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The hitchhiking robot has been found dead
By Vernita Hall
beheaded and dismembered in Philadelphia, where the lifeless life form was discovered
in Olde City. The robot's followers were shocked and deeply saddened by the news.
A group calling itself "Nobots" has claimed responsibility. Their spokesperson, Dell E.
Terious, issued this statement:
It's about jobs. It's about humanity.
We call on all Americans to oppose
the raw evil of automation.
We've struck a blow for human independence.
No bots! No bots! No bots!
They've released a video of the execution, where hooded members, holding raised
machetes, chant:
Raw
evil demands
war
demands evil
Human rights activists have decried the killing. They've called the fringe crusaders
savages, expressing outrage that the grinning guest—benign, child-sized, and
helpless—was martyred in the cradle of liberty.
Still, the bot's creators have committed to continue their novel social experiment.
But Ms. Terious has cautioned more to come. Up next, a warning on the perils of
hitchhiking.
This is Mark Jeering, Ferret News. And that's the way it is.
The Hive Index
The Hive Index is a directory of 900+ online communities, searchable by keyword. Use it to find writing and publishing discussion boards on social media, or to join groups on a topic that you're writing about.
The Home for Wayward Clocks
In this beautiful and innovative novel, an abused boy becomes a recluse who lavishes all his human warmth on the clocks he rescues and repairs for his museum. But a disabling accident, and the arrival of an abused teenage girl who needs his help, compel him to reach out to his neighbors and learn to trust again. His storyline is interspersed with the stories of the clock-owners.
The Hospital Poems
A powerful contribution to the literature of disability, this autobiography in verse exposes a childhood spent at the mercy of medical "experts", who performed invasive and ultimately futile surgeries to correct his uneven legs. With dark humor and an insistence on facts over rhetoric, Ferris restores dignity to the bodies of those whom the establishment treats as problems to be fixed. This book won the 2004 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award.
The Houses Along the Wall: A Pembrokeshire Poetry Cycle
By Karen Hayes. With stately cadence and tender attention to detail, this poetry chapbook imagines personal histories for a row of old houses in a Welsh seaside village, where a dwindling community depends on tourism to replace the fishing economy. The style and setting have the flavor of T.S. Eliot's "The Dry Salvages", without the philosophical pomposity.
The Hub
The Hub is a project of Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association. They review YA literature, including audio books and graphic novels.
The HyperTexts
Showcases the work of classic and contemporary poets, with an emphasis on traditional forms.
The Imaginary Poets
The brilliant idea behind this Tupelo Press anthology: ask 22 leading poets to invent an alter ego, "translate" one of his or her poems, and write a short bio and critical essay about the "author". From David Kirby inventing a lost Scandinavian language for his fisherman-poet "Kevnor", to Victoria Redel discussing the feminist implications of the poems "Tzadie Rackel" sewed into her dishrags, these deadpan critical essays play with the conventions of academic poetry and criticism, in the same way that Cindy Sherman's imaginary film stills trick us into "recognizing" characters and poses that are so archetypical that we think we've really seen the movie. If you've ever found the museum placards more interesting than the modern art they describe, this book will make you laugh and think.
The Independent Publishing Magazine
The Independent Publishing Magazine is an online magazine that highlights trends, resources, and best practices in self-publishing and small presses. It is edited by Mick Rooney, an author, journalist, and consultant, who has written two books of advice on self-publishing.
The Innocent Loss of First Rights
In this 2023 article for the writing resource site AuthorsPublish, Craig Westmore explains what "unpublished" means in contest and magazine submission guidelines, and how to avoid inadvertently making your work ineligible. Complicating the issue is the fact that journals' rules differ. Sharing your work for feedback in online forums, for example, can disqualify it for some submission opportunities but not others.
The Inquisitive Eater: New School Food
The Inquisitive Eater: New School Food is a project of the interdisciplinary university The New School, in New York City. The journal provides a forum for artists and academics to explore the intersections between food and family, the environment, politics, economics, social justice, and media. Submissions may be short stories, personal essays, poems, reviews of books, movies and TV, visual art, multi-media projects, or academic work. Enter via online form.
