This selection, chosen by guest editor Amber Alexander, is from The Curator's Notes by Robin Rosen Chang, released by Terrapin Books in 2021.
Moon
Today I helped bury someone I love,
and now I resent the moon.
My brother said it looks
like it’s been smoking dope.
I think it’s laughing up there.
I think it’s an indestructible clock, its tick
clicking it forward at what should be
a constant speed.
But it keeps going faster.
Robin Rosen Chang is the author of the full-length poetry collection, The Curator’s Notes (Terrapin Books). Her poems appear in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, Diode, North American Review, The Cortland Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of the Oregon Poetry Association’s Fall 2018 Poets’ Choice Award, an honorable mention for Spoon River Poetry Review‘s 2019 Editors’ Prize, and a 2021 Pushcart nominee. She has an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Amber Alexander, who publishes creative work as e. holloway, is a poet based in Ohio. They currently work in higher education and as an Assistant Editor for Best Of The Net within Sundress Publications. Alexander is a former Editorial Intern for Sundress Publications, former Editorial Board Member for Cornfield Review, and was a Sundress Academy for The Arts Writing Resident in 2023. Their work has been published by Cornfield Review and earned multiple awards during undergrad at The Ohio State University.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Amber Alexander, is from The Curator's Notes by Robin Rosen Chang, released by Terrapin Books in 2021.
The Snake
Listen here. Blame me,
then Eve all you want,
but it was Adam. Putting on
a show of innocence,
as if following Eve’s lead.
She’d allegedly seized my advice—
Ridiculous! Adam was
never smart, lazed around
while Eve tended the flowers,
trees, all the creatures.
She was kind, even to me,
unrattled by my cosmetics,
my forked tongue—no
more symbolic than Adam’s rib.
Careful where she stepped,
she didn’t hurt a living thing.
And generous. She let Adam play
with her long hair, tangle it
into knots when he was bored,
which was often,
so he wouldn’t keep spilling
his seed, which by itself
was useless.
The garden—
what did he do for it?
Or give her? At night,
babbling about himself,
in the morning, complaining,
too much birdsong,the squirrels’ chatter, foolish.
Later, the chickens’ eggs, very yolky,
so he dropped them by mistake,
the goats’ milk, too sweet,
so he tossed it,
peppers, too yellow,
and that apple—so red,
off limits?
He didn’t
heed our warning.
Sank his teeth in—
then claimed it
too soft.
Robin Rosen Chang is the author of the full-length poetry collection, The Curator’s Notes (Terrapin Books). Her poems appear in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, Diode, North American Review, The Cortland Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of the Oregon Poetry Association’s Fall 2018 Poets’ Choice Award, an honorable mention for Spoon River Poetry Review‘s 2019 Editors’ Prize, and a 2021 Pushcart nominee. She has an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Amber Alexander, who publishes creative work as e. holloway, is a poet based in Ohio. They currently work in higher education and as an Assistant Editor for Best Of The Net within Sundress Publications. Alexander is a former Editorial Intern for Sundress Publications, former Editorial Board Member for Cornfield Review, and was a Sundress Academy for The Arts Writing Resident in 2023. Their work has been published by Cornfield Review and earned multiple awards during undergrad at The Ohio State University.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Amber Alexander, is from The Curator's Notes by Robin Rosen Chang, released by Terrapin Books in 2021.
Riptide
My mother’s arm reaches
out of the water
and slides back in.
Then the other arm. Repeatedly,
they appear and disappear
as they move her through the turbulent ocean.
She’s swimming diagonal to the shoreline,
almost like someone
caught in a riptide.
But she’s not. She’s going calmly—
of her own volition, retreating
from the beach where I lie.
I squeeze my shut eyes hard.
A sliver of her face
appears, a waning moon,
when her head turns
after every second stroke. Her mouth opens
just enough
to pull in air that holds life in her.
Fixed on something
she seems to see,
she keeps going.
