Eve Stern grew up in Washington, DC, and Mexico.  She left behind a Harvard degree, a Mellon Fellowship, a husband, one dog and ten cats and a really nice house — to become an outlaw performance poet with one cat, two tattoos, a pierced nose and a pretty great apartment.  She only regrets her decisions in the middle of panic attacks.  She was a member of the 1997 Boston Team at the National Poetry Slam, and was the coach of Team Ozarks in 1998 and 1999.  Eve has had featured readings throughout the country, inhabiting her outrage on stage, radio, television and, of course, the page.  Her first chapbook, Whenever Wonder Knocks, was published in May of 1997.  Her second, Passport Photos, came out in 1998.

Eve has been published in The Boston Poet, The Cape Poet, Poetry@The Mining Company, Forbidden Panda, Map of Austin Poetry, Ozarks Poets and Writers, Portable Plateau, Arula Records, Poetry Umbrella, Omnivore and Clean Sheets.  She can be heard on An Out of Body Experience, an anthology CD of Boston women poets.

Her favorite poet is still John Milton — go figure: some things never change.
 

Samples of the poet’s work (including an audio):

FISHWIFE
for Judy the bartender
and every other woman who ever swam away

I was married to the flounder for four years,
        I joined my soul to the sole for two,
                and then
                         I split –
                in search of thicker flesh –
Oh, but I wanted that swordfish but bad,
        big brute with that great nose,
                but he knifed away in the surf.
I heard he got caught off the Bahamas, by a tourist,
        had his picture taken on the dock,
                drunken blurry snapshot's the last we'll ever see of him.

I've seen nets the size of Africa
        and gotten loved ones out.
I've seen lures as big as jewels
        and warned my kids against them.
I've dug pearls from the bellies of my best friends
        and given them as gifts.
I've stood, singing siren songs to my sons
        but they never come back to me.
(I get a postcard now and then from
        the hermit crab I used to drink with in the old days,
                but I don't miss him much,
                        cranky old nomad,
                                never content to stay in one place,
                                        always looking to expand his business.)

As a girl I had dreamt of nothing but
        blue,
                blue,
                        midnight blue:
As a girl I had dreamt of going into

outer space but
        there were no women allowed in capsules.
Instead of going above in search of stars,
        I went below,
                and found starfish,
who could touch me in five places at once,
        and the octopus who held me all night long
                in her eight strong arms,
                        shooting black ink at the sight of my breasts.

My heart was home; I left the soil behind.

One night, when I was homesick, a school of blue tang
dressed me with their bodies,
        changing shades to fit my shape
                until we waltzed among the coral
                        and I became blue velvet.

So now
I am my dream come true:
blue,
yes,
blue,
yes:
 I have become Ultramarine!

        and yes,
my human fingers do get pruned,
        and yes,
my hair crackles and bleeds salt,
        but I have learned to match my need for breath with
                                                                                       turtles.
I midwife the birth of tiny dolphins
        and I suckle them,
I grasp the backs of flying fish
        and move;
I slip my toes into the gills of mantas
                when they let me –
                        and they let me –

I sip plankton out of nautilus
        and stand on my head with the cleaner fish,
                snacking on the backs of sharks,
                        smooth as suede,
                                who watch me out of scarab eyes.
 

 
  TERZA RIMA FOR THE RAMROD BOYS
 

Every one of these bodies is not mine:
like so many other every
thing (houses, windows, husbands,

wagons, careers, childhoods) I walk
around the bar carefully protecting
them from what I am in fact: not
them. I wear what they wear,

for the sake of blending: white undershirt,
blue jeans, workboots in case I can be
mistaken for a boy from the back.

My love is what defines me here: my admiration
of their adoration of themselves is
what I plug into like a socket, though never

(I am careful) to drain energy. I am not
vampire, have outgrown college faghag days, when
somehow they seemed to love each other more

than any of us hets could. What I
see I love, and what is not apparent: yes,
I love the tangle of torsos, miles and

miles of rattlesnake beads on undulating
bellies, the sheen that rises clean as
Michael Jordan’s sweat, five minutes

into the game. Here in the River
Jordan, I am deep enough now to
look for smaller fineries, and savor

how the basic dance step’s never changed
over the years, how these are the white
boys with rhythm for days, but it’s basic,

I could still be in college but I’m not: now
there are the little things I didn’t see
before, that weren’t there: the Timberlands,

paired by laces, hung over ceiling pipes,
to commemorate the lovely trees,
felled by the war; the two men whose

eyes never stray from each other’s
while they flirt and slow-dance like
prom dates and manage to ignore the

oxygen tank hooked up to one of
them: they are looking into each
other’s eyes, they are looking into each

other’s lives, they are looking they are
looking: I am looking at them not
looking at anything but each other,

oxygen becomes just a chaperone, death
the one behind their backs and they
are saying with all their will: you

are  my prom date, we are
forever, this is  the moment,
baby: this is the living what.

MORE THAN MILK

Something more than milk was exchanged in this dark room.
You held me to your breast, not knowing I'd be the last;
There was one after me, who died in the womb
that shredded like newsprint after five knives of Caesar.
My father stood over your shoulder and took a photo of us,

late at night, the white strap of your nursing bra as clean as my
lavender legs draped,
         like raw veal sausages,
                         over your tan arm.

Your hair is swept up so beautifully
        from your neck,
                exposing your nape;
                        your hair
all pinned up in this late-night photo-session:
Even nursing me, you didn't forget to be pretty,
Even in his boxer shorts and undershirt my father did not
miss the red highlights in your hair
with his expensive flashbulb.

My face is so placid and full it's either
extremely dumb or supremely intelligent;
I don't know if I'm Socrates in agony or the pig in bliss.
I suspect I was the latter –
I am four months old in this
late-summer
         late-night
                 snap-shot,
twenty  whole  long  months  away
from the danger of my father's
probing hands and prick –
Nothing has passed into my body but your milk;
not even formula or cereal,
much less meat.

I am tongue and mouth,
I am pink and skin,
I am sleep and safe.

I am yours and his,
                                   You are mine and his,
                                                                         He is mine and yours;

We are all saying:
Oh yes, this counts for a lot,
this moment is peace and
that doesn't last long.

When I was old enough for winter,
You used to put on your sealskin coat to nurse me –
imagine now, how awful
and endangered,
but it was all you craved:
naked skins,
yours  and
          mine  and
                   seals  and
                            nothing else but milk.

I am so grateful:    these warmths flowed
in through my mouth and
closed eyelids and pores, and
it's how I learned to love as freely as I do,

when things are not complicated but liquid,
nothing must be chewed before swallowing:
everything can be accepted just as it is.

Lightning and thunder boomed in
so many other moments;
the jaggedness of your manic electric current
coursing, like a yellow fracture
between sky and earth and
the cacaphony that followed –

But not here.

You and he murmured softly here
As you sat, propped against pillows in the dark,
cupped my precious body against yours and,
for once

mommy
thank you for once
you let me have what I wanted
until I was done.

For booking information, write to:

333 Concord Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02138

Or email:  bluetang@earthlink.net

Back to the OpenMike Poetry homepage