The Internet Writing Journal’s Best Author Blogs
The editors of The Internet Writing Journal list their favorite individual and group blogs by accomplished writers. Represented genres include humor, romance, science fiction, horror, mystery, economics and technology. You will recognize many names on this list.
The Job of Being Everybody
The craftsmanship of these poems sneaks up on you, colloquial free verse initially disguising the deep intelligence of their observations about human nature. "You can know your building if you're interested/ in sadness," he writes of New York apartment life. How grateful we should be that he takes an interest.
The Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences
A project of the University of Massachusetts-Boston, the Joiner Institute promotes research, curriculum development, public events, and educational, cultural, and humanitarian exchanges which foster greater understanding and innovative means of addressing the consequences of war. Their annual writers' workshop is taught by Iraq and Vietnam veterans and others whose works address issues of social justice, cultural, political, and community concern.
The Kraken Collective
The Kraken Collective is an alliance of indie authors who have pooled resources to publish high-quality fiction while retaining complete creative control over our stories. Editors say, "We aim to provide a wide variety of science fiction and fantasy stories, all starring LGBTQIAP+ characters. Although it begins as a simple cooperative between authors, we aim to grow into an unique publishing model capable of supporting queer indie voices everywhere in SFF. We are committed to building a publishing space that is inclusive, positive, and brings fascinating stories to readers." At the moment, submissions are by invitation only, but they encourage reviewers to sign up to receive free ARCs. Customers can browse their books by genre and queer identity (e.g. polyamorous, asexual, transgender).
the lake has no saint
Repeated images of old houses, vines, and being underwater give this poetry chapbook the blurry, yearning atmosphere of a recurring dream, where one searches for the lost or never-known phrase that would make sense of a cloud of memories. Even as Waite offers compelling glimpses of discovering a masculine self within a body born female, womanhood exerts its tidal pull through domestic scenes with a female lover who seems perpetually on the verge of vanishing. This collection won the Snowbound Series Chapbook Award from Tupelo Press.
The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell
This hard-hitting memoir by a young veteran of the 2003 Iraq war portrays a failed system of military leadership that exposed infantrymen to pointless risks as their mission became increasingly unclear. Crawford joined the Florida National Guard before 9/11 for the tuition benefits, then found himself unexpectedly shipped to Kuwait. Scarcity of men and materials meant that his unit's tour of duty was continually being extended, yet they were not given the tools to do the job. Crawford's writing captures the brusque camaraderie and profanity-laced talk of soldiers, while his literary prose brings these harsh scenes to life.
The Latino Author
Founded by Corina Chaudhry, The Latino Author is a networking site that brings Hispanic/Latino authors and readers together. They welcome indie and self-published authors. The site includes annual best books lists, author profiles and interviews, and craft essays.
The Lit Pub
Founded in 2011, The Lit Pub website features recommendations of new literary fiction and nonfiction books, with brief reviews. The Lit Pub also publishes three full-length prose books per year through their open submissions period in June. Manuscripts may be novels, novellas, memoirs, lyric essays, story collections, prose poems and/or flash fictions.
The Literary Handyman
Fantasy novelist Danielle Ackley-McPhail's blog shares practical advice about structuring a story, marketing your work, and polishing your prose.
The Little Mermaid
By Jerry Pinkney. Hans Christian Andersen's tragic fairy tale is reconceived by acclaimed author-illustrator Pinkney as an empowering fable about friendship, exploration, and the power of a girl's voice. Lush paintings in gold and blue tones, featuring Black characters, make this one of the most delightful retellings of a famous story. Definitely superior to the Disney version, or at least an essential text to have on hand when your child watches the movie.
The Long Winter of 2014
By Janet Ruth Heller
Winter attacked us like a mugger,
battering us with frigid winds, hail,
whiteouts that closed roads
and shattered the power grid.
Snow piled fifteen feet high
obliterated mailboxes and froze solid,
blocking letters from friends,
jailing us in our homes.
The cold and storms
held us hostage for three months.
Even deer hunkered down,
unable to walk through high drifts.
Then we had a brief thaw
followed by rain
that turned into a blizzard
and axed tree limbs.
Now in late March, winter slowly frees us
from bondage. Snow begins to melt,
but the compressed crystals
resemble harpoons.
Today, the crocus blooms,
displays lavender petals
that dare winter to strike again.
