Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile

Episode 16: Consumption

Today we discussed fiction for the second time: Hunger by Kerry Donoghue. You can read the story before or after you listen to the podcast, but: SPOILER ALERT; you will hear us discuss all of the major plot points!

 

Hello and welcome to Episode 16 of our podcast! Today we discussed fiction for the second time: Hunger by Kerry Donoghue. You can read the story before or after you listen to the podcast, but: SPOILER ALERT; you will hear us discuss all of the major plot points!

Kerry Donoghue once launched a falcon from her arm so it could snatch a pigeon head in mid-air, which seems really random to mention to you right now, but when you’ll read the story you’ll see: she’s obsessed with consumption: what we put in our mouths, all the different infidelities we allow. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, her little girl, and a distressing capacity for cheese (See? It’s all connected.)  We know you’ll want more of Donoghue, so we’ve made it easy–The Pinch, The Louisville Review, The South Carolina Review, Potomac Review, and Harpur Palate.

We loved the way that Donoghue was able to paint such misguided, inept characters without judgement. From Buick’s competitive eating to Glory’s obsession with childbearing, the story held enough elements of reality for us to believe in and truly care about these characters. Sex, food, beauty salons, brothers, baby shampoo, and tricep dips–the visceral details here drive this piece. If you read it, you will immediately want to share it–just like us!

We then decided to fully rip off one our favorite podcast’s, (Pop Culture Happy Hour) and Kathy asked each of us what’s been making us happy. Tim mentioned that he’s re-reading George Orwell, while Caitlin brought up the Spider Man/Deadpool Marvel comic, and so her happiness dealt with anticipation. (Once again making us love the diversity of our staff’s minds.)

Jason is loving former PBQ author Kristen Dombek’s book, “The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism,” and admits that his currect gulity pleasure is the Netflix series, Stranger Things. (“Reason to watch=Winona Ryder.)

Kathleen ended the podcast with a call for memoirs written by people under 30 who are not celebrities and have not suffered huge life tragedies. Do any exist? Let us know on our event page!

As always, let us know what you think—of the story, our conversation, or the podcast in general, on our Facebook page! Don’t forget to rate and subscribe if you like what we’re doing!

Read on!

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Tim Fitts

Jason Schneiderman

Caitlin McLaughlin

 

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

 

Episode 15: The Schneiderman Tingle Episode

On today’s podcast we discussed four poems, all part of a “polyvalent” poetry series by Jayson Iwen. These poems were unique because they could be read two different ways, horizontally and vertically.

 

Hi and welcome to Episode 15 of the PBQ’s Slush pile.  On today’s podcast we discussed four poems, all part of a “polyvalent” poetry series by Jayson Iwen. These poems were unique because they could be read two different ways, horizontally and vertically.

Jayson lived in Beirut, Lebanon for four years where he served as the “Hare-Raiser” for the Beirut Tarboush Hash House Harriers (yeah, we had to look it up, too). He wrote his first two books on a Smith Corona WS250 when he was in high school, and dropped out of pre-med to become a writer. In college he played Petruchio in an S&M, black box version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (eat your heart out E.L. James).

You can check out Jayson’s website here; you’ll want to, after your hear and read these poems.

We started with  “.1.4.1,” which was the first in the series of “polyvalent” poetry. We started by reading the poem vertically and then moved on to horizontally. We were impressed with the way in which the meaning of the poem became clearer when we read the poem horizontally, like magic. Tim was able to connect with the feelings associated with new parenthood, while Jason questioned our ability to trust such an unconventional voice.

We decided to move on and read all of the poems before we voted, so it was on to “.1.4.2.” We found again that the horizontal version was more accessible to us, and admired the strong images the author’s language conjured.

Next was “.1.4.3,” and we really dug the “creepy” tone that progressed through the first two poems to this one, and when we moved on to “.1.4.4,” we looked forward to seeing where the story that was woven through the first three poems went.

You’ll have to listen to see which poems we ultimately accepted from the series!

Don’t forget to rate and subscribe on our iTunes, then let us know what you thought on our podcast Facebook page.

Read on!

 

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Tim Fitts

Jason Schneiderman

Caitlin McLaughlin

 

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

 

PBQ Box Score: 3:4

--------------------------- 

 

 

.1.4.1

You have descended from animals                                  Who descended from angels

Who alone have descended                                              From the darkness of their own choice

Where nothing holds its shape for long                          Hold out your hand

And feel for rain                                                                  The pain of sex

 

My great grandmother taught my grand                        With a knife

My grandfather taught my uncle                                      Respect with a pitch fork

No one arrives at insanity alone                                       It’s a social conclusion

Like finding the baby                                                          Waiving goodbye from the top of the stairs

.1.4.2

In the night you lean                                                           Over the baby, to make sure it’s okay

The baby wakes terrified                                                    A dark animal shape looms

From the fear within you                                                   Modeling itself in the child

The only way out of possession                                        To dispossess your thought, you remember

 

You’ve been so baked you couldn’t stand                       No one ever mentioned the crystal THC

With which they’d laced the pot                                      Those nights were long affairs

Watching the submarine calm of the ceiling                In the extra bedroom

Watching fire light flicker on the tent flap                    Listening to everything speak your name

 

.1.4.3

You might dream of a poolside party                               Where you bump into an old classmate

You thought had died years before                                   With whom you’d never spoken

Our military was so strong                                                  It would break its own neck

She said                                                                                  I’ll be in the last room on the left    

   

And left                                                                                  You might wake to find the baby

Sitting up in the dark                                                          Staring at a shape in the moonlight

Why did you never come to me                                         It says

You might have found me                                                  The high & holy center of the Earth                                                      

                                         

.1.4.4

I was my mother’s will                                                         Sent out into the world

For bread or cheese or meat                                               A vapor trail unforming

Against the morning light                                                  The sound of a struck bell

Slipping into the background                                           To live beyond scrutiny

 

Your glorious brain, my little humon                              Is a globule of fat

Dangling from the nerve tree                                          We call universe

That’s right, son                                                                   Daddy’s drinking again

His life is a dead end                                                           That tastes like mother’s cup

Episode 14: Martinis are Just Like Testicles

Welcome to Episode 14! We’re having so much nerdy fun with these and hope you are, too. This week we discussed one poem a piece by Hilary Jacqmin, Keith Woodruff, and Kierstin Bridger, each submitted for different issues. Another Slush Pile first! 

Welcome to Episode 14 of our podcast! We’re having so much nerdy fun with these and hope you are, too. This week we discussed one poem a piece by Hilary Jacqmin, Keith Woodruff, and Kierstin Bridger, each submitted for different issues. Another Slush Pile first!

First up was “Private Lives”  by Hilary Jacqmin.

Hilary S. Jacqmin earned her MA from Johns Hopkins University and her MFA from the University of Florida. Inspired by Baltimore performance art group Fluid Movement's elaborate water ballets, Hilary aspires to learn synchronized swimming. This summer, Hilary has kept busy by going to entirely too many concerts (including Beyoncé, Weezer, and Jason Isbell), baking a sour cherry pie in honor of her Door County, Wisconsin family heritage, and seeing Hamilton on Broadway

Her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2011, edited by D.A. Powell, The Awl, Pank, Subtropics, Passages North, AGNI, and elsewhere. You can also read her article on "killing your darlings" here!

This poem struck a chord with everyone at the table. It’s hard to write a poem about boredom that isn’t, well, boring! We were right there with her in her grandparent’s house, trying to pass the time.

 

Next we discussed Keith Woodruff’s  “Bride of Frankenstein Blues,” submitted for our Monsters issue.

Keith “from the Black Lagoon” Woodruff has a Masters in creative writing from Purdue University, and lives with his wife Michelle and son Whitman in Akron, Ohio. His work recently appeared in The Journal, Quarter After Eight, American Literary Review, and is forthcoming in Wigleaf. His haiku have appeared in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Mayfly, Acorn, A Hundred Gourds, and in Big Sky: the Red Moon anthology.

We all sympathized with poor Frankenstein trying to find love in the modern dating world, but this poem also sparked discussion of “pick-up” artists. We wondered what Frankenstein’s Bride would say about his pick-up methods? Regardless, the poem was accessible to all of us.

 

Last, we read “To the Girl From the Reformatory Town” by Kierstin Bridger, submitted for our Locals issue!

Kierstin is a Colorado writer and winner of the Mark Fischer Prize, the ACC Studio award and was shortlisted for the 2015 Manchester Poetry Prize in the UK. Western Colorado is full of incredible writers, and for the past several years they’ve been performing Literary Burlesque! This year they pulled a switch-a-roo on Oh Brother Where Art Thou. They changed it to Oh Sister and combined themes with The Odyssey. Kirsten says, “It was a smash, and so very collaborative.”

You can listen to Kierstin read from her book, Demimonde,  here.

We were intrigued by the imagery in Kierstin’s poem. Although none of us grew up in a “reformatory town” the emotional language put us in the mindset of the “girl.”

Over the years, PBQ often accepts work, contacts the authors, and then gets told there’s been a revision. Almost always, the original is better than the revision. We discussed why this might happen, and how difficult it is to know when your own work is “finished.” Let us know what you think—do you continue to work with your work once you’ve sent it out?

You can find PBQ on Twitter @paintedbrideq or on our Facebook.

Don’t forget to visit our Facebook event page to discuss this episode, and subscribe to our iTunes account!

Read on!

 

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Tim Fitts

Jason Schneiderman

Caitlin McLaughlin

 

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

 

PBQ Box Score: 3:0

-------------------------

 

Hilary Jacqmin

Private Lives

 

They have retired

to lost pines

and BurgerTime.

When our tan Malibu

grinds up

the switchback

to their mock-

Tahitian Village

in the Texas hills,

the grandparents

can barely stand to touch us.

But “Little David,”

they cry out, until

my father blushes.

Kindness is cold

champagne coupes

at 5 and 6 o’clock,

then Jeopardy. A walk

through bull pine,

clearing brush.

Whatever can be done

with us? My sister’s

fist is purpling

with cactus spines;

my mother’s stomach

bites; this week, I will not bathe.

