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Journal of Lesbian Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wjls20
Seven Poems for Three Amanda Kovattana Published online: 30 Jul 2010.
To cite this article: Amanda Kovattana (1999) Seven Poems for Three, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 3:1-2, 85-95, DOI: 10.1300/J155v03n01_09 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J155v03n01_09
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is
Downloaded by [University of Washington Libraries] at 23:36 14 November 2014
expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Downloaded by [University of Washington Libraries] at 23:36 14 November 2014
Seven Poems for Three Amanda Kovattana
SUMMARY. These poems describe the evolution of a polyamorous relationship among three women over a period of a year and a half. The original couple had been together five years and was ready to explore a more complex family structure as a powerful alternative to the heterosexual nuclear family model.
INTRODUCTION For five years I lived with a woman as her lover and partner in a largely monogamous relationship. The quality of our relationship was based on day-by-day appreciation and honesty rather than long-term promises. We entertained a great deal and made a home for our numerous friends, some of whom joined us in our bed. A woman came into our lives looking for escape from an unsatisfying relationship. My lover and I felt that we had an abundance of love in our own relationship that would only increase exponentially if we were to share it with a third. We were thrilled with the prospect of creating an alternative family structure that would ultimately link entire communities. When we invited her to live with us, I did not know that she was Amanda Kovattana is a freelance writer and professional organizer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her essays have appeared in Dyke Life (Basic Books, 1995), Encountering Cultures (Blair Press, 1995) and On My Honor: Lesbians Reflect on Their Scouting Experience (Madwoman Press, 1997). Several of the poems in this paper first appeared in the author’s chapbook Nine Poems for Three and are reprinted here by permission. [Haworth co-indexing entry note]: ‘‘Seven Poems for Three.’’ Kovattana, Amanda. Co-published simultaneously in Journal of Lesbian Studies (The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 3, No. 1/2, 1999, pp. 85-95; and: The Lesbian Polyamory Reader: Open Relationships, Non-Monogamy, and Casual Sex (ed: Marcia Munson and Judith P. Stelboum) The Haworth Press, Inc., 1999, pp. 85-95.
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already having an affair with my lover and thought that she was courting me. Eventually we all shared a bed together. This became a compromise for the new lover who just wanted an exclusive relationship with my partner. She turned away from me, soon forcing my partner to exclude me from their bed. I lived with them for a year longer before my partner felt she had to make a choice in order to have peace and she asked me to leave. These poems describe the transitions in this polyamorous phase of my life.
The Lover
My love, and I, we sit on the couch and wait for her new lover’s return. For the delivery of that in-love high, now for us but a fond memory. Just as we begin to question her power, she is with us, the lover, carrying over her shoulder, like Santa Claus, that big bag of desire. She sets it down; it opens up and fills the room, enveloping us, with that cloud of pungent feeling, thick with want, full with ripe promise of deep, wet, flesh. She applies the magic with a kiss feeding my love with her mouth, waking the lotus bud of want, and again we know we can come.
Downloaded by [University of Washington Libraries] at 23:36 14 November 2014
Amanda Kovattana
Changing Places We changed places you and I, like slow trains passing. You impatient to meet the lover who still held me in her arms so sweetly every night. Me, listening to your hunger as you paced in your room. I gave you what I could of my life with my love. I stood to let you pass as she beckoned to you. Your desire I honored, for, in truth, I loved you, too. The journey began for you and me; we stopped at every station. First it was a night with her, you asked for once a week. And though it was spent in passion, intimacy you couldn’t reach in such brief moments, while our lover lay with me and knew she was safe. You saw despair where I sought your gratitude. What could we do for peace, my love asked the Guides. They said it would be wiser to bow to your need. They asked me to give all that I had left and fear struck my heart for what would I have for me? The morning I left my place in her bed, We shed quiet tears for our gentle love. Remembering all that we had shared those five short years. Now you have reached your destination and I lie in the other room, listening to your happy laughter.
