Lisa B (Bernstein), GOD IN HER RUFFLED DRESS

Just a little shout-out this afternoon for a book by singer / poet Lisa B, whose book, God in Her Ruffled Dress, I reviewed for Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature for Women. (You can find the review on-line, here.)

It’s a romp of a book, much worth reading and recommending. Lisa B, also a singer and songwriter, plays with sound, and weaves together color and image in ways that continually surprise and please me.

Here’s one poem wedding past with future, history with fantasy, Emily both at her writing desk, sewing together the fascicles of her poems, and working as a computer programmer. Surprise, surprise!

EMILY DICKINSON AT WORK

she pulls the thread through the linen on
the embroidery frame and at her writing
table through the white packet of paper
poems the next morning tapping the
keyboard piecing together the html
<br> <br/> marking and closing the breaks a
figure in a white dress silent under fluorescent
lights at her place at the long table beside the
other programmers listening to the enclosing
emptiness a white pillow invisibly holding the
lines of code on her screen where she glimpses
her own reflected smile

“I can make the zigzag stitches
Straight—when I am strong— Till then—
dreaming I am sewing” the shape of God walking
through it like bird’s feet tracks in the snow
“I’ll begin to Sew When the Birds begin to whistle—” a song
hummed under her breath a bare small wind she painstakingly places
the letters and brackets

she for whom
“Success in Circuit lies” here and now are not where
everything that ticked has stopped no part of her shaven
instead tick by tick her mind the mind forming the
frame

—Lisa B (Bernstein), from God in Her Ruffled Dress

You can find Lisa B at her website, www.lisabmusic.com. She has an audiobook version of the book, published directly via Findaway Voices for Spotify, which is distributing it to multiple platforms.