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), Marys of the Sea (The Operating System, 2017), Xenos (Agape Editions, 2016), and Sexting Ghosts (Unknown Press, 2018). 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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via swissinfo.ch
A Poet I’ve Never Heard Of: Alfonsina Storni
And when you have put
Into it the soul
That through the bedrooms
Became entangled
Then, good man,
Ask that I be white
Ask that I be like snow
Ask that I be chaste
Michael Ramstead
Community, Murder & Feminism on the Podcast My Favorite Murder
I have discovered a pretty well known podcast called My Favorite Murder. Two women, Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgariff, host the show. It’s considered a comedy podcast. Most people wonder: Where’s the humor in murder? Most would also argue that there is none. However, the humor comes from somewhere else. It’s part of this idea that in order to understand something better we have to get close it. In order to understand why people like Dennis Rader kill we have to pay attention and get closer. So, the humor then, it comes from a place of trying to conquer fear and come to a point of understanding.
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Lola Ridge by Christiana Spens
A Poet I’ve Never Heard Of: Lola Ridge
Don’t you hate those articles with headlines like 20 Movies You Probably Never Heard of but Should Watch Now! And then you click through the exhaustive list, pop ups and all only to discover that you have seen 18 of them? I do. Now don’t get me wrong, I am always, always grateful for discovery. I have added quite a few books, records and films to my household I would have never heard of if it were not for these types of articles. I just do not like the assumption that I am completely clueless, so I am going to write about poets that I have never heard of and share them with you. And if it is someone you have heard of, you will either click elsewhere or keep reading just in case there is that one tiny factoid unknown to you. Most are poets I have come across by way of old anthologies (I have quite a few) and a few are just from me searching on my own terms via Google and research. If I continue this series it will be entitled Another Poet I’ve Never Heard Of!
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Poetry by Angelo Colavita
Founding Editor of Empty Set Press, Angelo Colavita lives and writes in Philadelphia, where he hosts Oxford Coma, a nihilist poetry reading series. His work has appeared in Occulum, Be About It, Mad House, Apiary Magazine, and elsewhere on line and in print. His first chapbook, HEROINes, was published in March 2017. Follow him on Twitter @angeloremipsum and @emptysetpress
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Poetry by Samantha Lamph/Len
Samantha Lamph/Len is a writer and cat masseuse in Los Angeles. You can read more of her work in OCCULUM, Queen Mob's Tea House, Connotation Press, and Inlandia. She is also the creator & co-curator of Memoir Mixtapes. You can follow her on Instagram & Twitter @quandoparamucho.
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Poetry by Charlotte Seley
Originally from the Hudson Valley region of New York, Charlotte Seley is a poet and writer living in Providence, RI. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, where she served as Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor of Redivider. Her first collection of poems, The World is My Rival, is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil Press.
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Poetry by Rachel Evelyn Sucher
Rachel Evelyn Sucher is a queer-identified Vermont writer, activist, performer, horsewoman, and intersectional feminist. Her poems have been shortlisted for the International Literary Award (Rita Dove Award in Poetry) and the Dan Veach Prize for Younger Poets, and longlisted for the Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize. Rachel is the founder & editor-in-chief of COUNTERCLOCK literary & art journal, an editor at Sooth Swarm Journal, a social media manager at Half Mystic publishing house & literary journal, and a founding member and editor at Mandatory Assembly literary journal. A mentee in the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program and the Glass Kite Anthology Summer Writing Studio, she has also attended the New England Young Writers' Conference at Bread Loaf and the Champlain College Young Writers' Conference. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tinderbox, Dream Pop Journal, and Rising Phoenix Review, as well as the anthology Destigmatized: Voices for Change from Madness Muse Press. Rachel is also a 2017-18 Trevor Project National Youth Ambassador. When she isn’t wrestling writer’s block or the patriarchy, Rachel can be found snuggling puppies, making music, and overthinking in her nerdy poet's notebook.
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via Vashtie
Five Poetry Forms to Nudge You out of Your Writing Lull
So while looking for a type of Morningsong that was NOT an Aubade I came across quite a few gems that I will hope inspire you to write different, or write anew.
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Katherina Jung
The Wild Hunt by Jennie Ziegler
BY JENNIE ZIEGLER
Voices call to my blood. It hums when I sleep, electric skin, bones cracking from wood smoke. Marked throat, painted nails. Remember, there, with the woods behind us and the city before. Liminal spaces, creatures, voices. We’re kept in glass, in tombs, in waiting rooms. They press clocks into our wombs, fold over skin and conversation. Make us chase rabbits that turn into FunDip dreams. But here we go, we’re sipping that potion, shrinking ourselves down to fit between rooms and breath, somewhere between floor and ceiling. Scrape our skin raw and clean and smooth, no longer scaled, part our legs away from each other, so we can stand, you say. Laughter like orange blossom honey, smooth and fragrant, stuck to our throats. Clock us in by moon cycle, seek our hearts to place into tinderboxes, gift us keys but deny us doors. Oh, darling, bloodstains do tell, after all. Saints save us, let us wander, barefoot, into forest so we can unbecome, the chilled earth sinking like fog into our bones. Ravens whip from our throats, offer stories to midwinter gods. Remember your feet, remember your teeth. You are untethered, boundless, endless. Hair spread like flame. Moonless or moonlit, our hands shine in the dark.
