May 2023 Publication Roundup

The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during the month of May 2023. 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 May 2023!

Congratulations to Toni Ann Johnson, whose novel excerpt “But, Where’s Home?” appeared in Moira.

One day my mom tells me Aunt Velma told her that Zeke Odom finally asked Maddie out. We’re excited for her, but Aunt Velma read it in Maddie’s diary, so we can’t say Snickers till Maddie asks Aunt Velma if she can go, which is like a whole week later and then we all have to act surprised. I do act surprised. Then I feel bad and tell Maddie her mother told my mother, but I tell her she can’t confront her mother, because then my mother will know I told and then Aunt Velma will know my mother told, and that would be a big fucked up mess.

Congrats also to .chisaraokwu. (Chisara Asomugha), whose poem “wom mata” appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review.

Kudos to Ashunda Norris, whose poem “Hoodoo Manifesto” appeared in Obsidian.

A shout out to Bonnie S. Kaplan, whose poem “Mastectomy, Simple” appeared in Medmic.

I never expected to feel the cool drink running
so close to my skin, just under my newly sutured
chest, my heart side now genderless and tender—

to love my flat chest, so much like the one I had at 13,
skateboarding in t-shirts without a bra. Never expected
to notice my right nipple, how it still becomes hard—

Congratulations to Cynthia Adam Prochaska, whose essay “My Anesthesiologist” appeared in CRAFT. Content warning: Miscarriage

I see my anesthesiologist at the movies and it surprises me in the way that seeing someone outside the setting you know them does. There is a prick of recognition and then my mind scrambles to place him. A stab of familiarity while I wonder why I am thinking of blue cotton pajamas. Why I feel like he has touched my forehead or stroked my arm, or spoken to me in the way he speaks to someone who is hurt. I stand on the pavement outside the Royal Theatre a little dazzled by the gray, cloudy glare and think. My brain is still half in the movie, a matinee, about a slacker who drinks White Russians and wears a patterned cardigan like a robe. But I place the anesthesiologist quickly enough when he turns to look at me. A few nights ago, he was standing over me in the ER, counting me down into total oblivion, during the Saturday night graveyard shift. I remember his face, square jawed and handsome, as a harbinger that everything would be okay. I was having a miscarriage, the last of three over several years, and my husband and son were out of town for a spring break the doctor had forbidden me to go on. A friend had driven me to the hospital and my mother was coming. But now I am back in that in-between time, when I was alone, reliving that gush of blood that left trails through the house and soaked the largest towel we owned.

Congrats to Roseanne Freed, whose poems “Black American Express Card” and “In the Workshop After I Read My Poem Aloud” appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly.

Here’s an excerpt from “Black American Express Card:”

The Centurion credit card—
the black American Express card—
is exclusive, prestigious,
and available by invitation only,
to select big spenders worldwide.

Here’s an excerpt from “In the Workshop After I Read My Poem Aloud:”

This isn’t a poem.
It’s a newspaper article, he said.
Where are the metaphors and similes?

My fame is so infamous
I don’t need metaphors or similes
to play like a plague. My smile
is contagious, it lights up the room,
fires a fever in my victims,
and as I dance on the lungs
I simply cancel respiration.

Kudos to Lisa Eve Cheby, whose poems “Doomsday Aphrodisiac,” “Pluto’s Emancipation,” and “I didn’t ask to be the center” appeared in Statement Magazine.

A shout out to liz gonzález, whose excerpted essay “The Original OLG: San Bernardino’s First Our Lady of Guadalupe Church” and poem “Confessions of a Pseudo-Chicana” appeared in Open Plaza.

Here’s the opening of liz’s excerpted essay “The Original OLG: San Bernardino’s First Our Lady of Guadalupe Church:”

On my way home to Long Beach from a visit with my family in the Inland Empire, I take a cruise through the old Mexican neighborhood in San Bernardino’s Westside. I park on Pico Avenue, where Spruce Street dead ends, to check out the small parking lot behind the new-ish Our Lady of Guadalupe Church Parish Hall. Protected by a tall ornamental metal fence, this space has received great care. The water-wise landscaping is well-maintained, and fresh white stripes designate parking spaces on the smooth asphalt. Looking at this empty and quiet spot, one would never know that the first Our Lady of Guadalupe Church—the original OLG—in the city once stood here. The church was the social, cultural, and spiritual hub of the local Mexican immigrant and Mexican American community. Yet, not even a historical marker has been installed on the site so that people can learn about this once-vital place.

Here’s an excerpt from her poem “Confessions of a Pseudo-Chicana:”

Forgive me 
Our Lady Virgen of Guadalupe
for I have offended you.
It has been eight months
since I lit a votive
or ate a bowl of menudo.
These are my sins:

I refused to taste hot chili until I was 18. Mama raised us
on Hamburger Helper and Macaroni & Cheese.
She never even made a pot of beans.

I learned how to make tortillas
from Mrs. Mac Dougall in home-ec.
Mama still uses the recipe.

A shout out to liz gonzález, whose work “Ode to OLG, San Berardino” appeared in Open Plaza.

On my way home to Long Beach from a visit with my family in the Inland Empire, I take a cruise through the old Mexican neighborhood in San Bernardino’s Westside. I park on Pico Avenue, where Spruce Street dead ends, to check out the small parking lot behind the new-ish Our Lady of Guadalupe Church Parish Hall. Protected by a tall ornamental metal fence, this space has received great care. The water-wise landscaping is well-maintained, and fresh white stripes designate parking spaces on the smooth asphalt. Looking at this empty and quiet spot, one would never know that the first Our Lady of Guadalupe Church—the original OLG—in the city once stood here. The church was the social, cultural, and spiritual hub of the local Mexican immigrant and Mexican American community. Yet, not even a historical marker has been installed on the site so that people can learn about this once-vital place.

Congratulations to Ashton Cynthia Clarke, whose essay “A Promising Young Woman” appeared in Olny Magazine.

In addition, Ashton’s essay “Intersect: Drapo Vodou Art of Myrlande Constant – Traditional African Religion Meets the Colonizers” appeared on the Women Who Submit Blog.

As an Afro-Caribbean myself (first generation raised in the USA of Jamaican immigrant parents), I have some second-hand knowledge of the creolization of traditional African religions with the Christianity of colonizers. The slaves of British-held Jamaica embraced obeah; Santería practice flourished in the Spanish colonies; and French-held Haiti birthed Vodou (voodoo). 

My mother was brought up Protestant and covered me in the Episcopal church from infant baptism until I left for college. Nevertheless, I would lay wide-eyed in bed after Mommy’s stories of naughty or even malevolent duppies (spirits) who blocked her path on the dark roads of northern Jamaica when she was a teen.