Devin Kelly on His New Book 'Blood on Blood' & Being Personal

BY JOANNA C. VALENTE

This is going to be a big year for Devin Kelly, because he has two books coming out in relative proximity. His book "Blood on Blood" is forthcoming from Unknown Press this year, while his other collection, "In This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen," is coming out from ELJ Publications in 2017. 

"Blood on Blood" is a gorgeous tale of growing up in a house of silence--and how that affects personhood, adulthood, and brotherhood. Having heard Devin read his poems, I can say he has a uniquely perceptive voice. 

I was thrilled to be able to speak with Devin about this forthcoming collection below:

JV: This collection is clearly very personal, as it details your relationship with your brother. Was it difficult to write about? Do you write personally in general?

DK: Most everything I write is personal in nature, often deeply. I’m grateful to be able to separate the act of writing work from the risks writing such work entails--you know, like how it will be perceived by loved ones. My brother and I were raised for the latter part of our childhood by just our father, and none of us really talked at all about anything. It didn’t seem out of the ordinary because that’s just the way it was, and I don’t think I realized until later the extent to which our silence could be made into something transcendent through language.

Our life was mundane, but language has the potential to heighten all of that, make the smallest piece-of-shit moments into something sorrowful, joyful, whatever. So no, it wasn’t difficult to access those memories--I think I’ve gone back into them so many times that the past has become a pliant thing, and it’s fun in a way to throw different kinds of light on it and see what happens – what shines in a new way, what dies out, what comes back.

In the end, there’s few things we know for certain. One is that time runs out. The other is that there are people with whom we share blood. No matter how much or little we talk, there’s no one I’ll ever feel closer to than my father and my brother. I can make myself well up when I think of them. I take our collective story very seriously because so much of what runs through me runs through them. I believe very firmly that our story is a debt and a reward we are each accountable for, and my hope is that such a feeling comes through.

 How do you know when a poem is done?

Oy, I don’t know. Is it bad if I just say something like when it feels done? It’s hard to say. I very much do get a feeling. A heaviness. A deepening. This is such a subjective and interesting question, because I think we all perceive the act of writing differently. I know we do. For me, writing a poem is an act of accrual. I’m trying to write out a feeling, a story, through lines, and the hope is that it will allow a reader to move through my headspace, reach that same feeling. I think (and this is my personal take) that such a moment happens, like I mentioned, with accrual, a piling-on, however tangential. It’s why I love the word and. This and this and this and this. It’s fun.

Some poets prefer minimalism. Some poets prefer cutting excess. All of these approaches can exist. That’s the beauty of poetry, it’s a super generous art. I don’t like when people approach it with complete certainty, that this must be the way. When I finish a poem and look back at it, I know there’s stuff I could cut, but there’s also the thought that everything seems necessary, and I feel a need to honor that. That the roughage is part of the art. That if a poem is approximating some sort of feeling, then there needs to be a little bit of detritus, the stuff of headspace and doubt.

And I know people who’d disagree with that, and that’s cool. And it doesn’t mean I approach a poem lazily--for every ten lines that made this new book, there’s 10, 20, 30 lines that didn’t--poems I started that I knew weren’t honest, or poems I finished that didn’t work the way I wanted. For me, editing is starting anew with failure in mind.

What I love about poetry is that this process can exist alongside so many others. But in the end, the poem you’re trying to write can only be that--the poem you’re trying to write. It can’t be someone else’s. It has to be yours. But within that is the fodder of so much you’ve read, you’ve loved, you’ve hated.

What were you listening to and reading and watching while writing this?

Well, as far as listening, obviously Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. Also Sharon Van Etten, Sufjan Stevens, Tallest Man on Earth, This Will Destroy You, Pinegrove, Modern Baseball, Advance Base. And a lot of the jazz my roommate puts on--Chet Baker and Thelonius Monk and Sonny Rollins especially.

Here are some books I read throughout the process: Maggie Nelson’s The Red Parts, Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Janice Lee’s The Sky Isn’t Blue, Jamaal May’s The Big Book of Exit Strategies, a bunch of James Wright, a bunch of Larry Levis, a bunch of Yusef Komunyakaa, Jim Harrison’s Just Before Dark, essays by Eula Biss and Lia Purpura.

I don’t know the ways in which all of these books influenced me, but, you know, they did or didn’t but probably did.

Also, Terrence Malick’s Badlands. Great movie. My girlfriend and I watched "Zootopia." I sometimes need to watch "Seinfeld" to help me fall asleep. None of this is really relevant. So, yeah. Go figure.

How do you know when to break a line?

Some combination of intuition, purposeful mistake making, wordplay, more mistakes, and not knowing and never-being-able-to-know what the fuck I’m doing.

What part of you writes your poems? What are your obsessions?

