Pirates, Burlesque, and Hockey! Oh My!

I love an accordion busker, bustle and musket rustler, a rascal market pass the hat pass the night I heard night shakes ebullient bubbles bump silence and grind the lights off to hear, feel custard muscles orange peel and stretch marks the spot night shakes the territory of the word made fresh

bump silence
and grind
last girl standing
any port in a storm
madeira
sherry
sailor scurvy lurcher
nurture the glare
a lighthouse whorehouse
brothel hostile
musical hostel

bring the lady a chair

pirates steal, there's nothing romantic about pirates, they're thieves...

here pussy
on the duck hunt for the cunt

the bed is a big ghost ship, she floats mostly to the left, listing badly against his tallow back, her sallow curves, candle light smooth, his night time bellows, her gallows, the rough hewn plank of his leg before she drops into cool water, cool sleep, cool dream, cool night under water, under cover, dark slap and tickle, the bump and grind, slapstick noise, the waves rise against her flank, the shift of the seas as she turns, sail billows, ocean pillows, at night the night comes, waterlogged, permeated, penetrated, the vessel, the body, a cup of water half full, her private motion rocks her self to sleep, ghost ship sails onward, safe harbour, into a red sunset, into a black horizon, the death's head flutters, pegleg tap tap tap pirate love, soiled dove, jolly roger.

iron lady
siren lady
a ship shape
slip slap handshake
a what the fuck's sake
slapstick sake.

tie me to the mast
fly me to the moon

she only dreams of horses now...

I'm the last girl standing, the other still sprawled on the ice, legs spread, tears caught in his frozen lashes. I loom giant above him, brandish my legs like knives beside his neck, like swords. Arrr. Call me Captain, call me wench. Have you ever seen anyone look this good in a Winnipeg Jets jersey?

You don't look like a hockey player

____

"Is the Language We Use the Language We Desire? A Threesome"

How do you spell feminist? In disjunctive treatments of popular slang and unpopular attitudes, we take on gendered sexuality on the page and in performance to reconsider the nature of the sensual, the physical, and the feminine. Seamen in a romantic poem? Brea Burton sails the seas of salty dogs and lady pirates. Wondering what's in Pandora's box? Jill Hartman sashays into the culturally charged territory of burlesque. Need a body check? Cara Hedley gets one past the goalie and pucks Freud right in the jockstrap in her girls-in-hockey narrative. In our trialogic performance, the violence inherent in masculinized language rubs up against the bloodless "feminine" of popular culture to rediscover the feminist potential in sex. The result? A new feminist poetics to reclaim the stage of 21st Century language.

Development of the Threesome's manuscript has been powered by performance in the last year, including presentation at the 2004 "Poetry and Sexuality" Conference at the University of Stirling, Scotland, and locally in Calgary at filling Station and dANDelion magazines' reading series and events.