My mom dated a boy whose family was in the mafia, which means on their dates down the road to get softserve at Humdinger he’d pass off a new stereo or a gold watch to help the trail run cold. Maybe this soured her on boys: maybe she knew she liked girls then—the one taking their order swirling ice cream better on her cone than his, getting the cherry dip just right. Only one drip fell on her thumb; she was quick to lick it off before he could.
This selection comes from the book, Lineage, available from Dancing Girl Press & Studio. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Natalie Giarratano .
Emily Holland is a lesbian poet pursuing her MFA at American University. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and two Pushcart Prizes. She has work appearing or forthcoming in publications including bedfellows, Screen Door Review, FOLIO, and Nat. Brut. Her poems explore themes of queerness, place, familial lineage, and investigate the Southern pastoral. She works at The Writer’s Center, where she is currently the managing editor for Poet Lore.
NatalieGiarratano is the author of Big Thicket Blues (Sundress Publications, 2017) and Leaving Clean, winner of the 2013 Liam Rector First Book Prize in Poetry (Briery Creek Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, Tinderbox, and American Literary Review, among others. She edits and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her partner and daughter and is the city’s poet laureate.
Geophagia You say the smell of pavement after it rains is how dirt tastes down South and I ask what dirt because the South I know doesn’t have dirt, it has red clay. You say it was white dirt you ate after you saw some of the older folks in town eating white dirt and it was just something everyone did. I don’t know about white dirt, but I know about clay and I know clay doesn’t taste like anything once you mold it into bowls and let it dry in the sun so you can drink rainwater from the Twelve Mile Creek. Clay ain’t white, you say, and I tell you I never ate clay and you ask why and I say because no one else did.
This selection comes from the book, Lineage, available from Dancing Girl Press & Studio. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Natalie Giarratano .
Emily Holland is a lesbian poet pursuing her MFA at American University. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and two Pushcart Prizes. She has work appearing or forthcoming in publications including bedfellows, Screen Door Review, FOLIO, and Nat. Brut. Her poems explore themes of queerness, place, familial lineage, and investigate the Southern pastoral. She works at The Writer’s Center, where she is currently the managing editor for Poet Lore.
NatalieGiarratano is the author of Big Thicket Blues (Sundress Publications, 2017) and Leaving Clean, winner of the 2013 Liam Rector First Book Prize in Poetry (Briery Creek Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, Tinderbox, and American Literary Review, among others. She edits and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her partner and daughter and is the city’s poet laureate.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present a First Friday Variety Show on Friday, February 7, 2020 from 7-9PM at The Casual Pint, Downtown. This free event, hosted by JoAnna Brooker, will feature musicians Redd Daugherty and Ryan Dunaway, poets Brynn Martin and Summer Awad, and comedians Ana Tantaris, Clinton Ricks, and Emaleigh Kierstin.
There will be raffle drawings to win a six-pack provided by the Pint, koozies, and Sundress Publications titles, and there will be a donation jar by the bar in support of Sundress. A portion of the sales of Miller Lite drafts during the event will be donated to Sundress Academy for the Arts.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is a writer’s residency that hosts workshops, retreats, and residencies for writers in all genres including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, journalism, academic writing, playwriting, and more. All are guided by experienced instructors from a variety of creative disciplines who are dedicated to cultivating the literary arts in East Tennessee.
Sundress Publications is pleased to announce that we are now open for submissions for our poetry broadside contest.
The winner’s poem will be letterpress-printed as an 8.5” x 11” broadside and made available for sale on our online store. The winner will receive $200 and 20 copies of their broadside.
To submit, send up to three poems, no longer than 30 lines each (line limit includes stanza breaks but not the title), in one Word or PDF document to contest@sundresspublications.com by March 31st, 2020. Be sure to include a copy of your payment receipt or purchase order number (see below for payment of fees). Please make sure that no identifying information is included in the submitted poems.
The reading fee is $10 per batch of three poems, though the fee will be waived for entrants who purchase or pre-order any Sundress title. We will also accept nominations for entrants, provided the nominating person either pays the reading fee or makes a qualifying purchase. Authors may submit and/or nominate as many manuscripts as they would like, so long as each is accompanied by a separate reading fee or purchase/pre-order. Entrants and nominators can place book orders or pay submission fees at our store. Once the purchase is made, the store will send a receipt with a code. This code should be included in the submission.
Previously published material is welcome so long as you maintain the rights to the work. Let us know in your cover letter if any of your submitted poems have been previously published.
Poems translated from another language will not be accepted. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but we ask that authors notify us immediately if their work has been accepted elsewhere; poems accepted for publication are still qualified provided the author retains the rights to the work.
