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St. Katherine Review
Founding editors include such notable writers as Scott Cairns and Kathleen Norris. They accept poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, book reviews, and critical essays. Enter by email. No simultaneous submissions.
Stage 32
Stage 32 is a screenwriters' social network and resource site. Basic membership is free. Paid membership tiers include online webinars and intensive classes by entertainment industry professionals, and access to script consultations and pitch sessions.
Stages and Pages
Writer, editor, and theatre professional Francine L. Trevens reviews books, movies, and stage productions at her blog.
Standard Ebooks
Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-run nonprofit that converts public domain literary classics to attractive, professionally formatted e-books that are compatible with the most popular e-reader platforms (iBooks, Kindle, and Kobo). If you don't see the book that you want, look for a plain text version at Project Gutenberg and contact Standard Ebooks for help converting it to their format.
Stanley Joel Crown
See website for flash fiction and Mr. Crown's favorite sports novels and movies.
StartBloggingOnline.com
Blogger and social media expert Mike Wallagher created this site to give writers a simple step-by-step introduction to creating their web presence. Topics include choosing a blogging platform, the pros and cons of free versus paid hosting, promoting your blog on Twitter, search engine optimization and digital marketing.
State of Grass
By Janet MacFadyen. This poetry collection brings the topic of family trauma out of the merely confessional and into the mythic. On retreat in Ireland after her father's death, an older woman recovers her incest memories, the lineaments of her story emerging like a preserved bog body or the archaeological traces of a famine-destroyed village. The land's stark beauty and endurance create a space for her to hold her personal recovery in historical perspective, creating a fellowship with her wounded ancestors.
Steel Womb Revisited
Plain-spoken poetry stands up for working-class America with humor, lucidity, and political outrage. Douglass is the publisher of the acclaimed small press Main Street Rag.
Step-by-Step Guide to Dealing with Content Theft
In this article at The Book Designer, a resource website for self-published and indie authors, attorney Helen Sedwick explains how to combat unauthorized uses of your writing. Common infringements include websites offering unlicensed electronic downloads of your books, or reposting or republishing your blog content without attribution.
Steve Fellner
Mr. Fellner's blog features book reviews and critical essays about contemporary LGBT poets.
Stillborn
In my groins the fire of your passionate kicks
Still burns, though lifeless on my lap
Lie your little legs limp and still.
Last night I heard little footsteps on my wooden floor
They scurried through the open door and faded fast
On the wet wings of the monstrous darkness
Tailed by explosion of liquid light and thunder
That unnerved the firmaments and ripped my inside.
Now I know it was you leaving.
Silence sits so serene on your soft blue lips
That never learned to curse and lie.
Though you speak not I hear you loud
As I always have, when you flipped and tumbled
In your cozy water world deep in my belly
That became your deathbed.
What did you say you'd become?
A president, a preacher, pilot, piper, pauper?
It doesn't matter now!
I'm content to know you were here—one of us.
And in your still little veins ran
The hopes and dreams, the passion and pain,
The frailty and fear that make us human.
Copyright 2007 by Obed Dolo
Critique by Jendi Reiter
I chose Obed Dolo's "Stillborn" as this month's critique poem for its intense imagery and assured pacing. There is a wonderful strangeness to this poem that reveals the clashing spiritual forces contained in the child's death, without sacrificing the tenderness and immediacy of the particular relationship. Birth and death: so commonplace yet so mysterious.
I admired this poem's consistency of tone and its use of varied sentence lengths for dramatic effect. Dolo is not embarrassed to employ a prophetic voice worthy of his serious subject matter, and does not break the spell with interjections of casual diction the way a beginning poet might. Minor suggestions for the first stanza: I would change "groins" to the singular "groin" because that is the more common usage, and the unusual form of the word here is distracting. Instead of repeating "little" in two successive lines, perhaps use a different modifier for "footsteps" in the fourth line (e.g. "faint" or "light"), or none at all. The alliteration of "Lie your little legs limp and still" is effective, so I would preserve that instance of the word and replace the other one.
Elegies work best when they connect the commemoration of a specific person to broader insights about finitude, love and loss. Thomas Gray's famous "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard" still resonates with us today because its theme is the universality of death. Gray emphasizes how much is not known about the souls asleep beneath their humble markers, and we nod in recognition because each of us feels like that "mute inglorious Milton" whose significance is obscured by time and mortality.