She doesn’t struggle.
The current
doesn’t batter her.
It doesn’t carry her off.
She’s a white spot in the water—
she’s taking herself away—
Robin Rosen Chang is the author of the full-length poetry collection, The Curator’s Notes (Terrapin Books). Her poems appear in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, Diode, North American Review, The Cortland Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of the Oregon Poetry Association’s Fall 2018 Poets’ Choice Award, an honorable mention for Spoon River Poetry Review‘s 2019 Editors’ Prize, and a 2021 Pushcart nominee. She has an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Amber Alexander, who publishes creative work as e. holloway, is a poet based in Ohio. They currently work in higher education and as an Assistant Editor for Best Of The Net within Sundress Publications. Alexander is a former Editorial Intern for Sundress Publications, former Editorial Board Member for Cornfield Review, and was a Sundress Academy for The Arts Writing Resident in 2023. Their work has been published by Cornfield Review and earned multiple awards during undergrad at The Ohio State University.
Welcome back to Lyric Essentials, where we invite authors to share the work of their favorite poets. This month, Matthew Johnson joins us to discuss the work of E Ethelbert Miller, place-based writing, and baseball in poetry and how surprising topics and discuss much broader themes. As always, we hope you enjoy as much as we did.
Ryleigh Wann: When was the first time you read E. Ethelbert Miller’s work? Why did it stand out to you then?
Matthew Johnson: I first came across E. Ethelbert Miller’s work while I was a graduate student at UNC-Greensboro, so around 2018-2019. I don’t remember how exactly I first saw his name, but I was immediately drawn to his poetry collection by the title itself, If God Invented Baseball; I found it to be creative, as well as his choice for a cover photo, which featured a picture of the legendary Negro League pitcher, Satchel Paige, who is one of my favorite all-time athletes and individuals to have studied and read about. Years later I bought the book, but I initially read it through an inter-library loan; I remember the librarian kinda having this puzzled look when I told them the title of the book, as well as the title of the movie I was checking out at the same time, The Last Black Man in San Francisco. I was really struck by the fact that here was a poet using the sport of baseball to talk about childhood, home, race, politics, and place. Since the ancient Olympics, sports have not just been purely about sports, and at the time, I had seen and read countless articles, documentaries, and non-fiction books about sports mixing with other topics, but not in a poetry book, so to go this collection for the first time was a vastly different experience from the literature I was reading and studying at the time.
MJ: I was fairly new to the publishing world when I came across Miller’s work. Prior to reading If God Invented Baseball, while I had written poems with a focus on different topics around sports, I had yet to come across an author who dedicated a whole collection of poems based on these similar topics. After reading Miller’s work, it instilled in me a spirit that, ‘yeah, people would be interested in reading about these types of topics if you write about it.’ But, while he talks about these athletes who a lot of people know about, Miller personalizes it to his upbringing and background, which I think is important and allows a writer’s voice to come out. I don’t think it can just be about the athlete or sport; the writer needs to be in there somehow, and Miller does a great job at that. It also stirred in me to go out and research and find like-minded readers and writers. There are a bunch of great magazines out there where athletics and literature blend together (e.g, The Sport Literate, The Under Review, Clinch, The Twin Bill, Words & Sports Quarterly, Aethlon).
RW: Where would you recommend new readers of E. Ethelbert Miller’s work start out? What other similar poets do you recommend?
MJ: Several poems by E. Ethelbert Miller can be found on Poetry Foundation and Poets.org, so I think that would be a good place for readers to get started with his work and style. I greatly enjoyed, If God Invented Baseball, and even if you’re not a baseball fan, readers could still take pleasure within it. Two poetry collections I read within the past several years that are a little similar would be, Joe DiMaggio Moves Like Liquid Lightning by Loren Broaddus and Aisle 228 by Sandra Marchetti. These poetry collections, like the work of Miller, use baseball to discuss broader themes that don’t just pertain to sports. I especially enjoyed the aspect of place in their works as they are both writers from the Midwest. I thought each presents that part of the country in an intriguing light to someone who is very unfamiliar with it, as I have only lived on the East Coast.