NO EYES, NO EARS, NO NOSE, NO TONGUE, NO COLOR, NO SOUND, NO SCENT, NO TASTE, NO TOUCH Until theirs. I split from nothing into two pixels, deep in their bodies.
This selection comes from the book, Nerve Chorus, available from The Word Works. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.
WillaCarroll is the author of Nerve Chorus (The Word Works), one of Entropy Magazine’s Best Poetry Books of 2018 and a Small Press Distribution Bestseller. A finalist for The Georgia Poetry Prize, she was the winner of Tupelo Quarterly’s TQ7 Poetry Prize and Narrative Magazine’s Third Annual Poetry Contest. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, Narrative, Tin House, The Slowdown, and elsewhere. Her poetry videos and multimedia works have been featured in Narrative Outloud, Interim Poetics, Writers Resist, etc. She holds a MFA from Bennington
Nilsa Rivera writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s also the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications. Nilsa’s work appeared in the Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and Selkie Literary Magazine. She lives in Miami, Florida with her husband, son, and other multi-species family members.
IN SITU Incise the skin, crack open the ribcage. Peel back the right lung like a curtain, draw the other open, making a theater of the body, heart convulsing in place. If nerves to the brain were cut, cardiac cells would beat onward in a slow chorus. My brother, a trauma surgeon, pumps a heart with his gloved hands, a heart belonging to a construction worker wheeled on a gurney after a massive crane collapse. My brother’s arms tire as he feels it stop & start, stop & start, feeling with his hands the man’s heart not wanting to stop, until it does.
This selection comes from the book, Nerve Chorus, available from The Word Works. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.
WillaCarroll is the author of Nerve Chorus (The Word Works), one of Entropy Magazine’s Best Poetry Books of 2018 and a Small Press Distribution Bestseller. A finalist for The Georgia Poetry Prize, she was the winner of Tupelo Quarterly’s TQ7 Poetry Prize and Narrative Magazine’s Third Annual Poetry Contest. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, Narrative, Tin House, The Slowdown, and elsewhere. Her poetry videos and multimedia works have been featured in Narrative Outloud, Interim Poetics, Writers Resist, etc. She holds a MFA from Bennington
Nilsa Rivera writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s also the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications. Nilsa’s work appeared in the Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and Selkie Literary Magazine. She lives in Miami, Florida with her husband, son, and other multi-species family members.
NO DRONE, NO FIRE, NO TREMOR, NO QUAKE, NO STORM, NO FLOOD, NO HEAT, NO DROUGHT, NO SIREN, NO SCENE Only our bodies riding a bed on a river, halfway to the rising sea, flesh holding back disaster.
This selection comes from the book, Nerve Chorus, available from The Word Works. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.
WillaCarroll is the author of Nerve Chorus (The Word Works), one of Entropy Magazine’s Best Poetry Books of 2018 and a Small Press Distribution Bestseller. A finalist for The Georgia Poetry Prize, she was the winner of Tupelo Quarterly’s TQ7 Poetry Prize and Narrative Magazine’s Third Annual Poetry Contest. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, Narrative, Tin House, The Slowdown, and elsewhere. Her poetry videos and multimedia works have been featured in Narrative Outloud, Interim Poetics, Writers Resist, etc. She holds a MFA from Bennington
Nilsa Rivera writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s also the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications. Nilsa’s work appeared in the Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and Selkie Literary Magazine. She lives in Miami, Florida with her husband, son, and other multi-species family members.
SYNAPTIC Haywire mess of us, volted meat, yellow fire in axon trees, blasted branches of the vagus nerve, wandering from brain to gut, shunting ions, charged when our warm tongues meet–– terpsichorean muscles, talking straight from neuron’s hot seat.
This selection comes from the book, Nerve Chorus, available from The Word Works. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.
WillaCarroll is the author of Nerve Chorus (The Word Works), one of Entropy Magazine’s Best Poetry Books of 2018 and a Small Press Distribution Bestseller. A finalist for The Georgia Poetry Prize, she was the winner of Tupelo Quarterly’s TQ7 Poetry Prize and Narrative Magazine’s Third Annual Poetry Contest. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, Narrative, Tin House, The Slowdown, and elsewhere. Her poetry videos and multimedia works have been featured in Narrative Outloud, Interim Poetics, Writers Resist, etc. She holds a MFA from Bennington
Nilsa Rivera writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s also the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications. Nilsa’s work appeared in the Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and Selkie Literary Magazine. She lives in Miami, Florida with her husband, son, and other multi-species family members.
You want a hunk of my flank? You’ll swallow yellow #5, tinder, maxed-out credit cards, wet-cut hay, gunpowder, old stamps, pink clouds of fiberglass fecked with asbestos. The mind is built on wind, the more important you feel, the worse the storm. I wear my name like a tag on borrowed air. I won’t administer as your night-nurse, not even in your inoculation dream. All the warm human milk in this world won’t balm your need.
