My friend Jade A. Waters is no stranger to my blog, that is because she always raises the bar and inspires me…read and listen below! Jade is now an audiobook narrator! My first dip into the audio world was from Rose Caraway, who has a new blog post telling you about Jade’s journey to becoming a narrator. you can read that here.
Below Jade has given us her poems and samples of her narrating them! Pssst, I like to listen, and I bet you will too!
Hi everyone! I’m thrilled to be back visiting the lovely F. Leonora Solomon, who has always been such a dear heart and supporter of my poetry. That’s why I’m ecstatic she let me swing by today to share my latest poetry news: that it’s gone into the audio world!
Let me start at the beginning, with the A to Z Blogging Challenge that happens every April. For those of you who have never heard of it, the challenge is one in which participants write a blog post each day for the month that corresponds to the letter of the day—and in my case, I’d decided not only that I needed to do something in my poetry practice, but that I needed to connect each lettered poem through a full story in verse.
What came of this was A Love Affair, From A to Z, a bittersweet love story that arced through the alphabet. I posted it each day on my poetry site in episodic form, but later, I wanted to give this narrative in verse more life—as in, I wanted to breathe more life into it, and the best way I saw to do that was to jump on narrating it!
The experience was fun, challenging, liberating, and new…and I loved every second of it. And now, I’m delighted to share a sample of the story in verse here on Leonora’s blog! The clip you’ll hear below is a sample of the story from B to C…but as the story starts with A, you’ll want to read along with the start of the poem to get your bearings.
Here’s the beginning of A Love Affair, From A to Z, with audio:
A Love Affair, From A To Z
Written and Narrated by Jade A. Waters
Always
“Always,”
He tells her,
“Always I will be here, love you, hold you close”
The words are a melody in her ear
The antidote to all she’s known,
The graze of his fingers over her lips
The sweetest touch
She’s been waiting for.
“Always,” she whispers back,
Her heart perched on the edge,
Waiting for him to grasp it
To clutch it close,
To honor it as deeply
As the two of them fall
Into the spell that’s lingered between them
All these hours over drinks,
All these nights they’ve been pretending
All these years they’ve been waiting,
Waiting for this.
A Love Affair, From A to Z – Sample
Beautiful
Beautiful is how she sees it
How she’s known this, him
The silent love they’ve shared
Is the perfect bar crawl
On the longest evening
Repeated, over and over again.
The laugh that echoes between them
Is the song for all they have yet to say,
So when they begin to crash together
To melt, colliding
Into this love like they’d always known they would,
His lips on hers are honey
His breath in her ear like a rainstorm
Prickling her skin, teasing her lashes
Wrapping her up in the sanctity of what they will be.
His palms slip along the flesh of her back
Her neck, her hips, her thighs
And she is naked now, finally, for him.
Cascading
Cascading
She calls it—
Like the waterfall of love they’ve tried to hold back
With the world’s strongest dam is now
Tumbling, rippling, rolling,
A surge of lust and waves
Capturing them, sweeping them away
Beneath the fiercest moonlight she’s ever seen.
It’s brighter than every moonlight that’s ever shined above them
Waiting for this moment
Like they have all these years.
It’s so different from what they’d expected—
“Our first time wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he says,
And she smiles at the love, at the dreams he’s had as crystal clear as she has
When they slip closer together,
Leather scraping her knees in the back seat of his car
While they kiss so deep
Bodies pressed
Finding each other, again
Finally
Tonight.
*
I loved narrating this story, so I hope you enjoyed hearing it, too. Thanks for reading and listening!
And a special thanks to F. for always encouraging my poetry writing, and for having me over to visit!
XX,
Jade
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About Jade:
Jade A. Waters is a fiction writer, poetess, and voice over artist in California. She is the author and narrator of A Love Affair, From A to Z, and the author of the Lessons In Control trilogy. Her short erotic fiction and poetry has been featured in publications by Cleis Press, Coming Together, Fuse Literary, Cosmopolitan UK, and Stupid Fish Productions, including Best Women’s Erotica of the Year (Vol. 1), Best Erotic Romance of the Year, and Best Women’s Erotica 2014. Her stories have also been narrated on The Kiss Me Quick’s Erotica Podcast. Find out more about Jade on her website at http://jadeawaters.com, or visit her on Twitter and Amazon.