Posts

Showing posts from 2024

Friday, April 26, 2024: Diana Rosen's "My Best Friend & I on the Way to Rotterdam"

Image
Herring with Bread and Beer (Pieter Claesz) Diana Rosen is a writer whose first full-length book of flash and poetry, High Stakes & Expectations ,  is available from thetinypublisher.com/shop Her work appears in international and domestic journals and anthologies including Rattle, As It Ought to be Magazine , and Dashboard Horus . To read more of her work, please visit authory.com/dianarosen   My Best Friend & I on the Way to Rotterdam It is the simplest route from England to Holland, a ferry from London to Rotterdam for a modest fare with our favorite travel amenity: everyone, passengers and staff, speaks English. Twenty- somethings huddle for warmth rather than  affection while sitting on the outer deck - - perhaps the price of parsimony or penury--that  Maggie and I are grateful to avoid, happy  to take advantage of the warm movie theatre in the boat’s hull, where the feature, a knockoff  of Wonder Woman

Wednesday, April 24, 2024: Kelley J. White's "Good Night, Ashbury Park"

Image
  Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner-city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle, and JAMA . Her most recent chapbook is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and is currently Poet in Residence at Drexel University College of Medicine. Her newest collection, No.Hope Street has just been published by Kelsay Books. “Good night, Asbury Park, — Johnny Cash, July 28, 1990 I’ll see you at church tomorrow.” I don’t quite see how a hotel can nestle along the Jersey Shore but this one claims to— and who am I to doubt though this story I am recalling sounds doubtful—Johnny Cash investing 250,000 in a hotel in a failing town, Asbury Park? But there’s proof, a 1990 concert at the Paramount, with Ring of Fire, and June’s there too, and two of her sisters, and I Walk the Line and The Old Ragged Flag and, well the door just opened so I got no privacy but jus

Friday, April 19, 2024: Michael Hoerman's "Rivermaid's Blues"

Image
  Neurodivergent activist-artist Michael Hoerman has developed community-based poetry happenings in the Ozarks, New England, and Gulf Coast regions since 1994. His poems appear in four noteworthy anthologies— Off the Cuffs (Soft Skull Press, 2003), Mischief, Caprice and Other Poetic Strategies (Red Hen Press, 2004), The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel (No Tell Books, 2006), Fuck Poems (Lavender Ink, 2012)—and in many outlaw journals. He co-founded and debuted the National Poetry Slam team from Fayetteville, Arkansas in 1994. His critical recognitions include a Massachusetts Artists Fellowship in the category of poetry. ©2024 Michael Hoerman

Wednesday, April 17, 2024: Pam Ward's "La Revue Negre"

Image
  Writer/designer, Pam Ward just released her poetry book Between Good Men & No Man At All, World Stage Press. She’s published two novels, Want Some Get Some , and Bad Girls Burn Slow Kensington. A UCLA graduate, recipient of a California Arts Council Fellow, and Pushcart Poetry Nominee, Pam has published in Chiron, Calyx, Voices of Leimert Park and the LA Times and is currently writing a novel about her aunt & the Black Dahlia Murder. Le Revue Negre     for Josephine Baker Before Baldwin lifted a suitcase  before Chester Himes escaped Josephine packed her bags & skipped off to France  severing ties with America  an umbilical cord  strangling her neck she boarded a ship bailed the US like bailing the back hand of a bad, brutal marriage. This Nubian princess. This queen of the bait & switch had everyone going bananas examining how yellow fruit curves dancing nude, except for  her produce-section skirt fifteen gyrating  penis-shaped smiling grins hap