June 2022 released even more chaos into the world. Roe v. Wade was officially overturned by SCOTUS, in a decision that eliminated a constitutional right for the first time in United States History, and the January 6th House Committee Hearings revealed information about the 2021 insurrection that even the most jaded found startling. Despite the ongoing mess that is 2022, our WWS members continue to persevere, sending out and publishing their amazing creative work in fantastic markets.
I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb if the publication is a book, and a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in June!
Congratulations to Linda Ravenswood, whose poetry chapbook The Stan Poems was published by Pedestrian Press.
Congrats also to Mary Camarillo, whose essay “The Comfort of Routine” appeared in the anthology Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis: Women Writers Respond to the Call, edited by Stefanie Raffelock.
Kudos to Thea Pueschel, whose essay “The Chemistry of Exposure” was published by Voicecatcher.
The faux leather camera body sat in my hand. I held the lens between my thumb and forefinger, slowly turning the rewind knob to roll the film into its cartridge. It clicked, signifying its readiness. I popped the back open and discovered it deceived me. I yelped a curse and closed the body quickly and wound with fervor, hoping my sin wasn’t a cardinal one. Unsure if the fog set in on my first assignment.
In addition, Thea’s flash “Professional Curby” appeared in Punk Noir Magazine.
“Where’s the PA with the hose?” The Assistant Director clacked the clip at the top of his clipboard. “We need to wet this area; the production car is here. Where’s the kid?”
The headlights flicked their orange hue in my direction. The kid was me. I carried the hose over my shoulder past the Akachōchin, two years of studying Japanese, and the only thing I could remember was what the damn red lantern was called, I walked up and down in front of the closed restaurants and shops, attempting to decipher the Katakana and couldn’t find a faucet.
A shout out to Janel Pineda, whose poem “Intergenerational Trauma Bingo” appeared in BOMB Magazine.
Congratulations to Lisa Eve Cheby, whose poem “For What It’s Worth” appeared in NA RCC MUSE Literary Journal.
Congrats also to Carly DeMento, whose poem “Careful What You Wish For” appeared in A Moon of One’s Own.
She writes down a phrase. Something about stars.
I want to warn her: don’t catch their cold in a jar.
What’s written on an empty sky is perilous.
How a whole life unfurls from a single seed.
Kudos to Laura Sturza, whose article “What My Older Cats Taught Me About Life. Really!” appeared in The Ethel from AARP.
When my husband and I married seven years ago, he agreed to a package deal. I came with two middle-aged cats I had adopted long before our wedding. Tom and I were middle-aged, too. He was 61. I was 53 (11 and 9 in cat years). I couldn’t ride into my golden years with a man who was cat averse. Felines are essential for my mental health.
What I never expected was that learning to accept the eccentricities and challenges that developed during Lulu and Moki’s twilight years would teach me how to live with my husband’s peccadillos (and mine) as we grew older.
In addition, Laura’s article “Why I Searched for Love in Thrift Store Aisles” appeared in Shondaland.
Working at my family’s antique business in Maryland took fortitude, which I developed at an early age during morning jaunts to yard sales and late nights hawking goods at my mother’s antique shows. Sorting out the goodies from the toss-offs and closing sales on the trinkets customers wavered over buying required true discernment.
Kudos to Ann Tweedy, whose poem “Reasons to Live” appeared in Rejected Lit Magazine.
1.
Sometimes instead of action
a poem
imitates emulates
2.
The website on methods instructs
pain free are the holy grail
and proceeds to rate each of the most popular
for lethality, time, agony.
In addition, Ann co-authored the blog post “The Indian Country Abortion Safe Harbor Fallacy,” which appeared in The LPE Project.
Following the leaked draft of the United States Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, several conservative states have moved to restrict access to abortion. Oklahoma, for instance, has recently passed the nation’s strictest abortion ban, exposing individuals to criminal and civil liability and defining life at “fertilization.”
In response, commentators have raised the possibility of an abortion “safe harbor” on tribal lands. Similar musings followed the passage of Senate Bill 8 in Texas months earlier. In theory, this idea rests on a simple premise: state governments lack the power to regulate tribal lands, so tribal governments could open abortion clinics that serve as islands of access in conservative states. However, as we will argue in the following post, this proposal overlooks important legal, financial, political, and ethical considerations that, in our view, make the possibility of abortion safe harbors highly unlikely.
A shout out to Kate Maruyama, whose science fiction short story “Bloom” appeared in Analog S/F.
In addition, Kate’s blog post “Kate Maruyama on ‘Bloom'” also appeared in Analog S/F.
