“after the dream act is revoked” by Rebecca Foust (poetry ’10)

An excerpt from “after the dream act is revoked” by Rebecca Foust (poetry ’10), published by Love’s Executive Order.

after the dream act is revoked

it’s time to get my hair cut again & the dream act    
just got rolled back      what can i do   
get in the car    keep the appointment   
preserve etiquette        the economy        routine    
so stupid        stupid        stupid        what can i do    
pick fruit for a pie      sweep the floor    
feed the dog        call my reps        send emails      
knit a pink hat        go to a march         write this dumb poem  
phone my kids who I can reasonably assume
will not get shot going out for milk        or sling-shot
back to a country that vomited them up
in fire & thirst & dismemberment
to land here with no guarantees

[… continue reading at Love’s Executive Order.]

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“New Ars Poetica” by Rebecca Foust (poetry ’10)

An excerpt from “New Ars Poetica” by Rebecca Foust (poetry ’10), published by Blackbird.

New Ars Poetica

This poem won’t sing on the sidewalk for dollar bills
or take penicillin; it’s disabled its airbags
and gone off the grid,

it’s allowing its id to have a say. This poem is not
your cure, sop, balm, or oasis of calm
in the world’s shitstorm.

[… continue reading at Blackbird.]

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Two Poems by Angela Narciso Torres (poetry ’09)

An excerpt from two poems by Angela Narciso Torres (poetry ’09), published by Pank Magazine.

Self-Portrait as Revision

I am the storm-torn palm frond draped on the balcony wall.
I am the cumin in the soup stirring the lentil’s sleep.

I am the olive’s skeletal pit, the cat’s paw, the thistle spear.
The clay in the kiln cast into a small flask to hold centuries of musk.

[… continue reading at Pank Magazine.]

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“Late Sonogram” by Amanda Newell (poetry ’17)

An excerpt from “Late Sonogram” by Amanda Newell (poetry ’17), published by Rattle.

Late Sonogram

I bled through the first month of every pregnancy.
I have been bleeding for weeks. I am bleeding even now,
and I have ruined at least fifteen pairs of underwear.
Poet M says no one wants to read about my underwear,

especially not in the first stanza. She said nothing
about the second, though, or where in the poem
the poet should introduce the subject of her underwear
if she’s going to write about it. Poet A didn’t mind underwear
in the first stanza. But it was only my first draft,
and maybe he was afraid to say anything.

[… continue reading at Rattle.]

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“Cold Shock” cycle: six poems by Caroline M. Mar (poetry ’13)

An excerpt from “Stage 1: Cold Shock” by Caroline M. Mar (poetry ’13), published by Anomalous Press.

STAGE 1: COLD SHOCK
THREAT NO.1: LOSS OF BREATHING CONTROL

Gasping

There are an average of seven drownings per year in the lake, most due 
to cold water shock, even among those who are capable swimmers. Or were 
before the water folded them into itself: 
                                                                           a pocket of failure, a slipped 
                            seam of darkness out of the summer 
                                                                                                       sun’s light. 

[…continue reading at Anomalous Press.]

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“Eye of the Storm: Interlude in the Penultimate Space (Part I: Berriault’s ‘The Stone Boy’)” by Alyson Mosquera Dutemple (fiction ’19)

An excerpt from an essay by Alyson Mosquera Dutemple (fiction ’19), published by Fiction Writers Review.

Eye of the Storm: Interlude in the Penultimate Space

Years before meeting my father, my mother had another husband. But because that husband, the first one, amounted to no more than a blip on the radar of my mother’s life (18 months to be precise), and because my mother and father will be celebrating their 44th wedding anniversary this spring, the existence of this mysterious first husband is now of little concern.

There was a time, however, when I was consumed by this information. I was five, and I had suddenly discovered a photo album full of wedding pictures from that short-lived marriage in the back of the coat closet in my childhood home. While photographs of my own parents’ marriage decorated the walls of our living room, the ones from that first marriage had been relegated to the darker recesses of the house. And though I can no longer remember the particulars about how I came to discover in the first place that my mother had been married before (did she tell me before I discovered the photographs, or had I guessed only after looking at the pictures?), I do remember that my mother kindly allowed me to look at the album whenever I liked because she wanted to be open with me and to honor my curiosity.

