Tag: best dressed

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Marilyn McCabe’s “Perpetual Motion”

Marilyn

Guide to Home Birth

What happens in a womb?
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny:
first you are a lizard, then you are a man.

Some days you think you have wings.
Sometimes you have gills and swim
everywhere through murky water.

Some days you gaze
through thin flesh, blinking
in the diffuse glare. There is doubt.

Once you enter the womb,
there is no going back. No matter
how long it takes, you come out.

Birth is spasmodic. There is
a violent peristalsis. Life comes
in a hiccup, a paroxysm.

In spite of your best intentions there are cries,
tears. For a long time,
you have no teeth.

—

This selection comes from Marilyn McCabe’s book Perpetual Motion, available from The Word Works. Purchase your copy here!

Marilyn McCabe’s poem “On Hearing the Call to Prayer Over the Marcellus Shale on Easter Morning” was awarded A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando Prize, fall 2012, and appeared in the Los Angeles Review. Her book of poetry Perpetual Motion was published by The Word Works in 2012 as the winner of the Hilary Tham Capitol Collection contest (available from Small Press Distribution, http://www.spdbooks.org). Her work has appeared in literary magazines such as Nimrod, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly, French translations and songs on Numero Cinq, and a video-poem on The Continental Review.  She blogs about writing and reading at marilynonaroll.wordpress.com.

Marika von Zellen has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Cornell College (no, not the one in Ithaca). She’s had poetry and fiction published in Open Field, Temporary Infinity, The Grin City Monthly, and the anthology Rock & Roll Saved My Soul. As an Editorial Assistant for Sundress, she’s copy-edited the book Picture Dictionary (2014); as a freelance editor she copy-edited the photography book Face It (2013). In the summer of 2012, she attended the Grin City Collective Artist Residency in Iowa. Besides writing, she enjoys theoretical physics, playing piano, ghost-hunting, climbing trees, and drinking good Czech beer. She’s also a scholar of Lewis Carroll.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Marilyn McCabe’s “Perpetual Motion”

perpetual motion

Perseveration

I’m walking downtown under the ghost of a half moon in the day sky
and think, I’m on a planet circled by a moon surrounded
by other planets circled by other moons in a galaxy circling something
and surrounded by other galaxies circling, and I’m dizzy from it,
and wonder why we developed the consciousness to ask why
we developed the consciousness to ask why we developed
that consciousness, and if our brain has a center whose tendency
is toward believing in a higher power does that disprove the existence of God,
or prove it? So I get an ice cream cone, and why not,
and carefully lick around the edges, a great tongue moon
lapping the ice cream planet, a great God tongue forming the ice cream mind,
like a thought moving around and around making sure nothing
drips out of the cosmic cone and down the cosmic arm
to fall on the pavement like the ghost of a half moon in the day sky.

—

This selection comes from Marilyn McCabe’s book Perpetual Motion, available from The Word Works. Purchase your copy here!

Marilyn McCabe’s poem “On Hearing the Call to Prayer Over the Marcellus Shale on Easter Morning” was awarded A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando Prize, fall 2012, and appeared in the Los Angeles Review. Her book of poetry Perpetual Motion was published by The Word Works in 2012 as the winner of the Hilary Tham Capitol Collection contest (available from Small Press Distribution, http://www.spdbooks.org). Her work has appeared in literary magazines such as Nimrod, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly, French translations and songs on Numero Cinq, and a video-poem on The Continental Review.  She blogs about writing and reading at marilynonaroll.wordpress.com.

