Articles by Beth Cortez-Neavel
Beth Cortez-Neavel is a freelance multimedia journalist living in Austin, Texas. She enjoys cooking, writing, sarcasm, good art and video games set on "easy." She writes empowered erotic poetry and can bee seen around austin photographing different events for pleasure and for pay. She is currently working towards her Masters degree at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of Texas.
Living Unitarian Universalist
by Beth Cortez-Neavel
This is how it begins, every time: whether I am at a potluck, a club, a bar, or with extended family. Someone ultimately asks me “So, what do you do?” I …
Sex Like Space
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
I am floating in a constant orgasm
I am come, and
I am going insane.
I am on the edge of every seat and
am the hand shifting every throttle and
am full speed ahead and
I …
To Have and To Hold
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
I want to be there
in the past
to hold your hand
like you have held mine, father.
I want to be there that day
to tell you
you will not be like him
you will …
7 a.m.
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
Cities abiotic
concrete-filtered sunlight hitting traffic jams through
sky scrapers’ grids
Barely a sidewalk without footprints left
in chewed- up
discarded
gum
Smells of tar and sewer steam
rise
to meet my
eyes
It is so material -
I can taste it;
Like my coffee …
In the night moon’s glow
the corners of the world are tucked in
and folded down
and the stars vainly whisper
their secrets lost in street-lamp invitations:
As he swept the dead leaves into a pile by the chain-link fence separating his house from mine the fall leaves continued to spiral down around him. He didn’t look up. He didn’t stop. He didn’t even acknowledge that they were ceaselessly dropping from the trees. He just kept sweeping in slow, small strokes.
I Have Still to Wash My Sheets
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
I jump at the chance to be touched
now.
I need that physical
that
hateful
blind penetration
so completely devoid.
I ache:
my bed has that smell
lingering of you.
a cadenza that flits
from petal
to pedal
tiptoeing on half steps of air
whole
whole
half
whole
whole
whole
half.
And you bent your neck down and hunched your shoulders your thin-soled cheap shoes breaking at the ice left in puddles on the dirty caking tar
(Kevlar in the inner pad: two layers woven
and two needle-punched –
but I do not really know what that means
because you told me through a fading
connection – but I know, at the least, that they will stop the blade)
They are falling like onion rings and cheeseburgers. They are falling like oatmeal and orange juice. They are falling like roti and vindaloo. Like eggrolls and hot and sour soup. They are falling in love like chocolate-ice-cream-and-banana-split sundaes. They are falling like waterfalls and paint thinner, like apples and appaloosas.
The night is warm and in this city you can see the stars from the broken sidewalks and rutted tar. I stand on my wooden porch, the dirty gray paint flaky underfoot as my feet shift of their own accord; I cannot stand still. Every hair stands on end in its follicle. The slightest movement of a leaf on the ground next to me causes me to startle, intensely amazed at the ability for the breeze to pick it up and move it a half-centimeter after spiraling through the thick, end-of-summer night air as if it were nothing.
Words on the Page
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
I am starry-eyed little pieces of joy
exploding in your atmosphere
I am happy tiny lovebugs
crawling tickling along your seams
Exploding through your atmosphere
I am b-b-b-breathless sleeping next to
songs floating through the clear …
Real All of the Sudden
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
(For Allison James, Austin Chaffin, Sol Richey, and Alex Red)
It was just real all of the sudden, Alison said. I couldn’t
handle it. I
had to run upstairs and scream …
It Is Not That Makes Me A Woman
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
It is not the curve
of my breast as it
hangs low
nipples pointing down
with gravity
beneath my blouse
that makes me a woman.
It is not
the youth of my hips
concealing the
Soft
inner …
Staples
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
She had too many staples, she decided.
They just sat there on her cluttered desk
in her tiny apartment
in their little blue box
taking up space.
“Fuck,” he said,
sitting desperate in his spacious flat downtown
holding his final …
I’d Rather Be Showering.
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
Seriously.
I just left the shower
to say
I love my pussy.
And that
all I wanted to do was take
one
slow
shower.
Cleanse my body.
My thoughts.
My soul.
But
all I did
was stick my hand in the fast
hot jets,
draw …
It’s Almost Time for Dinner
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
I
Sometimes
you can sit in a graying hanging-basket swing (so weathered by the years on St. Lawrence),
on an island with pine trees
so dense and
humming birds
so small and fast …
Slippery
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
and I could not sleep
all I could think about
was how you told me you
wanted me to spread them
and how you liked that I got so juicy.
and I opened the window
letting the cool October …
stars
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
We were what the stars are made of,
again, and
you peered into my constellations,
and
you were my galaxy.
SuperGiants luminous,
As big as the Milky Way.
We are
fueled by nuclear fusion
converting hydrogen
into helium.
The hotter you get,
The brighter I …
And It Was Strange
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
but just how it was,that time: seeing my own face projected back to me Delay Delay Touch your nose. Okay, touch your nos– pullyourhair Now Take off your shirt Touch …
You, I
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
What
makes me come and
what makes
me stay
and.
I like
my body
when it is with your
body
and.
You want
and. I want
and we wanted
and the books
were all
she could almost bear
annexes of books
and Boston spring summers
with you t e a …
©