Against this temptation to despair, the mother in Dolo's poem insists on the preciousness of her child's existence and his membership in the human family. Though he never had a life outside her womb, he was a person, not a thing. Her empathetic imagination turns an unnatural and grotesque object, the corpse of one who died before he could live, back into a baby. Stillborn is transformed into "still born".
In the first stanza, the dead child is alien, characterized in terms of his effects on the mother and the world. She does not yet perceive him as a person, but as a gateway for the chaotic swirl of spiritual power from which the individual soul emerges and to which it returns. He inhabited her body like a fire. Now his departing spirit is glimpsed indirectly, through the sound of ghostly little footsteps or the passage of the storm, which Dolo magnificently describes as "the wet wings of the monstrous darkness/Tailed by explosion of liquid light and thunder". The use of "tailed" instead of the more predictable "trailed" evokes the image of a dragon sweeping by overhead. After these long, action-filled lines, the terse declaration "Now I know it was you leaving" is stark and powerful.
This depiction of the world's darkness and violence sets us up to view the child's death in a new way, as an escape from the potential for misery and wickedness in every human life. "Silence sits so serene on your soft blue lips/That never learned to curse and lie." The mother turns away from the horrors of the first stanza and chooses to re-value both his life and his death. She finds herself able to be grateful for the Edenic existence he must have had inside her body, "when you flipped and tumbled/In your cozy water world deep in my belly," almost as if he were a pre-human innocent creature.
Where a lesser poem might have left us there, with a sentimentalized vision of death as sweeter than life, Dolo comes full circle to acknowledge the tragedy of wasted potential, as well as the tranquility of an unfinished life onto which we can project our own idealized vision of the future. "What did you say you'd become?/A president, a preacher, pilot, piper, pauper?/It doesn't matter now!" The mother acknowledges that the human condition is duality: "The hopes and dreams, the passion and pain,/The frailty and fear that make us human." Birth and death can each be a cause for rejoicing and gratitude, as well as a source of danger and fear.
Where could a poem like "Stillborn" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Eden Mills Writers' Festival Literary Contest
Postmark Deadline: June 30
Canadian festival offers C$500 for poetry and short stories (both genres compete together) by new, aspiring, and modestly published writers
Abilene Writers Guild Contest
Postmark Deadline: July 31
Prizes of $100 in a number of genres including rhymed and unrhymed poetry, short stories, articles, children's literature, and novel excerpts
This poem and critique appeared in the May 2007 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Stock Photo Resources at Canva
Canva, an online community sharing best practices in web design, has compiled this directory of sources for free stock photos that writers can use for blogs, book covers, and other promotional materials.
Stock Photo Secrets: Best Free Stock Photo Sites
Based in Germany, Stock Photo Secrets is a leading digital magazine dedicated to the stock photography industry. This section of their website explains the legal issues and hidden copyright pitfalls of using photos found online, and reviews two dozen favorite sites for free photos.
Stone Butch Blues
By Leslie Feinberg. This 1993 autobiographical novel is a radical queer classic. Jess, a factory worker in Buffalo in the 1960s and 70s, endures family rejection and police violence as a butch lesbian. Black-market medical treatment allows Jess to live as a man for awhile, affording them some safety but alienating them from their lesbian community and history. The choice to revert to a gender-nonconforming appearance feels authentic yet dangerous. Meanwhile, they're attempting to build solidarity in the workers' movement without exposing themselves to anti-queer attacks, a path that culminates in activism in 1980s New York City alongside their trans femme lover. In keeping with Feinberg's Communist philosophy, the book is free to download from their website, or available from Lulu.com in hard copy for the cost of printing and shipping.
Stone. Bread. Salt.
By Norbert Hirschhorn. These wise, good-humored poems explore Jewish legends and mysticism, the blessings and pains of approaching one's ninth decade, and the author's experiences as both physician and patient.
Stoned
By Des Mannay
I'm like a pebble on a beach
with shingle running over me—
A scraping of ecstasy
with the passing of the tides
which are over too soon,
and I am left alone again
With the sun beating down on me—
bleaching me white
and baking the residue of salt
Until I crack—
at least inside I feel I do
But this is never really true
Appetite's whetted by the sea in you—
in reality
you were a piece of shingle
which was soon past
And only myself, the sun and sand
are still here
The skimming stone of life goes on.
