The end of a wet and wild March is upon us, which means it’s time to celebrate the hardworking Women Who Submit members who have published their work.
The WWS members included in this post published their work during the month of March. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with 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 March!
Congratulations to Hazel Kight Witham, whose article “Books to See Us Through” appeared in High Country News.
Friday the 13th, March 2020: The world of public education in Los Angeles paused, and we went underground.
I told my students, “Some people stock up for the apocalypse with mountains of toilet paper and buckets of hand sanitizer.” They nodded, cast rueful, nervous smiles.
I asked, “You know what I stock up for the apocalypse with?”
With a knowing look, some of them ventured: “Books?”
“Books!” I trumpeted back. Books: our medicine, our escape, our refuge, our daily dose of empathy, one way of reimagining the world together. I pitched options for the two weeks: Kindred and Chronicle, Bluest Eye and Underdogs — stories of small and vast apocalypses. Class ended and I set them free, hoping the books they carried out could offer some shelter from whatever was coming.
Congrats also to Roseanne Freed, whose poems “The Stranger” appeared in One Art.
At my mother’s funeral the rabbi asked,
Who wants to see the body before we close the coffin?
It was good to see her. Wrapped
in a white cloth, she looked peaceful,
like the nun she’d always wanted to be.
I even kissed her cold forehead.
Roseanne’s poem “Exhibit ‘A'” also appeared in One Art.
newly married
on our European Grand Tour—
six months in a VW van
during that long ago time
of Europe on $5 a day…
Kudos to Lois P. Jones, whose poem “Frida Travels by Train to Meet Rilke for the First Time” appeared in Mslexia.
A shout out to Noriko Nakada, whose poem “Cat’s Cradle” appeared in The Rising Phoenix Review.
Fingers tug loops of yarn
middle fingers graze palms
starting this Cat’s Cradle
dance inside twine pulled tight
between dry space of hands.
Two partners play this game
for children, one not yet
resurrected like the
origami box, the
fortune teller, card games.
Congratulations to Ryane Nicole Granados, whose article “A Demonstration of Black Bodies in Nature” appeared in High Country News.
The lines etched on my wedding band resemble mountain peaks or ocean waves, depending on what you imagine them to be. I’ve always preferred the beach to the mountains. Some studies suggest that the beach is for extroverts, who favor frolicking and socializing over a solitary mountain journey. I am more extroverted than my mountain-loving husband, but I think my love of the beach has more to do with its sweeps of sand, colored sea glass and the sound of the ocean, emanating ease and serenity. The mountains have always left me with a tinge of fear. The threatening forests featured in horror movies, combined with my ancestral memory of Blacks being murdered in rural places, meant that the mountains, until recently, rarely called my name.
Congrats also to Carly Marie DeMento, whose poem “Inheritance” appeared in North American Review.
When my grandfather died in his sleep,
a spider crawled out of the sidewalk.
Until losing his breath, he commanded
the bees to bed flowers. Waving
his rake at the neighbors to say hello
he’d whisper the secret
to beefsteak tomatoes: steer manure.
In addition, Carly’s poem “Lithium Valley” appeared in the San Diego Annual 2022 – 2023.
At the end of the San Andreas,
we make grapefruits out of dust,
cantaloupes from sand.
Our dreams pour into the desert
to pound For Sale signs onto
beachfront lots.
Kudos to Michelle Otero, whose memoir Vessels: A Memoir of Borders was published by Flowersong Press.
“There are borders other than those between countries, borders between man and woman, sanity and madness, living and dead. These borders shift.” Vessels dwells in the borderlands. From this place, Michelle Otero turns to the seven directions and calls on Coyolxauhqui, Malinche, and her ancestors to answer the question, How do we put ourselves back together? Through memory, ceremonia, and testimonio, Vessels guides the reader through the long shadows of war, trauma, and death, lighting the way with the promise of wholeness and healing.