This year started off with tumultuous national events, but as January ends, hope shimmers in the air. With that shimmer in mind, let’s celebrate the accomplishments of our amazing membership. Despite tough times, the members of Women Who Submit have kept sending out their work and getting it published.
Congratulations to everyone who published this month!
Congratulations to Amy Raasch, whose poem “Shakes” appeared in The American Journal of Poetry.
For awhile
I made shakes every morning
Rainwater, old love letters,
broken rosary, cut grass
whatever I had lying around
Each had a strange taste
more medicine than treat
and was so thick
it took me hours to get through
And to Amy Shimshon-Santo, kudos on publishing the poem “Shades of White” appeared in Boom California.
Capitol White
Bone White
Pale Smoke
Winter Mood
Victorian Pewter
Silver Charm
Oatmeal
Macaroon
Moth Gray
Closet Mix
Master Mix
Eggshell White
Powder
Paper White
White Dove
Snowfall White
Swiss Coffee
Parchment
White Flour
Seditious White
Congrats also to Sibylla Nash, whose short story “One True Thing” appeared in Midnight & Indigo.
Jocelyn found it hard to focus on the date, although it had been the only thing occupying her mind until she got the text from her daughter. And just like that, she was split in half. Part of her brain trying to decide which dress could accommodate her extra pounds and the other part worrying about how she should respond about the rally. Knowing that whatever she said wouldn’t change anything but could make things worse. This was the part of parenting that felt harder than any other stage. In the ambiguous swampland of motherhood, the wrong comment, question, or non-committal grunt, could put you in the muck and leave you struggling to find firm footing for days, if not weeks. It was the stuff that kept therapists in business.
A shout out to Natalie Warther, whose flash fiction “Eileen Gets a Little Bit Drunk” was published by X-Ray.
My sons were watching a movie in the living room and I was upstairs, rummaging through their bathroom. I’m not really sure why, I almost never go in there, but there I was, and I’d had some wine, and we hadn’t left the house for twelve days, for Christ’s sake, so what else was I supposed to do?
I looked in the drawers, looked in the shower, looked in the trash can, looked in the mirror and I looked old.
Kudos to Amy Ma, whose short story “Elephant and Piggie: Which One of Us Will Survive the Pandemic?” was published in Little Old Lady Comedy.
We Are Getting Ice Cream
Elephant Gerald and Piggie walk up to Penguin’s ice cream truck.
Penguin: I’m so glad to see you, Gerald and Piggie! You two are the only customers I’ve had all week.
Elephant: No way! What happened to your other regulars, Pigeon and Squirrel?
Penguin: Pigeon and Squirrel don’t come by anymore.
Elephant: Wow, they must be taking quarantine seriously. Don’t they know ice cream is essential?!
Congratulations also to Lituo Huang, whose short story “小心 [Little Heart]” appeared in Tri-Quarterly Review.
The Café Delice menu was just big enough to hide Rosemary’s face if she ducked down. She had made sure to sit with her back to the window, so that the afternoon sun fell directly on her quarry: the late middle-aged couple sitting two tables in front of her.
Rosemary’s face, already well hidden by the café menu, would be even more obscured by its backlighting just in case the man (Dave or Dan or Stan, one of those names) decided to turn around. This was an extra precaution she did not have to take, since Dave/Dan/Stan, salt-gray hair, freshly shorn pale nape above expanse of work-crumpled white collar, was completely engrossed in conversation with the woman opposite him. That woman had nice curly hair, brown shot through with silver, and a wide-eyed, open face. She smiled beatifically at Dave/Dan/Stan like a Madonna. But Rosemary was always cautious, had always been cautious. Hadn’t her mother told her a million times, before she had left Harbin for film school in Burbank, 小心驶得万年船? And hadn’t her father told her she’d been born careful?
Kudos to Sara Ellen Fowler, whose conversation with Mario Ontiveros and Shana Lutker, “Production and Reflection,“ was published by X-TRA.
Sara Ellen Fowler: This invitation comes as a space for reflection and resolution. Could you speak to the phrase what art can do that became a kind of engine for this project?
Mario Ontiveros: For me, what art can do has always been an organizing principle for my teaching and my research. As an art historian working in a department of art that is about practice, one of the ways I invite people to think differently about the history of art is to not get caught up in the question what is art? but to really understand what art can do.
Shana Lutker: We attached that phrase to the series after the sessions had been recorded. It wasn’t the kind of question we could start with. But it was a question we could end with. Even if it seems obvious, there was a reason we had to go around the whole circle. We saw the kind of humanity that came through the participants’ art practices, that these citizens of the world had found that art was a way they could really build community, build affinities, and sometimes, make change.
Kudos also to Stephanie Yu, whose short story “Time Traveling Uncle” appeared in Litro.
He first disappears just before I am born. I have no memory of it, of course, but my mom still wears it years later like a lead vest, releasing a strangled sigh whenever she hears the garage door open. When he returns, I am six months old, and he just stares and stares. Absorbing the number of moles I have and the curve of my hairline.
He has already seen what I look like at puberty, middle age, in death. He has seen the acne that will spread across my face like he has seen the bed sores that will cover the backs of my withered legs when they wheel me out the door. He knows the address of the home my grandchildren will put me in, and he knows it is not very nice. He has mapped out all the things that will happen to me if I decide to roll over in my crib the wrong way, and it is by his mercy alone that he puts his hand up and says “stop.”
Congrats to S. Pearl Sharp, who published an essay in the anthology 2020: The Year That Changed America, edited by Kevin Powell.
Additional congrats to Dorothy Randall Gray, who had a poem included in the anthology 2020: The Year That Changed America.
Kudos to Jenise Miller, whose essay “I Hope That We Can Be Together Soon” appeared in the LA Review of Books.
The 2019 Compton Christmas parade started on a gray day, a light rain sprinkling down. But slight rain couldn’t stop the celebration. Every year, the parade is a main attraction in the famed city, with drill teams, marching bands, classic cars, and celebrities. It is ritual, something the city returns to for a communal moment of joy and exhalation, welcoming the promise of a new year.
In 2020, chemical pollution leaked into the Compton air, California skies hazed orange with fire and smoke, and a pandemic traveled unchecked across the United States. The same boulevard that holds the annual parade filled with marches demanding justice for police killings. There was no clearing of the difficult rain, no the parade must go on. When will we be together like that again?
And congratulations to Bonnie Kaplan, whose poem “A Manzanita Yad” appeared in Issue 119 of Sinister Wisdom.
I once whittled a yad from a fallen twig
of the manzanita bush, only I didn’t
think it yad at the time.
As with most whittling I did not know
where I was headed. One end of the sprig
was forked, evidence of branching,
and on the other I carved a single
claw, a talon really, which tipped it
into the magical, a sorcerer’s stick.
And to Kate Maruyama, congratulations on publishing her novella Family Solstice with Omnium Gatherum. Here’s excerpt from the novella’s description:
The Massey family loves their house. It’s been in the family for generations, and the land on which it sits has been with them even longer. In the summer everyone comes through to visit and the house is alive with family friends, barbecues and lobster boils. But come fall, the mood shifts as all of the kids start training for their turn in the basement.
A shout out to Natalie Warther for publishing her short story “Man’s World” in Gasher.
On our first three dates he talked mostly about the alligators. I had to come and see them, he said. At first I thought, you know, this is how he gets me to go home with him, but now I don’t think it was a game, I think he just wanted me to see his alligators.