Resources
From Category:
A Red Woman Was Crying
By Don Mitchell. Humorous, poignant, and enlightening, these linked short stories are set among the Nagovisi people of Bougainville Island in the Southwestern Pacific. The young American anthropologist in their midst learns as much about himself as about the villagers who have indulgently accepted him as an oddball member of their community. He mourns the collateral damage wrought on this small but culturally rich island by international wars and mining companies.
Seaside Writers Conference
The Seaside Writers Conference for poets, fiction writers, and screenwriters is held annually in May in Seaside, FL, an environmentally conscious planned community. Applications are due in February. It features a full week of intensive writing workshops, one-day seminars, school outreach programs, and social events, with well-known authors as headliners.
Samson’s Saga
By Helen Bar-Lev
Delilah wondered if all Hebrews were such gentle lovers
as she clipped his curls and left them lying on the ground
like so many question marks, slipped out of the room,
nodded to the waiting soldiers
musing if she would miss Samson,
surely the best tryst she'd ever known,
but she pocketed the pouch of payment
and vowed to forget him
What they didn't tell her
was that they would bind him, blind him,
a bit too cruel she winced, braiding her hair,
admiring her image in the waters of the Jordan,
applying more kohl to intensify her eyes,
consoling herself with another swig of the finest mandrake wine
Samson mused too as he begged for food
and listened to gossip as passersby spat on him;
so weak was he that two men had to help him home
but ever so slowly his hair was growing;
he wound a turban around his head
so that no one would notice and continued to beg
while at home he lifted weights and envisioned revenge
Meanwhile a feast was planned to celebrate his defeat;
all the populace entered the temple,
tingling with pagan anticipation
of the humiliation spectacle
A shackled Samson stumbled into the temple
and fumbled for the pillars he remembered
from the time when his eyes could see both light and night
and the beauty of Delilah whose betrayal had brought him
here to these pillars and whose jasmine perfume wafted
through the room, firing him with the passion to push and push,
harder, harder, a labour of anger
as the temple collapsed, burying them all
And then he could see again
Romantic
By Johnmichael Simon
Mister J.P. Hornbill, ninety fast approaching,
reading glasses unreliable as foglamps blinking,
has taken to watching movies from some wondrously
benevolent provider of purloined celluloid, streaming
down to his rusting yet still functioning computer
And like the zipped-up overcoated teenage dreamer
he never has relinquished, chooses Romance as his
favorite genre and watches, eyes misting up his specs,
how in script after metropolitan script, the camera focuses
on yet another pair of star-crossed strangers
Young and good looking, bumping unexpectedly, yet
also quite predictably, into each other, locking eyes
for a short magnetic moment, exchanging a word or two
on this or that, and having kindled in us a spark
That Mister J.P. Hornbill (like hundreds of other
lonely viewers) hopes, fondly imagines, nay is certain,
will within the next two hours become a flame, consuming
time and space, surviving improbable adventures,
partings and re-meetings, losses, tragedies and with
a quite implausible belief in destiny, burn on to help them
find each other once more in scene after scene then part
again, until the final minutes and that inevitable, arms around
each other, lips and tongues entwined, ecstatic moment,
after which the actors' names and all the other collaborators
in this great pretense appear in black and white across the screen
Mister J.P. Hornbill takes off his glasses, wipes his eyes,
prepares for bed. Somewhere, in a dream perhaps, he knows
he'll meet her. Maybe she's not far away now, closing her
computer, brushing her teeth, filling her hot water bottle.
Possibly they'll meet soon he thinks, sit in the back row
munching popcorn look at each other sideways, smile
and exchange a word or two, as strangers sometimes do
Flamingo Rampant
Flamingo Rampant is an independent publisher of feminist, racially diverse, LGBTQ-positive picture books for children. They publish six titles a year, which must be ordered as a box set. Other forthcoming projects include resource sheets for parents and educators.
Poetry Archive (Arts Council England)
A project of Arts Council England, the Poetry Archive features great poems for adults and children, video interviews with poets, and lesson plans. Their online store offers recordings of classic poetry read by writers and celebrities, and contemporary poets reading their own work.
“That’s Not How I Remember It”: Creative Nonfiction and the Art of Dealing with Doubters
In this essay at The Review Review, creative nonfiction writer Megan Galbraith discusses the unavoidably subjective and emotional nature of memory, and the delicate balance between preserving family ties and telling your truth.