First published in the No Tribal Dance anthology in the UK in 2017
Story Circle Book Reviews
Story Circle Book Reviews provides a review venue for women author-publishers and for women's work published by independent and university presses. The site's sponsor, Story Circle Network, also offers the Sarton Women's Book Awards for small press and self-published books by and about women, published in the US or Canada.
Story Monsters Ink
Story Monsters Ink publishes a glossy monthly magazine with children's book reviews, author interviews, and industry news. They also offer contests and publicity packages for indie authors of children's books.
StoryADay Writing Prompts Archive
StoryADay is a twice-yearly writing challenge where participants complete one short story per day in May and September. This website is the online hub for participants, offering inspiration and tips to keep the momentum going. The site includes an archive of prompts from past challenges, going back to May 2010.
Storyathon
Storyathon offers free competitions for students in grades 3-6 to write stories that are exactly 100 words. The challenges are designed to get young people excited about writing and teach them how to tighten their language, experiment with words, and focus their message. See website for new themes offered every semester.
Storyhouse Weekly Reader
The nonprofit Preservation Foundation was born in 1976 to encourage and preserve the "extraordinary stories of 'ordinary' people." Anyone can submit a personal life story or short fictional work for posting on their website. Their e-newsletter, the Storyhouse Weekly Reader, highlights one of the 1,000+ anecdotes in their archives.
Storyline Online
Storyline Online features picture books being read aloud by well-known actors such as Kristen Bell, Ernest Borgnine, Viola Davis, James Earl Jones, and Kiernan Shipka.
Storymatic
Storymatic is a box of writing prompts that doubles as a party game. The box of 360 cards has a shape and layout similar to Trivial Pursuit clue cards, with each card featuring a short phrase for a character trait or situation. Pull random cards from each section to generate an impromptu storytelling session or ideas for writing a scene. Other products in this series inclue Storymatic Kids (simpler language and concepts for ages 5+) and Rememory, which can be used for memoir-writing or icebreaker conversations at a party or reunion.
StoryQuarterly
SQ pays $150-$200 for accepted submissions, 8,000 words maximum. Enter online only. They seek to publish both prominent and first-time authors in every issue.
Student Scholarships
This website collects links to academic and vocational programs, grants, and scholarships. Free registration allows you to receive listings targeted to your geographic area and field of study.
Stunning Design Examples to Inspire Your Book Advertising
This 2024 article from the e-book bargains site BookBub showcases 25 well-designed advertisements for books in various genres and explains what makes them so effective.
Subject to Change
Accomplished collection of lively contemporary formal verse, ranging from a punning ode to the Nissan Stanza to a crown of sonnets that depicts the birth of feminism ("Notes from the Good-Girl Chronicles, 1963").
Submishmash Weekly
Free weekly e-newsletter from Submittable, a popular online submissions platform, contains news and opportunities for writers, artists, and filmmakers.
Submission Strategies: Advice from The Masters Review
In this blog post from the literary journal The Masters Review, editor Kim Winternheimer discusses the submission strategies that work best for different writers. Topics include whether to re-submit original or edited stories, targeting the right mix of top-tier and more accessible magazines, and how many pieces to send out at a time.
Submittable
This online submissions manager is used by a growing number of contests and journals. You can also use it to manage resumes and job postings.
Submittable’s Universal Submission Tracker
Launching in 2020, Submittable's Universal Submission Tracker is a new record-keeping feature available to anyone with an account at their online submissions platform. The designers say: "In addition to tracking the progress of submissions made using Submittable, you can now add submission details for any opportunity made outside of our platform, including the status, submission date and title, name of the organization reviewing your work, and internal notes specific to that submission."
Subscriber Poems for Black Lives Matter
Winning Writers launched this feature in June 2020 in response to police brutality against black Americans. Below is a selection of subscriber poems inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement.
COME BACK HOME! (Letter to a Moving Target)
by Mike Guinn
Dear Son,
This life is nothing but Saturday night autopsies, pre-ordered grave stones, a freedom you'll never know. It's hoping the Negro National Anthem justifies your skin just enough for you to realize that tattoos and K2 will never replace the scar tissue on your soul.
Your heritage is more than rope burns around history's black neck. It’s a deep desire for survival no matter how loudly homicide speaks of rivers.
This melanin is so rich that when this nation denies you your color, it will be impossible to feel safe in this house arrest called America.
