Tag: Darren C. Demaree

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Stevie Edwards’ “Good Grief”

Author Pic 2013

Mending/Poem for Seth Walsh

           I had the idea that the world’s so full of pain
          it must sometimes make a kind of singing.
                 — Robert Hass

Every day people wake with spines in need of mending, nights spent
spooning absence. There’s no sense in cursing at the barista for the
chew of grounds in your latte. Sometimes it’s impossible to get a job
right, especially early mornings, especially when there’s a frontier
of people impatient to leave you. You’ve miscarried jobs before. A
belayer, you made sure the man put his harness on snug, told him if
his foot slipped off the fidgeting cable, you’d hold him flopping around
in the treetops. One foot in front of the other, the stuck pulley, you
should have noticed the slack was too much to save him, no point in
the care you put into the knots. He didn’t slip or sue you. Call this
grace if you can believe in grace today. The news didn’t say what kind
of knot the boy tied. His parents found him with his freckles still on.
It doesn’t matter what kind of tree as long as the boughs were strong
enough to bear him. Perhaps you could’ve moved to California and
told him a faggot is a bundle of twigs, but who’s to say he wasn’t ready
to set himself on fire? Or, you could’ve told him the kids meant he was
a fancy stitch that binds delicate fabrics, old lace to silk, but it’s hard to
feel fancy while bees swarm your eyes. But sometimes the dictionary
is useless, which is what you tell your dad when he says that in Merriam
Webster it says marriage is between a man and a woman. And you don’t
mention too much gin grinding your body against your roommate’s
or the small of a younger woman’s back in the morning but bring
home a law-school-boy from a good family to plan your future over
strawberry pie. The boy probably didn’t drink coffee yet. He might
have grown to make chewy lattes too slowly. Maybe he’d never learn
to sew, hem his pants with staples. What must be true is this: if a boy
hangs from a sturdy branch alone, if wind swings his limbs for hours,
it makes a sound here.

 

—

This selection comes from Stevie Edwards’ book Good Grief, available from Write Bloody Publishing! Purchase your copy here!

Stevie Edwards is a poet, editor, and educator. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Good Grief, was published by Write Bloody in 2012 and subsequently won the Independent Publisher Book Awards Bronze in Poetry and the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award. Her second book, Humanly, is forthcoming from Small Doggies Press in 2015. She is Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine and Acquisitions Editor at YesYes Books. She lives in a castle in Ithaca, NY.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Stevie Edwards’ “Good Grief”

Author Pic 2013

Don’t Call This Tenderness

There’s a shelter in your voice shaped
like a rustbelt factory, some gravel
I could kick into dust.

The air last night was thick remnants
of burnt coffee. We couldn’t get its syrup
off our salty skins.

We were parched and trying
to suckle anything left wet
out of each other. We’d forgotten
about coldness.

I don’t think you noticed the blisters
on my cracked heels
as you pinned them back
beneath your shoulders.

You weren’t the first body to open me
against the damp dread
of summer sheets.

There’s a man on a plane home from Jamaica
who’s claimed the territory of my hip bones
with his lips, named them his
favorite part of a woman.

I’m not the desert type. I need
to see water to believe it’s there.

Sometimes I get confused about the body,
go searching for its ends, ask the dark
skin of a barrel-chested stranger
if it’s ever been mine.

—

This selection comes from Stevie Edwards’ book Good Grief, available from Write Bloody Publishing! Purchase your copy here!

Stevie Edwards is a poet, editor, and educator. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Good Grief, was published by Write Bloody in 2012 and subsequently won the Independent Publisher Book Awards Bronze in Poetry and the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award. Her second book, Humanly, is forthcoming from Small Doggies Press in 2015. She is Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine and Acquisitions Editor at YesYes Books. She lives in a castle in Ithaca, NY.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Stevie Edwards’ “Good Grief”

Author Pic 2013

Enough Light to Harbor

         Where is that sea, that once solved the whole loneliness
         of the Midwest?
                      — James Wright

The vacancy of atheist prayers and too much wine
walk me out to Montrose Harbor.

Dad said that in AA you don’t have to accept God,
just that something is greater than yourself.

