Zombieland by Stephen Page

Spillwords present to all readers: Zombieland by Stephen Page

#MicroFiction #ShortStory #SpillWords

To all readers: This is a work of fiction. Any character, place, or thing (even a photo) that seems to resemble someone, somewhere, or something is coincidental. 

Zombieland

Two Poems by Jennifer Novotney

North of Oxford

blinds
.
After Dinner Nap
.
Her arm hangs over the bed lazily
like a flower in need of rain.
Sometimes I’d stop to watch her sleep
witness the rise and fall of her chest
like calm waves glittering under a summer moon.
The long lines of light ripple in the liquidity
reflecting sky, the darkness enveloping the clouds.
I’d often wish she’d sit with me under that full moon
low and bright in the expansive night
but she was usually too tired, too drunk to stay awake
as if the world was too much for her
fragile, the way a thin vase balances precariously
on the mantle, little earthquakes rock it back and forth
on its delicate stem. In need of support, but instead
I watch for it to fall, the way it glides through the air
gracefully, the prism of rainbow light it catches
on the way down. The…

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A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Stephen Page

Fevers of the Mind

with Stephen Page:

Q1: When did you begin writing and first influences?

Stephen: In the second grade, during class, I used to exchange notes with the pretty girl who sat in the chair in front of me. They were about the silly things that 2nd graders write about, the teacher, the class bully, how we should have longer recesses, etc. Mine were rhyming and I always managed to slip a line in one or two about the color of her hair. I had read a lot of Dr. Seuss up until then so poetry was ingrained in me.

Q2: Who are your biggest influences today?

Stephen: There are so many, but just to name a few: Madeline Miller, Daniel Loedel, Tina Clark, Sven Birketts, Amanda Gorman, Cristopher J. LeBron, Houzan Mahmoud, Ocean Vuong, Joy Harjo, Chelsea Rathburn, Kavah Akbar, Jimyun Yun, Chen Chen, Wendy Chin-Tanner, Layli Long Soldier, Erica Plouffe…

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Sometimes in Times Like These

Old Water Rat Publishing

Stephen Page

Last night I sipped a half bottle of 12-year-old Scotch into my veins while rewatching Saving Private Ryan and three episodes of the original Star Trek series on Interflix. I slept very well after that. This morning I wrote a poem while sipping coffee, then scrambled up some eggs in butter, topped them with fresh diced tomatoes, and toasted the bread Teresa loves. I roasted a couple of steaks for Amigo, and sipped yerba mate while sunning my face and hands on the patio deck (I love the late winter sun). Now I am watching an old Western on cable, and occasionally gazing out at the Atlantic-blue sea, the fishing boats, the swallows dancing in swoops. Just as I was about to turn on the news, I thought better of it. I am so tired of news about that sociopathic, anti-mask-wearing, self-serving tyrant. I almost open my social…

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Poet captures the essence of 2020 in new book

Diane Sahms-Guarnieri

n timesCovid 19 2020 – A Poetic Journal by Diane Sahms-Guarnieri

Sahms-Guarnieri’s work embodies the magnitude of feelings felt at the beginning of the pandemic. Readers are left with the heaviness that 2020 left behind, but also gratitude that they survived a truly chaotic year. Megan Milligan- Northeast Times. Read the full review here: https://northeasttimes.com/2021/08/26/local-poet-captures-the-essence-of-2020-in-new-poetry-book/

You can buy the book here: https://moonstone-arts-center.square.site/product/sahms-guarnieri-diane-covid-19-2020-a-poetic-journal/294?cs=true&cst=custom

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Colors in the Rain

The Way to Rainbow Mountain is a moving collection of poems that span the Americas, from Newfoundland to Patagonia. The main theme is recovery. A Native American woman living in the northern Catskills is diagnosed with breast cancer. Thankfully (if that word can even be used in the case of cancer) the menace is not malignant. The tumor is removed with a lumpectomy and no chemotherapy is needed.  After surgery, her lover takes her on a couple of vacations, travels that written about compete with the best road-trip works in literature. Her amante is her caretaker, guide, and best friend. He drives her to see “daffodils and hyacinths flame forth,//the forget-me-nots and spring beauties…Long after the cold comes//and snow metastasizes across the mountains.” They converse with Peruvian, Chilean, and Bolivian natives. They exchange thoughts with llamas and guanacos. He changes flat tires on red-sand roads. All during the trips, she is passing through clouds of depression, ruminating in poetic monologues while escaping the pain and hollowness left by the extracted lump left back in the Catskills: “Is this light the Milky Way’s star road//watched over by llama eyes, the flashing//out of my skin not my fleeting rapture//when solstice flares in.” When they arrive at the base of the hill facing Rainbow Mountain, at an altitude of 17,000 feet, her lover has to practically carry her up, because the air is too thin for her to breathe. The beauteous peak becomes her colors in the rain. – Stephen Page, author of “A Ranch Bordering the Salty River.”

Susan Deer Cloud

Susan Deer Cloud, an alumna of public ivy Binghamton University, is a Catskill Métis Indian of Mohawk, Blackfoot and some Seneca lineage.  Currently Susan is an MFA student in Creative Writing at Goddard College, her tribal home away from home.  She has received various awards and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, a New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Chenango County Council for the Arts Literature Grant, First Prize in Allen Ginsberg Poetry Competition (twice), Prairie Schooner’s Readers’ Choice Award, and Native American Wordcraft Circle Editor’s Award for her multicultural anthology Confluence.  Deer Cloud’s work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies.  Her poetry collection The Last Ceremony (2007) and her Native anthology I Was Indian (2009) are also FootHills publications.  In 2008 Deer Cloud served as guest editor for Spring Issue of Yellow Medicine Review, a Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art & Thought; she is currently an adviser to YMR.  She lives peacefully with Wu Wei, her Persian cat, and Poetry, her one constant lover, in a second floor yurt in a rainy city in Iroquois Country.  You can write to Susan Deer Cloud at susan.poetrymatters@gmail.com

Today by Lou Gallo

North of Oxford

buzzards
.
Todayby Lou Gallo
.
I stand beside the Forester between
its door and interior as I wait for my daughters
to return from inside the pharmacy
where they will be administered their second doses
of vaccine.
We had broken out the old iPod and at this moment
Aerosmith’s “Walking in the Sand” blasts from the speakers.
What ever happened to that girl that I once knew . . .
.
To my right across the street a chaos of buzzards
tears into the flesh of a dead groundhog
as church gongs from the steeple to my left,
the sinister path, resound,
rippling the very air and drowning out
all other sounds in the neighborhood. The buzzards
couldn’t care less and seem to be dancing
to a song I once uploaded onto my iPod
as they finish off the remains of the rodent
that has now practically disappeared
as if…

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