The Louisville Review: The Children’s Corner
This literary journal based at Spalding University in Louisville, KY publishes work by both children and adults. The Children's Corner feature accepts poetry submissions year-round from students in grades K-12. Editors say, "We seek writing that looks for fresh ways to recreate scenes and feelings."
The Lovecraft Reread at Tor.com
H.P. Lovecraft was an influential early 20th century writer of horror and weird fiction, best known for his Cthulhu Mythos tales. In this online column at speculative fiction publisher Tor.com, modern Mythos writers Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth revisit classic Lovecraft tales and discuss other stories being written in the Mythos tradition.
The Luminous In-Between
By Cynthia Leslie-Bole
the portal
is the moment
where mind opens
and what's real rushes in
the nubbly sidewalk
the tarry parking lot
the cars blithely
maneuvering into slots
then suddenly
the bird
the crow
the huddled bundle of feathers
parked in a too-huge space
delineated by very straight
white lines
the stalled crow
blue-black sheen
dulled with dust
toes curling around asphalt
instead of branch
life flickering on and off
in a body remembering flight
in a voice echoing
lost morning warbles
the homeless man
the busy woman
gather to witness
the body heaving
the beak opening
the tongue darting
the lids drawing
opaque curtains across
obsidian eyes
as cars cruise by
with AC on high
time collapses
to one still point
the black hole of crow
in holy retreat
of spirit from flesh
I am the woman
watching
with impotent compassion
I am the vagrant
shrugging
with philosophical detachment
I am the bird
feeling life wane
choosing not to struggle
letting what's next begin
I am the white lines
containing it all
I am
breath
no breath
and the luminous
in-between
The Lutheran Writers Project
The Lutheran Writers Project seeks to make connections among writers and readers who are influencing and influenced by Lutheran traditions. They offer resources for book clubs, pastors, and educators, and also sponsor a literary festival at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa.
The Lynx Watch
Founded by bestselling novelist and bookstore owner Lauren Groff, The Lynx Watch is a nonprofit that fights censorship by distributing banned books to schools, libraries, prisons, Pride centers, and other community organizations in Florida, where conservative lawmakers have restricted people's access to books about racial justice, LGBTQ life, and environmental issues. Read a profile of the organization in the Nov/Dec 2024 Poets & Writers.
The Maine Review
Launched in 2014, The Maine Review is an online quarterly literary journal publishing poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and artwork. The first issue featured work by Maine authors, including celebrated poet Annie Finch, Authors Guild President Roxana Robinson, Maine Senior Poet Laureate Roger Finch, and Ellie O'Leary, host of WERU-FM's Writers Forum. Currently they are open to English-language submissions from around the world. There is also a writing contest with modest prizes.
The Malevolent Volume
By Justin Phillip Reed. This award-winning Black queer poet's sophomore collection gives a furious and brilliant voice to the shadow side of literary classics from Homer to Plath. The syntax of this poetry collection is thorny and twisted, and the word choice demands slow re-reading to discern the full meaning and appreciate the muscular rhythm. Reed is fond of using words that could be either nouns or verbs, placing them in such a way that you would mistake one for the other until the context becomes clear. One could see this style as a political choice in keeping with the book's passionate reclaiming of Blackness as an aesthetic. Reed is asserting that he deserves the reader's close attention. He is as important, and as intellectually accomplished, as the writers in the white literary canon that these poems deconstruct with wicked cleverness.
The Maven Game
David Moldawer was an acquisitions editor for major NYC publishing houses, and now runs Bookitect, an editing and ghostwriting service. His weekly email newsletter, The Maven Game, features his entertaining and informative reflections on the craft and business of writing.
The Meadow
By Scott A. Winkler. Old-fashioned and wholesome, this Vietnam War era coming-of-age novel reminds us that there was more to America in the late 1960s than the coastal counterculture. The eldest son of small-town Wisconsin dairy farmers, high school graduate Walt Neumann is torn between his dreams of becoming a college-educated writer and his rugged, taciturn father's demand that his sons carry on his legacy of military service. Not your typical rebel, Walt deeply honors his family's traditions of hard manual labor and service to the place they call home, but grows to understand that the traumatic stories locked inside the stolid "Greatest Generation" veterans may be preventing an entire nation from learning from its errors. Beautiful writing and sensitive character portraits make this meditative novel a good opener for blue- and red-state Americans to start understanding each other.