I obsess about so much, really. I'm terribly self conscious, and I'm terrified about the ways in which we each view the world - how much such views differ, and if my worldview has any place here. Not too long ago, I thought I was right about everything, and that gave me permission to feel victimized by the world when things didn't go my way, or when other people didn't, either. But, I mean, most of life is not knowing. We are surrounded far more by what we do not know than what we do, and this is very much what draws me to a poem.

There's so much anxiety involved with being alive, and I believe in poetry as a kind of stilling. It's the only way I can really still myself. A poem is a place where binaries don't need to exist. Right versus wrong, love versus hate. A poem can get at the infinitely small gray space where those kinds of binaries meet. I think that's really cool. And, I mean, poetry or not, in the end my hope is that we all sort of dwell in the gray space, the nuance of things. Just a huddled mass of fear and anxiety and embarrassment trying to figure shit out.

That's what a poem is. It's rough. I've made a lot of mistakes in life. That's what a poem is. Never perfect. You live in it, you suffer for it, you keep trying. And that takes empathy. And empathy understands that you’re never going to be right all the time. And knowing that you’re never going to be right all the time but still wanting to live in this mess means you’re okay with listening. And listening involves sound and breath and stillness and language. And bam, there you go, poetry. 

---

Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (forthcoming 2016, ELJ Publications) & Xenos (forthcoming 2017, Agape Editions). She received her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of her writing has appeared in Prelude, The Atlas Review, The Huffington Post, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. She has lead workshops at Brooklyn Poets.

Devin Kelly earned his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is a co-host of the Dead Rabbits Reading Series in Manhattan. His collaborative chapbook with Melissa Smyth, This Cup of Absence, is forthcoming from Anchor & Plume Press. His work has appeared in Drunken Boat, Gigantic Sequins, Lines & Stars, Post Road, The Millions, and more, and he's been nominated for both the Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. He works a college advisor for high schoolers in Queens, teaches English at Bronx Community College, and lives in Harlem. You can find him on twitter @themoneyiowe.

#BlackLivesMatter – Resources, Donation Links & Required Reading

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

We have no right words here, but we know we want to help. We're filled with anger, sadness and – instead of what should be shock – exhaustion. We stand as allies.

It's hard to watch our friends hurting, watch people sobbing in videos, watching bodies dying. It's hard to watch people (our families or friends sometimes!) post things like #AllLivesMatter. It's hard to see white people staying quiet.

It doesn't always feel obvious to people to do something. To take action. It can be stunning, frightening and hard to know what to say. That's OK sometimes, but you've seen too much to stay quiet now. Speaking out, watching the videos, engaging in the truth, and educating ourselves on the issue of police brutality is necessary.

As allies, we need to inform others and try to dismantle a system that feeds on ignorance and hatred. There are things we can do. Staying silent is worse than anything and listening to the black community at this time is the most accountable thing we can do. Listen. Listen. And then tell others in your community why #BlackLivesMatter and why they need to listen and speak out too. Tell others about institutionalized racism. Explain. Take a teaching moment and educate another human being.

You can talk to your parents, friends, spouses, neighbors and strangers and tell them police brutality is NOT acceptable. Racism is NOT acceptable. Inform people. Be outraged. Don't accept ignorant comments. Block people who spread hate on your social networks. Share words by people of color.

TAKE ACTION.

You can also Join Campaign Zero, join Ijeoma Oluo's The Accountability Project. Join a #BlackLivesMatter chapter. You can also write to your mayor, call your police station, write to your city council members (here's NY, but you can find anything by searching online "city council + city") and demand police brutality reform. You can ask what they're doing about this. This is something you CAN do.

DONATE.

Go Fund Me: Philando Castile's family
 
Go Fund Me: Alton Sterling's family

EDUCATE.

There has been a lot of education happening, and we wanted to share with you what we have been reading in the past few days.

I Need Justice, I Need Peace: A QTPOC Roundtable

Alton Sterling and When Black Lives Stop Mattering

5 Facts That Will Absolutely Infuriate You About Police and Racist Violence

This is what white people can do to support #BlackLivesMatter

Advice for White Folks in the Wake of the Police Murder of a Black Person

What You Can Do Right Now About Police Brutality

We Can Help Each Other Cope: One Simple Way to Be With Each Other Through Pain Right Now

Rape, Alton Sterling, And The Complexity Of Justice

POC Solidarity In Love: How To Support Our Black Partners and Friends In These Trying Times

5 Books of Poetry I'm Loving Right Now

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

I don't read lots of books quickly. I hate to admit that. I should read more – and faster. I really should. But when I do read, I read books over and over and over and I really ingest them. I try to let them inhabit me. Here are a few I've read over and over the past few weeks. Please do read them, buy them, support their authors and review them, too, if you wish. 

