This is my first post as the new publication roundups editor. Thank you, Laura Warrell, for being such a fantastic editor for the past four and a half years.
For many of us, it’s been difficult to stay focused on writing during the ongoing crises that define our everyday lives. Time and again, Women Who Submit has been a touchstone, a reminder that creativity matters; that our words make a difference in the world.
To witness WWS members continue to submit their work and publish far and wide is an inspiration. So let’s join in celebrating this month’s literary successes of our community members!
Congratulations to Donna Spruijt-Metz, whose poem “Pebbles Along the Labyrinth- Psalm 31” was published by The Cortland Review, along with an audio recording.
Listening for mercy –
I place pebbles
along the labyrinth – smooth
in YOUR hand
against
the cutting nets
of trust
Congratulations to Amy Shimshon-Santo, whose chapbook of erasure poems, Endless Bowls of Sky, was published this month by Placeholder’s Press’s Flashbulb!
Check out Li Yun Alvarado’s poem “To the White Parenting ‘Expert'” published by La Parent as part of “LA Parents Weigh in on Racism:”
My naivete: the
presumption
that your concern
for designing presence
& peace included
peace for black babies.
For Tammy Delatorre, her essay “I Want to Fuck Your Poem” appeared in the Los Angeles Review.
Everything you said about poetry, I wanted to get naked with. You quoted the immortals: W.H. Auden saying we’re making a “verbal object,” Carl Sandburg claiming a poem was “an echo asking a shadow to dance,” and Howard Nemerov stating that poetry was “a means of seeing invisible things and saying unspeakable things about them.”
Check out Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo’s essay “Forget About the Rap Star and Choose Me,” out now in PANK.
At 32 I fell for a man I met through OK Cupid. Still a couple of years before the dating app deluge, I joined the site determined to end my history with short-lived, non-boyfriends.
Congrats to Tanya Ko Hong, whose poems “Journey (여행)” and “What I Really Want (내가 간절히 원하는 것은)” were published this month in The Global Korean Literature Magazine (Anthology 3).
Congratulations Arielle Silver, whose musical album and companion book, both titled “A Thousand Tiny Torches,” were released this month.
From Colette Sartor, the interview “Excerpt & Q&A: ONCE REMOVED by Colette Sartor” was published by Angels Flight literary west.
Now, more than a century later, I find myself amidst a deadly pandemic, worried about keeping my family safe while staying afloat financially. I dread that we will wind up where my grandmother’s family did: ravaged by loss, fighting to rebuild in the outbreak’s aftermath.
Also from Colette, the interview “Cultural Attunement and ‘Otherness’: A Conversation with Aimee Liu” appeared in The Rumpus.
Liu’s novel succeeds not just as fine-tuned historical fiction but also as an insightful portrait of individuals determined to understand and embrace the humanity of all. The book is set within the context of the British colonial system’s arrogant dehumanization of anyone perceived as “other.”
Congrats to Soleil David, whose poem “Xyliphius sofiae” appeared in Coal Hill Review.
I, a human being with eyes that swim
in aqueous humor, hold a hand out
in absolute darkness and cannot see it.
From Désirée Zamorano, her short story “Norma” was published by PANK.
She could not stop being his mother; he made his own decisions. That was how it should be. What she needed to do was sip and enjoy the wine, his presence, their shared meal. She did not need the addition of the locura in her mind. Calmate, she told herself. To be a parent was to have expectations. To be an adult was to release them.
Congratulations to Laura Warrell, who published her essay “Writing While Black” in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
To write as a Black person in America is to sustain a barrage of gut punches from a community and industry that don’t do a great job transcending the larger inequities of the culture surrounding them. Writing is difficult and publishing hellish, but the path for Black writers is laden with unique indignities.
Congratulations Lisbeth Coiman on publishing her poem “A Rosary for Venezuela” in La Bloga.
I am a radical atheist relearning to pray.
Kneeling to conjure devotion, I hold my motherland between the palms of my hands, to protect her against all evils. My words, the beads of the rosary slipping through my fingers.
Also from Lisbeth, the poem “Allyship,” published by Cultural Weekly.
Identify the hair root-cause of self-hatred
Mother washing my hair with chamomile tea
To make it blonde
But she only made me a “bachaca”
“Yellow”
All throughout my childhood
I never understood why
A woman who despised Black people
Married the son of a Black woman
Congratulations to Melissa Chadburn, who published “The Archive” in The Paris Review Daily.
One quiet spring morning, as a plague engulfs America, I awake, brew coffee, and shuffle to my computer. Outside my windows, a cordillera of snow-thatched roofs. I feel rooted, glooming in grief and rage. The need to stay in place. In the place of our wreckage. In other homes, I imagine children in nightshirts, and daddy flipping pancakes, and some things still good. Meanwhile, the world continues to break in the ways that it has always been broken.
