The last two months of summer have been filled with emergencies for me. So I’ve combined the July and August publication roundups. This way, I was able to fully focus on the wonderful accomplishments of the WWS members, who continue to persevere and publish in wonderful places.
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 July and August!
Congratulations to Wendy Van Camp, whose poem “Magnetotail” appeared in Starship Sloan Publishing.
it’s a dry cold place
where radiation bombards
could Mars be our home
Congrats also to Lois P. Jones, whose poem “Letter to God in the WTF Season and Big Sur Redwoods Full Moon” appeared in Tiferet Journal.
This will be your last life
here. A land where the clouds clash
In someone’s private 3.00 a.m.
an archipelago of nowhere
Kudos to Noriko Nakada, whose article “Poor judgment: Remembering Japanese internment on a journey to Heart Mountain as Roe falls” appears High Country News.
Thunderstorms had been expected overnight, but as we drove past the Tetons, the sky was clearing, leaving blue skies dappled with high cirrus clouds. David, my partner, and I were visiting national parks with our two kids. We sped through Wyoming, spotting deer and antelope along the way, and even pulled up alongside other motorists to peer past clumps of snow into the woods at a grizzly family napping off the side of the highway.
It was somewhere on this two-lane highway in Wyoming that I learned about the new Supreme Court ruling. A few days earlier, the court had ruled that Maine couldn’t exclude religious schools from its private school voucher program. Then the court decided that New Yorkers had a right to carry concealed weapons. On this day in late June, however, word of the impending ruling on Roe v. Wade had already been leaked. We knew it was coming.
Congratulations also to Ashton Cynthia Clarke, whose essay “Authentic” appeared in Spectrum 32: Rejoice or Rue from Spectrum Publishing.
A shout out to Gerda Govine Ituarte, whose poetry appeared in the anthology Sounds of Southern California: Poetry of Music, published by Four Feathers Press.
Kudos to Soleil David, whose poem “The Taegukgi on a Bus Ride from Apgujeong to Gyeongnidan” appeared in The Cincinnati Review.
Fumes rose from
the cell-phone case
I had hoped to salvage
by painting
clear nail polish
on its fragile surface.
Congratulations to Ariadne Makridakis Arroyo, whose poem “Fragments of Color” appeared in Stanchion.
Brown body, not the whole covering
of my skin, but bits and pieces.
All simple parts of me:
my hair, my irises, the tips
of my breasts. If you kissed me,
you’d taste mud–
stained water, fertile soil that seeps deep
in the Earth after rain’s gone.
Congrats to Jay O’Shea, whose short story “Awakening” appeared in Purple Wall.
Pain is everywhere. Eyes that have been open too long fight to turn shapes into images. Their burning is so fierce it is sleeplessness and dust and unshed tears combined. Paper-thin eyelids strive to close, then open again. With a hideous crack, my eyes move. My chin follows, tipping forward. Gradually, I begin to see.
My vision widens. I lie on a gurney of some kind, a makeshift stretcher as you might find on the battlefield. My hands lay high on my chest. Placed intentionally, they sit crossed over one another. Stiff, blackened, shriveled. This ghastly dryness, an arid sensation no living form has tells me I am not hallucinating when I look at those starved hands. Terror runs through me and panic wells in what should be my gut. Its hollowness is an ugly certainty. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my chest. Sunken, it doesn’t rise or fall. Its skin is waxy and stiff, a translucent brown. Dried muscle and brittle bone press against its surface. Bandages stretch over my shrunken flesh. The skin on my face stretches taut, brittle around my eyes, my nostrils. My face, once handsome, I know it now to be ruined.
A shout out to Lauren Eggert-Crowe, whose poems “But our certainty was always bought with teeth,” “Self-Portrait as Weather.com,” and “Queen of Any World That Took Me” appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review. Here’s an excerpt from “Queen of Any World That Took Me,” which appears both in print and online:
By the time he arrived, night
had lengthened by a whole
minute. Near the close of pomegranate
season, all that had ripened in the heat
now smoldered in another heat.
I knew exactly what kind of winter
I was inviting in when his mouth
met my own, when I tasted black
pepper, chlorine, mint, ash.
