Reds, Woodlands, and Open Road

Stephen Page’s Lit Rep Has Entered Cincinnati, drove around the suburbs, eaten-on-the-road food, stayed in a roadside hotel, seen a horrible car accident, and left, enjoying the freedom of the road and the beauteous countryside. She has placed “The Salty River Bleeds” and “A Ranch Bordering the Salty River” in the following locations:

Sharonville Public Library

Deer Park Public Library

Madeira Branch Public Library

Old Milford Library

Goshen Branch Public Library

Owensville Branch Public Library

Clermont County Public Library

Doris E. Wood Branch Library

Joseph-Beth Booksellers

Like Falling Asleep – The Forge

LIKE FALLING ASLEEP
SPENCER LITMANJANUARY 13, 2020NONFICTION

— Read on forgelitmag.com/2020/01/13/like-falling-asleep/

SPENCER LITMAN

Spencer is an emerging writer in Phoenix who hopes to someday write good. His work appears or is forthcoming in Pithead Chapel, The Nottingham Review, Ellipsis Zine, JMWW Journal, Gravel Magazine, Tahoma Literary Review, and others.

Cherry Preserves

Cherry Preserves
— Read on www.rowanglassworks.org/cherry-preserves.html

Olga Breydo received her M.Arch from The Bartlett School of Architecture in London and an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Her fiction appears in Slice Magazine, Joyland, Bodega, RETRO, Cagibi, Glassworks Magazine and The Los Angeles Review. Her short story, “Cherry Preserves,” was a finalist in the 2018 New Letters Prize for Fiction, and her short story, “Not a Star,” was a finalist in The Missouri Review 2018 Editors’ Prize. She teaches in the First-Year Writing program at Eugene Lang College for Liberal Arts. Olga is also an artwork contributor at Cagibi Literary Journal, a co-founder of The Pushkin Academy of Russian Heritage, and a board member of Math-M-Addicts.

“Images of Landscape, Personality, and Emotion”

www.goodreads.com/review/show/3143771980

Review by Sarah Sarai

Stephen Page’s collection is one of imagination with images of landscape, personality, and emotion. The setting, a ranch in Argentina, is refreshingly unusual, at least for those of us in cities. Reading this collection, the reader can become a different person, for instance in the tongue-in-cheek-titled “The Ranch Manager Thinking in His Office While Cleaning His Shotgun.” …“you, who left / the fenceline open / all weekend. // You, you all, you nine in a line, / will never again breathe / my air. // All your separation papers / are stacked neatly / upon my metal desk.” The collection narrates a tale, an eco-friendly farmer pit against big business and contemporary culture’s disinterest in preserving the land or much of anything of true value. Which makes a person world weary as in “Casca and Tattler,” in which the monolog-effect of the rancher’s lament hits home. “I long ago put on my battle gear, / And now it is hard to take it off. / I run across pastures with my sword / Raised, looking for someone to decapitate.” A Quixote-like image. Who isn’t on the lookout to decapitate – a idiot boss, inept elected official, the CEO who knew about the poison? The sentiment’s echoed in “Transition.” “What do we do with the unlearned leader / That has yet to earn his office?” Incompetence is ubiquitous and ever disturbing. Then there is Page’s shorthand in naming which reminded me of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi. His choices are reminiscent of fairytales and myths and our absurdities. Self-named as none other than what they are: Wood (rather than forest or stand of trees), Cultivators, Old Man, Black Dog, and so on. The simplicity provokes imagination. And then there’s the romance-mixed-with-complication. The rancher’s wife (not named Wife but Teresa) is efficiently characterized in the four lines of “On a Winter Walk” “Garner some violets,” / Teresa said to me. / “They are perceptually constant, / Under the trees.” She knows Wood’s perpetual beauty and (yet) asks for what is possible only in the imagination. Rancher and Teresa are seen also in the ranch house, kitchen, bedroom. I should add that the collection is a follow-up to Stephan Page’s Ranch Bordering the Salty River. Both collections worthy; each can be read as a standalone. Both suggest that vision is personal. In “His Name is Pac-Man” a horse in glory and whim “has found life in the vision / of ranch, and eats it voraciously.” And, finally, the land. Its beauty evident. “Just as the sun disappeared over the horizon, / The Pink Flamingoes in the river hued red. (“The Salty River”). 