The grandparents shy

from our commotion. Secretly, we flip

through The Handmaid’s Tale.

Our shared air mattress

crackles like a seed. We’re trapped:

now that we’ve come,

they won’t let us go out

past the dry creek bed.

Next year, they’ll never

even leave the house.

Why is their clubhouse

impermeable,

a miniature Pentagon?

And why can’t we order malteds

at Lock Drug? Mother says

“We can’t ask why.”

Inside, we play

endless Rummikub.

Uno, uno.

“There ought

to be a religion

for people who don’t know

what to believe,”

grandmother frets,

her bad eye winking

like a cut-up moon.

Outside, a loop

of fire ants

works a burnt-out

stump, persistent

as pump jacks,

and night’s an oil field.

We are too young

to know what granddad did

with catalytic crackers

at Shell, too dumb

to talk duplicate bridge hands,

Gravity’s Rainbow,

or split stock,

but we think hard

about the hardwood

in the Lockhart

smokehouse

and how granddad’s

bread machine vibrates

like a Gravitron.

Sometimes, they notice me.

They say, “What are you writing?

Are you writing about us?”

They say, “That makes me

so nervous.” I want to tell them

there is so little

that I can write. Almost nothing.

Perfume like propane. A tickless clock.

How quickly they both turn away.

 

Keith Woodruff

Bride of Frankenstein Blues

 

Consider the moon, my friend,

how its absence conjures this unromantic air.

Here in the bar, smoke unwinds  like bolts

of slow lightning across the gauzy light;

everywhere you look

mouths, small dark graves, chew on drinks.

Now the music gropes its way

through the crowd looking for phone numbers, drags

itself onto the wooden dance floor.

This is no night for finding brides.

Still, you try, touch her wrist during “talk”

& spring the classic recoil. Her black eyes, twitch like nerves,

the head cocks bird-like,

spindly arms jerk back from your touch & clasp up

her breast sacs as the goose hiss splits

her blue lips.

These damn castles are cold.

Some nights, alone again, arms outstretched on the stairs,

you think you might prefer

the murderous torches. Anything to light you up.

 

Kierstin Bridger

To the Girl From the Reformatory Town

You wrestled against the clutches of brothers and cousins, etched lessons

in your muscle, broke tendencies, rerouted synapse with unwritten

chapters entitled, Risk, Pain, and Tolerance. Though pale and tender as

your own, you clawed your way into their flesh; red scratches and waning

moons of bruise. You carved a language of ferocious prey and warning but

more startling than the DNA that curled from under your nails was the

power which made you surge, the breathless current of survival that ran

like a lightning rod through the center of your axis as you spun in and out

of years knowing blood tracks would either catch up with you or become

abandoned to faster byways and untranslatable modes. So you walk, never

looking over your shoulder, one step in front of the other, past the

fermenting bumper crop yard-fruit. Never mind the dirty shoelace untied,

the frayed, grey string dangling over the trestle bridge track. You need this

grip of heat, the hot rail under your feet. It's like the static warmth the

addicts wear like skullcaps, the chokecherry buzz after needle pierce and

plunge. Keep your hair blown back, baby, and charged with the horizon

line. Ignore the periphery of prison men in orange. Their 40 ounce cans

and spent shells are their business not yours.  Disregard the jackrabbit

carcass and its fur which still clings but will sail away soon like dandelion

seeds. Remember it's not a charm and their sentence is not your sentence;

you can't do that kind of time. Keep going, never say, it'll all blow over

someday because lies like that scatter, fade, sink back to soil. They'll

transform into fragments so sparse, so swallow-drunk, the next generation

will skip the deciphering stone, misspell the story of you, digitize and

archive it on some pixelated and odorless, dot com.

 

Episode 13: Creature Triple Feature

Today we discussed three poems by Dana Sonnenschein, all submitted for our Monsters issue! Dana is a professor of English at Southern Connecticut State University. Her manuscript, Bear Country was selected as winner of the 2008 Stevens Poetry Book Manuscript Competition. 

On this episode we discussed three poems by Dana Sonnenschein, all submitted for our Monsters issue!

Dana is a professor of English at Southern Connecticut State University. Her manuscript, Bear Country was selected as winner of the 2008 Stevens Poetry Book Manuscript Competition. Her writing can also be found in Pith Journal and Poemeleon.

Dana love wolves, ravens, black cats, Universal horror films, folklore from around the world, and the kind of cookbooks that feature ingredients like mummy and shavings from human skulls.  And yes, she does wear white glove when she handles manuscripts!

You can ‘like’ Dana’s author page on Facebook.

These poems were part of a series that put a twist on old horror stories. First up was “The Secret” and we were seriously scared. From eyeballs in hands to some Shining-esque twins, we knew that we were in for some creepy stuff in the best way.

We moved on to discuss “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” a prose poem. This poem particularly resonated with editor Tim Fitts, causing him to recall a neighbor he had with serious boundary issues.

Last, Sonnenschein took us to Egypt with her poem “The Return of the Mummy.” Somehow, this poem related the mummies we all fear with another fear we all have--in relationships.

Although the authors we’ve asked to participate in our podcast have been overwhelmingly supportive, we have had a few authors who declined to be a part of Slush Pile.

We discussed some of the emotional responses we received so far, and some of the reasons our podcast might scare authors, even when we’re not talking about the Creature from the Black Lagoon!

You can find PBQ on Twitter @paintedbrideq or on our Facebook.

Don’t forget to visit our Facebook event page to discuss this episode, and subscribe to our iTunes account!

Read on!

 

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Tim Fitts

Jason Schneiderman

Caitlin McLaughlin

 

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

 

PBQ Box Score: 1:2

-----------------------

 

The Secret

Two boys of nine or ten in yellow slickers.  The first time I saw them, one stood high on the bank, watching the water, hands in his pockets; the other ran down the hill, holding his eyes out in his palms.  Drops ringing.  Grass shining wet with rain, rock dark like a rook.  A broken oar split the surface of the river.  The next night they came down from their stone keep and sang sweetly, holding hands, We are the eyes from the Eye Tower.  Then the river flowed under and the road gave in one sweeping curve.  I had to know.  So I took a whirlpool down, cool and smooth as metal.  Came up spiraling, my mouth full of blood.  I spit on the causeway, put my fingers where my teeth had been, and told no one what I’d seen.  But you know the river I mean.

Creature from the Black Lagoon

My neighbor leads a life of fiction and once in a while invites me in—to make believe she's got a spotless apartment, a couple kids, religion.  It's hard to keep up with the plot.  The radiator hisses like a cast-iron snake.  Or the kitchen faucet drips, and a roach slips out from under a plate.  She changes her age like her clothes, every few days.  Sometimes she stares where water scales the wall and says she'll give up booze.  One night the building’s old pipes ring and then my phone—I heard you typing.  I'm writing a novel, too, she says, about some people I know.  I sigh and lean on the wall we share.  Soon she’s breathing into my ear, So you think it's your honey, forgot his keys, no, drops the keys, he knocks and calls, louder, because you were in the shower, yeah, and you let him in, but   he's   not   your   honey.  He’s a man in flippers and a black rubber suit.  Universal Studios, 1954.I roll my eyes.  But then I think of her, hunched over, listening behind her door, as keys jangle onto hardwood, as this thing between a man and beast slithers in.  I say, Sorry, I left the water running. You'll have to stop by tomorrow and tell me how it ends.  When I hear her slippers in the hall, I shiver and pretend there's no one home.

 

The Return of the Mummy

At midnight, it's Kharis, clutching his heart

and game leg trailing:  he needs a good start,

 

but he won't stand still for his priestess's goods

being touched.  Her ghost returns to girlhood

 

or a handful of dust, but he remains, cursed,

rag-wrapped, limping through reels without words

 

*

 

Once we swore, Cross my heart and hope to die,

and stared into glass cases where mummies lie,

 

holding hands, our monstrous fascination

taking in needles, death, and devotion,

 

a toe dark as a raisin, the Rosetta Stone,

eternal pyramids, copulating oxen.

 

*

 

When we unlocked dead tongues and tombs,

it was because we knew the future loomed

 

beyond chill doors.  We held onto love like a balm.

We didn't want to be left alone after all

 

and couldn't quite believe in sky-blue heaven

or living on without our flesh and bones.

Episode 12: Who Killed the Cat?

Hello and welcome to Episode #12! For the first time on our podcast, we are discussing fiction! Today, we will talk about a short story, “Prufrock” by Terry Dubow. We were nervous about discussing this longer format, but super excited to try it out. 

Hello and welcome to Episode #12 of PBQ’s Slush Pile! For the first time on our podcast, we are discussing fiction! Today, we will talk about a short story, “Prufrock” by Terry Dubow. We were nervous about discussing this longer format, but super excited to try it out.

]

Dubow has been writing fiction for twenty years or so—it’s his secret identity without exciting parts. No super powers. No spy stories. No second family in Idaho.

In addition to writing 250 words a day, he works at an independent school in Cleveland and does his best to help his two daughters and his one lovely wife stay happy, healthy and fed. A story collection was a finalist for the Autumn House Fiction Prize in 2011. Currently, he’s working on his third novel. We want more, and after reading this story, we have a feeling you will, too. Read another story, “Wyoming” in Witness.

We advised our listeners to go read Prufrock first, but of course, we can’t know that they did--it’s all an experiment, right? We dove right in: raccoons and a cat and teenagers and mother-in-laws, oh my!!!

This story packs so much into thirteen pages; we laughed at moments, and while we may not have cried, we winced at all the right parts. This story made us think about fatherhood, T.S. Eliot, incapacitation, indecision, and whether we should be paid by the hour. Once again, Tim schooled us on the real habits of the wildlife of North America, and we could have discussed the story for another hour.

We had some dissension about how the piece ends and even more about what happened to Prufrock; please read, listen to this show, and cast your vote!

Marion suggested that we might provide a synopsis of the story at the beginning of episodes that discuss fiction, which sparked a discussion of recap podcasts and the ways we consume longform media. With such an overwhelming amount of media coming at us in so many ways---how do you consume? You can let us know on our Facebook event page and our twitter @PaintedBrideQ. Don't forget to subscribe and rate us on our iTunes  page!