Jennie Ziegler completed her M.F.A. in Nonfiction Writing at the University of Arizona. She is currently an Instructor and Outreach Consultant at the University of North Florida where she teaches fairy tales, food writing, and adolescent literature.
Hughes Léglise-Bataille
Sometimes Time Cannot Mend All Wounds
Even though she was certain she had drunken too much the night before, she still slid into her car, waiting briefly before turning the key and pulling out of the driveway. She drove with such caution, at least fifteen kilometers below the speed limit and triple checking every turn, sign and light. No one else had her caution, the world was so impatient that it wouldn’t wait for her. She had been left behind.
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Aela Labbe
A Poetic Sequence by Douglas Luman
BY DOUGLAS LUMAN
Author's note: These poems take on the occult through means of alchemy, created out of a book of practical magic: Perkins, Henry, and Barrington Haswell. Parlour Magic. Philadelphia: H. Perkins, 1838.
The Magician: Sight & Sound – Imitative Haloes
Spring suddenly burns in
a rosemary, the ruddy
color of lit charcoal,
artificial light, or
things a person intends.
You are told moonstone. You
are told moonglow. A chip
from the edge of the Earth;
you picture it, the slip
of a boy’s pop-gun. Two
minutes of crystals of
whispers. O, such a small
quantity leaves wanting.
An ounce of crow. One dram
of you. To change places?
Simple: fill an appearance.
Look from the moon’s long view
a blueness. But from here
a dark brown knot of dirt,
body shaken of moss.
The Magician: Sleights & Subtleties - Curious Experiment with a Glass of Water
Pick a mirror, hollow
glass; a highly polished
dish filled with the right air,
quicksilver, water, &
a scruple of alum.
Convert scruples to grains
to drachms—the apartment
of the palm, hold it,
vitreous animal.
The candle’s spirit turns
violet, turns indigo.
Even shutting the eye
they burn themselves from rest.
When Sir Isaac Newton
found fire, it was dropping
threads in liquid. Incant
now, I become an ounce.
The point—to vibrate in
unintelligible
jargon of linen. A
beverage of a voice,
the phantom in a skin.
Of the skull—what a nest—
a song or crucible
made of smooth masonry.
We think of it crafted
of ivory, dull &
polished, or an engraved
color of pearl. What if it
was empty? Gently knock
to sound its thickness. Find it
filled with stuff of yourself.
A space filled with crumpled
gray metal? An extract
that melts like camphor & in
an hour, it hardens.
The Magician: Sight & Sound – To Make a Prism
Open box containing
darkness. Introduce a
commonly dismal light
made completely of heat,
the degrees of which lie
in holding objects above
you. Follow the moon with
care. At the same time hold
tight to the weather. Steep
the air in your mouth. Call
a name to the glass—the shade
cast is amusing & burns
like fire. Laugh to cool
it. Iron folds out of
a paper slip, writing
the varieties of
gems & marble—one of which,
the eye occasioned by
magnesium, nitre,
some compound of beauty
& time breaking like a thumb
from hands from arms—hollow
stalks of lightning. A wan
figure. Shutter the blinds.
The Magician: Sight & Sound – Theory of Whispering
Literation somehow
leaves you, though all the neck’s
other parts seem to be
working fine. But the tongue,
a lunar muscle, acts
according to phases—
mostly waxing the moss
of promises, echoes
of some other name spilling
the crumbs of you that are
left about. No matter
of volume, sound travels
farther in warm places,
but is no substitute
for a body. Loudness,
as such, mistaken for
carelessness. Dismantle
the parts of his minute
& find a mouth or a proof
the surrounding space is
hollow & still.
Douglas Luman’s poetry has been published in magazines such as Salamander, Ocean State Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and Prelude. He is Production Director of Container, Art Director at Stillhouse Press, Head Researcher at appliedpoetics.org, a book designer, and digital human. His first book, The F Text, will be released in fall 2017 on Inside the Castle.
Poetry by Sarah Rebecca Warren
We are sixteen and arrogant. We follow curiosity
in the cab of your F-150, skip what we told
our mothers about church. Our prayers are songs
pumped loud through speakers. We sing hymns
of Kurt Cobain, flush against our wind-flung hair.
Natalia Drepina
Poetry by Ashley Miranda
witch blood, witch body, witch woman
handing out sweet milk and revenge
Image (Anais Nin) public domain; edited by Lisa Marie Basile
This Is What Our Readers Loved in 2017
BY LISA MARIE BASILE
We really didn't want to do a "best of" list because it can feel reductive (and we love all of our content and all of our writers)—but we did want to do a roundup of some of the reads favorited and widely-read by our readers, along with those pieces that deeply resonated with our team of editors. There is no way that this list is comprehensive or representative of the many incredible pieces we've published over the past year, though!
