Mike Puican (poetry, ’09): Mike’s poem “The Lawyer Objects to Metaphoric Language” appears in the summer/fall 2012 issue of TriQuarterly.

The Lawyer Objects to Metaphoric Language

Show me the fireball of desire, the scarlet carpet of untamed horses,
the roar of stone lions. Present the evidence! he says,

That fish spawn in tree trunks, that starlings
fly through the sleep of schoolchildren! 

The judge glances at her watch. She thinks of her lover’s body
touched by the morning’s sun. She could use a cigarette...[Keep Reading]…

You can listen to Mike read his poem aloud at TriQuarterly Online.

Beverley Bie Brahic (poetry, ’06): Beverley’s poetry collection White Sheets (2012, CBEditions, UK; Fitzhenry & Whitefield, NA) is one of five collections on the shortlist for the 2012 Forward Prize. The £10,000 award is one of the UK’s top poetry prizes.  Previously winners include poets Don Paterson, Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy and Ted Hughes.  You can read more about this year’s finalists in The Guardian.

Poems from White Sheets have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Field, Literary Imagination, Notre Dame Review, The TLS and elsewhere.

WHITE SHEETS

Airstrike hits wedding party—breaking news

The empty laundry basket
fills with molecules of light.
She stands beside it, arms falling
into the aftermath of the task.
Gesture is a proto-language
researchers say: the same circuits
light the brain when a chimp
signals help me please (hand
outstretched, palm up) as when
human beings process speech.
In the cave the hunter figure
mirrors his spear’s trajectory
towards the deer it will never,
of course, attain. The woman
sees nothing untoward. Her body
bars the spattered something
in the middle distance, though all
of this is right up close: the shed
they’ll use to dress the meat, the plane
geometry of white sheets
on a line. The world is beautiful,
she thinks, or feels, as deer
sense something coming
and move out of range. Beautiful,
the woman thinks, and lifts
the laundry basket to her arms—
beautiful, and orderly.

Beverley’s translation of Apollinaire’s poems, The Little Auto is also available from CBEditions.

Laurie Saurborn Young (poetry, ’08): Laurie’s poem “Draught” appears in the latest issue of The Collagist:

Draught

Much happens every day until it disappears.

I dream I am the sound of a hand
pulling a bell. Get me to the water

Nietzsche said, but every
one thought it a joke...[Keep Reading]…

Laurie is the author of Carnavoria (2012, H_NGM_N Books).

Katie Runde (fiction, ’12): Katie’s new piece “Extra Lives” appears in the latest issue of the Foundling Review:

 I want to grow up moving from town to town.

I’ll always be the new girl, and the third grade teacher will spell my name wrong, “Chrissy” instead of “Christy,” and the eighth-grade guidance counselor will give me someone else’s schedule by accident, so I’ll have to go around and return all the books I got on the first day, except the Earth Science book Mrs. Meinhardt gave me since Mrs. Meinhardt happens to still be my teacher in my real schedule just like she was in the wrong one. I’ll lose one irreplaceable thing every time we pack and unpack again: my adjustable ruby-colored birth stone ring in Tallahassee, my cat Gonzo in Phoenix, the Eiffel Tower keychain my Aunt Susan brought back for me when we leave Spokane. I’ll ride in the middle seat of the U-Haul, the vinyl and soaked-in-smoke smell of the front seat making me sick. I’ll listen for the radio to turn to static and for the pop in my ears as the U-Haul struggles up the hills...[Keep Reading]…

Patricia Eakins (fiction, ’77) will read July 20 with Mikhail Horowitz at the Liberty Free Theatre in Liberty, NY, as part of their First Hearings Series.  The reading will take place at 7:30 pm, and reservations are encouraged.  Visit the theatre’s website for more information, or contact them directly.

Liberty Free Theatre
109 S. Main Street,
Liberty, NY 12754
(845) 292-3788

Patricia is the author of The Marvelous Adventures of Pierre Baptiste: Father and Mother, First and Last (1999, NYU Press).

Matthew Olzmann (poetry, ’09): Matthew’s poem “‘Nothing Gets Through to You, Jackass'” is currently online at Body:

“NOTHING GETS THROUGH TO YOU, JACKASS”

When Catullus says it,
it sounds more eloquent
than when I say it:
Nothing gets through to you, jackass...[Keep Reading]…

Rachel Howard’s (fiction, ’09) personal essay, “Losing Things” is online at Berfrois:

My problem is that I don’t care about losing things.

Last month, at a restaurant, I left a rough grey scarf that my husband gave me on a rainy evening shortly after we began sleeping with each other, shortly after we fell in love—the scarf that, even after warm spring days arrived, I’d worn everywhere like a child’s blanket. Oh well, I immediately thought when I realized it was gone. I’ll always remember that scarf...[Keep Reading]…

Gabriel Blackwell (fiction, ’09): Gabriel’s new pieces, “5 Things You Should Read” and “Napolean Bonaparte” are online at Treehouse Magazine.

       5 Things You Should Read

  1. The Mirror: A History, Sabine Melchior-Bonnet: Just what it sounds like; at times, just as dry. Still, there’s a lot in here. The mirror set in our salvaged $5 bathroom cabinet would have cost the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars not so long ago. Did you know that? Me neither. Some people never saw themselves.
  2. Only Revolutions, Mark Z. Danielewski: Yeah, it’s not House of Leaves (and House of Leaves isn’t really House of Leaves either, really, let’s face it), but how many books have two narratives written opposite each other and turned 180º, meeting in the middle at page 180? Not many, huh?  …{Keep Reading]…

Evan Cleveland’s (fiction, ’12) new piece “Response” is online at Sara Slaughter (poetry, ’11) and Jessica Chong’s curated writing project, Every Day a Century:

Response

After the harmless black boy was murdered, the mayor relieved all police of nighttime shifts, hiring adjunct professors from the community college. Domestic disputes paralyzed them: She should release that knife. But he threatened her autonomy. Have you worked 12-hour shifts? Have you read existential feminist theory?…[Keep Reading]…

 

Natalie Serber (fiction, ’05): Natalie’s article “Care Package” is up at The Rumpus:

Across the continent my sweet girl has been crying herself to sleep at night.  She told me this in a mouse voice—small and deflated.  I heard the scrape of hangers on her end of the line.  She, in Brooklyn, shopping at a thrift store for a sheepskin coat, preparing for her first New York winter; me, in Portland, shopping for mascara to send in a care package to her college address.  I put down the tiny pot of eye cream that had distracted me with its promise of miracles—taut, bright skin, Spanx for the eye zone—and listened to my daughter talk of her loneliness, a spidery agitation growing in my chest.  I know her nighttime sorrow.  I know it is a perfectly normal, even character building experience for a plucky young woman embarking upon the next phase of her life, surprised by a bout of homesickness and too far away to hop in the car for a weekend in her childhood bed.  But moments like this, remote from her, unable to wrap her in my arms, fill me with a faint floating sadness.  No one wants to feel alone.  “Oh Lovely, what can I do?” …[Keep Reading]…

Natalie is the author of Shout Her Lovely Name (2012, Houghton Mifflin).