Some Assembly Required by Colleen S. Harris-Keith

Some Assembly Required (Colleen S. Harris Keith), cover photo by Shannon Smith

Some Assembly Required is a sampling of Colleen S. Harris-Keith’s poetry dealing with motherhood, marriage, and a life shared. From reading in bed through rickety crib assembly, and the things left after children have grown, these poems are intimate moments of togetherness and separation. | open edition cover, $6

An excerpt from “Frydaddy Wisdom:”

The first time he asks for seconds feels like
a smaller version of his proposal,
a promise of future calories shared.

A chicken leg waved in a chubby fist:
proof your can provide. Your well-fed children
bring cold chicken for lunch with their box drinks,
just as good at school as at funerals.

And the chicken is good at funerals,
keeping people busy, mouths full, mouths shut.

Micro Chapbook Series

We couldn’t say no to this or her other micro chapbook, That Reckless Sound, and so we accepted both for our inaugural micro chapbook series. Each of these chapbooks is available via Wicked Little Heart.

Open Edition Inkjet Cover

The cover photograph (by Shannon Smith) is printed on Epson premium matte professional paper. The micro chapbooks is handbound & each is trimmed by hand. As they are handmade, no two are exactly alike. The photo (“Kiddie Pool”) is pulled from Shannon’s Doing it Domestic series.

About the Poet

Colleen S. Harris-Keith works as a member of the library faculty at CSU Channel Islands. She holds various degrees, including BAs in Economics and International Relations, an MFA in Writing, an MS in Library Science, and will soon have her EdD in Learning & Leadership. She is the author of three books of poetry in addition to this chapbook, and is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee for her poetry and short fiction. When she’s not doing homework, you can find her daydreaming, writing, or doting on her husband Jed and basset hounds Otto and Igor.

Emily

art inspired by Emily, in process (artist: Nicci Mechler)

December (1830) is the month in which both Emily Dickinson and Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson were born. For that reason, we’ve decided to read for the anthology (mostly) in December. Dec 5, 2014 – Jan 5, 2015.

Emily is a collection of poetry&prose inspired by the works, life, and letters of Emily Dickinson. The anthology is to be split into several sections, each loosely clustered around one of the major themes&image in her works. We’re looking for all kinds of work for this anthology, be it poetry, prose, creative nonfiction, artwork, doodles, notes, short critical essays, illustrated narratives, comics, or illustrations. Full guidelines can be found on our Anthologies page.

• 3 to 5 poems (no more than 10 pages)
• 3 micro & flash fictions (no more than 1,500 words total)
• personal essay & excerpts no longer than 2,000 words
• short essays (no more than 2,000 words)
• up to 5 artworks, illustrations, comic pages, scans of notes/sketches, photos (JPGs)

We request FNASR & the right to archive your work on our SW or PP website (Archival Rights).

Payment is made in one limited edition copy of the resulting anthology.
If you have a website, and would like it linked, we’ll do so from the contributor section of our site, along with a bio.

(listed at Duotrope)

Threnody by Laura Madeline Wiseman

Threnody (Laura Madeline Wiseman)

Threnody explores the figure of lady-death, an icon come to life in these poems about the death cart, the death kiss, and a narrative dance with death. This is a collection of linked micro fictions & vignettes. They read like prose poems, too, which is part of the beauty in them—these small works live in a liminal space, somehow between poetry and prose, but also an almost-dream state between life and death. Sometimes versus too. | $7 open edition via Wicked Little Heart.

The chapbook measures about 5.25 x 5 inches. It features a painting as cover art (“Lady Death & Her Arrows,” guache+paper, 9 x 5 inches). The cover is produced via inkjet on Epson matte photo paper. Each book is handbound & trimmed.

An excerpt from Threnody titled “Kissing Death:” (listen)

The lady of death gives me the kiss of death. I don’t know why. I was just standing in jeans and a ribbed tee, my belt hard and black, the metal clasp opening, warm in my hands. She appeared in my room, looked up at me from those dark sockets—her body all rib bone, clavicle, pelvis flair, hands and fingers as delicate as cages of dead birds. I didn’t want the kiss of death. We both stared at it for a while, crawling and scooting on the cement floor. I grabbed an empty coffee cup and trapped it, but when I knelt to slide a piece of paper beneath the edge, it was gone. I looked up at death, but she shrugged and reached into the space where her heart had been for another.

