Kailey Tedesco's books She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publications) and These Ghosts of Mine, Siamese (Dancing Girl Press) are both forthcoming. She is the editor-in-chief of a Rag Queen Periodical and a performing member of the NYC Poetry Brothel. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. You can find her poetry featured or forthcoming in Prelude, Prick of the Spindle, Bellevue Literary Review, Vanilla Sex Magazine, and more. For more information, please visit kaileytedesco.com.
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Poetry by Kyle Brown-Watson
Kyle Brown-Watson is a bookseller based in Philadelphia. He has read poetry and fiction on stage for Empty Set Press and the Breweytown Social. Before that, he worked in advertising, software development, and heaven forgive him, television. He infrequently updates his newsletter Terminal Chill and is working on a graphic novel.
3 Poems You Should Read & Reread
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014),The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (Operating System, 2017), Sexting Ghosts (Unknown Press, 2018), Xenos (Agape Editions, 2016), and the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault (CCM, 2017). They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of their writing has appeared in Brooklyn Magazine, Prelude, BUST, Spork Press, and elsewhere. Joanna also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets. joannavalente.com / Twitter: @joannasaid / IG: joannacvalente
See These Illustrations Reinvent the Tarot Major Arcana Cards
In late 2015, my second book came out. The Gods Are Dead is an exploration and retelling of the Tarot journey through the major arcana cards, largely focusing on sexuality and queer identity. At the time, Luna Luna editor-in-chief, Lisa Marie Basile, interviewed me about the collection and how being a Tarot reading influenced my writing here.
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4 Books That Focus on Identity & Survival
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Xenos (Agape Editions, 2016), and Marys of the Sea (The Operating System, 2017). They are the editor of A Shadow Map: An Anthology by Survivors of Sexual Assault (CCM, 2017). Joanna received a MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, a managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine and CCM, as well as an instructor at Brooklyn Poets. Some of their writing has appeared in Brooklyn Magazine, Prelude, Apogee, Spork, The Feminist Wire, BUST, and elsewhere.
Light Magic for Dark Times: Practices for Magical Living, Resiliency, & Self-Care
BY LISA MARIE BASILE
Hello, Luna Luna readers—it's your long, lost editor-in-chief. This post is looooong overdue, but alas, summer languidness and a lack of time. So, I've got an announcement: I wrote a book, and it's called Light Magic for Dark Times! It is available for preorder now, and it's out in September.
In a way, this book is the official Luna Luna collection of rituals and practices for grief, resiliency, shadow work, sex magic, writing magic, body and identity appreciation, regeneration, love, trauma, creativity, and glamour. I'm so out of my mind excited!
In the fall of last year, I was approached by a publishing house, Quarto Books (the leading global publisher of illustrated nonfiction!)—whose editor had been reading Luna Luna (and one of my posts about grief rituals). They asked me if I'd be interested in writing a longer book of what they'd seen—so we went back and forth on some ideas. As a poet and essayist, this felt like a beautiful challenge, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't difficult. I had been practicing magic for so long—and in a really intimate, quiet, chaotic, eclectic and solitary way (more on that here), so I wanted to make sure that my work was accessible and inclusive to be understood and used by anyone, including people who also had their own set ways of practicing. Magic is something we all have within us, and I believe removing barriers to that personal power is so important—especially in times when we feel we've lost our autonomy or sense of joy.
As a former foster care youth, a trauma survivor, and someone with a chronic illness, feelings of out-of-control-ness have been no stranger to me. Those feelings can impact your self-esteem and your creativity, your resiliency, your hope, your desire, and the way you engage with the world around you. I wanted to share some of my personal practices and rituals that helped me through all of that. And I brought my experiences as a poet, empath, community builder, and writer to the book, too (so, yes it's even got a poetry section).
It was important to me that the book be a collection of practices that could both honor and manage our shadow selves and our light. They're one in the same, I think; they just move along on a spectrum, sometimes hand in hand, sometimes separately.
