Belle Laide

Belle Laide, a poetry collection by Joanne Dwyer (poetry, ’09) is now available from Sarabande Books.

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ARS POETICA, OR-KEEPER-OF-THE-WATER

First my father Killing Me Softly with his Roberta Flack album.

Then my son Killing Me Softly with his Fugees CD.

On my shoulder a carcinoma that will eventually kill me –

will eat my flesh, as I eat yours.

I bit hard, sucked hard, not to mark you as my possession

as the rancher burns his ranch insignia into young calves –

but to try and ingest, to take in

that which cannot be eaten.

Outside my window the tiny clawed feet of birds

slip on the ice in the cement birdbath

like the elderly couple who have not skated in half a century.

The birds peck and peck, but the ice remains

an impenetrable obstacle to thirst.  Read more

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Poems by Michael Collins

Three new poems by Michael Collins (poetry, ’03) appear in the latest issue of BlazeVOX.

Confession

I didn’t really want to murder lots of people
back when I drove around, windows up, doors locked,
Tupac counseling me on how to cope

when I ran out of endo and my mind
couldn’t take the stress – and how to die
straight thuggin’ even in dark times

when I could no longer trust my homies –
In point of fact, I had no homies
in my head that had done passed away,

was not, in reality, a G,
for whom getting high was a way to be free,
and my interactions with actual gangsters

Read more

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Scouts

“Scouts,” a poem by Mary Lou Buschi (poetry, ’04) appears online at Swarm.

We told stories with our eyes closed. Peeled grapes
passed around to signify eyeballs. Cold spaghetti

spilling into our laps—the boy’s disemboweled intestines.

That year, we were making gifts for the elderly.
I had never seen one, an elderly.

My gift was a gigantic corsage, pointy stiff leaves
like stars, held together with floral tape.

We were each given one name—Helen.
The name, a wooden box filled with pressed leaves
and fireflies sliding through summer mist. …[Keep Reading]…

Mary Lou is the author of The Spell of Coming (or Going) (2013, Patasola Press).

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The Chapel of Want

“The Chapel of Want,” a poem by Colleen Abel (poetry, ’04) appears online at A River & Sound Review.

What was your heart like?

Dropped crumbs in a wide forest

Slow drip         slow chant

In the chapel of want

One said          he will not live

Long like this

Your body sounding a bell

To my body …[Keep Reading]…

Colleen is the author of the chapbook Housewifery (2013, Dancing Girl Press).

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Three Rooftops

“Three Rooftops,” a poem by Justin Bigos (poetry, ’08) appears online at Driftless Review.

It happens on rooftops: the jump, the cut, the kiss smack     between the stripper’s
breasts, your lover holding her lips right there, watching you     watch.

October, 2001, Chinatown highrise apartment building, flags of     restaurants and America
whipping below, before the sordid and banal became     photographed

on phones, dilated cyclopean eyes, sent to other eyes across     the globe, across the room,
the rooftop. Now she’s dancing with some guy, some dude, tall     and lanky like you
Read more

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Poems by Abigail Wender

Three poems by Abigail Wender (poetry, ’08) appear online at New Orleans Review.

House on the Bluff

In winter you strapped the canoe
to the basement ceiling,

every rib written in silt.
Every year the huge lake froze,

ice figures clawed
and covered the pier.

Even in summer we shivered with cold,
my two brothers and I,

the lake growing inside us,
farther from your shore.

…Read More…

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Bay Conjury

“Bay Conjury,” a story by Faith Holsaert (fiction, ’82) appears online at Watershed Review.

I am Madeleine who was nicknamed Dunk.

I knew the machines, I knew the land, I knew the outbuildings and the barns and the livestock they sheltered. They were my body. He’d trained me up to be his son, his little farmer. The white envelope cut into me like the blade of a plow, working me, preparing me. We both knew the white envelope bushwhacked his plan.

Last night Isolde, with her slanting cheekbones and her Russian accent said, “No way emergency preparedness. We will be bush whacked.” She was carrying a 1940s handbook of English idioms.

Jackson with his feist dog held against his chest said, “I dated a guy whose tag was BushWhack.”

“To live or travel in the wild,” Isolde said.

One of the first photos I took was in the dusky bottom near the creek. The sun was behind me, and I was facing downhill, standing on the edge of my great long shadow laid out in the blue pooled at my feet.

I told myself when the day rolls around for another missed payment, I’ll get on a plane, leave the house, leave LaFayette, leave Indiana.

Already I hear someone else running the water in my shower. …[Keep Reading]…

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He Sent Flowers

“He Sent Flowers,” a short story by Christine Hale (fiction, ’96, Beebe Fellow, 2005) appears in Shelter: The 2012-2013 Issue of Mandala Journal.

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When I was still a newbie volunteer at the safe house for battered women in upstate New York, the director sent me, because no one else was available that day, on a salvage mission. A woman who’d run away from a beating and a gun needed a ride back to the home she’d shared with her abuser to pick up her things. The law, public awareness, and the attitude of police departments toward domestic violence as a criminal rather than family matter was still forming in the early eighties, and activists—resources for victims were not yet the province of social services departments—had learned the hard way how much could go wrong. The director gave me careful instructions. Call the local police before driving to the woman’s home, and ask them to meet us there—to observe that we observed the law, and as deterrence in case the abuser, who was supposed to be at work, got a tip from a friend or neighbor and showed up armed and angry. Stay in the car, no matter what, while the woman went in for her things, so that no one, including she, might later allege that I’d committed a burglary. Tell the woman to hurry, and remind her that if she insisted on rescuing a pet, we’d have to take it to a vet who’d agreed to provide temporary safe haven for non-human victims. …[Keep Reading]…

Christine is the author of Basil’s Dream (2009, Livingston Press).

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Interview with Matthew Olzmann

Poet Matthew Olzmann (poetry, ’09; Beebe Fellow, ’12) was recently interviewed by Stacy Parker Le Melle for The Huffington Post.

Every time I’ve heard you read, you make the audience laugh. I mean, really laugh. Have you ever been surprised by audience reactions? How important to your process is audience reaction? 

I think the “idea” of an audience is important for any writer. What I mean is that it’s important to remember as artists, we’re not simply trying to tell the audience about an experience, but create an experience in which they are — to varying degrees — participants.

Take for example, something as simple as metaphor. If the poet says, “The moon is a coin,” that expression is completed by the reader connecting the two parts of the expression, and determining how those parts are alike: the moon and the coin are round, they shine, they have some kind of symbolic value, etc. This happens in the mind of the reader, and if you multiply that private moment by a hundred or thousand similar moments, you have the cumulative experience of a piece of writing. For that piece of writing to be “successful,” the writer has have at least some awareness about how readers might respond to each of the pieces placed before them.

Read the Full Interview Here

Matthew is the author of the poetry collection Mezzanines (2013, Alice James Books).

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Nathan Poole Wins Mary McCarthy Prize

Nathan Poole (fiction, ’11) has won Sarabande Books’ Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction.

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Our contest season has come to a close, and Edith Pearlman has made her decision. The winner of the 2013 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction is Nathan Poole for his collectionFather Brother Keeper.The prize includes a $2,000 cash award, publication of a collection of short stories, novellas, or a short novel, and a standard royalty contract.

Read more at Sarabandebooks.org

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