Interview with Author, Mortician and Death Positive Activist Caitlin Doughty by Trista Edwards
On My Unapologetic Mother by Vanessa Wang
What Being a Caulbearer Means to Me by Kailey Tedesco
Poetry by Leslie Contreras Schwartz
Mexican White Magic by Lucina Stone
Read Tarot With a Simple Deck of Playing Cards by Tiffany Chaney
10 Movies About Witches That Will Terrify and Enchant You by Leza Cantoral
Intersectional Feminism: 5 Things White Women Need to Remember by Kyli Rodriguez-Cayro
Book of Shadows by Tina V. Cabrera
The Only Living Girl in a Rock Opera by Hannah Cohen
Poetry by Dominique Christina
"The blood of black women is unremarkable.
Window dressing, you might call it
For the horror show of lugging around
A body built for a funeral."
A Song for My Voice: A Non-binary Survivor Speaks Up by Chloé Rossetti
A Collaborative Poem by Alexis Bates & Logan February
A Water Ritual For Grief & Trauma by Lisa Marie Basile
How to be A Duplicitous Woman by Lydia A. Cyrus
Three Small Occult Presses You Should Check Out This Month by Trista Edwards
A Spell for Body Love & Appreciation by Laura Delarato
"It’s 2017 and 91% of women in the US are unhappy with their bodies. There is something wrong with this number. Unfortunately it doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like; we all walk around with an invisible cloud of insecurities based on our distorted view of how we are suppose to look — measured by impossible beauty standards. Advertisements, film and tv representations of women, media criticisms of bodies: they don’t care if you can wake up every morning as a person who love themselves. They want you to buy their product."
Poetry by Stephanie Valente
9 Reasons Why the Canadian Horror Film "Curtains" Deserves a Remake by Tiffany Sciacca
7 Doable, Inexpensive & Meaningful Ways to Practice Witchcraft by Archita Mittra
Riccardo Melosu
Where My Latina Protags At? by Amanda Toledo
Fibromyalgia: Three Instances of by Jay Vera Summer
Darrryl by Justin Allard
Valerie Hsiung In Conversation With Vi Khi Nao by Vi Khi Nao
"I am also drawn to the idea of poetry as thrown dice, poetry as a ritual effort (ie: climbing up a mile-long set of <stone> stairs only to encounter the Oracle--you know what I’m talking about, disembodied as It may be, who then takes over your body and voice and dictates to you yet ever so tenderly what to do. In this case, what poem to write)."
Every Single Reason You Should Brag Your Pushcart Nominations by Lisa Marie Basile
Theresa Duncan, My East Village Ghost by Patricia Grisafi
How to Create an Altar for Self-Care & Intention Setting by Lisa Marie Basile
What Self-Care & Beauty Rituals Mean for Trans & Non-Binary People by Joanna Valente
"I've really struggled with beauty stuff being genderqueer/transmasculine, but lately I got my eyebrows done and started wearing bright red lipstick as a way of claiming beauty rituals for myself."
Poetry by Diannely Antigua
Is It OK To Make Fun Of Instagram Poets? by Lisa Marie Basile
Whisper, with Blonde Hair: Mi Vida Loca's New Gangster Queen by Monique Quintana
Poetry by Kristin Chang
The Car Goes On: On My Father's Death by Fraylie Nord
Poetry by Tim Lynch
The Labyrinth of Anti-Aging and Shame by Claire Rudy Foster
The Sensuous, Feminine Power of Drinking Beer by Trista Edwards
The Barbaric Silencing of Transgender & Non-Binary People by Joanna Valente
When Someone Dies By Suicide, Headlines Sensationalize Their Death by Lior Zaltzman
How to Sew A Poppet by Mary Lanham
Poetry by Cooper Wilhelm
"I’d like to ask her if it’s narcissistic to fall
in love with the taste of your own blood,
needing the damage enough to craft a window into yourself
from a cut on the roof of your mouth."
On the Ritual of Downtime and the Oppressive Trappings of Writer's Block Literary Citizenship by Lisa Marie Basile
An Open Letter to My Nipples by Chloé Rossetti
How to Avoid a bad Tarot Reading by Asa West
Lisa Marie Basile is the founding editor-in-chief and creative director of Luna Luna Magazine and community. She is the author of a few books of poetry, including a full-length collection, Apocryphal. Her book Nympholepsy (co-authored with Alyssa Morhardt-Goldstein), will be published by Inside the Castle in November 2018 and was a finalist in the 2017 Tarpaulin Sky Book Awards. She is also working on her first novella, to be released by Clash Books in 2019. Her first nonfiction book, Light Magic for Dark Times, will be published by Quarto Books in 2018. Lisa Marie's work has appeared in the New York Times, Narratively, Refinery 29, Greatist, Bust, Bustle, Marie Claire, The Establishment, Hello Giggles, Ravishly, Marie Claire, and more. You can catch her on the podcasts Into the Dark, Essie's Hour of Love, and Get Lit With Leza. She recently received two Pushcart nominations—for her work in Narratively and The Account. She received an MFA from The New School in NYC.