Oh, and the foreword is written by Kristen J. Sollee, the amazing, inimitable, wonderful author of Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring The Sex Positive.
Would you like to preorder the book?! You can do just that anywhere you can get books (Amazon, your local indie book store, B&N, and more). It can be preordered in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada here. It can even be preordered at Target and Walmart (wild, right?).
Oh, and here are some photos from the writing & editing process:
A Sequence of Dreams
I graduated from college one month ago. Still, I am having the dreams. The ones where everything that has not settled or come to pass arises again and comes to gather before my closed eyes.
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The Book You Need to Read About Drug Addiction
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Xenos (Agape Editions, 2016), and Marys of the Sea (The Operating System, 2017). They are the editor of A Shadow Map: An Anthology by Survivors of Sexual Assault (CCM, 2017). Joanna received a MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, a managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine and CCM, as well as an instructor at Brooklyn Poets. Some of their writing has appeared in Brooklyn Magazine, Prelude, Apogee, Spork, The Feminist Wire, BUST, and elsewhere.
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Poetry by Laura Passin
When you burst through the body’s confines
in the grip of joy,
think of the black hole's
birth cry:
Poetry by Bunkong Tuon
Bunkong Tuon is the author of Gruel (2015) and And So I Was Blessed (2017), both poetry collections published by NYQ Books, and a regular contributor to Cultural Weekly He is also an associate professor of English and Asian Studies at Union College, in Schenectady, NY.
How I Uknowingly Asked a Man out During Jury Duty
One of the things I looked most forward to after being sworn in as an American citizen: to serve on a jury. Partially inspired by the show Law & Order SVU; and, partially by the philosophy: Innocent until proven guilty.
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Via Karisma Price
Selections from Omotara James: 2 Poems By Karisma Price
BY KARISMA PRICE
SELECTIONS BY OMOTARA JAMES
Even if you’ve never endured the burn of a chemical relaxer, even if you’ve never sat still beneath the crackle of a sizzling hot comb, who among us hasn’t processed the body through a problematic paradigm? Hasn’t prayed for at least one part of the whole to be perfect? An inquisitive voice emanates from Price’s poems with all the authority granted by compassion. How the he tenderness of the phrase “to hold the seeds of you in my fingers” cohabitates within the same poem that mouths “the feathered kiss of suffering,” demonstrates Price’s lyric grace and propensity to translate every divine inch of the mortal coil.
God of burning scalp,
prevent the dollop of chemical from destroying my cousin’s hairline. She sits contently in the kitchen chair, unaware of the approaching fire. I watch how the loose strand swings, lands on her acne cheek and wonder how long it took her to master stillness. How many times did my aunt have to promise her an incentive for straight hair and itchy scabs? I frown when the smell of sulfur floods the room. When the hot comb couldn’t tame the wild, my aunt suggested a more permanent solution. This is a rite of passage. Maybe now it won’t look so nappy. When the thick, white cream loiters for too long on my cousin’s scalp, she bolts from the chair and plunges head first into the kitchen sink. This must be what a proper baptism looks like.
Demeter, Reimagined as a Black Woman, Speaks to Persephone
Please do not come back to me
suspended in the sky’s quiet
diorama, or in umber pieces
that require me to hold the seeds
of you in my fingers
like an examiner holds
a tooth to an x-ray. Baby, I have broken
the trees for you. I will curse every
person that yells, “A man was lynched
here yesterday,” but refuses to acknowledge
his wife. Did they ever cut her down or
does she still swing above us like a broken
promise? What of the mothers afraid of being
mothers of daughters and fear the feathered
kiss of suffering? I asked God
for mercy. There was no answer.
I’ve decided you don’t have to answer
me either. Because I love you, surrender
to the only darkness heavier than sleep.
Do not come back from it.
