“Ghosts” by Loretta Tobin
“Each page I turn arouses memories,
ghosts mustering in my tiny office,
bumping each other and crowding me”
“Varicosities” by Rebecca Brock
“The doctor hisses a small yesss
that lingers and I see a bird,
worm in its grasp, the body
in and out of the earth,
except it’s my leg and my vein
and I should look but I’m learning
I don’t always have to.”
“Returns Department” by Jan Schmidt
“Throughout the jiggling trip, stopping and starting, grumbling motor, people getting on and off, trees and ocean whizzing by, I ignore it all to administer the silent treatment to Nick. He’s acting like he doesn’t notice the thousand cuts from my icy glares, but he’ll find out I’m not playing. Today I’m returning Nick to his parents.”
“borderless” by Brittany Mishra
“there was much
steepling of hands
as if the surgeons
were trying to build
a church to house
their inoperable religion”
“Two Annas” by Yuliya Musakovska
“Anna to the left
and Anna to the right,
wild mice,
two halves of an apple.
Now it is time to make a wish:
May this be our last visit here.”
“Duplex” by Carrie Shipers
“I have the same disease my family does.
I try to tell stories to make things right.
I keep trying to tell our stories right
because I want to understand our past.”
“Give Me a Room in Hotel Eternity…” by Susan Cohen
“Poetry never saved anyone from death, though it might have helped a few to go on living.”
“Coming Quiet” by Kathleen Loe
“It’s almost September again.
I sit stiffening in the wide
wicker chair, watching
my line break while late summer folds
the garden like a spent libretto, edges
shredded to a slatternly fringe.”
“A New Widow” by Christy Prahl
“Fleshy apples cave as winter arrives early
one October afternoon.
Even the cranes gorging
their hard corn in the fields
seem bewildered.”
“Red Rover” by Julia Rose Greider
“It all starts, Margaret will see later, with the old voicemail that plays through her earbuds on the train to work one morning in the first September Cara is gone. In that moment Cara begins to be resurrected, meticulously pruned, like a bonsai. I have some exciting news, she says, not really Cara but only the captured sound waves that are all that’s left of her by then. I need to tell you about it. And I want to hear what’s up with you. Okay, love you. Call me.”
“Crosscurrents” by Stacie M. Kiner
“My father’s ashes
sit on a bookcase,
waiting for a promised trip
to San Francisco,
where he spent the
best years
of his life.”
“Siste, Viator” by Ann Lauinger
“There are worse fates.
At least we didn’t end up
as some nacreous gimcrack souvenir:
‘Greetings From San Fran’ in mother-of-pearl.”
Animal Afterlife Review by Brianna Flavin
“I read this collection shortly after the sudden death of one of my best friends. I picked it up, even though I didn’t feel any spark for art. I started reading in the bath. Then I was on the bathroom floor, water cold, a little shocked to return to myself in human form, holding a book.”
“The Maple” by Emily Mohn-Slate
“If I could just get one thing done
If I could set the to do list on fire
If I could create a clearing
I might hear the Japanese maple outside the window
whispering in stillness and light”
“Red Pajamas” by Yuliya Musakovska
“We leave in a respected line
wearing red:
We’ve been sent good weather,
orange fish that flip over beneath the bridge,
a building of rust-colored brick that you exit as if from your body.
You can’t have everything.
No one has everything.”
“The Sublime Edge of Absence” by Theresa Anne Padden
Rare is the child, or adult for that matter, who doesn’t wonder what it would be like to lose a sense. I was six or seven the first time I wondered—lying on my stomach in the front yard of our house in San Mateo, the grass cool, prickling against my bare belly, the light stippling through the leaves of the elms that ringed our yard and round a circle of children, siblings and friends, heads close together, whispering,
“What would you rather be: deaf or blind?”
“My brother says” by Carrie Shipers
“he needs
to quit drinking before he dies
of it. He says he hasn’t driven
in nine months, that he’s been
losing friends and took today
off work to get his act together.
I ask how he plans to stop
and he says he’s just going to.”
“Petrified” by Gerri Brightwell
“Beyond the windows the sun was buckling off paving stones, off shutters and white-painted walls, and even in here where the air was antiseptic and cool we talked slowly, moved slowly, cleaned wounds and took blood slowly. It had been long enough since the door had opened that we paused at the squeal of its hinges, noticed the parched breath of the desert sweep in.”
McKenzie Watson-Fore’s Review of Woman Pissing by Elizabeth Cooperman
“Woman Pissing takes Picasso’s bravado-soaked declaratives and subjects those claims to a bloodletting. Cooperman’s narrator invokes Julian Barnes’ assertion that Picasso dramatically simplified art. One page later Cooperman demonstrates thus: Because Bonnard kept watching the sky, it became a dozen different colors. / How hilarious that Bonnard cannot paint a sky blue! thought Picasso.”