Which turned out to be abundant. For a few months, I became mildly obsessed with this man, this figure who, had my mother’s life not taken a different path, could have been my father. It both bothered me and fascinated me that a person’s life could be profoundly affected by such a fleeting trifle: a photo album tucked in a dark closet, a ghost-like figure haunting its pages from a time years before I was born.

[…continue reading “Part I: Berriault’s ‘The Stone Boy'” and find “Part II: Trevor’s ‘Le Visiteur'” at Fiction Writers Review.]

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“Dogs on the Beach” by Taryn Tilton (fiction ’16)

An excerpt from “Dogs on the Beach” by Taryn Tilton (fiction ’16), published by Waxwing.

Dogs on the Beach

I do not like things I cannot see the shape of: there are dogs on the beach in the distance, there’s breathing under the bridge.

It’s early morning. I’m out of breath. I’ve buried my feet in the sand. The dogs hobble and call out but I can’t be sure because I’m on the phone with my sister, who is telling me about a new kind of meditation. You tie a small weight to the end of a string, swallow it, and hold on to the other end. You wait for two days until it passes through your body. Then you have one end between your legs and the other out your mouth. She anticipates all my questions. “What then?” I ask. You can pull it, slowly. “Isn’t that harmful?” I ask. It’s just a string, she says, but I meant a kind of damage unseen.

[…continue reading at Waxwing.]

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“When I’m By Myself I’m Very Different Than I Am” by Matt Hart (poetry ’02)

An excerpt from “When I’m By Myself I’m Very Different Than I Am” by Matt Hart (poetry ’02) published by Waxwing.

When I’m By Myself I’m Very Different Than I Am

In a car in Ohio, I am sitting
against the sky eating blackberries — truly
the biggest ones I have ever seen
in this life. They were grown in Kentucky,

which is just across the river

[…continue reading “When I’m By Myself I’m Very Different Than I Am,” as well as several other poems by Matt Hart, at Waxwing.]

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“What She Is Not” by Emilie Pascale Beck (fiction ’17)

An excerpt from “What She Is Not” by Emilie Pascale Beck (fiction ’17) published by Waxwing.

What She Is Not

You stood with the fat girls on the corner of Leavenworth and O’Farrell. Junkies nodded down on Eddy, and boys posed on Polk. You weren’t fat, but you were a freak, and the fat girls let you stand with them because no one else would.

Elvis Presley played in mourning from radios as the cars circled around and around, Valiants and GTOs slowing, men scanning the merchandise, settling for the most their money could buy. The ones who stopped for you didn’t know they were looking for you. How could they have imagined your eyes, which showed up on your face along different planes? The way one eyeball floated away, so they couldn’t be sure if you were looking at them or the moon. They wouldn’t have thought to crave your uneven, cone-shaped tits. But they stopped for you anyway. A good excuse not to have to look at you as they came in your hand, your mouth, your ass, between your pitiful breasts, on your ugly face, however they wanted, yelling at you, bitch, cunt, whore, slapping you, punching you, pinching your half-assed tits, hating you while they fucked you in their dark cars, grateful that they didn’t have to think about you afterwards, a crumpled $10 bill stuffed in your sticky hand. They drove their rusted Plymouths and Pontiacs back into the night while your stomach growled.

[…continue reading at Waxwing.]

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“The Power Paragraph” by Candace Walsh (fiction ’19)

headshot of Candace Walsh (fiction '19) gazing at the camera wearing a blue cardigan.

An excerpt from “The Power Paragraph” by Candace Walsh (fiction ’19), published by Fiction Writers Review.

With Some help from Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, Candace Walsh explores the power of the paragraph.

The Power Paragraph

Fiction writers agonize about using le mot juste, and we also strive for finely honed sentences. But what of the paragraph? A power paragraph can serve as a story’s fuse box, sending softly glowing, undulating, or hissing-hot power to different parts and levels of a story. This power paragraph can also serve as a hinge in the middle of a novel, as it does in Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, looking forward and backward, to the future and the past, like Janus (Chronos), the two-faced Roman god of gates, transitions, and dualities. Engaging with the idea of a power paragraph can help to focus one’s writing at an initial stage, or serve as a keystone in a work that is closer to being finished.

[…continue reading at Fiction Writers Review.]

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