed to the inner and outer narratives of so many people. In this jungle of human diversity, the question of the interconnected human remains thus: Will we find, or lose ourselves? While reading Kim Whysall-Hammond’s work and words, I felt the skeptic inside me recede, to lean toward the former.
Reading poetry has always felt like reading secrets to me, a shapely Roman à clef, a skeleton key of words. Kim’s use of poetry as a kind of autofiction (popular in the current time) speaks to many, and her rejection of what is sometimes referred to as “the poet’s logic” – that aesthetically versed words imply validity – is refreshing. The growing modern consensus of poetry seems to be that poetry is a way to tell the truth – in full frontal freedom. To employ the senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch – to invite others into our experiences and to, inversely, be invited into them. “Good poetry talks to you.” writes Kim, and so her poems speak to us, with clearly stated themes and intents. Her poetic devices such as anaphora and allusion are serviced not to mystified, but to define.
So Kim’s work is richly defined, through experience. Through her feeling, witnessing, being alive. I can think of no better way of signing off than with more words from Kim, “The internet abounds with poems of all sorts, and long may it do so.”
Long may we do so, these poems of life.
-RB
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“[D]on’t be precious.”: Q & A With Candice Louisa Daquin, our 2022 ROAR Showcase Finale
“[D]on’t be precious.”: Q & A With Candice Louisa Daquin
Q. What is your earliest memory of poetry?
A: I have a very bad memory of early years but I do remember the poem “Small Hands” by Walt Whitman* being spoken in a Woody Allen movie and me being really deeply affected. I think it might have been “The Tyger” by William Blake. Although to be fair I think children are surrounded with poetry if you think about it.
Q. Have you ever cried reading a poem? Which poem was it? How did it affect you?
A: Without doubt. Mostly ones written by people I know or ones on subjects that are very evocative personally. I cried editing We Will Not Be Silenced because I was so angry that women’s rights and the #metoo movement was having to struggle so much and still wasn’t on par with other rights. I cried editing Through The Looking Glass because of all the mental illness people experience with so little support and compassion. I cried editing But You Don’t Look Sick for the same reason. I even cried with SMITTEN because of the love between women and how hard it can be in society to be same-sex. I think poetry can easily bring you to tears because it’s immediate and visceral and honest.
Q. There are hundreds of types of poetic forms. Is there a particular form that speaks to you? Why?
A: Not at all. I did a MA in writing including learning all the poetic forms like the back of my hand and I was singularly unimpressed. I mean sure, yeah, go at it, but for me – it doesn’t do a thing. I like my poetry raw and steaming on a plate.
Q. Do you ever experience writer’s block? How do you overcome it?
A: Someone once told me they never did and I didn’t believe them. I have not met a writer who hasn’t. There are some good tips for avoiding it – but mostly it comes down to discipline. For me I find it hard to write when I’m too busy with other things. I think poetry needs space. I overcome it by reminding myself when I die I will not think ‘I wish I had spent more time in the office’ and trying not to be that typical American who works all the time – that’s not who I want to be and it’s not how I grew up (France) so I make a conscious effort to balance work and life as much as is realistically possible.
Q. Some writers have methods that help them write. Do you? Will you share it with us?
A; When writing prose – don’t be precious. Start. It doesn’t matter if it’s not linear because good writing never is. Just write something. Anything. And keep going. Even if it’s piecemeal you’ll put it together. Have faith in the process – instead of thinking you have to write it how it’s going to ultimately be from the very start. Same with poetry, write it out, then edit it and then wait and then edit it again. Sometimes it comes out perfect the first time but that’s rare.
Q. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil, “Poets treat their experiences shamelessly: they exploit them.” Do you think this is true? Why or why not?
A: I definitely agree with this. I think writers in general are egotists. I think artists in general are egotists. I think in this world anyone who thinks what they will do for a living is to create for others, and thus they rely upon an audience and thus they need people who like what they do, is by necessity an egotist or they will not succeed. It is a shame. I like humble people without egos but I have yet to meet one in the art-world. It is unfortunate that people who may not have big egos often get nowhere whilst those who do often succeed because it should never be about that but of course it is, especially as we go from 7 billion people all trying to get somewhere and earn their keep. It makes us very dog-eat-dog and I wonder if it would be possible to be pure? I expect once it was.