The Mirror
Do you see gazelles pronking up and down like snow flakes falling to the ground
Or do you see the ocean dark and blue
Do you see me on a crystal wave floating out to sea
Or does the tide roll your heart along the ocean floor
My tears for you will never lie
Even though your eyes could never see the tears you had inside for me
You told me life was a balancing game and that we hold the balance
You rode your stallion in the rain
You rode him all through the night
You rode him never letting go for that stallion loved you so
Do you see the meadow in the morning sun
Golden leaves lying on the ground parting left and right like waves rolling out to sea
A faded shadow in a gilded frame trotting faster than before
Towards the scent he knows so well
The reins that hold him tight are now in his sight
Her hand lifting into the air
Golden honey dripping on her finger tips
Dancing drops of golden rain so sweet surround his tongue again
This the angels from above only give for two to share
For love and trust are just skin deep this moment for mortals not to keep
Black stallion's mane waving in the breeze balancing on his knees
Her hand once by her side striking at the fore
Spooked forever more
Galloping into the night
Following shadows cast by stars above forever now in search of love
Never to return again
But you'll hear him in the wind and taste him in the rain
And in the dark of every night you'll see the stars that are his tears
For he will love you for a thousand years
Copyright 2008 by Neville Klaric
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, Neville Klaric's "The Mirror", uses a free-flowing modern verse form to freshen its traditional romantic sentiments and imagery. Energetic as the dream-stallion who embodies the passion of the protagonists, the poem's momentum is driven by internal rhymes and the syncopation of longer and shorter lines. However, inconsistent use of pronouns caused the occasional stumble for this reader, as the poem appears to shift from an "I/You" to a "He/She" perspective without making it clear whether these are the same characters.
The unrequited love of the original speaker is enigmatically interwoven with another story of a woman and a creature who appears to be a stallion, but actually represents Romantic Love itself—fleeting, ecstatic, wounded yet made sublime by loss. ("For love and trust are just skin deep this moment for mortals not to keep.") The beloved must disappear as a mortal individual in order to be transfigured into an immortal ideal, as described in the last four lines of the poem.
This understanding of romance harks back to the medieval tradition of courtly love, in which unconsummated passion for an unattainable Lady was sublimated into artistic expressions of devotion. This state of refined frustration was considered nobler than an ordinary coupling between two individuals. (Denis de Rougemont's Love in the Western World is in my view a matchless history of this idea as well as a critique of its impact on our present culture. For a good summary of the book, click here.)
At first I wondered whether this poem should be called "The Mirror", as this initial image was not always well-integrated into the poem's storyline. However, the title points to the shadow side of romantic love, which is its narcissism. One could argue that the courtly lover actually worships a construction of his own mind, to the point where genuine intimacy with the other person becomes an impediment to the fantasy. W.H. Auden explored this dilemma in his poem "Alone", which begins:
Each lover has a theory of his own
About the difference between the ache
Of being with his love, and being alone:
Why what, when dreaming, is dear flesh and bone
That really stirs the senses, when awake,
Appears a simulacrum of his own.
With this in mind, we can see why the speaker of the poem invites his lover to "look into the mirror" as the first step toward rekindling their romance. He seems to be inviting her to know herself, yet he begins with images that are not really "about" her at all, the gazelles and the ocean. Perhaps he is saying that our heart's deep response to natural beauty is akin to the impulse behind romantic love, and that reawakening the former passion can revive the latter as well.
This argument culminates in the fusion of nature, art and the erotic in the figure of the stallion, who appears to move seamlessly between the realms of imagination and reality. Coming in the middle of the breathless description of the woman and her stallion-lover galloping through golden leaves, the line "A faded shadow in a gilded frame trotting faster than before" adds a surprising twist. This creature, so physically present a moment ago, is seen from another perspective as a distant ideal, a figure in a painting come magically to life, or passing like Alice "through the looking-glass" from one world into another. Again, this subtly raises the question of whether romantic love is more like looking in the mirror than looking outward at the beloved.