I press my palms together, tell the lake
I’ve always had trouble loving the whole

of a man, so I started with the dip in his shoulders
and ended with a strand of hair too dark to be mine.

I bought multivitamins today, which is the opposite
of killing myself. All my dreams are in French,

but I can’t understand the sounds. I say
endless, something about light pollution

and gunshots, two hampers of dirty laundry
and no quarters, a guitar I can’t play.

A man who looks too much like him, all beard
and bones and blue jeans, walks toward me,

then turns. I am the morning’s torn lace
and aches, which will have to be enough.

If I walked into the lake, I don’t think it’d leave.
The lake keeps licking the sand like I like,

which will have to be enough.

—

This selection comes from Stevie Edwards’ book Good Grief, available from Write Bloody Publishing! Purchase your copy here!

Stevie Edwards is a poet, editor, and educator. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Good Grief, was published by Write Bloody in 2012 and subsequently won the Independent Publisher Book Awards Bronze in Poetry and the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award. Her second book, Humanly, is forthcoming from Small Doggies Press in 2015. She is Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine and Acquisitions Editor at YesYes Books. She lives in a castle in Ithaca, NY.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s “Paper, Cotton, Leather”

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Nullipara Song

If it doesn’t happen soon,
it just won’t.

The weight of a smaller hand
fisting my pointer finger.

Toothless smiles humming through
playpen netting.

Matching wallpaper to a duck
or sailboat theme.

Spooning powder cereal to water,
making bowled meals.

With a lean, walking the weighty body
slapping against a hip always.

—

This selection comes from Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s poetry book Paper, Cotton, Leather, available from Press 53! Purchase your copy here!

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of Paper, Cotton, Leather and four chapbooks. Recent poetry has appeared in Redivider, Eleven Eleven, Thrush Poetry Journal, PANK, Rhino, Sixth Finch, ILK, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, and Poemeleon. Recent prose has appeared in The Rumpus, The Toast, and Delirious Hem. She is co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly and an Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State University.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s “Paper, Cotton, Leather”

Paper_Cotton_Leather_cover

Hand Me Down

Cards we played on our honeymoon are still in the pink
suitcase you were too masculine to carry out to the black
trunk of taxi. We thought things don’t change when you leave
home. There, taxis are yellow too. I left the cards you bought,

forgotten by you, in the suitcase you won’t open or touch.
I kept them there, spread out, code-like, as if summoning spirits
to see what we were made of. They are sprawled amongst
slight sand and salt, a bikini I never wore, a toothbrush I bought
the day of the wedding, thinking married, bride teeth must feel

different. I saved them spread out so that when our someday
daughter unearths the suitcase for her class trip
to somewhere foreign, the cards with pictures of half-naked
women will spill out, scatter her young ankles.

—

This selection comes from Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s poetry book Paper, Cotton, Leather, available from Press 53! Purchase your copy here!

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of Paper, Cotton, Leather and four chapbooks. Recent poetry has appeared in Redivider, Eleven Eleven, Thrush Poetry Journal, PANK, Rhino, Sixth Finch, ILK, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, and Poemeleon. Recent prose has appeared in The Rumpus, The Toast, and Delirious Hem. She is co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly and an Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State University.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s “Paper, Cotton, Leather”

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Brocade in the Water Garden

Their hooked lips are sewn
with the thinnest skins.
The mouths open and wait.

It seemed wrong to take
the picture. You were too close.
It seemed like a cheap move.

I stood over them. My reflection
off their slimy orange, wanting
their heads to sink.

I would say I saw before you
the stippled mouths move
toward the lens and shudder.

—

This selection comes from Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s poetry book Paper, Cotton, Leather, available from Press 53! Purchase your copy here!

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of Paper, Cotton, Leather and four chapbooks. Recent poetry has appeared in Redivider, Eleven Eleven, Thrush Poetry Journal, PANK, Rhino, Sixth Finch, ILK, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, and Poemeleon. Recent prose has appeared in The Rumpus, The Toast, and Delirious Hem. She is co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly and an Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State University.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s “Paper, Cotton, Leather”

Paper_Cotton_Leather_cover

Failed Bearings

One weekend morning I mark
our woods with a trail while
you’re steeping in the shower.