Q. In 2013 Alexandra Petri wrote the viral and infamous Washington Post article “Is Poetry Dead?” Some people believe poetry doesn’t have a purpose in the modern world and that it is a dying art form. Do you agree? Why or why not?
A: I think the whole idea of poetry being dead or conversely, alive, is just rhetoric. That’s why I don’t like a lot of articles [op-eds] written by people because we mistake them for fact but they’re just noise. The truth lies in simple places. We don’t have the power to pronounce an art form dead or alive. We do it to sell articles, magazines, ad-space, to justify our existence as journalists. But journalism is more dead than anything else. Everything has a purpose in the modern world if people want it to – and it’s not about how many people want it to but about one person wanting it to. We forget that.
Q. Have you ever read the work of prison poets? If you have, tell us about them and whether or not their works have affected you, and if so, how?
A: No – except clients I have had who were in prison. I wouldn’t be adverse to it but then again I can think of other groups I might have more time for – like those who the people in prison victimized?
Q. Do you think trauma and poetry are connected? If so, how?
A: They can be. Essentially because trauma can be best illustrated using art and poetry is a form of art.
Q. What does poetry mean to you?
A: That’s an evolving perspective as it means different things depending. Right now I’m embracing prose even more than poetry and I never thought that would happen. It does discourage me that not enough people read longer, more detailed poetry and I really loathe the whole IG meme poetry movement although I respect others’ love of it. I read a poem the other day from a girl I know well who is dying – so on that day poetry meant I was losing my friend and reading them writing about dying and it slayed me.
Q. Do you think a poem can save a life?
A: No. I think a poem can help save a life. Saving a life is ultimately going to be a personal decision or the intervention of someone else.
Q. How or why do you think poetry is important to the world?
A: Because humans think expression matters and it does – even if nauseatingly we’ve gone too far in our expression, better that than no expression. Poetry is a form of expression that has music literally. I admire singers who write their own songs more than poetry because they go beyond poetry, they transform it to music and thus their art is greater but all writers are musicians if you consider words and how they play.
*Editor’s Note: I believe the poem Candice is referring to here is the poem “somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond” by E.E. Cummings which ends with the line “nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.” But I have not seen many movies, so I digress. Memory is a fickle mistress.
Candice Louisa Daquin Candice Louisa Daquin is of Sephardi French/Egyptian descent. Born in Europe, Daquin worked in publishing before immigrating to America to become a Psychotherapist, where she has continued writing and editing whilst practicing as a therapist. Daquin is Senior Editor at Indie Blu(e) Publishing, a feminist micro-press. She freelances as Writer-in-Residence for Borderless Journal and Poetry & Art Editor for The Pine Cone Review. Her next personal book of poetry is Tainted by the Same Counterfeit (Finishing Line Press, coming out 2022). Find more of her work at http://www.thefeatheredsleep.com
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Day Seven, ROAR Showcase: Absolution by Candice Louisa Daquin
Absolution I don’t know if there’s hope When friend turns foe I don’t know Where in separation Yoke and embryo Glistening placenta gouache The painter may Render this potential life Legacy of strife In verdant whisker I could have been born Elsewhere or not Chemistry. cellular change Alchemists with tears as coat of arms We consume tangerines The smell of orange rind and cloves Seasonal with moth holes Moses climbs from his wicker man Escaping the fire And disbelieved share Their bronze debacle Lend me the mahogany deep of your voice Bringing me back from kimono exile Remember, I have no power But the truth of nude vanquish Attributed to low lamps, proffered incense Summoning believers in thin Mackintosh bones We are rubric To gardens in the rain Bird baths for those Needful of absolution
Candice Louisa Daquin is of Sephardi French/Egyptian descent. Born in Europe, Daquin worked in publishing before immigrating to America to become a Psychotherapist, where she has continued writing and editing whilst practicing as a therapist. Daquin is Senior Editor at Indie Blu(e) Publishing, a feminist micro-press. She freelances as Writer-in-Residence for Borderless Journal and Poetry & Art Editor for The Pine Cone Review. Her next personal book of poetry is Tainted by the Same Counterfeit (Finishing Line Press, coming out 2022). Find more of her work at http://www.thefeatheredsleep.com
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Day Six, ROAR Showcase: For my first friend in America by Candice Louisa Daquin
