Two Poems by Sara Quinn Rivara (poetry ’02) from DIODE

Husk

When did my body become a seedpod, burst open and brittle? I am still cavernous
with hunger. At first, I loved scotch broom blooming near the highway each June,

how yellow, how bright. The biologist next door chided it’s a blight,
chokes out anything native. I don’t tell him I love how the seedpod explodes,

launches seed further and further up the embankment, how early summer blazes
xanthic along the ordinary highway. Yet, God, I’ve been so sad.

Read the rest of “Husk” and more at this link: http://diodepoetry.com/quinn-rivara_sara/

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Cammy Thomas (poetry ’99) Interviewed about TREMORS, Her New Collection of Poetry

When did you first encounter poetry?  How did you discover that you wanted to write poems?

The first time I remember poetry making a deep impression on me was when I had the measles at age eight. My mother had them along with me, and we lay in her bed with the lights low for several days. She read to me out of her school poetry anthology.  She’d once dropped the book in the bath, so the pages were very crinkly. She read parts of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Coleridge, and I was gripped not just by the exciting story of the mariner who had done wrong by shooting the albatross and was condemned to tell his tale over and over, but also by the ballad rhythm and rhyme: “Water, water, every where, / And all the boards did shrink; / Water, water every where, / Nor any drop to drink.”  Then in ninth grade, I had a teacher, Irma Kempel, who encouraged us to keep a journal, in which we could write poems or prose as we chose. I started writing poems, trying to write words that would make readers feel things.

Read the rest of the interview and a poem from TREMORS on the Mass Poetry Society website: https://masspoetry.org/new-book-thomas/

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A New Story by Dan Leach (fiction ’20) Appears on COPPER NICKEL

“Wasp Queen” was the winner of the Editors’ Prize in Prose for issue 33 of COPPER NICKEL

I.

Convention says I should kill you. By convention I mean my wife, the artist, who had plans to repurpose the vintage steel trash can inside of which you’ve built a nest the size of a small child. By convention I also mean my four-year-old daughter, who has been afraid to play outside since the day she bumped the trash can, prompting your drones to emerge and sting her on her face, and across her stomach, and even in the tiny pockets of flesh behind her knees. Twenty-six hits? Some might call that excessive. 

Read the full story at this link: https://copper-nickel.org/wasp-queen/

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Daniel Tam-Claiborne (fiction ’20) Interviews Peter Ho Davies

I was first introduced to Peter Ho Davies through a mutual friend to talk about craft for a lecture I was to deliver as a graduation requirement for my MFA program at Warren Wilson College. After two years of parsing short stories and making conjectures on writerly intentions in their work, I was eager to engage with Peter directly about marking identity through the lens of dialogue in his novel The Fortunes, an ambitious and captivating book that recasts Chinese American history through the lives of historical and fictional Chinese figures in America.

https://therumpus.net/2021/11/the-rumpus-interview-with-peter-ho-davies/
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“Offering,” a Poem by Mike Puican (poetry ’09) from FOUR WAY REVIEW

THE OFFERING

Unknown, wind-blown, the night 

requests your presence. The world burns 

at the oven door of your blank page. 

Read the full poem and listen to Mike’s recording of it on the FOUR WAY REVIEW website: https://fourwayreview.com/offering-by-mike-pulcan/

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“Memorial,” by Muriel Nelson (Poetry ’06)

Five poems by 2006 poetry alum Muriel Nelson were recently featured in Bloom. Read an excerpt of “Memorial” below:

Read this poem in its entirety, as well as four others, here: https://bloomsite.wordpress.com/2021/10/26/bloom-creative-writing-poetry-by-muriel-nelson/

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“Denoument,” by Suzanne Langlois (Poetry ’20)

2020 poetry alum Suzanne Langlois was recently featured in Rust + Moth. Read an excerpt of “Denoument” below:

Denoument

The only part of Time Bandits I remember
is the end, when the boy’s parents hold
a toaster oven between them with a charred
hunk of evil inside. The boy tells them
not to touch it. I think he says, “Don’t touch it,
it’s evil!” But they touch it anyway, and though
we don’t like them—they’re bad parents—
the resulting blast is disturbing. Even as
the curious neighbors step out onto their lawns
and the firetrucks arrive, we know he’ll be left
alone, which isn’t necessarily better. I might
be remembering it wrong. It’s been thirty years
since I saw it. But I remember clearly the dull
sense of dread settling in my bones. It probably
came from the recent realization that my parents
weren’t quite up to the task of raising me,
and that I wasn’t quite up to it either,
and those were the only available options.

Read this poem in its entirety here: https://rustandmoth.com/work/denouement/

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“Bone Folder,” by Leslie Contreras Schwartz (Poetry ’11)

“Bone Folder,” a poem by 2011 poetry alum Leslie Contreras Schwartz, was recently featured in the Cortland Review. Read an excerpt below:

Leslie Contreras Schwartz

Bone Folder

The bone folder dissects a single sheet
into half of one crisp line.

Is it possible to spare the hands, the fingers,
the body’s own bones and muscles?

But the work requires manipulation
upon hidden or interior lines

the body’s cellular agendas and maps
locked behind glass with the last lady’s skull.

Read this poem in its entirety, and hear the author read it, here: https://www.cortlandreview.com/issue-88/leslie-contreras-schwartz/

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“The Smell Test,” by Noah Stetzer (Poetry ’14)

Noah Stetzer, a 2014 poetry alum, was recently featured in One Art. Read an excerpt of Stetzer’s poem “The Smell Test” below:

The Smell Test

Ten thousand jasmine flowers and twenty
eight dozen roses are required to make
a single vial of this landmark perfume —
to it they add essence from the tropical
ylang ylang tree along with the michelia
magnolia mixed in with the white
star-shaped petals of the tuberose:
a concoction of not one particular earthly
manifestation, but an achievement
of the platonic ideal of a flower… 

Read this poem in its entirety here: https://oneartpoetry.com/2021/10/11/the-smell-test-by-noah-stetzer/

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