The “stranger” in Joanna Valente’s Xenos writes herself into being, sifting through the detritus of a life that spans Maine, Brooklyn, and a boat to Greece. These are poems of sisterhood, motherhood, self-preservation, desire. In verse as dangerous and illuminating as berry-stained lips under a clear Aegean moon, Xenos reminds us that we are at once self and not-self, invention and memory, family and exile. —Sophia Starmack, author of The Wild Rabbit Joanna Valente’s Xenos is an immigrant narrative, but it’s not simply about the transition from one country to another, one homeland to the next–it’s the narrative of the heart that finds estrangement wherever it goes, the body that does and does not recognize itself, and the way family disinherits us even as it claims us. In these poems, we meet the strangers who we know all too well, and the loved ones who remain forever inexplicable, and we, [...]
“’I know / there is violence in all of us,’ these ‘problematic feminist’ poems assert. This work reminds us that what is truly problematic is poetry devoid of awareness of complexity and complicity, and feminism without nuance. Some Other Stupid Fruit lays bear the strangeness, the rot, and the inherent hypocrisies of our gendered identities, and refuses to put a cherry on top.” —Arielle Greenberg “Musings on maneuvering through the rapey ol’ patriarchy. Margaret Bashaar’s newest chapbook hits the ground in heels kicking for the artery. In case you haven’t been listening to her poetry thus far, Some Other Stupid Fruit all but grabs your stupid face and wills its words to crack your orbital bones and release the gooey insides of your eyes. Honest, brutal observations in rapid succession, enough to leave the reader concussed. The roar of a self-aware woman in today’s asshat weird world. Some Other Stupid [...]
“I am tired of people taking language from the Bible out of context and using it as a weapon against other people, so I started taking language from the Bible out of context and using it to create art. My process was to use the last chapter from one book of the Bible as a word bank for each poem. This is either the most heretical or the most reverent thing I’ve ever written.” ~ Katie Manning Click the cover or here to download.
Download The Birth Creatures Something fantastic mixed with the plundering lowing of pregnancy and early motherhood is present here. We have the surprise mixed with trim rhyme: “I’m pulled into the rhino / nestled in its crib of ribs” and we think of this grotesque comfort, the body as push and pull and grasping. So much is about consumption and aggressively so: the moon is devoured and “a peat bog / where the kitchen table was” becomes the murky counterpoint. This is a geography that lurks, that is an extra self within the realm that is the deep loneliness of early motherhood. I too felt consumed while reading this chapbook, but in the best, most delicious way. —Molly Sutton Kiefer, author of Nestuary, Tinderbox Editions EIC How a woman’s body turns alien, fantastical, so foreign to herself when she grows a child—“under the crust I am cherry pie.” Samantha Duncan’s [...]
“Gene Tanta comes from a land where the place of words and even of letters was challenged one hundred years ago. Tristan Tzara, born and educated in a very small town of Eastern Romania, Moineşti, as Samuel Rosenstock, and Isidore Isou, pen name of Ioan-Isidor Goldstein, broke the new wood between mimetic language and language as material. Twisting together the spectral traces of the Romanian and North American avant-gardes via the “fronde” (Dada’s sling against illusionist art) and the formal concerns of the Language poets, Tanta continues the path blazed by Tzara and Isou. Pastoral Emergency asks how words or even letters still manage to coexist without colliding after such a cultural and universal “Big Bang”?” – Radu Andriescu “From “all that glitters” to “catch some Z’s before you zag,” Gene Tanta’s Pastoral Emergency is a vertiginous alphabetical romp. The twenty-six poems deconstruct each letter into a surreal and hypnotic [...]
You’re in love. The problem is, you haven’t told the girl, and your brain and your heart have different ideas about how to proceed. Brain vs. heartis a dialog between the brain and the heart of one man as he attempts to “make the move.” Both indulgently prosaic and absurdly poetic, with plenty of in-jokes for computer nerds and literature nerds alike, this beautiful chapbook will make you laugh, cry, and/or hate the authors. LO-RES Chap MED-RES Chap HI-RES Chap: Coming Soon This book is also available in print (at cost). Though this digital chapbook is free, you may want to… About the authors… Christopher Robinson is a writer, teacher, and translator (And illustrator? This is his first stab at it) currently living in the wind. He earned his MA in poetry from Boston University and his MFA from Hunter College. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Alaska [...]
X X marked the spot on the blackboard where xenophobia poured in xenial as a bullwhip spine or xanthate printed xylographs in the X rated moonlight xirself perched on a xenolith xebec cuts the fleecy waves aft as we approach in xenon traces to xerox someone else’s wrought iron dreams on Xmas Formerly Excerpt from Pastoral Emergency. .
PAINTED LADY The worst part is how my thumb could erase her body but not the nausea draining her body down to a dull hum, her skin against bone: the scaffolding not around her heart but the movement of her heart wrapped in a cocoon, the way she emerges weeks later, covered in butterfly wings folding and folding in the kerosene sky, finally refusing the kiss, the spark, the mere possibility love could move next door, never cut the grass, not make a big deal when she lets her hair down, I want her to tell me I should leave, tell me loneliness is a compass needle, a pencil tip, that she is just a sketch I trace with my thumb.
In his inimitable fashion, Joe Weil treats the pains of life as joy and the joys of life as pain. This diverse collection ranges from Weil’s classics (“Poem with Lamb and Potatoes”, “Cricket Hour”) to a series of haikus dedicated to a dead groundhog (“Dead Groundhog Lust Haiku”). A short run was made available through the short-lived Press Electrrrric! and is now available online. Click on the book cover for a preview and free download. Related Posts The Cartographer Electric is Dead How to Ransack a Poem for Parts Terms, Truth, Sun Sparrows: A Very Important Lesson from My Father Poem of the Week: Etheridge Knight Ronin Poet: Kalkbrenner’s Foul Feelings