As always, thank you for listening, and read on!

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Tim Fitts

Denise Guerin

Alexa Josaphouitch

Caitlin McLaughlin

 

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

 

PBQ Box Score: 1:1

 

Episode 11: The One with Heart, Brain, and Balls

In this podcast, we discuss three of Laura McCullough’s poems. The box score above is the spoiler alert: though today’s podcast crew spanned from the east coast to Iowa, included an undergrad and people who’ve done this work of editing for more than two decades, we were unanimously enamored of all three poems.

 

Welcome to Episode 11 of PBQ’s Slush Pile! In this podcast, we discuss three of Laura McCullough’s poems. The box score above is the spoiler alert: though today’s podcast crew spanned from the east coast to Iowa, included an undergrad and people who’ve done this work of editing for more than two decades, we were unanimously enamored of all three poems.

“Leafless” moved us and took us on a journey that also spanned decades. “Reclaimed Wood” told a tale we only want even more of, and “Maggot Therapy” simply left us thunderstruck. Read along and listen in—these poems are even more breathtaking aloud. .

She hates the word feminist and she’s no stranger to PBQ! Laura McCullough is an award-winning poet with six (!) poetry collections which include her most recent, Jersey Mercy, which narrates the lives of two people affected by Hurricane Sandy. Watch a brief interview after her first book or watch part of a reading from this past spring.Check out more of her work on her website.

The fact that we were going to discuss Laura’s work and we’ve known her for years, spurred us to invite Jennifer L. Knox to join us for this episode, as Jennifer fits a similar profile: she’s a poet whose work we admire and the added bonus—we can call her a friend.

We discussed the conundrum many of us find ourselves in—how difficult is it to be a poet who wants to send work to journals she loves and respects, but whose editors she knows well. No one wants to be published out of obligation or to put her friend in an awkward position. The flip side is just as bad: no editor takes pleasure out of rejecting anyone, let alone a friend. Our discussion focused on social ties and aesthetic taste—or, as Jennifer put it, discerning the “heart-to-brains-to-balls ratio” of any given magazine or press in order to find the right home for your work. Listen in as we explore our practices, then chime in on our FB event page and share your own.

Sign for our email list if you’re in the area, and even if you’re not!

Send us a self-addressed stamped envelope, and we’ll send you a PBQ Podcast sticker.

Follow us on Twitter @PaintedBrideQ and Instagram @paintedbridequarterly.  Don't forget to subscribe and rate us on our iTunes page!

Read on!

 

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Jason Schneiderman

Alexa Josaphouitch

Tim Fitts

Jennifer Knox

 

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

 

PBQ Box Score: 3:0

------------------------

 

Laura McCullough

Leafless

In the end, my mother’s shoulders, barely covered and quivering, 

were like birds.

                        Once, I made a dress 

 

for her, the fabric creamy white, the print a single brown tree 

spanning the width, with stark branches. 

 

It was 1974.    I was fourteen.                       Each night, 

I taught myself to sew,                                   feeding

the fabric through the foot,                 thinking 

how surprised she would be.              I remember 

 

seeing her in it, how we’d both loved the gesture, the achievement, 

and though it fit poorly, the print 

was enough for us.      She wore it once and never again, let me see 

her walk out the door in it.

            Maybe

love’s architecture is exposed when we try and fail at what we mean.

 

Outside the hospital, winter had flayed everything, the trees 

charcoaled against the sky, their shadows 

thumb smudges on the institutional snow hid lawn, and inside the air 

was redolent of shit, flowers, and chlorine.

 

The first time I changed her clothes, peeling back from her shoulders 

the blue flecked cotton gown, 

then sliding a clean pink one up her arms, we held each other 

in the oily light, spent.




Reclaimed Wood
I confess now I have begun to henna 

            my red hair gone dull 

in parts and penny bright in others. 

            And I always tried to subdue 

its wildness. But when the hull of our 

            marriage busted rock 

 

and began to leak, we both thought 

            it was a good idea to renovate 

the kitchen, together, by ourselves. 

            We closed up the hall 

to the back rooms to create more 

            privacy and took down a load- 

 

bearing wall in hoped of opening 

            the “flow.” My husband looked 

like Christ hauling the salvaged 

            timbers from a warehouse deep 

in the Piney woods one by one 

            up the front stoop, laying 

 

them in our suburban living room, 

            posing as a Brooklyn loft. 

We framed the new wide space: 

            one as header, two as column braces, 

then sat on the floor cross-legged 

            looking at our work in progress, 

 

the way the wood had aged, 

            the colors and striations, notches 

and hammered pegs. We felt our 

            fifties ranch had a new story now, 

something with weight, and we 

            held hands a little while before 

 

getting up, heading to the shower, 

            falling back into our routine.

 

 



Maggot Therapy 

 

Near death, sometimes the hands curve 

            into themselves like claws. 

I held my mother’s open, smoothing 

            the fingers, trimming the wild nails. 

 

Once, years before, my husband and I awoke 

            to a fawn caught in the family compost, 

a hole on its back end festering with worms, 

            and he pinched each one out 

 

swiping his little finger in the bowl 

            of the wound, then coating it 

with antibiotic salve. I loved him, 

            and how he saved this small thing. 

 

It’s a story I have told over and over.  

            Today though, I’m thinking of the medical uses 

for maggots: biodebridement and extracorporeal 

            digestion, their enzymes liquefying

 

dead tissue in wounds, and wonder, 

            do I feed off the dead 

who live inside me? When my mother was dying, 

            she had a vision of her non-corporeal 

 

father, brothers, sisters. Her last words, 

            Why have you left me alone? 

She never opened her eyes again, 

            her chest a drowning well. 

 

The bodily signs of death: 

            the skin mottling as blood flow slows; 

breathing, open mouthed; jaw, unhinged. 

            I won’t recount the signs of a dying marriage, 

 

but he left two days after her funeral. Physically, 

            he returned but told me he’d fallen 

in love with someone else, 

            that his love for me had passed. 

 

Above my mother’s body, orange mist 

            had exhaled and dispersed, a light bulb 

busted open, its luminescent gas escaping. 

            The word fluorescent is so similar 

 

to the word florescence, meaning flowering, 

            and somewhere between these two, 

there is a splendor I can barely stand. 

            Inflorescence refers to flowers clustering 

 

on one branch, each a separate floret,

            but if they are tightly clustered 

as in the dandelion seed head, they look incomplete 

            alone, though the whole is an illusion. 

 

The word for this—pseudanthium—means “false 

            flower.” Infrutescence, its fruiting stage, 

gives us grapes, ears of corn, stalks of wheat, 

            so many of the berries we love. 

 

This morning my hands ache 

            as though in the night I’d been trying 

to claw my way out of a hole

            I am down in, having lost the body 

 
I came into this world through, and my husband’s 

            as well. It’s almost as if my body 

had come to believe his was a part of its own, 

            a connection he would have to break or die. 

 

Medical experts say it takes two moltings 

            for maggots to do the job well, 

to feed enough to clean a wound. I do not feel 

            clean at all, though in our shower, 

 

my husband and I still huddle some days, 

            hunched into the spray. We call it watering.  

When we do, we scrub each other, grateful 

            for the living, dying flesh, but trying to get clean 

 

of each other. That fawn he saved way back 

            when we were new in love 

was released into the wild. Surely, it had a scar 

            identifying it, evidence of what flesh 

 

my husband was willing to enter 

            in order to keep something alive. Lately, 

he seems more clear-eyed, and it is as if a cicatrix husk 

            is cracking. Neither of us know who 

 

will emerge, but he seems luminescent, 

            a kind of light created by the excitation 

of the smallest elements, and not giving off warmth,

            but a cold glow that at least illuminates. 

 

Episode 10: Mangoes and Monsters

Welcome to Episode 10 of the PBQ’s Slush pile! Episode 10!!!! Can you believe it?  Thus far, we have released 10 episodes of our podcast.  We’d like to say thank you to our listeners, supporters, authors and editorial board!  

Welcome to Episode 10 of the PBQ’s Slush pile! Episode 10!!!! Can you believe it?  Thus far, we have released 10 episodes of our podcast.  We’d like to say thank you to our listeners, supporters, authors and editorial board!

First up is Jen Karetnick, who submitted the poem “The Physics of Falling Mangoes” for the Locals issue. When we asked her if we could discuss the poem she said, “I love the idea of the podcast editorial meeting, although it might prove to be a little nerve-wracking. But I'm sure my students, who get put through the workshop wringer all year long, will consider it more than just! So for their sake alone, I am delighted to say yes.”

Side note: It’s mango season, so we thought what better time to discuss this poem than now! Perplexed at first by a few “scientific” words, we grew to appreciate the intimacy of the vocabulary. Karetnick beautifully and authentically captured the atmosphere where mango trees grow; it’s as if she lives among the trees that she describes. In fact, Jen Karetnick lives in Miami Shores on the last acre of a historic plantation with her husband, two teenagers, three dogs, three cats and fourteen mango trees. This poem will make you want a mango, and to read more of her Jen Karetnick’s work: she released the poetry collection American Sentencing (Winter Goose Publications, May 2016). You can also see more   @ TheAtlantic.com, Guernica and her website.

 

The next poem was submitted to our Monsters issue, but you probably would have guessed that. When we first asked Tria Wood she said she was “excited and intrigued” also a “little nervous.”Keep up the bravery poets!

Immediately, we noticed the contrast between Godzilla’s graceful swan-like nature and his belly collapsing like a flat tire. The imagery in the third and fourth stanzas also had us close to speechless—which loyal listeners know takes a lot!  Every detail had us captivated (even Godzilla's cocktail)! A pleasant surprise for all, we quickly fell in love with this re-imagined Godzilla.

Make sure to watch Tria read “Godzilla Walks Into a Bar” herself!

Tria Wood’s poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Rattle, Literary Mama and other publications. Check out one of the public art projects in Houston that features her work.