The American Aesthetic
Launched in 2014, The American Aesthetic is a quarterly online journal searching for poetry that conveys in its composition—as well as in the sound, cadence, and possibly even musicality of its words—an expression of honesty and purpose that somehow rings true. See website for free sonnet competition with small prizes.
The Write Life
The Write Life is a one-stop shop for information on how to make a living as a writer. Their annual "100 Best Websites for Writers" list showcases their favorite resources for freelancing, book marketing, blogging, literary craft advice, and inspiration for the long haul.
M-Moments
By Lind Grant-Oyeye
Silvery hair, bones thinned in-out, of life the silver screen speaks.
Letter M, embossed in audacious colors. It had begun long before her time...
time when clay pots were sanded out to shimmer.
It starts by falling—falling in love. Minute carts tenderly packed
full of moments, full of memories delicately loosely tied together.
It flows with fantasies of prized certificates, a desire for a stamp—the majestic seal of approval.
It flows to the stage of self-journey through dark subways, tunnels to the unfamiliar...
untested promise lands. She heard some had swam bellied-up in wavy pools,
Chillin' to the historic tempest.
Others swim to "bien venue" cat-calls, to honeymoons filled with French kisses,
flowers and fresh caresses, beauty and beautiful feet planted on cozy carpets,
romance lasting into wintery and the hurricane hugging days.
On strange lands were some feet planted. They kissed strangers
and slept with enemies—red juices pressed against their lips,
with the firm force of a heavyweight boxer's strength, kissing Judas' doppelganger
to the sweet sound of the language from Babel, spoken with a lover's passion.
Faint memories show M in the alphabet song, is for Migration, for marriage.
Internet Writing Workshop
The Internet Writing Workshop is a free online forum for writers to exchange critiques of their works in progress. There are groups for short fiction, novels, poetry, nonfiction, and young adult literature. There are minimum participation requirements for each critiquing list representing approximately one half-hour per week. In addition, there are discussion forums to share ideas about marketing, literary craft, and favorite books and movies.
George Saunders on Storytelling
In this artistically produced video from The Atlantic magazine, acclaimed short story writer George Saunders shares his advice for writing a story that is compassionate, surprising, and open to fresh meanings. "Revision is a form of active love; it's love in progress," he says, touting the benefits of listening to your characters rather than controlling them. Saunders is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker whose collections include Tenth of December and Pastoralia.
Montreal Pantoum I
By Isobel Cunningham
My island city bathed in the river's wet embrace
Her bridges, strands of a silver web, span shore to shore
A dormered house, a balcony, a curved staircase
Come, stroll along marshy banks where rapids roar.
Her bridges, strands of a silver web, span shore to shore
Sweltering summer then brilliant leaves of autumn fall to bless
Come, stroll along marshy banks where rapids roar
Hear the hum of commerce, traffic and excess.
Sweltering summer then brilliant leaves of autumn fall to bless
The empty churches, spires that decorate the town
Hear the hum of commerce, traffic and excess
Short triumph of the blizzard and the plow's soft growl
The empty churches, spires that decorate the town
Sidewalk cafes sacred to l'apero, le flirt
Short triumph of the blizzard and the plow's soft growl
Sweet spring of lilac, gangsters and le cirque
Sidewalk cafes sacred to l'apero, le flirt
A dormered house, a balcony, a curved staircase
Sweet spring of lilac, gangsters and le cirque
My island city bathed in the river's wet embrace.
Found Polaroids
The website Found Polaroids is a curated collection of over 6,000 anonymous photos from the past. Readers are invited to submit a short story (250-350 words) based on one of these images. Or use them as the seed of inspiration for your own writing projects.
Northern Public Radio Book Series
This book review series is broadcast on WNIJ and WNIU, the public radio station affiliated with Northern Illinois University. The website includes book reviews and audio clips of author readings and interviews.
Big Fiction
Big Fiction is a twice-yearly journal specializing in long-form literary fiction: novelettes (7,500-15,000 words) and novellas (15,000-30,000 words). This is a paying market. Submissions must be previously unpublished. No genre fiction (sci-fi, horror, fantasy, romance) or works for children. See website for reading periods and contests.
Book Promotion Tips at Blue Light Press
Founded by poet and novelist Diane Frank, Blue Light Press is a well-established independent publisher of poetry books, chapbooks, and anthologies. This page on their website provides a long list of ideas for promoting your forthcoming book via readings, reviews, launch parties, media interviews, and more.
