Art and shiny things…
SILENCE, by Amorito Citrella
The books held her in a total silence, a depth and richness she’d never imagined, that made the air hum and the pages vibrate with a music and a promise of hope, of magic, of adventure, of home, of thousands of worlds to be lived in across the smooth, slippery brown boards (made for dancing) of the library room…
There is no language for why
I wanted to stroke your cheek yesterday
When you first arrived at the pub
Friend of a friend, unfamiliar
And promise-full as a new metaphor
Why I noticed the soft flesh
At the V of your T-shirt
The tender Canadian “Eh”
Inflection-propped as I imagined your body might be
Supported by an elbow amid ruffled sheets
Why it felt right for our knees to touch
And stay touching, warmth just short
Of a spark sustaining the connection
As the day lost itself to growing chill
There is no reason, no rhyme
For why I spent all of today smiling
At something more than April sunshine
And the prospect of a drink with you after dinner
When, hearing you mention a boyfriend,
In a parallel universe, another me learns again those
Other things for which we have no words:
Nothing as easy as anger; just the slow wilt
Of waste, desire cooled like a Spring day
Retreating where unbeen chances go to die.
In ours, I learn that sometimes, just feeling
Is enough. I hug you, promise to email and surprise
Myself with a skyward grin at whatever God
Decided this might amuse.
In yet another, another you sits on my hotel bed:
As we talk about planting trees, saving the world,
I start to run my hands through your hair.
-Aaron Maniam, from the Singapore poets edition of Blue Lyra Review
Naked boy makes light like
mosquito, like
key drunk and the door.
I name a ghost for him.
I don’t care – all boys end.
Light goes, popped story like
wanting any him pushed, sucked
flat mosquito, to door.
I name the ghosts for them. Light
goes, breaking out like
wound-touch, like
school child, like
boy become naked can door.
Light goes.
Naked boy crawls shadow to bed.
His name says he will have
greater fortunes than this.
Sound for ghost goes
kwi-shin
like
boy swallows mosquito, like
boy I kissed once, boy
who swallows his name.
Like
like
boy kiss drunk and the noraebang
song loud as junk food and light
light sour stomach humming light
crystal-spun light
like
anyone turned on,
turned off.
My name says I will have
greater ghosts than this.
-Kat Dixon, Kenning Journal
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”
-J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Brian Jacques. Jane Austen. J.R.R. Tolkein. Roald Dahl. C.S. Lewis. Alistair MacLean. Louis L’Amour. Rainbow Rowell.
That’s my short list of authors who gave me that jolt of pure, unadulterated joy that obliterates the rest of the world, makes you feel you’ve found a spiritual/mental soulmate, and makes you want to track them down and knock down their door or call them up and have long conversations about everything and nothing and find out their opinion about the world and politics in that one corner of the world and how they like their tea.
Dreamt last night I fed you, unknowingly,
something you were allergic to.
And you were gone, like that.
You don’t have even a single allergy,
but still. The dream cracked. Cars nose-dived
off snow banks into side streets. Sometimes
dreams slip poison, make the living
dead then alive again, twirling
in an unfamiliar room.
It’s hard to say I need you enough.
Today I did. Walked into your morning
shower fully clothed. All the moments
we stop ourselves just because we might
feel embarrassed or impractical, or get wet.
-Tara Skurtu, first published in the minnesota review, found via Poetry Storehouse where you can also hear a beautiful recording
Source unknown
(image via Ninth Letter)
1. Keep endless lists of literary journals. Mark which ones actually publish your style, and archive the rest. Note open submission periods per year.
2. Follow LitMagNews on Twitter, where Jonathan Crowl posts and retweets calls for submissions from literary journals.
3. Join the Facebook Group for Poetry, Fiction, and Art Calls for Submissions. It’s approve-only but it’s fairly easy to get approved.
Submit!!
Sum up with a glance the virginal absence dispersed
in this solitude and, as one gathers, in memory of a
site, one of those magical, closed water lilies which
spring up suddenly, enveloping nothingness with
their hollow whiteness, formed from untouched
dreams, from a happiness that will never take place,
and from the breath that I am now holding in fear
of an apparition, depart with it: steal silently away,
rowing little by little …
-STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ, Monet’s Garden
Those weekends, while
Bradleys gathered
on Kuwait’s northern border, their barrels
raised, the tankers’
breath drawn, our father
on the kitchen table, arranged
the hulking Macintosh he’d brought
home in his Chrysler Horizon.
Five
that year, as yet
unlettered in the epic
of disasters passing
beyond our block, I watched
with my sister the flickering
disk-drive light
its small beacon beneath
his touch. The dull
screen shimmered
to life.
Like
this, he’d say taking
our hands in his own & holding
our thin fingers to the keys. & we,
first
in terror then
in awe watched
the strange combinations of letters rend
the darkness. DOS. The chalky
cursor. The whir
& clicking the disk-
drive, like
a man, moved
through its work with.
When,
in fin de siècle Boston, Bell
to the mouthpiece plucked
a reed, he
heard first the same mechanical static. He flattened
his ear to the signal’s hissing as if,
there in his basement, hailed
by the great & ruined future. Our father
huddled
before the screen. Oh son
et lumière machine. Oh we
who in that new light looked
like a family folding
in on itself on the shores
of a burning empire. On the Tigris,
tanks in formation. In the basement, Bell
to Watson—do you understand
what I am telling you?
Yes, he said.
We entered
our names & erased them.
-Christopher Kempf, The Kenyon Review
Be the woman you’re destined to be in this life;
graceful in motion, dance free in this life.
Buy tickets for any train, bus, plane or cab.
So much to hear, do, think and see in this life.
Speak up with body and voice, flowing hands—
you don’t always have to agree in this life.
Lay burdens down on altars, by lakes,
places to which you can flee in this life.
Eyes to the heavens, fingers to the sky,
hands up to feel the glee in this life.
All numbers on the scale act shady—
not everyone’s size three in this life.
Beads and bracelets, bridges and bayous.
Don’t have to be one she in this life.
A book, a pen, a solemn afternoon.
Savor your cups of green tea in this life.
Poems should be courted like a bride.
Get down on one knee in this life.
Come up for air beneath the glamour;
listen for your own plea in this life.
Every taste and flavor, every grain—
so glad you’ve come to me in this life.
-Allison Joseph, Valparaiso Poetry Review
Coffee and Irony 