Amy Saul-Zerby is the author of Deep Camouflage (Civil Coping Mechanisms) and Paper Flowers Imaginary Birds (Be About It Press). Her poems have appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Spy Kids Review, Mad House, and Bedfellows Magazine. She is editor in chief of Voicemail Poems and a contributing writer at Fields Magazine and The Rumpus.
Read More
3 Poems by Cathleen Allyn Conway
BY CATHLEEN ALLYN CONWAY
Author's note: These are all found works, some using modified versions of traditional poetic forms. Their sources are Toby Whithouse's Doctor Who episode VAMPIRES OF VENICE, Stephen King's SALEM'S LOT, the stage adaptation of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, miscellaneous Sylvia Plath poems, and DRACULA by Bram Stoker. They are part of a longer work, Bloofer, a collection of found poems on the female vampire that forms the creative component of my PhD thesis.
THE VAMPIRE WHO SAID HE WAS YOU
He bites. A mouth just bloodied.
The blood flood is the flood of love.
A love gift utterly unasked for.
Death opened, like a black tree, blackly.
The box is only temporary, the
black bunched in there like a bat.
I bleed or sleep all the blackening morning,
separated from my house by headstones and corpses.
I am red meat, red hair; marble facades.
The corpse at the gate petrifies as I rise.
THE VILLAGERS NEVER LIKED YOU
I wake to a mausoleum.
This is the room I could never breathe in.
Black bat airs wrap me, raggy shawls,
blue garments unloosing small owls.
Eternity bores me; my soul dies for it.
I eat men like air. I never wanted it.
LUCY’S SWEET PURITY
I could see in the white flesh a dint
then Arthur struck with all his might:
contorting and cut, The Thing writhed,
a blood-curdling screech from red lips.
Arthur never faltered, deeper driving
His stake into the body, twisting and wild,
crimson foam smearing white,
blood from the pierce welling, welling.
The teeth ceased to champ,
the writhing became less.
On his forehead sprang
drops of sweat, broken gasps
came his breath, and a light
broke his face, glad and strange.
Cathleen Allyn Conway is a PhD creative writing research student at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is the co-editor of Plath Profiles, the only academic journal dedicated to the work of Sylvia Plath, and the founder and co-editor of women’s protest poetry magazine Thank You For Swallowing. She has previously worked as a journalist on UK trades and national newspapers, and as an English teacher in inner London. Her poetry has appeared in print, online and in anthologies. Her pamphlet Static Cling was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2012. Originally from Chicago, she lives in south London with her partner and son. You may follow her intermittent feminist ranting and retweets at @mllekitty.
Daily Mail
On Being Pregnant, Peaches Geldolf and Mental Illness
In a strange way, she has become my pregnancy muse.
Read More
This Music Playlist Will Make You Feel A Million Times Calmer
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.
Read More
via Shutterstock
On the Friend of My Life
Part of growing up with someone is learning how to grow apart too. When we started high school we drifted a little. Our senior year we had anatomy together and became friends again. We spent every morning together in the commons area eating breakfast. Our friend, Emily, dubbed us "The Breakfast Club" and decided which characters from the film we were. The night we graduated we all rode together to the local movie theater still in our graduation regalia and we watched back to back movies before going home. My own family had pizza and gathered together, but we went out together instead. I still think about it a lot: the way friends become family.
Read More
Excerpts from "Dress Code Aquarium" by Benjamin Niespodziany
The doctor wasn't supposed to
but she prescribed herself
to try new things.
"Something new once a week,
repeat, repeat."
via ArtSpecialDay
A Poet I’ve Never Heard Of: Alda Merini
Alda Merini put a lot of poetry and other writings into this world, but it is hard to find a lot of it translated! Below you will find both poems and aphorisms, or as Merini called them "spells of the night."
Read More
Via Film Equals
Strange Beauty: The Female Body Spectacle in Jodorowsky's, Santa Sangre
Her body is an “exotic” thing that cannot rest within the boundaries of appropriateness.
Read More
3 Poetry Books You Will Love Reading
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.
Read More
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
Terese Nielsen
Fact and Fiction Are Different Truths
When we hand over the responsibility of discerning the true from the false, we lose our ability to identify it ourselves.
Read More
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.
Read More
Via Lizz V
Instagram Accounts By Goth Female and Non-binary POC
Women and Non-binary people of color have often been overlooked by film, books, and music, yet their communities are strong. Here are a few fun Instagram accounts that celebrate the darker things in life.
Read More
Cookie Mueller, by Don Herron
Invoking Your Idols: Cookie Mueller
Other than the cliché "fake it till you make it" mentality, it’s hard to find a how-to guide for confidence, especially within a consumerist society that profits off a lack of it. On New Years, trapped in my grandparents’ Floridian subdivision, I found an old college-lined notebook and began to write a list of the people I wanted to invoke for confidence. It included the obvious, like Bowie and Kim Gordon, but without thinking twice the first name I wrote was Cookie Mueller.
Read More
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!
Read More