This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Gold Hill Family Audio by Corrie Lynn White, released by Southeast Missouri State University Press in 2022.
Instead of Having Kids
I clog on a quarter-inch piece of plywood
at Slick’s fiddle circle on Wednesday nights.
Instead of suffering raw nipples,
I strap on swimming goggles and make soap,
stir lye into a steel pot and run outside
to shovel the valley’s air into my mouth.
In my Civic, I cross Roan Mountain
and describe the silver hill I chase to the teacher
across the hall. The silver is hoar frost, he says,
frozen fog clinging to trees. Instead of watching
the baby’s eyes shift from gray to blue,
we hike to the Walls of Jericho,
step inside a January creek, hide inside
a dead hollow tree and crawl under
a cemetery’s barbed wire.
My friends with babies sing more than ever.
I ask them how quiet the old self becomes—
the self before the child. My sister gets jealous
on Christmas Day when I zip my coat
and walk outside without children running after
to zip-up and carry. The rare sun out,
I only want the North Sea and Roker Pier.
Whichever path you don’t choose
gets lodged somewhere in your throat.
Corrie Lynn White is the author of Gold Hill Family Audio (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2022). A 2021 Tennessee Arts Commission Fellow in Poetry, she is the recipient of the 2013 Amon Liner Poetry Award from the Greensboro Review. Originally from Gold Hill, North Carolina, White currently lives in Chattanooga.
Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.
Doubleback Books announces the release of Joy Ladin’s Impersonation. Previously published in 2015 from The Sheep Meadow Press, and a finalist for the Lamda Literary Award, Impersonation is a collection of poems that chronicles the messy, mysterious, profound, and idiosyncratic gender transition of the speaker. It is a book about the life-long process of becoming. The poems encompass shame and triumph, ecstasy and disappointment, the mundane humiliation of airport security screenings and the miraculous experience of incarnation and fully embodied love. This new edition of Impersonation has been edited with new poems, a new structure, and a new introduction by the author.
Joy Ladin has long worked at the tangled intersection of literature and trans identity. She has published ten books of poetry, including her latest collection, Shekhinah Speaks (Selva Oscura Press, 2022); 2021 National Jewish Book Award winner The Book of Anna (EOAGH); and Lambda Literary Award finalists Impersonation and Transmigration. A new collection, Family, is forthcoming from Persea in 2024. She has also published a memoir of gender transition, National Jewish Book Award finalist Through the Door of Life, and a groundbreaking work of trans theology, Lambda Literary and Triangle Award finalist, The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective. Her writings have been recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship, among other honors. Many of her poems, essays, and videos of her presentations are available at joyladin.wordpress.com.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Gold Hill Family Audio by Corrie Lynn White, released by Southeast Missouri State University Press in 2022.
Morning as Philosophy
This skinny hour—
floor-boards damp with rain
pressed down like piano keys.
I follow them to the sink,
empty but for butter-knives.
Bread gone but the heel.
How I’ve let things dwindle,
let open door-ways whisper
about the better future.
God could change my heart
if I let him hunker down
among the soft grip of summer
and point at that July path I took
to the water dragging kayak.
Water lapped the bank
and it was clear: stay here.
Sun knew no better
than shoulder, petal, leaf.
Turtles risked their balance for a branch.
They did it in pairs.
But on the lake’s edge,
I pushed off and dipped the oar,
decided to be—majorette,
toy working by battery towards coves—
shaded, sewn-in, minnows following after.
Corrie Lynn White is the author of Gold Hill Family Audio (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2022). A 2021 Tennessee Arts Commission Fellow in Poetry, she is the recipient of the 2013 Amon Liner Poetry Award from the Greensboro Review. Originally from Gold Hill, North Carolina, White currently lives in Chattanooga.
Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Gold Hill Family Audio by Corrie Lynn White, released by Southeast Missouri State University Press in 2022.
In Praise of Multitudes
I am looking through the key-hole.
You are pacing past my only light.
When I say you are, you is more
than one. The English language
knows I am looking at a river,
a string of rail cars, a field
of what’s wild. When I say hold on,
the road will turn to gravel;
your muscles won’t soften.