For my first friend in America Your hand covers mine we pose for the camera and smile a 100 watt smile The American Way since immigrating here, I have learned how to park a truck discovered that shorts are not as anathema in Texas as in Cannes I understand, ordering drinks you size up, trying clothes, you size down topsy-turvy world for a foreigner, still lost in her baggage claim. You made me feel easy and comfortable like an Adirondack chair smooth wood, deep grain, eccentric shape this became my town thanks to you taking the time to show me the way to fit in with my queer, mixed-race looks different on the outside ways no vegetarians, just signs proclaiming ‘love equals a man and a woman’ you stayed my hand when I wanted to give up and go back. Now, the candles dim in the windows of the bar we once sat as if they know you are now gone, where the bird died and we buried it flowers grow up and a little crepe myrtle, mountain laurel blooms wildly across splayed streets replete with thin cats seeking their breakfast in Taco huts, the color of watermelon where I ate among the gladioli without fear. In the beginning you were like Tiger Balm rubbed over my anxiety I could make my way through the throng as good as anyone your watchful eyes on my narrow back, urging me onward how will I continue with you gone? Family, you said, comes from the heart you may find someone you love in the strangest places I found you in a Chinese buffet eating Wonton soup in my skinny jeans you asked me if I used to be a dancer I said yes, and now I unravel for a living you took under your wing, that juniper girl who didn’t know how to fit in a State six times the size of her country taught her the measure of her adopted land, how to avoid being gay-bashed and left out of BBQ invites because you don’t fit in and nothing about you ever will like the time we planted trees and you warned, never forget to be merciful, to those less fortunate white cranes flew languidly overhead, we shared Limeade and Tortas, our feet in hot puddles I recall the first time you were sick, I said, you reminded me of my grandmother and you frowned; I’m not old enough! But what I meant was; she had a strength, nobody else could see every time I went to school she’d wait in her high-waisted pants of crepe or wool tight curled hair, wearing oversize sunglasses, her brown skin against a sea of white standing below the stairs, nodding with a wink mouthing the words; You got this nobody saw that side of her, just as people dismissed you as a Jesus Freak I learned, it’s often the things people dismiss in you, that are the best parts. To the rose opening this day after your passing, I say, go now and live in the sun I hear your voice, see your face nodding, you got this I want to run backward and say please don’t leave me, don’t go but I know you have to and I have to go on alone but holding your wisdom imprinted upon my heart.
Candice Louisa Daquin is of Sephardi French/Egyptian descent. Born in Europe, Daquin worked in publishing before immigrating to America to become a Psychotherapist, where she has continued writing and editing whilst practicing as a therapist. Daquin is Senior Editor at Indie Blu(e) Publishing, a feminist micro-press. She freelances as Writer-in-Residence for Borderless Journal and Poetry & Art Editor for The Pine Cone Review. Her next personal book of poetry is Tainted by the Same Counterfeit (Finishing Line Press, coming out 2022). Find more of her work at http://www.thefeatheredsleep.com
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Day Five, ROAR Showcase: What kind of lesbian would I be if I were born today by Candice Louisa Daquin
What kind of lesbian would I be if I were born today I see your pictures on social media a part of me is envious of your freedom even though women many years before either of us had absolutely no freedom and only those with enough money could consider taking a woman as their lover it is hard to imagine each generation I suspect forgets the sacrifices of the last cannot envision a time when it was illegal to love my experience was never that awful I had freedoms many women still do not possess and I am grateful for that but sometimes when I see your youthful face and the grace with which you accept love how natural and easy it feels I recall how I began hiding in dark bars, trying to fit in, failing never one to play endless games of poker face I didn’t fit in with my own kind then but if I’d been you born in the sun with your turquoise eyes like the Donovan song I might have had on my arm a whole host of dreams and not dabbled in boys for a few futile and unhappy years or felt I couldn’t have had children and let my fear and my constraint decide for me the future you are the age my daughter might be and I would like to think I’d have done all you have done had I been born in a time of greater acceptance where women who love women can grow their hair and not have to cling to stereotypes or subterfuge carrying knots of shame and confusion, like blankets never stretched out and slept on I would have gotten a tattoo and maybe been less shy and apologetic I remember at 18 that’s all I seemed to do sorry to my family for not having turned out straight apologetic to those who thought our culture, our race should procreate with a man and not be ‘unnatural’ sorry to my friends for being the odd one out sorry to the gays on the march who thought with my dresses and my long tresses I was a weekend lesbian if they only knew what it took and what I sacrificed maybe they understand now but we’re all a little older and you don’t recapture what you felt at 18 you remember it like a language I spoke the language of trial and error I suspect you speak the language of love just a little freer so forgive me if I envy you as you walk past me hand in hand, laughing, the edges of your hair hitting your waist like a Summer tidal wave.