About halfway through, the poem undergoes a pronoun-shift that I find confusing, starting with the lines "Her hand lifting into the air/Golden honey dripping on her finger tips/Dancing drops of golden rain so sweet surround his tongue again". From the context, it seems likely that we are still talking about the woman who loves the stallion, but since she is also the narrator's beloved, it's not clear whether the "he" in this episode is the narrator or the horse.
The line "Black stallion's mane waving in the breeze balancing on his knees" further complicates the picture. "Waving in the breeze" suggests that the horse is galloping, so he could not be balancing on his (the horse's) knees. Is it then the narrator who is balancing, as a rider? The position sounds physically awkward even so. I suspect that the phrase about "knees" was put in for the sake of the rhyme, and should either be taken out or set off from the preceding phrase with some connecting words to show that these are two different moments and/or characters.
At the end, the speaker goes back to addressing the woman as "you", which perhaps the author meant to do all along. I would recommend making the usage consistent throughout: "Your hand lifting into the air" and so on. At this point I had to wonder whether the narrator himself was even necessary to the story, because he never reappears after the line "You told me life was a balancing game". After that, it becomes solely the love story of the woman and the stallion. Ultimately I decided that I liked the back-story of the speaker's own lost love because it gives the reader a personal, emotional entry point into the other story—a reason to care about the woman, and to believe she is a real person rather than a stock character in a romantic poem.
However, this frame is still missing one of its sides, in my opinion. I wouldn't want to dilute the power of the ending by adding new lines there; the poem should end on its main theme, not its subplot. A good transition point to add new material would be after "...for mortals not to keep". Here, a line or two could be inserted to complete the speaker's own story. What is he trying to tell her about their relationship by reminding her of this other love in her life? What insight into his situation does he take away from the stallion's story of loss and transformation? "The Mirror" needs one more step in its argument to reach a unified resolution for the profound themes its beautiful imagery sets in motion.
Where could a poem like "The Mirror" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Heart Poetry Award
Postmark Deadlines: April 30, June 30
Nostalgia Press offers $500 prize for "insightful, immersing" free verse
Dancing Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: May 15
Artists Embassy International offers prizes up to $100 plus opportunity to have your poem presented as an interpretive dance at festival in San Francisco
Writer's Digest Annual Writing Competition
Postmark Deadline: May 15
Competitive award for unpublished poetry, fiction and essays; entries in all genres compete for top prize ($3,000 and trip to NYC to meet editors and agents), plus there are prizes up to $1,000 in each genre
This poem and critique appeared in the April 2008 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
The Moon Reflected Fire
Vietnam veteran's searing, lyrical, dark-humored poems relate the surreal horrors and feverish pleasures of that war to a wider tradition of Western moral and literary struggles with our capacity for destruction. Anderson weaves a tapestry of connections between the Trojan War, Vietnam, and the drug-fueled violence of our streets. Winner of the 1994 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Don't miss his most recent collection, Blues for Unemployed Secret Police.
The Most Common Formatting Mistakes When Submitting to a Literary Journal
This 2023 blog post by Erik Harper Klass from SubmitIt, an editing and submissions service, walks you through the standard formatting that literary journal editors expect. In the age of online submissions, some rules have changed from the days when typewriters and mail were the norm.
The Most of It
Like Socrates, the narrator of these engaging prose-poems asks innocent-seeming questions about our habitual ways of thinking, but the reader who takes up the challenge will find the territory shift suddenly from featherbrained whimsy to a profoundly unsettling realization of the emptiness of language and the ego, ending with a return to childlike humility that facilitates a spiritual awakening.
The Moth: True Stories Told Live
The Moth is a NYC-based literary organization and performance space dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. Since its launch in 1997, The Moth has presented thousands of stories, told live and without notes, to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. The Moth directors work with storytellers to shape their tales into a performance piece. See website for submission guidelines, tour dates, and podcasts of The Moth Radio Hour.
The Mountain in the Sea
By Ray Nayler. This compelling hard-science thriller is set in a reshaped geopolitical environment, where humankind's aggressive harvesting of the oceans for protein may have put evolutionary pressure on octopuses to develop a civilization of comparable intelligence as ours. But rather than pitting humans against nature, the multi-layered and well-researched plot comes down to two theories of consciousness: the colonialist quest for knowledge-as-control, or empathy across the mysterious divide of self from other. The stakes are nothing less than human survival on the planet.
