Another round of incredible publications by our membership. Each month when I put together this post, I’m awed by the determination, talent, and perseverance of every one of us who gets our words out into the world. So congratulations to the following WWS members who published work during the month of October!
Congratulations to Carla Sameth, whose personal essay “We Have Pets” appears in the anthology Unspoken: Writers on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Stillbirth, published by L10 Press. A description of the anthology:
Unspoken is a long overdue anthology, gathering the voices of twenty-nine writers whose lives have been affected by infertility, pregnancy loss, and infant death. From the chronicle of a father’s love for his lost daughter to poetry exploring the journey of a woman supporting her wife through IVF, from the terror of losing a pregnancy to the heartbreak of twins born too early to survive, from an essay on loss across the generations of one family to the impossible choices and impossible choicelessness of modern prenatal care, the stories and poems in these pages give voice to the many heartaches of childbearing loss.
And to Hannah Sward, kudos for publishing “Love, Russian Style” in Erotic Review.
I haven’t had a date in months. Tonight I’m finally going out with Dimitri, the buff Russian with bad teeth. He spotted me at the gym this morning. In the middle of his sweaty, mad run on the treadmill he came to an abrupt stop and approached me.
Kudos to Natalie Warther for publishing her story “Clogged” in Sip Cup.
The spaghetti still wouldn’t fit down the drain. It had come out into the sink in one big slop, still formed in a tupperware-shaped blob that clung to itself until she ran the hot water over all the skinny noodles and they split like hairs falling away from their scalp. Pour hot water on anything and it’s bound to break loose.
Congratulations to Amy Shimshon-Santo, who published her poem “the future of music” in the Winter 2020 issue of Prairie Schooner.
Amy also published the essay and poem “Versos y Besos / Born in Los Angeles on Los Angeles Street” in ASAP Journal.
Manuela García’s devotion to music reveals the centrality of the feminine voice in the sonic history of the Southwest. Over 100 wax cylinders of her singing were carefully preserved in the Autry Museum’s archive, but her story had been separated from her songs. In one sepia photograph, she gazes out of frame. In another, she stands with a group of women by the trunk of a thick-limbed tree, branches wide as elephant legs. I was asked to write a poem to honor her for the centennial of women’s suffrage. In order to celebrate her in poetry we first had to restore the missing link between inert archival objects and her life.
And to Mary Camarillo, congratulations on publishing the poem “Barren Women” in 166 Palms – A Literary Anthology 2020, published by Stanford University Press.
Check out Cynthia Alessandra Briano’s poem “Where the ocean becomes the mouth” in Ginger Zine.
Your imagined landscapes, where will they take you?
To a spot of brilliant white light
where the ocean becomes the mouth
of a sea cave, wave-cut
and chiseled in columnar basalt
Also check out the novel Edendale by Jacquelyn Stolos, published by Creature Publishing. Praise for Edendale from author Edan Lepuki:
“Edendale is a sly and smart novel that contains multitudes—itʼs strange, funny, dark, violent, frightening, compelling, and mysterious. Jacquelyn Stolos takes many exciting risks on the page, and together these risks accumulate to become a powerful and unique story about young, alienated people trying to find their way in an inhospitable world.”
To Soleil David, congratulations for publishing the short story “Donya Zaragoza” in Barnstorm.
Donya Zaragoza allowed herself to be whisked away from her beloved Bantangas family home to the southern province of Bicol because she knew that marrying a Zaragoza meant that she could restore her family’s fortune.
Kudos to Ashunda Norris, whose published the poem “Monostitch On the Cusp of 40” in PANK Magazine:
I’m a Terry McMillian character live & in charge of my own damn(ed) life.
I loathe men then clamor after their body parts regional accents
blue collar swag.
No, I am not the bitch to play with.
Ashunda also published the poem “15 Yr Old Redbone Me” in PANK:
damian is kissing on my titties in tha back of east laurens right up against my daddy’s truck and all i can think about is when will he be fucking done already
Congrats to Elline Lipkin, who published a review of the poetry collection The Clearing by Allison Adair in Rhino.
The titleof Adair’s debut volume, The Clearing, chosen by Henri Cole for the Max Ritvo Prize, suggests open spaces or coming into a wide vista. Yet, the striking cover art depicts the space below a ramshackle house, its windows and doors X’ed out in red, with an assemblage of stones — variegated, shiny, colorful, and collaged so that the space fills in. Throughout Adair’s remarkable book, I felt she was doing the same: mining a quarry of rocky emotional terrain and polishing roughness so that hidden gems emerge.
