The leaves are turning as the writers from Women Who Submit continue to get their words into the world. Congratulations to all the women who were published in September!
From Erika Schikel‘s review of Patti Smith’s memoir Year of the Monkey at Book & Film Globe:
It begins on the first morning of 2016, at the Dream Inn in Santa Cruz. Patti has just played a gig at the Fillmore, celebrated her birthday, and visited Sandy, a lifelong friend who has suffered a brain aneurysm and lies unconscious in the hospital. She wanders outside the motel and takes a Polaroid of its googie sign and says to it, “Thanks, Dream Motel.”
From Ja’net Danielo‘s “The Fact of Things” at Frontier Poetry:
I am staring out the bus
window, watching
trees spin green
down a suburban
street. I am looking
for poetry in the blur
of leaves, in the lavender-
blue smear of jacarandas,
which is to say, I am
trying to hold something
without touching it
From “Venus” by Lituo Huang at goodbaad:
I am hungry for you, brown girl.
Spider-like you crawl,
your eyes are milk.
Do not gaze upward with your mouth
open, red.
Also from Lituo, “I Knew a Cat Once” at Recenter Press:
I knew a cat once.
Kitten-yellow
eyes it had.
Egg yolks against the edge of its tongue
purled with hooks
split and released daylight
onto a cooling plate.
From “I Do Not Know Where the Children Are” by Désirée Zamorano at the Los Angeles Review of Books:
I do not know where the children are. I do not know where their parents are. I do not know how our government supports this horror. I do not know what I can do.
Also from Désirée , “Angel Luis Colon: On Writing Violence” at CrimeReads:
My first loves were horror and literary fiction. Being a kid from the Bronx it never really struck me that you could write about the Bronx. I don’t know why; I imagine because when things are too close to home you just don’t see them from that perspective. When I really discovered the newer wave of crime fiction in the last ten years, I got exposed to that from places like Beat to a Pulp, Needle Magazine. So it’s kind of funny to realize, oh, people like this? I can write stories about this?
From Margo McCall‘s “Riverbed” at Pomona Valley Review:
Carrie’s last client of the day was a surprise, although she already sensed that
after a few more weeks in this job, nothing would surprise her. As she viewed the
latest personification of human need slumped in the worn chair beyond her desk,
she saw a guy her own age—and not bad looking either.
Congratulations to Jenise Miller who had two poems published at Cultural Weekly! From “Dolphins:”
Yolanda “Yo-Yo”
Whitaker whipped crimped,
blonde braids and bragged
the earrings I wear are called dolphins
and I became bigger
From Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera‘s “Swirling Debris” at Citron Review:
She stands on the corner, only one young man next to her.
His headphone bass vibrates the air.
The signal changes to walk.
Congratulations to Helena Lipstadt whose poem, “Everybody Knows” was published at Free State Review!
Congratulations to Lindsey Skillen whose story, “Labor Day,” was published at Cosmonauts Review!
Congratulations to Colette Sartor whose story collection, Once Removed, debuted this season!
Congratulations to Desiree Kannel whose story, “Running Man” was published in Running Wild Press’ Anthology of Stories!
Noriko Nakada is the editor of the Breathe and Push column. She writes, blogs, tweets, and parents in Los Angeles. She is committed to writing thought-provoking creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.
