Matt Hart (poetry, ’02): Matt’s poem “Mountain Man” appears in the online poetry magazine LEVELER. Matt is the editor of the online journal Forklift, Ohio, and author of Wolf Face
Joanne Dominique Dwyer (poetry, ’09): Joanne’s poem “Dialogue de Sourds“ appears in the current issue of the New England Review (Vol. 33, 2012).
Joe Schuster (fiction, ’91): Joe’s essay “Thirty Years of Re-Reading Lucky Jim” is featured at The Millions. Joe is the author of the novel, The Might Have Been
Mark Prudowsky (poetry, ’08), Elisabeth Lewis Corley (poetry, ’10) and Victoria Bosch Murray (poetry, ’08) all have poems currently online at mahmag.org (magazine of arts and humanities).
Agica (Aggie) Zivaljevic (fiction, ’05): Aggie’s story “Eva’s Room,” which took third place in the Summer Literary Seminars’ 2012 Unified Literary Contest, appears in the current issue of Joyland Magazine.
After the sun sets behind the bakery, and the sky turns a dark Prussian blue, the children feverishly play their sweetest games before being called in. From the hilltop they see how the downtown lights cast a golden glow on the glass dome of the City Hall, in the center of old Sarajevo. They hear the rattling of the streetcars below, and the barking of stray dogs in the Mt. Trebevic suburbs. The twilight breeze lures them with the river’s scent. Brothers and sisters can always go home and play or fight, but children without siblings cannot.
Eva cannot go home now. The yellow jersey shorts, showing her bronzed legs to the boys, and her mother’s buying power to the neighbors, are ruined. Eva’s mother Stella bought them for her eleventh birthday...[Keep Reading]…
Catherine Barnett (poetry, ’02) has won the Academy of American Poets’ 2012 James Laughlin Award, which “honors a second book of original poetry, in English, by a living citizen of the United States… Offered since 1954, it is the only second-book award for poetry in the United States.”
Judge April Bernard wrote that Catherine’s book, The Game of Boxes
Past faculty members who have won the award include Lisel Mueller (1975, The Private Life), Larry Levis (1976, The Afterlife) and Tony Hoagland (1997, Donkey Gospel).
A short piece by Rolf Yngve (fiction, ’12) appears at The Common, a journal of “fiction, essays, poetry, documentary vignettes, and images that embody particular times and places both real and imagined.”
People would tell us to go see the big tree, and finally we flagged ourselves into one of the cheap cabs that go between Santa Maria del Tule and Oaxaca de Juarez on a set route. It was getting dark early under an overcast sky, the remains from tropical storm Ernesto, who had petered out after making some news in the Yucatan.
We found the big tree, a knob made for the grip of some great giant who could use it to lift the entire town – the entire state – out of the Mexican ground. It seemed to squat between the mayoral offices and the church. All the nearby buildings clung to earth like the homes of dwarves...[Keep Reading]…
Christine Fadden (fiction, ’09): Christine’s story “The Smallest Bones Break” is featured online at Gulf Coast:
Grandmother’s summerhouse is where Uncle lets Cousin fall from a highchair. Niece hears the ensuing chaos from where she is watching TV, on the front porch. The Bionic Woman is trying to convince her Indian student, Paco, that she is not a spirit. Now, thirty years later, Niece is living with Aunt and Uncle while getting her PhD in acoustical engineering at the university they both have retired from, Cousin has just had a baby, and Aunt tells Uncle he will not be trusted alone with new Granddaughter—ever—because of Fall From Highchair ca. 1973. Also, the plastic water bottles he buys because of his need to drink lots of water (because of his organ transplant), and to most conveniently monitor the amount of water he drinks, are polluting the planet “for Granddaughter.” …[Keep Reading]…
Nathan Poole (fiction, ’11) has been named one of two winners of the 2012 Narrative Prize, a $4,000 annual award for the best short story, novel excerpt, poem, one-act play, graphic story, or work of literary nonfiction published by a new or emerging writer in Narrative magazine. Nathan won for his short story, “Stretch Out Your Hand.”
I saw it go out from the ends of her hair. So many long strands of light. Milky, drifting upward—each hair casting off something that looked like silk until all the filaments were impossibly thin and lucent and seemed lost where they passed through the lamplight. They rose from Ruth’s head and congregated in the joists of the ceiling. A bright, glowing nest.
“The fever’s broken,” my father said. He lifted my younger sister out of her bed, legs dangling, toes pointed down. Her arms hung unfastened behind his neck, where the fingers curled up in two loose fists. He pressed his cheek against her forehead to feel her temperature again and he held it there for a long moment.
“Momma, it’s broken,” he said, nearly shouting at my mother.
“O Jesus, thank you. Thank you, Jesus,” my mother said, patting the base of her neck with her hand—a little rhythm she makes when grateful. She sat down on the edge of Ruth’s bed and touched the empty indented place on the mattress. She patted it with her palm and smoothed the sheets. “For this,” her hand seemed to say as it formed its particular rhythm, “for the coolness of this place, right here, on this bed. Thank you.”
Hannah Fries (poetry, ’10): Hannah’s poem “Epithalamion” recently appeared at Mass Poetry:
Epithalamion
The elm weaves the field’s late light, this hill
hanging from the tree’s roots like the moon
From its shadow and the whole
world beneath suspended.Roots knead the earth’s thick sorrow.
Still, leaves from this.
From this unshackling, birdsong.I am a blade of corn where you kneel,
wind and quaking stalk.
The elm’s body a vase of poured sky.The tree will die.
Someday, the tree will die.For now, this axis—
what we choose to compass by.
Rick Bursky (poetry ’03) recently read his poems “We” and “The Accordion Player’s Window” for the Southern Review.
Rick is the author of Death Obscura
Shadab Zeest Hashmi (poetry, ’09): Shadab’s poem “Betrayals” recently appeared in the San Diego Free Press.
Betrayals
Who stepped on my wings
my tea-stained
dog-eared wings
when I was climbing up the library ladder?Who trapped the dove
when it rode the fox?The fox runs through the forest
like a red bullet
belly full of lies
in fine print …[Keep Reading]…
Shadab is the author of the poetry collection Baker of Tarifa
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