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Do You Think Your Father
By Lesléa Newman
DO YOU THINK YOUR FATHER
would take me to the theatre?"
A woman pulls me towards her,
her pointed red nails digging
into the doughy flesh of my bare
upper arm. It is a hot August
afternoon, made hotter still
by the heat of the oven
which I have just opened
to take out a pan of kugel
a neighbor brought by and needed
to be warmed. How did I wind up
alone in the kitchen with this
woman who does not look unlike
my mother? Styled and stiff
thinning brown hair dried out
from too many years of dyeing,
lipstick two shades too dark,
forehead lined like notebook paper
hope springing eternal
in her made-up myopic eyes.
I drop the metal pan of food
on the counter with a clatter,
open a drawer near the sink
and lift my mother's gleaming
kitchen knife. What is this woman's
name? Edna, Edith, Estelle,
Esther! A woman my mother used
to play canasta with and never
particularly liked. "She cheats,"
my mother told me on a scorching
afternoon not that long ago.
"She picks out all the cashews
in the bridge mix. And she has eyes
for your father." I cut the kugel
into even, sharp-edged squares
missing my even sharper-edged mother
who would curl her lip and shoot
me a silent "I told you so" look
to hear Esther ask me if my father
would take her to the theatre
the very afternoon after
the morning of my mother's funeral.
Last Rites
By Pamela Sumners
It rained cottonmouths for 30 days after you died.
They wore proud boots and took over the streets,
slithered and kicked through the steel-plated doors.
They sat coiled or casually dropped in your special recliner.
They ate the last Tyson's chicken in Arkansas—they did!
and then ravaged the okra and bean patches out back.
Then they took the tomatoes and purple-hull peas,
cutting a swath like Sherman's army marching to sea.
Their white mouths turned a deep heliotrope purple.
We plied them with offerings of heavy red wine
and they turned all purple and died. We swept snakeskins
for weeks. Next the bats came, echolocating what we
humans heard only as a series of slight erratic clicks.
We developed a decoder that could read bat-tongue for us
and learned that they repeated through the walls a gossip chorus:
"You know he heard the wind chimes just before he died, a music
that played so hauntingly on the listening ears of time."
We banged every pot and pan in the house like a marching band
starting off a Fourth of July parade with John Philip Sousa's brass
until they gave up their roost, a lonely, leaning excuse for a chimney.
When finally we wept and muttered a flood of desolate words
over your cavernous deep rhombus in the earth, a dark hole really,
an aunt we barely knew said to me, "Give me your last skinny-back
wishbone hug and tell us how thin we've become."
Writer’s Digest List of Poetic Forms
Writer's Digest Editor Robert Lee Brewer first compiled this list of 50 poetic forms in 2015, updated to 168 in 2021. Each item on the alphabetized list links to a definition and example.
National Centre for Writing
The UK's National Centre for Writing offers courses, curriculum resources, prizes, youth programs, and resources for translators, to name just some of their programs. Check out their list of links to many other British literary organizations.
Elephind
Keyword-search through 200 million articles from over 4,000 newspaper titles at Elephind, a free database. Most publications are from the US and Australia, with some from Mexico and Japan.
Contemporary Irish Literature Resource Network
The Contemporary Irish Literature Resource Network brings together Irish writers and academics to increase critical study of new Irish literature. Their blog features reviews of notable new books.
DeepL Translate
DeepL Translate is an online translation tool (similar to Google Translate) with both free and paid versions. The advanced option lets you translate MS Word and PowerPoint files without ruining the formatting.
Tip of My Tongue
Search this database of dictionaries for that word you can't quite remember. You can input meanings, syllables, sound-alikes, and letters that it should or shouldn't include. This free reference site is created and maintained by writer and software designer. Chirag Mehta
Position Papers
By Andrea Lawlor. This chapbook of prose-poems is a playful and uplifting manifesto for a future society where resources are shared and identities and property are held lightly. Published by Factory Hollow Press in 2016 and now out of print, it is free to download as a PDF from their website.
Misfit Magazine
Edited by poet Alan Catlin, Misfit Magazine is an online poetry journal that publishes gritty and energetic free verse. They value authentic narrative poetry inspired by "down in the dirt, real life experience". Submission periods are Jan. 2-Feb. 28 for Spring Issue, April 1-May 31 for Summer Issue, Sept. 1-Oct. 30 for Fall/Winter Issue.
New Play Exchange
New Play Exchange is a site for playwrights, lyricists, composers, librettists, devising artists, adapters, and translators to read and share scripts. Find your next collaborator or dramatic work to produce at your arts organization, and network with other creators in your genre. Annual fees are just $12 for early-career members and $18 for professionals.