And even after you've given this country all of your Africa and your life light goes dim because the sun refused you immunity. You'll realize that our fragile lives began on the back porch of shotgun houses, where camouflaged chalk lines silhouette themselves in the shade of a lonely bulls-eye searching for another black target and you already fit the profile!
And it's not your fault that you were born a verb in past tense, an unwilling subject in a sentence that kept on running.
This curse, this prison we call life is like playing peekaboo with Satan. And I'lI be that gospel stripper, quoting scripture, god's reluctant theologian. Because here you are, fractured by the manner in which the wind whistled and Emmett-Tilled your future.
Boy my love is rugged remnants of pain polished smooth by trial and error. It knows your heart like skeletons know crowded closets.
These streets will eat and rip and tear you apart SON!
They are as relentless as hurricanes and as unforgiving as white privilege. And I am dying inside the way this life intended, but not you!
You will not be blood stains on sidewalks or a redundancy of clichés rewinding themselves into tornadoes of fully refurbished lies.
You will not sag or smoke or walk around here entitled with the audacity to hold up clean hands like this world owes you something.
Because it don't.
Listen...I don't want your existence to be another statistic on the back page of history.
This life needs to know that if you died, at least you stood for something far more substantial than a bag of weed or pride.
There are good things to come son. But you have to be here to see em.
So do me a favor, lose the attitude, put down your ego, pull up yo pants and remember this!
That whether it be cop or stranger Just SHUT YO MOUTH. SMILE! STAY ALIVE...and Bring Yo Ass Home!
Cause these streets don't give a damn about young black men.
Reprinted by permission from Crying in Colors (Jazzy Kitty Publishing, 2010) by spoken-word poet and motivational speaker Mike Guinn.
****
I Can't Breathe!
by Yassin Senge
(in loving memory of George Floyd)
Blood from my father
And milk from my mother
We're both used to make
Milkshake
And yoghurt
For the hypocrite
Claiming that an ox was not productive
And the cow not reproductive
That their manure
Was not pure
That crops could not grow
Anymore
Then I as a calf
Was not strong enough
To stop the hypocrite
From taking me for meat.
Yassin Senge is a Tanzanian poet whose work has appeared as a contest winner in the League of Poets' anthology Songs of Peace: The World's Biggest Anthology of Contemporary Poetry 2020.
****
Make America Love Again
by Mike Quinn
America is back on their civil rights home run
In the land of the brave and the home of the gun
Where a black man is not let catch his breath
We mourn his murder and his unlawful death
The President's dark heart amplified their pain
He's singularly Made America Hate Again
So it's a crime now if your live's black
Will they ever get America's "free" soul back?
George Floyd's "ambulance was his hearse"
While Uncle Sam hosts this Covid curse
The flames of hate are burning brightly now
This matter should Make America Think Again somehow?
Until they bend their collective knee of shame
Can this too begin to Make America Love Again
Mike writes: "I am an Irish person deeply touched by George Floyd's cruel murder and also the deeper Viruses of Hate in America."
****
The Journey
by Mary Brooks
I was brought here many years ago from a distant land, deep in the bowels of a hellbound ship to this unknown land we sailed.
I raised my head to heaven and planted a seed in my heart, then put the rest in a treasure chest where in heaven it might prevail.
Sold on the block like an antique clock whose chimes they dared to sound, then I saw hope die and rise again with thorns upon his crown.
So the antique clock from the auction block could stay its chimes no more and it told of strife and the loss of life on this foreign shore.
I still see God's face in this far off place and his promise still rings true, when darkest night falls down on me Lord I'll remember you.
****
The Human Family
by Alisha Rodrigues
The color of one's skin
does not define the person.
We are all human
and
come from the same source.
Therefore we are all interconnected.
We are a human family
of
brothers and sisters.
Alisha is the Vice President of Artists Embassy International, which sponsors the Dancing Poetry Contest.
****
Civil Rights and Its Role With the Military
by Denise Jones
As an African American retired U.S. Army soldier,
I would like to point out civil rights and its role with the military.
The President and Commander-In-Chief involved
Had the last name Truman and the first name Harry.
The military's integration in the 1950s
Was based on Truman's mandate.
It made it unlawful for the military
To continue to segregate.
Military personnel like the Tuskegee Airmen
Could finally join General MacArthur's ranks.
