Poetry – Page 94 – As It Ought To Be

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JEN CAMPBELL

Posted on September 20, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

Vaginaland
By Jen Campbell

“Vaginaland” was previously published in English Pen “Poems for Pussy Riot” and appears here today with permission from the poet.

Jen Campbell is an award-winning poet and short story writer. She’s also the author of the bestselling Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops Series. Her poetry collection, The Hungry Ghost Festival, is published by The Rialto and her latest book, The Bookshop Book, will be published in October by Little, Brown.

Editor’s Note: What is a girl? What is her mouth, her body, her words? Who is that girl when the world tries to hold her down and shut her up? When “She has been baked / as a blackberry pie and / now everyone wants a piece / of her”?

“Vaginaland” was originally published by English PEN as a political act. In an act of solidarity. In support of three members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot, who were then in prison for their outspoken feminism, LGBT advocacy, and opposition to the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Who — and what — does a girl become when she stands up, breaks free, and fires out the words that are deep inside of her? When those words are political? When her voice is political? When “She says: this is the capital of me”?

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ALLIE MARINI BATTS

Posted on September 13, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Allie Marini Batts:

breeding, trumpet flowers out of the dead ash

a cautious unfurling, petals, these fragile fingers,

extended through layers of silt and salt,

the battle-blown lands where once a city stood.

these vines, they labor furiously,

expanding and dividing beneath the dust of nations

nightshades in mitosis, their toxins lovely, bright and narrow

set against a land destroyed.

likewise myself and my skin,

a playground for dead things

and invasive plants to rise from,

a phoenix, in botany.

the mythology of the night skies

you were once a man

square but bright

incense in the dark

your story, told by Greeks

naïve, the way we

lit sticks of incense and prayed

wantonly to false hopes and square gods

and stars, naïve offerings

and devotions meant to keep us safe

protections and punishments

remembered in the

rotations of the planet

naïve, how we thought

you loved us

and would keep us safe

“breeding, trumpet flowers out of the dead ash” previously appeared in quarter after and “the mythology of the night skies” previously appeared in Symmetry Pebbles. These poems appear here today with permission from the poet.

Allie Marini Batts holds degrees from both Antioch University of Los Angeles and New College of Florida, meaning she can explain deconstructionism, but cannot perform simple math. Her work has been a finalist for Best of the Net and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is managing editor for the NonBinary Review and Zoetic Press, and has previously served on the masthead for Lunch Ticket, Spry Literary Journal, The Weekenders Magazine, Mojave River Review & Press, and The Bookshelf Bombshells. Allie is the author of the poetry chapbooks, You Might Curse Before You Bless (ELJ Publications, 2013) Unmade & Other Poems, (Beautysleep Press, 2013) and This Is How We End (forthcoming 2014, Bitterzoet.)

Editor’s Note: “breeding, trumpet flowers out of the dead ash” is so stunning that the poem speaks for itself. I am loathe to feature a favorite line in the face of so many beautifully wrought images emerging one after another. The subject matter is as rich as the soil the poem’s flowers rise from. The world revealed is post apocalyptic, brimming with nature’s resilience and with death nurturing new life, “a phoenix, in botany.”

“the mythology of the night skies” turns our eyes upward to the heavens and our minds to the gods. While pressing against the idea of worship in antiquity, the poem’s echo seems to question deity worship altogether. “naïve, how we thought / you loved us / and would keep us safe.”

Want more from Allie Marini Batts?
Find her on the web
Follow her on Twitter @kiddeternity

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: PAPER COTTON LEATHER

Posted on September 6, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

From PAPER COTTON LEATHER
By Jenny Sadre-Orafai:

RETRACT OR RECANT

This accordion love expands or exhales,
retracts or recants. It is only as much
as we allow. It squeezes out warnings
of cardboard walls closing in.

Its wheezing fills a willful tide
with dread. I turn to this gone
love. I was taught curve into the slide
when spinning on frozen road.

CUTTING YOUR HAIR

When I was done, a ring of hair
or a halo curved your hunched
shoulders. Your broad back didn’t
flinch when the scissors’ legs twitched,
when I wanted to cut more than you mimed.

