The woman who wouldn’t shake hands

Chocolate Waters’s house music is rhythmic syntax and sassily whimsical word play that disarms, and then shifts down into impassioned essence. She shares with Billie Holiday a ‘smoldering, smoky quality’ and a finely tuned sense of timing, sometimes holding onto a single word or phrase until it becomes pure emotion. These poems are of the self yet selfless. Revelatory, lucid, luscious and laugh out loud funny but so psychologically astute. STEPHANIE DICKINSON, Award-winning Poet and Author of HALF GIRL and ROAD OF FIVE CHURCHES; Chocolate Waters writes in your mirror. Be prepared to gasp out loud in recognition. SHELLY ROBERTS, Columnist and Author of ROBERTS’ RULES OF LESBIAN LIVING; Live a raw and sensuous life. Suffer it with wisdom, wit and vodka. Then using elegance, restraint and bite, craft it all into hilarious, tender, brutal, outrageous poetry. That’s the art of Chocolate. Each of us has either loved a Woman Who Wouldn’t Shake Hands, or been one. Read these poems! LYNN JERICHO, Writer, Counselor, Creator of the Inner Year (www.LynnJericho.com)