Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
Biographic Data
| ID | 951253 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lyrae |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Clief-Stefanon |
| SIGNATURE | VAN CLIEF-STEFANON L |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Writing Love
Writing LoveInto a New Correspondence with Ourselves Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon Callaloo © 2012 [End Page 582] I live where it’s grey: Ithaca, NY, “a place full of winters.” Each year—is it always in fall?—I travel to some settled upon black lit space to confer with black people whose minds and bodies I love. I travel with my heart, who calls herself Dagmawi and walks on legs…
Blessed Assurance
Blessed Assurance Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (bio) “This is my story.” When I heard a man’s voice on the line I said, “My name is Whitt Roundtree. Do you know who I am?” And he answered, “Yes.” I was at that time twenty-four years old. I was a student, a writer. I was engaged to be married. I was the daughter of a widowed woman who’d wed herself to the church; who’d drenched her tongue in Jesus; who spoke little else. She had called me days earlier…
Absorption
Absorption Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (bio) The hyena’s thick neck, the terror— not the jaws, not even the crushing grin: a perversion: the teeth of such clowning. I don’t want to see it take a strip of meat from that man’s mouth with its mouth as gently as a lover might but you are intrigued by the prospect of that kiss. You cover my mouth when I try to tell you how the priest at Bet Giyorgis blessed me: he placed a pinch of red dirt on my tongue …
Bet Giyorgis
Bet Giyorgis Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (bio) First, forgive the myth. A pink-skinned iteration less egregious against this monolith you want to say. Forgive yourself the error of wanting to reverse yourself, to say the body has no bearing on this rock as though this cross were carved from soap. Your man? He wants to wash not just your mouth out but your memory with it, your un-forgiveness unforgiveable— Andromeda. He has imagined your dragon a cro…
Axum
Reclining Nude, c. 1977, Romare Bearden
Reclining Nude, c. 1977, Romare Bearden Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (bio) Not turquoise: sea-blue, lithe blessing curved heavy-lipped to tomb, to teach how shelter devastates; our bed swallowed, the last memory in the antique wood spent, day spent sweat-drowned; not gorges, Lucifer Falls carved as though with a ruler, straight-edged, from the rock: —bracketed: the landscape opens: reveals a mouth wide enough to walk through penetrable as] the body […
Reclining Nude, c. 1977, Romare Bearden
Reclining Nude, C. 1977, Romare Bearden Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon You want to say she is peach-ripe, fragrant, Dark fruit sweetening around a hard, grooved seed. Say this: she is you—the tan parchment beneath her Florida sand as all things bring you Back there, to land your mother's love threatened Out of you, you out of it—you, a beached thing, Just made, and open for the sun. You, a black man's creation, His simplest collage, a woman. There come…
Poetry
Red Whorehouse Sofa
Callaloo - Volume 22, Number 4, Fall 1999
No prominent works on this page.
Red Whorehouse Sofa
Callaloo - Volume 22, Number 4, Fall 1999
Poetry
Reclining Nude, c. 1977, Romare Bearden
Reclining Nude, C. 1977, Romare Bearden Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon You want to say she is peach-ripe, fragrant, Dark fruit sweetening around a hard, grooved seed. Say this: she is you—the tan parchment beneath her Florida sand as all things bring you Back there, to land your mother's love threatened Out of you, you out of it—you, a beached thing, Just made, and open for the sun. You, a black man's creation, His simplest collage, a woman. There come…
Reclining Nude, c. 1977, Romare Bearden
Reclining Nude, c. 1977, Romare Bearden Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (bio) Not turquoise: sea-blue, lithe blessing curved heavy-lipped to tomb, to teach how shelter devastates; our bed swallowed, the last memory in the antique wood spent, day spent sweat-drowned; not gorges, Lucifer Falls carved as though with a ruler, straight-edged, from the rock: —bracketed: the landscape opens: reveals a mouth wide enough to walk through penetrable as] the body […
Absorption
Absorption Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (bio) The hyena’s thick neck, the terror— not the jaws, not even the crushing grin: a perversion: the teeth of such clowning. I don’t want to see it take a strip of meat from that man’s mouth with its mouth as gently as a lover might but you are intrigued by the prospect of that kiss. You cover my mouth when I try to tell you how the priest at Bet Giyorgis blessed me: he placed a pinch of red dirt on my tongue …
Bet Giyorgis
Bet Giyorgis Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (bio) First, forgive the myth. A pink-skinned iteration less egregious against this monolith you want to say. Forgive yourself the error of wanting to reverse yourself, to say the body has no bearing on this rock as though this cross were carved from soap. Your man? He wants to wash not just your mouth out but your memory with it, your un-forgiveness unforgiveable— Andromeda. He has imagined your dragon a cro…
Axum
Writing Love
Writing LoveInto a New Correspondence with Ourselves Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon Callaloo © 2012 [End Page 582] I live where it’s grey: Ithaca, NY, “a place full of winters.” Each year—is it always in fall?—I travel to some settled upon black lit space to confer with black people whose minds and bodies I love. I travel with my heart, who calls herself Dagmawi and walks on legs…
Blessed Assurance
Blessed Assurance Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (bio) “This is my story.” When I heard a man’s voice on the line I said, “My name is Whitt Roundtree. Do you know who I am?” And he answered, “Yes.” I was at that time twenty-four years old. I was a student, a writer. I was engaged to be married. I was the daughter of a widowed woman who’d wed herself to the church; who’d drenched her tongue in Jesus; who spoke little else. She had called me days earlier…
Art (7 works) · Art history (6 works) · Literature (5 works) · History (4 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Poetry (3 works) · Latin American and Latino Studies (2 works) · Visual arts (2 works) · African history and culture analysis (1 work) · Anatomy (1 work)