RW: You’re the author of the recent publication, Far From New York State (New York Quarterly Press, 2023). What was the process of creating this collection like? How did you reflect on place, history, and your own experience while writing these poems?
MJ: Having moved around a bit, I have always been fascinated by the idea of regionalism. In the final semester of my graduate career, I was in an early American Literature class and for the final presentation, my topic focused on the works of Washington Irving. I had heard of his famed characters, Rip Van Winkle, Ichabod Crane, and the Headless Horseman, but I never really read his work until then, and I greatly enjoyed reading his Sketch Book.And it was through research, I kinda went down a wormhole and was inspired by artists and writers of New York, and not from the city, but from the rest of the state. Even though New York City is wonderful, there’s a whole bunch of state and experience and beauty north of it, including the parts where I am originally from (New Rochelle in Westchester County). I wanted to write about these experiences, and I looked inward as well as outward, specifically to my parents, who spent the majority of their lives in Westchester County (New Rochelle and Mount Vernon) and have told me countless stories of their childhood and early adulthood. And though my experience wasn’t as vast as theirs, I did have some, including when I returned to New York in adulthood to work in journalism in Oneonta (between Albany and Binghamton). So I wanted to talk about these histories, as well as the histories of the people who inspired me, including in the form of literature, music, and sports.
E. Ethelbert Miller was born in the Bronx, New York. A self-described “literary activist,” Miller is on the board of the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive multi-issue think tank, and has served as director of the African American Studies Resource Center at Howard University since 1974. His collections of poetry include Andromeda (1974) and How We Sleep on the Nights We Don’t Make Love (2004), among others. The mayor of Baltimore made Miller an honorary citizen of the city in 1994. He received a Columbia Merit Award in 1993 and was honored by First Lady Laura Bush at the White House in 2003. Miller has held positions as scholar-in-residence at George Mason University and as the Jessie Ball DuPont Scholar at Emory & Henry College. He has conducted writing workshops for soldiers and the families of soldiers through Operation Homecoming and is the founder and director of the Ascension Poetry Reading Series, one of the oldest literary series in the Washington area.
Matthew Johnson is the author of Shadow Folks and Soul Songs (Kelsay Books) and Far from New York State (New York Quarterly Press). His forthcoming chapbook, Too Short to Box with God, is scheduled for a November 2024 release through Finishing Line Press. His work has appeared in Front Porch Review, Roanoke Review, Northern New England Review, South Florida Poetry Journal Up the Staircase Quarterly, and elsewhere. A former sports journalist and editor (The USA Today College, The Daily Star in Oneonta, NY), he has also been a Sundress Publications Residency recipient and a multi-time Best of the Net nominee. An M.A. graduate of UNC-Greensboro, Matthew is currently the managing editor of The Portrait of New England and the poetry editor of The Twin Bill. You can view more of his work and his social media platforms at his website: www.matthewjohnsonpoetry.com
Ryleigh Wann (she/her) hails from Michigan and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. She earned an MFA from UNC Wilmington where she taught poetry and served as the comics editor for Ecotone. Her writing can be found in The McNeese Review, Longleaf Review, The Shore, and elsewhere. You can visit her website at ryleighwann.com
Melissa Valentine’s The Names of All The Flowers is dedicated to her late older brother, Junior. The memoir serves a devastating reminder that gun violence statistics refer to people (often young men of color) who are loved by many and sometimes suffocated by deep-rooted, systemic challenges in the United States.
