a slice from the cake made of air - Softcover

"Speaking from 'where the lasso lashing/ cuts the fig leaf, ' Lillian-Yvonne Bertram considers flesh, considers life, considers loving, considers the cock, and considers 'the scissoring scheme.' She asks 'of what erase/ do I remind myself.' She asks 'is heaven colored.' She asks 'is heaven without being able.' And Bertram asks without the question mark--because she doesn't need, or want, or anticipate, or believe in any answer we might give: she lives, brilliantly, with whole heart, whole mind, and whole body, in the contradictions. In the complexity. In the neverending paradox of a life. She shows us, let's say, that Illusion is the Medium Which Allows Emptiness to Become Something Special, and I love this book beyond loving."
--Sarah Vap

a slice from the cake made of air processes the physical and mental trauma of abortion coupled with the desires for sexual and emotional love against a backdrop of contemporary culture—with all the sexualization that comes with race, gender, and landscape. From front to back the book is wound through with a single poem whose language is permuted, translated, and retranslated (from English to English) as it cycles around abortion, both asking “what artifact / do I resemble” and stating “small love / small / you failed it / in person.” The poems directly confront the sexual self (“This isn’t a real orgasm, a real patellar fatigue”) and take up the thesis abstract as a malleable form for interrogating the inevitable intersections and overlaps of brains and bodies. Sexy and volatile, a slice from the cake made of air winds over and through itself, with no conclusions or solutions for the mess of living in the world.