The warmth lingered like a dry red.
Kudos to Laura Sturza, whose post “My Action Partner – A Thoughtful Witness” appeared on the WWS blog.
While I have never birthed a human baby, I often benefit from the practices taught in birthing classes, the ones name-checked in this column—breathe, push. I spend much of my time pushing to be seen, heard, known, read, welcomed, held. I breathe between pushes, sometimes because I’m about to pass out.
Among the things that have carried me through my pushes to write, publish, read, support other writers, and teach—has been the support of having an action buddy (aka action partner). We’re both goal-oriented people, full of visions and the chops to carry them out. It happens with greater ease by having a consistent partner who serves as a reminder of our progress.
In addition, Laura’s article “Understudies: The Unsung Superheroes of D. C. Theater” appeared in Washington City Paper.
Shakespeare Theatre Company’s recent production of Our Town had understudies perform in every one of its 33 shows. “By the time we had six understudies performing for full audiences, it was a madhouse,” says Quinn Johnson, an understudy who acted in the all-local production. “But it’s kind of amazing. You stand backstage, and there’s this calm that happens.” Johnson credits the work of Stage Manager Joe Smelser and Director Alan Paul for keeping together this would-be madhouse, which drew strong reviews from the Washington Post and DC Theater Arts that name-checked its understudy stars.
Congrats to Ruby Hansen Murray, whose poem “Riders” appeared in ecotone.
Imagine the nuns herding
the žįkážį into the cellar where it is cool,
dry good stores along the shelves. Osage girls,
whose parents ride wagons to see them
across bluestem grasslands,
girls who wear big satin bows when they sit for photos,
girls who whisper their language
when the nuns can’t hear
In addition, Ruby’s article “Embodying Sovereignty Through Native Stories” appeared in High Country News.
In March, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Cherokee citizen, at least nominally, appeared on Fox News, telling Tucker Carlson, “I’ve got my Indian card. … My six children with blond hair and blue eyes, they all have their Indian card.” The interview concerned the McGirt decision, in which the Supreme Court held that Congress had not disestablished the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Stitt, however, has been at war with tribes ever since he took office.
The governor simply exploits Americans’ ignorance about Native Americans. Meanwhile, Native authors from reservations in the part of northeast Oklahoma most concerned in the McGirt case are publishing vibrant fiction that fully embodies Native history and presence.
Congratulations to Carla Sameth, whose poem “My Wife Who Became My Husband” appeared in MetroWeekly OutWrite.
He has begun to sound more mannish
as if we were in an old-time movie
maybe “My Fair Lady” – he’s as grumpy as Professor Higgins.
I’m not saying he wasn’t a curmudgeon before
but the first days after his top surgery, it was as if
he’d awoken in his real body, without breasts
being referred to as “he” and “my Husband” —
the latter a shock. And I was moved by his happiness
as if he’d finally landed on the right planet. But then,
I suppose the anesthesia and pain pills wore off
and as often happens with these things, there was
there was a downward movement as if the plane
went into a tailspin. He says he has no regrets
but perhaps some resentment that he couldn’t have been born
into the right body the first time around. After that
I couldn’t seem to locate the euphoria,
the sweetness of those early post-surgery days
when I could tend to him, and I felt even with his pain
if was as if he looked upon it all with wonderment,
as if he’d tunneled out of the birth canal again, the right gender.
A shout out to Roseanne Freed, whose poem “The tree which moves some to tears of joy, is in the eyes of others only a green thing —After William Blake*” appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly.
Nemophilist, an ancient Greek word
for a haunter of the woods,
is a perfect way to describe
my daughter. Instead of weeping
for her, I’m going to dry my eyes,
and take her two children hiking.
Kudos to Margo McCall, whose short story “Fur Trade” appeared in Dark Winter Literary Magazine.
The breeze carried a taste of prairie winter the first time Mark and Sofia passed the business with barred windows. It was just down Princess Street from their favorite Exchange District restaurant, Deer + Almond, where they’d consumed morsels of braised lamb shanks and smoked wild sockeye, followed by Ontario icewine and caramel salted chocolate cake.