“Unearthed” by Emily Patterson
“You are two and each day is a world
in which to peel gold pawpaw leaves
from the path; to plunk pebbles
in water, one by one; to trace tar
ribbons on cement in watermelon
rainboots”
“She Can’t Help It” by Maureen Sherbondy
“My mother hangs up
in the midst of conversation
without saying good-bye.
Her father fled Germany
to secure family passage
eventually. “
“To Mourn” by Chloe Yelena Miller
“What if mourning is my engine? Sound almost muted, just a whir, behind the T-shirt and jeans. My hands do what is expected—wash dishes, answer emails—instead of reaching down to thump on the dirt or dig.”
“Shearing” by Marilyn Johnston
“And afterward, we’ll say
it was good, how much we
like how it feels, as our hands
rub the back of our heads.
Then we’ll embrace, relishing
the feel of one another.”
Amy Mevorach’s Review of Miss Chloe by A.J. Verdelle
“When you open the door to Toni Morrison, the book begins, you look genius in the face. The multiple facets of the phrase open the door are characteristic of the linguistic dexterity Verdelle and Morrison enjoyed. Over two-and-a-half decades, Verdelle literally opened the door to Toni Morrison many times, a surprising development in Verdelle’s life as a young novelist, and her memoir figuratively opens the door on Morrison as a writer, mentor, and friend.”
“Dispatch from the Unwritten” by Megan Gannon
Forgive me if the books I might have written linger like a miscarriage.
That word—as in miscarriage of justice—and what is justice now
that the surprise quickening of my youngest might have felt
less blessing than sentence. I had a choice, and still somedays
I lament the sentence I’ve been given and not given.
“motherAnxiety” by Katherine Gaffney
“A friend texts to ask for ways to keep
her four-month-old occupied
during “tummy time”—a sweet name for the exercise
that will prevent her child from wearing
a helmet while the now-doughy skull forms:
an assortment of dry beans in a plastic bag”
“Russian Easter” by Mila Holt
“I’m with you tonight at the candlelight
service in my new straw hat, Mary Janes,
white gloves, a dress that you’ve sewn,
the whole congregation holding candles
at midnight.”
“Alewives in Their Thousands” by Judith Grey
“I hear it before I see a mass of gulls
dive-bombing the channel at the foot
of the falls, where a dark smear
roils like a storm cloud underwater.”
“Playing for Prokofiev” by Mir Seidel
“For her to have achieved more renown, I wonder if Gus would have had to be more pushy, more self-centered, more sure of herself. Or maybe she just needed to have been born a hundred years later. But she was herself, in her own time. My mother, who was a writer, had to make similar choices in her life. And I have too, trying, not always gracefully, to balance being married, having a child, and making a living with the commitment to a creative life.”
“Soma, Turkey” by Zuleyha Ozturk Lasky
“prayer beads and a well and cow dung and smoke and coal and flag plastered on a hill and olive trees and olive trees choiring and an olive seed smacked onto a plate by my grandmother and sheepish eye and a rug in the bedroom from Bulgaria and yogurt fermenting and ashtray with a stomach full of ash and cevşen read thrice and halo of television and plastic covered couches and kahvehane and kahve and Müslüm Baba hunkering hangimiz sevmedik? on taxi radio and Atatürk street and my uncle looping a rope around the awning as a swing for me and kittens and chickpeas and chickpeas dried and collected in a pile and chickpeas on fire”
“Dispatch from That Day in Door County” by Megan Gannon
“What
to do on that unexceptional Sunday, our kids already swim-suited
and seat-belted, but go on, go on, and drive to Door County.
The rest of the ride silent except for my sounds, no one sure
if they’re allowed to have fun until they’re finally loosed
to the shadow-sharp air, their calls and accidental laughter
high as the wind-buoyed gulls.”
“Fissure” by Elisabeth Preston-Hsu
“The aches in your back spread in springtime,
breaths caught in each twist. What have I
been? you must ask me. The sheen in
your eyes stolen by dark, it punches
circles onto bone maps, on pelvis,
ribs. I will write you, I offer.”
Betty LaDuke Exhibit in Philomath, OR
Friday, April 19: 5-7pm The Benton County Historical Society is hosting an opening reception for artist Betty LaDuke’s newest exhibit, Bringing the World Together at the Philomath Museum (1101 Main Street Philomath, Oregon). LaDuke will give a short talk about her work at 6pm. LaDuke’s current exhibitions focus on social justice from multiple perspectives, with
Where Research Meets the Imagination: CALYX Welcomes Author Katey Schultz
Katey Schultz speaks at the Corvallis Museum March 9th, 2024, on the topic of research’s role in the creative process.