Candice Louisa Daquin is of Sephardi French/Egyptian descent. Born in Europe, Daquin worked in publishing before immigrating to America to become a Psychotherapist, where she has continued writing and editing whilst practicing as a therapist. Daquin is Senior Editor at Indie Blu(e) Publishing, a feminist micro-press. She freelances as Writer-in-Residence for Borderless Journal and Poetry & Art Editor for The Pine Cone Review. Her next personal book of poetry is Tainted by the Same Counterfeit (Finishing Line Press, coming out 2022). Find more of her work at http://www.thefeatheredsleep.com
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Day Four, ROAR Showcase: The Abortionist’s Chair by Candice Louisa Daquin
The Abortionist's Chair Behold the abortionist's chair not leather, for leather is thirsty this chair is wreathed in glossy rubber that can be wiped down and disinfected to mute the smell of blood this chair does not owe its shape to comfort, nor seeks it nay, the very contour is built upon a premise bringing life should not be a sentence women are not incubators nor second-class citizens who have no right to their own crown of thorns that is choice these women and girls climb into the chair tearfully the tears are not because they are forced to leave behind a piece of them but the slow sorrow of particular relief regret that contraception failed regret that he left her destitute regret this is her 6th pregnancy and she is unwell regret life is hard and she cannot, she cannot bring a child into the world relief that she has a choice. Before entering the clinic, they watch from their car swells of protesters with plastic babies attached to placards chant and throng hate and intolerance thinking how little has changed in 400 years how if nobody was watching that crowd would fall upon the girl, the woman and have her bloody guts for garters if they could get away with it a murder of crows, the sycophant irony they are trying to save just as they fantasize about killing. These women trapped in their cars stare at colorless clouds a chain of ants climbs along cement walkway easily crushed, invisible to us, these women feel a simpatico; the worth of life, of value, of other’s moral high-ground as those who believe themselves untouchable, eat with their heavy knife and fork bleeding steak at lunchtime pontification lashing the sin of woman, swallowing globs of meat without thought of the dumb beast who trawled to the slaughter yard in a cart of wide-eyed animals who knew they were going to die facing it without words. The chair has seen the doctor wiping her brow as she gives freedom of choice back to women whose womb holds the viability of that life, not politicians whose legs pucker with the cold of heavy instruments and they say she chose this as a form of contraception? They say she is evil and has no compassion? They who would have her led like muted cow to slaughter speaking on her behalf, feigning they speak for her murdered child painting easy shame to denigrate her dignity as life bearer which necessarily includes a symbiotic understanding it’s never that simple and you can’t speak for me! How society thinks they own bodies but won’t pay maternity leave believing a coat-hanger legacy unworthy no reason to grant real lasting equality as her body roils with morning sickness as she knows she cannot bring a child into this world this world of carnivores eating steak at lunchtime gazing at the fine legs of a slender waisted woman walking from the bar and back to bring them a drink the very same men and women who pervert justice calling a girl, a whore if she drank before she was raped a child ‘gagging for it’ if she wore a short skirt asking; are you sure you didn’t lead him on? Thinking a prostitute unworthy of consideration rape a corrective necessity for lesbians. These things are not footnotes in history they happen every day a world that still doesn’t grant equality for women thinking it preferable to spray paint clinics, shut them down, starve them of resources shoot their staff, shame those women who knew they couldn’t bring a child into the world didn’t want to be an incubator for an adoption agency who profits adopting out babies of young mothers whom they have guilted into remaining pregnant because any abortion is a sin, don’t you know you will go to Hell? But isn’t Hell a place where you are a second-class-citizen? Your rights eroded; your body controlled by all means choose, keep a baby, or not but to have no say in what happens in your womb? Hell is shame placed on your every action — trapped, trapped, trapped yes, I would say that is hell a world where clinics are closed and protesters have nowhere to hate anymore so, they come up with something else (because they will) it’s not even