This selection, chosen by guest editor Kenli Doss, is from Hushby Nikki Ummel (Belle Point Press 2023).
After the Flood
We took with us things immediate: dog leash by the door, overripe bananas, fresh underwear folded in the basket by the stairs. it was not enough. We wrung our hands nightly, hundreds of miles away. Word of mouth birthed new rivers within us.
All washed clean. We wait for the river water to stop being greedy. Lifetimes. What will they say, our descendants, when our home reemerges, when the water recedes, of our chipped pho bowls, the blown glass bong? Will they know the love we shared? Our record player, clammed shut. Still spinning Fats Domino.
Nikki Ummel is a queer writer, editor, and educator in New Orleans. Nikki’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly, The Adroit Journal, The Georgia Review, and more. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and twice awarded an Academy of American Poets Award. She is the 2022 winner of the Leslie McGrath Poetry Prize. You can find her wandering around Holy Cross with her beautiful dog and equally beautiful partner.
Kenli Dossholds 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 Kenli Doss, is from Hushby Nikki Ummel (Belle Point Press 2023).
Self-Portrait as Godmother
As the moon rises, I lift him from the crib, his fingers curling around my hair, pulled by the whims
of his dreams. My feet in soft shag, he swathes my swaying hips, lays his head on my chest. Humming Moonlight Sonata, I press my lips to his cradle cap. The moon
is high as I (knowing soon he will rise, seek my side) lay him down again.
I sweep hair from his eyes, nibble the tip of his ear, and revel in his smile, projected from his nighttime palace.
Door cracked, I hear him find the crib’s edge, pull himself to stand before his cry breaks midnight hush. My personal call to prayer. We repeat: sleeping child, sleepless caregiver, midnight snack maker, monster under the bed slayer. Permanently stained purveyor of wooden blocks and perpetual peeker of those hidden boos.
I lift him from the crib. The moon sets.
Nikki Ummel is a queer writer, editor, and educator in New Orleans. Nikki’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly, The Adroit Journal, The Georgia Review, and more. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and twice awarded an Academy of American Poets Award. She is the 2022 winner of the Leslie McGrath Poetry Prize. You can find her wandering around Holy Cross with her beautiful dog and equally beautiful partner.
Kenli Dossholds 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.
A personal growth narrative applies twofold to Jared Joseph’s A Book About Myself Called Hell (KERNPUNKT Press, 2022). In the book, which reads almost like a travel diary, Joseph documents his reading process of Dante’s Inferno, an epic poem in which Dante journeys through Hell as a living being. The parallel narratives for Dante and Joseph reveal the nested nature of the book’s themes, mirroring and re-forming like the concentric circles of Hell.
A Book About Myself Called Hell is a truly impressive work of critiquing and weaving, of joking and wondering, and it is funny. Joseph does it all intentionally, with nary a misplaced comma, and by the end I felt devastatingly seen and understood. The book is precisely human. I recognized my soul’s questions mirrored in the confusion and absurdity of both Joseph’s and Dante’s wanderings. The sentiment is captured perfectly in Job 9:12, which is featured in the book as an epigraph: “Who can say to Him, what are you doing?”. Who is running this life of ours? How can we ask what on earth is going on?
Joseph’s book unfolds in three sections. First, there is a brief introduction to Inferno and why Joseph is reading. The middle is made up of critical commentaries for each canto. Finally, Joseph puts together a multiple-choice section with upside-down answers, reading like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. This last part enhances the book’s conversational nature; Joseph is telling the readers a story and interjecting with context and anecdotes, to which we respond, but all we say in the end is why is Hell so funny and why can’t we laugh?