The Muse’s Muse: Songwriting Contests
Jodi Krangle has done a great job of finding interesting songwriting contests and other resources for songwriters. Subscribe to her free newsletter, and enjoy articles and tools for both novices and professionals. We especially liked "Six Easy Steps to Writing Hit Lyrics".
The Museum of American Poetics
Seeks out diverse subcultures and genres. Special attention to multimedia presentations. Free video performances and lectures.
The Museum of Americana
The Museum of Americana is an online literary review dedicated to fiction, poetry, nonfiction, photography, and artwork that revives or repurposes the old, the dying, the forgotten, or the almost entirely unknown aspects of Americana. It is published purely out of fascination with the big, weird, wildly contradictory collage that is our nation's cultural history.
The Mystic Blue Review
The Mystic Blue Review, founded in 2017, is a bimonthly online global magazine of writing and art, open to both emerging and established writers. It is currently edited by undergraduate creative writing students at the University of California.
The Nature of Objects
By Anna K. Scotti
There was a time traveler who moved
very slowly through time, and in just one direction,
in halting jerks, made baffled and headachy by dials
to pushbuttons, the dog's grey muzzle, a cracked lipstick,
her daughter's Easter shoes: first stuffed with paper,
then too tight, then tucked neatly in a carton
marked cheerlessly, Goodwill. Stumbling left,
then right, as if her limbs had grown too heavy,
or else too light, she ended staring at the window,
as the dirty river flowed, or flows, beneath the overpass
then swelled, overran, and dried again. Leaves flamed,
dried, dropped, the car died—the dog, too—while the daughter,
grown large as if by potion, telescoping distant
and close again, fled, came home, and finally shot
away, a comet trailing books, socks, blocks, outgrown skirts
and scratched CDs, a plastic cow, a spaceship.
And the traveler moved very slowly through time,
as if baffled by a bent enamel dish
that once held the dog's water, a cracked flowerpot,
by the layer of dust that conceals and reveals
the nature of objects, the crush of gravity, the thinness
of our atmosphere, the proximity of the sun.
Reprinted by permission from Bewildered by All This Broken Sky (Lightscatter Press, forthcoming 2021)
The New Amazon
By Linda Neal
Both male and female,
cut down the middle,
this half the man—
she points to her bony chest
this half the woman—
she touches the breast that remains
above the flat plain of her body and
says her essence contracts
to contain the pain, she's freed
from expectations of joy.
She embraces the dance with chemotherapy,
eats brown rice and fish
and flies to a guru in a far-off land.
She grows accustomed to the loss.
She's no region for milk, her body
shrinking to make room for more loss.
The hour of the new amazon
to step forward has come—
with a warrior's bow drawn,
against her flat chest.
She cultivates her garden
and pulls stray weeds from her life,
grabs at words,
rock, ocean, tree
and prays she'll make sense
of her body parts, uncover a truth
greater than medical mythology
or phallic dominion. She'll reach
for the life within the life,
as she traces the outline of one aureole
with her fingertip—
the rich mandala that remains.
The New Criterion
"We are proud that The New Criterion has been in the forefront both of championing what is best and most humanely vital in our cultural inheritance and in exposing what is mendacious, corrosive, and spurious. Published monthly from September through June, The New Criterion brings together a wide range of young and established critics whose common aim is to bring you the most incisive criticism being written today."
The New Republic
Culture section is particularly good.
The Next Ancient World
Winner of the Tupelo Press Judge's Prize in Poetry. Historian of science applies her rational and witty perspective to our dilemmas at the turn of the millennium.
The Novelry
The Novelry offers a variety of online workshops and coaching for novel-writers. Get help with plotting, editing, and staying on track to finish your book. A bonus feature is that they will work with graduates of their courses to pitch their books to literary agents. See their website for success stories.
The NUB: Indie Arts Hub
The NUB is an app for iPhone and Android smartphones that provides a stream of independent arts and culture content from across North America directly to readers 5 times per week. Each day, you will find in your phone a new column, poem, short story, interview, profile, book/zine review, comic or rant from one of North America's best independent arts and culture magazines. As of 2013, The NUB features content from Broken Pencil: The Magazine of Zine Culture and the Independent Arts; Geist Magazine; Subterrain Magazine; Matrix Magazine; and Taddle Creek Magazine.