PREMATURE OBITUARY

I pretend you’re dead.
I don’t let them say your name.
I was taught it’s impolite
to talk behind a dead man’s back.

I wear black four months and ten days.

I smell your clothes before
hand washing, bagging,
and then giving them away.
I don’t give your mother a thing.

I pray for what’s left of you.

I stack the wedding ring, all the rings
you gave me on my right hand,
my proclamation that you are no longer
with us or like us, the living, listening.

I tell myself what I tell myself
to keep from going back.

PAPER COTTON LEATHER: “The specter of divorce haunts Sadre-Orafai’s debut, although Paper, Cotton, Leather is much more than a lyrical response to loss. Paper, Cotton, Leather is an instruction manual for the amateur anthropologist, the domestic ghost-hunter, and the doomsday prepper. In ‘Retract or Recant,’ Sadre-Orafai writes: ‘I was taught curve into the slide/when spinning on frozen road.’ This is exactly what Paper, Cotton, Leather can teach us: how to navigate the heart’s switchbacks, how to survive a spin-out on its loneliest back roads.” —Shelley Puhak, author of Guinevere in Baltimore (From the Press 53 website.)

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of four poetry chapbooks—Weed Over Flower (Finishing Line Press), What Her Hair Says About Her (H_NGM_N Books), Dressing the Throat Plate (Finishing Line Press), and Avoid Disaster (Dancing Girl Press). Her poetry has appeared in H_NGM_N, Gargoyle, Rhino, Redivider, PANK, Mount Hope, Sixth Finch, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, and other journals. Her creative nonfiction has been published in The Los Angeles Review, South Loop Review, and The Rumpus. She co-founded and co-edits the literary journal Josephine Quarterly. She lives in Atlanta and is an Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State University.

Editor’s Note: Reading Paper, Cotton, Leather is like reading a diary written in achingly executed lyric. The compact, controlled poems function almost ironically; tiny scaffolding straining beneath the pressure of massive weight and breadth. The poems are honest. Fiercely, unapologetically honest. Surely it took no small amount of courage for the poet to sift through the wreckage of her failed marriage and catalogue its failures for us in verse.

In the poem “Fortune,” Sadre-Orafai writes, “Our pictures live in a box marked / THE PAST in my parents’ garage.” Each poem reads like its own discreet picture from that box. Vignettes of trying, failing, moving on, and learning to let go. Together those pictures—these poems—tell a story. This book is carefully held by a narrative arc that gives the illusion that we might piece together the end of this marriage like a puzzle. And yet, You know nothing, Jon Snow. This is an expertly crafted book of poems, not a memoir. We are left only with what the poet chooses to reveal. With what poetry is perhaps best at conveying. A selection of life’s moments as if through lens and shutter. Emotion. Regret and loss and heartache. Experience that finds a kindred spirit in the reader. This is a book that one reads to remember that life’s trials are universal, that we are not alone.

We are not alone. So many of us know, or have known, love like an accordion, squeezing out warnings, wheezing and transforming into gone love. “Cutting Your Hair” recalls Delilah, in all her power, destroying her lover. So, too, does that recollection call forth Regina Spektor (who is quoted in one of the book’s epigrams) in her song “Sampson”: “I cut his hair myself one night, a pair of dull scissors in the yellow light.” In this manner one can read Paper, Cotton, Leather like an archaeologist, dusting away layers to discern history, or, as Shelley Puhak suggests, like an anthropologist, observing humanity, past and present. So how does the poet pick herself up, dust herself off, and move into the future? In the most human way imaginable: striving and imperfect. “I pretend you’re dead. / I don’t let them say your name.” “I smell your clothes before / hand washing, bagging, / and then giving them away.” “I tell myself what I tell myself / to keep from going back.”

Want to see more from Jenny Sadre-Orafai?
Buy Paper, Cotton, Leather from Press 53
Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s Official Website
Jenny Sadre-Orafai on As It Ought To Be

Daniela Olszewska: A Micro-Interview and Three Poems

Posted on September 4, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

Okla Elliott: What difficulties did you encounter writing a book entirely centered around one character?