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I was torn away, but my love and I, we did not stop loving. We are family, still, and that we fight to keep. Intimacy we have on your nights away. I hold her close and will it to be enough, but still I wonder if you have the heart to leave me what I have, or will your hunger take it all. Deception Sweet deception like a drug feeding the imagination, with a temporary grace, to buy time with a secret lover. How easily you slipped into this old habit from twenty years of marriage. That aphrodisiac of secrecy heightening desire with the possibility of being caught while your life was safely steered by our commitment. I had a secret lover, too, after you had your open one. Secret because you wouldn’t stop bugging me about the absurd possibility of my running off with her. Our lovemaking was a good-bye gift and she was soon gone, to another state, safely married to a man. Your lover stayed, moved in, wove a complex trail of fractured memories for me to repair, later, when you told me, for fear your heart would turn black from the casting of lies.
Downloaded by [University of Washington Libraries] at 23:36 14 November 2014
Amanda Kovattana
You watched with compassion for my struggle as I pasted the missing pieces into my muddled brain. And you looked with fascination at your longtime belief that you can’t have what you want unless you buy it with a lie.
Shadowlove That summer afternoon when I didn’t know you were my lover’s love, you sat across from her at the museum cafe, her comments enticing you with erotic undercurrents that made you smile and I had this sudden, unexplainable desire to kiss you. Tall, prickly woman espousing facts I didn’t care to know, my lover took you riding and discovered your soft core inside that too-smart lonely teenager you thought you left behind. She brought you home --persuaded me to help save your soul from quickening into stone. I forgave you, doctor, your cocky arrogance when she invited me to touch you.
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My love and I, we dreamed up a vision of sisterhood, empowered by the thought of three women together. One night you kissed me in front of Louise and I thought this flirtation was for me alone. I pursued this shadow love drawn by its mercurial mystery. I didn’t know I was caught in the crossfire; the erotic energy of your affair coursing through me like a palpable current lighting every open circuit. Flattered by my attention and thirsty for friendship you let me love you. What does it matter that you say you didn’t love me. That Louise, your bright star soon eclipsed me. You held me and spoke to me in intimate tones that promised family like a long awaited firstborn child. Now I grow cold in the dark shadow of this love affair, yet I hold open the space that grew love for you for fear that hostility will tear apart my soul.
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Amanda Kovattana
Wild Life I follow them upstairs and patiently wait on my bed like duck hunters in camouflage holding guns erect behind blinds. Sometimes I wait in vain with ears tuned for any sound from the room next door, and get nothing but laughter and conversation too muffled to make out, then the quiet of sleep. But more often silence breaks into the squeak of the bedsprings and a telling groan. This is my cue to leap quietly to the wood floor and lie by my open door in the dark. Sweeping up the sounds that slip under the crack of their closed door, my mind’s eye imagines the hands at work building muscled sensation into orgasm. First the eager partner, her urgent groans demanding immediate gratification in anticipation of the work ahead. I imagine her unguarded desire and take her place with my own body. I see the slam of the drawer where the dildo lives and picture her with it strapped on when I hear footsteps on the floor as she walks around the bed. Her big body carrying that bulbous lavender latex thing more
91
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gracefully than I, as she fucks my ex-lover with determined rhythm. More often the chainsaw buzz betrays the wielding of the Hitachi vibrator, the cord clunking on the floor. Muffled speech tells a fantasy, promising some titillating technique. The tandem breathing, one encouraging the other to take all. Then my ex-lover’s groans evoke the remembered expression on her face as she lets it all go in triumphant bellows. The immediacy of their pleasure has me riveted to the urgency of the moment storing for later use the narration of an orgasm more vivid than any fantasy I care to make up. As silence falls with an imagined sigh, I jump back into bed to replay for my own body’s ecstasy, the erotic image of the lovers who can’t exclude me in their pleasure as they do in their union. Lost Thailand You saw your lost Thailand when you looked at me. The girl you left behind who had your heart but didn’t ask for your body. The Thailand you never intended to leave, where you made a home in the tropics
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Amanda Kovattana
far more whole than your desert childhood had ever been. You gave me the affection that is second nature among the people of my homeland. That touch of reassurance that we are part of the whole, never alone without community. You gave me back the Thailand of my childhood so brusquely torn away from me. That loss forcing me to construct the identity of the lone cowboy Westerners seem to prize. You didn’t see the American lesbian I had become, aroused by your touch, by the flirtatious game you were trying out since your new lover awakened your erotic soul. You gave me more than Thailand. You kissed me and asked me to sleep with you in celibate intimacy as you had done with your Thai friend. And you are shocked that I wanted more? Did I betray you with my sexuality? Didn’t your girlfriend in Thailand want this too? when she went alone with you on holiday. Why else would she have been so cool to you afterwards?
