Lightning Strikes Twice

by Mari Selby, Jennet Inglis (Illustrator)

These poems are dedicated with all my love to Mother Earth - Gaia. May these poems inspire you to live more wildly, love more deeply, and find an authentic voice to express your unique and awesome selves. I am an ambitious crone, an experienced entrepreneur, cancer survivor and a fierce spiritual warrior. Earthquakes, thunder storms, morning fog, buttercups, and snow angels spark a state of wonder in my heart. Daily I strive to walk the line between laughter and tears, and no hope and no fear. That line I describe as fierce grace.

84 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2013

Reviews

[Lee Gooden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lightning Strikes Twice
Written by Mari Selby
Illustrated by Jennet Inglis

"Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship."
-Susan Sontag

Some people are by nature or nurture or both, magically more than just the sum of their parts. Mari Selby fits in this category. The poetry in her new book Lighting Strikes Twice is demonstrative of Selby as a grand and whole human being more than the incremental things, (such as being a feminist, lesbian, two time cancer survivor, spiritual healer, publisher, entrepreneur, and poet) that made and continue to be instrumental in making her who she is. The following lines from her poem Faster Than Mint Julep best illustrates this:

Now grey sparks shoots through my curly hair and
there’s a red zipper down my middle where my female organs
used to be, while recovering from cancer and my addictions,
all my sharp edges exposed, slowly licked clean
by God’s rough tongue..

Lyrically bewitching, Lighting Strikes Twice is an electrical poignant unforgiving and unstoppable storm. Its power hits hard, invoking instant discordant emotionality. Lovers of strong feminist humane poetry will devour Selby’s work, finding rich nourishment in lines like the following from her poem We are All Stars:

We are all stars reaching for a birthright
More than penises, more
than clitorises…
…we have faces on our very human bodies

As shown in the lines from the poems above, Selby doesn’t hold anything back. Nothing is too personal. She shares her uncensored pink and bloody flesh, bares her raw beating heart and exposes her naked pulsating gray matter. Her lines and stanzas are fulminating sword thrusts, hurricanes that blow readers across the page, speeding to the end of the book.
If read a second time, soon after the initial reading, like the book’s title, lighting strikes again. This time, the words are subtle and assured. The book’s weather contains humor and wordplay that can be identifiable and comprehended by people from every socio-political-economic background. Touching everyone, it circumvents prejudice and hatred and persists on being heard and digested. It builds new neural pathways and sets off the quaking and rumblings of almost forgotten and forsaken fault lines lines beneath those of us with thin crusts and hard heads. Taking root, her poems germinate, flower and blossom, perpetuating seeds of spiritual transcendence and empathic clarity. Selby makes us complicit in the belief of different kinds of love. Her poems sweep through our minds and hearts like a slow balmy healing breeze. The following lines from her poem Hot Red Pepper Overalls best illustrates this:

Today when I saw your sweet heartbeat, I
heard the song of your valves and chambers
and knew this as
music full of love and
hope for me

Lighting Strikes Twice is significant addition in the lexicon of twenty-first century Feminist Poetry. Mari Selby is a vital poet to the canon of American Poetry and Feminist Literature.


--Lee Gooden 10/21/2015