Zoe Dzunko's Selfless (TAR Chapbook Series / Atlas Review)

I'd read Dzunko's poetry before in an issue of Pith, so when I got my hands on Selfless, I had expected that same bodily rush – explosive and uncomfortable, like a reader-cheerleader who is on the sidelines of darkness. There is a lot of body – and bodylessness and body trauma – in this book. I think her voice is strong as fuck, even in those moments when weakness is drawn up and offered as matter-of-factly as-anything: "The time you fucked / my face it felt like a feather." All of the book's power just grows and grows, and there are some dozens and dozens of crushing lines throughout – too many for me to quote here. Go read it.

I have somewhere to be
in the future – it is a shape I drew
in the dirt, ten backyards ago.

•

No violets
to shrink into — I am laying a body

out for the bees, but they never land
when you want them this much.

---

Jay Besemer's Chelate (Brooklyn Arts Press)

Chelate is killing me. I want to understand the poet, soothe the poet, make a space for the poet in my heart and take in some of his pain. Besemer writes of gender transition in such a cutting, confrontational, active way, and you can feel it. 

The writer explores the undoing and re-creation of body, and while some of that is very painful, to me this book is made of strength, autonomy and reconciliation. This is an engine of a book – every single piece leads you further and further into this form-bending holy land of self.

The book also makes excellent use of colons (something you'll notice first), which are hard to use successfully when the poet isn't sure of why they are using them. They seem obvious here, though – they are pushing this massive engine of change and becoming forward; they are the symbol of change. Obsessed. 

erasing one file : that's not what we're doing here /
: erasure is not the right word : recognition is the/
analogous process : my today & my tomorrow/
recognize yesterday but do not attempt to obscure/
it
 

---

Locally Made Panties by Arielle Greenberg (Ricochet Editions)

So this book is sitting on my counter one day – I'd ripped open the packing and left it there to be read later. I'm always rushing. And then later that night I come home, and see the cover staring up at me – this 1970s babe pulling her undies up tight around her body. It's raunchy – for sure – but really, it's just powerful. Because the body is always so shamed. God forbid you see a little camel toe! God forbid a woman show her body in a way that we are taught to objectify and sexualize? I like that this book says, "Hi. This vagina and this proud lady showing her vag is totally on this book cover. So take that." Also, the back cover boasts blurbs by Cheryl Strayed and Kate Durbin, a fully little pairing that I'm intrigued by. (I love Kate Durbin). 

This whole thing is about being a woman, a mother, a consumer, a human, a writer, an observer – all while having a body, and having clothes, and watching other bodies and others' behaviors. It is about what our clothes really mean and what we really mean when we talk about clothing. 

At first, being that I'm such a bratty little Wednesday Addams about everything, I wasn't sure where this would fit for me. I was (admittedly) thrown off by the idea of poetry encountering clothing or fashion. But it was so much more than that, and I was wrong for making that snap decision. 

This book is an interesting, honest recollection (or diary) of being alive and being a woman. She deftly deals with issues of shopping guilt, poet outfits, her body, ethical clothes, weight gain and shopping with friends who tell you that you look good but are fibbing. All the things we can all relate to. 

And then there is a poet who has worn the same
Adorable 1940s print day dresses and cat's eye
glasses every day, every time I've seen her, for the
decade that I've known her. It is her Look.

I often think about how I would like to have a Look.

•

If I lose forty pounds altogether it will be a fucking
miracle and that would be my Goal Weight, my weight
of all weights, and I would think that everything I put
on looked fabulous on me.

A Goal Weight is really a completely ridiculous
construct.

---

Fire in the Sky by E. Kristin Anderson (Grey Book Press)

I actually loved this book so much I blurbed it, and so with that I present you my blurb:

These clever erasure poems strain the blood of Lana Del Rey (a pure blend of sex, kitsch & American Dream) into something Del Rey herself would likely read while dozing, or smoking, on an Italian shore. The work here speaks to poetry's most addictive power: aesthetic overdose in the form of language. There's so much to indulge in here, so much to consume, like a woman drunk on the lure of a bad, bad man. I got the impression that the writer is a real Lana Del Rey fan, the kind that sees past LDR's obvious tropes and vice-riddled repetitions - and sees, instead, the heart of who we are as people; in love , on fire, sad, lost and obsessive. That's really what this is about, not a regurgitation. I found myself wanting to pull the words out and arrange them before me, all covered in sea salt and flower petals and lipstick.

Don’t make the girl dark. No butterflies. Bats come sing
drinkin’ like memory, sad mountain paradise. But life? 
Want that vitamin crazy hard, radio queens and rain.

You raised chasers; I want the close cry. 
Lick them like a national party, know my every worth. 
I’ll die now, in my party bikini, honey true, the shameless way.

---

Anaïs Duplan's Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press)

This book is a force. I mean, a force.

It's bold, brazen, experimental in form and loud in language. But for all of that – it's attacking quality – it remains soft and vulnerable. It is hooves and also fur, and they are synced in constant movement.

I am so in love with the way Duplan writes her interior world. She says things in a way that makes you think she's telling a secret to a best friend. But also that she will write it on a wall in the public park because who cares what you think? 

