Tag: Imaginary Friend Press

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Ayshia Stephenson’s “Black Hands of a Morning Calm”

1853079_1406823100.0299

dancing tires my night
catching a cab, feet away
a stranger’s catching one too
he jumps into mine

we eat and drink and flirt in
a restaurant with
red lanterns until
outside dawn breaks and

say that again –
you are married? do you cheat?
i’m a man, he declares

but i’m worried about my wife
every night has to end you
aren’t coming inside
she withholds
stay in the cab
a year in counting!
so you worry about her?
and continue
to do what causes
the withholding?

stay in the cab
there is nothing
in me
your wife
does not have

—

This selection comes from Ayshia Stephenson’s book Black Hands of a Morning Calm, available from Imaginary Friend Press. Purchase your copy here!

Ayshia Stephenson fuses poetry and storytelling with a provocative and spiritual performance, both in her writing and on stage. She received her MFA in writing from the California Institute of Arts in 2009 and holds an MA in applied sociology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is most interested in looking at race, gender and culture through a narrative and ethnographic lens. Her interdisciplinary work has been published by TESOL Review, Seoul Writer’s Anthology, Seoul National University, A Gathering of the Tribes, the Clarion, and Drury University. She most recently won Notes and Grace Notes’ 2011 Gold Prize First Book Award for her poetry manuscript “black hands of a morning calm” about her three-year expatriate experience in Seoul, South Korea. She is a visiting lecturer in Salem State’s English department.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Ayshia Stephenson’s “Black Hands of a Morning Calm”

Blackhandsfrontcover

at the first fancy
faculty luncheon
a colleague of mine asks
if i’m on the same visa as the rest
of the foreign faculty

i look around the table

i nod.
i look into her
eyes, so she can’t escape

yes…of course you are…
so why korea?
she chuckles
with her head down

why not?
i was finishing
another grad degree, my mfa
i wanted to see more of the world
i wanted benefits
health insurance
and seventy percent of american classes
are
taught by adjuncts

i did my ph.d. at yale

the butter
the sugar, in this biscuit
makes my
makes my
stomach turn
where’s the
brown in this
feed me

—

This selection comes from Ayshia Stephenson’s book Black Hands of a Morning Calm, available from Imaginary Friend Press. Purchase your copy here!

Ayshia Stephenson fuses poetry and storytelling with a provocative and spiritual performance, both in her writing and on stage. She received her MFA in writing from the California Institute of Arts in 2009 and holds an MA in applied sociology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is most interested in looking at race, gender and culture through a narrative and ethnographic lens. Her interdisciplinary work has been published by TESOL Review, Seoul Writer’s Anthology, Seoul National University, A Gathering of the Tribes, the Clarion, and Drury University. She most recently won Notes and Grace Notes’ 2011 Gold Prize First Book Award for her poetry manuscript “black hands of a morning calm” about her three-year expatriate experience in Seoul, South Korea. She is a visiting lecturer in Salem State’s English department.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Ayshia Stephenson’s “Black Hands of a Morning Calm”

1853079_1406823100.0299

oh i-tae-won
to you i can come alone
elsewhere, the bars have no stools

when my head is warm
enough, i practice my korean
where foreigner
friendly han-guk-sa-rams
practice their english
after work with boozing teachers

i will never be
inside
so this is my i-tae-won
here,
under the sun
i eat the fat on beef
and don’t feel guilty
here,
under the sun
the bul-go-gi sauce
sticks to my black chops

—

This selection comes from Ayshia Stephenson’s book Black Hands of a Morning Calm, available from Imaginary Friend Press. Purchase your copy here!