 

In this podcast, we also clarify some things that have been happening in our podcasts. Even after our tenth episode, we can still be surprised by the outcomes. We’re sorry to learn that “Brazillian” was accepted elsewhere, but we are glad we still got to discuss it in Episode 8.

We also discuss a few questions that arose due to Episode 9: Do you consider the work posted here as published? Is there a difference between posting and publishing work? Listen and then chime in!

We’d love to know what you think; let us know on our FB page!

Sign for our email list if you’re in the area, and even if you’re not!

Send us a self-addressed stamped envelope, and we’ll send you a PBQ Podcast sticker.

Follow us on Twitter @PaintedBrideQ and Instagram @paintedbridequarterly.

Don't forget to subscribe and rate us on our iTunes page!

Read on!

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Jason Schneiderman

Miriam Haier

Tim Fitts

Isabella Fidanza

 

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

 

PBQ Box Score: 2=0

-------------------------

 
Jen Karetnick

The Physics of Falling Mangoes

If a Haden mango, full with sun,

and an ovoid Irwin, that ornament

of dawn, drop at the same time from

panicles equivalent in height,

will they accelerate identically

despite degrees of heft, of maturity,

 

the knowledge of their own ripeness?

Physics says yes, despite mass, even

if it’s a late-season Beverly, still green,

set upon too early by a squirrel

sitting on its stem, or an Indian mango

five pounds large, swaying all summer,

 

too big for the basket of the tool

I wield like lightning to strike

a singular fruit. The damage, then:

That should be equal, too. But all things

considered, there is no free fall. Air,

on a humid whim, can change

 

its resistance, and there is no formula

to adjust for the destructive means

of a mango during descent, helicoptering

sap through the day’s work of spiderwebs,

a season of boat-shaped leaves that bear

those burns until they themselves release,

 

and the twigs it breaks without discrimination,

whether they are ready to reach like hands

or be struck down to ground. And the ground,

which could be oolite or limestone, grass

or a brother mango, the driveway

or the chemical buffer of pool water,

 

my shoulder or arm or skull, willing to take

the aromatic knock. I know the parts

of the equation: limb, fruit, gravity. But not

the sum, upon landing. Wholly bruised? Flesh

protected by deflection? Or a split that, turned

every possible way, simply, dumbly smiles?

 

Tria Wood

Godzilla Walks into a Bar

Godzilla walks into a bar.

He’s much smaller

than you’d expect, really.

Scaly, dark, and haggard.

 

He’s been sleeping it off

for centuries, all that rage,

dust and ashes washed out

of the cracks in his suit

 

by the surging Pacific.

He’s graceful, surprisingly

so. Swanlike, even.

He will not look at you.

 

When he sits, his forearms pool

on the bar like crayons in the sun.

His belly is a flat tire

collapsing into his crotch

 

and whatever may be there

is hidden. He’ll order

something tropical, all rum

and fruit and fire,

 

incinerate the paper umbrella

with a tiny burst

that could have been a laugh.

He swivels his head

 

to watch it burn, left,

right, then pokes its charred

skeleton down into the tumbler

and gives it a feeble stir

 

with stubbed fingers. One dark claw

etches delicate architecture

into the condensation on the glass.

And when he turns, half-smiles

 

at you, at last you understand

love at first sight.

Episode 09: All Abu Dhabi, All the Time

All 3 of the poems on today’s episode were submitted by poet Brittney Scott.* The Abu Dhabi editors flagged Scott’s previous submissions—we wanted to publish them!—but we moved too slowly. Other publications nabbed them. So Scott sent us another batch of poems to consider and we discussed them on this special edition of “The Slush Pile,” the “all Abu Dhabi all the time edition,” featuring members of our Abu Dhabi editorial board.

 

All 3 of the poems on today’s episode were submitted by poet Brittney Scott.* The Abu Dhabi editors flagged Scott’s previous submissions—we wanted to publish them!—but we moved too slowly. Other publications nabbed them. So Scott sent us another batch of poems to consider and we discussed them on this special edition of “The Slush Pile,” the “all Abu Dhabi all the time edition,” featuring members of our Abu Dhabi editorial board.

These poems set out to both delight and appall. We were transfixed by a dismembered body mauled by dogs in “After the Hunt”; fascinated by the relationship between a daughter and her mother, an “unstable gardener,” in “Daughter of Wild Lettuce.”

Plus, Scott’s work stuck an inadvertent chord with our PBQ ex-pat crew. Listen as Scott’s poems help the Abu Dhabi editors make sense of being far flung, of being mildly Dazed & Confused.

Brittney Scott received an MFA from Hollins University in Virginia. A finalist in the 2013 Narrative 30 Below Contest, she is also the 2012 recipient of the Joy Harjo Prize for Poetry and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. She teaches creative writing to adults, Girl Scouts, and high-risk youth at Richmond’s Visual Arts Center.

Tell us what you think about Brittney Scott’s poems or anything else you’d like to share with us on our Facebook page event, Episode 9.

Sign up for our e-mail list if you are in the area and even if you, too, are far flung!

Send us a SASE and we’ll send you a podcast sticker!

Follow us on Twitter @PaintedBrideQ and Instagram @paintedbridequarterly.

Read on!

--MW

* You might notice that we posted only 2 of the 3 poems we discussed in this week’s episode in our show notes. This is the first time in 9 episodes we’ve had a poet ask us not to post anything we reject. You’ll have to listen to hear more!

Don't forget to subscribe and rate us on our iTunes page!

 

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

Marion Wrenn

Anna Pedersen

Ben Hackenberger

Samantha Neugebauer

 

Production Engineer:

Richard Lennon

 

PBQ Box Score: 2=3

------------------------- 

 

 

After the Hunt

Here’s the body the dogs robbed—

the limbs strewn around the field like prophecy.

She won’t make it,

they say. They say

the body found in her bed

was eaten right through to the floral mattress.

They had to shut her eyes

because she would not stop

blinking up at a bone marrow colored sky,

enjoying her party, the confetti

of her flayed body.

The dogs got sick on her form,

the remains of her last meal of steamed artichoke

grapes, mercy, and rejection.

Don’t they know

What’s good for one

will poison another? So

they say. They say

the dogs died in a circle

and she rose the next day

to bury them and bring flowers

to their graves.

 

 

Daughter of Wild Lettuce

My mother plants snow peas behind the garage.

She works around the sink hole that takes

dry leaves and garbage all summer.

 

In her memory, I am an almost abortion.

She plants marigolds with the tomatoes,

symbiotic bright suns

 

bursting between the rows.

Sometimes she knows, love

abounding, sometimes she overlooks

 

an entire season’s glut, and rot

carries us through winter.

In the cellar, plastic roses, night crawlers,

 

unfinished half-hearted projects,

the potatoes’ all seeing eyes and me

damp through my nightshirt.

 

No natural light filters in,

so I only know the earth’s eternal hour.

 

My mother, an unstable gardener,

tosses spare seeds into barren patches

of the backyard. We won’t know until spring.

 

Sometimes new buds shoot up

in the most unusual places,

but more often, they don’t.

 

 

 

Episode 08: The Brazilian

First up in this episode is Todd Pierce, with “If Only You Could Remember” which had us both as lost as the speaker (in a good way) and mesmerized. Todd is currently rereading War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad, by Christopher Logue and the chapbook Weird Vocation, by Art Zilleruelo. 

First up in this episode is Todd Pierce, with “If Only You Could Remember” which had us both as lost as the speaker (in a good way) and mesmerized. Todd is currently rereading War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad, by Christopher Logue and the chapbook Weird Vocation, by Art Zilleruelo.  He hopes that 2016 is the year that he finishes Don Quixote. Other facts:  he once flew a plane without crashing it, and once crashed a bicycle without riding it.

Todd Pierce has been published in Opium Magazine, Annapolis Underground, and Poet Lore. Stay tuned to see if he can add Painted Bride Quarterly to that growing list! Until then, we are honored to publish his first ever selfie!

You really have to scroll down or click here and check out the format of “Brazilian”—it’s one of the best executions of this difficult format that we’ve seen.

We had so much fun discussing this one, and were very happy we could finally educate Jason Schneiderman on SOMETHING. But to be even more mysterious, though (spoiler alert) we loved the poem, we found out some bad news after this podcast, which we will discuss in Episode 9!

  

 

Beau Boudreaux is New Orleans born and raised, and he uses his deep, southern roots for inspiration in his writing. Read more in Louisiana Literature and Southern Poetry Anthology, buy Running Red, Running Redder (Cherry Grove Collections, 2012) and see even more here.

 

Tell us what you think on our Facebook Event page for this episode!

Sign for our email list if you’re in the area, and even if you’re not!

If you haven’t yet, follow us on Twitter @PaintedBrideQ and Instagram @paintedbridequarterly.

Don't forget to subscribe and rate us on our iTunes page!

Send us a self-addressed stamped envelope, and we’ll send you a PBQ Podcast Slushpile sticker!

Read on!

KVM

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Jason Schneiderman

Tim Fitts

 

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

 

PBQ Box Score: 2=0

------------------------

 

Todd Pierce

If Only You Could Remember

 

When we came upon the muddy river

between the mountains I realize

now were not there, our dog crawling

out of the lungs of the mysterious beast he found

ahead of us, lost as much but more at home,

we learned to distinguish dream from wish, surrounded

by the forest’s tired breath chilling the sky, our noses

bunched up against the scent of something not quite death,

as I plucked a bloated tick off your nape

and popped it under the rolling clouds,

fine raindrops running red down the dog’s white sides.

 

Beau Boudreaux

Brazilian

 

She leans in                                                     towards my ear

 

overwhelmed, awash                                       shock of perfume

 

zoo stench, sniff                                            an old Easter lily

 

no, I really do admire                                      the cut of her

 

hemline, zebra skin                                         bangs on the brow

 

oh commando                                                  Ms. Orlando

 

information I don’t need                                 a cheat, she’s the only one

 

smoking, cocktailed                                       touching my arm.

 

 

 

Episode 07: Howl

Both of the poems we discussed in Episode 7 were submitted for our “Monsters” Issue and both poems, Coyote and Coyotes, were written by Paul Nelson. Tantalizing and intriguing, we were “seduced into loving this animal that will eat your face,” as Tim pointed out....