The language is precise; her line-breaks are thoughtful and exact, and her dedication to exploring form feels natural; it doesn't feel like a poet-checklist of "and now I tried this," which, let's be honest, is a thing.

This book – I read it twice. Each time I thought I am so glad this exists. I love Anaïs Duplan's work, and I think everyone should read it. 

I become my mother and father. I don
their postures, I posture, "Where-"
have they gone and how I stop them
from devouring me." 

•

You and I are filthy but it is
our filth. Look how quick the clouds
when you expect bad news. Here is
a telegram I have never received:
Please. Hold out hope. The best
is nowhere in sight. 

The Handshake by Becca Shaw Glaser

BY BECCA SHAW GLASER

Up close, he wasn’t as cute. He was older and plumper, and anyway, it all just felt so weird. When I first saw his profile earlier in the day I thought, Ooh, he seems like someone who wants a relationship. I was absolutely specifically not looking for a hookup, but as soon as we started typing, it became clear that’s what he was up for. His place turned out to be a bank converted to a condo by the Dean of Architecture. Everything was huge and austere, almost entirely white, with cathedral ceilings. Perfect, I thought.

Oct 5, 6:41pm
How do you feel
driving to meet a stranger,
naked under your skirt
knowing that you may be
seduced and taken and
fucked.

Conveniently he’d forgotten that I’d told him I would be arriving hungry and could he please feed me. After I reminded him he tossed canned clams and hasty pasta together, smashing garlic cloves with the side of a silver chef’s knife. I hung awkwardly by the granite island.

He had wanted me to wear heels but I didn’t own any. Boots? Yeah, I had tall black boots. He’d asked me to wear something that showed cleavage, and no panties, so I did. While I waited on the hard-backed chair, legs firmly closed, he plied white wine. I said No thanks. I knew I was supposed to uncross my legs so he could get a glimpse, but I didn’t even want to take off my long black coat, keeping it tightly buttoned.

Oct 5, 6:41pm
Wet with anticipation?

When the food was ready we sat at one end of the stark maple table. Half-chewed worms poured from our mouths as we discussed the economy of desire, the poststructuralist concept of sexual exchange—really it’s a handshake, we agreed, a Marxist solidarity. He said In those days they used to think women so lusty the husbands made them wear metal plates when they were away to stop them from fucking half the village. And I hate it now—for men it’s like supposed to be a conquest and the woman’s supposed to be pushing away, keeping her number low. I was impressed by his awareness of gender and sexuality, but I still felt so timid that even sitting next to him on the couch felt scary. Our voices were tinny, floating around under the white cathedral ceilings and getting lost.

When he took off his clothes in the bedroom he was glazed in ginger fir, pale skin flecked with large pink freckles, each candied with a hair, long strands piercing out of his pubis, and I realized I was repulsed. How unfair and fucked up of me, I thought, to be so political in my preferences. He devoured my vulva, he was good at it, it’s a skill, I shut off the top of my head. Looked out the enormous arched window. Can anyone see?

Oct 5, 6:43pm
Nervous. Also,
I’m kind of lost.

He told me his favorite was to be with female CEOS, older women who were used to being in charge, he loved when they became submissive with him, let themselves go. And he loved being the odd-male out with a male-female couple. He liked going to truck rest-stops and having his dick sucked by another dude, most straight-identifying, of course, or sucking other guys’ dicks through those glory holes. I loved hearing the stories. I loved thinking there are younger guys out there who get off on giving older women pleasure, because, I’m getting older. I wished for a world where I could feel safe being so sexually adventurous, not terrified of rape, disease, or being considered a slut.

Oct 5, 6:44pm
Oh. We don’t
have to do this,
you know.

He stuck his fist partly in, and I was opening on his cool white sheets under his white down comforter against his vanilla-stained Ikea headboard in his white marble flat but I didn’t want to suck his small pink dick or even kiss his lips which I felt bad about and thankfully he didn’t pressure me at all but I think it was pretty obvious and then when it was clear I couldn’t or wouldn’t cum, Want to watch me? he slid his hand over his penis moving silently until white spurted out. I tried to at least touch him a bit while he was touching himself but the truth is I didn’t really want to.

After the shirt got tucked back into the jeans, after the zipper on the black dress was zipped up again, my still-wet vulva bristling between my thighs, my curly hair tangled, my breasts pulsing with the sensation of stranger-touch, after I shut the door to his white world firmly with a thud behind me, the first thing I wanted to do was see my lover, the lover who can’t be in a real relationship, the lover who gave me permission to try to find one. Not even in my car yet, I dialed, and surprisingly he picked up, said Sure, come over—and it was almost like coming home, to his soft gorgeous body, the body I’m bonded to, he was stretched out on his tiny bed, books and clothes chaotically strewn everywhere, small piles of trash that for some reason he sweeps into a corner and then leaves for weeks, he was watching Baron Munchausen, being uncharacteristically silly. He knew where I’d been. It didn’t bother him. In fact he liked the look of the dress, too, the way it clung to my breasts, pushing them together. I dropped my black shoulder bag and pressed my mouth to his.