The book is adventurous and searching, perhaps because it is somehow a compilation of asked, unanswered, and re-asked questions, occasionally specific but often metaphysical in nature. This essence is what made me feel understood and impressed at the same time: somehow, through a lot of swearing and crude analogies, Joseph pares away the bullshit and gets at some philosophical truth. The absurd humor of the book hinges on a tension between the ancient and the modern, and Joseph bridges the gap through continuous questions and eventual answers. He accurately dissects the structure of Inferno, referencing Dante’s life and numerological affiliations (Beatrice, basically), and analyzing the terza rima rhyme structure that reinforces the structure of the narrative. As well as this technical efficiency, Joseph demonstrates an intimate understanding of the soul struggle which pierces Inferno and carries into his own book: how can we make sense of this strange, contradictory existence that is human? Many little inversions reinforce the idea of heaven being hell, hell being life, and the journey out of hell being downwards to get back up, such as “they [finally] get to wet ground” (Joseph 25). Hell becomes a home for all the comically absurd, and the comically absurd include a lot of questions.
Some of the genius of the work is that, in almost every canto’s commentary, a reference offered earlier is revisited in some sensible, conclusive way, such that everything feels very satisfying. Joseph brings us into his thoughts as he reads Inferno, reminding us that he is laughing with us at all the absurdity, and tying things back together when the questions start to get too big.I invite readers who have not read Inferno, either recently or at all, into Joseph’s narrative for the eccentric father-son relationship of Dante and Virgil, and for the hilarity.
For those with an interest in Dante, Classics, humor, or the existential, this will prove an absolutely worthwhile read. Joseph demonstrates understanding of historical context, accurately touching on Florentine political conflicts and the tension between antiquity and Christian orthodoxy in the Italian Renaissance era. The whole project is kind of lovely because today’s angst at Covid-19, climate change, and the death of God is comparable somehow with that of the dreamy intellectual of the Middle Ages, stuck between pagan antiquity’s distant paradise and the reality of Christendom and plague. Either this was already apparent to Joseph, or he picked a really good quarantine read. In either case, A Book About Myself Called Hell makes sense. It is roaringly funny and intimately beautiful.
Isabelle Whittall is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in combined Philosophy and Political Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She co-hosts the radio show Hail! Discordia! on CITR 101.9fm, and is an Editorial Board Member of UBC’s Journal of Philosophical Enquiries.
My criteria for buy-worthy books has changed a lot over the years. Spending money on books I didn’t already know I liked used to feel wasteful, especially with my limited bookshelf space. I have a pretty large collection now, but I consider all additions carefully. Deciding which works I find memorable enough to want to have on hand is an investment to me. Not every book on my shelves is necessarily a favorite, but if I have it, it’s probably for the creativity of its contents and the context it was published in.
Mainly, unless I wish to support a living author and buy directly from a mainstream bookstore, I rely on thrifting, secondhand websites, book fairs, etc. to slowly build my collection. I make it a point to buy obscure works that are relevant to my interests as soon as I have the chance to ensure I’ll eventually be able to read them. After a lifetime of immersion in the classics of America and England, and growing boredom with the oversaturation of specific narratives for POC in English fiction, I’ve made it my mission to explore translated literature, especially from South Asia and MENA countries.
The ongoing incompleteness of this collection is what I love most about it. I am not one to despair over the impossibility of reading every book in the world. I enjoy always having something more to discover. I’m saving yet-to-be-read titles pictured above like The Mirror of My Heart, The Water Urn, and Satyajit Ray’s Detective Feluda stories for rainy days, to read when I have more time, and relish the anticipation that comes with their presence on my shelf. Similarly, I have a list of books that I would ideally already own, but know will be worth the wait to acquire when I finally locate them, like The Oxford Book of Urdu Short Stories and Umrao Jan Ada.
I also treasure older favorites, like Elantris, Phantom, and The Inheritance Cycle (not pictured) from when I used to mostly read fantasy and retellings, and still had the stamina for long sagas. My poetry collections and nonfiction are the works I like to take the most time with to ensure I absorb them, hence the bookmarks. If I had to choose any three titles from this particular shelf as my favorites, they would be Sonora Jha’s The Laughter, Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac, and Louise Glück’s Averno.