In a brick building with limestone facade, the store seemed a throwback from another era. The thick iron bars on the windows reminded Mark of those at Lower Fort Garry that had kept supplies, pelts, and munitions safe from marauders in the 1800s.
Suppressing an urge to peer beyond the bars, he backed away from whatever security cameras or motion detectors might be waiting to entrap him. The police headquarters was right down the street. Mark had never been arrested and didn’t want to start now.
Congrats to Eva Recinos, whose article “How an Overlooked Black Collective Carved Out Pathways for a New Generation of Photographers” appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
Kamoinge, a photography collective made up of 12 members at the time, was familiar with mainstream media and art spaces overlooking their work. So they took the lead instead, showing their photos in an unofficial Kamoinge gallery, critiquing each other’s work, putting together portfolios and mentoring young photographers. Their black-and-white images captured the many experiences of the Black community, and in their work they explored abstraction, street photography, portraiture and more.
Roy DeCarava photographed stars like Billie Holiday; he was the first Black photographer to receive a Guggenheim fellowship in 1952, and he spent a year photographing Harlem. Herbert Randall photographed the Freedom Summer movement in 1964 and captured the streets of the Lower East Side during that era. Ming Smith documented people everywhere from Harlem to Senegal, also taking ethereal photographs of stars like Sun Ra and James Baldwin. Anthony Barboza photographed Harlem in the 1970s, put together an artist’s book featuring portraits of Kamoinge members and their art and captured a still-emerging Grace Jones in 1970.
In addition, Eve’s article “Lending Library of Joy, Storytelling” appeared in Poets & Writers Magazine.
Nestled into a block with a dance studio and a tax-services business in El Monte, California, Matilija Lending Library greets visitors with a sign in the window announcing its name in English, Spanish, and Chinese. There’s also a poster with the dictum “Protect Our Elders” and another that reads “This Is Tongva Land,” referring to the Indigenous people who have long inhabited the region. Inside, bright yellow and exposed-brick walls frame shelves of books. Colorful papel picado flutters overhead, and a vintage typewriter sits on a side table.
The decor’s nod to a wealth of cultures reflects the mission of Amy J. Wong and Andrew Fung Yip, the couple who opened the lending library to the public in March. Named after the Matilija poppy—a California-native plant that flowers in fire-ravaged landscapes—the library aims to “reflect our people of color communities in the San Gabriel Valley, and build multiracial solidarity.” Boasting a collection of more than 1,500 books by mainly BIPOC authors, Matilija allows patrons to check out three volumes for four weeks at a time. Recently displayed titles have included Chiang Yee’s The Silent Traveller in Boston, Nguyen Phan Que Mai’s The Mountains Sing, and Nikole Hannah-Jones’s The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. Guests can also congregate in the space during the library’s hours of operation on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. At a time when people of color are struggling under the weight of increasing racist and anti-immigrant violence nationwide, Matilija functions as a sanctuary as well as a lending library.
A shout out to Barbara Berg, whose poems “Something about vibration and sensory neurons” and “Even in this mess, something smells good outside my balcony” appeared in Tupelo Quarterly.
Here’s an excerpt from Barbara’s poem “Something about vibration and sensory neurons:”
Until the body becomes a flower, knowing its curvature in space.
An acceleration of speed, a pushing away — the back of a head, an exposed root, a lie.
Once I wrote, I’m running with my arms.
Grappling with the position of my limbs in relation to my body.
And here’s an excerpt from Barbara’s poem “Even in this mess, something smells good outside my balcony:”
Almost as if the stars were being blurred.
How the word decay sits and moans.
It wasn’t deliberate, I realize as I feel my head settle.
Kudos to Elline Lipkin, whose poems “Gretel, Looking Back,” and “Mother in the Earth” appeared in Mantis: A Journal of Poetry, Criticism & Translation, published by Stanford University Press,
Congratulations to Carly DeMento, whose poem “A Brief Lantern” appeared in The Journal of Radical Wonder.
I know in my heart
how rare each day is
but I’ve learned to pretend
it’s no big thing.