March has been marked by both tentative hope, with the heartening increase in vaccinations across the country, and by horrific violence, with mass shootings in Orange, California, Boulder, Colorado, and Atlanta, Georgia. The yoyoing of emotion caused by these uncertain, frightening times can make it difficult to write, much less send out work for publication.
Still, our members have kept publishing their incredible writing in outstanding outlets. So let’s celebrate the WWS members who published during the tumultuous month of March.
Congratulations to liz gonzález, whose personal essay “A Room of (Almost) My Own” appeared in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
When I was single, I never needed a room of my own. I wrote whenever I wanted, day or night, in my tiny studio apartment, where I lived alone. Drafts of poems and stories and books would be strewn about for days, undisturbed. My clerical job didn’t require me to take work home; I could even write at my desk when business was slow.
My unencumbered writing life changed considerably twenty years ago, when I earned a graduate degree and fell in love in the same year. After graduation, my boyfriend–now husband–Jorge and I moved into an apartment together. I soon joined the ranks of adjunct instructors commuting across congested Southern California freeways to teach at community colleges and universities.
My writing suffered.
Congratulations also to Deborah Edler Brown, whose poem “Testament” appeared in Al-Khemia Poetica.
I, being of sound mind and body, do hereby relinquish all hope of being other than who I am.
She put the pen down and looked at what she had written. It wasn’t her will she was writing, she realized, now that the words had hijacked her. It was her will. The cornerstone of will power and her much vaunted willfulness. Her will and testament: all she had to say about who she was and where she was going. And relinquish…that was the keeper. It sat well on the tongue.
I relinquish all right to opinions that are not mine, and all interest in opinions about me.
Kudos to to Tanya Ko-Hong, whose poem “Go – Stop” appears in Heart’s Compass: Discover Journaling & Create Your Own Cards by Tania Pryputniewicz, published by Two Fine Crow Books.
From the tarot curious to the tarot savvy, Heart’s Compass Tarot provides a guide to using the tarot as a compass to navigate life, focus creativity, inspire writing, and forge a deeper connection to the self.
And to Carla Sameth, congrats for publishing her poem “Dying Gardenia” in Global Poemic.
Talk to no one
about what goes on, the gardener
senses your hurt goes beyond
the dying gardenia. The jacaranda
that refuses to flower,
lemon tree that will not
bear fruit. Tell yourself,
it’s not a child,
a husband or wife. Still,
you feel the loss,
of scent and taste, a sign
of what?
Congrats also to Lisa Eve Cheby, whose poem “Contact Tracing” also appeared in Global Poemic.
i.
Rain in Griffith Park and my last human contact.
I snuck out early from day-one of work-from-home.
I lay my naked body face down under the sheet.
After Marika prepared my body with oils, before I return
to begin shelter at home, the rain and no one but I
walk in Griffith Park. The eucalyptus and longleaf pines are closer
than six feet, their branches brush, alive and fearlessly fragrant.
Kudos to Tammy Delatorre, who published her essay “Brother: An Abecedarian Essay” in Sundog Lit.
Around Christmas, he’s on the run again; five nights without sleep, running from people he says hide in the shadows.
Baby brother posted this on Facebook—that’s how I found out, not that my family would tell me.
Called my father, immediately, who said it wasn’t his place, as if it would be gossip.
Dad doesn’t want to admit it’s meth because he’s done meth and never had delusions; I never saw my father do meth, but maybe little bro did, and now I bear witness to my brother’s downward spiral, the events running from A to Z, despite me not wanting them to.
A shout out to Soleil David, whose translation of a short story appears in the anthology Ulirat: Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines, published by Gaudy Boy Translates. Says the anthology’s description:
A groundbreaking survey of contemporary Philippine short fiction across seven different languages...Ulir t: Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines offers alternative visions of the islands beyond poverty and paradise. A vital survey of the richness and diversity of modern Philippine short stories, Ulirá tfeatures fiction from Filipino, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Ilocano, Waray, Kinaray-a, and Akeanon translated into English for the first time for international audiences. Vigorous writing from Filipino writers living in different parts of the archipelago re-animate Duterte’s Philippines, dramatizing everything from the drug wars, widespread corruption, and environmental degradation in surprisingly surreal and illuminating ways.
Congrats to Natalie Warther, whose craft essay “142. Poetry by Erasure” was published by The Isolation Journals.
I began playing with erasure poetry in the early months of quarantine. When I felt overwhelmed by the world around me, it was much less daunting to manipulate a preexisting thing than to create something from scratch.
And that’s all erasure poetry is: a manipulation, creation through elimination, an intense form of revision. It’s a whittling down until the original text is unrecognizable, until it no longer belongs to its original creator—until the thing that needs to be said through you is left there on the page.
Kudos also goes to Elizabeth Galoozis, whose poem “a cricket in the apartment” appeared in Horse Egg Literary.
we know it
only by its sound
the vibration of its wings
in the dark.
we have tried
to trace the chirp,
trap it.
closed all the windows,
taken a broom to the skylight
to shake it loose
but all that fell
was plaster.
And to Thea Pueschel, congratulations on publishing her flash fiction “The Doorbell” on The Abstract Elephant.
Her little hand would shake as her pointer finger connected with the button. Ding-dong!
She would pray no one would answer. The door would unlatch. The Watchtower and Awake! in her hand. A man or woman would grimace at the adult by her side, then look down at her and smile. Until the words of god dropped from her lips like rotten fruit on their doorstep —
“Not interested,” they would say as they slammed the door in her young face.
Congrats also to Tanya Ward Goodman, whose essay “A Four Way Stop (is a conversation)” appeared on The Manifest Station.
Many years ago, fresh out of college and broke as an egg in a bakery I took a job teaching traffic school. I dutifully learned as much as I could about the rules of the road and then, a few times a week, I talked for nearly eight hours straight in a series of hotel conference rooms. In addition to a much needed paycheck, the main perk of overseeing this detention for grown ups, was my access to a group of adults, most of whom were happy to answer my questions about “the real world.” I taught them the regulations of a four-way stop and reminded them who has right of way on a hill and, in return, they gave me their opinions on everything from cheap health insurance to the best Dim Sum.