Hiba Syed is a Pakistani-American writer and reviewer with an appreciation for all genres. Having recently graduated with a BA in English, she fills her time traveling, experimenting in the kitchen, and reading anything she can get her hands on. Currently she resides in St. Louis, Missouri.
I have always loved stories. As a child, weekends were spent at the library amassing impossibly large stacks of books. I had a tendency for sneaking off from the children’s section to the literature aisles, tucking works like Frankenstein and To Kill a Mockingbird into the middle of my pile to try to make my selections a little less suspicious. Usually, I got away with it.
My love for reading translated into a love for writing as well. Poetry came first, as I attended readings and workshops throughout high school, and longer-form fiction followed, leading me to where I am now, finishing the final edits of my first novel manuscript while also getting ready to begin work on a second project.
I entered college fully intent on pursuing a major in creative writing. A voracious reader and writer, I began my coursework with a great deal of excitement and urgency to learn. However, I found myself questioning if this was the right path for me as I also began taking classes in psychology and falling in love with the field. At the same time, I was hired as an editor for my college’s literary magazine, Cipher, and was finding great purpose and passion in working with writers and other editors to bring pieces to full realization. I was excited about and impassioned by my work as an editor, while also wrestling with the question of whether I was going to continue pursuing writing or delve further into psychology. Now, in my senior year of college, I’ve decided to do both.
For me, working as an editor is a direct extension of my writing practice. This work has given me the space to consider writing from a different angle, and to work with other writers in a holistic and generative process, something I am excited to continue in my work with Sundress Publications.
While it may seem like a strange combination, working as a clinical intern at a domestic violence shelter while also pursuing editorial work, I believe that my work in the field of psychology is a different translation of what I do as an editor and writer. As I move further along the path to becoming a therapist, it’s clear to me that much of this clinical work is listening to and assisting in realizing individuals’ stories in order to help them process what has happened to them.
On the other side of that coin, I see my work in editing as another way of bringing stories to the surface through supporting writers in the development and propulsion of their stories. I deeply believe in the inherent healing that is available in telling stories, and in those stories being heard and understood. As such, I believe that the development and distribution of published works is crucial to our societal well-being. It is a great privilege for me to work with people and their stories in these two separate, but inextricable modalities.
Addie Dodge is a student at Colorado College pursuing a BA in Psychology with a Minor in English. She is a writer currently working as an editor for her college’s literary magazine, Cipher, and is also a clinical intern at a domestic violence shelter in Colorado. She fills her free time with hiking in the mountains and lots of reading.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Kenli Doss, is from Hushby Nikki Ummel (Belle Point Press 2023).
Fantasy of Walking My Niece Home
We veer off the path, head for the trees, knee-deep in pine straw.
My niece launches herself from the Radio Flyer, her feet crunching in pine needles.
She sinks her hands into sharp pine cones. They become missiles, bomb the thick straw for enemy ships.
Look! I cry, pointing to the looming trees: the pine cones have come so far.
She jumps, flaps her hands open and closed. We have to put them back, she says. Their mommy will miss them.
Clutching pine cones in her too-small palms, she hugs them to her body: A child, far from home. Mother, unreachable.
Sharp distance. My sister, sheathed in stiff sheets & soft lights, pink nails painted by kind hospice nurses.
She is two. The world is still kind.
I tell her, some things can’t come home.
She takes a pine cone, shoves it in my pocket, deep.
She says, We will make a home for them.
Nikki Ummel is a queer writer, editor, and educator in New Orleans. Nikki’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly, The Adroit Journal, The Georgia Review, and more. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and twice awarded an Academy of American Poets Award. She is the 2022 winner of the Leslie McGrath Poetry Prize. You can find her wandering around Holy Cross with her beautiful dog and equally beautiful partner.
Kenli Dossholds 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.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Ashley Hajimirsadeghi. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, February 18 from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/sundress with the password “safta”.
Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. You will receive ideas, guidelines, and more as part of this generative workshop series in order to complete three poems in two hours. A new set of prompts will be provided after the writers have written collaboratively for thirty minutes. The goal is to create material that can be later modified and transformed into artwork rather than producing flawless final versions. The event is open to prose authors as well!
Ashley Hajimirsadeghi is an Iranian American multimedia artist, writer, and journalist currently pursuing an M.A. in Global Humanities at Towson University. Her creative writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Passages North, The Cortland Review, Salamander, RHINO, Salt Hill, and The Journal, among others. She is the Co-Editor-in-Chief at Mud Season Review, a former Brooklyn Poets Fellow, an assistant editor at Sundress Publications, and a contributing writer and film critic at MovieWeb. She can be found at www.ashleyhajimirsadeghi.com // Instagram: @nassarine
While this is a free event, donations can be made to the Sundress Academy for the Arts here.
Each month we split donations with our community partner. Our community partner for February is Bryant’s Bridge. Bryant’s Bridge intends to provide affordable housing and a safe space to prevent homelessness and promote the successful transition from youth to adulthood.This organization was created to be a safe place and a long-term option with the goal of making linkages to supportive services that can help people heal and grow through the gap until they can become fully functioning, stable adults with a promising life ahead of them. Find more about the important work they do here.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Kenli Doss, is from Reading Berryman to the Dogby Wendy Taylor Carlisle (Belle Point Press 2023).
Rocket Science
When Chickie and I climbed into the tree to sit and wait for our periods, Chickie was an optimist. I wasn’t sure mine would ever come. But it did months after Chickie showed off her belt, the hooks on each end. Swinging her legs over the branch, she explained how grown up felt more clearly than our teacher did in her lecture, “On Being a Woman,” better than the grainy black and white film with its scientific diagrams— the retort-shaped organ floating in our girl bodies, the miniature rockets our brothers were always trying to get us to touch.
Chickie and I educated ourselves, studied the pamphlets, got answers from the books we read. We believed in science then, in Apollo and a manned moon. We believed we had learned all we needed to know about how it would go with the boys. We imagined it was an experiment in simple biology.
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of four books and five chapbooks and is the 2020 winner of the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Award for her fourth book, The Mercy of Traffic.
Kenli Dossholds 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 Kenli Doss, is from Reading Berryman to the Dogby Wendy Taylor Carlisle (Belle Point Press 2023).
content warning for pedophilia
Dog Days
Along this county FM road there’s water vapor gathered in the ditches and overhead the oaks show dusty green. The radio reports on politics and fornication, a teacher and her thirteen-year-old lover. Good folks are stunned by gossip and hot weather.
Lord, save us from the need to chide sad flesh or to believe we’re not all animals with wishes. Help us admit the blessing in an August wind, a cloud-troweled sky, the shelf of blue behind.
Show us the truth’s an urgent belly, what we need most, the slick fender on a Chevy, a body bent over it, hot as a summer garage, the roller coaster second before we come.
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of four books and five chapbooks and is the 2020 winner of the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Award for her fourth book, The Mercy of Traffic.
Kenli Dossholds 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 Kenli Doss, is from Reading Berryman to the Dogby Wendy Taylor Carlisle (Belle Point Press 2023).
Naked
The fall your father died all the leaves came down in a three-day rainstorm. It was a damned fine storm. The rain went on steady, one day into the next, while leaves fell slow and constant, regular as raindrops. The last hay baled weeks before, farmers at the co-op had nothing to do but nod and rock and spit, and watch the trees strip, till they were naked in the carpeted fields.
You were thirty-four the year those wet hills unrolled, glossy as a calendar picture, and you took your father’s cancer like you did the weather. Under the dripping eaves, your chair tipped back, you talked about the hay, but you seemed slighter, more like a boy, as if your father’s passing gave you back childhood, stripped you, washed you down. As if he fathered you, dying, and you could be naked then, being his son.
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of four books and five chapbooks and is the 2020 winner of the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Award for her fourth book, The Mercy of Traffic.
Kenli Dossholds 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.