---

Becca Shaw Glaser is the co-editor and author of “Mindful Occupation: Rising Up Without Burning Out.” Her writing has also appeared in Mad in America, Black Clock, H.O.W., Two Serious Ladies, Birdfeast, The Laurel Review, Quaint, and Lemon Hound, among other publications. 

Falling by Lorna Gibb

BY LORNA GIBB

Off the strip, a door opens and the ring, k-ching, jingle and tinny tinkling melodies sound a cacophony from the casino inside.  There’s a glimpse of blank eyes staring at spinning fruit but scant evidence of the vacillating hope behind them. The door shuts again. On the tarmac a girl stands, then sits, then slumps.  She wears shorts in blue, has track marks up her legs and arms.  Her dyed red hair is cut close to the scalp and looks patchy.  It’s warm but not hot, the ground is a pleasant temperature to sit on, not like it will be in a month or two when it will burn.
There’s no one about. It’s a dead time. 

For a moment the windowless artificiality that merges all hours into one unending minute of waiting seems to have followed her outdoors from the casino.  The car park is half full but no one arrives or leaves and to her, the quietness seems louder than the noise of slot machines and expectation.  He’s still inside, her own hostage to fortune, following the turn of a card in the thick fug of nicotine smell and stale spilled beer. Her eyes close, she falls right over to one side, her head hits the ground and she passes into a dream of some drug’s making.

She sees a tree. It is a gnarled, contorted thing that reaches high above and its branches block out all but the smallest hints of sky.  The fruit on this tree is odd, shaped in a way that is mindful of a human heart from some angles, but like a small bird, a sparrow or a finch perhaps, from others.  It seems to her that there is no recurring season, no single passage of time when all the fruit is young or mature, or ready to fall, so from each branch hang several fruits all at different stages of their development, and at random intervals, one or more tumbles down.  Yet they fall only briefly because it is at that point they become most like the birds they recall, and instead of hurtling down, after the briefest of seconds, they take wing and go upwards again, to whatever lies above the branches that obscure the view.

But in one of those slight fractions of a second between falling and flight, she dreams of a hand reaching out and catching one of the tiny embryonic things, not quite beating heart, not quite winged creature, and holding it there. It flutters in the gentlest of holds, trembles as it begins its transformation, for change it does.

The fingers of the hand cradle the strange being until it grows into a reflection of a child, perhaps of Claire herself, she thinks in the dream.  But then, when it can be contained no more, it falls, keeps on falling down to a garden, in another place. She catches a sudden movement, a glint from the skin of a snake in a clearing that has suddenly materialised in the thick foliage.  Claire is watching the snake when all her dreaming stops.
 
One Week Ago
 
She comes round from a state that is part stupor, part unconsciousness, to vomit.  Sees a foot crush a cigarette butt just in front of her.

The man in a silver mustang pulls up, gets out, comes over, says ‘Hello Claire.’ She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and manages a smile.  He takes her hand pulls her up.  Claire leans towards him.  ‘Brush your teeth first,’ he says.  They get in the car, drive off.

Back on the strip, he tells her his luck has held all day.  She tries to tell him of a strange dream she has had, a recurring dream about fruit and snakes. ‘Like the bible,’ he says, ‘wonder if it means I’ll be lucky again tomorrow.’ Her thoughts are filled with portents of foreboding that seem incompatible with his constant quest for omens of good fortune, but she says nothing, does not want to darken the mood that is now so light, but could so easily and quickly change to heavy black silence and her fearful watchfulness.

The noise inside the hotel casino is deafening.  Bright pink walls and neon flamingos, but it’s a brief stop and he collects something while she waits in the car, then they go west to the Tropicana. It’s white and cool inside, and somehow quieter than the other hotels, without the cigarette smell that permeates every stool and curtain and green baize table top along the strip.  This time she goes in too, he listlessly loses some money on slot machines as he passes, she begs him to put ten dollars in the machine with the pictures of kittens and he scores twenty back.  He pats her affectionately on the rump, ‘Need to see about getting you a kitten one of these days.’

But in truth she doesn’t want one, prefers these cute, saccharine photos, thinks that the smell of cat urine and faeces in her tiny room on days when the air condition is playing up would make her sick.  But she says nothing. He stops at the high stakes Black Jack table and already she is beginning to worry.  If he loses, he’ll lose a lot and she knows what that means. He does his usual ritual, a half muttered prayer to some entity that he somehow thinks watches over him, keeps him safe, brings him luck.  This time, because he’s in a good mood, she asks him, ‘Carver, what’s that thing you say every time?’

