The new issue of Rogue Agent is live, and I’m thrilled to have “Baby Dream #33: The Fountain” included alongside some incredible poems and art by M. Brett Gaffney, Sally Deskins, Janeen Rastall, David Ishaya Osu, and more.
What an awesome third issue! Congratulations to editor Jill Khoury!
Happy two years to my first poetry chapbook, The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman!
If you want to get a copy for yourself or someone else, this one is still available from Wipf & Stock and Amazon, or you can be even cooler and buy a signed copy directly from me.
This still makes me feel like Jo March. 🙂
Check out the new issue of Rogue Agent, a great new online literary journal that focuses on the body.
I haven’t sent poems yet (on my to do list!), but I have a photo in the “I Feel Empowered When I Wear” photo gallery.
Thanks for starting this journal and including my photo, Jill Khoury!
I did a photo shoot as Harriet Potter for the Sundress Academy for the Arts 2015 calendar of gender-swapped literary characters. I’m so excited to be part of this project!
Pre-order a calendar here.
My guest blog post for Editing Addict is up this morning: “How to Submit Poems for Publication.”
I hope it helps someone!
Happy anniversary to my third chapbook, I Awake in My Womb!
These poems are based on dreams that I had immediately before and during pregnancy, and this chapbook has been fun for me to revisit now that I’m pregnant again. I’m glad that my dreams have not been so vivid or fraught this time around, but I’m also glad that I captured the bizarre manifestations of my anxiety the first time!
Two of the poems from this chapbook were nominated for The Pushcart Prize: thanks for that, Yellow Flag Press and Thrush Press!
You can read a few of these poems in online journals: “The Well” in elimae, “The Dream Job” in Fiction Southeast, and “The Minor Mutation” in TRIVIA.
Although this limited edition chapbook is out of stock from YFP now, I have a few contributor’s copies left to sell, so contact me if you’re interested.
I’ll close this anniversary post with the note from my acknowledgements page: “Thanks to Marthe Reed for her invaluable feedback on these poems and for our many talks about pregnancy and motherhood; to J. Bruce Fuller of Yellow Flag Press for his enthusiastic affirmation; to Elliott for simply being; and to Jon for sharing all of the identity crises, horrors, and profound joys of parenting with me.”
Happy anniversary to my second published chapbook, Tea with Ezra!
These poems, especially the ones based on fairy tales, are some of my very favorites to share at poetry readings. They’re also some of my favorites to read aloud in private: my son often grabs this chapbook off of the shelf by my desk and asks me to read “Mommy’s poems” to him. 🙂
I received The Nassau Review‘s Author Award for Poetry for “Sleeping Beauty’s Mother,” and most of these poems appeared in cool journals before I collected them into this chapbook.
This lovely little handmade chapbook from Boneset Books sold out in pre-order, but the publisher intends to do a second run soon. Thanks to Emily Capettini for publishing this collection, thanks to everyone who bought a copy, and thanks to Jenn Tracy for the awesome book-at-the-beach photo.
While you wait for the second run, I have a handy electronic version of Tea with Ezra that I’ll be happy to share with you if you contact me.
Here’s an interview up at Poets’ Quarterly with the wonderful Nicelle Davis about The Living Poetry Project. I’m honored to be mentioned in her “currently reading” answer.
My guest blog post went up yesterday at The Junia Project. If you’d like to read my thoughts about a terribly unsuccessful campus interview, or if you’d like to read my thoughts about how feminism and Christianity work together, then take a look.
“People come and go so quickly here.” – Dorothy Gale
Today is one month since my Granny passed away. A few nights ago I dreamed about her. She was sitting beside my cousin Nikki, watching Nikki’s daughter and my son play together, something she really did love to do. We were all smiling.
This week I’ve been working on a poem that gives instructions for how to play Yahtzee with my Granny now, after her death. I’m pleased that I’ve been able to write about her still. She’s haunted my poems since I was very young, and I didn’t want to lose that.
Yesterday, I had a chat with a new undergraduate student about poetry and truth. She was so surprised when I told her that poetry doesn’t have to be non-fiction. I explained that poetry is art; it is large and varied. Even when we are writing about something that is “true,” we should craft our poems carefully so that other people can share the experience, and sometimes that means we’re writing fiction. Have I really been playing Yahtzee with my Granny’s ghost? No, but the poem captures something very true about our past and about my present longing for her. In 2009, nine years after my Grandpa’s death, I wrote the following poem about my Granny’s grief. Did this scene actually take place? I don’t recall that morning. I can’t know exactly what Granny was doing and thinking, but I know a whole lot about my grandparents’ lives, and for me this poem captures something true about their relationship.
The Morning After
She pictures him at the kitchen table,
reading the newspaper and sipping coffee
like he did every morning. So ordinary.
She remembers how, when they were first
married, he would tap his mug twice
on the table when he wanted a refill.
She’d hinted at first that this was not
polite, but still he tapped. One day,
she just ignored his knocking. He stopped.
Years later, they would laugh
about the tapping, the 50’s, their first
attempts at sex. Today, she wonders
if she’ll ever laugh again. She sits
in his place at the table and lifts
his mug. She brings it down lightly—
once, twice—then moves herself slowly
across the room, reaching for the coffee pot.
(First published in The Coffee Shop Chronicles, A Word with You Press, 2010.)