Writer, Explorer, Perpetual Student
Today I’m reading and re-reading ekphrastic poems by Sara Biggs Chaney at The Boiler. They’re based on the photographs of Katerina Plotnikova, who uses live animals and striking color in her photographs — they’re very evocative. So, too, are Sara’s poems.
From “II. Brown Bear“:
I smell my death on your belly
and I do not flinch.Your face a cannon
on the hinge of my neck
I’ve got six (6) (?!?) poems appearing in the summer issue of Menacing Hedge, each of which includes a reading in my dulcet voice (which has previously been praised for “the purity of its timbre,” FYI):
Repetitive Motion Injuries
Rape Poem #3
The Persistent Appeal of Synchronized Drowning
The Secret Life of a Secret Collector
Explanations for Silence
Butcher’s Goodbye
An excerpt from “Repetitive Motion Injuries”:
I have the tissue paper wrists of a child,
barely wider than the blue thread stitching
through them, just thick enough to tingle life
into these lined hands. He held themboth in one hand behind me.
Please note “Repetitive Motion Injuries” and “Rape Poem #3” may be triggering to some victims of sexual assault.
The issue also features work by Deborah Bacharach, Amber Amber Rose Edmondson, Alicia Elkort, Ruth Foley, Fox Frazier-Foley, Brenda Mann Hammack, Jennifer Hanks, Amy Elisabeth Hansen, Lissa Kiernan, Andrew Koch, Kathleen Brewin Lewis, Emily Stoddard Furrow, Timothy Day, Jay Gershwin, Kat Giordano and Connie Guo. Read the whole lovely thing here.
Throughout the month of June, I selected poems to appear each week at the TheThe Poetry Blog. TheThe is great at sharing interesting work and engaging essays and interviews. Here are the poems I selected, with an excerpt from each:
Better than Television and Will’s White Hen by Alisa Golden
Her ankles swole up
and she leaned on a
sprinkler key like a cane.
Letter from the Back Porch by Sara Biggs Chaney
I would never ask you
to come backas I don’t contain ideas
like come back
The Size of Things, Decreasing Scale by Jen Stein
11) Your pupils grown wide soaking light
12) A bean seed to be planted
13) My pupils when fixated
14) The distance between your thumb and my neck
Nocturne in Which we Fail Yet Again to Have Sex in your Parents’ Hot Tub by Amorak Huey
Your breasts at the surface of the roiling water. The smell of chlorine
and desire. We divide and assign the space between us.Your specialty is keeping score, mine is pretending not to.
A huge thanks to Fox Frazier-Foley and Micah Towery for inviting me to contribute!
Spending time today with this long poem posted at Word Riot, falling in love with its language and imagery and the deep, resonant familiarity of it.
. . . Everything—even the crickets—will stop
& listen as you split a screen door from its dry-socket framebut I’ve heard the unfastening of hips, the careful click of human
exhaustion. I’ve heard a wooden door open its mouth for you& I swear I would too, because it’s your not-quite-human quiet
that I want. I called you hazy field of yellowed grass, called you sleepyheap of secrets. For a long time I plan to keep the slow motion
swing of you between my legs—here, at the joints, the fragilerubbed against & held together. . . .
Read the whole thing. It’s beautiful.
Winter Tangerine has a fascinating issue that features poems alongside their earlier drafts, as well as the poet talking about the evolution of the piece.
Here’s an excerpt from Sara Biggs Chaney’s poem “The Engineers Lament the Inevitability of Foundation Collapse“:
Problems occur.
The floor runs slant.Drop a marble on the doormat;
gravity will attend.
And her final words on editing:
At any rate, I decided this poem was finished when I could find no more tangles through which to comb.
Process is such an interesting thing, and as individual as a thumbprint. It often even varies widely from poem to poem. It’s great to get inside the mind of a poet, and behind the scenes with their work.
The new issue of JuJuBes includes three gorgeous pieces by Darren C. Demaree.
That’s why I’ve stood here
for hours, naked
& now expecting a tide
to rise from a part
of me I do not know.from “Nude Male with Echo #38”
The issue is also presented in video format, which is really lovely. Or, you can download a free PDF or purchase an interactive PDF of the issue here.
The third issue of Rogue Agent came out yesterday, and it’s just as lovely as the first two.
Ten days at the sanatorium, four ribs taken. One father teaches
his boy how to wait by filling in crossword puzzles—
twelve across, seven letters: to eat or devour.from “Tuberculosis by the Numbers” by M. Brett Gaffney
The rest of the line-up:
Albert Rhea
Katie Manning
Sarah Browning
Sally Deskins
Monica Rico
Courtney Kenny Porto
Tyler Kline
Janeen Pergrin Rastall & Courtney Kenny Porto
Ariana Den Bleyker
Ellen McGrath Smith
Miriam Sagan &
Isabel Winson-Sagan
David Ishaya Osu
Christine Stoddard
Jason Bradford
Check out this beautiful journal “for work that inhabits the body.”
Issue Two of the new journal Rogue Agent was released today, and includes my poem “Body Cartography.” Rogue Agent features work focused on the body. This issue also features a themed photo series titled, “I Feel Empowered When I Wear” which is full of powerful imagery. I hope you’ll take a look!
I’m honored and humbled to announce that my poem “Love Song for Recovering Codependent” was selected by poet Allan Peterson to win the Lester M. Wolfson Student Writing Award in Poetry this year.
Congratulations to the other winners, as well:
Graduate Award
Kristiane Weeks for “Shaken and Stirred”
Fiction
Savannah Hope for “Eden”
Cassandra Laforest for “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn”
Aaron Quist for “33 1/2”
Poetry
Jennifer Jones for “Tornado Alley”
Anne Marie Lindgren for “Yellow Silk”
I’ll be reading my poem “On Learning the Jorōgumo has a Boyfriend While I Do Not” tonight at Most Wanted Fine Art in Pittsburgh, PA for the FREE MONSTER POEMS ABOUT MONSTERS release party. Here’s an excerpt:
In Japan, if you have a yen for it, you can sniff
The secretions of a young girl cracked fresh from a plastic
Egg birthed by a burusera vending machine.This is where the spider woman takes a lover.
Come out and see me!