‘Mum used to say I had a Guardian angel watching over me, told me not to worry when times were hard and I was a kid.  I used to be irritated, but now I reckon there’s no harm in it. If someone’s listening, great, if they’re not, it’s not hurting anyone. Just hedging my bets, staying on the good side of the angels.’

 ‘It’s cute’. She means it too, likes this way he accepts the possibility of outside agent, she believes in something too, though she’s not sure what.  The RC church on Cathedral Way is called Guardian Angels. It’s cool and comforting and once, a few weeks back, when she was coming down they let her sleep the night there.  When half the congregation left mass the next day before Holy Communion the priest ended the service by saying, only those of you that stayed will have a chance to win tonight.  And she smiled, at this, the most appropriate and local of blessings.

Carver holds his cards close, doesn’t let her see what he has, and loses, once, twice, five, six times in quick succession. She touches his arm gently and he shrugs her off, ‘Don’t, I need to concentrate,’ he says and she hears the low note of warning in his voice.

The women’s restroom smells of coconut and she perches a leg on the toilet seat in the white cubicle and reaches down to pull out her tampon.  It’s soaked through with bright red blood, she drops it in the pan and pushes another in. It’s been the same for more than a month now, the cramps, the bleeds, sometimes vivid like this other times dark dried red, a period that comes more days each month than it should. While she washes her hands she looks in the mirror and checks her too pale face, the bruised under eyes, covers them with powder.  But as she leaves, goes back into the steady din of slots, her head spins and she holds the door to balance herself. 
 
One Month Ago
 
On the strip, Claire kicks and turns perfectly but then the sudden spasm in her abdomen catches her off balance as she goes into a stretch pose.  The audience gasp when she falls, a collective intake of breath, this isn’t a subtle mistake, easily missed.  Molly steps in front, picks up her routine so the other dancers who are meant to be echoing Claire’s steps a beat behind can take their places.  Claire recovers but not as quickly as she should, she gets to face level with the sparkling waist band of Molly’s g-string, then with the clear tape fastenings for the angel wings.  Head up, and step, pause, step, pause, extend.

Two interminable minutes to the end of the number.  Claire has taken Molly’s place in the line so at least she’s not the centre of it all, but still she thinks the audience are watching to see if she messes up again, wonders if they’re thinking she’s not good enough to be there.  Most days, these days, she doesn’t think so either.

Afterwards she thanks Molly and means it but Harry comes up immediately.  Like her he’s Scottish, like her he swears a lot, something the Americans still haven’t got used to.
‘So what the fuck was that about?’

‘I got a cramp.’

‘Then take a fucking aspirin. Fuck knows where we’d be if we had a line up break every time one of your girls was on the rag.  That’s the third time. One more and you’re back to the chorus.’

Once he’s gone, Molly says, ‘Long period, Claire, better get checked out.’

‘I know, I know.’  But thinks, ‘Butt out’, and of Harry, ‘trumped up public schoolboy prick.’

At the back of the hotel, Carver, dressed in a linen suit, hands her a small packet of powder.
‘Where the fuck were you yesterday?’  Claire pays him.

‘Detained.  Literally. Bit impatient aren’t we?’

‘I’m fine.  Just made a bit of a mistake.  Stuff helps the cramps.’

‘That’s what they all say.  Friday then.  Must say I like those stage outfits of yours a lot better than that granny shit you’re wearing.  Nice titties, shouldn’t hide them away.’

Claire doesn’t answer, just tucks her little packet in a pocket concealed by folds of cotton fabric.
 
Six Months Ago
 
Claire is asked to dance the lead and she doesn’t know whether to be pleased or terrified.  Pleased she can write home to her family and say, hey, I’ve made it out here.  After all those years of being the stupid girl, the one who wasn’t too good at reading or doing sums, the too tall, skinny girl who couldn’t get a snog, now look at me.

Terrified because she only overcomes her paralysing stage fright in the competitive camaraderie of the troupe.  Molly on one side, Kate on the other, and she gets by, knowing they’re in it together.

It would be impossible to refuse anyway.  The girls she takes comfort from are already bitching.  They say Harry is British, so is she, that’s why she’s got the lead so quickly, she’s probably fucking him.  She isn’t.  But if she turns it down, they’ll say it’s posturing.  The lead dancer is the girl they love to hate.

‘You’re a fantastic dancer,’ Harry says, ‘just remember to get yourself out there a bit more.’
She tells her boyfriend, Nick, one of those is he/isn’t he yet relationships because they’ve only been out three times.  They’re at lunch in a Mexican place off the strip and next to a topless bar where the food is authentic and the waitresses look like they work shifts with the club next door.

He positively glows. ‘Wow babe, that’s going to be so cool.  I’ll be there, in the front row.’
Claire ventures, ‘I’m scared.’

‘What’s scary? You look so great they won’t notice if you’re out of step.’

‘I just am.  Always have been.  It’s easier when you’re in a troupe.’

‘You could always take something, just a little, to get the edge off that first night.’
 