Daniela Olszewska: I started making the poems that became Citizen J while I was an undergraduate at Columbia College Chicago (so, somewhere around 2005). Originally, the character of J was known as Jane Doe and she was an autobiographical-ish twentysomething who lived in Chicago. As I became older and (slightly) less solipsistic, I became more interested in making Jane/J less a reflection of myself and more of an Etch-a-Sketchable character I could ab/use to show off the images in my head associated with my concerns over gender, sexuality, citizenship, careerism, and terrorism. Poetry gave me the permission to ignore linear narratives; it allowed me to essentially re-write the character of J whenever I wanted. This story had to be in poem form; I could not have showed all the things I want to show if I was trapped in a novel.

OE: Did your Polish heritage play into the creation of Citizen J? Did it inspire the Soviet-style atmosphere of the book?

DO: Absolutely. I was born in Wrocław, but I was raised in Chicago by my American mom. Growing up, I would see my Polish father and his maniac ex-Solidarity nationalist friends 3-4x a month. This was just enough exposure to ingrain some sense of the horrors of Soviet Satellite Statehood, and these terrors have definitely stayed with me in adulthood and spilled into most of my writing. Also, while I was in the process of writing Citizen J, I had this misfortunate notion that I should get a masters degree in Slavic Languages and Literature, so I was also consuming a shit ton of Soviet-era media during the writing of these poems. After finishing Citizen J, I became aware of the work by this Russian fashion designer named Ulyana Sergeenko. Her Fall 2012 collection is basically Citizen J in couture form: http://www.style.com/fashionshows/complete/F2012CTR-ULYANA I wish I had known about her while I was writing the book; I would have tried to include pictures of her dresses at the start of each new chapter.

OE: What current projects are you working on or that are forthcoming?

DO: I’ve been doing a lot of writing with/about/against the Internet. In June, I had an e-chap come out from NAP. Its name is THIRTEENZ and it chronicles my attempts to run my favorite parts of Emily Dickinson through an LOLCats translator. Interested and/or concerned citizens can find it here: http://napnapnaps.com/post/88325873183/thirteenz.

Last month, a book of prose poems I co-wrote with the awesomepants Carol Guess came out from Black Lawrence Press. The book is called How To Feel Confident With Your Special Talents and its writings are inspired by articles from the user-generated content advice site, WikiHow. Curious citizens can trade their dollars for a hard copy of the book by going here: http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9781625579041/default.aspx.

I’m currently working on two projects. One is a small collection of confessional-ish poems about a bad break-up (groundbreaking territory for a poet…). The poems are formatted to look as if they have been written in Tumblr’s text post box and I’ve been having a lot of fun coming up with hashtags for each of the pieces. I am also working on a collection of short fictions “narrated” by various Men’s Rights Activists (it’s a comedy…).

***

from CITIZEN J

in the midst of dressing
up to go messing up

the magistrate’s new
motorcade, j takes to

the motion that the insides
of her toasters are miked.

she goes to consult her pet
magic mirror, but he looks

miked too—wired to heads
that can store more than

the traditional three minutes’
worth of incriminating

soundbite. thus, j resolves
to take distance, to make

haste w/ignition
+ several cans of firewerks.

***

from CITIZEN J

we caught j w/the help
of earnest accessory,

we made certain to make

eye contact. when j saw
the sheriffs ranging down

in zealously-patterned
ties, she tossed
her free lunch +++

++=instructed the fire
escape part of her

brain to shrink
to a little bigger

than miniature,
a little bigger than cell.

***

from CITIZEN J

j rendezvouses with him in public restroom and mid-sized luxury sedans. he is all gussied in ascot and champagne cork heel. speciously complimenting j’s proliferation skills as he slides a stirrup around her hot hot holster. nobody is giving anybody a heaveho tonight. casually, j twists his loose mammal skin into a party favor shape. an heir to a tin can telephone empire, he has always been an expert at getting his people to the front of the breadline. they have so many levels and layers in common. tenderly, he suggests they hire someone to hold her hair back while she’s working. it was never nothing personal. yet j aspires to one day be on his side of the business. she wants ambulances to chase her for a change. she wants, she says, to be able to act as if she is at least as infamous as him.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: GLOSSOLALIA

Posted on August 30, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

from GLOSSOLALIA
By Marita Dachsel:

PATTY BARTLETT SESSIONS

I was 17, newly married
when I first put a woman to bed,
her new babe in arms.