So to Commander-In-Chief Truman,
I give thanks.
Truman's mandate also opened the door in the 1960s
Where President Lyndon B. Johnson signed various legislation.
This would include the Civil Rights Act of 1964
And the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to prohibit discrimination.
Jones writes: "I am an aspiring black poet who would like to share an unpublished poem in the midst of a grieving and outraged country where black people are still, to this day, victims of systemic racism. In the way that things have been unfolding in recent days, this is definitely a watershed moment for civil rights right now. This poem is to show that there is still hope for black people in the United States."
****
Substack
Substack is an easy-to-use platform to create free or paid-subscription email newsletters. Good for sending out short articles, poems, or blog posts.
Subtropics
Simultaneous submissions accepted for prose but not poetry. Past contributors include Steve Almond, Charles Wright, D.A. Powell, Anne Carson, and Billy Collins. Read editors' preferences on website before submitting. Best for authors with some professional publication credits.
Sun, Moon, Salt
Winner of the 1992 Word Works Washington Prize, this debut collection was reissued in 2010. If this book could be summed up in one word, it would be the title of the opening poem, "Tongue", that place where language and sex meet. White delights in the body's unique shapes, textures, and tastes, inviting us to experience familiar features as strange and wonderful. The generous range of these poems also extends to Northeastern small-town life, the constraints of female roles, and a grown woman's empathetic insights into her parents' struggles.
Sundress Reads
Sundress Publications is a well-regarded small press that runs the Best of the Net award series. Their "Sundress Reads" review series is open year-round to submissions of small press poetry and literary prose books published in the past two years. Editors say, "We hope to champion writers whose work highlights human struggle and challenges misconceptions." Send one PDF by email and one hard copy to Sundress Academy of the Arts.
Sunspot Literary Journal
Founded in 2019, Sunspot Literary Journal seeks to amplify diverse multinational voices. They accept unpublished poetry, short fiction, and creative and journalistic nonfiction. There is a small fee for submissions, but the issues are free to download online. Periodic contests offer prizes around $250-$500 for micro poetry and flash prose. On the other end of the spectrum, Sunspot is willing to read literary prose pieces (stories, long-form stories, novelettes and novellas, ssays, opinions, memoir, travel, reviews) that run up to 49,000 words. Poetry can be up to 1,250 lines.
Superhero Diversity: Improving Diversity in Comic Books
This 2020 article by Brent Moeshlin on the website of Quality Comics, a comic-book store and collectors' resource site in Alabama, gives a useful overview of "firsts" in superhero representation beyond white straight men. (Did you know Batwoman was a Jewish lesbian?) The storylines mentioned in this piece are a good place to start expanding your imagination as a comics creator.
SuperSummary Poetry Writing and Analysis Guide
SuperSummary is an online compendium of plot summaries and study guides for notable contemporary and classic literary works. This page on their website features resources to begin your basic education in poetry writing and analysis. Links include tips for understanding a poem, glossaries of literary terms and poetic forms, and sites with kid-friendly poems.
Survivor Stories: It’s On Us
Survivor Stories is a project of It's On Us, a national movement to end sexual assault, and the group End Rape on Campus. This free online forum offers a supportive space to post personal stories of sexual abuse and trauma recovery. Stories are searchable by theme, gender, and orientation. The site includes grounding activities to help with the emotional impact of reading the stories.
Susan Tepper
Ms. Tepper is the author of DEER and Other Stories (Wilderness House Press, 2009) and the poetry chapbook Blue Edge (Cervena Barva Press, 2006).
Swallow
This chapbook won the 2008 Flip Kelly Poetry Prize from Amsterdam Press. Award-winning poet Ellaraine Lockie says of this collection, "Jendi Reiter's poems are arrows that plunge dead center into the hearts of feminism, religion, death, the interior of mental health and psychotherapy. Her humor and satire here are as sharply honed as her indignation." Email the author for purchasing information.
TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics
TAB: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics is a national and international journal of creative and critical writing. The mission is to discover, support, and publish poems and other writing and art about poetry; to provide a forum in which the poetic tradition is practiced, extended, challenged, and discussed by emerging and established voices; and to encourage wide appreciation of poetry. TAB is part of Tabula Poetica: The Center for Poetry at Chapman University. Print issues appear annually in January; electronic issues are published during the rest of the year. Back issues can be read for free online.