Omotara James is a poet and essayist. Her poetry chapbook, Daughter Tongue, was selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. Her debut full length collection, Mama Wata, is forthcoming in the Fall of 2018 from Siren Songs, of CCM press. She has been award fellowships from Cave Canem and Lambda Literary. Currently, she is an MFA candidate in poetry at NYU. For further information, please visit her website: www.omotarajames.com
Karisma Price was born and raised in New Orleans, LA and holds a BA in creative writing from Columbia University. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at New York University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Four Way Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Vinyl, and Leveler. Karisma lives in New York City, and along with Kwame Opoku-Duku III, she is a founding member of the Unbnd Collective. Find her on twitter at @itsKayPrice and here.
Tadeusz Styka
Flash Fiction by Romey Petite
According to the ancient myth, the pale phantom king of the underworld had a frozen heart—unmoved even by Orpheus’ twinkling music. The poet would have to rely on charming the king's wife, kindly Persephone in her flower crown, instead. With lyre and honey-colored falsetto, he applied himself to his art.
Charm her, the poet did.
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Review of James Diaz's "This Someone I Call Stranger" by Devon Balwit
While voicing anguish, Diaz’ narrators are never pitiable, nor does he allow the suffering self to wallow.
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Tragedy Queens: Writers on Lana Del Rey & Sylvia Plath
BY LISA MARIE BASILE
When visionary editor Leza Cantoral asked me to contribute to the Tragedy Queens anthology (you can also order from the publisher, Clash Books) she said something to the affect of, "you are literally perfect for this," which probably means I'm a very, very Sad Girl. More seriously, though, I felt drawn toward it because of Plath's impact on my own poetry career and my not-so-secret Lana Del Rey fascination.
There's Plath wrangling with the shadow, full of beautiful, unique language, and then there's this singer-starlet who aestheticizes her own sadness. Sorrow was the language and the vein of this anthology, and I wanted to explore that. I wanted to investigate my own relationship to sorrow—and the ways in which these Tragedy Queens informed my creativity. I ended up writing an exceptionally melodramatic piece called Girls In The Garden of Holy Suffering, both a true testament of my youth and psycho-sexual development, and a nod toward Lana's exaggerations of sadness and sadness aesthetic. Both of these women have inspired me to explore the authentic and inauthentic—and how they both sort of meld into one.
In this mini interview series, I chatted with the editor, Leza Cantoral, along with a few of the other stellar contributors, and got their story on why the anthology felt so right for them.
— Lisa Marie Basile
RELATED: On Sylvia Plath, The Tarot And Bad College Writing
Leza Cantoral, Editor:
"Tragedy Queens is the culmination of my obsession with Sylvia Plath. When I read Ariel, it changed my life. I read everything I could find about her. I am drawn to tragic figures. I relate to them. But I am getting sick of the tragic narrative. When I sent out the submissions call I did not specify a genre. What I cared about was character arcs. People making choices. I especially wanted the female perspective.
Lana Del Rey came into my life a few years ago and I became obsessed with everything about her: her voice, her music, her hair, her eyeliner, her lips, her past, her glamour, her sadness, her passion. Her songs resonated deep within me. I loved her openness. The confessional quality of her music reminded me of Sylvia Plath, so it made sense to join two of my favorite muses together. They both inspire my own writing. I wanted to share that and was so excited to see what people came up with. I was not disappointed. Everyone knocked my socks off. I was sobbing, laughing, and gasping, as I read through the stories that made it into Tragedy Queens. People think of pop music as low art and poetry as high art and I think that’s bullshit. Lana Del Rey is a poet of the highest order and she deserves that recognition for her craft."
Gabino Iglesias:
"For me, Plath embodies mental health struggles. She was incredibly talented, but the demons in her heart, soul, and mind ended up winning. That she was able to focus all of that and express it in words is something that deserves to be celebrated. LDR, on the other hand, is a modern anomaly that somehow became a sensation thanks to am atmosphere of strong women taking over and a massive push to obliterate patriarchy, and she does it all while being bizarre and having her own aesthetic. I knew many women would be getting involved in this, and that made me want to be a part of it. Strong brujas all around celebrating two unique ladies with their words. Who wouldn't want to be a part of that magic?"