What others are saying about the chapbook:

Laura Madeline Wiseman’s Threnody is one kickass, wailing dirge that has death driving shotgun, “more hold you than break you apart,” luminous, pulsating poetry that defies fear and denial. —Meg Tuite

These poems are powerful, possessing great lyrical intensity and a profound sense of the mystery inherent in this mythic feminine journey into the underworld. Here the poet is an archeologist of the subterranean mind, lifting bits and pieces of knowledge like shards of pottery back up to the light. —Devreaux Baker

Mythic rituals have hints of danger and sex and regret, and Wiseman’s incantatory language mixes dream and nightmare, and Eros and Thanatos, in little portraits that soothe as they trouble. I admired each piece’s swift iconography. —Timothy Schaffert

About the author:

Laura Madeline Wiseman is the author of more than a dozen books and chapbooks and the editor of Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013). Her recent books are American Galactic (Martian Lit Books, 2014), Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience (Lavender Ink, 2014), Queen of the Platform (Anaphora Literary Press, 2013), Sprung (San Francisco Bay Press, 2012), and the collaborative book Intimates and Fools (Les Femmes Folles Books, 2014) with artist Sally Deskins. She holds a doctorate from the University of Nebraska and has received an Academy of American Poets Award, a Mari Sandoz/Prairie Schooner Award, and the Wurlitzer Foundation Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Margie, Mid-American Review, and Feminist Studies. www.lauramadelinewiseman.com

Cover Artist: Nicci // damnredshoes.wordpress.com

 

More can also be found: goodreads

Love Letter to Biology 250, Chella Courington (Preview)

Cover detail, Love Letter to Biology 250 (Chella Courington), art by Jonathan Rountree

Love Letter to Biology 250 is a chapbook of micro fictions by Chella Courington. This manuscript pinged our nerd-brains when we first read it, flirting with obscure tidbits from Biology lectures—those things we remember because they’re strange—crafted into really tiny stories. It’ll be released on December 5th, and is currently available for pre-order via Wicked Little Heart. | $7

Excerpt from “Preferring a Clean Virgin:”

The male dark fishing spider climbs her Amazonian body, his legs under a third her size, her abdomen mountainous, fourteen times heavier than his, and he rocks her, side to side, his pedipalps engorged until the blood pushes too hard against arterial walls, curling him against her. Stuck to her, he’s consumed by her. The number and size of their offspring increased by his sacrifice.

What others are saying about Love Letter:

“This collection is a work of freshness that is always surprising and never disappointing. Courington manages to do fascinating things with common images and she gives those images new life in a pleasing and sometimes disturbing oblique sort of light. Her terse, intense, and honest stories are presented in an earthy narrative voice in language full of longing and desire. These stories are both playful and provocative and can leave a reader almost breathless at times. Combined, the stories make up witty but also quite serious and worthwhile explorations.” —Pamelyn Casto, editor of Flash Fiction Flash Newsletter

About the Author

Chella Courington is Professor of Creative Writing at Santa Barbara City College. Her prose and poetry have appeared in numerous journals including The Los Angeles Review, lo-ball magazine, Gargoyle, The Tusculum Review, and Danse Macabre. In 2011 Courington published Paper Covers Rock, a flipbook of lined poetry, Indigo Press; Girls & Women, a chapbook of prose poetry, Burning River; and Talking Did Not Come Easily to Diana, an e-book of linked microfiction, Musa Publishing. Her work has been honored by Camroc Press Review, The Collagist, Qarrtsiluni, and Main Street Rag, and nominated for Best of the Net and Best New Poets Anthologies.

That Reckless Sound by Colleen S. Harris-Keith

That Reckless Sound, Colleen S. Harris-Keith

That Reckless Sound investigates the complications of identity and relationship, the destructive next to the beautiful, the fragile touching the reckless, all bound up into one fluid experience. These poems peer through the eyes of historical & mythic (female) figures from Pandora to Magdalene, Bathsheba to Joséphine. | more at Wicked Little Heart’s shop

Below is an excerpt from the first poem, “The Way Youth Yields:”

There is nothing so faithless as
a girl left on her own among other
green and growing things. Brimming

with life, carelessly killing the field’s
flowering army so she can wear
ribbons of bluebells in her hair,

she has no need of forgiveness

Micro Chapbook Series

Colleen had our attention from the very first poem, and she kept it. We couldn’t say no to this or her other micro chapbook, Some Assembly Required, and so we accepted both for our inaugural micro chapbook series.

Open Edition Inkjet Cover

The cover is a photograph (Nicci’s) printed on Epson premium matte professional paper. The micro chapbooks is handbound & each is trimmed by hand. As they are handmade, no two are exactly alike. | open edition cover | $6

About the Poet

Colleen S. Harris-Keith works as a member of the library faculty at CSU Channel Islands. She holds various degrees, including BAs in Economics and International Relations, an MFA in Writing, an MS in Library Science, and will soon have her EdD in Learning & Leadership. She is the author of three books of poetry in addition to this chapbook, and is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee for her poetry and short fiction. When she’s not doing homework, you can find her daydreaming, writing, or doting on her husband Jed and basset hounds Otto and Igor.