To be clear, a gay-owned press that doesn’t rabble rouse a bit is no friend of mine, and oh, these poems! From the moment we saw Kate Lebo‘s prayers, we were smitten and so it is a great honor and privilege to collect them into one reasonably priced, ready to give to the people—”may they find their freedom from Cathy McMorris Rodgers” package— and to get them out into the world!
Kate Lebo writes openly and honestly. She sings the songs of liberation! She is the hammer of freedom! She bakes pie like a boss and drinks a bit of whiskey. “I used myself roughly and I / enjoyed it,// drank milk and whiskey/ and assumed these pleasures were normal.”
Whether it is health care, marriage, the role of women in politics or society, she reminds us and her representative that decisions in the other Washington have real impact here in our own state, no matter the posturing for power and riches Congresswoman Rodgers seeks on the backs of the hard-working women (and men) of her district.
We want you to copy these. We want you to pass them around. We want you to sing them to your neighbors. We want you to VOTE.
And so while we ask you to buy these from us, to help us get them into the local bookshops, coffee shops all through the FIFTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT, we are also ready to answer all reasonable requests for free copies in the Fifth. Please email us directly at publisher@entreriosbooks.com for discounts for 10 copies or more and to query for free copies. For our readers outside of the Fighting Fifth, we ask that you kindly purchase your copies to help us fund our free copies.
Our first chapbook is saddle-stitched, contains twenty pages and complete audio: DOWNLOAD HERE.
I live in a house on a block in a town
where your name takes shape on my neighbors’ front lawns
from heat wave to windstorm. They stake Cathy in the grass
until you win, again, the right to represent us.
You are a good example, Cathy.
Reasonable with your opponents.
So firm and respectful, rage-free
and logical as a man,
no nun but no sexpot either,
sex not being the substance of this address,
sex being more a material you and I were cut from
without prior consultation.
Like a large warm meal you are, Cathy.
Like hot chocolate. Powerful too—
black tea scalded and forgotten
into tannic strength.
Of course it is silly to say we share
a source or tribe,
you with your vagina and I with mine.
Us white ladies.
And it’s winter, almost.
As the year dies,
and you contemplate a new cycle
of intercession with government on my behalf,
I hope we can conference re: our differences.
Cathy, I’m a person, you’re a person.
It’s like we’ve met before.
