Featured Poet & Artist jojo Lazar

​Goddess Misandry

In the side pocket
of jerk- in. Divine energy,
pagan love story
homage to transcendent

woman riding on
the back after death,
an obsession-type toys.

Flagellating him
with a bunch
of large keys on a ring. 
​

​"I still witch"

Starting a diary
while I'm sleeping,
fiendish new torment.

To model crypto-
artists strongly inward looking,
caricatures emer-
lie naked in our quest.

I still witch,
beguile passing time
wearing snake's blood

in common, a symbol of
"share and move along."
We spoke of love, fire.

​

Perverts for expensive 

Universal thumbprints
that occur, a little warmth
How bourgeoisie! aside from
a few phallic bronzes.

Explain some magic;
the break (in) his two ears,
hair fully delineated.

Hold my dessert for me,
could hope for, little tail.
"Very good, sir."

The world is
full of perverts,
for expensive erotica.

Means (however) year-old that
"we are some of them?
but I like, mix my own." 

​

“Give an emo haunting?”

witches, their goings-on
market for high-class
tinted black, erotica.

“Dark as a cat,”
“It’s a little bit like Bach—“
a party I told a room.

Men with wicked sepia
French influence,
whose uncommon effort,
and energy 
(I let believe)
ever hold my attention.

​

Intimate revelations
​
of a Gothic castle
without telling all:

A piano making love.
Few seemed to “get it.”
We were formed by
an angel at a / bull fight.

Romantic read:
head set against a nimbus--

Cry, as from far away.
“You’re all sweating
on reading, kneeling.”

—back of his head. 

​

À La Louise Brooks

Hair is so
(some) our identities.
Cut off your
hair loose
—in exchange for
a blessing.
Young necks
sacrifice of hair is key.

Had seen her,
(remained but a bone)
picture of her, before.
Expertly graceful, con
fox-trot--
grabbed my hair. 

​

​I Was a Teenage LiveJournal Faerie

1.

So what if I
wasn’t tattooed and twenty.
We thought, “How do?”

alternate set. Think, kitten.
A sartorial punchy comic
in jet scattered petals
front of the stage.

I grew up / inside there.
On the fax-line (online) for
messages and forgetting
I wasn’t in unbuttoned coats,
a villa in France.

Began building
it was an incredible connection,
human spirit. Empowered women
quick-change option, equally.

We could giggle like hysterical teens,
beyond their autobio-
graphic/al stories.

Other imagery / discover the mind.
Diary-like lens
superheroines:
-dot bows for versions. 

2.

Desire shapes the way we see,
and penned a memoir.

A fantasy of all culture
-out would end in romance.

These motivating / masquerading
received, lead

other young ladies.
Have relationship to the
unaware agreeable--
(Out of the old)
—language to today’s
perpetual self-repetition.

They’re brief, polka
but true of culture.

Intense fantasies that I am
not different person / to myself.

Light-hearted woman who could!
Perfect symmetry in her
figure —coats weren’t
all that opened. ​ 






 Artist Statement

​
​Two of my favorite kid books growing up were "The Jolly Postman (or Other People's Letters)" and "The Eleventh Hour: A Curious Mystery," (a picture book with the equiv' scandalous feel of Clue), and I started writing poetry at eleven. It feels inevitable that several decades later my 'collage oracle leaves' have absorbed the sense of 'found' artifact, voyeurism, empathy - an art-puzzle, overheard partial narrative in a swirl of glamor.

I've made near a (couple) thousand collage poems in the last six years, their increasing high-tincture feel has lead me to describe them as: overhearing seance/spiritualism transcriptions, experiencing crossed telephone wires, a radio playing on station search/scan, love letters from strangers, and snatches of ghosts' conversation from an Edith Wharton novel overheard through a parlour wall.

The work presents as a puzzle-gift, but I hope for the immediacy/transmission of a tarot card spread. Though references and metaphor can be unlocked, I aim for the work to be enjoyed viscerally when still a psychedelic mystery. A padlock beautiful when shut as much as an utterly different treasure once open to the reader's translation.

By this found or drag/masque voice format of Omniscient Acceptable Narrator I am able to be (infinitely) more than I am often read in the flesh. As I'm "only" doing "cut-ups" how much can I be held responsible for extreme libertine hippy things, radical empathy, feminist fencing, mysticism, depression, and satirizing while butchering-quoting others in the dada tradition?

After years of this collage-process my transcription voice has gotten creepier! Yet closer in a soul-sense to what I could call my 'free hand personal narrative' poetry. There's also a tension the closer the typed-up work gets to sounding how I chat naturally with my closest, which we call "poet mouth." Parameters can set you free to be who you have always been. ("Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde) I am inadvertently on the Shakespearean arc from artifice to authenticity with the collage journey I re-realize as I write this. So I will probably divide my upcoming poetry manuscript to reflect that in two parts, "Inapproetry / Collage Oracle Leaves."

These poems are part of a print collection coming out this spring, "I Still Witch: Collage Poetry, Erasure Art, and Nonfiction." The book is a collab' with Oilcan Press and my band's imprint, WIREFOREST. It's a supreme honor to preview the work and share the book news here on Anti-Heroin Chic. Deep gratitude to James.

-jojo Lazar
February 19, 2020
​

jojo Lazar is a Boston based multi-genre vaudevillian artist. She is a multi-instrumentalist in qweirdo art rock band 'Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys,' and has a crypt folk duo, 'Death and the Poetess.' She teaches ukulele, creative writing, and zine-making and holds a BA from Brandeis and an MFA in poetry from Lesley University. Her paintings and poetry have been published in A Bad Penny Review, Connotation Press, Zen Monster, For Sale, Delirious Hem, Faggot Dinosaur, her own zines and others'. (jojoLazar.com)

You can find paintings, blackout poetry, and collages at @poetessS on social media. And free-to-stream music via ArmyofToys.com, Spotify, and http://deathandthepoetess.bandcamp.com 

---