Marika von Zellen has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Cornell College (no, not the one in Ithaca). She’s had poetry and fiction published in Open Field, Temporary Infinity, The Grin City Monthly, and the anthology Rock & Roll Saved My Soul. As an Editorial Assistant for Sundress, she’s copy-edited the book Picture Dictionary (2014); as a freelance editor she copy-edited the photography book Face It (2013). In the summer of 2012, she attended the Grin City Collective Artist Residency in Iowa. Besides writing, she enjoys theoretical physics, playing piano, ghost-hunting, climbing trees, and drinking good Czech beer. She’s also a scholar of Lewis Carroll.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Marilyn McCabe’s “Perpetual Motion”

Marilyn

Root Systems

Bittersweet sucks at the apples,
and the rest wanders
hungry underground.
I see it the next street
over and the next, all
one great growth,
tree and fence, your house, mine.
And water too, doesn’t it
blanket the earth, a thirsty crust,
bonny coat all on and under?
Won’t this stream I splash through
become the sea we cruise
in great yachts, then muddy
waste of Madagascar marsh,
the turgid Sunderbans?
And it rises to cloud to fall
again across all time,
so these drops once held
the hand of a man dead
in the bloody Ardennes,
cupped the sturdy skin
-boat of Saint Patrick. Oh, man,
we’re never done with
each other and earth.
Take my tears for your tea.
Grind my teeth for your garden.
Let me feed your child’s child.
Let him suck
the bitter root sweet.

—

This selection comes from Marilyn McCabe’s book Perpetual Motion, available from The Word Works. Purchase your copy here!

Marilyn McCabe’s poem “On Hearing the Call to Prayer Over the Marcellus Shale on Easter Morning” was awarded A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando Prize, fall 2012, and appeared in the Los Angeles Review. Her book of poetry Perpetual Motion was published by The Word Works in 2012 as the winner of the Hilary Tham Capitol Collection contest (available from Small Press Distribution, http://www.spdbooks.org). Her work has appeared in literary magazines such as Nimrod, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly, French translations and songs on Numero Cinq, and a video-poem on The Continental Review.  She blogs about writing and reading at marilynonaroll.wordpress.com.

Marika von Zellen has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Cornell College (no, not the one in Ithaca). She’s had poetry and fiction published in Open Field, Temporary Infinity, The Grin City Monthly, and the anthology Rock & Roll Saved My Soul. As an Editorial Assistant for Sundress, she’s copy-edited the book Picture Dictionary (2014); as a freelance editor she copy-edited the photography book Face It (2013). In the summer of 2012, she attended the Grin City Collective Artist Residency in Iowa. Besides writing, she enjoys theoretical physics, playing piano, ghost-hunting, climbing trees, and drinking good Czech beer. She’s also a scholar of Lewis Carroll.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Susan Lewis’ “How to Be Another”

SusanLewis406x269

                                                 In Quest

If words were pixels I could lighten these shadows. If words were
pixels, my logic could be leavened. If words were binary, machines
would chuckle at the right moments. The sun, alas, will still be
reprehensible. I‘m not talking about death-dealing or its opposite,
but something anomalous I can’t disclose. Tell me your deepest
secret, as soon as I forget. There is this nagging lack, there is this
honeymoon of cones & rods as colorful as any Indian wedding.
Black, black is the rarity some of us are bound to crave. Call me
contrary, call me besotted with soot or unwilling to put this idea
beside its natural brother. What I won’t revisit is the Age of
Affront. You may vibrate with sympathy for a plethora of
accidental beauties, although they are no less probable than the rest
of us.

—

This selection comes from Susan Lewis’ book How to Be Another, available from Červená Barva Press. Purchase your copy here!

Susan Lewis lives in New York City and edits Posit (www.positjournal.com). In addition to How to be Another, her most recent books are This Visit (BlazeVOX [books], 2015) and State of the Union (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014). Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in The Awl, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Connotation Press, EOAGH, Gargoyle, Luna Luna, Otoliths, Ping Pong, Propeller, Raritan, Seneca Review, Verse, Word For/Word, and Yew. More at www.susanlewis.net.

