All These Rooms

EARTH’S BODY: AN ECOPOETRY ANTHOLOGY

Coeditors Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street solicit submissions for an international anthology of ecopoetry. We are looking for a wide and varied array of submissions. Our working definition of “ecopoetry” is flexible; it includes not only what might be called nature poetry, and not only poetry that focuses on environmental issues, but also experimental poetry–poetry that explores language in its relations with the other-than-human. We welcome work by emerging as well as established poets. We welcome serious poems, playful poems, poems in open or traditional forms. [Read more →]

if your heart turns

to mud

to avoid the bitter glances

of the sun

do not call for it—

tell your tongue to

follow

it down.

If you want the hallowed whomper stick (TM), you must win the following challenge. And since you are naughty, asymmetrical little (all these) room-mates, I challenge you to write a somehow-symmetrical poem. The symmetry can be something like lines of equal length, number of letters, number of words, etc. Or pick some other type of symmetry. Non-participants will be whomped and eaten with a side of succotash by the next winner.

watching the faces

in the mirror above the bar

red cheeks underlining shallow eyes

magenta lipstick trying to hide

wrinkled lips

I think up metaphors

to quantify their sadness:

miles of birdless telephone poles

beneath an absent sky,

five unreturned phone calls,

or maybe it’s just one brother

with dreams of scarred elbows.

I don’t know.

but I think that

sadness cannot be quantified. it just pours

out of you like a liquid mouth

and one look at my own face and I see

that no metaphor can

fully measure

the reality of a quiet girl.

I want to go home.

but I don’t want

to leave the friends at my side

and this is when I know

that everything, the way I smile incessantly,

even at people I despise, the way that I kiss,

the way that I hide myself

in my walk,

this letter to you,

is born out of my

insatiable desire to be loved.

When the whole crowd is circulating such that soon everyone is covered in blood, and I call for him
Fearful Frank! Fearful Frank!
No one turns for me.

Without it becoming complete crap? Or just something kind of absurd, surreal? Seriously, I’m trying to start a poem for the Dorothy poetry prize, because why not, but I keep writing crap.

You guys have any favorite “happy” poems that I could read for guidance?

YOU CAN LIVE

7.1.06

Waiting for the sunrise
I walk down to the Hawthorne
bridge. I’ve decided. Today,
I’ll be the brother
who has died
and you can be the one
who fills his pockets
with rocks. You can throw
them at the parked cars
as you pass the open mouthed
mansions in Ladd’s addition
as their windows dart
and twitch with that last
burst of dreaming that comes
just before waking.
You can glare
at the joggers insulting
their dogs with their slow witted
voices repeating words
their dogs don’t understand,
you can stop on twelfth street
to watch the ten year old
kid who had gotten up
before his parents to come outside
and smash ants against the sidewalk
with his thumb. Today
you can try and lose the simple ease
of coming and going
that trails me like a starving stray.

From:  crwropps@aol.com   aejos

online journal for women seeks submissions: damselfly press

damselfly press, an online literary journal for women recently selected as Best of the Web 2009 by Dzanc Books, is pleased to announce the publication of our fourth issue and call for submissions for the fifth issue. We are seeking electronic submissions of original fiction, poetry, and nonfiction by female writers slated for online publication in October 2009.
[Read more →]

Song

A sudden lack of desire

strips the night from the waist up -

Bare-breasted night,

Lime-leaf Night,

Night of a thousand catfish

feeding on the surface

of a city pond in spate -

the sky’s discarnate twin

disturbed by their blind hunger.

This is the night

mother would sing of

from the bottom of the well,

the one that remains

insatiable even though we cup our hands

and drink and drink.

Oh never-ending night

of awe

whose hunger is everyone’s hunger.

A Dance

Two acacia nuts, sovereign and unkempt

buried in the milk-white flesh of my palm

apprentice me not to thee but to the dance before

water, mineral, salt. No answer

for an inquisitor except breaking twice

the space between earth and sky

so effortlessly courting then forgetting

all the things we’ve loved and lost

never to come again.

Go on.

As if there was a choice.

A small talisman: A long grey bird

in the elder part of January sculls the estuary and

each pussy willow turns serpentine inside the fold

of image upon image, water then the world.

At the caesura, what happens there?

To foliate: the having of leaves.

Call for submissions: diode poetry journal

http://diodepoetry.com

diode poetry journal is an online poetry journal that is looking for
electropositive poetry for its one year anniversary issue which will appear in
August, 2009.

What is electropositive poetry? It’s poetry that excites and energizes. It’s
poetry that uses language that crackles and sparks. We’re looking for poetry
from all points on the arc, from formal to experimental (no light verse or
erotic poetry, please).

Simultaneous submissions are welcomed, but please notify us if work is
accepted elsewhere. diode does not accept previously published work.

Please submit 3-5 poems with a cover letter via email to:

submit(at)diodepoetry.com (replace (at) with @)
or
diodepoetryjournal(at)gmail.com
(replace (at) with @)

Please attach poems in either Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf).
We read year round and will respond in 4-8 weeks.