In 1990’s Oakland, young Melissa and Junior are two of six children born to a white Quaker man and a Black woman from the deep South. Valentine grips readers from the beginning with prose that sings: “Oakland is home. It is where I was born. It is where I live. Home is where I live and where your heart is supposed to be. Oakland is graffiti and blood-stained cement; it is redwoods and eucalyptus trees; it is rolling hills and the silver, undulating San Francisco Bay that reminds you that you are on the edge, that you are small” (17). She often lingers in a child-like present tense POV; for example, Valentine writes, “I’ve waited all morning for the sun to come out and am celebrating its arrival on the front steps with my dolls. The front door to our house bursts open. A gap-toothed, oversunned Junior fires from it” (18). Here, she drops the reader into the story at an age where she is innocent and deeply admires her older brother, who is still a young boy himself.
As Valentine gets older, she floats in and out of the naive narrator voice. She begins to notice things about her older brother, writing, “Doing bad things gets you something like attention. Junior had always been recalcitrant––it is his way––but there had been a subtle shift in him since he started middle school” ( Valentine 44). What starts as stealing snacks from neighbors grows into Junior erecting a tough exterior after he starts getting bullied at school. As the incidents grow more intense, his parents try to keep him safe, shuffling him from school to school, hoping that he will land in a better, safer environment. After a violent beating leaves him with bruised ribs, eyes, and a limp, Junior tells his sister he plans to fight back. Valentine’s narrator begins to understand her brother’s situation, yet worries about his safety. She writes, “This is social warfare. This is high school. This is becoming a man. I can feel the fervor in his words, but also the split: my soft brother Junior and the Junior who must survive. Not fighting is not an option. But how will he win against all those boys?” ( Valentine 83). Here, the reader can feel Valentine maturing as she begins to piece together what it means for her brother to be teetering on the edge between boy and man.
Valentine artfully uses time to structure the book in a way that lets the reader know right from the first page that Junior won’t make it to adulthood, “I see my brother Junior as if he were alive before me. I see him everywhere” (7). By including an introduction that begins in the relative present, she avoids all tropes that might lure the reader into turning pages just to know if Junior will make it or not. She gives away nearly the whole synopsis by page five.
So why keep reading?
Because, twenty years after her brother is killed, gun violence is still rampant in the United States, taking lives senselessly. As I sit here, writing this in Harlem, there have been over 400 shootings in Manhattan this year, including three separate incidents in one weekend: a 15-year-old boy playing basketball in Riverbank State Park and a 5-year-old girl sitting in a parked car in the Bronx, outside a vigil for her late 26-year-old neighbor––who had also been shot at the same location just one day prior.
The Names of All the Flowers uses Junior’s story to force the reader to think critically about gun violence and the school-to-prison pipeline, but it is more than a political statement. In Valentine’s words, “This book is an ode to our collective grief and trauma. It deserves to have a name. It deserves discussion…Burying young people should not be so normal. And yet, we all touch it. We are deeply hurt by it. This book is for all who have touched this and all who suffer in silent trauma and grief either directly or indirectly. Therefore, this book is for all of us” (9).
The book is in intimate portrayal of a boy and a family broken by the very systems meant to protect them.
Heather Domenicis (she/her) is an Upper Manhattan based writer and editor moonlighting at a tech startup. She holds an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction from The New School and her words appear in Hobart, JAKE, and [sub]liminal. Born in a jail, she is writing a memoir about all that comes with that. She sometimes tweets @heatherlynnd11.
A deep passion for art has been at the forefront of my life for as long as I can remember. As a young girl, reading was my escape from a lack of popularity in school and food on the table at home. Books continue to offer a sense of safety for me via the enclosed worlds of print on paper even now, as my twenty-fifth birthday encroaches ever nearer. I’ve made a habit in my adult life of reading everything, not just books. Stories, poems, articles, captions, and even informational stickers are all free game in my ongoing love affair with words. I read SciShow and New York Times articles like they’re going out of style, and the end is nowhere in sight.
