Poems by Matthew Olzmann

Two new poems by alumnus and former Beebe Fellow Matthew Olzmann (poetry, ’09) appear online in Waxwing:

Carnival Music 

Was it the clown suit that freaked them out?

No. Not the suit.

 

That wouldn’t explain why, at the State Fair,

even the other clowns — who looked like him — avoided him.

Seventeen would tumble from the same miniature car,

and he, alone, would fall from another.

…

Continue reading online. 

 

Consider All the Things You’ve Known but Now Know Differently

— After Steve Orlen

In Michigan, on his seventh birthday,

a boy is given an old toolbox. Thank you,

he says, for the tool box, Thank you,

for the wrench dotted with rust,

Thank you, for the greased screwdrivers,

and the needle-nosed pliers. Just imagine

all the wonders the boy can build

or repair now, right? No siree!

Immediately, he sets out to discover

how the world was made

by unmaking everything the world has made.

…

Continue reading online. 

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Rachel Howard in Arroyo Literary Review

A new piece of non-fiction by alumna Rachel Howard (fiction, ’09) appears online in Arroyo Literary Review:

Frank Black

1.

DIRT CROSSROADS IN the orchard. Green Datsun station
wagon. Plum trees in bloom, but the blossoms are hidden
because Scott has cut the headlights. The windows are down
and the hatchback up to let in the treble-buzz of unseen insects,
no hope of breeze but the heat feels like permission. The smell
of manure drifts to us from the dairy down the road, dust in
our nostrils and in our eyes and on our tongues—always in
the Central Valley, dust. The back of the station wagon is
prepared with blankets.

Eight rows of flowering plum trees between me and the back
fence, but the house might as well be the moon. I can see my
mother’s bedroom light shining from the second story. She is in
bed alone, I know, since she worked too damn hard on kicking
out her second husband to let another man under our roof.

Sometimes I try to imagine that my father can still see me.

Scott nudges a mix-tape into the deck.

…

Read more online. 

 

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Marian Szczepanski in Houston Press

A blog post, “100 Creatives 2014,” featuring alumna Marian Szczepanski (fiction, ’97) appears online in Houston Press. The blog’s author writes:

“It took Marian Szczepanski nine years to write her newly released novel Playing St. Barbara. She says she’ll probably spend another year publicizing and promoting it. “What’s another year, right?” she laughs. “I’ve already spent nine years of my life on this book. What can another year be?”

Her debut novel, Playing St. Barbara, the story of a Depression-era woman and her three daughters, was inspired by two elements of Szczepanski’s real life. The first, a family history tied to coal mines of Pennsylvania. The second, an interest in women’s history. Both of her grandfathers were immigrant coal miners and she had some information about them but she knew very little about her grandmothers’ lives. “I’ve always been interested in social history and women’s history and there’s nothing about the lives of women back in the coal era. I had no idea what women’s lives were like back then.””

…

Continue reading online. 

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New Work by Jamaal May

New poems by alumnus Jamaal May (poetry, ’11) appear online in Poetry:

There Are Birds Here

For Detroit

There are birds here,
so many birds here
is what I was trying to say
when they said those birds were metaphors
for what is trapped
between buildings
and buildings. No.
…

Continue reading online.

Per Fumum

(through smoke)

My mother became an ornithologist
when the grackle tumbled through barbecue smoke
and fell at her feet. Soon she learned
why singers cage birds; it can take weeks
to memorize a melody —
the first days lost as they mope
and warble a friendless note,
the same tone every animal memorizes
hours into breathing.
…

 

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Tracy Winn’s “Another Way to Make Cleopatra Cry”

A story by alumna Tracy Winn (fiction, ’02) appears online in an audio recording at The Drum. Follow the link to hear “Another Way to Make Cleopatra Cry” in the February 2014 issue.

 

 

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“Kaddish” by Jayne Benjulian

A new poem by alumna Jayne Benjulian (poetry, ’13) appears online in The Ilanot Review:

Kaddish

In the attic deep enough for twenty
childhoods, an autograph book,
Oak School No. 3, resplendent in gold,
zipper teeth around the pastel sheets,

her signature in shaky cursive.
Bundled in blankets, smaller than
a ten-year-old, fingers cold,
she must have found it awkward
to hold a pen.

…

Finish reading online at The Ilanot Review.

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“The Last Day” by Faith S. Holsaert

A new poem by alumna Faith S. Holsaert (poetry, ’82) is published online in Glass:

The Last Day

-after Lucille Clifton

I will ride a freckled mare
Into the sturdy mother oaks,
the bending birches of the aunt,
the moody autumn maple of the father,
the dogwood gleaming from inside       she
bitch lover I chose.

…

Finish reading online at Glass.

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“Lights” by Matthew Zanoni Muller

New work by alumnus Matthew Zanoni Muller (fiction, ’10) is published in Rappahannock Review:

Lights

On Saint Martin’s Day in Germany the children would go into the dark woods carrying their lanterns in long snakes of colored lights, orbs in the darkness bobbing up and down on unsteady arms, held and reached by their mothers. I stuck in close to my father’s rough coat, felt the cold melting into his pockets where he kept his tissues and plastic spoons and sugar packets. Inside of that coat was his warmth and his belly and the belt around his black jeans. I clung to his body at night when I walked into my parents’ dark room to escape the darkness of my own, where the faint light cut across to where my brother lay on the other end of the long dark open wood floor, sleeping.

…

Finish reading online at the Rappahannock Review.

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Abduction at the Deluxe Kwik-Trip Pump by Lara Markstein

A new story by alumna Lara Markstein (fiction, ’13) appears online in the journal Necessary Fiction: 

Abduction at the Deluxe Kwik-Trip Pump

I was abducted at the Deluxe Kwik-Trip pump. Yet more proof that supporting local business has its benefits. It is not easy getting abducted, you see. It was May, and I’d been angling for a kidnapping since tax season in March.

The reason: I discovered my husband’s life insurance policy.

Tim is an oncologist. He is paid a tidy sum to save generally unhappy, but suddenly valuable lives. If he were to die, a check for three million dollars would arrive in the mail. A figure like that makes a girl think.

…

Continue reading online at Necessary Fiction. 

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New Essay by Kate Greathead

Work by alumna Kate Greathead (fiction, ’11) appears online in The Hairpin:

The Best Time I Learned My Last Name Means Blow Job

As a shy, late bloomer with a nervous twitch in my eye, I didn’t particularly enjoy high school. I was consistently the last one to get a joke, with the exception of dirty jokes, which I usually didn’t get at all. This sense of being on a different wavelength from my peers led to a paranoid, left-out feeling—like nobody knew I existed, and at the same time, they were all laughing at me behind my back.

One night after dinner in tenth grade, my mom said there was something she wanted to “talk about.” My first thought was that my mom had seen one of those TALK TO YOUR KID ABOUT SEX commercials and I’d have to confess I’d never even kissed a boy, which I knew to be pathetic at my age. To my relief, it wasn’t sexual relations my mom wanted to discuss, but our last name. Which is Greathead. Spelled like it sounds: the word GREAT, then the word HEAD.

…

Finish reading online at The Hairpin.

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