Tablet Magazine’s Pride Reading List for Kids
Tablet is a Jewish magazine of politics and culture. This 2016 article by Marjorie Ingall recommends contemporary books with positive LGBTQ representation for kids, tweens, and teens. As Ingall says, "Teaching tolerance is a Jewish value. And it's never too early to read to your kids about different kinds of families and different identities, and to model why kindness is important. Everyone is created b'tzelem Elohim, in the image of God."
Tachyon Publications
This San Francisco-based small press specializes in science fiction and fantasy, with titles by James Morrow, Thomas M. Disch, Peter S. Beagle, Charles de Lint, and other leading authors in that genre, as well as "steampunk" and "cyberpunk" anthologies.
Taco Bell Quarterly
Not affiliated with the eponymous fast-food chain, this quirky online journal founded by MM Carrigan publishes poetry, fiction, essays, artwork, and comics. Every piece must reference Taco Bell in some way. Editors say, "First and foremost, TBQ is about great writing. It’s about provoking and existing among the white noise of capitalism. We embrace the spectrum of trash to brilliance."
Tales from the Trail
The YouTube channel Tales from the Trail is a growing collection of distinct short videos showcasing original poetry inspired from hiking trails across the United States. If you are interested in writing a poem for Tales from the Trail, you can contact TalesfromtheTrail3@gmail.com.
Tales of the Woodcock
By Julie Irigaray
A picture of me holding a woodcock
my father had freshly shot
takes pride of place in our living room.
What a peculiar thing to let a three-year-old child
pose with a dead bird, and such a majestic one.
But I'm not repelled. I am familiar with
the woodcock's umber and burnt sienna
plumage—I even know her Latin name is
Scolopax Rusticola, that her belly resembles
bandages. I have learned to find the pin feathers,
these delicate striped tears used
by artists as brushes for miniatures.
I spread her wing as one unfolds a moth, trying
not to touch the powder which allows it flight.
I'm not thinking about why her head is dangling:
I just love to caress her coal skullcap. I grasp
the woodcock tightly—my father's most precious
treasure. I don't realise yet that he will neglect
his family to track her down every weekend.
I don't resent her being our rival.
*
A snapshot of the mind: I'm no more than twelve
and my mother cooks woodcocks in boiling
duck fat to preserve them. She offers to prepare me
one for breakfast: I accept but feel embarrassed
as I know she is going to tell her friends
and all the family how good a girl from
the south west I am, eating woodcocks at 9 am:
Such a strong child, a hunter's daughter.
Now I feel guilty when I devour the woodcocks
my father shoots. I love the crack of the beak
when I open it to catch the tongue, breaking the skull
to suck the brain, the succulent taste of what I enucleate.
Then I reflect on this pair of obsidian eyes, always glassy
—the most impenetrable I’ve ever seen. So I make a small
sacrifice by not asking my father to bring me others,
hoping my opposition is of principle, not a rejection of him.
Tanager
By Anna Scotti
There are people who spend this pink hour of dawn walking the perimeters of skyscrapers in Houston, never looking up, gathering birds that have crashed against the great walls of mirrored windows, bewildered by all this broken sky and endless squares of cloud. And there is a Texas man who crosses to Matamoros every morning, stacks of flyers on the cracked seat beside him: La has visto? Missing seven years. They are never coming back, the girl, the years, they are never coming back, the flocks that once darkened the plain wide skies like purple clouds, but there are goldfinch, and warblers, and martins tucked in every tree, nature's secret, until their desperate hallelujah at the orange edge of dawn. Some of the birds are dead and some will die on folded towels in boxes tucked beneath desks or in car trunks, old women's tears wetting the broken beaks, the perfect feathers, but a few will be released to wing again into the treacherous sky. Now the wayward daughter dances for a slab-faced man whose fists bristle with folded dollars, or she washes laundry for beans and oranges, or she has lain at the bottom of a rocky ravine since the morning of the slammed door, since her father's words were spoken; that can't be undone. But here a scarlet-throated bird is cupped in a man's rough palm, a thick finger strokes its bright breast, and in response, a trembling.
Tania Pryputniewicz: Author, Teacher, Tarot Muse
Poet Tania Pryputniewicz is the author of Heart's Compass Tarot. She offers critiques and online workshops that combine ekphrastic poetry, Tarot journaling, and creating visual art.