The Object of White Noise
By Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé
Now we will say it with a small poem.
–Ernest Hemingway
Loneliness, I remember you before Polonius' talk of friendship in old verse,
final ellipsis in short taps and kicks, gusting metaphor extending itself, to think
of death early on, at once counterpoint and bargain end to life, as if to say
long marches were tedium, as Stein's invitations to garden parties, as want
as insatiable, ripped off book covers, on the quarterdeck or bowsprit, to see
larger ships, castle view beyond Pont Neuf, its elbow of a park, where I read
something of 12 rue de l'Odéon, as concrete a place as Mary's Avallon, a read
open as Sylvia Beach's hand, firm shake, first kindness, like the first verse
sciolti da rima, where rhymes recede, caesurae percolating, as the poet sees
rather than hears his words, oblique, their cello and echo, Rodin's Thinker
in a new tableau, left arm extended like a big wing, fast updraft, as if wanting
flight as escape, denouement, hurtling towards the poplar, rising obelisk to say
this is the way Marlowe wrote of undying dandelions and mirrors, to say
Milton's Aegean isle was like any other mapped dot, as open an autumn read,
as dismal and removed and blank a slate and stare, singly at Artemis, and want
a new fabric, sky and land, less architrave and Phrygian cadence than verse,
that invention meant movement, a rotation clear of the drydock, of thinking
what virtue to make into a creed, what rendered scruple to surface and see
in the light of day, not to decorate or scaffold, but in burning, to truly see
and intend the words, creation for all its vagaries like a tremulous saying,
its memory, distinct tremor, of Hecht casting Yolek between soldiers, thinking
his lungs would give way, along with his tiny legs, all for one midnight read,
with Spenser asleep, as with the common nightingale, in Augustan verse,
the way Nani tasted cumin, garlic within Ríos' albondigas, softly wanting
more chiftele in her soup, more celery, carrots and halved onions, to want
so desire is made clear, like agulha rice soaking in flavoured water, and seen
from outside the Oriel window where a boy swivels his orpharion, girl's verse
rolled into a scroll, yellowed, tied with daisy chain and bow string, as if to say
I made this for weight and resistance and home, so read it the way I read
your every word, fistmele of thought and image, on our long walks, to think
life is but its own long wait, Tennyson searching for the Happy Isles, thinking
maybe a late sun after the rain, in Paris too, its Cubist book carts, same wanton
disregard, or just joie de vivre, like Frost in his seat, same street café, to read
the same tone and rest at line's end, his road home through apple trees, seeing
Joyce in a make-believe Dublin, as filled with grain and mettle, as if to say
even this libretto, even this madrigal has emptied itself into portamenti, verse
of wanderlust; think Illinois sonata into Hemingway's Seine, its wave of seers
and their want of love, hope for soft courage, one more ostinato today to say
read me to sleep, beyond this city's noise and history, and meandering verse.
* This poem is excerpted from Sanctus Sanctus Dirgha Sanctus (Red Wheelbarrow Books, 2014). It placed as runner-up in the Georgetown Review Magazine Contest, and was subsequently published in the journal. It also received the Segora Open Poetry Commendation. The epigraph is taken from "Portrait of a Lady", Hemingway's poem about Gertrude Stein. Originally subtitled "The Oak Park Sestina", the piece remains an ekphrasis of Hemingway's poem, "[Blank Verse]", written in Oak Park, 1916. Published in Trapeze the same year, the poem is made up of missing texts, evidenced only through the presence of punctuation marks and symbols.
The Offing
The Offing, an affiliate of the Los Angeles Review of Books, is an online literary magazine publishing creative writing in all genres and art in all media. The journal seeks work that challenges, experiments, provokes: work that pushes literary and artistic forms and conventions, while demonstrating a rigorous understanding of those forms and conventions. The Offing welcomes work by people of color, women and gender nonconformists, LGBTQ and differently abled people. This is a paying market. Contributors have included Paul Lisicky, Eileen Myles, and Matthew Rohrer.
