Elizabeth Price: Moving Day, Reasons to Love a Musician, Which Wrath Came from Your Lover?, and Bitch, Poems and Interview

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POET HIGHLIGHT: Elizabeth Price

Interview by Katherine Preza Leonor

Elizabeth Price is a poet, author, award-winning journalist, and advocate for radical social change who is based in Los Angeles, California.  Born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Oakland, California, her poetry and prose centers love, heartbreak, sex, sensuality, body image, Black identity, spirituality, and the messiness of humanhood.  Elizabeth believes in the power of the written word as a catalyst for peace. Her winding professional career has landed her in management roles across technology, media, and philanthropy. These experiences have deeply informed her creative process. Poetry is her first love. Her social media handles are Instagram: [curly.buddha] and her personal website is [curlybuddha.com].

I had the honor of reading Price's manuscript after her pitching at the Beach Writers Conference at USC by the Community Literature Initiative (CLI). To say in very few words, I was able to identify with a lot of her poems which is why I selected from her manuscript, the following four poems. The poems we will be discussing today are Moving Day, Reasons To Love A Musician, Which Wrath Came From Your Lover?, and Bitch. My first question was:

PREZA LEONOR: Do you have any published work? Don't be shy to plug it in here! 

PRICE: I have several poems published in Let the Black Woman Say Ase , an anthology by The Aya Collective.

Link: https://www.amazon.com/Let-Black-Women-Say-Ase/dp/B0B8R938VF

Let the Black Women Say Ase' by the Aya Collective is an anthology which is written in the form of positive affirmations. It is dedicated to black women so that they have a community supporting them on their journey in their spirituality and embracing womanhood.

PREZA LEONOR: That is such a beautiful topic, the Aya Collective must have received a lot of beautiful entries, so I'm super glad and impressed you had an opportunity to be a contributor! Since you have other works, some that might not been published: if you were to highlight one piece of work, which one would it be and why? 

PRICE: "Which Wrath Came From Your Lover?"

PREZA LEONOR: I really loved that piece too! I noticed that a lot of your pieces were related to romance or the idea of falling out of the societal notion of love, can you tell me a bit about some of the themes in your manuscript? And secondly, what inspires you to write?

PRICE: Some of my themes outside of love are heartache, heartbreak, redemption, sentimentality, resentment, longing, creativity, and hope. My writing is raw and sentimental - I aim to guide readers on a personal journey into the inner workings of their most sacred emotional spaces. While a large portion of my work centers on love and heartbreak, the core of my work prioritizes self-inquiry - why we do the things we do, why we are afraid to feel the things that will liberate us, why we run away from things that are good for us. I write for people who have come out on the other side of their personal transformations, or who might find themselves in the midst of one and need a friend to help them navigate the darkness. My hope and prayer is that, after reading my poetry, readers come out on the other side as more ferocious, more fearless, and more untamed versions of themselves.

PREZA LEONOR: Specifically on the poems selected for the interview, can you give some insights on the inner-workings of the creation of these pieces? How do you aim for your work to come across to a wide-scale audience?

PRICE: These pieces are about the often heavy and multitudinous societal expectations that women experience in romantic relationships. It is about my own experiences navigating the roles I felt I was required to fulfill as a woman in love with a man - and the anger that later came after realizing he was not held to the same standards or expectations, while also exhibiting a sense of entitlement to benefit from my mental, emotional and physical labor. These expectations ran the gamut -- from needing to be the perfect sexual plaything, to knowing how to cook the perfect dish (and doing it on command), to having to play the role of therapist, even when my own emotional tank was empty and I had no more to give. I hope this piece provides nuanced perspectives on gender and power imbalances in heterosexual relationships, so that readers can begin to understand their own role in upholding harmful gendered stereotypes in love and romance. The ultimate goal of my work is always for readers to become more free - free from expectation, from harmful stereotyping, and from their own self-judgement. Feminism and gender equality are the core themes of this piece. Conversations about gender equality continue to dominate cultural conversations and inform the way people feel about themselves and their place in the world. I hope to give voice to women who might be struggling with finding a way to express their lived experiences.

PREZA LEONOR: Your words are beautiful and immensely impactful. Thank you for sharing this and allowing this interview to be so vulnerable. Gender equality is still something we constantly fight for so it is important to continue the conversation. Your work is so rich and fruitful, is there anything that you specifically get inspiration from? Or, do you have any influences?

PRICE: The British-Jamaican poet Yrsa Daley-Ward is one of my biggest influences. Her poems are so lovely, raw and real. I'm also inspired by the art of the Harlem Renaissance - the jazz, poetry, and writing of so many classic African American artists continues to inform my perspective. Travel is another area of influence for me - I love to travel and always find pockets of inspiration when I'm on a plane or a train.

PREZA LEONOR: Thank you for taking the time to meet with us. It has truly been an honor conducting this interview. For my last question, do you have any book recommendations or an author in particular you would like to shout out?

PRICE: Definitely, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.