Awaiting death, I’ve tallied,
attended 3977 births. Midwife,
my eminent title.

Pride is a sin,
but I think I will be forgiven
for the surge I feel
when I consider my record.

47 did not feel old,
but looked ancient to him.
A month after my daughter,
me. Sexless, righteous.
Virtuous. Finished.

III

I became a Mother in Israel,
coaxing young women
into the new covenant.

We were Sarah & Hagar. Rachel & Leah.

But I was wrong about polygamy.

Lust, envy & wrath are sins,
& I know I will never be forgiven
for being the zealous handmaiden
to this difficult life.

I have lost four children. Heartache
is my chronic companion,
chafing the every day.

But my dear husband David
took a second wife
& I will tell you
what the others won’t admit:

There is no other earthly pain,
constant, raw & rending,
like sharing your man
with a younger wife.

I am a practical woman:
I can heal with herbs & my hands,
I brew my own beer, sew, knit,
& speak in tongues.

After birth, I would show
the mother the slick placenta,
raised up, a stretched orb.
An offering.

It carries the tree of life.
Rough, ropey. Red,
the colour of strawberry jam
boiling low on the stove.

Being the first hand
to touch a life
is a powerful thing.

I have wondered
what imprint
I have left

& what has been
left on me.

AFTER THE MARTYRDOM

The men, they surged
from their homes,
from their women,
a confluence
in search of
their Galilee.

They shuffled, they scuffed
dirt across the land,
a hand of a crone.

The men, they fished.
Eyes skimmed the shore
for a stranger they would know.
Hope bobbed in their throats.
Loss, a lure, caught
shredding what they once knew true.

The women, they were left
with the children,
the dead.
The scriptures gave no guide
for wives at a time like this.

GLOSSOLALIA is an unflinching exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, and sexuality as told in a series of poetic monologues spoken by the thirty-four polygamous wives of Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In Marita Dachsel’s second full-length collection, the self-avowed agnostic feminist uses mid-nineteenth century Mormon America as a microcosm for the universal emotions of love, jealousy, loneliness, pride, despair, and passion. Glossolalia is an extraordinary, often funny, and deeply human examination of what it means to be a wife and a woman through the lens of religion and history. (From the Anvil Press website.)

Marita Dachsel is the author of Glossolalia, Eliza Roxcy Snow, and All Things Said & Done. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and the ReLit Prize and has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies. Her play Initiation Trilogy was produced by Electric Company Theatre, was featured at the 2012 Vancouver International Writers Fest, and was nominated for the Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding New Script. She is the 2013/2014 Artist in Residence at UVic’s Centre for Studies in Religion and Society.

Editor’s Note: In this collection Marita Dachsel has taken on no small task. By seeking to reclaim women’s stories from the polygamous world of Joseph Smith, the poet gives voice to the voiceless, the unknown, the lost and forgotten. Their stories come to life, their lives become known history. In “Patty Bartlett Sessions,” polygamous wife Patty Bartlett converts other women to the Mormon faith, “coaxing young women / into the new covenant.” But when she realizes the insurmountable trials of polygamy, she knows she “will never be forgiven / for being the zealous handmaiden / to this difficult life.” Instead she finds inspiration and fulfillment in her work as a midwife, for “Being the first hand / to touch a life / is a powerful thing.” In “After the Marytrdom” Dachsel speaks for a chorus of wives left by husbands seeking a divine experience, noting ruefully that “The scriptures gave no guide / for wives at a time like this.”

Want to see more from Marita Dachsel?
All Things Said & Done – Marita Dachsel’s Official Blog
Canadian Poetries
The Rusty Toque
The Barnstormer
Youtube: Too True: The poetry of four acclaimed BC poets

Renée Ashley: A Micro-Interview and Three Poems

Posted on August 28, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

Renée Ashley is the author of five volumes of poetry and a novel. Her awards include a Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Kenyon Review Award for Literary Excellence, the Charles Angoff Award from The Literary Review, an American Literary Review Poetry Prize, The Robert Watson Literary Prize in Poetry from Greensboro Review, a Black Warrior Review Poetry Award, the Chelsea Poetry Award, The Open Voice Award in Poetry from the Writers Voice, West Side Y, NY, NY, and the Robert H. Winner Award and the Ruth Lake Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and has received fellowships in both poetry and prose from New Jersey State Council on the Arts as well as a fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment of the Arts. She teaches in Fairleigh Dickinson University’s MFA in Creative Writing and the MA in Creative Writing and Literature for Educators.

