From Foster Care to a PhD in Biology, My Fears Are Still the Same

February 4, 2016

I met Zach while choking on a Vietnamese Spring Roll at Lemon Grass, in University Heights. I was on a blind date with a man named William, my first date after my divorce to Hank.

Violence As Violence: A Response to Zachary Schomburg’s “Poetry As Violence”

February 1, 2016

It wasn’t in my plan to start this article this way, but on thinking about the most important parts of Zachary Schomburg’s essay “Poetry As Violence,” I continue to hold in mind his idea that the trauma of violence is in the small details around the violence, and I remember the snippets of memories that occasionally come to me out of nowhere like moths in the night, and that, like moths, I try to bat away before they can land on me. The one that comes to mind first is a confession. It is a memory I’ve told almost no one and I’m telling you here not so you can experience violence, but so you can be humanized in your observance of someone else’s. March 9 (tomorrow, as I write this) marks the sixth anniversary of the day I, at sixteen, downed a bottle of aspirin and tried to go to sleep. What lingers of the violence isn’t the act of swallowing the chalky pills, or the burning in my stomach I couldn’t explain to you if I tried, it isn’t the activated charcoal I forced into my own body, not out of a desire to live but out of the embarrassment of being seen trying not to live.

A Review of Thomas Fucaloro’s 'It Starts from the Belly and Blooms'

January 26, 2016

For me, It Starts from the Belly and Blooms is like having a conversation with myself–chaotic, messy, violent, aware, vulnerable, and scary. It’s a conversation you know the answers to but are too afraid to say. While the book is definitely am emotional journey not always easy getting through, it ends with beauty, with rebirth: “so I gave it a sound/a sunrise/a star.”

George Wakes Up

January 22, 2016

She stood there staring at him wide-eyed for so long that he felt his hands go clammy, realizing his mistake too late of having fecundated yet another triviality. Finally she let out a great horse whinny of a snort, rolled her large bright eyes exaggeratedly, and began to giggle uncontrollably. She spilled onto the floor in a fit of hysteric giggles, so tickled was she by this gesture of his, so transparent in meaning. She knew she ought to stop, so as to avoid hurting the man’s feelings further, but the fact that he had found this declaration worthy of rousing her from a most comfortable slumber allowed her a few giggles more, or so she reasoned.

A LGBTQ Comic Book I'm Obsessed With: The Wicked + The Divine

January 20, 2016

My recent obsession with comic books may inconvenience my wallet, but has visually opened colorful, grandiloquent worlds for me. Already one of my favorite comic book publishers—Image Comics—recently released their collection of “Image Firsts” comics, reprints of popular and iconic comics for only $1 each. Among these is the first issue of my latest obsession: The Wicked + The Divine.

The Contemporary Poetry Book For You, According To Your Zodiac Sign

January 20, 2016

Editor’s Note: This column was cobbled together by several Luna Luna staffers. It is dedicated to pairing the zodiac with the arts, but don’t worry; this isn’t a final list. Watch out for this column again and again, as there are far too many other poets we love!

Tori Amos & The Écriture Féminine: Boys for Pele 20 Years Later

January 19, 2016

My problem? I couldn’t find any female writers who wrote in this way. Even Cixous’s ultimate examples of écriture féminine writers were men: James Joyce and John Genet. I hadn’t discovered the postmodernist novelist Kathy Acker yet. I adored female poets like Plath and Sexton and Millay, but they seemed to assimilate into the male canon rather than defy it. But listening to Tori Amos’s 'Boys for Pele'—twenty years old as of January 22nd—felt like the purest expression of this mode I’ve been able to find. And it was a revelation.

Review of 'Arcana: The Tarot Poetry Anthology'

January 19, 2016

When I received "Arcana: The Tarot Poetry Anthology" (Minor Arcana Press, 2015) in the mail, I was pretty excited. Anyone who knows me even a little knows I love anything Tarot-related, so Tarot poetry is basically my favorite thing in this world. I'm happy to say this anthology did not disappoint.

Poetry by Devin Kelly

January 14, 2016

Devin Kelly earned his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. His collaborative chapbook with Melissa Smyth, This Cup of Absence, is forthcoming from Anchor & Plume Press. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming inGigantic Sequins, Armchair/Shotgun, Post Road, RATTLE, The Millions, Appalachian Heritage, Midwestern Gothic, The Adirondack Review, and more, and his essay “Love Innings" was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He co-hosts the Dead Rabbits Reading Series in Manhattan, teaches Creative Writing and English classes to high schoolers in Queens, and lives in Harlem. You can find him on twitter @themoneyiowe.

Interview with Poet & Painter Rebecca Nison on Influences and New Book

January 13, 2016

Rebecca Nison is one of those people you want to hate a little bit, because she's just good at everything. Being a poet and a painter, while not completely unheard of, is pretty unusual if you're actually talented at both. And she is--she's proved it in her new book, If We'd Never Seen the Sea, which was published by Deadly Chaps Press at the end of 2015.

Poet Robert Balun on His Obsessions, Process, & 'Self (Ceremony)'

January 12, 2016

I'm interested in what works and what's engaging; I'm thinking about other media and drawing from them. I think this mindset influences my perception of ontology and aesthetics, they way I move through the world, what to pay attention to, what to absorb. I forget who said this, but they said that poets orbit all of the arts, and this was illuminating and affirming for me to hear. Maybe, though, I'm not exactly sure what this distinction means; I don't know what a poet or writer's "mentality" is or if it's any different. But being an artist is a lifelong pursuit, again, a way to make sense of the world, a lens. David Bohm talks about how art, science, and religion all evolved from the same impulse in humanity (and were once a unified entity), and I think there's something of this in the way that I approach my work and myself.

Poetry by Jenna Cardinale

January 6, 2016

You notice that the pen you’re using to write is not an easy pen with which to write. Maybe it’s the flow. Or something about the grip is off. So you look at the pen. It is thin. Silver, black, then tipped with silver. “Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts.” You think, “How fancy,” then remember that this is your pen. You took it from a Four Season hotel. It wasn’t as decadent as the appearance of the pen might suggest. Or maybe it was fancy for the Midwest. Because you were in the St. Louis Four Seasons hotel and St. Louis is different from where you’re from. This is why you were staying in a hotel, after all. But there was a rainfall shower. And the TV appeared in the corner of the bathroom mirror. Was the toilet seat heated? Maybe you don’t understand decadence. Did you touch it all?

Overnight Success Is Overrated: A Book Blogger’s Journey

January 6, 2016

It’s hard to believe that my book review blog, Savvy Verse & Wit, is still going after eight years. It started with just one reader and individual poems I’d read in literary journals, like Poetry and AGNI, that I liked or made me view the world a little differently. I wanted to share these poems and my thoughts, and I really gave very little thought to how the blog would continue or how it would evolve. All I knew is that I wanted to talk about poetry, something I missed after college graduation.

You Write What You Read

January 5, 2016

I didn’t consciously make my protagonists white when I began to write fiction. There were times I swore I didn’t think about my characters’ races. But really, they were. Even when I claimed they were utter inventions of my imagination, removed from a context of race, I re-read my stories and see how they really weren’t of anything else. They were all cut from the same cloth.

Poetry by Michael Schmeltzer

December 28, 2015

The way the worm
ripples forward.

The way a boy and girl,
disgusted by the movement,

follow.