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Moving Day

We carried cardboard memories in with hurried hands

Muscles screaming under expectation and precedence

This was the first time

This was the last time 

Right before this 

I stood stoic like a broznied war statue 

The condo building across the street titled, inception-bending 

Warping onto itself

As if i had tip-toed inside a macabre time machine 

Cobweb lace rendering its calculations incomplete

Pixels distorting in nauseous fervor 

Maybe we YKK zipped up the gilded elevator 

Rounding and unfurling labyrinthian corridors 

Cheeks cherry-flush with promise 

Lip-locking on the threshold 

Maybe it felt reminiscent of silver-screened lovers 

Or plans our parents had meticulously drawn up for us

Devoid of drafting tables or clamp lamps 

They etched schematics in the dark for us to decode in the light

I don't remember 

I can't remember 

I should remember 

What I do recall is that you stunk up the joint with your 

Fake exuberance 

And 

Big white lies about 

How much money you made

How you had two phones because you needed one for business 

And one for family

Soon I’m heaving napalm tears

They fall and incinerate the welcome mat

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Which Wrath Came From Your Lover?

For me it was a special kind of 

Hand-to-heart combat

And the resulting hard-won victory 

As if to say,

I am capable, I am full, I am whole

Without you

And here I was, 

Piling on duties both solemn and perfunctory

I am cleaner, I am cook, I am mistress, I am maid

I am healer, I am servant, I bear witness, unafraid 

I play duality’s song with aplomb,

Wearing responsibility like a cape,

Wearing submission like a badge,

Waiting to take the costumer’s edge off as it frays and unravels itself,

Praying I could be two women at once,

Wishing I didn’t have to be,

Knowing I trained for this,

Knowing I was raised for this,

Knowing those before me paid gravely for this.

In my bones I know this,

In my bones I know this.

Which wrath came from your lover?

Now, I am rolling around in scant sea-drenched nothings

Scent thick and hot, 

Thighs taught and rolled,

Backside bronzed,

Smile as wide as sunsets, 

Tan lines carving maps on my skin,

Hoping you will see my pleas,

Juvenile fantasies in grown-up bodies,

Hoping you will see just how much me I can be,

That is,

The me they want me to be, no less and certainly no more.

This way, I am 

Carefully fashioned into the satin-lined box.

Which wrath came from your lover?

I pray you remember where you came from

You came far, remember?

From silly tantrums and secret rendezvous 

Eking meaning from nothing

(a delightful meaninglessness to be clear)

Misplaced magic-making 

Never letting things die

Things die, remember?

But they grow back, gloriously

Detritus turning tricks into real-life glory

Remember here you came from.

They are rooting for you.

And so am I. 

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Reasons to Love a Musician

A conjuring of sorts

Heaven’s fools formed by spindled digits

Some callous-worn

Others tender

Either way,

They’ll play with your treasure as good as they play the Rhodes

Or the stratocaster 

Or the upright bass

A cherry whimsy surrounds you

Gorgeous, gloating 

Sound spins from your ears through your pores

Down from the tips of your fingers and toes

You talk before you think

You call out and we listen

Pulling wisdom from hidden places

You worship at solitary altars

My preference was for the times we spent in front of the baby grand overlooking the Potomac

You staccato-ing and me lounging 

Ruby red rugs holding us like magic carpets underfoot

Our smiles like cheshire moons studding an aubergine sky

The night shades us til sunrise

Then there’s sixth-knowing 

Of major fifth and minor thirds

Of secrets only we could tell

I’d stop and think 

How can you get me like this?

No one’s ever gotten me like this

This poem is only for good things 

Only good reasons to love

So i’ll try not to answer such questions with sour answers

Lest the pith gets stuck between flapping gums 

I remember all the times you wrapped me in your psychic embrace 

I loved those times

Never thinking I’d be sitting here

Writing this 

After all that

After the fact

At least now I can weep again

For a while the music had stopped and silence rolled in

Loud and cantankerous 

Others will hear the song in you 

And like me they’ll be lulled 

Like snakes writhing in the streets of cairo 

I know you’ll play it and let the charm slither over them

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Bitch

fuck it 

i am a bitch

not just a bitch

but that bitch

i hate the word bitch

but i can understand it

only i’m allowed to call me a bitch

if a bitch calls me a bitch

then a bitch gon see how much of a bitch this bitch

can be

i am the most politically correct,

incorrect bitch,

daughter bitch, 

sister bitch, 

best friend bitch

i spit profanity on bowl-headed bitches,

Teeth bared, fangs dripping

i squash them with my heel

and trail the blood like war paint between stiletto tips 

i am a savage

eating stiffs for dinner 

and saving the bones for decoration on the mantle 

Wearing shirts as skirts and dresses as capes

i am a 

raving, 

wilding, 

wild-like, 

child-like, 

incorrect, 

always correct,

giant 

fatso 

bitch 

i am often good

mostly good 

sometimes bad, 

but usually good bitch,

nonetheless