The poems reprinted below are from Because I am the Short I Want to Be the Sea, published by Subito Press.

***

Okla Elliott: The poems in Because I Am the Shore I Want to Be the Sea are largely prose poems, with a few pieces that break into lineation of a sort. The syntax and punctuation for the poems are idiosyncratic to this project as well. How did you happen upon or decide on these formal aspects of the book?
Renée Ashley: I’d been wanting to write prose poems for a couple of years and couldn’t make a go of it. It took me a long time to figure out what worked for me. Conventional punctuation gave the poems too many stops, too much air, too many moments for the reader to think and/or react. I wanted a feeling of claustrophobia, of speed trapped inside a sealed vessel—as though the reader were locked inside my head with me. So, over time, terminal punctuation, except for question marks and exclamation points, was done away with, and I imposed an extreme sort of compression on the poems. I needed pressure on both the breath and the meting out of sound and content to achieve a sense of profluence, but also one of embeddedness, density, and restraint, all of those at the same time—meaning I wanted the sound and content to press outwardly against the rigid margins but then be visually forced back again at the point at which each poem’s real estate abruptly ended. Whether or not I achieved what I was after, I don’t know. But that was the ideal I had in mind.

OE: The vast majority of the poems have a similar structure and the same titling tactic, along with several other similarities, yet the book remains fresh throughout. What little tricks or tactics did you use to create variation between the poems?
RA: I’m so glad you think the pieces remain fresh–what a disaster if they hadn’t! It wasn’t something I consciously considered—well, no more than I would for any other gathering of my poems. Each poem or poem section has its own engine (an image, a rhythm) that drives it forward and conjures association and consequence. I’m very aware that my thematic issues are few, so I try to let image and angle of approach propel the flow of the articulation. I did fiddle with title tactics a lot and titles-as-titles didn’t work; they were too loud, too directive. Too there. The combination of the brackets and lower case seemed to hush them, make them seem tacked-on rather than an integral part of the working bodies of the poems; that’s what I wanted, a sort of whisper, a suggestion softly heard.

OE: Okay, I’m going to go lofty and abstract here. If there were one thing you could change about the current literary landscape, what would it be? Imagine you have total power and no limitations for this wish.
RA: Ah, bigger than a breadbox! You must understand that a big issue for me is deciding whether or not to use a semicolon… or whether or not to get out of bed on any given day.
But the first thing that comes to mind is that all really great writing could find a suitable venue for publication. (And, selfishly, that I would have time to read it—but, I know: that’s two wishes.) It’s a good wish, huge, really, though also small, I admit, in the face of the power you’ve offered me. But as I said, I’m not a thinker-in-grand-scales. I’m a punctuation-sized-thinker or open-my-eyes-sized-thinker. I’d make a terrible politician. Wait … wait … Maybe my wish should be that great writers aren’t beaten down by circumstances that discourage them so that they would keep writing and reach some ultimate work they might not have otherwise achieved … but then again that difficulty and/or discouragement that I relieve them of may have turned out to be the exact source of push-back that would have powered their definitive articulation. Never mind. I probably shouldn’t dabble in others’ affairs anyway; I can barely manage my own. We’ll all do what we do. I’m going to have to go with door number one.