Where is the custom of raising a glass
By David Kherdian
Where is the custom of raising glass
to a dead companion of old?
No memorials to visit, friends
scattered, lost. Tender moments
come and go and have no place.
Like sediment, when the wine is drunk,
left in the glass, forgotten
Advice from Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Judge of the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier offers her advice to poetry contestants at Winning Writers:
What, for you, makes a poem in traditional verse feel fresh and contemporary?
Poetry is as ancient and persistent as war, so I'll quote military strategist Sun Tzu:
There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.
There are not more than five primary colours, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever be seen.
There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavours than can ever be tasted.
(Sun Tzu, The Art of War)
Being intimately familiar with the vast poetic terrain, a skilled traditional poet can adeptly navigate meter and structure—guiding readers unwaveringly toward the destination—in a singularly modern way. Thoughtful inclusion of today's events, perspectives, vernacular or themes can render even the strictest villanelle contemporary. And a slight, strategic bending of the rules can make a sonnet feel utterly fresh. Shakespeare took occasional liberties. Poet, so can you.
Consider Samsara Turntable, a crown of sonnets by Lois Elaine Heckman of Milan, Italy—winner of the Traditional Verse category of 2013's Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. The sonnets span the arc of a mother-daughter relationship, traveling nimbly back and forth in time between two appearances of the one stunning, transforming line that opens and closes the work: "Her hand is cold and trembles into mine." With thoughtful manipulations of common language we hear every day, Heckman zooms in close on doctors in bleached white smocks; a grapefruit tree displaying its golden baubles—zooms out again to ponder the symbiosis of parenthood; the horrors and discoveries of dementia. These are not your great-grandfather's sonnets.
What poetic qualities do you look for in free verse, to differentiate it from prose?
Robert Mezey, poet and professor emeritus, once said to me: "Prose is an opening form. Poetry is a closing one." So in free verse, I look for linguistic closure: a finality of language—a satisfying precision, throughout the work and especially in the poem's last line—even if its narrative is left unresolved. Beyond that, I really expect poetry to follow the advice of another great teacher—my second grade teacher, Mrs. Brown. "Show, don't tell," she'd remind us when we wrote our wobbly-lettered stories. "Make it so I can understand and experience whatever you're writing about." Thank you, Mrs. Brown, for imparting the purpose of nearly every poetic device: metaphor, imagery, alliteration.
How can poets figure out whether our contest is a good fit for their work?
Here, I'll let the interviewer answer the question for the interviewee: check out Jendi Reiter's spot-on advice on selecting the right poetry competition. Once you have, you'll see why Winning Writers offers more than one contest category.
Because each category is adjudicated professionally and ethically, and Winning Writers has a long history of choosing winners who go on to produce more high-caliber work (and paying these winners well) each category receives hundreds, in some cases thousands, of entries from the US and beyond. So my advice for ensuring that your work is competitive in the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest is this: read your poem aloud, listening as though it were being read by a stranger.
Imagine yourself seated in a sunlit café, on a rumbling train or in a doctor's waiting room and overhearing the poem read. Could you stop listening?
If you could, go back to the drawing board. Your work still needs revision. If you couldn't, your poem is ready for this contest.
Do you have any pet peeves as a contest judge? E.g. over-used themes, clichés, awkward line breaks...
I don't have pet peeves, and here's why: I've been called on to help screen/judge work for a number of literary contests, ranging from literary journals' competitions to the Kore Press Short Fiction Award to Youth Speaks poetry slams to the City of Oakland's Youth Poet Laureate competition. And at one time or another, every pet peeve I held as a judge was forcefully dispelled.
Never rely on general words that one might hear in a platitude (like "beautiful", "evil", or "tragic") I thought, till a poem said something extremely specific with general, flowery, oft-used words—turning those words on their heads to make me gasp audibly. Never write about writing, I thought, and particularly not in rhyme, till a rhymed poem about writing raised goosebumps down my spine.
So go on: write another poem about birds, or your last breakup. Create a natural-disaster-based metaphor. Use the image of a red rose in your work—albeit one that's so ubiquitous Rite Aid builds Valentine's Day campaigns around it. When you do it, though, do it well. Give me goosebumps. Give me gasps.
What are the greatest rewards of being a contest judge?