Check out Angela M. Brommel’s poem “The Water Bearer” published by The Night Heron Barks.
I imagined your death our whole lives.
The loss an uninhabitable heat,
overtaking me, bereft and wild.
Congratulations to Flint, whose flash erotica “Crime & Punishment in Little Tokyo” appears in the flash fiction anthology Erato, published by New Smut Project. The publisher describes the book:
Erato: 50 erotic short, short stories with a diversity of characters and settings–all of them breathtakingly seductive and memorable. Expand your erotic imagination and discover the pleasure different bodies, relationships, and play with language can bring us. From the prehistoric past to newly discovered planets in the far future, the stories included here include many kinky, creative, and body-positive celebrations of sensuality–from temperature play to leather, phone sex, strap-ons, or magic and music. Slow seductions and urgent lust are both on offer, with hours of reading pleasure to savor one luxurious bite at a time.
Congrats to Dinah Berland, whose poem “What Some Men Can Do” was published by Lummox Press.
Also, congratulations to Deborah Edler Brown, who published a haiku in Failed Haiku.
Single White Female
seeks Fireman with Arson Heart.
No bullshit. No smoke.
Kudos to Angela M. Sanchez, whose article “FLAWED AND FURRY: Anthropomorphism, Allegory, and Oppression” appeared in Solrad.
Whether on two legs and in full contemporary clothing or on all fours and simply imbued with a higher sentience, animal-people allegories have existed since time immemorial. These stories oftentimes serve to impart parables and cautionary tales. Aesop’s tortoise and hare taught us about moderation and haste. Anansi the spider taught us resourcefulness and resilience. The Trickster Coyote, ubiquitous across many southwestern Native American cultures, taught us about the duality of wisdom and foolishness. And in Disney’s Zootopia (2016), Nick the fox and Judy the rabbit taught us that in a distant past people of color preyed upon white people.
Wait . . . what?
Congrats to Melissa Chadburn, who published the article “For the Dis/Rupted Voter” in McSweeney’s.
As I write this… my inbox is stuffed with emails from Ladies and The Men. The Ladies tell me they are writers too. The Ladies would like to speak with me. They are very interested in my work. They would like me to give them all of my work from the last decade. They would like to write a book.
As I write this…Amazon has received at least $2,982,000,000 in subsidies. In April, Amazon and Walmart began allowing customers to use SNAP benefits to pay for groceries. Yet in five states, Amazon ranked among the top twenty companies with the most employees who receive food stamps.
And to Hazel Kight Witham, congratulations on publishing the flash essay “House Engraved” in Cultural Weekly.
The plastic ghouls and rope nets, wired spiders in frozen creep, this cemetery of street, this house cobwebbed in gauze of pretend decay, and along front window, the letters of her name, inked and hung with care.
One wants to read “Happy Halloween” there, but instead these letters, more ache, more memorial, renders whole house tombstone in predawn grief.
Also check out Erana Leiken’s flash fiction “Kindred Spirits,“ published by Tiny Seed Journal.
I woke from a bad dream to the sound of a buzz saw to discover the mangled corpse of chopped wood chunks and strewn branches, the remains of the beautiful tree that protected my balcony. The former golf course owners sold the land to a developer; and the tree, a victim of drought and greed, lost its caretaker. The tree was home to mourning doves and hummingbirds, a sanctuary for them and a natural shade and privacy screen for my living space. I felt a mixture of sorrow and anger.
Plus, check out Lorinda Toledo’s short story “What Grew from the Earth” that appeared in The Normal School.
Maudie was eight months pregnant with their second child, her hands raw and wrinkled from scrubbing laundry. Men passed through Oklahoma looking for work, and Maudie knew how to tell a joke, share a bit of laughter. She made them feel human again. It was her smile and her easy way of listening, like they were old friends sipping iced tea on a porch on a warm day the way they used to do before the barren fields made them take to the road. There were no porches in this rural Hooverville where tents served as houses, or living quarters of a kind were scrabbled together from whatever could be found. Maudie’s features reminded them of their mothers, their sisters, their lovers all at once and also not at all. The gentle way she insisted a clean pair of overalls or a fresh shirt was all they needed to forget, for a little while, they were destitute and tired. Most times, the men would scrounge up what they could pay her. Sometimes they simply took their clean clothes and moved on. Sometimes, especially when her belly hadn’t been so big, they asked her to take a walk in the woods. But Maudie always made sure she stayed right out in the open.