***

[once quickly (quietly)]

The rough black sky then the lid of morning opens There’s a pure yellow light buried in the toad’s eye and the mute swan’s plodding through shallow water The snake is dangling from his myrtle tree and the sun rests—curled like a gilded cat—on the ledge of the sky The wild collation begins again Moon and the syntax of stars The turning on their silver pivots But the blades overhead are dividing the air And the light remains whole despite that There can be nothing ordinary about the ordinary Monstrous when the dark thing takes its place Then approaching that one grain of joy on the tongue: that place of beginning of all things able to climb the ladder named Assumption And all that was dead is dead again The horrible dreams return We are the restless unlovliest animal Hours of penitence Hours of rain like a beating Two instants of holy permutation Things come to you and you use them

***

[café des quatres vents]

It’s only a postcard Nothing about the wind knocking debris to the curb No hint about the heart We are the act of consequence – figure and profile Every thing is fatal and we suffer the world and its waters Somebody will always object and we grieve for those living hard amidst these shifting miracles Right now is when I love you That world is only darkness Our place is in those small lights It’s best to be clear

***

[I run to the sad man in the white car and]

This is a different gun reader than you have heard about before From me This is a different tragedy The man in the white car is weary of sorrow weary the way a woman becomes weary of a man Or of her life (Or of a satchel which might contain the whole history a whole of sorrow’s vestige) This man is learning the gun: singed wing orphan rare bird Sorrow can fly and a gun can fly and a shot And time. But time is simply metaphor here & hardly a metaphor at all Not flying Dragging a busted wing dragging its bitter (Like a satchel) Dragging its stark and dragging its bleak dragging its heavy its carcass its blasted-out carrion heart

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JACKIE TREIBER

Posted on August 23, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

from ‘A DANCER’
By Jackie Treiber

And from eternal life found in the eyes came the truth: she was one witch. She was from Atzlan. Of Avar, wore the bridal relic, sat at the heels of mother fire. Mary A. of Massachusetts, little unclear Mary. Celine of Normandy, sick on milk. Joan of Arc. Strega. Lost in the woods in her red shoes. Caught in the rain at the base of a mountain. No survivor of death, survivor of transcendence. Torched, entombed, excised. Acrid climate, cupidity, war, drought. In lieu of an oral lineage, in lieu of explanations, there came the gift of death to her. When death was collective, she was anonymous. When death became individual, she died with little handfuls of dirt on her chest, thrown with purpose and care. Her conclusion was more than physical death now, and her body nothing more than a reed carved to sing its masterful song. This is why she stood resolute—she had known a thousand floods of death. This, out of all of them, was nothing.

Today’s excerpt appears here with permission from the author.

Jackie Treiber writes, reads and edits in Portland, Oregon. She is drawn to conflicted and damaged characters. Dualities such as profane/magical, masculine/feminine and stability/chaos thrill and inspire her. Her poems will be published in an anthology of Kansas City poets in Spring 2015 (UnHoly Day Press). Her most recent work was featured in Smalldoggies Reading Series Chapbook (2011).

Editor’s Note: Today’s excerpt is part of a larger work of fiction, though it stands on its own as a poem, blurring the line between prose and prose poetry. From within its almost choral narration (despite its third person narrative perspective) emerges one woman who is also every woman. She is a witch, a bride, Joan of Arc. She is our collective suffering, our recurring death. And yet her story is epiphanous. Because she has suffered, she knows that she can rise above. She has lived—and died—often enough to know that death is nothing more than metamorphosis.

Want to read more by Jackie Treiber?
Work poems
How Do We Look?
#23
#11 Socially Acceptable Cannibalism
We burned John Wayne’s favorite yacht

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: KAITLIN DYER

Posted on August 16, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Kaitlin Dyer:

LEAVING JERUSALEM

ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, I HEAR THE NEIGHBOR’S MUSIC

Today’s poems were originally published in the Hawai’i Pacific Review, and appear here today with permission from the poet.

Kaitlin Dyer is a founding editor of Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion. Her work has appeared in PANK, Potomac Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, and The New Welsh Review among others. These poems will be included in her chapbook Alter Lives of Alter Egos which is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in Feb/March of 2015. She loves dogs, hates caramel, and contains multitudes.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poems take on big issues. Politics and God. Ownership, land rights, and humanity. “God, forgive us. We build a fence / in the yard.” Who are we to lay claim to the earth, to carve out our little sections and plant our flags? And what god are we living with after we have staked our claims? These are the questions today’s poems pose. Questions that at once seem to take a stance and yet feel rhetorical. We don’t know where our birds have gone: “Perhaps / to the desert. / Perhaps, the morgue.” And instead of a God who is reflected in children and animals, we are left with an image of a biblical God who breaks through man-made fences.