Ayshia Stephenson fuses poetry and storytelling with a provocative and spiritual performance, both in her writing and on stage. She received her MFA in writing from the California Institute of Arts in 2009 and holds an MA in applied sociology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is most interested in looking at race, gender and culture through a narrative and ethnographic lens. Her interdisciplinary work has been published by TESOL Review, Seoul Writer’s Anthology, Seoul National University, A Gathering of the Tribes, the Clarion, and Drury University. She most recently won Notes and Grace Notes’ 2011 Gold Prize First Book Award for her poetry manuscript “black hands of a morning calm” about her three-year expatriate experience in Seoul, South Korea. She is a visiting lecturer in Salem State’s English department.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Ayshia Stephenson’s “Black Hands of a Morning Calm”

Blackhandsfrontcover

in the first snow storm
i walk
with the foreigners
where the foreigners live
and i see her
i see her black skin in the falling flakes

and i want to

kiss her
hug her
                         closer
but she
keeps her
head
straight walks
past me

she is african
but i am american
            so we are
different and we are
not the same

—

This selection comes from Ayshia Stephenson’s book Black Hands of a Morning Calm, available from Imaginary Friend Press. Purchase your copy here!

Ayshia Stephenson fuses poetry and storytelling with a provocative and spiritual performance, both in her writing and on stage. She received her MFA in writing from the California Institute of Arts in 2009 and holds an MA in applied sociology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is most interested in looking at race, gender and culture through a narrative and ethnographic lens. Her interdisciplinary work has been published by TESOL Review, Seoul Writer’s Anthology, Seoul National University, A Gathering of the Tribes, the Clarion, and Drury University. She most recently won Notes and Grace Notes’ 2011 Gold Prize First Book Award for her poetry manuscript “black hands of a morning calm” about her three-year expatriate experience in Seoul, South Korea. She is a visiting lecturer in Salem State’s English department.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Ayshia Stephenson’s “Black Hands of a Morning Calm”

1853079_1406823100.0299

i left my home
so i walk the university’s campus
to my new studio
in a new country

up the hill
summer still
sticks
to my skin
i wipe my forehead
look up and see
the construction workers stop
to stare

        and the silence
standing between us
was like their long summer
without foreigners
that made my black skin a mystery again

—

This selection comes from Ayshia Stephenson’s book Black Hands of a Morning Calm, available from Imaginary Friend Press. Purchase your copy here!

Ayshia Stephenson fuses poetry and storytelling with a provocative and spiritual performance, both in her writing and on stage. She received her MFA in writing from the California Institute of Arts in 2009 and holds an MA in applied sociology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is most interested in looking at race, gender and culture through a narrative and ethnographic lens. Her interdisciplinary work has been published by TESOL Review, Seoul Writer’s Anthology, Seoul National University, A Gathering of the Tribes, the Clarion, and Drury University. She most recently won Notes and Grace Notes’ 2011 Gold Prize First Book Award for her poetry manuscript “black hands of a morning calm” about her three-year expatriate experience in Seoul, South Korea. She is a visiting lecturer in Salem State’s English department.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Patty Paine’s “Feral”

paine photo

Ritual

She fans her hand
through the water, fingers
for pebbles, palms them
into trash.
She tips the pot, careful
not to spill a single grain.
She washes rice
as her mother was taught,
as her mother taught her.
Her daughter rushes
in, bangs open a cabinet,
shakes Pop Tarts from a box.
The woman turns to speak,
but her daughter is already gone.
She turns back to see rice swirling
down the drain. She settles
the pot, refills it with rice,
swishes, drains. She sets the pot
in the cooker, clicks it to heat
and waits for the first hiss of steam.

—

This selection comes from Patty Paine’s chapbook Feral, available from Imaginary Friend Press! Purchase your copy here!

Patty Paine is the author of Grief & Other Animals (forthcoming from Accents Publishing), The Sounding Machine (Accents Publishing), Feral (Imaginary Friend Press), Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press), co-editor of Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry (Garnet Publishing & Ithaca Press) and The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf (Berkshire Academic Press). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird, Verse Daily, The Atlanta Review, Gulf Stream, The Journal and other publications. She is the founding editor of diode poetry journal and Diode Editions. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar where she teaches writing and literature.

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Patty Paine’s “Feral”

feral cover
All-American

After hours spent sifting curios
craft items, packets of instant noodles,
we find the suitcase
our mother brought to America.
Inside, a traditional silk Korean dress
wrapped in tissue. A-frame top,
mandarin collar, striped sleeves that bell
toward the wrist. It’s for a child,
though neither of us
ever wore it. I tilt the skirt
in the afternoon light
revealing glints of umber and jade.
The silk is slick in my hands
and I think of my mother’s
shifting hopes, her hope
when she packed this dress
and her new world
hope that we’d grow to be All-American.
My sister sets the dress aside,
her eight-year-old daughter will love it.
Halloween is coming,
and she dreams of being Mulan.