about sparing little defenseless babies if that were true, they’d give a damn about all those unwanted kids of color in foster care it’s hate of convenience, a conviction of superiority, a penchant for judgement extended through the laws of patriarchy and beyond twisting religion and doctrine to your will, as if you speak for Gods controlling what others do with their bodies, like you are one even in cases of rape and incest because; it’s not the innocent child’s fault, meting out the sentence let’s ask ourselves then, whose fault is it? A society where rape isn’t taken seriously or punished? Or people who think a survivor’s rights are worthless? The abortionist’s chair is gathering dust and some people cheer this as they bite into their $50 dollar steak and pieces of a life far more sentient when it was ended get stuck like slivers of placenta in their righteous clenched teeth. Who then, we ask is the greater criminal? The woman who seeks choice or the hypocrite who denies her the solace of saying what her own body will bear?
Candice Louisa Daquin is of Sephardi French/Egyptian descent. Born in Europe, Daquin worked in publishing before immigrating to America to become a Psychotherapist, where she has continued writing and editing whilst practicing as a therapist. Daquin is Senior Editor at Indie Blu(e) Publishing, a feminist micro-press. She freelances as Writer-in-Residence for Borderless Journal and Poetry & Art Editor for The Pine Cone Review. Her next personal book of poetry is Tainted by the Same Counterfeit (Finishing Line Press, coming out 2022). Find more of her work at http://www.thefeatheredsleep.com
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Day Three, ROAR Showcase: I knew my invisibility by Candice Louisa Daquin
I knew my invisibility I knew my invisibility when the lady next to my mother in the French nursing ward took me in her arms out of pity for there was nobody there who cared to rock a crying child, not wanted by hedonists who erred in pregnancy I knew my invisibility when my mother tucked bus ticket in her blouse kissed me goodnight for the final time explaining she needed to get out and breathe did not remember to keep the door ajar and the night vanquished me in her absence I knew my invisibility when my father silently resenting single-parenting did not pick me up outside the school gates the boys in the projects threw stones and jeered shouting; “show me your stinking snatch, bitch” until I learned to climb trees and wait and wait and wait I knew my invisibility when my grandfather told me to sit on his lap the only attention was the wrong kind and sick everyone else got busy like they didn’t know what was happening bit like being chained to a rock and watching for The Gorgon I knew my invisibility when my friends in bikinis had boys stuck to them like bees cooing as birds will underneath willow trees whilst I was bitten by mosquitoes not men and the ordinariness of me was the best repellent no need to spray tan, just stand and burn I knew my visibility when I broke into pieces and watched them descend unwilling to drown I reached out and a hand pulled me out of the darkness and into her universe where for the first time I was seen and loved for who I was and not a cream centered assortment blindly plucked from a candy box
Candice Louisa Daquin is of Sephardi French/Egyptian descent. Born in Europe, Daquin worked in publishing before immigrating to America to become a Psychotherapist, where she has continued writing and editing whilst practicing as a therapist. Daquin is Senior Editor at Indie Blu(e) Publishing, a feminist micro-press. She freelances as Writer-in-Residence for Borderless Journal and Poetry & Art Editor for The Pine Cone Review. Her next personal book of poetry is Tainted by the Same Counterfeit (Finishing Line Press, coming out 2022). Find more of her work at http://www.thefeatheredsleep.com
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Day Two, ROAR Showcase: Le rapas by Candice Louisa Daquin
Le rapas The way she cleans, puts away the day into lopsided drawers that do not shut well even on easy days their contents lost in shuffle and exploit planes over head, mournful drone, a whine of grief as they attain height her hands chapped from slapping herself back to life rivets run like zippers down her nails, a light somewhere is extinguished another turned on, sudden furnace, shadows vanquished, she has not drunk all day, for the trembling in her hands betrays the wait. Dusk smears sky, oranges hang like tired bosoms pressed in a woman’s dress amidst plump leaves, blue-black birds caw their hunger into cavernous pitch, cats with arched tails, disappear potently, eternally her ankles swell with want, her thyroid a box of treasure, alight with waiting in