Happiness is Poetry: Dominique Lowell

Dominique Lowell

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, words that burn. ~ Thomas Gray

A warning right off of the bat, Dominique Lowell will not be for everyone.  If you like flowery, lovely poetry stop now.  If you like your poetry, in your face, rude, full of explicit language and vulgar language, read on. Which of course is what I like it’s why I really dig poets like Sapphire and Warsan Shire.  It’s hard to find any of Dominique Lowell’s work online, I’ve read a few of her pieces in compilations.  I found her in the American Bible of Outlaw Poetry, my favorite poetry compilation.  So I’ve gathered up two pieces for you tonight.  Enjoy! ~ Rev Kane

I’ve just about had it with all of you a Youtube performance of spoken word poetry

Women are Hungry

women are hungry
they be hoes
they be sittin on your stoop waitin to drink your beer
eat your food
suck your dick
women are hungry

they need your favorite shirt your leather jacket
a house and a car
they just neeeeeed
they wanna tell you things, pretty little things about
the light in your eyes and the feel of your thighs
they wanna shave your balls
have you tell them about every clit you ever licked every ass
you ever eyed so they can
slice them all to ribbons
they’re insatiable
it’s biological

they just want and want and stretch their yearning arms at you
their craving lusting insatiable envelopes gawking open mouthed
must have must have must have it
you
now

whore mother goddess priestess convict jailer
needy neeedy needy needy
need your sperm need your job need space need more impossible paint
for another impossible face
crimson lips and concrete sharpened nails
blackened purple eyes
the beaten look, that’s it
already been hit

feed me
feed me beer and cigarettes and dead idols who make me feel like
I might have a reason to die too
give me War and Coca-Cola and the promise of another American
chance
give me another good song to dance to
tell me I’m not fat
tell me my tits are jewels, my nipples gumpdrops
tell me we can pay the rent tomorrow
tell me we are just like John and Yoko only I get to die first
O.K.? I get to be the one they light the candles for in Central
Park, O.K.?

Fuck Women.
They are such sluttish catfight evile bitches
every one of them
Beware. Beware.
They know what they are doing.
Does that scare you, are you scared

women are hungry
hungry for balance
I been called a whore so many times I almost became one
and it’s not you personally I want anything out of
It’s the world
the World owes me BigTime
The World leaves me hungry

— Dominique Lowell, “Women Are Hungry” (as appears in New American Underground Poetry: Vol. 1: The Babarians of San Francisco – Poets from Hell