ok, Lydia, so why should we read YOUR book ???

Reasons to read Shufflepoems, forthcoming from Minor Arcana Press. Shuffle & read them in any order:

 

It’s not a book. It’s a deck of poems. Which you shuffle, so.

 

It’s the same temperature as your flesh, unless you’re a zombie.

 

If I go back to writing about pain, you will be sorry.

 

Can you follow a recipe? Does that necessarily mean you have to?

 

You’re blocked up like a constipated rooster. Pull a card. Then write/paint/dance about it.

 

Sometimes you read sitting down. Sometimes you read standing up or lying down. Sometimes you read walking. Or in the tub. Or in a moving vehicle.

 

Have you checked out the Minor Arcana Press staff? Cuu-uuuute!

 

I know where you live, possibly.

 

My ass was never my fortune, but my tits aren’t bad.

 

It’s going to start raining soon & then what will you do?

 

Despite the blood on my hands, I sleep as well as ever.

 

Everybody’s getting married. Everybody’s having babies.

 

Set this to music.

 

Gamble with it. Cheat with it.

 

Tie a scarf around your head & charge people $20 for you to use Shufflepoems to tell fortunes.

 

At this point, we need to accept that I’ll always handle rejection with an obvious lack of aplomb.

 

If you wrap it up & put it under the tree, no one can guess what it is by shape or size or weight.

 

If you misspell my name again, I swear I will come to your house & steal your pets.

 

Horror movies make me laugh. Comedies do not.

 

This is something else I will lie about.

 

I may or may not know how to levitate. That’s private.

 

Size 30/32, depending on style.

 

Shufflepoems slouches towards issues with which all poets wrestle: Love. Death. Nipples. Sybil Danning.

 

They’ll never take me alive.

 

(Lydia Swartz, Seattle 10/2014)

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