Monique Quintana:
"Sylvia Plath and Lana Del Rey get at death, beauty, and the grotesque in artful and unnerving ways. As a writer and mother, I’ve always felt that womanhood and motherhood should not be sanitized, but rather, stripped down to its visceral core, so that blood and bone and tissue are exposed. My story was inspired by the trash glam aesthetic of Lana Del Rey’s song, 'Sad Girl' and Plath’s dark mythos of mother and father figures. It’s about a teenage Xicana’s doomed love affair in a 1997 dystopian central California that results in the conception of a brujo baby."
RELATED: 9 Lust for Life Observations from the Ultimate Lana Del Rey Fan
Christine Stoddard:
"I wrote a short story inspired by Lana Del Rey's captivating song, 'Summertime Sadness.' Throughout her work, Lana eerily and beautifully captures the nature of tragic love. I don't think she glorifies domestic violence or other forms of abuse. She's simply telling stories. Love is complicated and even the healthiest relationships have their tragedies. Those stories need to be told because, even when they are fictitious, they are very real. I saw this anthology as a chance to tell yet another story about love's complexities."
Jerry Drake:
"Sylvia Plath and Lana Del Rey represent an inspirational arc covering the course of my life. As a teenager struggling with OCD and depression I found in Plath a comforting fellow traveler, someone who had a shared voice. As a man in my 40's I find in Del Rey the echoes of my own wild youth—hot nights, too much beer, and the dangerous fun of mischief and trouble. I had toyed with writing a story but didn't like my original idea. I found myself standing in my kitchen chatting with Leza Cantoral, the anthology's editor, during the 2017 AWP. I gave her my original idea and she said, 'No, I want you to tell the story that clearly draws from your real life and your real inspirations, don't make anything up.' It came together and I sat down that night and wrote my story. I am pleased to have it accepted. I feel like I caught a night of my youth in a bottle for others to experience."
Trish Grisafi:
"Plath has inspired me since I was twelve years old and picked up The Bell Jar. It spoke to me so much as a floundering adolescent—and it was incredibly funny. I could really relate to Plath’s sardonic wit and her cut-throat observations about the world. She’s smart, heartbreaking, and culturally astute about her historical moment. I wanted to create a story that, like The Bell Jar, deconstructed typically idealized experiences and put forth commentary on mental health care. Growing up, I suffered from depression, anxiety, and OCD. I wasn’t able to get help until I ended up in a psychiatric hospital in my mid-twenties. I wanted to create a character who is clearly suffering but also ignored—like Esther was in The Bell Jar. It was very important for me to get that voice down."
Lisa Marie Basile is a poet-witch and founding creative director of Luna Luna Magazine—a digital diary of literature, magical living and idea. She is the author of "Light Magic for Dark Times," a modern grimoire of inspired rituals and daily practices. She's also the author of a few poetry collections, including the forthcoming "Nympholepsy."
Her work encounters the intersection of ritual and wellness, chronic illness, magic, overcoming trauma, and creativity, and she has written for The New York Times, Narratively, Grimoire Magazine, Venefica, The Establishment, Refinery 29, Bust, Hello Giggles, and more.
Lisa Marie earned a Masters degree in Writing from The New School and studied literature and psychology as an undergraduate at Pace University.
Leza Cantoral is a Xicana writer & editor who lives on the internet. She is the Editor in Chief of CLASH Books & host of the Get Lit With Leza podcast where she talks to cool ass writers. Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana Del Rey & Sylvia Plath is a CLASH Books anthology of stories that she edited as a result of being a Lana Del Rey & Sylvia Plath megafan. You can find her on YouTube at Trash Panda Poetry & everywhere else as herself. She blogs at lezacantoral.com