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Now you tell me it is against your nature to be affectionate. That you touch no one but your lover. You treat me the best you can like a member of your desert family, showing all the intimacy of a cactus in the wind. You’ve made it clear I can no more go back to that Thailand we shared than I can go back to my childhood homeland. How dare you touch me twenty-five years later on that ten-year-old’s wound of abandonment. Three Pull down the power of three and see the possibility of unity, strength, community, world peace. Beatific visions only the divine could sustain. Three is a number for the Gods. I wanted three to be like ancient priestesses initiating a new lover into the sisterhood. But one of us wasn’t ready saw us as two and one left out. Living against the power of three pitched yin against yang, broke the circle; the energy turned against itself, tearing us apart.
Downloaded by [University of Washington Libraries] at 23:36 14 November 2014
Amanda Kovattana
We saw the roots of war when two must fight over one and harmony is traded for competition. To love one and reject the other meant seeing both our beginnings and our endings simultaneously, in a cruel zen exercise of the heart. Loving both kept the heart open to pain from the hurt one. and hurt from the hostile one. To keep the love, we had to stay and tolerate the pain; it made us stronger--able to risk greater joy. As we struggled to embrace uncertainty, we learned gratitude for what we had, and made fast our commitments. Runaway emotions took control out of our hands, taught us the power of fate. What a teacher is three for the fatalities of the heart.
95
Journal of Lesbian Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wjls20
Seven Poems for Three Amanda Kovattana Published online: 30 Jul 2010.
To cite this article: Amanda Kovattana (1999) Seven Poems for Three, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 3:1-2, 85-95, DOI: 10.1300/J155v03n01_09 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J155v03n01_09
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is
Downloaded by [University of Washington Libraries] at 23:36 14 November 2014
expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Downloaded by [University of Washington Libraries] at 23:36 14 November 2014
Seven Poems for Three Amanda Kovattana
SUMMARY. These poems describe the evolution of a polyamorous relationship among three women over a period of a year and a half. The original couple had been together five years and was ready to explore a more complex family structure as a powerful alternative to the heterosexual nuclear family model.
INTRODUCTION For five years I lived with a woman as her lover and partner in a largely monogamous relationship. The quality of our relationship was based on day-by-day appreciation and honesty rather than long-term promises. We entertained a great deal and made a home for our numerous friends, some of whom joined us in our bed. A woman came into our lives looking for escape from an unsatisfying relationship. My lover and I felt that we had an abundance of love in our own relationship that would only increase exponentially if we were to share it with a third. We were thrilled with the prospect of creating an alternative family structure that would ultimately link entire communities. When we invited her to live with us, I did not know that she was Amanda Kovattana is a freelance writer and professional organizer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her essays have appeared in Dyke Life (Basic Books, 1995), Encountering Cultures (Blair Press, 1995) and On My Honor: Lesbians Reflect on Their Scouting Experience (Madwoman Press, 1997). Several of the poems in this paper first appeared in the author’s chapbook Nine Poems for Three and are reprinted here by permission. [Haworth co-indexing entry note]: ‘‘Seven Poems for Three.’’ Kovattana, Amanda. Co-published simultaneously in Journal of Lesbian Studies (The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 3, No. 1/2, 1999, pp. 85-95; and: The Lesbian Polyamory Reader: Open Relationships, Non-Monogamy, and Casual Sex (ed: Marcia Munson and Judith P. Stelboum) The Haworth Press, Inc., 1999, pp. 85-95.