Marika von Zellen has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Cornell College (no, not the one in Ithaca). She’s had poetry and fiction published in Open Field, Temporary Infinity, The Grin City Monthly, and the anthology Rock & Roll Saved My Soul. As an Editorial Assistant for Sundress, she’s copy-edited the book Picture Dictionary (2014); as a freelance editor she copy-edited the photography book Face It (2013). In the summer of 2012, she attended the Grin City Collective Artist Residency in Iowa. Besides writing, she enjoys theoretical physics, playing piano, ghost-hunting, climbing trees, and drinking good Czech beer. She’s also a scholar of Lewis Carroll.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Susan Lewis’ “How to Be Another”

how-to-be-another-295

                               Introduction to Anonymity (I)

Consider Hecuba. Consider the lilies. Consider the captain of any
team. Consider yourself lucky. Even your own mother forgets you.
You, too, can ignore the pain in just minutes a day. Refine your
superstitions, revive your age-old proclivity to fabulate. To be
flooded with faces, to be anointed, to be inundated with molecules
of jasmine or sheet metal or gold leaf or stagnant soil. Now, try
amputating that vestigial ego. Try building a dark edifice or another
dying species. Meditate upon the walls until you find a cave, a
hypodermic needle, or a childhood memory. Who do you want to
know? Who wants to know you?

—

This selection comes from Susan Lewis’ book How to Be Another, available from Červená Barva Press. Purchase your copy here!

Susan Lewis lives in New York City and edits Posit (www.positjournal.com). In addition to How to be Another, her most recent books are This Visit (BlazeVOX [books], 2015) and State of the Union (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014). Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in The Awl, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Connotation Press, EOAGH, Gargoyle, Luna Luna, Otoliths, Ping Pong, Propeller, Raritan, Seneca Review, Verse, Word For/Word, and Yew. More at www.susanlewis.net.

Marika von Zellen has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Cornell College (no, not the one in Ithaca). She’s had poetry and fiction published in Open Field, Temporary Infinity, The Grin City Monthly, and the anthology Rock & Roll Saved My Soul. As an Editorial Assistant for Sundress, she’s copy-edited the book Picture Dictionary (2014); as a freelance editor she copy-edited the photography book Face It (2013). In the summer of 2012, she attended the Grin City Collective Artist Residency in Iowa. Besides writing, she enjoys theoretical physics, playing piano, ghost-hunting, climbing trees, and drinking good Czech beer. She’s also a scholar of Lewis Carroll.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Susan Lewis’ “How to Be Another”

SusanLewis406x269

                                                    Beloved

I want to thank you for the cage you made. As you know, it fits my
narrow outlook to a T, better than the one I made myself. That
one, you may recall, replaced my original home. Those were the
days! Remember? Back then we were always fed & watered, &
could sometimes touch fingers through the bars. Forgive me for
wondering why you continue to concern yourself with my wellbeing.
I would have thought, with those instinctively kinetic &
incessantly expanding offspring, you’d have your hands full enough
with (only the best) locks & bars & other paraphernalia of affection
& concern.

—

This selection comes from Susan Lewis’ book How to Be Another, available from Červená Barva Press. Purchase your copy here!

Susan Lewis lives in New York City and edits Posit (www.positjournal.com). In addition to How to be Another, her most recent books are This Visit (BlazeVOX [books], 2015) and State of the Union (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014). Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in The Awl, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Connotation Press, EOAGH, Gargoyle, Luna Luna, Otoliths, Ping Pong, Propeller, Raritan, Seneca Review, Verse, Word For/Word, and Yew. More at www.susanlewis.net.