Nick’s flat is just round the corner from the one she shares with Molly and Kate. After lunch, he invites her back, settles her on the sofa and kneels by the glass table. He takes out a square pack wrapped in cellophane from the pocket of his 501s. It’s no bigger than a fifty pence piece.  The stuff inside reminds Claire of her baby sister’s talcum powder.  He doesn’t line it up with a card like they do in films, instead he dampens his finger and makes a squiggle that looks like a snake then follows the shape expertly as he snorts.

 ‘My party piece,’ he says to her.  ‘’You probably just want a straight line.’

He taps the pack on the surface and some more cocaine appears.  With his American Express, he makes it into two tiny lines and hands Claire a straw.  ‘Sniff quickly’ he says.  But he’s too late with the advice and she sneezes.  It smells funny, like a mix of cat pee and chlorine, chemical and organic.  He laughs, and nods as she takes the second line much more quickly. ‘Like a pro,’ he says.

It tingles, makes her head feel like someone’s thrown on a switch in a good way, and soon it gets even better.  Nick looks amazing, she realises that now, and his accent makes him sound like a movie star.  He’s so at ease with his body but then she catches the reflection of her own legs in the mirror above the fireplace, stretched over the arm of the couch and thinks, God, I really do look good. It isn’t all costumes and lights; I’m a beautiful woman.

Nick leans over and they kiss, his hands move to her breasts and for the first time she lets him undress her.  The intensity of her desire is newly felt and she responds, pulling his shirt off, unbuttoning his jeans, losing her inhibitions, the ones that would normally make her hesitant, worried that her body, so popular on stage, won’t hold up to the proximity of a lover.  They leave the blinds pulled up and the blinking lights of early evening on the Fremont Street experience, look like stars, are wondrous to behold.  She uses those words, ‘wondrous to behold’ and he laughs, full heartedly and she is delighted in that too, her ability to entertain with words, to be funny.  He sucks her nipples, says, ‘I’ll think of this next time I see them up there on the stage’.

She thinks of being on stage and of the barely there costumes that made her nervous at first, but most nights now just seem uncomfortable,  the too tight G-string that works its way up her bum, the rash she gets from the rough finish of the sequinned fabrics. Now she pictures herself looking like the neon lights outside, all glitter, illuminating the stage, the whole city, with her radiance.  When she orgasms, it is sudden and unexpected and she shouts out her joyousness.  He is delighted and when he ejaculates into her, calls out too, her name over and over, ‘Oh Claire, oh Claire,’ and then ‘my very own showgirl.’

The walls of the flat are brick painted white but Claire thinks they are snow, so cool they seem against her sex sweat.  She licks the walls and their taste is better than the white chocolate soufflé she craves but can’t eat because her body is a temple. She says this out loud too, ‘My body is a temple.’  And again he laughs, says, ‘I’m going to start going to church regularly’. 
‘I want to go out. Now. Look at how it is down there,’ Claire opens the window on the carnival of Fremont Street.  She grabs his shirt and her own jeans and he dresses too.  Four blocks have been covered in a canopy of lights.  It is a carnival of fancy dress and loud rock music, all of Vegas but amplified, magnified, with blaring music in a constantly changing, plasma covered tent.

The sky is neon and from it Claire hears screaming. Looking up she sees people hurtling from the heights of the covered over street to the ground where Elvis look alikes, cowboys, clowns and girls who are mostly too short to be show girls wear spangled bikinis and feathers and mingle with the day trippers and holidaymakers.

‘Let’s fly,’ Nick says, and she tells him she already is flying, but he pulls her out of the canopied area to the entry point and they stand under the night sky.  There’s a giant slot machine and she looks up, thinking, wow this is some hit, but in fact it’s real, just like the 37 foot tall models of showgirls, one dressed in a turquoise bikini that looks like the outfit for one of her numbers.  She points, giggles, ‘It’s me!’

From the top of the monstrous mechanism there are zip lines that lead into the canopy of lights.  People dangle from them on contraptions that look like a toddler’s safety harness and reins.

He stops at the ticket office and whispers to her, reading from a list of rules on the side window of the booth, ‘Do not go on the ride if you are under the influence of drugs or alcohol,’ then adds, ‘but it’s so much more fun that way.’  He hands over eighty dollars for two tickets and gets into the lift to take them up to the top of the canopy arch.   They hold onto poles suspended from the wire while they are strapped in.  He goes first.  Claire follows easily, feels fearless, unbreakable sees the roof and all of the neon rush up towards her and thinks she will soar right through, hit the sky and keep ascending. The Four Queens and Golden Nugget Hotels fly past, and she is above them all, moving ever more rapidly towards a dazzling immensity of brightness.  

She begins to descend far sooner than she wants to in a rush of air that blows through her hair rendering her free and fast. But still she believes she won’t stop, will keep going, will climb up again, somewhere into a white, shining light.  But the ride ends, and she’s at the other end of Fremont Street, under the Golden Gate casino.