In the past few years, I’ve heard so many stories from friends about friendships divided along binary lines; people deciding they can’t remain friends with those politically opposed to their viewpoints. Over the past five years or so friendships and family relationships have fallen out over ideological differences. As COVID spread in the country, more friendships were lost along lines of belief in science or in the virus itself. And, on a more distressing level, lines drawn between people who believed in and supported science and those who pushed against it. I have had friendships tested, ones I thought that would be there forever when, finally “seeing” the belief system by which those friends were living, I realized that these folks may not have other human’s best interests at heart.
Congrats to Carolina Rivera Escamilla, whose poems “Tracing Time” and “In Memory to Paula Lopez “ appeared in BOMB Magazine.
From “Tracing Time:”
Tracing time
Time and space
are and are not.
You are anxiety searching
the fiber of what is left,
that memory untouched,
From “In Memory to Paula Lopez:”
Paula, dreaming spirit
perfumed voice of
eucalyptus petals and
springs.
blessed by herbs
from the mountains of
your grandmothers
you didn’t let her tongue die.
Congratulations to Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera, whose short story “Seven Strands” appeared in Luna Station Quarterly.
“It’s real churchy in here.” Norma touched the foot of the crucified Jesus. “When did your mom become so religious?”
Cristian answered, “Mi tia’s been here all week. Clearly she has redecorated.”
In addition, Tisha’s short story “We Wish” appeared in Empty House Press.
At dusk, we hop over the creaky wooden steps and sprint across the gravel to Tenth Avenue. We skip in the middle of the street, across the train tracks, and climb over the black wrought iron fence into the cemetery. We each find a new headstone to read, shout names, dates, and epitaphs across the warm night air. We imagine the lives the dead led, wonder what they left undone. When a big rig rumbles by, we lie flat on the dry grass, press one ear to the earth, and listen for lingering heartbeats. A bug crawls in Larissa’s ear. She squeals and squirms, says it’s time to go. Joanna’s flip flop gets stuck on the fence. She tweaks her ankle and limps all the way home.
Kudos to Donna Spruijt-Metz, whose poem “To the Death” appeared in Orange Blossom Review.
My husband and I had a fight today about pictures—I
never like the ones of me, and that pisses him off. My
negativity pisses him off. In any picture taken right now,
or a few days ago, or last year, I always think I look old,
or tired. But tonight, I am poring over decades of
snapshots and I see that there are pictures I like now, at
this remove. The pictures I like are the ones where I am—
not just looking happy, but truly happy, at least as
far as memory serves. And yet I come back to this one. My
mother and I….
In addition, Donna’s poem “The Green Before Her” appeared in Whale Road Review.
I remember other mornings
before she was born
this same green—those mornings
without—where the only darkness comes
from within. Frosted mist rising
over the sleeper dike. Out across the polder—for miles, nothing
but grasses and marshlands, Godwits
and willows, the Herons still as statues.
Sun readying herself for dew.
A shout out to S.R. Ponaka, whose essay “Just a Letter in the Mailbox” appeared in Heavy Feather Review.
My niece wants me to write a love letter to her father. They are visiting from New York, and all the rooms have been taken over by suitcases, so I’ve set up my laptop on the kitchen table, where I’m finishing up some urgent work emails before I can take her to the park. She stands by my side, her head bowed, green glitter pen and rainbow stationary in hand, while she waits for me to look at her. I press send, then give her a big hug and a high five. I tell her I’m almost done. She grips my thumb and pulls it toward her, then very clearly and confidently says, I don’t know my letters yet, so I need you to help me write a letter to my daddy, because he didn’t come with us and I love him and I miss him. I have no children of my own and perhaps this is why my love for my niece scares me, it comes from an alien and unfamiliar place. But this task feels herculean because I despise her father, married to my sister, a man I refuse to call my brother-in-law because he isn’t my family, regardless of whether my sister chose him to be hers. My sister’s husband, I say, with no irony.
Congratulations to Tanya Ko Hong, whose translation of her poem “Thinking About Parents” appeared in Defunctmag.
My homeland is about a thousand miles away over mountain
after mountain after mountain
but I always wanted to go back whether awake or asleep even in dreams
In addition, Tanya’s poem “The Yellow Freesia” appeared in the anthology Flowers Blooming from Scars.
Congrats to liz gonzález, whose article “Book Prize Celebrates Older Poets” appeared in Poets & Writers.
Even as the number of awards for debut poetry books seems to have increased over the years, an inordinate number of those awards are won by writers age forty and under. Some awards even have an age limit of thirty-five or younger. But Passager Books, an independent press based in Baltimore, recognizes that not all debut poets are “young,” that youth is not a prerequisite for talent and relevance. In 2018 the press established one of a handful of prizes offered by small presses for older poets: the Henry Morgenthau III First Book Poetry Prize. The award is “given biennially for a first book of poems by a writer age seventy or older” and includes $3,000 and publication of the winning manuscript. This spring, Passager announced the newest recipient of the prize: seventy-year-old Mark Elber, whose collection of poems, Headstone, will be released in October.