A podcast of Emily Sinclair reading her essay, “Searching for the Duck Hole,” in The Colorado Review.
Click here for the audio of the podcast.
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Part two of a story by Ian Randall Wilson (poetry, ’02; fiction, ’16) appears in Hollywood Dimentia:
Mishaps: Part Two
by Ian Randall Wilson
The second time, Jeffrey was taking the shortcut he took every morning to walk from the parking garage from his office at the Studio in the fewest steps possible. No shooting on the lot today because of a driving rainstorm. He had passed by three accidents on the freeway that delayed him. In Los Angeles, no one knew how to drive in a storm. He was in his black raincoat, his umbrella unfurled, and still he was taking on heavy water. [. . . continue reading Part Two here.]
. . . Part One appears here.
Part one of a story by Ian Randall Wilson (poetry, ’02; fiction, ’16) appears in Hollywood Dimentia:
Mishaps, Part One
by Ian Randall Wilson
He made his career at the movie studio. But not his life. Illustration by Thomas Warming.
The first time it was the sign along the wall of the Studio lot. Someone had pulled off the two small “e”s leaving “Ent rtainm nt”. Was it a dig at the kinds of films the Studio produced? Maybe it wasn’t even vandalism, just some yokel who had shown up and, after the decidedly inferior Studio tour compared to Universal or the fabulous back lot at Warners, concluded that a souvenir was required. They could go back to Paduca or Clover or Groversville, hold up the purloined letters and say, “Look what I got me,” basking in praise from their friends. [. . . continue reading Part One here]
A poem by Leslie Contreras Schwartz (poetry, 11) appears in Hermeneutic Chaos Journal:
A L I T A N Y A N D S O N G
Outside
The birds sound
Like muffled cries
How many times
Can things be taken?
In the same breath
With viva la vida, viva
. . . continue reading here.
A poem by Lara Egger (poetry, ’16) appears in The American Poetry Journal:
. . . continue reading here.
An essay by Scott Gould (fiction, ’06) appears in Lit Hub:
Not long after I finished a book of stories set in Kingstree, S.C., my hometown drowned. The stories in the collection Strangers to Temptation take place in that town and on the river that runs through it, during the 1970s—back when I was a kid. In the fall of 2015, Kingstree sank under the Black River’s muddy floodwaters. Turns out, the town is still struggling to return to the surface. I just didn’t realize how much until I went back for a visit.
You’ll find Kingstree just west-of-center in Williamsburg County. By most measures, Williamsburg County is the poorest county in the state. The county got a little poorer and a lot wetter when the hard rains came. During a five-day period in 2015, beginning late on October 1, Kingstree was sledgehammered with a deluge of biblical proportions. A low-pressure area lumbered in from the west. [. . . continue reading here.]
An essay by Shadab Zeest Hashmi (poetry, ’09) appears in World Literature Today:
Ghazal Cosmopolitan
by Shadab Zeest Hashmi
Poetry is of course a universal art, but is it possible for a particular poetic form to be not only universally (or largely) adaptable but also act as a vessel for the mercurial shifts that define the cosmopolitan? As I delve into the history of the ghazal form, I find that it has effectively transcended and transferred the culture of its origins and made itself at home in vastly different cultures and times.
Two recent scenes come to mind as I think of the ghazal and the poetic cosmopolitan:
Latin Quarter, Paris: Marilyn Hacker weaving in and out of Arabic, French, and English at a Lebanese restaurant in the heart of medieval Paris, before she and I walked through the backstreets, through the doors of the somber Saint-Séverin Saint-Nicolas church where she lit a candle, to Berkeley Bookstore where she recited her ghazal dedicated to a Pakistani and an Afghan woman. [. . . continue reading here.]
A poem by Lara Egger (poetry, ’16) appears in May Day Magazine:
A New New Guide
1.
Look at this orange. When Rothko
painted No. 12, 1954 was he thinking
of a setting sun, or a piece of fruit?
In every language I know,
the word for both is the same.
In ancient Greek, there is no blue,
so Homer said wine-dark,
and honey was green; even the sky
. . . continue reading here.
NOW BLOWN APART HIT RECORD
I look through the living room
window and gush Or
I look through the blotchy
black canopies of trees
I wonder if I have anything
to say about an apple
A poem from Daye Phillippo (poetry, ’14) appears in Literary Mama:
Summer Day
or John
When he refused to be born, when he stayed
curled and warm and huge inside, they
sent me from the hospital, said Go home and rest,
but I weeded the parched garden instead.
After a time, the boy’s father stepped outside,
suggested I might come in out of July’s brass
heat for a glass of water, at least, but I glared
. . . continue reading here.