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.]
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.
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.
An excerpt from “Crone poem (we’re all gonna die)” by Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet (poetry ’05) published by The Collagist.
Crone poem (we’re all gonna die)
and how could I have come
more than halfway and not know, I mean
I say it often enough. This is how
we talk tough, out here in the dark wood
where the direct way is lost though hey
it looks pretty clear to me, one-way trip
fire to fire. Even you, asshole,
the one with the big gun
on your shoulder, brandishing your right
to brandish your fear.
[…continue reading “Crone poem (we’re all gonna die)” at The Collagist.]
An excerpt from “House of Unending” by Reginald Dwayne Betts (poetry ’10) published by Poetry.
House of Unending
1
The sinner’s bouquet, house of shredded & torn
Dear John letters, upended grave of names, moon
Black kiss of a pistol’s flat side, time blueborn
& threaded into a curse, Lazarus of hustlers, the picayune
Spinning into beatdown; breath of a thief stilled
By fluorescent lights, a system of 40 blocks,
Empty vials, a hand full of purple cranesbills,
Memories of crates suspended from stairs, tied in knots
Around streetlamps, the house of unending push-ups,
Wheelbarrows & walking 20s, the daughters
Chasing their fathers’ shadows, sons that upset
The wind with their secrets, the paraphrase of fractured,
Scarred wings flying through smoke, each wild hour
Of lockdown, hunger time & the blackened flower.
An excerpt from “Ode to Dalya’s Bald Spot” by Angel Nafis (poetry ’19), published by Poetry.
Ode to Dalya’s Bald Spot
my sister wraps the throw
around herself on the small
cream loveseat & i know
for sure that she is not
a speck of dirt on a pill.
she coughs & sniffs up all
the lucky air in the room
into her excellent nostrils,
which are endless
holy wells replenishing
the soft architecture of her guts.
not even the lupus can interrupt
this ritual of beholding.
An excerpt from “Ship of Fools: Surviving Fragment of Triptych” by Rose Auslander (poetry ’15) published by The Piltdown Review.
Ship of Fools: Surviving Fragment of Triptych
and what remains of us? A plateful of cherries
spilled, half-eaten, a breast forgotten, dangling
from a torn bodice, men bellowing drunk
nuns plucking lutes, blind to children
begging naked in the water and
the fool we raised on high to guide
our leaking vessel, canvas torn, paint
cracked with age or by his rage—
[…continue reading “Ship of Fools: Surviving Fragment of Triptych” at The Piltdown Review.]
An excerpt from “Greenhousing” by Sarah Audsley (poetry ’19), published by Tupelo Quarterly.
Greenhousing
I’ll push against—
what did you say—any
edge. An orchid cannot
impregnate it-
self. Stamen & pistil sound
like dirty words, but they’re necessary.
I know how
to push
against the glass. I was a seed.
[…continue reading “Greenhousing” at Tupelo Quarterly.]
An excerpt from “W A K E : A SLEEP IN FORTY-SOMETHING WINKS” by Jennifer Sperry Steinorth (poetry ’15), published by Connotation Press.
W A K E : A SLEEP IN FORTY-SOMETHING WINKS
Midway through our night’s sleep
I woke to find the dream lost
My body shaken from it— salt
\ /
At the midpoint of the night we were allotted
I found myself in dark apartment
\ / /
Half through rocky return journey
I woke beneath a skein of geese
three fleet deer mice scrambling o’er me
[…continue reading “W A K E : A SLEEP IN FORTY-SOMETHING WINKS” at Connotation Press.]
An excerpt from “Ode to My Father’s Failed Heart” by Maya Phillips (poetry ’17), selected by Rita Dove and published by The New York Times Magazine.
Ode to My Father’s Failed Heart
It’s okay. I, too, have failed
at the expected, have sputtered
and choked like a rusty valve
in water, have jumped into the pool
only to sink. Little engine, your flawed
machinery is nothing like love. You limp
at last call to the dance floor,
but feel no shame
[…continue reading “Ode to My Father’s Failed Heart” at The New York Times Magazine.]
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