sleeping with houdini
2007, BOA Editions
The Portable Pussy
an excerpt from Sleeping with Houdini
Wherever I go, I carry a pussy with me. How, you might ask, but I and the pussy are not one and the same being, so carry it I must. Asleep or awake, depending on who else is in the room, the pussy talks. Quietly of course, so as not to attract attention or disturb the peace. And honestly, much too honestly, really. I am so relieved when those who hear it pretend not to. Or perhaps they imagine they are only hearing things. On rare occasions the pussy gets carried away. Then it sings off key or starts composing poetry. Of course, most don’t suspect (or so I hope) that it’s the pussy and not I who sing, or how difficult it is to carry a pussy everywhere I go, much less listen to the running commentary when all I wish is silence. A little relief.
I even sought medical advice, but the doctors insist the pussy is all in the mind. I need only stop thinking about it, and...
“‘Sleeping with Houdini’ is an outrageous book, a scandalous book, a beautiful book, a book that holds too much trouble and invention to be blurbed. It’s the kind of book that might be banned in a society that read more poetry. I’m not being funny. In large part, our lives are propped up by our own inattentiveness. In this collection, Nin Andrews takes a long, delirious look at intimacy and family and the quiet, scrambling, trying-to-stay-afloat self. A lesser magician might easily have drowned in the depths of such material, but not here.”
Read a review of Sleeping with Houdni from Reading Women here.