chocolate dusk she dozes in her reverie, business put away, the calm of darkening, a hot bath scalding dry air with its promise, oils filling her nostrils, pungent and wistful, infusion of sorrow she remembers when they lay together without fault or breakage the outline of their union, a mandala, with complicated lines leading back to circles drawn in henna, indigo, cheap car paint, permanent in bare footed sprint poured into a tattoo gun in wild Canadian hinterlands. stabbed in staccato for her eternal, sea sick pleasure. She lay then, thinking of burning up like fireworks set alight to bloom and bloom till dry of pollen she wanted to melt the snow as she walked back alone and hurting, wounded by her own loathing a cigarette in her mouth, pressed against clenched, chipped teeth, and you? You were far off like winking lights in sea storm you were so far then… gone, without being gone As is so much of life. Waiting. Closing curtains. Wrapping away disappointed hours to bed, to claim, to screaming beneath wedged pillows till the thankless clock in the downstairs anteroom chimes not and without putting our heads in the oven even once we are done Done.
Candice Louisa Daquin is of Sephardi French/Egyptian descent. Born in Europe, Daquin worked in publishing before immigrating to America to become a Psychotherapist, where she has continued writing and editing whilst practicing as a therapist. Daquin is Senior Editor at Indie Blu(e) Publishing, a feminist micro-press. She freelances as Writer-in-Residence for Borderless Journal and Poetry & Art Editor for The Pine Cone Review. Her next personal book of poetry is Tainted by the Same Counterfeit (Finishing Line Press, coming out 2022). Find more of her work at http://www.thefeatheredsleep.com
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Day One, ROAR Showcase: Amulet by Candice Louisa Daquin
Amulet No they didn’t write poems about you and they didn’t write poems about me they didn’t write poems about us we were a label, a provocation, pornography perhaps sometimes a curse, misfortune something to deride in that lazy way people who find it amusing to poke fun, do I imagine them now sipping on over-sweet lemonade in lawn chairs pointing metaphorically when we pass by if younger they might say “well those two probably look good doing it” but as we’re past the sell by date of women they stay with the flabby slurs, the ways of erasure subtle and time tested “those damn lesbians I bet they are protesting-to-gain-attention-and-notoriety-again won’t-they-just-quit-trying-to-queer-the-world” (I wonder what they DO in bed?) the jokes about too many cats, why don’t we have short hair or wear wife-beaters (was that ever really a thing?) it could be 1950 (but then we’d be arrested) it could be 1975 (but then we’d just be beaten and raped) it could be 1990 (dirty looks on the street, possibly pity, less attacks more isolation) I remember a friend asking me why I hadn’t been attracted to her as if being a lesbian made me a predator and ready for anyone it could be tomorrow and you’re let go at your job but you can’t prove why despite your boss being a Christian Scientist the newspaper has an article on gay commitment ceremonies why gays shouldn’t push the envelope, they make it worse (by existing?) you bring in the post, we still can’t marry though a colleague got drunk hitched to a girl he knew 24 hours last weekend in Vegas we still can’t immigrate which is why I don’t drive and I work two badly paid illegal jobs and don’t answer our phone if you get sick your family will block me from visiting or living in my own home we laugh they would even take the cat (can’t you queer a cat?) my friend who is a Catholic asks me why gay-marriage is so important, after all it’s not illegal to be gay anymore what else do you really need? She married her high school sweetheart (but it’s different, how?) I need to feel safe, equal, legitimized, your aunt once asked why the law changing would achieve that, and we considered her own 3 marriages and children and had no words what can you say to that quiet, soft, almost lullaby dislike an collar of intolerance imposed by the majority that feels like half warm water choking your right to live free. “At least it’s not illegal anymore,” a teacher said, almost consolidatory as if she knew what that felt like, or the wick of fear seeing police lights in your rear-view mirror, (and one of them is COLORED the lead cop said before asking us to place our hands on the car and assume the position) When the law changed and the signs that said marriage equals a man and a woman NO queers! were removed the neighbors asked us if we were going to get married and have a big party in the back garden if so they would ask their cousin to make a rainbow cake and the smile on my face felt tight like when you put spray on sun lotion and it dries in place because all the grief carried around had become our children all the fear had become our legacy we were tired of explaining anything or even attempting to be part of straight people’s trending celebrations for finally possessing rights it seemed easier then to just carry on being the way we always had been trying to avoid detection like it had been an amulet, whether we wanted it or not that took us through the darkness, until we no longer needed the light