Marika von Zellen has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Cornell College (no, not the one in Ithaca). She’s had poetry and fiction published in Open Field, Temporary Infinity, The Grin City Monthly, and the anthology Rock & Roll Saved My Soul. As an Editorial Assistant for Sundress, she’s copy-edited the book Picture Dictionary (2014); as a freelance editor she copy-edited the photography book Face It (2013). In the summer of 2012, she attended the Grin City Collective Artist Residency in Iowa. Besides writing, she enjoys theoretical physics, playing piano, ghost-hunting, climbing trees, and drinking good Czech beer. She’s also a scholar of Lewis Carroll.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Susan Lewis’ “How to Be Another”

how-to-be-another-295

                                                  Sometimes

I hear a voice, although it doesn’t hear me. It says little of interest.
Perhaps I should learn another language, or invent one. I’m trying
to understand the Song of the Invisible Bird. I also incline towards
Modern Paleontology. Once, someone gave me a sample of
Spirited Inquiry, but it didn’t take. Horses & dogs woo me. Even
the grass has something to sell. Gimme is the word I would most
like to quash, with or without a subpoena. Sure, birds do it, bees do it,
but I only have these ancient opposable thumbs. Soon, I’m hoping
to be less awed by the presence of greatness. Dusk & dawn might
be in for a surprise. Whole continents could be affected. You
might see a flowering of pan-atheistic revelry. Forbidden
indulgence will be legislatively annulled. Even the boldest blossoms
will count themselves out. Pay attention, or the clamor in your
head might very well prevail.

—

This selection comes from Susan Lewis’ book How to Be Another, available from Červená Barva Press. Purchase your copy here!

Susan Lewis lives in New York City and edits Posit (www.positjournal.com). Her most recent books are This Visit (forthcoming), How to Be Another, and State of the Union. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared recently in such places as The Awl, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Connotation Press, Dusie, EOAGH, Gargoyle, Otoliths, Ping Pong, Propeller, Raritan, Seneca Review, and Verse. More at www.susanlewis.net.

Marika von Zellen has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Cornell College (no, not the one in Ithaca). She’s had poetry and fiction published in Open Field, Temporary Infinity, The Grin City Monthly, and the anthology Rock & Roll Saved My Soul. As an Editorial Assistant for Sundress, she’s copy-edited the book Picture Dictionary (2014); as a freelance editor she copy-edited the photography book Face It (2013). In the summer of 2012, she attended the Grin City Collective Artist Residency in Iowa. Besides writing, she enjoys theoretical physics, playing piano, ghost-hunting, climbing trees, and drinking good Czech beer. She’s also a scholar of Lewis Carroll.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Susan Lewis’ “How to Be Another”

SusanLewis406x269

                                               Let’s

talk this over like rational actors. Convention, convection, let’s call
the whole thing off. Let’s say I went first. Let’s say you never did.
Let’s agree to be disagreeable. Let’s go play in quicksand, quickly.
Let’s not bother with the rules. Let’s not amount to a hill of beans.
Let’s order something to share, like vinegar & quicklime, a mug of
gold dust, & a deconstructed chain of command. That’s what I
thought of, but let’s admit it, the menu goes on forever, & I’ll
never appreciate what you’ve been through. Also, I promise to stay
open to new intrusions.

—

This selection comes from Susan Lewis’ book How to Be Another, available from Červená Barva Press. Purchase your copy here!

Susan Lewis lives in New York City and edits Posit (www.positjournal.com). In addition to How to be Another, her most recent books are This Visit (BlazeVOX [books], 2015) and State of the Union (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014). Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in The Awl, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Connotation Press, EOAGH, Gargoyle, Luna Luna, Otoliths, Ping Pong, Propeller, Raritan, Seneca Review, Verse, Word For/Word, and Yew. More at www.susanlewis.net.

Marika von Zellen has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Cornell College (no, not the one in Ithaca). She’s had poetry and fiction published in Open Field, Temporary Infinity, The Grin City Monthly, and the anthology Rock & Roll Saved My Soul. As an Editorial Assistant for Sundress, she’s copy-edited the book Picture Dictionary (2014); as a freelance editor she copy-edited the photography book Face It (2013). In the summer of 2012, she attended the Grin City Collective Artist Residency in Iowa. Besides writing, she enjoys theoretical physics, playing piano, ghost-hunting, climbing trees, and drinking good Czech beer. She’s also a scholar of Lewis Carroll.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Lori Lamothe’s “Diary in Irregular Ink”

lori-lamothe-headshot-2

Coming Attractions

Morning opens its door on scoured light
and sweeps my cluttered rooms.

