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Lee Kottner

New York, NY

I'm a writer, agitator, educator, editor, and book artist living in Brooklyn.

Interests: Art, Marine Biology, Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology, Literature, Writing, Politics, Buddhism, Non-Violence, History, Human Rights, Feminism, Science Fiction, Artist's Books, Poetry, Education, Travel, Food, New York City, Labor History, Social Justice

Recent Activity

Plague Poems #24

And Then As if things weren’t bad enough already with us jobless and hungry, threat of ruin hanging over our heads while our Great Leader does nothing, locked in together like felons in a national jail serving an interminable sentence for nothing more than being vulnerable, the damn cops killed... Continue reading

Posted Jun 9, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #23

Rising Like the sourdough on our pandemic counters fed and nurtured, punched down, cast off and culled, rage is a heady medium. Stir in incipient poverty, hunger and homelessness with the fear of a weaponized strangling disease and grief for the 100,000 and more it has already been allowed to... Continue reading

Posted May 30, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #22

I'm in Facebook jail today for insulting white people, even though I am one and we are fucking stupid, so this is only going up here today. We'll see if it gets cross posted. [Edit: And the answer is ... Nope. Because I am offensive to some people. Poor little... Continue reading

Posted May 28, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #21

Ode I see it through a scrim now the blue sky, the trees in leaf, and realize again that seeing is not simply looking. When you haven’t been outside more than twice in 73 days except to walk to the trash cans, Outside becomes mythical, mystical, a radically new place... Continue reading

Posted May 21, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #20

Headspace ‒Day 78. Hat tip to Allyson Beatrice for her brutal honesty and a line too well-phrased to pass up. How are you? No, really— How are you? A throwaway greeting, a social nicety, grease in the community wheel. Fine, fine. I’m great. I’m good. I’m okay. I’m hanging in... Continue reading

Posted May 17, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #19

\ Your Gun Your gun will not change the necessity of masks and gloves, or make anyone want to stand closer to you again, or cut your hair, or buy you a drink at the bar, or serve you a meal in a restaurant, or bag your groceries in any... Continue reading

Posted May 14, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #18

Abyss We used to go for months— sometimes years —without seeing each other, without speaking, even, picking right up where we left off over dinner and drinks when one of us flew into town. These are the best friendships, we insisted, then, the strongest, when you’re not in each others’... Continue reading

Posted May 13, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #17

Classified While we are counting and grieving the lives we have lost— each someone loved, each life valuable, so many unnecessarily gone, unable to even say goodbye before death, to hold funerals, to bury them, instead filing them away in coffins in refrigerated trucks against the time, if ever, when... Continue reading

Posted May 12, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #16

R.I.P. Gem Spa. The layout will play merry hell with my linebreaks in the first couple of stanzas. Holler if you want to see how it really looks on the page. Asteroid, After Here when I arrived 34 years ago at the corner of St. Marks and Second— the walk... Continue reading

Posted May 10, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #15

It's Friday, and Tiki Bar will be open later. PM me if you want an invite. Happy Hour Every Friday they flash like fireflies onto my screen: Boop! A new face, caught unaware and pleading (please work please work please work) before the connection goes live to four time zones... Continue reading

Posted May 8, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #14

Disillusionment Not that kind, where everything you thought was good is revealed as vile and evil. Well, not exactly. More like the scales falling from our eyes, the idea that we will simply Go Back To The Way It Was When This Is Over, slowly dissolving like hoarfrost on a... Continue reading

Posted May 6, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #13

On the heels of the realization that T-Rump is trying to kill us because he knows he can't get re-elected now, this seemed appropriate: Curse April 28, 2020, 3:55 p.m. EDT: After three months, the United States hits 1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, one-third of the world’s total. By... Continue reading

Posted May 5, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #12

Lucky Lucky I moved before this happened, so I’m not cooped up in a run-down, over-subdivided, low-ceilinged fourth floor walkup with my sullen roommate’s two cats shitting everywhere, and a stifling eight by ten room for work and privacy to share with a fractious calico of my own. Lucky my... Continue reading

Posted May 4, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #11

Psychosomatic All it takes is going out to do the laundry and some fool there, unmasked and ungloved, folding his clothes on the table, or my super, cheerful and oblivious of physical distancing starting to fix the dryer right next to the one I’m unloading while my back is turned—... Continue reading

Posted May 3, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #10

Conspiracy Theory For Laura McCormick How quickly we are usurped. A few weeks in our own zoo banging on the cages, occasionally escaping to spread germs and havoc —and look! Not just squirrels and rats and foxes and raccoons and coyotes and bunnies and bears and ducks and geese who... Continue reading

Posted May 2, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #9

Cassandra Sometimes, knowledge is a comfort, sometimes, a weapon. Sometimes it brings its own tortures in reminders of lessons unlearned, whether you are oracle or prophetess, historian or social scientist. You see the previous, familiar patterns, the churning and the change but not the outcome. Knowing how contagion and immunity... Continue reading

Posted May 1, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #8

Cranky this morning after yesterday's encounters. So there's this: Cover Up Fashion statement or cosplay for survival? All the cool kids are doing it. The DIYers are making their own of every style, from elastic ear-looped to tie-in-back, to the full out Plague Doctor like the Venetian Carnival in steampunk... Continue reading

Posted Apr 30, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #7

I've been on a tear and wasn't sure what to post today, but I see the anti-lockdown assholes are at it again, so here's this: Life, Liberty For Dr. Lorna Breen (1971-2020), who survived COVID, but not treating it in the New York-Presbyterian emergency room in northern Manhattan. Sunny today... Continue reading

Posted Apr 29, 2020 at Dowsing

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You're welcome! Thanks for commenting! Stay safe!

Commented Apr 28, 2020 on Plague Poems #4 at Dowsing

Plague Poems #6

Hunted Every morning I wake to the dawn ruckus of birds, and the cat beside me, her tail lashing in the desire to be outside and kill. But this morning I wake late and the cat is off stalking water bugs beneath the sink instead, the sky is full daylight... Continue reading

Posted Apr 28, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #5

Briefing “And you don’t have the right, frankly, to take … people who are literally putting their lives on the line and be cavalier or reckless with them.” ‒New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, April 25, 2020. And if not for yourself and your family then for your neighbor’s kid... Continue reading

Posted Apr 26, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #4

Day 56 No one is chasing us through bombed streets or trying to systematically hunt us down and murder us except for this virus like a mine bobbing in the droplets of our own spit, or a mace that cudgels the careless and arrogant, which we can outwit by holing... Continue reading

Posted Apr 25, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #3

Black Horses I hear them in the night when the flesh is weakest, somewhere at a distance, our little crossroads of small houses and apartments hardly taller mostly spared until today. This one, brazen, stopped right outside, silently painting my walls red/white/red/white under the storm-grey skies, the driver and partner... Continue reading

Posted Apr 22, 2020 at Dowsing

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Plague Poems #2

Psalm The day before Easter. Astarte’s season, before the branches are so heavy with leaves that there is no sunlight below them, only a dappled, cool shadow, and skies are bluer and wisped with high frivolous clouds limned in spring sunlight. My neighbor, who is a poet in Polish and... Continue reading

Posted Apr 12, 2020 at Dowsing

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Thanks, folks. It's nice to know all those years of biology didn't go to waste and are doing a good deed for someone.

Commented Apr 9, 2020 on Quarantine Thoughts, Part 2: Science Will Save Our Asses at Dowsing

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