This week's Poet of the People is the indomitable Cassie Premo Steele. Cassie is an Earth mother to many poets and writers. Her poetry invites you to take a walk with her in a forest to her safe place for an intimate poetry salon with the denizens of nature. A Daughter of Light, she leads you back to the city refreshed and remade.
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Cassie Premo Steele is a lesbian ecofeminist poet and novelist and the author of 18 books. She will be reading from Swimming in Gilead, her seventh book of poetry, at Simple Gifts on November 7, and the launch party for her third novel, Beaver Girl, will be at All Good Books on November 16. Her poetry has won numerous awards, including the Archibald Rutledge Prize named after the first Poet Laureate of South Carolina, where she lives with her wife. She is currently running a Kickstarter project to fund the Beaver Girl Book Tour:
Poems from Swimming in Gilead, Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2023
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Let Us Begin Again
Be very quiet. Make it dawn.
Rise from bed. Walk on the lawn.
Wait for it. The sun is coming.
It’s a new one. It’s beginning.
You don’t believe me, you say
this happens every day, there’s
nothing new under the sun and
certainly not the sun itself.
Put your doubts on a shelf,
I say to you. Hush now.
Listen to the birds singing.
Watch the blue ones feeding
their babies. See the heron
heading south for fishing.
Look at the egrets catching
pink light in their white wings.
Faith is made of things like
these, everyday movements,
sights and sounds that you
usually ignore, and today,
since you’ve told me you’re
tired of life and wanting something
more, I’ve shown you how to do it,
and now that you know,
come, let us begin again.
The Woman Speaks of Bicycles
I’ve known bicycles:
I’ve known bicycles new as my skin and older than my dried blood
from my womb.
I’ve known bicycles:
Reliable rubber and metal bicycles.
My body has grown strong like bicycles.
I rode along the Minnesota roads when constant motion was my freedom.
I got off my bike and walked the sugar bluffs, puffing with each step.
I looked upon the Mississippi and had a vision of finally flowing away.
I heard the wheels of my bike whizzing downhill at the end of the day.
I’ve known bicycles:
Reliable rubber and metal bicycles.
My body has grown strong like bicycles.
I rode in Carolina when children waited for me back home.
I got off my bike and walked the hilly edge of Covenant Road.
I looked upon the Congaree River and knew I would always stay.
I heard the music of my own voice saying I could live a different way.
My body has grown strong like bicycles.
This Is How We
I once knew a Native woman,
Eastern Cherokee, who taught me
that in order to fix a rip in a basket,
you can’t just go in after it.
You have to unwind the fibers until
it’s pinestraw and sweetgrass again.
This is how we begin again.
I once injured my left knee
and the physical therapist,
a Latina from Texas, showed
me how a lack of stability
in my right hip had caused it.
The body crosses like this,
she said. It’s all connected.
This is how we heal again.
I once lay on my bed for hours
on end, as a child in Minnesota,
reading book after book while
my body disappeared, and so
did the pain and fear, until
I was just a mind in a story.
It took me years to invite
my body back into the party.
This is how we move again.
I once stayed in endless motion
of serving and cleaning, cooking
and feeding, wiping and washing,
drying and folding, until my mind,
always so strong, broke hard
and long, and for the first time,
I told the truth in therapy.
This is how we feel again.
I once heard a song that felt
like it was singing all that had
gone wrong, and I thought
it had been written just for
me, and then a pandemic broke
the globe and I realized everybody
knows the melody of tragedy.
This is how we begin to be together for the first time really.
Sun Loving
Just before the day ends, I look up
and the sun is in drag, orange lipstick
and purple fingernails, red hair,
peach high heels, and I say, Hey, girl,
Where you headed? And she says,
Off to bed. Alone? I ask. You know
better than that, she laughs, and
as she sashays away, I see the moon
and stars take her by the hand
and lead her downstairs to a ballroom
for a final dance before kisses and
all the love she has ever deserved.
Under a Full Moon
What must be done is a gathering
of women under a full moon,
each one holding in her hands
a leaf or bud or flower, blade
of grass, and together we say
the names of these plants,
and the list transforms into
a poem, a prayer, a spell, an
incantation, a chant and belief
in peace, peace, peace, peace.
And when our throats go sore
and voices tire, we take our
empty hands and make a chain
to keep the violence from crashing
into bodies any longer, and
dream that war will cease.
Seeds
I spent years diving and digging
and bringing coral and diamonds
up into the light with my palms,
but the sun had dimmed so much
that my gifts were invisible, and I
mourned the bodies and voices
of women and girls I’d wanted
to crown with orange and bright
jewels who had all gone down
underground in a collective action
of mutual survival, and so I let
what I wanted to give away
drop to the ground and walked
so long up a mountain that I could
look back and see the seeds had
buried themselves back into the
earth to be trees. Tall were their
trunks and the leaves sang green
songs to bring the girls and woman
back to me and back into the castles
and courts we ruled over again in
this land where we’d always belonged.
Tuesday Afternoon
I walk with my fingers on the page and
I dance with my hips on the stage I have
made in my room where bluebirds take
turns with me playing the parts of star
and audience and I hear the silence filled
with breath and electric hum and a neighbor’s
rake and I touch my dog’s fur and think
about origins and species and know that
nothing the mind does brings as much joy
as an animal can and I laugh while
remembering my grandson’s voice after he
knocked my chin with a stick in the garden
and asked me, Are you okay, Gaga?
and I wonder what would have happened
if God had been more like this boy in Eden
and instead of rules and banishment, we’d
been met in our mistakes and our pain
with a question and compassion.