The sky’s been rinsed with wind.
The land bleached down to its bones.

October was a lit match—every shade
of tree on fire, the lawn a sheet

strewn with leaves redder than petals.
There are women who shouldn’t

wear mascara. There are poems of glass,
all windows, that you can open

to observe a ghost’s beating heart.
Note how each chamber

serves as its own paperweight—
how a wing’s blue pulse

is actually a lake that mirrors lightning.
The switch of our attention

flickers as the day scrolls down
to a hotel for professional snugglers

that might be a treasure map,
might be a brothel.

—

This selection comes from Lori Lamothe’s chapbook Diary in Irregular Ink, available from ELJ Publications. Purchase your copy here!

Lori Lamothe’s poetry has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, CALYX, cream city review, Emerge Literary Journal, Seattle Review, Stone Highway Review, Third Coast, and other magazines. She is the author a full-length collection, Trace Elements (Aldrich Press), and of two other chapbooks, Camera Obscura (Finishing Line Press) and Ouija in Suburbia (dancing girl press, forthcoming 2015).

Marika von Zellen has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Cornell College (no, not the one in Ithaca). She’s had poetry and fiction published in Open Field, Temporary Infinity, The Grin City Monthly, and the anthology Rock & Roll Saved My Soul. As an Editorial Assistant for Sundress, she’s copy-edited the book Picture Dictionary (2014); as a freelance editor she copy-edited the photography book Face It (2013). In the summer of 2012, she attended the Grin City Collective Artist Residency in Iowa. Besides writing, she enjoys theoretical physics, playing piano, ghost-hunting, climbing trees, and drinking good Czech beer. She’s also a scholar of Lewis Carroll.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Lori Lamothe’s “Diary in Irregular Ink”

diarycinirregularinkcover

Witness

Normally, Inquisitorial tribunals were supposed to hear witness testimony
against the accused and base any verdict upon such testimony, but in this case
the only witness called was the accused herself… In the end, Cauchon would
convict her on the cross-dressing charge.
                                                                      —Joan of Arc, a brief biography

The voices always stood off to one side
and when I turned to look at the light head on

it swerved out of vision at the last second, blinding.
You say I’m mad because I cut my hair short,

wore amour into battle—yet the king before
believed he was made of glass, had iron rods

sewn into his clothes so he wouldn’t break.
You want me to kneel before you and dial

the precise combination for femininity—
drape my virginity in white, ravel out my hair

and let you climb until you reach satisfaction.
Listen: before the next feast you will burn

my body three times, sweep my bones
into a sack and hold it under running water.

Listen: tomorrow lightning will tattoo its image
across the executioner’s chest. In every dream

you will wander lost in a landscape of nightmare

—

This selection comes from Lori Lamothe’s chapbook Diary in Irregular Ink, available from ELJ Publications. Purchase your copy here!

Lori Lamothe’s poetry has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, CALYX, cream city review, Emerge Literary Journal, Seattle Review, Stone Highway Review, Third Coast, and other magazines. She is the author a full-length collection, Trace Elements (Aldrich Press), and of two other chapbooks, Camera Obscura (Finishing Line Press) and Ouija in Suburbia (dancing girl press, forthcoming 2015).

Marika von Zellen has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Cornell College (no, not the one in Ithaca). She’s had poetry and fiction published in Open Field, Temporary Infinity, The Grin City Monthly, and the anthology Rock & Roll Saved My Soul. As an Editorial Assistant for Sundress, she’s copy-edited the book Picture Dictionary (2014); as a freelance editor she copy-edited the photography book Face It (2013). In the summer of 2012, she attended the Grin City Collective Artist Residency in Iowa. Besides writing, she enjoys theoretical physics, playing piano, ghost-hunting, climbing trees, and drinking good Czech beer. She’s also a scholar of Lewis Carroll.