The Meet of My Thighs Book Launch Party

Posted by David Duhr in News & Events      No comments

May
11

On May 14th, Austin poet Harmony Eichsteadt will be holding a launch party for her new collection, The Meet of My Thighs. WBN friend David Kassin Fried will be among the readers at the party (details of which can be seen here or here), and recently reviewed the book on his blog, The Writer’s Review. With David’s permission, I am reprinting his review below, followed by a poem from the book, which Harmony was kind enough to let us reprint.

The Meet of My Thighs

Harmony Eichsteadt is the kind of woman most men dream of. Or at least most men like me.

A self-described sex-positive feminist, she’s a fan of Neil Strauss, is writing a book–from the woman’s perspective–on how to be an effective pick up artist, and in a few weeks will be performing a strip-tease at her book-launch party as punishment for failing, on one particularly day, to write for an hour. (You can thank yours truly for suggesting the punishment.)

The launch party is for her book of “feminist erotic poetry,” which is a nice way of saying “a graphic depiction of my sex life for all the world to see.” Aptly titled The Meet of My Thighs, it is a salacious exploration of the boundary between the erotic and the obscene; challenging the limits of what can be eroticized: from farts to bestiality to menstruation to rape, leaving few stones unturned (I didn’t see anything about gynecologists, but I probably wasn’t paying close enough attention) and pulling the reader into a fantasy world that many would no doubt prefer to pretend doesn’t exist.

The poems range from the sacred to the profane; from the not-quite-subtle “Ghost” (which is either about a dead relationship or necrophelia) to the even-less-subtle “Odes to My New Dildo” and “Things I Have (and Have Not) Masturbated To.” Perhaps the most controversial piece is “Love Song to My Rapist,” written from the perspective of the raped and murdered woman, but in such a dulcet tone that it comes across as a romance. Fresh off a viewing of the movie Hereafter, I was left with the peace of the dead, who bear no grudges and hold no hate and have nothing but forgiveness and compassion in their hearts. But nevertheless, it takes courage to publish this kind of story, whose title alone is enough to invite hate mail from all kinds of grieving and wounded individuals.

I’ll be performing one of the poems at the launch party on May 14th, along with some good old fashioned roasting of the lady of honor. It’ll be an entire night of sex and poetry. After all, what could be a more perfect combination?

Tempest

In the hot tempest mist of June nights without breezes

In the moonless escape of the shadows,

I wait.

There are jungles of fevers

Of rivers of dancing

There are bongos of snakeskin,

And there, there is me.

At the source of the river, the delta, the crossroads

At the meet of my thighs

There is bubbling

A wellspring, a hot spring, the twisting, the turning

To hot tempest waters of tropical dreams.

The scent of the flowers is choking and staining

The musk of the mammals empowers, elicits

The dance of the beasts and the birds and the trees…

Dance with me darling

The moonlight has vanished

Trundle still deeper, to the heart of the darkness

I’ll love you from sun-up to sun-up

And spent on the banks,

Damuzi, I’ll sleep.

My body a canvas

Paint me with wanting

Your tongue like a paintbrush

Thick strong strokes are best

My love with your nails

Tell our story of longing

My sweet with your eyes,

Lose everything you know.

And deep through the leaves and the vines and lairs

I’ll lure you slowly, now quickly

The web of entanglement weaves itself slowly

It’s made up of our limbs,

First your left and now mine.

The kisses of sorrow, the haunting of drowning

The screams of devouring

Shake canopies.

And deep in the night

In the heart of the jungle

In the moonless and misty tempest of us

I will eat you and take you and sweat you and love you

I will rock you like bongos

I will know who you are.