Like everyone these days, I've got a lot on my to do list: help shape and run my department at the college where I chair and teach; edit a multimedia publication; finish a novel; finish a screenplay; collaborate on a stage play; edit my second prose chapbook for release this spring. And beyond all that lie the demands of life and parenthood: drive my daughter here, drive my daughter there, keep her alive and feed her and such.
It's the nature of the world we live in.
What better, then, than mandated reading time; being forced—by my role as judge and responsibility to study each contest entry closely—to read and reread poems? This justified literary luxury is the greatest reward of being a contest judge, as I'm not only giving, but also receiving something unique from each submission I read. Inevitably there's an unfamiliar word, a mesmerizing line, a distinct or devastating image that grabs and rattles me; sparks emotion, research, dialogue or a poem in answer; pulls me back into the reading or pushes me out the door with some dawning realization. And I'll admit something, too: as the editor of a literary journal and the organizer of multiple literary events, sometimes I steal authors from contests. I look them up online and, if their information is public, contact them to solicit new work or a public reading.
Do you encourage writers to re-submit the same poems in future years (or revised versions thereof), or would you prefer new work each time?
Revisions, to me, are new work: I can't count the times I've sent a poem or story off to a contest, then edited the heck out of it and submitted it anew. Sometimes the revision is transformed beyond recognition. Other times, I've changed just a sentence or two yet in doing so altered the tenor of the entire piece. And it's paid off. I've had editors and judges pass on one version and reward another. So yes: I do encourage revised work.
Regarding resubmission of an earlier entry: I don't strongly encourage it, as I want to provide incentives for poets to keep writing; keep revising. But I don't discourage it either, as there are those times when a poem nearly makes the cut, but, due to some variable such as the quality of the other entries, doesn't quite. In those instances, it may have a good chance in another year's contest.
How do you know when a poem is "done"? What are the signs of over-revision?
There are myriad ways in which to strengthen a piece of writing; myriad alternate versions. So perhaps the closest a poem can come to "done" is to relay the intended experience to the target readership; deliver the right message to the correct recipients. I stop tinkering with my own work only once I've received satisfying feedback from four or five bluntly honest people who represent the audience I want to reach with a particular piece.
One of those people is myself. So I'll examine the poem in several fonts (the visual is potent, as any graphic poet knows: sometimes the unfamiliarity of larger, smaller, or sans serif lines will jar me into seeing something new). I'll ask someone to read it to me, then read it aloud myself (first sitting, then standing; first alone, then for others). If I've overworked it, it'll no longer ring true in my own ears. Then I'll set it aside. This is hard, but I do it. I leave it alone for a few days. When I come back to it, I know whether it's done.
Poems are tricky, aren't they? So in making this decision and all others—for my own work, and for that of the poets whose entries I judge—I've always got to look closely, and more than once. As I began with Sun Tzu, I'll end with Sun Tzu:
"To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear." (Sun Tzu, The Art of War)
Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing
The Prison Creative Arts Project at the University of Michigan publishes this annual journal to showcase the talent and diversity of Michigan's incarcerated writers.
NEA Military Healing Arts Partnership
The National Endowment for the Arts is a federal agency that gives grants to individual artists and arts organizations in the US. Launched in 2011, the NEA Military Healing Arts Partnership supports creative art therapy programs to help wounded, ill, and injured American service members and their families in their recovery, reintegration or transition to civilian life. In conjunction with the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, this partnership is developing arts programs to treat service members with traumatic brain injury and associated psychological health issues.
A Violence I Can Sing
By Lucia Galloway
My palms are open, cupped and fleshy,
moist—the petals of peonies that fall away
from the tight bud at their center.
My soul, an iris still sheathed in its bud,
a knot that angles the stem slightly
where it is freed from blade-like leaves.
Flowering is wildness even in the garden.
The mute cacophony of hollyhocks and freesia—
their riot of trumpets and peal of bells
chiming for something else entirely.
Autumn Fire
By Linda Principe
Autumn fire
these trees in a row
like flaming candles against the blue.
Fall is a feeling,
not unlike the setting sun;
the most beautiful kind of dying.
They know, these trees,
about borrowed time,
that brazen, courageous orange,
a last stand against the onslaught of wind
that will strip them to skeletons,
their death no more merciful
than anyone else's.
Every year, for weeks,
they move from flicker to flame,
to autumn fire,
time the accelerant that reduces them
to embers on the grass
strewn about like pages
from books we barely remember,
though we know how the story ends.