Want to read more by Kaitlin Dyer?
Kaitlin Dyer Official Website
Kaitlin Dyer on Twitter
Harlot Magazine

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ALLIE MORENO

Posted on August 9, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING
By Allie Moreno

I have been stretched like
skin to dry in the sun
I am a blanket
I’m a tightrope
a staircase
a palace of forgotten
photographs
a sandcastle exposed in the wind
I love and
cover you

I have filled all the glasses
on the table
I have eaten what is
left on every plate
to be free of it

I have swallowed your
skeletons on cue
I should probably apologize
for complaining
but I’m the parade and the rain

“Too Much of a Good Thing” appears here today with permission from the poet.

Allie Moreno spends her daytime hours writing for a large tech company in the San Diego area. She received an MFA in Writing from UC San Diego and sometimes writes poetry from the confines of her cubicle. Allie tends to write about identity, belonging, and her experience as a trans-racial adoptee.

Editor’s Note: Simple, straightforward, and full of evocative imagery, today’s poem takes us inside the world of one who has lived for another. Stretched tight, walked upon, now disappearing grain by grain, “a sandcastle exposed in the wind.” To give love is not enough, when in so doing we give too much of ourselves. In end end we are almost left with a woman’s tendency to apologize for herself, but instead we are left with a counterweight. A provocative image slightly obscured. What is a woman when she is “the parade and the rain”?

Want to read more by Allie Moreno?
Allie Moreno’s Blog
Interview: Allie Moreno’s Adoption Experience

Feminism, Culture, and Poetry: An Interview with Lisa Marie Basile

Posted on August 7, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

Feminism, Culture, and Poetry:

An Interview with Luna Luna Magazine Editor Lisa Marie Basile

by Sarah Marcus

This interview originally appeared as part of Gazing Grain Press’s feminist-author interview series by co-editor Sarah Marcus and is reprinted here with permission.

Sarah Marcus: You are the editor-in-chief at Luna Luna Magazine, which is self described as “a diary of ideas and a place for dialogue.” From your website, it seems as though this publication encourages a wide range of views and opinions. Although you “do not tolerate sexism, misandry, homophobia, ageism, racism, sizeism, religism, classism or transphobia in comments or in our published work,” you do allow articles from authors and comments from people who openly disagree and may have controversial stances on a variety of issues. How was Luna Luna Magazine founded, and how do you view its role and importance within the greater feminist and literary community?

Lisa Marie Basile: When I started Luna Luna I wanted to create a conversation. We are almost entirely run by women, and that is something I’m very proud of and want to continue. We of course allow voices from everyone, but I have never published anything I consider problematic or hateful.

I allow a very specific level of autonomy with regard to our contributors and staff writers; our disclaimer very clearly says that while we may not all agree with one another, we allow conversation and opinion. I want people to be able to discuss race, society, gender, sexuality and lifestyle in an open way. I will say, though, that I’ve never, ever published anyone who I felt was harmful to the public dialogue. We do publish comments to our articles that may be in opposition to our ideas (unless they’re blatantly rude or disgusting) and even then, sometimes (rarely), comment moderation slips through the cracks.

We do this because it gives our readers a chance to discuss the issue and it gives our writers the opportunity to provide a teaching moment. If I feel that there is ever a exploitative comment or if a commenter gets out of hand I’ll certainly discuss with the author and editors. I firmly believe in the discussion of differing opinions for the health of all – to an extent. We want to provide a platform for idea, and even confession of flawed idea, but I would not allow hate speech. We haven’t even come close, and if we had, our editorial staff would have had a very detailed discussion about it.

As far as feminism is concerned, our feminism is innate. We provide feminism in action. We are written by (mostly) women. We feature, spotlight and promote women. We actively seek diverse opinions on feminist issues, and we actively take a stance against everyday sexism. No opinion or delivery will be perfect for everyone, but we certainly try to at least get people talking about issues that affect them. We’ve had a lot of interaction with (either through content share or cross-promotion) other feminist organizations and magazines, and we’re really proud of that.

I’m not comfortable with labels but I will say our writers are gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, asexual, religious, atheist, parents, soon-to-be parents, and those who don’t want children. We have writers of almost every race, socioeconomic background, and size, and we’re determined to welcome people from every path of life.