 

 

Both of the poems we discussed in Episode 7 were submitted for our “Monsters” Issue and both poems, Coyote and Coyotes, were written by Paul Nelson. Tantalizing and intriguing, we were “seduced into loving this animal that will eat your face,” as Tim pointed out. We now love coyotes and the unanimous “yes” votes prove we love these poems too!

Paul Nelson has authored eight books and was Ohio University’s Director of the Creative Writing program for many years. Nelson has bounced around the Northeast United States but currently resides in O’ahu, Hawaii where he is a member of the editorial board for Kaimina, a Hawaiian literary magazine.

After our unanimous votes for Paul Nelson’s poetry, Tim brought to the table a rising trend among new writers: using crowd funding websites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or even the artist-centered Patreon to raise funds for future projects, books in the making. How does crowd funding affect content? Should it be a viable form of self-publishing? What do editors feel about it? You’ll have to listen to Episode 7 to hear our answers to these questions and more, of course.

We at Painted Bride Quarterly are more than excited to endorse our own Jason Schneiderman’s latest book, Primary Source (Red Hen Press, 2016) which is now available for purchase!

Tell us what you think about Paul Nelson, the use of crowd funding for writers, or anything you’d like to share with us on our Facebook page event, Episode 7.

Sign up for our email list if you’re in the area and even if you’re not!

Send us a SASE and we’ll send you a podcast sticker!

Follow us on Twitter @PaintedBrideQ and Instagram

@paintedbridequarterly.

Don't forget to subscribe and rate us on our iTunes page!

Read on!

-KVM

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Jason Schneiderman

Miriam Haier

Tim Fitts

 

Production Engineer:

Ryan McDonald

 

PBQ Box Score: 2=2

---------------------------

 

Paul Nelson

Coyote

Last December, just beyond the windows

where we stand with wine, she clawed

for frozen apples in her new coat

beneath the tree the children climbed.

Just bred we guessed.

I wanted to caress her muzzle and ears,

lower my face to her eyes,

say something as if she were a dog,

something fatuous and loving.

You laughed because I said

I would take anything she offered,

teeth or tongue.

 

Coyotes

In a shaft of brass light

down through spruce, a big

chocolate male, done for the year,

pads across moss, dissolves in shadow.

 

The tattered blond bitch stands in bright

spring grass edging the woods.

Hanks drag from her molting flanks,

ears alert for mice and voles.

Two pale kits dive after each other.

Shorter ears and heavier bodied

than western cartoons; “coy-dog” some say.

Her heavy rotting tail drapes,

eyes generous and frank.

 

This morning on three legs another bitch

crabs across Nebraska’s 1-90 in a whiteout,

men standing down at truck stops,

diesels thrumming and clacking in the lots.

 

Shaky behind the slapping wipers, I barely see her

hop South through the barbed wire

onto stubbled acres of ice and drifting snow

where men set traps to kill “vermin”

that will freeze, coiled down on steel and chain,

get skinned and nailed to a shed with others,

or thaw come spring to feed the ravens.

She chewed her own leg off.

A sixteen wheeler passes like a war.

 

I draft in its wake as it shelves the storm

over and by me, watching for its tail lights

to blink …muzzle flash, signals

to follow in the blur.

Episode 06: "Wait, Wait, You Said 'No'?!"

As we prepared for Episode 6, something new happened: a poet whose work we wanted to read and discuss on our podcast said, “No.” It was bound to happen some time and it did---a month and a half in.

As we prepared for Episode 6, something new happened: a poet whose work we wanted to read and discuss on our podcast said, “No.” It was bound to happen some time and it did---a month and a half in. We talked about it and acknowledged that some people are simply not going to be ready, some people are going to let fear win over curiosity, and some people are simply not going to ever want their work discussed in such a public manner---a recorded manner that will always exist.

We were disappointed to receive our first “No,” but it caused us to revisit the vulnerability of what we are doing here: taking a writer’s work and picking it apart, separating the juicy poetic goodness from the bone. For most writers, they never get to hear what editors think of their poems, regardless of whether they were accepted or denied. The feedback we are getting uses the word transparency a lot, with that term directed at the transparency of our editorial conversation, but whoa—the writers who are brave for sharing--for writing in the first place—have to peel another layer back to submit to a podcast.

We are grateful that the people we asked so far said, Yes, even though they were scared. Their bravery makes us feel brave, too, and like we’re doing the right thing with this project. Tell us what you think on our FB Episode 6 event page.

We will be looking at two poets today, and the first poet up is Carlos Gomez.

 

 

We discussed, Morning, Rikers Island, Black Hair, and Interracial in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Gomez is a renaissance man with too many skills and too many awards for us to reiterate here! Poet, actor, essayist—it seems wherever he directs his attention, great things happen. After you read these poems we know you’ll want more, so we suggest you start here.

Let us tell you his last three accomplishments, just so you get the idea: the cover story on of Brass Magazine. He was ONLY voted Best Diversity Artist in Campus Activities Magazine’s 2016 Reader’s Choice Awards. And oh, year, he is featured in The New York Times documentary short film A Conversation with Latinos on Race! So that’s what he’s been up to in just the last few months! Check out his performance schedule—practically no matter where you are he’ll be there this spring and summer.

None of Gomez’s poems were unanimous acceptances, but all three were accepted. From the first line, the light in Morning, Rikers Island resonated with us, and we applauded the craft and elegance of this poem. Interracial in Flatbush, Brooklyn has such specific narrative imagery that we all felt immersed in this scene, and a final moment that resonates. Black Hair had a very different tone, voice, and format from the other two, and our editors were simply engaged in the story just under the surface.

We discussed Adam Day a bit in Episode 5—take a look and listen back to see how these poems ended up in our podcast at all! We discussed The Quiet Life, My Telemachus, and Openango.

 

 

 

Anyone who has been reading literary magazines for a while has seen work by Adam Day. His latest book is Model of a City in Civil War (Sarabande Books), and his latest awards are a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship for Badger, Apocrypha, a PEN Emerging Writers Award, and an Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. It’s hard to keep up with this author. If you need to catch up, visit.  If you miss him, watch this video.

You’ll have to listen to find out which of the three poems we accepted, but know this: we had a great time discussing them! Tell us what you think at our FB event page. We enjoyed the passion behind The Quiet Life, and the humor of both My Telemachus and Openango; we’re betting you will, too.

Thank you for your patience as we’re learning as we go here in the podcast world, we’d love to know what you think – let us know on our Facebook page!

Sign up for our email list if you’re in the Philadelphia area and even if you’re not!

Follow us on Twitter @PaintedBrideQ and Instagram @paintedbridequarterly.

Read on!

-KVM

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Jason Schneiderman

Miriam Haier

Tim Fitts

Melody Nielson

 

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

 

PBQ Box Score: 4=2

-------------------------------

 

Carlos Gomez

Morning, Rikers Island

Physics and light
pierce the hollow stench
of the forgotten
gymnasium stripped naked of clocks.

All the boys stopped.
Offered their grief
to each other like water,
glancing out the only window
they all shared. A single ray
unfolds its warmth
across the dusty belly
of the thudded parquet;
and here’s the miracle—
another day had come.

Interracial in Flatbush, Brooklyn

We watch them do this, expand
from all directions like lungs
abruptly filling with water,
as we hold hands and walk through
the eye of another storm. A man grabs
his crotch, offering it to my wife, flings
a mouthful of spit and epithets towards us.

Each pupil is a dim swamp
flooding, silence blanketing a shallow
body in Neshoba County, dusk
shedding its absence across the congealed
oven grease beneath a rusted burner.

A woman’s neck swivels when we pass,
wraps a hard vowel around her tongue
like lighter fluid choking a glass bottle
holding a fuse.

On this corner, scored by dancehall and soca,
there is nothing more novel than me and my love’s
contrasting hues—it ignites a rush of color
from these strangers’ faces. They ring us
a violence familiar as February weather,
mine our skin for metaphors, demand
we offer answers to questions
they are still forming like infants
from their throats.

I have watched my body’s primal wisdom
flicker dark as a fist-concealed palm, ache
so volatile it screams for release. Rage
is a language I unlearn on the corner
of Ocean Avenue and Church, no shoreline
or cathedrals in sight, only fractured things
decorating a broken sidewalk like littered snow.

A new voice pierces the air, a flood of sound
that hits me like a wall of ice, louder and higher
pitched than those before, this time a small child
with brown skin and green eyes, writhing
in her flimsy stroller, pointing towards
the dimpled oval bootprints I leave
behind in the hazel-colored slush,
squealing: Papi! Papi! Papi!

Black Hair

I made her a vow
that I always would,
so I join two fresh clusters
in my clumsy
and careful hands as I cradle
her slumbering nape.
I am submerged in the calculus
of it all, as though
concentration is where I took
my misstep. As though I am
not three decades behind
in my practice. As though it is just
about finding the pattern
(too late). I’m too late, I think,
or maybe it’s something else: his hands
never knew how to fix
my sister’s hair. I tend
each thick, onyx strand
like I’m mending her favorite blanket,
as though my calloused
digits might coax and shape
anything into an ordered grace.
I layer another braid
into the tidy maze
crowning her scalp. I can feel,
with each pull and twist,
the newly assembled
crib watching.

 

Adam Day

The Quiet Life

You is a pricy practical joke, a missed
appointment, termination that didn't take,
doctor without depth, military march,

intolerant of mystery; a dinner party
grope and stock exchange, growing aroused
in the shadow of compromise, in the pantry's

smell of lessening, of whatever
comes along. You'll have him-
you can't have anything dripping

and no one to see, and should you
be feared to share him your shrunk
breasted enthusiasm, and shaven

gape, like a mouth ajar, an over worn
loafer, you'll liptongue and hand him,
poor spunk, half-screwed, like moth larva

rolling in a rice jar. To make nothing
out of nothing but a backbend and
take three quarters of an hour over it.