When I say the bottle’s open;
go pour a glass, you slide
the bottoms of your feet
into the kitchen. My dusty floor
might stick to your feet when I say
let’s dance. When I say hush,
the crickets thicken.
Home isn’t where you leave it.
When I say you are, God knows
one isn’t enough: that hope gleans
heaven here and over there –
a girl gone to gather.
Corrie Lynn White is the author of Gold Hill Family Audio (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2022). A 2021 Tennessee Arts Commission Fellow in Poetry, she is the recipient of the 2013 Amon Liner Poetry Award from the Greensboro Review. Originally from Gold Hill, North Carolina, White currently lives in Chattanooga.
Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.
Sundress Publications is currently looking to hire for the position of Sundress Reads Editor. This remote, unpaid position will work with a team of interns and outside reviewers to give feedback on reviews prior to drafting them on WordPress as well as join Sundress Publications in continuing its ongoing commitment to service and the importance of highlighting work from the independent publishing community. Sundress created the blog series, Sundress Reads, which features reviews of recent or forthcoming titles from small presses.
The editor will make sure reviews are assigned out, completed, edited, and drafted online as part of the process. The position will require approximately two hours of work per week.
Preferred qualifications include: • Database management and/or experience in Microsoft Excel • Staff management • WordPress experience
Applicants are welcome to telecommute and therefore are not restricted to living in any particular location. Sundress Publications is staffed entirely by volunteers, so this position, as with all positions at the press, is unpaid. All Sundress staff receive opportunities to attend residencies and retreats at discounted prices, teach in our workshop series, and read for contests and open reading periods.
To apply, please send a CV and a brief cover letter detailing your interest in the position to our Managing Editor, Erin Elizabeth Smith at erin@sundresspublications.com. Applications are due by May 15, 2023. For more information, visit our website.
“These moments are punctuated by the smell of oolong tea, memories / of getting drunk off Blue Wave Vodka at Brian’s house, and hiding / from the cops in your car” (14). Throughout Mother Tongue, lines such as these resurrect. What is resurrected depends on your reading. For me, the tactile details and lush symbolism tore a hole in time, through which I could explore my early heart ruptures, while clasping hands with my co-time traveler, the speaker.
Mother Tongue is a merciless miracle of storytelling. In its pages, readers enter the realms of trauma and passion anew.
This latest installment of Sundress’ We Call Upon the Author Series contains valuable advice for designing and organizing a poetry collection from Layla Lenhardt, the esteemed author of Mother Tongue and a gallery coordinator.
Marah Hoffman: Because I know you are gifted at curating aesthetics, I would love to ask some questions about Mother Tongue’s design. The cover art is perfect for the collection–peculiar and alluring. How did you decide on this image?
Layla Lenhardt: Choosing the cover art was, admittedly, the hardest part of the entire process. I wanted something that really captured what Mother Tongue was. I spent the better part of three months looking at various artists’ websites and pouring through pages of stock images. After sending three contenders to my editor, we made the decision to go with the image we chose for the cover. It just spoke to me in a way I can’t quite explain. But it felt right.
MH: Any advice for others picking cover art?
LL: Don’t settle. Take your time and do your research. The cover of your book represents the entirety of it. It is the first idea that the reader digests, so make sure it is something that really resonates with you and your work.
MH: Would you be willing to explain how you selected titles, for the entire collection and/or individual poems? Choosing titles has always been a challenge for me, but yours feel like essential components, providing texture. One of my favorites was “The Owl Theory.” An awareness of this theory makes readers understand the speaker’s loss so sharply.
LL: Mother Tongue took on many names during its conception. Actually I didn’t decide on the name Mother Tongue until a month or so before I finished it. It had a different name for years. The idea came from a year of my life where I was unable to cry, and I felt that was akin to forgetting how to speak in my mother tongue. Some of the titles of the poems are names of the actual people. Most of them encapsulate the feeling I felt while writing it. I’d choose to reference things and events that I’d find were parallel to the concept of the poem.
MH: What are your main sources of creative inspiration?