 

 

Sarah Sarai is author of the poetry collections That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books), as well as Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books), and The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOXBooks). Her poems are in many journals, including The Southampton Review, Posit, Boston Review, Zocalo Public Square, and Unbroken. She is an independent editor in New York and a squirrel enthusiast.

 

This Land is Full of Noises by Robert Nisbet

North of Oxford

preseli hills
.
This Land is Full of Noises
.
Ours being a small and rural region,
much of our noise will be ripples and shifts,
quirks, half-mutes and ghostly sounds.
.
Yes, traffic certainly, a few loud racers,
the odd blasting exhaust, but get a mile away
from the small towns and it’s more a grumble.
.
The jets to America are too high to be heard.
There’s the now-and-again light aircraft drone
and the gliders, lower, hinting at a wind’s rush.
.
The sheep’s bleat can sometimes reach crescendo
but is often more a token of a stolid self.
The cow’s low is placid, stays short of the mournful.
.
The coastal winds can rise to a shriek, a pounding,
which can quickly drift on down to stillness
and soon to the sinking hiss of sea on sand.
.
Two sets of footsteps, trudging a Preseli peak,
just a slight…

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T-shirt and Symbol for the AWP 2020

Hello AWP members and attendees, please . . . Mong Lan is elated that her T-shirt design was recently chosen as a Finalist. I hope you will choose and vote for her design as your favorite here: https://forms.gle/PWRKDB4C6nYd3cdi6 Winner announced on Jan 15, so please vote before then!! Thank you!!

Mong-Lan is an artist, poet, writer, painter, photographer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, singer, dancer, choreographer and teacher of Argentine tango. She is a former Stegner Fellow in poetry for two years at Stanford University and a Fulbright Scholar. Mong-Lan left her native Viet Nam on the last day of the evacuation of Sai Gon. Winner of a Pushcart Prize, the Juniper Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Awards for Poetry, and other awards, Mong-Lan’s poetry has been nationally and internationally anthologized to include being in Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Book of Poetry: Best Poems from 30 Years of the Pushcart Prize. She is the author of seven books and three chapbooks which contain her poetry and artwork — the most recent of which is Dusk Aflame: poems & art. Other books include One Thousand Minds Brimming: poems & art; Song of the Cicadas (Juniper Prize, finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award); Why is the Edge Always Windy?; Tango, Tangoing: Poems & Art; the bilingual Spanish / English edition, Tango, Tangueando: Poemas & Dibujos; and the chapbooks Love Poem to Tofu and Other Poems and Love Poem to Ginger & Other Poems: poetry & paintings. Her book Force of the Heart: Tango, Art, which includes drawings, paintings, and a poem, was inspired by the tango.

Watch a video of her reading:

https://youtu.be/xp0O2vi8DX4

Detroit Rocks!

Stephen Page’s Literary Representative recently passed through the City of Rock, Motown, birthplace of the U.S. car industry. She managed to find a home for “The Salty River Bleeds” in the following places:

Pages

#TPQ5: CAROL LYNN STEVENSON GRELLAS – The Poetry Question

#TPQ5: CAROL LYNN STEVENSON GRELLAS Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas, ten-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a seven-time Best of the Net nominee, include in today’s #TPQ5? Find out inside!
— Read on thepoetryquestion.com/2020/01/08/tpq5-carol-lynn-stevenson-grellas/

House on the Edge of Town and Other Stories Just Released by Alien Buddha Press

North of Oxford

house cover amazonAlien Buddha Press has just released, House on the Edge of Town and Other Stories by g emil reutter. This short story collection is his first release of fiction since 2014. The book is available at this link:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1651393575/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1578180105&refinements=p_27%3AG+Emil+Reutter&s=books&sr=1-1&text=G+Emil+Reutter

What others have to say about House on the Edge of Town and Other Stories

“g emil reutter is the real deal. The authentic voice of weird and wild America. reutter’s stories are vivid and unforgettable. His prose is dazzling”

                                    – James Vincent, editor In Shades Magazine.

                                    – Marina Esmeraldo, creative director In Shades Magazine.

“Tight. Real. This is how g emil reutter solves the style of melodrama in House on the Edge of Town and Other Stories—with a huge dose of insight for those who fall through life and those who barely escape. Even if they are to blame in this world of blame, House on the…

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