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already having an affair with my lover and thought that she was courting me. Eventually we all shared a bed together. This became a compromise for the new lover who just wanted an exclusive relationship with my partner. She turned away from me, soon forcing my partner to exclude me from their bed. I lived with them for a year longer before my partner felt she had to make a choice in order to have peace and she asked me to leave. These poems describe the transitions in this polyamorous phase of my life.
The Lover
My love, and I, we sit on the couch and wait for her new lover’s return. For the delivery of that in-love high, now for us but a fond memory. Just as we begin to question her power, she is with us, the lover, carrying over her shoulder, like Santa Claus, that big bag of desire. She sets it down; it opens up and fills the room, enveloping us, with that cloud of pungent feeling, thick with want, full with ripe promise of deep, wet, flesh. She applies the magic with a kiss feeding my love with her mouth, waking the lotus bud of want, and again we know we can come.
Downloaded by [University of Washington Libraries] at 23:36 14 November 2014
Amanda Kovattana
Changing Places We changed places you and I, like slow trains passing. You impatient to meet the lover who still held me in her arms so sweetly every night. Me, listening to your hunger as you paced in your room. I gave you what I could of my life with my love. I stood to let you pass as she beckoned to you. Your desire I honored, for, in truth, I loved you, too. The journey began for you and me; we stopped at every station. First it was a night with her, you asked for once a week. And though it was spent in passion, intimacy you couldn’t reach in such brief moments, while our lover lay with me and knew she was safe. You saw despair where I sought your gratitude. What could we do for peace, my love asked the Guides. They said it would be wiser to bow to your need. They asked me to give all that I had left and fear struck my heart for what would I have for me? The morning I left my place in her bed, We shed quiet tears for our gentle love. Remembering all that we had shared those five short years. Now you have reached your destination and I lie in the other room, listening to your happy laughter.
87
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I was torn away, but my love and I, we did not stop loving. We are family, still, and that we fight to keep. Intimacy we have on your nights away. I hold her close and will it to be enough, but still I wonder if you have the heart to leave me what I have, or will your hunger take it all. Deception Sweet deception like a drug feeding the imagination, with a temporary grace, to buy time with a secret lover. How easily you slipped into this old habit from twenty years of marriage. That aphrodisiac of secrecy heightening desire with the possibility of being caught while your life was safely steered by our commitment. I had a secret lover, too, after you had your open one. Secret because you wouldn’t stop bugging me about the absurd possibility of my running off with her. Our lovemaking was a good-bye gift and she was soon gone, to another state, safely married to a man. Your lover stayed, moved in, wove a complex trail of fractured memories for me to repair, later, when you told me, for fear your heart would turn black from the casting of lies.
Downloaded by [University of Washington Libraries] at 23:36 14 November 2014
Amanda Kovattana
You watched with compassion for my struggle as I pasted the missing pieces into my muddled brain. And you looked with fascination at your longtime belief that you can’t have what you want unless you buy it with a lie.
Shadowlove That summer afternoon when I didn’t know you were my lover’s love, you sat across from her at the museum cafe, her comments enticing you with erotic undercurrents that made you smile and I had this sudden, unexplainable desire to kiss you. Tall, prickly woman espousing facts I didn’t care to know, my lover took you riding and discovered your soft core inside that too-smart lonely teenager you thought you left behind. She brought you home --persuaded me to help save your soul from quickening into stone. I forgave you, doctor, your cocky arrogance when she invited me to touch you.
89
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THE LESBIAN POLYAMORY READER
My love and I, we dreamed up a vision of sisterhood, empowered by the thought of three women together. One night you kissed me in front of Louise and I thought this flirtation was for me alone. I pursued this shadow love drawn by its mercurial mystery. I didn’t know I was caught in the crossfire; the erotic energy of your affair coursing through me like a palpable current lighting every open circuit. Flattered by my attention and thirsty for friendship you let me love you. What does it matter that you say you didn’t love me. That Louise, your bright star soon eclipsed me. You held me and spoke to me in intimate tones that promised family like a long awaited firstborn child. Now I grow cold in the dark shadow of this love affair, yet I hold open the space that grew love for you for fear that hostility will tear apart my soul.