No one ever captured the insanity
of monologue like you did, vulgarizing
anger into irritation and a plaster

of panic, grinding fists into your eyes,
like our child. So quiet now
it scrapes the calm from bones,

punctuated with involuntary
exonerations, the house in weed,
shingles steaming, all fog

and submission, a celibate brothel
(if nuns carried their duties
as you sexed all saints they'd be.)

No, no solicitation in a street
urinal, no sodomizing the duck
on account of its down, no slush

of thrushes in the rain gutter, no train
of dangers, or snoring next door, eyes
unlit, half the sun and twice the rent.

 

My Telemachus

"The dog drinking water
sounds like a horse
trotting," my five-year-old says.
Well, look at you, brilliant little
oedipal bastard, trying to steal
my crown (and he is illegitimate;
ask his mother if you
can find her) but Patton was too
and look what he achieved.

 

 

"Openango"

Openango
After Sherman Alexie

I had just begun
ice-fishing. A walleye

taught me
how. A fish

with a headdress.
He called me

white man. Man,
I'm tired

of that racist
shit. It's like

if I didn't vacation
at your ice hole

you wouldn't
have that casino. And

don't look
at me like that, lying

on your side, a vein
of blood

skating the black
plate of your eye.

Episode 5.5: WTF2 AWP + PBQ + LDM = Umbrella Drinks

 

AWP 2016 (the conference for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs) in Los Angeles was la-la lovely. Marion and I flew out together, for the first time in all of these years of traveling to different cities. Our first bit of business? We discussed what our podcast from AWP would be about.

Literary Death Match?  Could we ever have an experience close to the awesomeness of Mark Doty in Chicago? Tony Hoagland in Boston? Abraham Smith in Seattle? How about Chris Abani, Susan Orlean, Danez Smith, and Kirsten Valdez Quade in L.A.?  And since it’s LA, let’s throw in some celebrities like, I dunno,  Martin Starr, Lena Waithe, Michaela Watkins, and Zach Woods. 

The Stars at the Literary Death Match

Sure, hot enough, but basically, we wanted to sit back and enjoy the show, and then immediately have umbrella drinks on the rooftop, so…what else could we talk about?

How crowded it was?  Negative and boring.

How expensive it was? Negative and boring.

AWP Ladies and Gentlemen!

Should we interview our Uber drivers?  Not a bad idea. But, when we thought just that much longer, probably about when we were flying over Wyoming, we thought about the AWP conference and everyone’s expectations, how overwhelming it can be to have so many choices, how undone one can become even when all of those choices are great, we thought about the bookfair.

We thought about how much we enjoy “camping out” at the bookfair, letting the attendees and our far-flung friends come to us, doing laps ourselves when we need to stretch. Yes. We’d hang out and the boofair and talk to people about…

Writing. What else? Tune in and hear what people are working on when they’re not swimming in the riches of the AWP conference.

John-Michael Peter Bloomquis, the founder and director of Poetry for Trash talked to us about his organization. Poetry for Trash goes to public parks and forests, installing stations where passerby can read a poem. The reader decides how much trash the poem is worth, and places the litter they find inside a trash bag. Poetry really is making the world a better place!

Tell us what you think about AWP (and anything else) on our Facebook event page.

Sign up for our email list if you’re in the area and even if you’re not!

Follow us on Twitter @PaintedBrideQ and Instagram @paintedbridequarterly.

Read on!

-KVM

 

Kathy Graber and Kazim Ali

Episode 05: Fascinating and Terrifying

When we asked Maggie Queeney for permission to discuss her work in this podcast, her response was “this sounds fascinating and terrifying!” We’re considering that as our tag line (and a life philosophy). 

When we asked Maggie Queeney for permission to discuss her work in this podcast, her response was “this sounds fascinating and terrifying!” We’re considering that as our tag line (and a life philosophy).

We discussed Queeney’s pieces, "Last Case on the Murder Task Force,” and to be honest, we didn’t want to stop, even when all of the editors’ comments clearly illustrated how the vote would go! This poem’s craft is so beautiful to linger in, even though the images are heart wrenching and tragic.

"Nox” was a little less accessible for us, more difficult to simply understand, but that didn’t deter our enthusiasm for the piece—not with this many arresting images.

"Cry Wolf” takes the classic fable, expounds upon it, and changes it for you forever.

We meant to discuss three poems from Adam Day, but we had such a good time discussing Maggie’s poems that we didn’t feel we had enough time to really get into the discussion, so we thought we’d “reveal” another issue that comes up when culling through work for PBQ.

Adam Day’s work came in via Submittable and was assigned to our Abu Dhabi staff. Two editors there liked a few of his pieces, but alas, before the work could come to the editorial table for a vote, the pieces we had interest in were accepted elsewhere!

Listen to us discuss the “notes” in Submittable. Adam was about to get a straight up boiler plate rejection and she realized he would never know he had fans at PBQ. So, she took action…

Tell us what you think about simultaneous submissions (and anything else) on our Facebook page event, Episode 5.

Sign up for our email list if you’re in the area and even if you’re not!

Follow us on Twitter @PaintedBrideQ and Instagram @paintedbridequarterly.

Read on!

-KVM

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Jason Schneiderman

Miriam Haier

Tim Fitts

 

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

 

PBQ Box Score: 3=2

------------------------

 

Maggie Queeney

Last Case on the Murder Task Force

A telephone splices the night—lit nerve ending
or lightning strike—and the child rises all lung, all mouth

and howl. The man rises from inside the mother, rises
from the casts of his fingers clutched into the sheets

and separates the boy’s head from his chest.
He runs, knife in hand, body in arms, floor to floor,

beating on doors as the thin limbs jog at his sides.
He palms the boy’s head, guides the jaw back

to the neck, but blood leaks and blacks
his bared chest in the stills taken later that night.

The state assigns my father to the defense. He twists
the tinny, stripped facts into a cast outlining a life.

He tells the jury the man grew up a thing burnt
by his grandfather, his mother, that his thin body smoked

and scabbed taut. And then the foster homes and the beatings
and the drugs and the howl and the boy and the knife.

The state threads a new heart into the man’s chest.
He is kept living. He is sentenced to death. Nights on trial,

my father walks the floor with my infant brother, crouped up
and wailing the mucus out of his lungs, his mouth with a howl.

My mother sleeps, buried tight as a drawered knife,
gleaming through what beauty her children had left.

Nox

A child teethes. Through the door,
a loop of scream and whimper

traces the length of the porch.
Morning, I find the blood

left by the raw gums rubbed
like a hand along the rail,

the floor, the frame and lock
to the front door. At night,

I stay inside, listen to the tap
somnolent in the pipes, the house drafts,

the moon pushing to perfect circle.
The birds curl into their fists

of nest, their small breasts hot hulls
above the shriek of owl-torn mice.

Animals take a human voice
in dying. Their wet tunnels of throat,

slick and holy as the inside of a flute,
bottom into the black running under.

Cry Wolf

What difference between crying and calling,
cursing and summoning, the frantic limbs
of a lamb and the bared legs of a boy.

What difference between the desire to laugh
at the adults running, spades and rakes in hand,
and the need to know they would run at his call.

Remember most do not know the name
of what they want, even as they are wanting—
the body incandesces, numb and ecstatic,
as it is destroyed.

Remember the wolf, drawn only
by gut and jaws, insistent as divining rods—
heart stilling at its name called,
finally, between the trees.

Episode 04: The One With Friends

In this episode we read three poems from Kathleen Sheeder Bonnano’s poetry. Though they were originally submitted for an unthemed issue, they felt more suited to our Locals theme, one of two themes for Print 8. We expected reading submissions for Locals to expand our horizons, to help us to see different pockets of the world in a new way, but these poems helped us appreciate the every-day right in our backyard of Philadelphia.

 

Welcome to Episode 4 of the PBQ’s Slushpile. We take more time than other editorial boards, but we stand behind our methodology, so much so that we’re going to share our process with you through this podcast. Welcome to the editorial table. In this episode we read three poems from Kathleen Sheeder Bonnano’s poetry. Though they were originally submitted for an unthemed issue, they felt more suited to our Locals theme, one of two themes for Print 8. We expected reading submissions for Locals to expand our horizons, to help us to see different pockets of the world in a new way, but these poems helped us appreciate the every-day right in our backyard of Philadelphia.

Kathleen Sheeder Bonnano is a poet, professor, and co-editor of the American Review. She is the author of Slamming Open the Door (Alice James Books, 2009), which was the 2008 Beatrice Hawley Award winner, and also received a positive, full-page review in The New York Times, while Library Journal praised it as "A stunning first book."

We were honored to read “30th Street Station,” “The Pool,” and “Jerzee’s Bar.” Reveal: Many of our editorial staff know Kathy well, and in fact, love her. We did what we always do when reading work of those we know; simply tried to remain as objective as possible; and made sure there were people at the editorial table who do not have a personal connection. These poems made us laugh and made our hearts hurt a bit. They gracefully walk the line between the specific and the universal.

And now for one of our occasional segments: “Something random I saw in a literary magazine this week.”

• This week, I visited Carve magazine’s site. It’s run out of Texas, publishes only fiction, and derives its name and ideology from Raymond Carver. On the submit page, they make an offer—if you become a subscriber at the time of submission, they promise to get you a response on your work faster, within two weeks.

• This flipped me out a bit and I didn’t even have time to process and think about what that does to the editor/author relationship, what it means, and then, I looked at Cleaver magazine (I guess I was on a cutlery theme) and they have this super complicated process----their free submissions are currently closed, but if you pay them $5 you could still submit now. PLUS: In all genres, a voluntary $10.00 "tip-jar" fee will guarantee an expedited answer within two weeks.For fiction, flash, and nonfiction, a voluntary $25.00 "tip-jar" donation, which guarantees a two-week expedited answer plus a detailed personal response from one of our chief editors. We are not able to offer critiques for poetry at this time.

 

So---crazy genius or mercenary? This is a “thing?” Listen to what we had to say, but chime in on our Facebook page event, Episode 4.

Sign up for our email list if you’re in the area and even if you’re not!

Follow us on Twitter @PaintedBrideQ and Instagram @paintedbridequarterly.