I remember the first play I ever read, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and I hated it. I was a high school freshman expected to understand Shakespeare’s nuanced themes and antiquated diction, but I failed to understand the point. It wasn’t until college, in fact, that two professors took special care to show me what I was missing. Under their tutelage, I fell in love with the Bard and began reading, writing, acting, and teaching about Shakespeare’s plays. This journey through literature sparked a longing in me that I never knew existed: to consume it all. I made it my mission to eat up every piece of writing the world has to offer, even the things I know I won’t agree with or enjoy reading, all for the sake of learning.
Today, I adhere to this idea of consumption as if it were my religion. I use others’ writings to make myself a more informed, diversified writer, and I’ve never felt more confident as an artist. I study the intersection of literature and other forms of art like painting and film, and I do it for fun!
This insistence on knowing everything motivates me to submit my writing and to continue doing so even when doubt and rejection whisper their nasty words into my ear. It’s what brought me here, to the Sundress family, and I have no doubt it will push me further into my life as a successful artist. I owe those professors, and myself, an abundance of gratitude for pushing me when I was glued to the floor, and everything I do is permeated with that gratitude even today, even tomorrow, and hopefully forever.
Kenli Doss holds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Amber Alexander, is from The Curator's Notes by Robin Rosen Chang, released by Terrapin Books in 2021.
My Mother Was Water
She used to say they didn’t know how
she got pregnant with me
because my father was married to his work.
I think about them,
how he and his work might have dined together—
my father in his blue and white polka-dotted bowtie
across from work, a mess demanding,
Look at me! I need you to do this now!—
and where they would’ve slept, the space
work took up in bed. But really, I knew
my mother, so turbulent. She was
water—a river, torrid,
and trying to flow uphill,
and he, a dam at the bottom
imploring gravity—Pull down
her wild current!
I think I was a pebble between them,
too light to lodge myself
in the silt. I decided to be a fish,
brown and speckled,
to camouflage myself in mud and rocks.
Refusing to swim
upstream or downstream, I wondered
about land—how hospitable it might be.
Robin Rosen Chang is the author of the full-length poetry collection, The Curator’s Notes (Terrapin Books). Her poems appear in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, Diode, North American Review, The Cortland Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of the Oregon Poetry Association’s Fall 2018 Poets’ Choice Award, an honorable mention for Spoon River Poetry Review‘s 2019 Editors’ Prize, and a 2021 Pushcart nominee. She has an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Amber Alexander, who publishes creative work as e. holloway, is a poet based in Ohio. They currently work in higher education and as an Assistant Editor for Best Of The Net within Sundress Publications. Alexander is a former Editorial Intern for Sundress Publications, former Editorial Board Member for Cornfield Review, and was a Sundress Academy for The Arts Writing Resident in 2023. Their work has been published by Cornfield Review and earned multiple awards during undergrad at The Ohio State University.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Amber Alexander, is from The Girl Who Talked to Paintings by Shannon K. Winston, released by Glass Lyre Press in 2021.
Marbles V
I cherish their slow,
hesitant rolls
and wobbles
across the floor
the most.
It’s something
about their
deliberate
trajectory toward
an uncertain
destination
that reminds me
of myself.
Is this how
my mother felt,
watching me walk
for the first time?
One foot, then . . .
then the other.
Each step its own
miracle after all
those months
in the hospital.
Or did she feel only fear
as she whispered:
Will she make it
to the other side
of the room?
Shannon K. Winston’s book, The Girl Who Talked to Paintings (Glass Lyre Press), was published in 2021. Her individual poems have appeared in Bracken, Cider Press Review, On the Seawall, RHINO Poetry, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and lives in Bloomington, IN.
