Jeffrey Ethan Lee
Gender & Race are two of the themes that have always driven my work; i've found they are inseparable whether i like it or not. these are also themes in my life that are inseparable whether i like it or not, and i've learned from anthropologists and social scientists that race & sex are indissoluble etc. though most of us would like to deny or forget this because the ways they are linked reveal mostly how people truly behave rather than how we would like to imagine that we behave etc. a lot of my work explores repressed truths about race & sex. e.g. invisible sister is about a character whose race & gender work mostly to undermine her in the most profound ways possible. but it is like a novel in which we can see the heroine transform her understanding of her situation so that there is, ultimately, a kind of greater (post-tragic) vision that comes.
sex ed blues
(listen to the audio, as read by Jeffrey Ethan Lee)
I’m the wrong person in the picture—
the caption says “Winners
of the Spelling Bee”
and the girls smiling at me
during the shoot are saying I’m cute,
but I can’t believe it.
I’m thirteen,
I’m not white—
I’m unthinkable.
I’m thinking I could get killed for smiling back
because in 4th grade
when Laura asked me to kiss her
her boyfriend threw me across the floor
into her wood-backed steel-tube chair
and ironically as I struggled up
my head bumped under her seat
and her dress fell over my head,
then in the light blue confusion
off balance I bumped into this soft white
patch printed with little flowers
and she squealed, embarrassed,
pushing my head down while I tried to stand
till we tumbled over
and when I knew where my face was
my mouth dropped open
on the most wrong of all places—
I was about to be killed at nine.
I struggled to get up again
but she cried my name out
laughing as she slid her whiteness away,
and I came out from under her blue,
her face flushed bright red...
“Why’d you open your mouth, there?”
“It— it was an accident...”
“It felt good!”
I looked at her boyfriend
and our eyes met, astonished.
towards euphoria
(listen to the audio, as read by Jeffrey Ethan Lee and Lori-Nan Engler)
Elated by the sunrise over my yard,
I saw floods of orange-red and indigo
in tints so luminous that the grass
bright as waving scythe blades
reflected the sky, a soft ocean breathing,
and the trees pointed up like arrows,
I wanted to soar into its colors—
and then I saw
a one-boy helicopter narrow as my shoulders;
its body had no skin and its skeleton
of tubes was shaped like a stretched-out Jet Ski
with a tail fin and small propeller,
and its long blades were wide as bird wings
red orange yellow green
drooping like steel mirrors
nudged by the beautiful wind
that painted the body blue indigo violet
—I climbed in, gripped the controls
and the blades broke into a whir
quiet as a little fan
and I rose like a helium balloon
and flew north toward the spring
of all insane sexuality—New York City—
over Bucks County before it would sprawl
into asphalt blots and concrete malls.
I saw a few humble highways,
clustered roofs amid cultivated fields
crawling with tractors plowing
stubs of stalks of last winter’s corn
into the dark brown loam;
I smelled the mud and cows and leaves
and the sky was so warm
I caught a thermal stream
that lifted me till I saw the ocean,
its blue curves along the shore
and soon I saw the skyline
of chromium and silvered glass
on an island like a jaw
moored between two rivers glinting
like a billion acetylene flames
but my fuel was low—
I had to land
on a wide white helipad,
and I wanted all my friends from Choir
to see this—I wondered where they were...
Then I saw Tim and Eric, Chris and Glen
racing by dressed like we were singing—
I tried to catch up— I yelled,
but only Eric turned, shouting:
“RUN!” like they were being chased,
probably by cops
(we were bad...)
So I tore ass after them,
saw a cop trailing me and broke off
down a side street
then an alley—
I pushed through a door so old
it crumbled in my hands
like moss and wet cardboard,
bolted down a black alley tunnel,
emerged into a den of people smoking,
crashed in the haze
of a heady flower’s fumes....
I stepped in the musky heat
lit only by momentary lighter flames
and hot orange embers in brass pipe-bowls
and I wanted to try some—
somehow I knew they’d let me,
and someone did
put a pipe in my mouth.
I took it all in—
its pungence made me gag
before I could cough—
tears obscured my lit ember,
and then as if by a signal
all the people were panting,
groping and stripping each other hungrily
and I saw
everything....
It dawned on me this was my big chance
to get “defrocked,”
and somehow I knew help was nearby
but before I could even get excited
I transformed suddenly
into a girl of seventeen.
I had breasts—I was shocked
to clutch them, but after feeling them
for a few seconds I stopped feeling so bad.
But then I reached lower and
oh, what was there was
so distinct, yet I knew it
like I’d touched it all my life—
its pleasure so indelible
the urge to try each part
was irresistible, and I was
drawing stares as if I was
beautiful in a way that wounds
whoever sees.... and I was
so turned on by lovers’ groans,
feeling its lips splay, slicken suddenly
and swallow—O—finally—
but the door burst apart
into withered flowers
and flashlights stabbed the waves of orgy
like steel probes made of smoke.
One cop stood surveying us,
a silent totem pole—
he came to me and I knew why
he pushed me down,
and I even understood everyone’s relief
thinking maybe they’d still go free.
I wasn’t afraid because I knew
just what he’d do,
his flashlight beaming selfishly
and his shaft a heavy shadow,
but instead of hating his rage,
I enjoyed his hunger
and wanted him more than his anger
could bear—he pushed in
and I was stunned, filled—remembering
as if I’d done it hundreds of times
(or as if I’d done anything at all)
and I wanted him to split me in half
with his slow stoke
with my sex clutching,
with my heels bucking, till I was
coming so hard inside suddenly I was
translated out of self and was
myself watching this fucking,
then I was bolting for the door
while Vice Squad cuffed
the naked and forlorn...
I fled through the tunnel
and out to the street
and saw Tim and Eric, Chris and Glen
running across another avenue.
I lost them in crowds but found myself
before a kind of cathedral
shaped like a great white stadium.
I entered its sanctuary—
it was an inverted amphitheater,
with concentric pews in rising circles
steeper and smaller towards the center,
and I stepped instinctively up
towards the one light
drawn the way I always was
towards euphoria,
and I felt myself transforming utterly
getting higher—as I rose closer
to the shining that was so sun-like
it erased all sight but itself
(even through closed eyelids)
I was almost upon it
wondering what would happen
if I touched it—
its glare obliterated me
in love at its pinnacle
I reached out for its sky.
"Sex Ed Blues" appeared in invisible sister, Many Mountains Moving Press, 2004. It also appeared in Xconnect & is still archived at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/xconnect/v5/i3/g/loo2.html.
"Towards Euphoria" appeared in invisible sister, Many Mountains Moving Press, 2004.
Lee's poetry book, identity papers, was a 2006 Colorado Book Award finalist; visit http://identitypapers.org for samples, audio, video, responses etc. His first poetry book, invisible sister, at http://mmmpress.org /, has samples, audio, reviews, interviews etc.) Lee won the 2002 Sow's Ear Poetry Chapbook prize ($1,000) for The Sylf (2003), created identity papers for Drimala Records, published Strangers in a Homeland (chapbook with Ashland Poetry Press, 2001), and published hundreds of poems, stories and essays in Many Mountains Moving, Xconnect, Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, Crosscurrents, Drexel Online Journal, Green Mountain Review, Washington Square. He teaches creative writing at West Chester University. He has a Ph.D. in British Romanticism and an MFA from NYU. Lee’s books have been used at LeMoyne College (Syracuse, NY), Drexel University (Phila., PA), The Honors College of Penn State Erie, Ashland U MFA program (Ashland, Ohio, and Moravian College (Bethlehem, PA).