Read on!

-KVM

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

SPECIAL GUEST: Major Jackson

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Jason Schneiderman

Miriam Haier

Isabella Fidanza

 

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

 

PBQ Box Score: 2=1

------------------------------

 

Kathleen Sheeder Bonnano

30th Street Station

Sweet old man in a tweed cap

soft shoes, soft brown skin,

says, Do you need a cab?

 

Yes I say and my heart is laughing;

this is how I get sometimes.

You look like my second grade teacher

Mrs. Richmond, I always loved

Mrs. Richmond, he says.

 

He ushers me to a silver Lexus.

This is not a cab. This is a bait and switch.

Behind the wheel, the driver,

300 pounds of muscle

arms like hams

 

a diamond ring on each pinky

a diamond in each earlobe

a red baseball cap backward.

I think a piece of his ear is missing.

I think he has a tattoo on his face.

Our eyes meet in the rear view mirror

 

Clang, clang, goes my danger meter

Don’t get in the car! says everyone.

So…I get in the car.

 

By 45th and Locust,

turns out his name is Steve.

Turns out he buried his younger sister this year

and his mom, the year before.

She was way too easy on his

brother with cerebral palsy—

51 years old and doesn’t like

to get out of bed!

 

I read him a poem

about my daughter, from my book.

And then he wants to remember my name,

and gets out a tiny pencil

to write it down.

 
The Pool

My fifteen-year old son,

adopted from Chile,

pedals his bike back from the pool,

says some boys just called him a Spic,

and my brain explodes—

Ping, ping, says my brain.

Wait! says Louey.

 

I get in the car,

gun the gas pedal,

stomp past two

teenage lifeguards at the gate,

on my way to the deep end.

 

Did you call my son a Name?

I call across the water

to two skinny white boys

no older than twelve,

their goose-pimpled arms

hugging their concave chests.

 

They nod. Any minute they

might cry and their

their mothers might come over.

Listen, you! Words hurt!

I am yelling,

Don’t ever say that word again, do you

understand? Or I'll come back here

and beat the shit out of you, do you understand?

Open-mouthed, they nod.

Maybe I didn't make that threat aloud.

But we all heard it.

 

At home,

Louey says he was holding their

heads underwater

for fun,

which is why they got mad

in the first place.

 

Jerzee’s Bar

I love my rum and coke;

I love everybody tonight,

even the young roofer who has

drunk himself shit-faced on Budweiser.

 

He stands very still,

tries not to wobble when he, whoa,

sees his reflection in the mirror

behind the bar.

 

Seems I’ve known this guy all my life.

Tomorrow morning he’ll show up

at his mom’s house

all scraped up with a chipped tooth

and a story about some

asshole in the bar.

 

Should I take his keys?

Should I save him from

himself?

Should I call somebody

who loves him?

 

I sip my drink.

I smile at the band.

Tap, tap tap goes my foot.

Episode 03: Still Thinking About Roger Camp's Hammock

We discussed three poems by Clara Changxin Fang and two poems by Roger Camp. While we walked away with an impressive box score, we were more than impressed by the quality of poems we’ve received for our Locals issue! Just like our Monsters, Locals was broadly interpreted by submitters and we were not left disappointed... 

In this episode of Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile, we discussed three poems by Clara Changxin Fang, and two poems by Roger Camp. While we walked away with an impressive box score, we were more than impressed by the quality of poems we’ve received for our Locals issue! Just like our Monsters, Locals was broadly interpreted by submitters and we were not left disappointed. Sigh. We love our job.

 

Clara Changxin Fang’s poems draw heavily on the theme of the foreigner in a strange land. The poems we discussed, “Lost Colony”, “Don’t Go Away,” and “The Other Side of Night,” though so different in format and execution, centered around the theme of getting lost (figuratively and literally) in a new reality, and conveyed a sense of longing and homesickness. One of our editors pulled this batch right to the top of the slush pile, and we are so grateful, When we realized we were just going to gush, we decided to go ahead and vote!

Clara channels her thoughtful observations of the world around her into her poetry, as well as her blog Residence on Earth, which delves into her thoughts on ecology, climate change, sustainable living, education, social justice, and love. Read more about her work on planet earth here: earthdeeds.org

 

Roger Camp is no stranger to Painted Bride Quarterly’s slush pile. In fact, we published his poem “Motion Assignnment, La Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas, Madrid” in Issue 90! While we ultimately decided to pass on the poems he sent us for Locals, “Riding Your Aura” and “Cape Cod”, one can’t deny that Roger Camp’s poetry evokes strong imagery of beautiful moments in ordinary surroundings. I have to admit I’m still thinking about that bank guard…

He lives in Seal Beach, CA where he tends several hundred plants, walks the streets of his beloved Paris yearly, is apprenticed to a master mason, naps in a hammock under an avocado tree, plays blues piano evenings and kayak fishes, weather permitting. He is an identical twin whose twin does none of these things. (I’m not sure what to believe…)

 

Thank you for your patience as we’re learning as we go here in the podcast world, we’d love to know what you think - let us know on our Facebook page!

Sign up for our email list if you’re in the area and even if you’re not!

Follow us on Twitter @PaintedBrideQ and Instagram @paintedbridequarterly.

Read on!

-KVM

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Jason Schneiderman

Miriam Haier

Tim Fitts

Lauren Patterson

 

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

 

PBQ Box Score: 3=2

 ------------------------

Clara Changxin Fang

Lost Colony

Settled in the Spring of 1584, Roanoke was the first English colony in North America.
We built two story houses

with stone walls on dry mud,

the island a crumbling sandbar

pummeled by wind and waves.

We erected fences and fence posts,

laid claim to a patch of wilderness

like Ptolemy mapping the heavens,

giving titles to congregations of stars.

 

We found a bay with oysters

more numerous than pebbles

and a seashore bright with starfish

and sand dollars. What we didn't find

was gold to fill our ships

or rain to coax our harvest.

 

For three years no sails appeared

on the horizon. (The way I waited for you,

love, absent on the horizon.)

 

Only the blinding clarity of a cloudless sky

ushering us towards winter.

 

Disaster is the absence of events.

 

The sun wheeled the heavens like a flour mill,

everlasting waves lashed at the shore;

no boats in sight, the sea

rolled back our memories of home—

The reek of urine in the streets of London,

the towers of Parliament spearing the sky

like a row of bayonets above a river of blood. The hulls

of abandoned vessels lurking beyond sight.

 

2.

 

CRO – Letters carved into a tree stump at Roanoke before the colony’s disappearance in 1590.

 

Nothing remained of what we owned.

No pottery, no tools, not even our own bones.

 

What we brought with us was filched

by the fingers of the ocean and the shadow of the moon.

 

Not even a dream in which you appear,

a shadow behind a wall of water.

 

Beloved, did I imagine us walking hand in hand

in the city of cathedrals, your hands

 

smelling of baked bread, the afternoon sun

glazing rooftops and sidewalks with gold.

 

I hold on to evidence—

a pebble plucked from the Rue Monge,

a sprig of lavender from the apothecary,

the dress I wore the last night.

 

On the island, the letters CRO,

a bird with a golden beak and black wings,

all that’s left to tell of our departure.

 

No violence had been done.

We simply gave up waiting for salvation to appear

 

like a chalice falling out of the heavens

or the waters parting to reveal a road.

 

I gave birth to a child.

Even without news of you, we are happy.

 

How bright the moon shines without city lights!

I remain ever your loving,

 

Eleanor

 

3.

 

500—The number of mountains destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, including Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

 

We named her Virginia—

land of blue ridged mountains,

fish chocked rivers and timber stands

vast enough to build all the battleships of Europe.

 

After centuries we are still after

what brought us here:

timber, fur, coal, the exhumed remains

of ancient forests we burn to light our homes.

 

Today asphalt cuts through

this valley like a ribbon of steel

and explosions shave the scalp

off of tree covered mountains.

Rocks shatter like fragments of a skull.

 

Men excavate hillsides, blast

through rock, bringing down avalanches

of boulders, mud, and branches, bodies

tumble down like logs, the women

buried them in their coal stained clothes

with the children they miscarried.

 

Some abandoned this place,

let mud and rain pull their houses

back into the earth. Most stayed,

subsisting from the mountains

they helped to destroy.

 

This gutted Appalachia

is a war zone, but one

we still call home.

 

4.

 

Arlington, Virginia

June 1992

 

Dear Chen Ying,

 

Virginia is a beautiful. I walk to the Potomac River with mother every evening, and we watch the sun go down over the mountains, orange slices on the water, geese gliding over the surface like the airplanes landing at Reagan airport. Everything here is bigger and faster, we ride in dragons shaped like cars. Here we play with Barbie dolls instead of silk worms, and in the autumn the leaves turn red like the lanterns during the Spring Festival, and we light candles inside pumpkins carved with hideous faces; unlike our friendly family ghosts, they have no names and confer no blessings. I am learning new words: crow, cloud, kite. You must speak here in order to survive. In social studies, we learned about a group of English people who sailed here in a tiny ship, built a settlement on an island, and disappeared a few years later. Eleanor’s father came back to look for them, but he never found his daughter or his grandchild. I am thinking of her today, the family she abandoned, or who abandoned her, the beach extinguished of stars, the country’s interior so vast and full of terrors, the night rustling with strange sounds. Sometimes you don’t know enough to be afraid. You only know: the air is clean here, it smells like daffodils. The children have yellow hair like the tassels of corn, and like scarecrows, it’s hard to tell if they are real, but when they fall they cry like we do. While I still remember how to form these characters, tell your mother thank you for taking care of me before I came. Maybe I’ll send you the flowers I’m growing, heliotrope and nasturtiums, pressed into dictionaries we should study but use as weights. Until then I subsist on the memory of your smiles, the sticky buns we ate together on festival days.

 

I miss you,

Chang Xin

Don’t Go Away
The night shakes its wings and the sky

hasn't folded its whitewashed lawn chairs.

 

Hyacinths in the garden gleam like pale fire,

the forests are crammed with shadowy fish.