Amber Alexander, who publishes creative work as e. holloway, is a poet based in Ohio. They currently work in higher education and as an Assistant Editor for Best Of The Net within Sundress Publications. Alexander is a former Editorial Intern for Sundress Publications, former Editorial Board Member for Cornfield Review, and was a Sundress Academy for The Arts Writing Resident in 2023. Their work has been published by Cornfield Review and earned multiple awards during undergrad at The Ohio State University.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Amber Alexander, is from The Girl Who Talked to Paintings by Shannon K. Winston, released by Glass Lyre Press in 2021.
Flower Girl
John Singer Sargent, Polly Barnard,
Study for “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose”
After the ceremony our father whisked us away,
dropped us off in a parking lot on the side of the highway
before returning to the reception.
We waited (seconds? minutes?
hours?) for our mother to pick us up.
Heat lightning ripped through the sky
as semis whirred past us,
stirring up plastic bags and cigarette butts
at our feet. Standing perfectly still,
we resembled old dolls
stowed away, brushed seamlessly
into my father’s past.
Our best thrift store dresses
clung to our stomachs. Sweat curved into
crescent moons under our arms,
where threads frayed.
How we had stepped down the aisle
just hours before with white lilies.
We had scattered them slowly, feeling
each petal slip through our fingertips, as if
we were offering up a small part of ourselves.
Years later, in the Tate Museum,
I gazed at Sargent’s Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose
and suddenly recalled that night.
How I wished I had leaned over
and whispered to my sister: Close your eyes,
you be Lily, I’ll be Rose.
If only we’d had our own
makeshift lanterns into which we could
have thrown bottle caps,
gum wrappers, and glass.
We would have watched it all smolder.
We would have transformed
the parking lot into our own garden
where cut flowers find new roots
and girls like us are given a second chance.
Shannon K. Winston’s book, The Girl Who Talked to Paintings (Glass Lyre Press), was published in 2021. Her individual poems have appeared in Bracken, Cider Press Review, On the Seawall, RHINO Poetry, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and lives in Bloomington, IN.
Amber Alexander, who publishes creative work as e. holloway, is a poet based in Ohio. They currently work in higher education and as an Assistant Editor for Best Of The Net within Sundress Publications. Alexander is a former Editorial Intern for Sundress Publications, former Editorial Board Member for Cornfield Review, and was a Sundress Academy for The Arts Writing Resident in 2023. Their work has been published by Cornfield Review and earned multiple awards during undergrad at The Ohio State University.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Amber Alexander, is from The Girl Who Talked to Paintings by Shannon K. Winston, released by Glass Lyre Press in 2021.
Birdcage and Shadows
Imogen Cunningham, photograph
Imagine your loneliness
is a room with shadows
of leaves projected onto
whitewashed walls.
It’s easier for you
to picture your feelings
cinematically, to project
them outside
of yourself and watch
them reel by.
As if they never belonged
to you, as if someone
else has trouble finding her
footing in the world.
My hands are cold,
you replied, when a man
said he loved you. Or,
I’m not sure I understandthe question, when a friend
asked what you desired most.
Project, from proicere,
to expel or abandon.
In this room, there’s an empty
birdcage with bent bars.
Did the bird, like you,
try to hurl itself out
of this domestic scene
in search of something
else to care for?
Look, in the foreground,
there’s an outline of a boy.
If you had been more
maternal, you might have
loved him—his rounded
cheeks, his soft nose.
Yes, that might have been enough.
Shannon K. Winston’s book, The Girl Who Talked to Paintings (Glass Lyre Press), was published in 2021. Her individual poems have appeared in Bracken, Cider Press Review, On the Seawall, RHINO Poetry, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and lives in Bloomington, IN.
Amber Alexander, who publishes creative work as e. holloway, is a poet based in Ohio. They currently work in higher education and as an Assistant Editor for Best Of The Net within Sundress Publications. Alexander is a former Editorial Intern for Sundress Publications, former Editorial Board Member for Cornfield Review, and was a Sundress Academy for The Arts Writing Resident in 2023. Their work has been published by Cornfield Review and earned multiple awards during undergrad at The Ohio State University.