Reads Rainbow
Launched in 2018, Reads Rainbow is a blog that highlights new LGBTQ books, comics, TV shows, and movies. Search by genre, queer identity, or ethnicity.
Queer Comics Database
The Queer Comics Database is an online guide to contemporary graphic narratives with LGBTQ content or creators. It is searchable by author name, genre, ethnicity, queer identity, art style, and tone (from "action-packed" to "tranquil"). Find your next good read here.
81Words
81Words began as a flash fiction website hosted by Adam Rubenstein and is now curated on author Christopher Fielden's writing resources blog. Submit your 81-word short stories for online publication and possible anthology inclusion.
Midwest Writing Center
Founded in 1979, the Midwest Writing Center offers literary awards, conferences, workshops, book groups, and readings. Their publishing arm, MWC Press, publishes the winners of their poetry chapbook conference, the young writers' literary journal The Atlas, and literary novels and memoirs.
Journal of the Month
Journal of the Month is a curated subscription service that sends a different literary journal each time, giving subscribers an overview of the contemporary creative writing market. "Decide how often you want to receive magazines—every month, every other month, or once every three months—and during that period of time, you will receive a brand new literary magazine by the 10th of the month. Exactly which literary magazine you'll get is a tantalizing surprise that changes every month. And you'll never receive the same literary magazine twice." Participating journals include Creative Nonfiction, Ecotone, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, December, and many more.
Quarantine Public Library
In response to the closure of public libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, artists Katie Garth and Tracy Honn created Quarantine Public Library, a free digital collection of mini-books by illustrators and writers. Books can be printed on one sheet of paper and folded into 8-page folios, similar to 'zines.
13th Balloon
By Mark Bibbins. This multi-layered yet accessible book-length poem is an elegy for the author's late partner, Mark Crast, one of the many casualties of the AIDS crisis at its height in the 1980s and early 90s. From the vantage point of 2020, a middle-aged gay man looks back on the ghosts of his community and surveys a youth culture that knows of the mass devastation only as history, if at all. Brief unpunctuated lines give the poem the contemporary immediacy of a social media newsfeed, while the everyday embodiments of grief have a timeless relevance.
My Dim Aviary
By Gillian Cummings. This collection of sensual prose-poems is an imagined autobiography of the model Fernande, the subject of French photographer Jean Agélou's erotic postcards in the early 20th century. Slipping gracefully between English and French, her wordplay is as elusive as a woman desired by all, understood by none.
The Curator Magazine
The Curator is a literary journal that explores the meaning and matters of the heart and spirit reflected in cultural objects, experiences, and the arts. Their site publishes at least one piece of prose (including creative nonfiction essays, reviews and interviews) and one poem each week. Editors say, "We curate writing about art intersecting with humanity. Aesthetically, we desire to showcase a diverse range of voices, artforms, and styles, but we do not accept academic essays. We do publish personal essays, interviews, reviews, reported stories, and memoir with a tie to an artwork, piece of music, or an everyday object." Submit 1-3 poems, or an essay pitch of 150-250 words, via their online form.
The Blues
By Joan Gelfand
"I think there's something in the pain of the blues, something deep, that touches something ancient in Jewish DNA." —Marshall Chess, founder of Chess Records, producer of Chicago blues.
It was news to me that Jews took up the chore of indigo
Dyeing. It was messy, a job in which no noble
Deigned to engage. Fingers, forearms, clothes,
Stained from steaming vats.
"The stench," they complained.
And, holding their noses they
Created a tone so rarified women fought for the right to buy.
A logical progression, this blue
Manufactured by Jews who, as you knew,
Never felt at home—and still don't.
This blue, encoded in the bones, was royal, leaped centuries to David's harp
His poems of yearning for God and Jonathan's forbidden love.
These blues wept and bled, crept along diaspora routes
All the way to Dylan. Today, we mourn Pittsburgh Jews.
The same hands that mixed indigo, lent a hand to suffering wanderers, immigrants,
The displaced, murdered. They recalled their own treacherous crossings.
The blues. The Shoah. Dachau, Pittsburgh.
Indigo, David, bloodlines. Lines of blood
And still, an outstretched arm, an open hand.
Fictional Café
The Fictional Café is a virtual coffee shop and literary magazine created especially for writers and artists. They publish short stories, novel excerpts, poetry, visual art, podcasts and audio dramas on their website. Other occasional features include interviews and links to literary news. All accepted submissions are automatically considered for inclusion in their print "best of" anthology. No simultaneous submissions.
Kris Spisak’s Writing Tips
Affect or effect? Riffle or rifle? Even experienced authors are tripped up by common words and phrases that are often mistaken for each other. Kris Spisak's blog highlights hundreds of these and explains their etymology to help you remember proper usage.
