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The Lake

The June issue of The Lake is now online featuring Estaban Allard-Valdivieso, Georgi Bailey, Daisy Bassen, Sylvia Freeman, Neil Fulwood, Margaret Galvin, Maren O. Mitchell, Fiona Sinclair, J. R. Solonche, Richard Allen Taylor, Damaris West, Sarah White, Rodney Wood.

Boulevard – Spring 2021

The Spring 2021 edition of Boulevard is now available with winning poems from the 2020 Poetry Contest by Bryan Byrdlong, the winning essay from the 2020 Nonfiction Contest by Jonathan Wei, and a craft interview with Emily St. John Mandel. New poetry by Adrian Matejka, Adedayo Agarau, JD Amick, Clare Banks, Lory Bedikian, Ava C. Cipri, Laura Davenport, Kwame Dawes, Rosalind Guy, Rachael Hershon, Lisa Low, Jane Morton, and more.

Elemental Witness

Guest Post by Michael Hettich.

Perhaps the most striking characteristic of Blood Aria, given its poems’ formal dexterity, nuanced tonal shifts, and emotional depths, is that it is Christopher Nelson’s first full-length book of poetry. In its range of subject matter and at times harrowing emotional risk, as well as in the sheer dexterity of its strategies and tones, Blood Aria is a deeply powerful and necessary book, one of the richest first books of poetry I have read in years. This is work that reminds us of the depths of insight and feeling that are unsayable except in the most dexterous, courageous, emotionally capacious poetry; it reminds us as well of an essential human need that finds expression only in the best poetry’s capacity to speak through the blood and guts of being, balanced against the scintillating engagements of the formally-adept mind. Continue reading “Elemental Witness”

Touch-Starved Poetry

Magazine Review by Katy Haas.

In Volume 33 of The Briar Cliff Review, readers can find a poem that I think most people can relate to after the past year. “Gargoyles” by Sara Wallace describes the empty of feeling of craving someone else’s touch. While the poem does lean toward the romantic side of touch (“No one’s biting your lips, / no one’s tasting you.), it comes at a time when I’m seeing my friends celebrate the ability to hug their loved ones again after, and ends up feeling more general. After being separated from friends and family during the pandemic, who hasn’t missed the intimacy of touch?

Wallace carries the idea of gargoyles through the poem, first as a smoker standing in a doorway of a bodega, and finally as the game “statues, / how when you were tagged // you had to pretend you were stone,” and could only move again when “someone touched you.” I love this thread she carries through from present to past, keeping with that yearning for physical touch.

“Gargoyles” by Sara Wallace. The Briar Cliff Review, 2021.

Plume – May 2021

This month’s Plume featured selection is “Five Contemporary Love Songs edited by Leeya Mehta,” with work by five contemporary Indian poets: Tishani Doshi, Rajiv Mohabir, Jerry Pinto, Arundhathi Subramaniam, and Jeet Thayil. Chelsea Wagenaar reviews Music for the Dead and Resurrected by Valzhyna Mort. In nonfiction: “The Mind’s Meander: Indirection, Ambiguity, and Association in Poetry” by Rachel Hadas.

Cimarron Review – Fall 2020

In this issue of Cimarron Review: poetry by Ken Autrey, Martha Silano, Sandra McPherson, Daniel Bourne, Erin McIntosh, George Bilgere, Annie Christian, Rebecca Cross, Chloe Hanson, Austen Leah Rose, Millie Tullis, Avra Wing, Amy Bagan, and more; fiction by Jason K. Friedman, Laura Dzubay, David Philip Mullins, and Ashley Clarke; and nonfiction by Brenna Womer, Andrew Johnson, and Lindsay Shen.

Anomaly – No 32

Our new issue, ANMLY #32, features a special folio Neighbor Species and Shared Futures curated by Kristine Ong Muslim. Featuring work in various genres from Tilde Acuña, Richard Calayeg Cornelio, Reil Benedict Obinque, Regine Cabato, Pedantic Pedestrians, Melvin Clemente Magsanoc, and more. See what else you can expect to find in this issue at the Anomaly website.

The Main Street Rag – Spring 2021

The Spring 2021 issue features Postscript to a Postscript: an interview with Bill Glose, Winner of the 2020 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, interviewed by M. Scott Douglass. Fiction by Abe Aamidor, Allison Daniel, Tony Hozeny, Michele Lovell, Bob Moskowitz, Robert Stone and poetry by Bill Glose, Joan Bauer, Frederick W. Bassett, Joan Bernard, Burt Beckmann, Ace Boggess, Marion Starling Boyer, and more.

Carve Magazine – Spring 2021

The Spring 2021 issue features short stories by and interviews with Sydney Rende, Sam White, Kimm Brockett Stammen, and Caroline Kim. New poetry by Michael Quinn, Ruth Baumann, Will Thomas, and Mureall Hebert and nonfiction by Jory Pomeranz and Christie Tate. Prose & Poetry Contest winners: Mona’a Malik, Ryan Little, and Alisha Acquaye. Read more at the Carve website.

About Place Journal – May 2021

“Geographies of Justice,” edited by Alexis Lathem with Richard Cambridge and Charles Coe. An extraordinary testament to extraordinary times: includes poetry from Susan Deer Cloud, Tammy Melody Gomez, Richard Hoffmann, Jacqueline Johnson, Petra Kuppers, and Danielle Wolffe; nonfiction from Teow Lim Goh, Andréana Elise Lefton, David Mura, Nicole Walker, and Catherine Young. Find more contributors at the About Place Journal website.