The trail flails and is a comet,
a centipede curled into his death.
The symmetry is a hive.

As you dry off, I tell you: leave
behind the compass, the barometer,
the metal detector. Figure it out on your own.

I guide you to the trail’s mouth
and fire the emergency kit flare gun.
We needed the dramatic beginning.

My distress signal is a traitor,
listens to itself, pings out, diving
to bury itself in a stack of leaves.

Tapping a fingernail on my father’s
stopwatch hanging from my neck,
I ache for your failure. I refuse you clues.

I await your unsafe return. Without
breakfast, I imagine you hungry and weak.
I believe you’ll eat my patient display.

—

This selection comes from Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s poetry book Paper, Cotton, Leather, available from Press 53! Purchase your copy here!

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of Paper, Cotton, Leather and four chapbooks. Recent poetry has appeared in Redivider, Eleven Eleven, Thrush Poetry Journal, PANK, Rhino, Sixth Finch, ILK, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, and Poemeleon. Recent prose has appeared in The Rumpus, The Toast, and Delirious Hem. She is co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly and an Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State University.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s “Paper, Cotton, Leather”

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Forgiveness Act

My doppelganger would never let this happen. She’d
swap her frilled dress for your groom pants at the
altar. She’d fling her fickle body into cartwheels down
the flowered aisle, those hired-for-the-day instru-
ments sighing at her back like some flimsy net she
didn’t hear. No one in the audience would know what
comes next so they’ll grip their hands to fight their
own applause.

From this day forward she would remember every
grocery list in her head, eat slick doughnuts only to
be reminded of symmetry, let every first date feel
her up in the backseat before the date, trash old
tickets from movies and planes. She remembers
without them.

She would take up tightrope walking to hear the
bottoms of her feet slide across wire, devote practice
time to cartwheels and splits, her specialties. After
her first performance, she will look down to you
from her glittered perch, and since she can’t feel,
you have and hold all the applause for her. You hoard
it in a jar, your souvenir.

—

This selection comes from Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s poetry book Paper, Cotton, Leather, available from Press 53! Purchase your copy here!

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of Paper, Cotton, Leather and four chapbooks. Recent poetry has appeared in Redivider, Eleven Eleven, Thrush Poetry Journal, PANK, Rhino, Sixth Finch, ILK, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, and Poemeleon. Recent prose has appeared in The Rumpus, The Toast, and Delirious Hem. She is co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly and an Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State University.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Natalia Treviño’s “Lavando La Dirty Laundry”

Natalia Trevino

From Natalia Treviño’s book “Lavando La Dirty Laundry”

Tortilla Skins

In the hot light of your kitchen, ’Uelita, you show me how to
press the thick dough against your popping, aluminum table.
Your hands the size of the tortillas to come, willing the mass to
open as a soft disk. My hands too small to maneuver, to stretch
over it, to pull the dry powder in. I was fifteen and knew you
were happy. Years after ‘Buelito had died, you were a new kind of
woman. Certain eyes. Laughing, traveling, playing cards. Able to
wake and say no, to skip the simmering heat of guisados and
flame-burnt tortillas by the main noon meal. Bake a cake instead,
at night. Crochet and smoke at the same time. Speak up around
the men. Accept a small glass of beer. The dough as cool as your
hands, your red fingernails disappear into the ball. Would you
remarry? I ask. You are quick to answer. Yes, it is ugly to live
alone. Your fingers have memorized this motion, the bend of this
mass. All I can think is how wives in Mexico flail in sick waters, in
tired, wakeful oceans, choppy white crests salting their faces,
silenced and gasping by the slap of spray. Romantic novella
endings are kneaded into the eyes and ears of their daughters,
spiteful neighborhood chisme, the sealing orders from men, sons,
brothers, husbands. The time folds on your face, ’Uelita, the veins
rise on the back of your hands. Portraits in your living room,
bridal framed faces, faint as shells at the end of a flat beach,
stripped of color by the brine of dry sunlight, waiting for the tide
to soak them, turn them, or swallow them. Bone pushing out the
skin at the back of your neck, you bend to your yes it is ugly to
live alone. And we press our tortilla skins to the heat, their faces
down, to cook.