LL: I feel the most inspired after listening to music or reading a poetry collection. I think one of my biggest inspirations in writing is Joanna Newsom. Her lyricism is so profound and all encompassing; I always learn a lot from her.
MH: Any recommendations for music, writing prompts, or books?
LL: Joanna Newsom, especially her album Have One On Me. I’d also like to recommend the following poetry books; Refusal by Jenny Molberg, Field Glass by Catherine Pond, and Vantage by Taneum Bambrick.
MH: Reading Mother Tongue, I felt close to the speaker’s lovers through your consistently tactile and tender imagery. I lost them, mourned them, and watched time morph their memory. What are your views on the art of transferring a beloved onto the page? Dos and don’ts?
LL: I think you should only do it if you’re ready, sometimes you have to kill your darlings. I find in transferring these people to the page, it’s showing them a small bit of gratitude for the things they’ve allowed me to feel, which in turn makes me very thankful for even the worst experiences; I find it cathartic.
MH: While the collection flits back and forth between different eras of youth, there is a clear arc. How was the process of organizing the poems? LL: The process of organizing poems was a little arduous. Initially, I wanted to put them in chronological order, but I soon realized that wasn’t the best for the collection. So I printed out each poem and sat on the floor and organized them around me so I could literally visualize how to best curate this collection. I liked to pair pieces that spoke to each other. I also chose to move through the general sentiments and feelings, so I’d select the order based off of pieces that encapsulated each feeling: grief, youth, longing, guilt, etc.
Layla Lenhardt is an American poet currently based out of Indianapolis. She is the author of Mother Tongue (Main Street Rag, 2023) and a 2021 Best of the Net Nominee. She is a 2022 alumna of the SAFTA residency. Her work appears in Rust + Moth, Poetry Quarterly, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and elsewhere. www.laylalenhardt.com
Marah Hoffman is a 2022 graduate with a bachelor’s in English and Creative Writing from Lebanon Valley College. In college, she served as co-poetry editor of Green Blotter Literary Magazine and Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Society president. From the LVC English department, she won The Green Blotter Writer Award. She has been featured in journals including Green Blotter, LUReJournal, Oakland Arts Review, Beyond Thought, and Asterism. Now, she works for the Sundress Academy for the Arts, where she enjoys immersing herself in a new and radiant literary community. Marah loves creative nonfiction, intertextuality, whimsicality, cats, lattes, distance running, and adding to her personal lexicon. Her favorite word changes nearly every week.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts at Firefly Farms, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, is seeking an editorial intern for a six-month position. Each part-time position would consist of approximately 5-10 hours of work per week and run from June 30th, 2023 to January 5th, 2024. All applicants must be local to the greater Knoxville, TN area.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is an entirely volunteer-run organization that hosts residencies, workshops, and retreats centered on creative writing in all genres. Located on a 45-acre farm twenty minutes from downtown Knoxville, SAFTA’s mission is to give writers of all levels a chance to work with nationally renowned professionals in their field as well as uninterrupted time to focus on their creative work.
The editorial intern’s responsibilities include the preparation of documents necessary to run an independent writer’s residency and arts collective, such as writing press releases, composing blogs, proofreading, working with social media (Facebook, WordPress, etc.), collating editorial and residency data, research, and more. The intern will also be needed to help facilitate Zoom readings and events.
Preferred qualifications include:
• A keen eye for proof-reading
• Strong written communication skills
• Experience with WordPress, Zoom, Google Sheets, and/or other online mediums
• Knowledge of contemporary literature a plus
While the internship position is unpaid, our staff gain real-world experience in working with online event planning, nonprofit management, running a residency, communications, and more while creating a portfolio of work for future employment. SAFTA staff work alongside members of both the local and national literary community through workshops and readings, which staff are able to attend for free during their tenure with the organization.
To apply, please send a resume and a brief cover letter detailing your interest in the position to the Staff Director, Z Eihausen, at saftastaffdirector@gmail.com. Applications are due by Monday, June 5th, 2023.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Swan Wife by Sara Moore Wagner, released by Cider Press Review in 2022.