NY Book Editors
NY Book Editors matches authors with experienced publishing professionals for manuscript critiques, from developmental to line editing. Initial fee is refundable if author is not satisfied with sample critique. Their blog features articles about the basics of writing and publishing.
Austin Kleon’s Writing Newsletter
Writer and illustrator Austin Kleon is the bestselling author of the creativity guide Steal Like an Artist and other books. His free weekly e-newsletter (archived on his website) features 10 links to writing, art, and other media that he finds worthwhile and relevant to the moment. An example of Kleon's playful, down-to-earth writing advice: "When I am beginning a new project, I often ask myself, 'What's something you despise in the culture that you wish were otherwise?' and I go from there."
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.
Poetry Films from the On Being Project
Poetry Films, a YouTube channel featuring animations of classic and contemporary poems, is a project of the public radio show On Being (Krista Tippett). Authors in the series include Rumi, Wendell Berry, and Naomi Shihab Nye.
What I Call Erosion
By Kelli Russell Agodon
Today's sea seems tired of stealing
acres of sand from the beach.
What I call erosion, the waves call:
I wish the wind would stop rushing us,
I wish we could just take it slow.
In the beauty of whitecaps, I sometimes
see sadness, sometimes how lucky we are
to watch the sunrise one more time.
There's so much we're carrying these days—
an osprey with a fish in its talons,
a killdeer runs across the dunes
trying to distract us from its nest.
Danger, even when it's not, is everywhere.
Sometimes I pretend to have a broken wing
as I look out the window. But then a cloudscape
in a world of buffleheads, of saltwater roses,
and I forget fear. It's 7 a.m. on a Thursday
and an otter is pretending none of my concerns
matter. The otter, if laughter was a mammal,
is diving in and out of the waves, playful.
When the planet says, This is impossible,
the otter responds, Only if you believe it.
Shibai
By Don Mitchell. In this compelling hybrid memoir and true-crime account, Mitchell recounts how the cold-case murder of his friend Jane Britton, a fellow graduate student in the Harvard anthropology department, was solved after 49 years. Shibai, a Japanese word for a stage play, also means "gaslighting" or "bullshit" in the slang of Mitchell's native Hawai'i. As an anthropologist among the Nagovisi people of Bougainville, Mitchell learned early that truth is always filtered through the stories we tell ourselves and the roles in which our culture casts us. When Becky Cooper, a journalist for the New Yorker, contacts him for a book she is writing about Jane's case, he discovers, in retelling the story to a stranger, that his long-held assumptions about the murder don't hold up. With him, the reader relives the Kafka-esque terror of being suspected by the police, the frustration when the investigation is stonewalled or misled by people he once loved, and the sorrow and relief of finally filling in the gaps about Jane's last moments. The resulting saga is a profound and subtle meditation on memory, aging, and our responsibility to the dead. Like a shadow that provides contrast in a photograph, Jane's unlived life stands as a counterpart to Mitchell's honest and self-aware journey through the milestones of his 77 years, from the triumphs and disappointments of his academic career to his deep relationship with the Hawaiian landscape and people.
Christopher Fielden’s Links to Writing Critique Services
Fiction writer and digital marketing expert Christopher Fielden's blog features a list of links to services, both free and paid, where you can get feedback on your writing.
Ghost of Funeral Past
By G. Greene
seated before the altar,
I mourned you at the inaugural
of the end of our life.
In that same hour today,
the sad ghost I am now
returned to the shrine
of that bitter anniversary
to find a baptism underway,
renovating the echo of your last rites.
From the last pew
I bore silent witness
to the rituals of a newborn life,
as I wept over the remains of ours.
I departed quietly,
a poltergeist with no role in that play,
unseen, unremarked, unrequited,
and made my solemn way to the graveyard,
the very last specter in your funeral procession,
the very first in hers.
Dead Darlings
Dead Darlings is a novel-writing advice blog by alumni of GrubStreet Boston's Novel Incubator. Brief, personable essays cover a variety of topics from inspiration to revision, publication, and marketing. There are also interviews with authors of notable new books.
Catholic Poetry Room
A weekly feature on the Integrated Catholic Life website, the Catholic Poetry Room has a Catholic Christian focus, but welcomes a wide range of takes on the spiritual life expressed in all manner of verse, from emerging and established poets.
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.
Free Breakfast
By Terri Kirby Erickson
The Springhill Suites free breakfast area
was filling up fast when a man carrying his
disabled young son lowered him into his
chair, the same way an expert pilot's airplane
kisses the runway when it lands. And all the
while, the man whispered into his boy's ear,
perhaps telling him about the waffle maker
that was such a hit with the children gathered
around it, or sharing the family's plans for the
day as they traveled to wherever they were
going. Whatever was said, the boy's face was
alight with some anticipated happiness. And
the father, soon joined by the mother, seemed
intent on providing it. So beautiful they all
were, it was hard to concentrate on our eggs
and buttered toast, to look away when his
parents placed their hands on the little boy's
shoulders and smiled at one another, as if
they were the luckiest people in the room.