—

This selection comes from Natalia Trevino’s book Lavando La Dirty Laundry, available from Mongrel Empire Press! Find more details about the book here!

Born in Mexico City and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Natalia Treviño was raised in Spanish by her parents while Bert and Ernie gave her English lessons on the side. Natalia is an Associate Professor of English at Northwest Vista College and a member of the Macondo Foundation, a writer’s workshop aimed at encouraging non-violent social change.  She graduated from UTSA’s graduate English and The University of Nebraska’s MFA in Creative Writing programs. Her poetry has won the Alfredo Moral de Cisneros Award for Emerging Writers from Sandra Cisneros, the Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award, the 2008 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and the San Antonio Artists Foundation Literary Award. Natalia’s fiction has appeared in Curbstone Press’s Mirrors Beneath the Earth and The Platte Valley Review. Nonfiction essays are included in the Wising Up Anthologies, Shifting Balance Sheets: Women’s Stories of Naturalized Citizens and Complex Allegiances: Constellations of Immigration. She is currently finishing her novel, La Cruzada. Often working the community programs to increase young adult literacy, she has taught classes at women’s and children’s shelters as well as teen detention centers. Having experienced a bi-national and bicultural life, she hopes to raise understanding between people divided by arbitrary borders. She lives with her husband, Stewart and son, Stuart just outside of San Antonio, Texas.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Natalia Treviño’s “Lavando La Dirty Laundry”

LavandoCover#1

From Natalia Treviño’s book “Lavando La Dirty Laundry”

Lavando La Dirty Laundry

’Uelita, we were kneading the flour on your metal kitchen table
when you told me my grandfather had girlfriends.

Measuring granules of salt. You said it explained the day
he threw your ironing into the mud.

There you were, holding the steaming
iron in your hot cement house.

You heard a fellow at the front door, calling for my grandfather
Raul! Raul! Raul? And you let the man in,

seated him in your home,
offered him agua fresca, for the heat.

’Uelito arrives in that moment.
Sees you handing

the fellow a drink,
screams, ¡Lárgate de aquí!

Get Out!

Get Out!
¡Hijo de su madre! ¡Cabron!

Throwing the man and your fresh, hot whites
into the muddy street.

33And he did not speak
to you for days. Left you to guess

what the fellow had done.
Your pile of laundry

flung to a trampled mess.
You gathered it,

left it sagging, soaking in a bucket
for days while the rain kept you from washing again.

Years later, after ’Uelito died,
the fellow came again:

He thought you were cheating with me, he said.
I’d seen him with a girl.

And he thought you and I were
like them.

You tell me this and press the dough into the tin
clang of the table, a metal heart yielding below your fingers.

—

This selection comes from Natalia Trevino’s book Lavando La Dirty Laundry, available from Mongrel Empire Press! Find more details about the book here!

Born in Mexico City and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Natalia Treviño was raised in Spanish by her parents while Bert and Ernie gave her English lessons on the side. Natalia is an Associate Professor of English at Northwest Vista College and a member of the Macondo Foundation, a writer’s workshop aimed at encouraging non-violent social change.  She graduated from UTSA’s graduate English and The University of Nebraska’s MFA in Creative Writing programs. Her poetry has won the Alfredo Moral de Cisneros Award for Emerging Writers from Sandra Cisneros, the Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award, the 2008 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and the San Antonio Artists Foundation Literary Award. Natalia’s fiction has appeared in Curbstone Press’s Mirrors Beneath the Earth and The Platte Valley Review. Nonfiction essays are included in the Wising Up Anthologies, Shifting Balance Sheets: Women’s Stories of Naturalized Citizens and Complex Allegiances: Constellations of Immigration. She is currently finishing her novel, La Cruzada. Often working the community programs to increase young adult literacy, she has taught classes at women’s and children’s shelters as well as teen detention centers. Having experienced a bi-national and bicultural life, she hopes to raise understanding between people divided by arbitrary borders. She lives with her husband, Stewart and son, Stuart just outside of San Antonio, Texas.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.