Arrow
By Maureen Sherbondy
All you want to do is fly away
from the trees you planted years before,
from the house collecting boxes
in the attic's dust, to flit away from fleeting
time. The husband snores in a shared bed
but you no longer know him. Overnight
some old man robbed his body and mind,
left behind an imposter in the four-post
bed. What was it you once desired?
A brick house on a quiet tree-lined street?
Sweet babies asleep in their beds?
In front of you a door you have a key to,
ridged metal leaves an achy red imprint in your palm.
Now you must knock from the outside
because you are just a stranger.
You want to bury the key in the yard,
to shoot an arrow into the clouds,
watch it land near a different town,
a different house, a different man.
Side Trip
By James K. Zimmerman
I seek an occasional
side trip to the universe
next door
the next slice in
the cosmic loaf
of bread
there, crows do not
say "caw" nor sneezes
"a-choo"
it is unearthly still
no language to ruin
thought
no heavenly bodies
to memorize
the words
and there, god is a magic
wand to a violin
an open hand
to a hungry dog
or perhaps
to a lurking trout
an angler's passing fly
The Audacity of Prose
In this 2015 essay in the online journal The Millions, Nigerian novelist Chigozie Obioma critiques the fad of literary minimalism, arguing that the glory and purpose of literature is to "magnify the ordinary" through language that rises above everyday banal usage. Obioma's debut novel The Fishermen was published in 2015 by Little, Brown.
Catch the Moon, Mary
By Wendy Waters. Fans of Anne Rice and "The Phantom of the Opera" will enjoy this paranormal romance/horror novel that asks creative questions about God, love, and power. The angel Gabriel has tried so long to enlighten humanity that he has become bitter and violent. He has lost faith in love, and believes that humanity must be redeemed by force. He rescues an abused girl who is a musical prodigy, in exchange for a claim on her talent—but her love and innocent wisdom make him question whether the end justifies the means.
Apocalyptic Swing
By Gabrielle Calvocoressi. The jazzy, tough, delicious poems in this collection swing through highs and lows of sexual awakening, boxing, and religious devotion. Resilience sings through these anecdotes of bombed black churches and synagogues, down-and-out factory towns and risky love affairs, with characters who know that "all you gotta do is get up/one more time than the other guy thinks you can."
For Your Own Good
By Leah Horlick. This breathtaking lesbian-feminist poetry collection breaks the silence around intimate partner violence in same-sex relationships. Jewish tradition, nature spirituality, and archetypes from Tarot cards build a framework for healing. This book is valuable for its specificity about the dynamics of abusive lesbian partnerships, which may not fit our popular culture's image of domestic violence. Horlick shows how the closet and the invisibility of non-physical abuse make it difficult for these victims to name what is happening to them. The book's narrative arc is hopeful and empowering.
Safekeeping
By Jessamyn Hope. This many-layered debut novel, set on a kibbutz (Israeli commune) in 1994, brings together an unlikely community of troubled souls whose fates intersect in surprising ways. At the heart of the story is a priceless brooch crafted by a medieval Jewish goldsmith, preserved by his descendants through centuries of anti-Semitic massacres and international migration. Adam, a drug addict from Manhattan, seeks to atone for the damage he has done to his family, by bringing the brooch to the mysterious woman his late grandfather loved when he was a Holocaust refugee on the kibbutz. His arrival stirs up painful memories for the kibbutz founder, who sacrificed her personal happiness to a utopian project that is now in danger of being disbanded. Meanwhile, his fellow volunteers are on their own desperate quests for redemption and freedom, which sometimes help and sometimes hinder Adam's mission. The novel raises profound questions about the trade-offs between individual fulfillment and collective survival.
Maple Tree Literary Supplement
The Maple Tree Literary Supplement, a thrice-yearly online journal, provides a platform for dialogue or interviews on any topic between and amongst Canadian writers, while featuring their work and reporting on literary events, landmarks or festivals in Canada and around the world—with an emphasis on their Canadian composition. The journal accepts submissions of unpublished poetry, short fiction, general-interest nonfiction and personal essays, excerpts from dramatic works, and author interviews. This is a paying market.
Emerge-Surface-Be: The Poetry Project’s Fellowship Program
Launched in 2013, Emerge-Surface-Be is a fellowship program sponsored by the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, a well-known center of literary culture in New York City. Each year, three NYC-based poets will receive a stipend and mentoring by an established writer to complete a new project. Eligible authors must not have published more than one full-length collection and three chapbooks, excluding self-published books. See website for rules and deadline.