Invasive Species
I can see myself peeling
potatoes in the window, the light
split by the frame in an x
across my brow, a speckled
robin’s egg, my face—we left
the Christmas wreath out
until Spring, and now a bird
has built a nest, Styrofoam
holly berries flank the twigs,
the thin beak of the baby.
How many times has our daughter
pounded through the door and upset
the balance of this world.
Suddenly the driveway
swamps, what were twigs
turn into hollowed out
ash trees, reaching up
like skeletal arms, chewed lifeless
by the emerald ash borer, serpentining
out, all green and jeweled. There
they are, and there is our little
baby, in the pond moss wetland
of the yard, all blonde amidst
the fallen limbs, the jagged lines
of timber. Sometimes she’ll
scare the mother bird out of the nest
with her shouts. She is
separated from us by a door,
by a moment, by a slant
of light and shadow, by life
and death. By god. We’re all just
waiting to crack open
or be emptied out, to be forced
from our homes or windows,
to destroy what we love
because we need it,
because we think
we’re safe.
Sara Moore Wagner is the author of three prize winning full length books of poetry, Lady Wing Shot, winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize (forthcoming in 2024), Swan Wife (Cider Press Review Editors Prize, 2022), and Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize, 2022), and the author of two chapbooks, Tumbling After(Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022) and Hooked Through (2017). She is also a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals and anthologies including Gulf Coast, Smartish Pace, Waxwing, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Cincinnati Review, among others.
Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Swan Wife by Sara Moore Wagner, released by Cider Press Review in 2022.
Housewife as Eve
A drop of blood pools on my finger,
blossoms like a tulip, bulbs and sets,
as the sun. I show it to you.
You prune a ficus benjamina,
weeping fig, it bleeds milky, too—
I say, you’ve never cared about self
or preservation. Every bit of sap
nettles your skin, irritates you, nags
and itches you like I do—the way I can’t
ever let things go. In the garden,
I push all the branches up,
out of reach. I can’t hear anything,
any whispers, eat this—come to it—
just this: A plant knows to sap
upon cutting. My name
means something like settling, like the end
of the day—evening. The sky,
sometimes, looks red and splotchy
like the back of your hand—come
rescue me, if there’s anyone there at all.
Separate me from the land, from man.
I want to lick the wet wound of the earth
until something heals in me
or it, until we stop wanting
to snip it all away.
Sara Moore Wagner is the author of three prize winning full length books of poetry, Lady Wing Shot, winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize (forthcoming in 2024), Swan Wife (Cider Press Review Editors Prize, 2022), and Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize, 2022), and the author of two chapbooks, Tumbling After(Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022) and Hooked Through (2017). She is also a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals and anthologies including Gulf Coast, Smartish Pace, Waxwing, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Cincinnati Review, among others.
Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Swan Wife by Sara Moore Wagner, released by Cider Press Review in 2022.
Domestic Pantoum
The bananas perch in the bowl,
severed as a woman’s hand.
I am undressing in the kitchen,
want you to touch me,
severed as a woman’s hand.
Divorce me, if you want to, I
want you to touch me
right here, in the kitchen lights—
Divorce me if you want, I
know what this looks like
right here, in the kitchen lights—
the knife handles glinting—just
know what this looks like,
it is an even slice, a piece, appealing,
the knife handles glinting—just
where we can see them. A corner, a sigh.
An even slice, a pealing,
unhinge you from your skin, your eyes
where we can see them, cornered, sigh—
How you appear florescent in this light.
Unhinge me from this skin, my eyes
want to see more open windows,
how you appear in this light,
to be alive and not want something,
want to see more open windows,
the vastness of this continual night
to be alive and not want something besides
these bananas, perched—this bowl: mine.
Sara Moore Wagner is the author of three prize winning full length books of poetry, Lady Wing Shot, winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize (forthcoming in 2024), Swan Wife (Cider Press Review Editors Prize, 2022), and Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize, 2022), and the author of two chapbooks, Tumbling After(Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022) and Hooked Through (2017). She is also a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals and anthologies including Gulf Coast, Smartish Pace, Waxwing, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Cincinnati Review, among others.
Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.