He’s there waiting when she lands, takes her back to his flat, just as the tiredness hits her, the utter exhaustion.  And with the weariness comes the worry that he might not want her anymore.  His phone rings and he ignores it and she feels sure he just doesn’t want to speak to whoever it is when she is there to overhear and says so. ‘You’re coming down,’ he says, ‘let’s go to bed.’  She walks through the living room and there’s a snake on the glass table. No, it’s gone; it’s the memory of an image, not a real one.  

In the bedroom, fully clothed, they fall onto his bed and into drug induced dreaming.
 
One Year Ago
 
It’s the longest flight she’s ever been on.  Eleven hours.  The only other times she has been out of Scotland were the Blackpool trips when she was a kid and the holiday in Spain when her dad got his redundancy money.  She’s watched Ocean’s Eleven three times and Leaving Las Vegas twice but still when she finds it on the plane’s classic film list, she puts it on again.  Claire has a travel guide, Lonely Planet, and for the umpteenth time she looks at the photo of the hotel where she will be working.

Her flat address, shared with two other girls, is just off Fremont Street which sounds amazing, but overwhelming too.  The world’s largest projection screen, five football pitches long makes a sky over blocks of hotels and casinos.  She imagines a cocoon of strobes, mirrors and lights if the book’s description is anything to go by.   She also wonders if she’ll be able to sleep or if the Queen and Jon Bon Jovi tribute bands will play all night through her apartment window.
She’s never been one for parties; there was never time; she’s had dance classes straight after school, five nights week and dance workshops all Saturday, for the past six years.  It’s all so unreal, this flight, the life that awaits her, a dream of sorts, just not the one she started out with. Her true desire was a job in a ballet company but she was too tall, just two inches short of six foot, so instead she’s going to be a chorus girl, and not just anywhere but in the showgirl capital of the world.

The audition was easy, at least for her, after all those classes, and the guy who checked out her breasts seemed more like a medical person than anything else.  She was sure he’d hate them, notice that one was slightly bigger than the other and send her home. He was very detached and professional, reassuring, but also engaged enough to show he was pleased with what he saw.  He made her rub ice on her nipples and then praised the outcome, something in his business-like manner stopping her shyness, relaxing her somehow.

She knew she’d done well after the second set.  There were ten shortlisted girls altogether, all after one place in the troupe, but only two of the others could pick up the steps as quickly as she could, and none except her after only one run through.
 
One Decade Ago
 
Claire’s mum is coming out of the Post Office when she hears the tinkling of a piano.  It’s not the usual sound she expects round there, on the bad end of the High Street, where the old men and the junkies sit on the bench by the War memorial, so she does a double take and sees the door of the YMCA has been jammed open because of the unusually warm weather.  Claire’s beat her to it, has already spotted the little girls through the windows at the side and is dragging her mum, who isn’t putting up much resistance, towards the concrete building.

‘Can I go, mum?  Can I, can I?’

They go into the big hall with its parquet floor and wood panelling and see a dozen girls and two boys, all about Claire’s age, give or take a year or two.  Claire’s mum thinks they look adorable.  Some are in leotards and pink shoes, other are in shorts and T-shirt and barefoot.  One girl is wearing a party dress and smiling broadly as she does her ‘step, point, step point’.  Claire’s always been shy and this could be just the thing she needs to bring her out of her shell.  Her mum watches the confident, grinning girl and imagines Claire just like her, doing her steps, beaming at an audience. A newly confident child, not one that’s too afraid and nervous to speak to visitors and hides behind the couch, but perhaps, instead, one who shows off a few of her ballet steps in the living room.  There’s an elderly man sitting at a white desk with a tin full of cash and she goes over to him.  He’s the dance teacher’s dad.  The lessons cost very little so she hands over some money and Claire, so very unusual for Claire, who always hangs back, would usually wait to be asked, runs to the far side of the room where kids’ shoes and clothes and bags are piled against a wall and various parents sit on plastic seats looking on.  Claire pulls open the Velcro strips to unfasten her shoes, very carefully takes off the socks with the angel wings at the ankle and places them neatly on top of a chair.  Her mum sees the other mothers watching in envy at this display of innate neatness and feels proud.

By the time Claire stands in the second row and raises her arms to fifth position, copying the girls in front of her, she is already smiling and her mum settles in a seat between two other parents to watch.  The pianist plays the opening bars of a waltz.  The room smells of beeswax polish, flowery soap and hopefulness. Claire begins to dance.
 

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Lorna Gibb has written two biographies – Lady Hester (Faber) and West's World (Pan Mac) and most recently a novel, A Ghost's Story (Granta), as well as published lots of short pieces. She's currently working on another book for Granta. She lectures part time in creative writing at Middlesex University, and she used to be a professional dancer (many, many years ago), hence the idea for this story. She lives in London with her husband and three cats.