Tu Books
Tu Books, an imprint of Lee & Low, publishes diverse middle-grade and young adult novels. Their motto is "Where fantasy and real life collide". Science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and genre-bending works are welcomed. Editors say, "Tu Books was created for a specific reason. The present and the future belong to everyone and to limit this reality is a fantasy. Adventure, excitement, and who gets the girl (or boy) are not limited to one race or species. The role of hero is up for grabs, and we mean to take our shot."
The Pillow Book
By Jee Leong Koh. The design of this illustrated Japanese-English edition has a studied casualness that suits these subtle, charming poems. Koh writes of male-male eroticism without the gritty explicitness or florid imagery that often prevail in this genre. Everything is enjoyed in moderation yet savored to the fullest. Literary sketches of his native Singapore combine the sensory immediacy of childhood memories with an expatriate's wry detachment.
The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind
Claudia Rankine, Beth Loffreda, & Max King Cap, eds. An essential anthology of poetics and politics in the 21st century, this essay collection from Fence Books grew out of Rankine's "Open Letter" blog that solicited personal meditations on race and the creative imagination. Contributors include poets Francisco Aragón, Dan Beachy-Quick, Jericho Brown, Dawn Lundy Martin, Danielle Pafunda, Evie Shockley, Ronaldo V. Wilson, and many more, plus contemporary artwork selected by Max King Cap. The writers span a variety of ethnic backgrounds, points of view, and aesthetics, united by honest self-examination and political insightfulness.
Morning in the Burned House
By Margaret Atwood. This mature poetry collection considers history and warfare from women's perspectives. A father's death prompts a more personal turn to poems exploring memory and loss. The style is straightforward, declarative, assured. Yet the multi-layered meanings of these poems complicate our conventional wisdom and lead us into mysteries that can only be experienced, not mastered, through language.
Vetch
Launched in 2015, Vetch is an online literary journal of poetry by transgender authors. Essays and book reviews should take the poetry of trans authors as their subject. It was founded by the poet Liam O'Brien and is edited by writers from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Editors say: "Vetch seeks work by trans poets in trans language. This is not to say that trans people have a single way of speaking to one another, nor that trans language is by necessity revolutionary, but that we seek work that does not bother to translate itself for a cis reader. Vetch seeks work attentive to the ways in which power shapes language, poetry, and relations among trans people. Vetch seeks work excited by imagining a trans poetics, rather than dogmatic about establishing one." See website for email submission guidelines.
“Each Morning I Rise Like a Sleepwalker & Rot a Little More.”
By Jeff Walt
"Each Morning I Rise Like a Sleepwalker & Rot a Little More."
—Amiri Baraka
Two packs of Pall Malls while leaning
on this window sill all day
& hollerin', Choco, take me down
the Hershey Highway! instead
of looking for work.
Between Cloves & men, my dear Chocolate
Transsexual Goddess of Delight—"Best Blow Job
on Lemon Street"—thrusts her usual hula
at tourist cruising in a Humvee limousine. Prince
somewhere singing Tick, Tick Bang.
Tonight my budding career is standing here—rent's due
on this room and Mr. Manager
tacked a pink slip to the door.
So, I say it aloud: I've missed the bull's-eye in this life.
Never chased a tornado.
Not one tomb unearthed.
No Lotto blown.
I remember being saved.
There was a priest kneeling; he read prayers
from gilded pages.
Now I worship down
at Tony's liquor store
where that cleft-lipped kid
on the donation box stared
the last bit of lint
outta my conscience
for buying a pint of skunk instead.
In Group my brothers handed me
an invisible hammer & nails, told me to build
a house on the inside.
I love Chocolate.
She owns her dark alley.
She's home,
& she knows how to work it.
Antigua’s Hope
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Sweet Potato Man sits
on the tailgate of his battered
pick-up, parked near the road
that tracks Antigua's shore
waiting for someone to pay
for his crop. Nearly black-baked
by the Carib heat as he, sweet
potatoes lie on a blanket like twists
of dark yarn.
Like a flower drawn to the sun,
Sweet Potato Man turns his face
toward traffic. Crumpled, brown
as a prune it is. Languid he is.