 

I heard you say: I don’t know

when I’m coming back.

 

Once, I lost my car in a strange city

while we circled the streets searching

 

for a way home. All was dark except

where we glimpsed ballroom dancers

 

flickering like moths through a window.

At dinner, we spoke to each other

 

one or two words only. Yet here we are,

alone in your car while I cast my net

 

for something to say.

Stay. Take me with you.

 

If you go, I will see your eyes

looking back in every corner.

 

I won’t have to listen

to hear you call my name.

 

If you go, you must come back quickly.

Or else clouds will sweep the rooms with rain.

 

The Other Side of Night

The Buddhist monk instructs us to pay attention to our breathing but all I can think of is the way you touched me before I left for Utah, like oil splattered on the wrist, like snow falling on bare shoulders. For the next two years the great bowl of the Salt Lake valley was cleft by a chasm I could not close. The mountains are taller than I imagined. The Great Plains is vast like the Pacific Ocean. The distance between one who loves and one who doesn't. Not able to turn back, the people who lost everything built a city praising God on the snow white shores of that inland sea, and all who came to it admired its ship like tabernacle, its broad avenues, and its temples without windows. At the bottom of my suffering there is a door. The latch opened and I sank. I breathed in water and breathed out love. So much of it that it filled the oceans and the air, the fish grew wings and the birds grew gills, the eyes of the people were opened and no one killed or hurt one another because they saw the wound they carried in themselves in each other.

 

Roger Camp

Riding Your Aura

In front of the Bank of America,

a bank protection officer

lays hands on the newspaper stand

like a man who knows his way

around an altar.

There’s no mistaking him

for the bank guard

of my youth, the greying,

pot-bellied, retired cop

well laundered in blue

dozing inside the doorway.
A New Age version,

this man is outside,

swathed in black like SWAT,

protective vest and automatic in hand.

Shooting your way out of a bank

is one thing, but shooting your way in?

Seeing Isaac, patriarch

of the sidewalk,

would turn my tail

if I were a robber of banks.
Friendly, he has earned

Main Street’s affection,

every pedestrian watching

his back.

When I wear a lid he likes

I get a fist bump.

Hidden in his casual demeanor

is no slouch. Behind those shades,

a warrior, Iraq

or maybe Afghanistan.

At peace with himself

he is adept at reading others.

Greeting him after returning

from six sunny days in Alaska

he said to me

that was you, riding your aura.

  

Cape Cod

The Cape itself is like a snake at its serpentine end.

Beyond a place the charts call Long Point is an echo

of the Cape, a final coil within a coil.

Walking in Beech Forest, I saw two snakes

their chocolate colored bellies and tri-lateral yellow

stripes entwined, age and youth combined.

The older, larger one sensing me, held still

while his younger, slimmer companion slid its body

along side, contour unfolding contour.

In my effort to follow I lost focus, lost the snakes,

unable to define a coil within a coil,

unable to tell beginning from end,

lost my way as well, wending tail to tail.

Episode 02: It's Alive!

In our second episode, we stuck with a theme: monsters! One of two themes for Print 8, reading the submissions for Monsters has been anything but a nightmare, and the four poems we discussed on this podcast are examples of how broadly the theme was interpreted, just like we hoped...

  

"Cloisters" by Kristin Bock

In our second episode, we stuck with a theme: monsters! One of two themes for Print 8, reading the submissions for Monsters has been anything but a nightmare, and the four poems we discussed on this podcast are examples of how broadly the theme was interpreted, just like we hoped.

 

Kristin Bock’s “Compound” and “Matchmakers” alone are great examples of diverse submissions. We had a hard time unpacking “Compound,” its densely mysterious and complicated, but we really enjoy work that doesn’t feel like work. And “Matchmakers” is simply--a blast. Her first book was winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Award; we’ll be watching to see what she does next.

 

Cristina Baptista's “Monster” has imagery that called us in and called us back. Listen to us read and talk about it, but then—trust us--listen to Cristina read it—you’re going to want to experience this poem at least twice. And then, trust us, you’ll want to follow her on Twitter @Herds_of_Words

But wait until you hear this: Cristina recently created a collection of poetry about her experience as a 38th Voyager—one of 85 people in the world selected to travel (in Summer 2014) on the 38th Voyage of the Charles W. Morgan, an 1841 wooden whaleship that is the last remaining one in the world. She also served as a documenter of the Portuguese immigrant experience aboard whaleships, during this Voyage. See, told you you’d want to follow her!

 

Jennie Malboeuf’s “The Part of My Father Will be Played by Jack Nicholson” calls up the always-fun classic, “The Shining.” With brothers, bear suits, and blood, how could we say, No. We’re betting you won’t either, and that you’ll want more. Jennie’s poems can be found all over the web, but here’s two pick’s for you: the very cool anthology that is the Montreal International Poetry Prize (warning: you’ll stay on their site for awhile), and these two (plus audio!) at The Cortland Review.

 

We’d love to know what you think - let us know on our Facebook page!

Sign up for our email list if you’re in the area and even if you’re not!

Follow us on Twitter @PaintedBrideQ and Instagram @paintedbridequarterly.

Read on!

-KVM

 

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Jason Schneiderman

Miriam Haier

Michelle Johnson

 

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

 

PBQ Box Score: 4=0

 -------------------------

 

Kristin Bock

Compound

Come stand in the garden. Let the soft rain rinse you. Line up with the others. Hold
hands. Now, kiss. Imagine your mind is a blue rose, a blue rose rinsed clean. Hide in the bushes. Wait for the little black stars to squeak by. Step on them. Stamp on them. Some will feel like urchins and under your feet. They will whisper terrible things. Step on them harder. They will cry out. They will have your mother’s voice. Run. Catch the stars and squeeze until they burst. They will be slippery. Their black oil will leak into the earth. Now your hands are dirty. They’re filthy. Go back to your spot in the garden and stand like a flower. Do not move until your skin becomes blue and clean and cold. Take off your dress. You are dirty inside. Open your legs to the rain. Your mind unfolds like a blue rose. Hold hands. Now you’ve been bad. Very bad. Today you will not eat. Today you will stamp on the little black stars until your feet are raw. The stars will squirt and whimper. They will sound like your father crying in the shed. Step on him. Make him cry harder. He is dirty. Your mother is dirty. Come to me. Come to us. Open your legs. Let us rinse you. My brain is as big as a car. My brain is as big as mountain range. I will bend my fat red brain over you like a blood-soaked rose. I will sing to you and wash you and starve you and love you like no other. Now go back to the garden and plant yourself where you belong.

 

Kristin Bock

Matchmakers

Where does your monster sleep?

In a cage too small for him.

What does your monster's heart look like?

Like a child's teacup, small and full of blood.

What color is he?

Green, of course.

What does he eat?

Basically, nose to tail.

Cataracts?

Installed.

Fins?

Cauterized.

Fangs?

Restored.

Good. He's healthy then?

Yes, he takes ratfish liver oil—from a 300 million year old chimeric fish, half-skate half-shark. It lives at the very bottom of the sea and has a face like a rat. Legend has it Norwegian Vikings would hang a ratfish up by the head and the liver oil would drip from its long tail. They named the elixir “Gold of the Ocean” and considered it to be a very rare and precious gift. There are many other fish oils on the market, but he prefers this one.

Excellent! He should make some fine little monsters. One last question—does he have any issues?

Well, only if you count his fear of snow globes.

Oh c’mon, snow globes?

Yes. They remind him of his childhood. His father was a snowman and his mother was an icicle. It snowed each and every day. His father cried tears of fire for they begat a daughter named Wendy, who, after fifteen years of unforgivable acts of kindness, was sent to live among the moose.

Forget it. My monster's not like that at all.

 

Cristina Baptista

Monster

Where the cut has dried over,

you find red crystals in your hair;

like colored sugar from a child’s cupcake,

lost Valentine glitter, crushed

stained glass beneath your heel

in the monastery.  I first saw

you outlined against that window, triptych,

you blotting out San Sebastian’s image

all mass and shadow, an absorbent dark sponge,

stealing his wings for your own.

 

Jennie Malboeuf

The Part of my Father Will Be Played by Jack Nicholson

Big white teeth. My brother

reminds me he isn’t Irish.

But the brows are the same.

Horned and intense, he’ll do

a plum job.

 

In this scene, something isn’t

right. The lighting is strange;

the furniture that was there

is now here. Or gone entirely.

Someone is standing in

 

the background that wasn’t

just before. And that yawn sounds

like a door closing (or opening).

Everything looks normal but

one thing has blood on it.

 

I didn’t mention the scariest

part     jumpcut!

a man in a bear suit.

You can’t help but like him,

he commands attention

 

with broad arms or bright eyes

when seated. His face looks

crooked in the wrong direction

when you glance together in the mirror.

Episode 01: PBQ--WTF?

In our inaugural episode, we discussed four poems from Emily Corwin, and three poems from Leah Falk. I don’t think it was just our happy-to-launch mood that caused such an impressive box score...

 

 

 

In our inaugural episode, we discussed four poems from Emily Corwin, and three poems from Leah Falk. I don’t think it was just our happy-to-launch mood that caused such an impressive box score.

Emily’s poems were all submitted for the Monsters issue, and with their very Grimm/grim fairy-tale qualities juxtaposed against their embrace of fun with language, we were smitten. Poems up for discussion were “pink girl takes a tumble,” “thwack,” “out like a lamb,” and “pink girl kicks the bucket.” Thank goodness some of us are at the editorial table remotely--we might have come to fisticuffs over who got to read these poems. (Listen to Emily read a poem at Split Rock Review!)

  

Leah Falk’s “Visiting,” “Commonest in Nature,” and “Islands,” can’t really be categorized as of a particular “type.” Each of these had us wanting to linger and didn’t disappoint when we did. Haunting (listen--you’ll get it) and redolent with history, unpacking these poems was nothing but pleasure.

Read Leah’s ideas on “Why…some poets perform as though they had just come to in a bad dream?” at The Millions. Watch a video of a performance of her song cycles. You gotta Google this gal for more and more and more.

 

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Read on!

-KVM

 

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