Downloaded by [University of Washington Libraries] at 23:36 14 November 2014
Amanda Kovattana
Wild Life I follow them upstairs and patiently wait on my bed like duck hunters in camouflage holding guns erect behind blinds. Sometimes I wait in vain with ears tuned for any sound from the room next door, and get nothing but laughter and conversation too muffled to make out, then the quiet of sleep. But more often silence breaks into the squeak of the bedsprings and a telling groan. This is my cue to leap quietly to the wood floor and lie by my open door in the dark. Sweeping up the sounds that slip under the crack of their closed door, my mind’s eye imagines the hands at work building muscled sensation into orgasm. First the eager partner, her urgent groans demanding immediate gratification in anticipation of the work ahead. I imagine her unguarded desire and take her place with my own body. I see the slam of the drawer where the dildo lives and picture her with it strapped on when I hear footsteps on the floor as she walks around the bed. Her big body carrying that bulbous lavender latex thing more
91
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THE LESBIAN POLYAMORY READER
gracefully than I, as she fucks my ex-lover with determined rhythm. More often the chainsaw buzz betrays the wielding of the Hitachi vibrator, the cord clunking on the floor. Muffled speech tells a fantasy, promising some titillating technique. The tandem breathing, one encouraging the other to take all. Then my ex-lover’s groans evoke the remembered expression on her face as she lets it all go in triumphant bellows. The immediacy of their pleasure has me riveted to the urgency of the moment storing for later use the narration of an orgasm more vivid than any fantasy I care to make up. As silence falls with an imagined sigh, I jump back into bed to replay for my own body’s ecstasy, the erotic image of the lovers who can’t exclude me in their pleasure as they do in their union. Lost Thailand You saw your lost Thailand when you looked at me. The girl you left behind who had your heart but didn’t ask for your body. The Thailand you never intended to leave, where you made a home in the tropics
Downloaded by [University of Washington Libraries] at 23:36 14 November 2014
Amanda Kovattana
far more whole than your desert childhood had ever been. You gave me the affection that is second nature among the people of my homeland. That touch of reassurance that we are part of the whole, never alone without community. You gave me back the Thailand of my childhood so brusquely torn away from me. That loss forcing me to construct the identity of the lone cowboy Westerners seem to prize. You didn’t see the American lesbian I had become, aroused by your touch, by the flirtatious game you were trying out since your new lover awakened your erotic soul. You gave me more than Thailand. You kissed me and asked me to sleep with you in celibate intimacy as you had done with your Thai friend. And you are shocked that I wanted more? Did I betray you with my sexuality? Didn’t your girlfriend in Thailand want this too? when she went alone with you on holiday. Why else would she have been so cool to you afterwards?
93
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Now you tell me it is against your nature to be affectionate. That you touch no one but your lover. You treat me the best you can like a member of your desert family, showing all the intimacy of a cactus in the wind. You’ve made it clear I can no more go back to that Thailand we shared than I can go back to my childhood homeland. How dare you touch me twenty-five years later on that ten-year-old’s wound of abandonment. Three Pull down the power of three and see the possibility of unity, strength, community, world peace. Beatific visions only the divine could sustain. Three is a number for the Gods. I wanted three to be like ancient priestesses initiating a new lover into the sisterhood. But one of us wasn’t ready saw us as two and one left out. Living against the power of three pitched yin against yang, broke the circle; the energy turned against itself, tearing us apart.
Downloaded by [University of Washington Libraries] at 23:36 14 November 2014
Amanda Kovattana
We saw the roots of war when two must fight over one and harmony is traded for competition. To love one and reject the other meant seeing both our beginnings and our endings simultaneously, in a cruel zen exercise of the heart. Loving both kept the heart open to pain from the hurt one. and hurt from the hostile one. To keep the love, we had to stay and tolerate the pain; it made us stronger--able to risk greater joy. As we struggled to embrace uncertainty, we learned gratitude for what we had, and made fast our commitments. Runaway emotions took control out of our hands, taught us the power of fate. What a teacher is three for the fatalities of the heart.
95
