The Real Politics of Lipstick
Winner of the 2010 Slipstream Poetry Chapbook Competition, this collection of prose poems and flash fictions is indeed about the "realpolitik" of our sexuality as it collides with poverty and loss and makes a beautiful explosion. Dead fathers return as jaunty ghosts, budding teenagers remind mothers of the sexy stockings they renounced, tough girls find power in submission and abandonment. This is the honky-tonk woman as sacred prostitute, speaking in tongues as men "plowed away the weight of hard hurt lives" in union with her body but not, perhaps, her elusive soul. Small typeface makes the page look less inviting, but close reading will be rewarded.
