JP Howard aka Juliet P. Howard is a poet, lawyer, Cave Canem fellow and native New Yorker. She was selected as a Lambda Literary Foundation 2011 Emerging LGBT Voices Fellow, as well as a 2011 Cave Canem Fellow-in-Residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). JP was a finalist in the Astraea Lesbian Writer’s Fund 2009-2010 poetry category and recipient of a Soul Mountain Retreat writing residency in 2010. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Talking Writing, Muzzle Magazine, Connotation Press, TORCH, Queer Convention: A Chapbook of Fierce, Cave Canem Anthology XII: Poems 2008-2009, Cave Canem XI 2007 Anthology, The Portable Lower East Side (Queer City), Promethean Literary Journal and Poetry in Performance. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The City College of New York, as well as a BA from Barnard College and a JD from Brooklyn Law School. She co-founded Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon and Blog, a forum offering women writers at all levels a venue to come together in a positive and critically supportive space. http://womenwritersinbloompoetrysalon.blogspot.com/

 

Phantom Lover

I dreamt you were the final peace of us

That place where memory taunts goodbye

Now, you will stop haunting my nights           

Singeing my dreams with your scent

Pushing my voice into

Pillow swallowing

Me whole while I

Remember

Your skin’s

Touch.

 

Sexy Self-Portrait

See

Mirror

See sexy

See reflection

Rub hands on full hips

While licking your own lips

Admire cocoa butter

Curve of ass while spanking yourself

Shhhh….ain’t nobody looking while you

Let fingers search thighs nipples find softness

 

Simmering skin seeks touch of rising heat

See steamy reflection kiss smooth skin

Be gentle be rough dim the lights

Burn rose scented candles drip

Hot wax on secret spots

Inhale self sexy

Scent of rose skin

Trace where next

Lover

Melts

 

 

Praise Poem for Baby Girl

 

Baby girl praise your stick thin, bony, knock kneed spitfire self.

Praise the Buster Brown black patent leather Mary Janes,

and your saccharine dagger smile.

Praise you child for holding me together, when I should have split in two.

 

Baby girl praise your pink bows kissing braided plaits,

your innocence dangled by ears.

Praise peach colored ruffles that curled round your throat,

and the memories waiting to be uncovered.

 

Baby girl praise all the words you held in, folded under skin,

and let crawl into crevices.

Praise your soft voice, let your whispers scream:

“No the cat don’t got my tongue!”

 

Baby girl praise the turquoise daisy dotted dress

and the secrets buried deep.

Praise your tiny little body for keeping us afloat,

and praise the words you carved under my tongue.