Poetica #16
Grant Hudson and Clarendon House Publishing present: The effort of this series of Poetica anthologies is to contribute to the creation of a market for poetry throughout the calendar year. The idea is that, by providing a regular, published venue for poetry from all over the world, poems as media for the communication of important and heartfelt ideas and reflections will gain in respect and become more widely acknowledged. Voices will be heard; channels will be opened. ~ Featuring the work of (in order of appearance): Ed Ahern, Linda M. Crate, Michal Reiben, Catherine A. MacKenzie, Giuseppina Marino Leyland, Sultana Raza, Kelli J Gavin, Elizabeth Brown, Suranjit Gain, Jim Bates, Craig Tickner, Jonah Jones, Engilbert Egill Stefánsson, Anne Marie Lake, the Birch Twins, Gareth Macready, Justin Wiggins, Mike Turner, Annie Nardone, Duane Vorhees, DJ Elton, Afshan Aqil, Jacek Wilkos, Linda Sparks, Marlene Fabian Stiles, David Painter, Richard Rose, Gabriella Balcom, Petrouchka Alexieva, Dawn DeBraal, Fhen M., Trish Bailey, Kerri Jesmer, Dr. Elizabeth V. Koshy, Peter Kenny, Tony Fyler, Aminath Neena, Vanessa Caraveo, Thomas R Bates, Sharon Frame Gay, Tim Law, Nnamdi Chinkere Anyahara, Lisa H. Owens and Jill Kiesow. ~ Lisa H. Owens' excerpt: Glass Prisons in Suburbia On her last day in captivity, she heard a Van Zant brother belt out the lyrics of Freebird; so few words with so much meaning made her want to fly-fly-fly so far away. Like Jen-nay, she thought about her escape, about getting out of that one-horse town and how sometimes there weren’t enough rocks to break all the windowpanes. Open that shit all the way up to let them see what goes on behind closed doors behind glass prisons in suburbia. [read more in the anthology]
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Nobody Left to Blame
Owl Canyon Press presents: A fiction anthology featuring the winning entries from the 2023 Owl Canyon Press Short Story Hackathon team challenge. The collection contains 27 stories chosen from over 100 entries from more than 20 countries. These stories represent a mix of both seasoned and emerging writers whose astonishing and entertaining works present a wide ranging collection of themes from fear to euphoria. ~ Redeeming Angel Shaw: Team: Redrum & Mehyam's Excerpt: Writer A: Lisa H. Owens Writer B: Dawn DeBraal *No coverage, not even one bar; the battery was dead anyway. It was still daytime, but there was an overcast and the sky had a perfectly even dullness, so there was no way to tell what time of day it was, much less which direction was north or south or anything else for that matter. A two-lane blacktop road snaked up into the distance and disappeared into some trees, or a forest if you wanted to get technical about it. It also snaked down toward some lumpy hills and disappeared there as well. What sounded like a two-stroke chainsaw could be heard in the distance, but it was impossible to tell whether it was up in the forest or down in the lumpy hills. This had been happening more often lately. Two different ways to go, with a dead battery and no bars, and nobody left to blame. [*opening prompt paragraph] I clapped the book shut before I even made it to chapter two. It was the beginning of nearly every cliché horror novel I’d ever read. Two ways to go and a two-stroke chainsaw? A dead battery? No one to blame? I thought of Cousin Larry and his nightly shenanigans. Where a dead car battery was concerned, Larry the numskull would always be the one to blame. He had a penchant for sneaking out to the garage to hide in the car for a shot of rotgut whiskey and some righteous weed—every night. And most nights he whacked it to porn by the dashboard light. And some nights, he ironically listened to Meatloaf wail about doing it by the dashboard light on side-one of his worn Cool Songs mixtape, which brought his thoughts back to the porn, which brought him back to the righteous weed, which ultimately led to another shot of rotgut whiskey—Larry’s Circle of Life. [Writer A] My cousin, Larry, the issue of my father’s older brother Leonard, was an embarrassment to the family. One day his daddy took off, leaving him with our Meemaw, after his mama headed for parts unknown. Growing up, Meemaw’s isolated house in the woods kept my cousin from having any redeeming social graces, hence the dashboard lights fiasco that carried well beyond Larry’s puberty years. We all thought he would grow out of it, but never having the opportunity to find a girlfriend after quitting school in the eleventh grade, Larry clung to the “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with,” vibe on the Cool Songs tape I made for him as a gift on his seventeenth birthday. Who would have known that the tape and his Fleshy Girls Magazine, hidden under the front seat, would lead to the trouble it did? Larry picked the time I needed that old wreck of a car the most to fall asleep with the cassette tape playing repeatedly, resulting in an almost dead battery. But that wasn’t all that was nearly dead. [Writer B] [read more in the anthology]
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February 2024
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