 

—

This selection comes from Patty Paine’s chapbook Feral, available from Imaginary Friend Press! Purchase your copy here!

Patty Paine is the author of Grief & Other Animals (forthcoming from Accents Publishing), The Sounding Machine (Accents Publishing), Feral (Imaginary Friend Press), Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press), co-editor of Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry (Garnet Publishing & Ithaca Press) and The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf (Berkshire Academic Press). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird, Verse Daily, The Atlanta Review, Gulf Stream, The Journal and other publications. She is the founding editor of diode poetry journal and Diode Editions. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar where she teaches writing and literature.

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Patty Paine’s “Feral”

paine photo

Notes On Mirrors, Already Lost

Everything after aches
river & bones &
the unsaid naming itself
endlessly. My son
comes to me in dreams
and I reach
for needle & thread
to close the tear
at his knee.
This morning I found
ants in the saltshaker, a pattern
repeated in the new snow
peppered with black walnuts.
I confess, with my tongue
I press His body
to the roof of my mouth,
sometimes I think rose petal,
sometimes blister.

—

This selection comes from Patty Paine’s chapbook Feral, available from Imaginary Friend Press! Purchase your copy here!

Patty Paine is the author of Grief & Other Animals (forthcoming from Accents Publishing), The Sounding Machine (Accents Publishing), Feral (Imaginary Friend Press), Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press), co-editor of Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry (Garnet Publishing & Ithaca Press) and The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf (Berkshire Academic Press). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird, Verse Daily, The Atlanta Review, Gulf Stream, The Journal and other publications. She is the founding editor of diode poetry journal and Diode Editions. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar where she teaches writing and literature.

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Patty Paine’s “Feral”

feral cover
Nude in the Bathtub, 1935
                   “He who sings is not always happy.”
                                                     -Pierre Bonnard

Marthe   in the bath     we watch

Bonnard watch her     (a factory

      of persistence)

He embalms her

        with his gaze

Think of them

      in that two-level studio

sequestered     circumscribed     Bonnard

      in furry slippers daubing

at the canvas    the way

      a mother (gently

purposefully) presses tissue to lips—

        tissue to child’s face

We lean in the doorway

      peer over Bonnard’s shoulder

It’s just us and the sound

        of water running

        of steam hissing

through sweating copper pipes

—

This selection comes from Patty Paine’s chapbook Feral, available from Imaginary Friend Press! Purchase your copy here!

Patty Paine is the author of Grief & Other Animals (forthcoming from Accents Publishing), The Sounding Machine (Accents Publishing), Feral (Imaginary Friend Press), Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press), co-editor of Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry (Garnet Publishing & Ithaca Press) and The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf (Berkshire Academic Press). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird, Verse Daily, The Atlanta Review, Gulf Stream, The Journal and other publications. She is the founding editor of diode poetry journal and Diode Editions. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar where she teaches writing and literature.

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Patty Paine’s “Feral”

paine photo

Lowering

Leaving hour, how quick
it came. The train echoed
across the valley, over Tickfaw Creek,
trembled the ryegrass at the edge
of town, then further
still, beyond Black Mountain
clear to strange weather.
Now, six days from land
the compass has gone out of me.
These cursed waves thrash
like thieves, and what a mockery
of song the wind is making. Dearest,
the sea is another tongue
for loss, for misery, for coffin.
For grief: the rusty hinge of it,
the knife stab sudden of it.

—

This selection comes from Patty Paine’s chapbook Feral, available from Imaginary Friend Press! Purchase your copy here!

Patty Paine is the author of Grief & Other Animals (forthcoming from Accents Publishing), The Sounding Machine (Accents Publishing), Feral (Imaginary Friend Press), Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press), co-editor of Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry (Garnet Publishing & Ithaca Press) and The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf (Berkshire Academic Press). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird, Verse Daily, The Atlanta Review, Gulf Stream, The Journal and other publications. She is the founding editor of diode poetry journal and Diode Editions. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar where she teaches writing and literature.

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.