‘Even the Saints Audition’

Guest Post by Sherrel McLafferty.

When we are asked to carry stories with us, fables and religion and family origins, we carry not just their words but their implications. Opening with a thoughtful exploration of Job, we witness the haunting impacts of “. . . the Devil asking / for permission to torment” and “God saying yes” on a vulnerable persona who ties these poems together. As a reader, the three acts serve as a pathway between childhood, where poems are playful including asking questions about sex in Sunday school, to the self doubt and self-harm of teenagehood, and ending with a young woman’s struggle with addiction.

In the background of this transformation, there is God and this story that haunts the beginning of each act, Job. God let him suffer. God lets our persona suffer. The commitment to the theme is astonishing; Jackson uses erasure of hymns, references to Jonah, and the anticipated language of sin. However, the redemption arc is not quite there. Jackson keeps us hungering for relief that only appears in the occasional rhetorical line or question, “Who am I /to go against God & the saints?”

I arrived at this book in need of fellowship about midway through this hellscape of a year. What a welcome 75 pages of commiseration. An open hand to anyone, regardless of religion, despite its theme because at its heart, it builds a story of abandonment, of melancholy, of needing someone to witness one’s pain.

Even the Saints Audition by Raych Jackson. Button Poetry, September 2019.

Reviewer bio: Sherrel McLafferty is a Pushcart nominated writer residing in Bowling Green, Ohio. For more information, visit her website at sherrelmclafferty.com or her Twitter @AwesomeSherrel.

Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.

Magazine Stand :: Wordrunner eChapbooks – 2021

Our theme for this issue is LOVE in all its painful, confusing, passionate, and joyous diversity. Featuring fiction by Louise Blalock, Margaret Emma Brandl, Ed Davis, Stefan Kiesbye, and Nick Sweeney; memoir by Jane Boch, Ruth Askew Brelsford, Laura Foxworthy, and Carmela Delia Lanza; and poetry and prose poems by Leonore Hildebrandt, Robert Murray, and Jacalyn Shelley.

Sky Island Journal – Spring 2021

Sky Island Journal’s stunning 16th issue features poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction from contributors around the globe. Accomplished, well-established authors are published—side by side—with fresh, emerging voices. Readers are provided with a powerful, focused literary experience that transports them: one that challenges them intellectually and moves them emotionally. Always free to access, and always free from advertising, discover what over 80,000 readers in 145 countries already know; the finest new writing is here, at your fingertips.

Alaska Quarterly Review – Winter 2021

In this issue, find special Memoir as Drama feature “Dialogue Box” by Debbie Urbanski. Also in this issue: stories by Emily Mitchell, Elizabeth Stix, Cara Blue Adams, JoAnna Novak, and more; essays by Emma Hine, Catalina Bode, Nicole Graev Lipson, and Josh Shoemake; and poetry by Emily Nason, Rose DeMaris, Dorsey Craft, and others. Find more contributors at the Alaska Quarterly Review website.

Ruminate – Spring 2021

From the editors: In the face of the immense grief that surrounds us, for this issue Ruminate Magazine editors decided to explore What Remains. “Everything is held together with stories,” writes the acclaimed author Barry Lopez, who died this past year, a few months after the Holiday Farm Fire destroyed his house and archives. “That is all that is holding us together. Stories and compassion.” This issue features the winners of our 2020 Broadside Poetry Prize: Michael Dechane and S. Yarberry.

Plume – April 2021

For this month’s Plume featured selection, Nancy Mitchell interviewed five Poet Laureates: Tina Chang, Elizabeth Jacobson, Paisley Rekdal, Levi Romero and Laura Tohe. In nonfiction: “Correspondence In The Air” by Ilya Kaminsky and “Twilight of the Theorists” by Doug Anderson. Andrea Read reviews Steven Cramer’s Listen.

The Shore – Spring 2021

The spring issue of The Shore is bursting with breathtaking poetry by Dana Blatte, Jessica Poli, Matthew Tuckner, CD Eskilson, Dakota Reed, Kelsey Carmody Wort, Martha Silano, SK Grout, Hilary King, Babo Kamel, Noa Saunders, Jeremy Michael Reed, Lucy Zhang, C Samuel Rees, Becki Hawes, Kevin Grauke, Jenny Wong, Steven Pfau, Ashley Steineger, Danielle Pieratti, Eric Steineger, Farnaz Fatemi, Scarlett Peterson, Sarah Elkins, Katie Holtmeyer, Robert Fanning, Jean Theron, Heidi Seaborn, Caroline Riley, Sarah Stickney, David Keplinger, Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan, Tara A Elliott, Laren Mallett, Richard Prins and Sam Sobel. It also features dazzling art by Joshua Young.

Radar Poetry – No. 29

Radar Poetry’s newest issue features poetry by Geula Geurts, Despy Boutris, K. D. Harryman, Jennifer Beebe, Marietta Brill, Kathryn Haemmerle, Michelle Menting, Julia Paul, Amanda Chiado, Jane Zwart, Meggie Royer, Claudia Acevedo-Quiñones, Janine Certo, Cynthia White, Rachael Inciarte, Josh Exoo, Casey Patrick, and Ruth Dickey, as well as accompany art by artists such as Ethan Pines, Tema Stauffer, Lava Munroe, Honour Mack, and more.