Waiting. His legs dangle from his perch,
limp, puppet limbs. Shoulders hunch,
sweat glints on his cheeks, his eyes
white buttons. I sense he wants
me to stop, knows
I will pass him by.
Pexels
Pexels is a curated archive of free stock photos that writers can use to illustrate their blogs, book covers, or promotional materials.
Compfight
Compfight is a search engine to locate Creative Commons (public domain) images on the photo-sharing site Flickr. Use it to illustrate your literary blogs, book covers, or promotional materials.
Water on Rocks
By Mary Lou Taylor
Oh, you red planet!
Did you once have beings running around,
keeping herds, building shelters, planting?
Once did you have water?
Spirit and Opportunity—they surprised you.
Twin robots hunkering down on opposite flanks,
busy poking at rocks, maneuvering, searching soil,
mining for minerals. They didn't go away.
Spirit hung around five years, then got stuck.
Opportunity soldiers on, a ten-year-old, golf-cart-sized
robot, exploring, working Endeavour Crater, looking
to see if you were once warm and wet.
Opportunity spotted a rock called "Esperance,"
filled with clay minerals. Acid water, undrinkable,
once flowed across it. Hey, Mars, we know you had
a wet past. Today you're cold and dry.
Earth needs to know your history. Let that Opportunist
be a geologist who walks around your surface, uses
a hammer on the inside of a rock, digs in, picks up
dust particles. Mars, get ready for your close-up.
Complete Works of Shakespeare at MIT Online
Hosted by the student newspaper The Tech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 1993, this website offers free HTML versions of William Shakespeare's complete plays and poems.
Jane Friedman’s Writing Advice Links
Publishing industry expert Jane Friedman's blog offers a wealth of information on marketing your creative work. This page collects links to her most important articles about writing, publishing, and promoting your book. Topics include getting started on social media, fact versus fiction in memoirs, the pros and cons of creative writing groups, finding an agent, and much more.
Unbridled Books
Founded in 2003, Unbridled Books publishes fiction of high literary quality that also appeals to a broad audience. In an interview at the literary journal Ploughshares, editors Fred Ramey and Greg Michaelson expressed a preference for books that exude a spirit of hope and survival, not excluding dark subject matter but not ending in a place of despair. Authors in their catalog include Elise Blackwell, Ed Falco, Marc Estrin, Emily St. John Mandel, and Richard Kramer.
The Politics of Empathy
In this 2015 essay from Solstice Lit Mag, poet Jennifer Jean shares the ethical principles that guided her when writing persona poems in the voices of sex-trafficking survivors. What is the boundary between empathy and appropriation? Consent from subjects, an intent to heal and inspire, and feedback from the community are key considerations.
Gourmet at Seventy Nine
By Robert Joe Stout
Leftovers... but by design. How else can one
who lives alone have home-cooked beans,
grilled chicken, soup? That or crap dumped out
of cans, tasteless noodles, burrito grease.
I like to cook... he tells himself (there being
no one else to tell) clamoring kids,
heaped plates of pasta, applauding guests
ghosting through the vacant room.
One bean meal more then salad, fruit...
Diverted by old notebook notes, memories
of baseball games, he props his feet on table top,
invites himself to share a rich dessert.
Bright Sky, Cole Night
By Anne Kaylor
~For Charles Urrey, 1954–2014
His battered hands are bruised yet
never beaten. Kneading with need,
he molds honey-laced love, even as
his broken body grows too fragile
to touch.
Yet nothing—not even hours
preparing the gear nor single-digit
degrees—surpasses his desire to stargaze
tonight as the clouds part to reveal
constellations.
By motorized chair, his fingers navigate
him in this rural setting where clarity of sky
matches a crystal mind. He begs to be lifted,
to gaze at his dark heaven, but his frame
betrays him.
His cognizance is caged by tongue;
sagging, his view clings to earth.
But inside, his own unforgettable jazz
blares a timbre acclaiming life and he sheds
death's tainting touch
for one more day, his Stetson
firmly in place as we break bread,
heedless of the odds.
Brilliant Flash Fiction
Based in Ireland, the online journal Brilliant Flash Fiction is published quarterly and accepts submissions of unpublished short stories under 1,000 words. See website for rules for their quarterly free contests with prizes up to 50 euros. No simultaneous submissions.
Haiku News and Competitions: Poetry Society of New Zealand
The Poetry Society of New Zealand's website features this page of links to contests and publication opportunities for English-language haiku and related Japanese forms.