Candice Louisa Daquin is of Sephardi French/Egyptian descent. Born in Europe, Daquin worked in publishing before immigrating to America to become a Psychotherapist, where she has continued writing and editing whilst practicing as a therapist. Daquin is Senior Editor at Indie Blu(e) Publishing, a feminist micro-press. She freelances as Writer-in-Residence for Borderless Journal and Poetry & Art Editor for The Pine Cone Review. Her next personal book of poetry is Tainted by the Same Counterfeit (Finishing Line Press, coming out 2022). Find more of her work at http://www.thefeatheredsleep.com
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GLJ’s First ROAR Showcase 2022: The Indomitable Candice Louisa Daquin
Candice Louisa Daquin Green Lion Journal is proud to announce our first ever ROAR Showcase: Candice Louisa Daquin. Over the next week GLJ will post Candice’s poems and her Q&A. Her work will continue to be featured on GLJ in the ROAR showcase until December 1st, 2022.
To be ‘indomitable’ by definition is to be impossible to subdue or defeat. Though all human beings are mortal, we all know or have known a person who encompasses this forceful adjective. To be ‘indomitable’ has nothing to do with the body, be the body frail or strong, large or small, male or female or between; no, to be ‘indomitable’ is to be of a spirit that forges on despite all fears, all obstacles, all terrain.
As such, one can only encounter the indomitable through experience with the expression of an internal, unique self. A body may be fast, but it is not necessarily indomitable; a body may be powerful, but it may not be indomitable. The indomitable is only that which forges on by will, a control exerted, a desire brought to bear.
Candice Louisa Daquin’s work embodies the indomitable. Through the verses one can sense the will and desire to forge forward, to be unconquerable, to be untamed. The iambic, the meter, the lineation, the enjambments, the marginals, the shape of the work, all these things are disregarded as mere incidentals; it is the indomitable that spears out. The brute force by which the work defies classical categorization is the work itself. Free verse and blank verse at times spiral into rhyme and mixed meter, an ecopoem can be as much a love poem or a confessional. Daring expression of the self, the commitments to one’s opinions, the vulnerability of one’s doubts—this is the work. And at its core, sits the beating heart of all meaningful art.
To forge ourselves into the future. To be indomitable.
–RB
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Launch Day: Green Lion Journal is now Accepting Submissions for GLJ Blog
Green Lion Journal is now accepting submissions for GLJ Blog. Submissions for the blog are open year round and are free. Send us 1 to 3 pieces of your best work in the body of the email or in a single attached document to gljblog@gmail.com with the subject line “Submission [Your Name] GLJ Blog.” Maximum line count for each poem is 45. Keep your prose 300 words or less. Preference is for unpublished pieces, but published work is also accepted. If your work has been published elsewhere please leave a note at the bottom of your submission stating where your poem or prose piece has previously appeared and make sure you have retained the rights. Please visit the Summa/Submit page for a complete guide to submission.
In the body of the email include a short cover letter and a small bio, and if you feel friendly, a picture of yourself.
Confessional verse is very welcome here. Green Lion likes pieces that impact the chest, stretch the nerves, and invoke that white hot feeling of surrender to emotion. The work does not necessarily have to be dark and sinister; in fact, if you can avoid this route, you should. What Green Lion looks for is introspective, explosive, and attached; detached nihilism and ersatz spooky lines will likely get you rejected. (Though if you truly feel you have “it”, send it in regardless.) Poetry and prose that holds the sensation of intense caring and need, inner conflict and internal analysis will hit the notes that will get you published.
Green Lion Journal is awaiting your power, your pain, your words. Swallow the Sun.
Green Lion Journal 