Lesleigh Owen

I have interviewed Lesleigh Owen -actually Dr. Lesleigh Owen- before, and hope to do so again.

Besides being one of the best poets around, she is also one of the most amazing paranormal romance writers around, under the name Elle Hill. If you haven't checked out "Hunted Dreams" or any of the books in her "Hunted" series, you are missing a treat.

If you haven't yet figured it out, Lesleigh is one of the most intelligent women in her generation. She is also one of the most cat-happy women in her generation.

Here is one of her poems from Fat Poets Speak 2: Living and Loving Fatly (Pearlsong Press, 2014).

Lesleigh Owen

Soft

How compelling can a poem without angst be?

I told myself not to lift my fingers from this keyboard

but even fevers need to be fed

and eyes require cleaning.

I don’t operate on batteries anymore,

although when I sleep, I have been known to

make a suspicious buzzing noise.

The press and release of routine;

I crave the resentment and comfort of it all.

Without ritual, how could I free myself

to think thoughts that remain unvoiced

and realizations that I forget within the hour?

How can anyone love grays and browns

when blacks and whites shine and stab and pierce

like teeth through flesh?

Is there a strength in being common,

being pretty,

being accommodating,

being the third smartest person

in the world?

Or maybe it’s the be-ing

that pumps potency into the world

in quiet gasps and blinks.

I used to scatter violence in my poems

up above the page so high,

shards twinkling, twinkling

in the sky.

I don’t miss

or covet that walnut-colored, blocky pain,

checking my hair for genetic hints,

white and springy impulses in an otherwise

soft tangle of

innocuous brown curls.

The illusion of power in abuse,

of control in pain,

of devotion in jealousy:

My strength rumbles up from the ground,

rotund and rich

with triple chins and enough cellulite in the belly

to pad the heads of ten or more cats

and the not-as-innocuous brown curls

of my Prince Charming.

I find inspiration in silence

and songs in sighs.

Did you know?

The strongest substances are also the softest.

And because I can’t tell you any other way,

he hurt me for ten years.

And no, it’s not okay when you interrupt me –

even when I say it is.

And I am not broken.

And all those poems I wrote about raw lips gaping,

screaming and singing and rhyming

into vast, dusty silences?

Learn to take a hint.

And I largely dated men because

I wanted my mom to be proud of me.

And most days I cherish this body --

think it should be memorialized in latex

in some museum

for the masses to rub against and dream –

but some days I’d like to revel and roll,

with a jellied messiness that would horrify the nuns,

inside a thin privilege I will never know. 

And guess what, Mom:

Prince Charming was never a boy.