In the end, we want to offer opinion of lifestyle, culture and the arts – and we welcome writing in those areas through a variety of lenses.

SM: You are also a co-editor & co-curator at DIORAMA: Poetry/Shape/Sound, the NYC editor of The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, and the editor at Patasola Press. Can you please tell us a little bit about each of these projects and about the experience of being an editor for so many different, interesting projects?

LMB: I am inundated, but luckily these projects don’t all come to life at once. Patasola is a small press. I publish a handful of chapbooks or books per year and have found it very difficult to do any more than a few. My goal here is to publish beautiful words, because I love the authors I work with.

I curate content from writers in the NY area for The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, which is on break right now. I also teach a class for their workshops. DIORAMA is a poetry and performance event that incorporates the idea of musicality in poetry and live music into one intimate, vulnerable event where the reader and the audience isn’t separated by podium and harsh light. We’re very interested evocation and reading style and sound – how sound affects the listener’s experience. We host this event (myself and co-curate Alyssa Morhart-Goldstein, who runs SOUND Lit Mag, the associated journal of contemporary musico-poetics) every few months. We’re like a live action lit-journal; we select poets and their poems for the event. We also pair them with musicians who set their poems to music. It’s amazing.

I love to support writers and do beautiful things. I’m probably stretched too thin (no, I am), but I work best when busy. I am just lucky to be around the best people.

SM: I am so excited that your first full-length book, APOCRYPHAL, is due out this summer from Noctuary Press. Can you give us a synopsis of this work and tell us what inspired you to write these poems?

LMB: Thank you!!! I am so excited, too. It’s a weird, almost anti-climactic feeling; sort of like a death and a birth at once. I am already well-past the experience of those poems and I moved through a lot when writing it. Now it feels like a world I vaguely remember in a dream, but it’s still a world I know as home.

APOCRYPHAL is sort of set in three parts: a genesis, a world of secrets (apocrypha) and a paradise. For me, these “parts” are fluid; they’re from dreams and realities and half-remembered memories and secrets. Sometimes I don’t know which are which, but I use form and lineation to explore this. The book examines the woman’s relationship to sex and desire and being desired, but I think I try to subvert what we’ve been taught to “be” and “perform” and “look like.” I wanted to create a world that was as superficial and dramatic and broken as I felt and was taught when I was younger, insecure, and frightened. A lot of it deals with my father, who left when I was young and has always been a figure of relative mythology to me: how we talk about fathers, how we let them influence us, how we let them “define” men – these are all topics I encounter. It’s written from not only my perspective but a sort of omnipotent camera. It pulls from my life as an Italian-American in a religious family, and from life on the beach and in cars and from the younger me who connected sex with validation. It’s my way of consoling my younger, more sunless self.

SM: What are you working on next?

LMB: I’m working on a book of fiction-it details the extreme side of friendship: obsession, co-dependence, ownership, lust and manipulation. I’m frightened of how natural it feels. But I’m excited for it to exist.

***

Lisa Marie Basile in a NYC-based poet. She is also the author of the chapbooks Andalucia (The Poetry Society of NY) and triste (Dancing Girl Press) and the forthcoming full-length APOCRYPHAL. She is the founding editor of Luna Luna, a diary of art, sex and culture, curator for the musicopoetics performance salon, Diorama, and the NY editor and a writing instructor for The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. A graduate of The New School’s MFA program, she has been named a top contemporary NYC poet to read by several publications. She tweets at @lisamariebasile and works as a writer.

Sarah Marcus is the author of BACKCOUNTRY (2013, Finishing Line Press) and Every Bird, To You (2013, Crisis Chronicles Press). Her other work has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s, Cimarron Review, CALYX Journal, Spork, Nashville Review, Slipstream, Tidal Basin Review, and Bodega, among others. She is an editor at Gazing Grain Press and a spirited Count Coordinator for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. She holds an MFA in poetry from George Mason University and currently teaches and writes in Cleveland, OH. sarahannmarcus.com

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Feminism, Culture, and Poetry:

An Interview with Luna Luna Magazine Editor Lisa Marie Basile

by Sarah Marcus

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