A Thousand Summers
By Sue Gerrard
There were a thousand summers in the sun
to celebrate, to anticipate
to hold our breathe for, to welcome.
Looking forwards, always forwards, never backwards;
never caring to remember the days passed,
but time runs on and takes us with it,
until the summers have all gone
and the chill of perpetual autumn
mists our eyes and dulls our memories.
Reprinted from her collection Poems from the Cottage, a limited-edition book published by The Pear Tree Press (Auckland, NZ) in 2020
Book Cover Templates at PosterMyWall
PosterMyWall is a graphic design vendor offering templates and stock images for email marketing, promotional videos, social media posts, and self-published book design. A monthly subscription gives you unlimited templates and various credits toward buying photos, or you can pay for individual images and videos as needed. Their sample book covers on their website are professional-looking and clearly indicate the book's genre.
MEHPoeting: The Writings of Matthew E. Henry
Matthew E. Henry is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet and the author of Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020). He is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, an online literary magazine publishing high-quality creative writing by high school students. From his website bio: "His writing shines a black-light on the bed of relationships, race, religion, and everything else you're not supposed to discuss in polite company."
The Weight Journal
Launched in 2020, The Weight Journal is an online literary space for the best poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction by high school students. Editor Matthew Henry ("MEH") is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet and the author of Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020). Read an interview with him about The Weight Journal in Frontier Poetry.
Duane L. Herrmann
Duane L. Herrmann is an American prairie poet based in rural Kansas. His books include the poetry collection Prairies of Possibilities and the historical work By Thy Strengthening Grace, published in 2006 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Topeka Baha'i community.
Heeding Signs
By Diane Elayne Dees
When the snowy egret appears on your curb
at dusk, offering the cast-off fragments
of your soul a peaceful passage
through the perilous landscape of your life,
attention is required.
When the dragonfly lights on your porch,
observing your pain through multiple lenses,
granting you a chance to grasp the meaning
of that life—sit down, open your own eyes,
contemplate iridescence.
When, in your dream, the giant owl
enters your house, startling you
with its mottled feathers, remember
that something has to die so that something
can emerge. When death arrives on giant wings,
prepare to be a midwife.
originally published in Amethyst Review
Send Mail From Desk
An alternative to in-person trips to the post office, Send Mail From Desk allows customers to send documents, letters, and invoices via FedEx Standard Overnight, USPS Priority, Express & First Class Mail, all from your computer dashboard.
Published to Death
Erica Verrillo is the author of the middle-grade fantasy series Phoenix Rising and has published short fiction in numerous literary journals. Her blog, Published to Death, offers a variety of writing resources, including submission calls, links to magazines that pay writers, free contests, and resources for finding an agent and getting reviews.
Silence. Struggle. Salvation.
By Judith Cody
for Guy, he'd have understood
Crash in the rose garden. Crash. Crash. Crash.
Suddenly a full petaled wide open Tea Rose
Known as Mr. Lincoln, let go of most of
Its immense maroon, elderly petals (this all at once)
Sending them fluttering helplessly to the bare
Ground, some of them struck a furtive Brown Towhee
Who was scratching noisily at the base of the shrub
For a few errant earwigs who normally rest in the day,
But now must fight wiggle for their lives (though lost)
For a second, now the descending cascade of petals distracted
The disheveled bird allowing the exposed insects
To escape (this afternoon).
Reprinted from Garden on an Alien Star System (Finishing Line Press, 2020); first published in Phantasmagoria 5(1):8
BookBaby
BookBaby offers self-published authors a full range of services from editing and design to printing, distribution, and marketing. BookBaby is a co-sponsor of our North Street Book Prize—that's how much we trust them!
25 Animations of Great Literary Works
This article at Open Culture features links to short films animating such literary classics as an Emily Dickinson poem, the parable of Plato's Cave, and excerpts from Kafka's diaries and Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf.
Bookish & Writer Events: Sarah Nicolas Newsletter
Sarah Nicolas is the author of the YA novels Keeping Her Secret and Dragons Are People, Too. Her weekly newsletter on Substack features listings of upcoming author readings, book fairs, and writing workshops.
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.
The Blue Mountain Review
Published by the Southern Collective, the Blue Mountain Review is a quarterly journal of arts and culture. They publish interviews with writers, lit mag editors, artists, and musicians, plus original poetry, fiction, and essays. See their website for the current theme for their annual poetry chapbook contest.
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, 2021)