This selection comes from the book, Nerve Chorus, available from The Word Works. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.
WillaCarroll is the author of Nerve Chorus (The Word Works), one of Entropy Magazine’s Best Poetry Books of 2018 and a Small Press Distribution Bestseller. A finalist for The Georgia Poetry Prize, she was the winner of Tupelo Quarterly’s TQ7 Poetry Prize and Narrative Magazine’s Third Annual Poetry Contest. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, Narrative, Tin House, The Slowdown, and elsewhere. Her poetry videos and multimedia works have been featured in Narrative Outloud, Interim Poetics, Writers Resist, etc. She holds a MFA from Bennington
Nilsa Rivera writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s also the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications. Nilsa’s work appeared in the Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and Selkie Literary Magazine. She lives in Miami, Florida with her husband, son, and other multi-species family members.
Why A Colored Girl Will Slice You If You Talk Wrong About Motown
Patricia Smith
The men and women who coupled, causing us, first arrived confounded. Surrounded by teetering towers of no, not now and you shoulda known better, they cowered and built little boxes of northern home, crammed themselves inside, feasted on the familiar of fat skin and the unskimmed, made gods of doors. When we came — the same insistent bloody and question we would have been south — they clutched us, plumped us on government cereal drenched in Carnation milk, slathered our hair, faces, our fat wiggling arms and legs with Vaseline. We shined like the new things we were. The city squared its teeth, smiled oil, smelled the sour each hour left at the corner of our mouths. Our parents threw darts at the day. They romanced shut factories, waged hot battle with skittering roaches and vermin, lumbered after hunches. Their newborn children grew like streetlights. We grew like insurance payments. We grew like resentment. And since no tall sweetgum thrived to offer its shouldered shade, no front porch lesson spun wide to craft our wrong or righteous, our parents loosed us, into the crumble, into the glass, into the hips of a new city. They trusted exploded summer hydrants, scarlet licorice whips and crumbling rocks of government cheese to conjure a sort of joy, trusted joy to school us in the woeful limits of jukeboxes and moonwash. Freshly dunked in church water, slapped away from double negatives and country ways, we were orphans of the north star, dutifully sacrificed, our young bodies arranged on sharp slabs of boulevard. We learned what we needed, not from our parents and their rumored south, but from the gospel seeping through the sad gap in Mary Wells’ grin. Smokey slow-sketched pictures of our husbands, their future skins flooded with white light, their voices all remorse and atmospheric coo. Lil’ Stevie squeezed his eyes shut on the soul notes, replacing his dark with ours. Diana was the bone our mamas coveted, the flow of slip silver they knew was buried deep beneath their rollicking heft. Every lyric, growled or sweet from perfect brown throats, was instruction: Sit pert, pout, and seamed silk. Then watch him beg. Every spun line was consolation: You’re such a good girl. If he has not arrived, he will. Every wall of horn, every slick choreographed swivel, threaded us with the rhythm of the mildly wild. We slept with transistor radios, worked the two silver knobs, one tiny ear bud blocking out the roar of our parents’ tardy attempts to retrieve us. Instead, we snuggled with the Temps, lined up five pretty men across. And damned if they didn’t begin every one of their songs with the same word. Girl
This selection comes from the book, Soul Sister Revue: A Poetry Compilation, available from Jamii Publishing. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.
Cynthia Manick is the author of Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press) and editor of Soul Sister Revue: A Poetry Compilation (Jamii Publishing, 2019). She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, MacDowell Colony, and Château de la Napoule among others. Winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry, Manick was awarded Honorable Mention for the 2019 Furious Flower Poetry Prize. She is Founder of the reading series Soul Sister Revue; and her poem “Things I Carry Into the World” was made into a film by Motionpoems, an organization dedicated to video poetry, and has debuted on Tidal for National Poetry Month. A performer at literary festivals, libraries, universities, and most recently the Brooklyn Museum, Manick’s work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. She currently serves on the Editorial Board of Alice James Books. Jamii Publishing can be reached via Twitter at https://twitter.com/jamiipub.
Patricia Smith is the author of eight books of poetry, including Incendiary Art, winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist; and Gotta Go, Gotta Flow, a collaboration with award-winning Chicago photographer Michael Abramson. Her other books include the poetry volumes Teahouse of the Almighty, Close to Death, Big Towns Big Talk, Life According to Motown; the children’s book Janna and the Kings and the history Africans in America, a companion book to the award-winning PBS series.
Nilsa Rivera writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s also the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications. Nilsa’s work appeared in the Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and Selkie Literary Magazine. She lives in Riverview, Florida with her husband, son, and other multi-species family members.
