May’s Good Stuff

Strangest Sea (Ariana D. Den Bleyker) cover artist: Nicci Mechler

The Peace of Wild Things by Ariana D. Den Bleyker (cover: Jonathan Rountree & Nicci Mechler)

A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road by Amorak Huey (cover image: Alexandra Eldridge)

Feeding the Dead by M. Brett Gaffney (cover art: Mary Chiaramonte)

My Heart in Aspic by Sonya Vatomsky (cover: Shannon Perry)

hiku [pull] by James A. H. White (cover: Nicci Mechler)

bindweed & crow poison: small poems of stray girls, fierce women by Robin Turner (cover: Anita Olivia Koester)

Haunting the Last House on Holland Island, Fallen into the Bay (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by Sarah Ann Winn (cover: Angie Reed Garner)

Ghost Skin by Wren Hanks (cover: Alexandra Eldridge)

My Own Strange Beast by Melissa Atkinson Mercer (cover art by Danial Powers)

Set the Garden on Fire by Chen Chen (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Ghost Tongue by Nicole Rollender (Cover art: Susan Yount)

Dry Spell by Patrick Kindig (cover: Nicci Mechler)

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My Own Strange Beast (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by Melissa Atkinson Mercer

• My Own Strange Beast was released this month!
• “girl with diagnosis or gun, #6” appears in Gingerbread House.

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A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Amorak Huey » amorakhuey.net

• Two poems in Bloodroot.

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Ghost Tongue (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Nicole Rollender » nicolerollender.com

• Ghost Tongue was nominated for a 2017 Elgin Award!

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Haunting the Last House on Holland Island, Fallen into the Bay (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Sarah Ann Winn » bluebirdwords.com

• One of Sarah’s Holland Island pieces was nominated for WigleaF‘s long list!

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Set the Garden on Fire (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Chen Chen » chenchenwrites.com

• Starred review of Chen’s When I Grow Up I Want To Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA, 2017) at Library Journal: “Visually vivid, erotic and intimate, at times bitingly funny, and refreshingly world-observant,” writes Barbara Hoffert.

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My Heart in Aspic (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Sonya Vatomsky » www.sonyavatomsky.com

• Sonya’s new death positive article is in the New York Post. “These pet owners just can’t let go.”

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Feeding the Dead (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by M. Brett Gaffney » blog

• a micro review of Feeding the Dead via Gwendolyn Kiste: “Women of Horror, Dark Fantasy, and the Weird: A Recommended Reading List.”

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bindweed & crow poison: small poems of stray girls, fierce women (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Robin Turner

• Robin’s bindweed & crow poison: small poems of stray girls, fierce women (Porkbelly Press, 2016) is featured this week on The Wardrobe‘s “Best Dressed” (Sundress Publications).

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Ghost Skin (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Wren Hanks » tumblr

• Ghost Skin was nominated for a 2017 Elgin Award!

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hiku [pull] (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by James A. H. White

• hiku [pull] was nominated for a 2017 Elgin Award!

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Strangest Sea (Porkbelly Press, 2015) &
The Peace of Wild Things (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Ariana D. Den Bleyker » arianaddenbleyker.com

• Ariana has two new pieces in May’s beautiful issue of Hermeneutic Chaos.

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Dry Spell (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Patrick Kindig » website

• two pieces in The Collapsar : “fascinations: cynthia gleason, mesmeric clairvoyant” & “fascinations: butterfly.”

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Melissa Atkinson Mercer’s My Own Strange Beast

My Own Strange Beast by Melissa Atkinson Mercer (cover art by Danial Powers)

Mercer’s My Own Strange Beast is a cluster of short poems, most under twenty lines, packed with evocative language, lush image, and the dichotomy of the delicate and the sharp. There’s a lingering darkness here, a follower, something haunting this speaker through dreams, the smell of lotus, candles, and salted bones. They feel mythic, these women (mother/daughter, aunt/niece) in these poems, carrying baskets of dead fish, sitting in the glow of a brick oven, surviving together, searching together: “Your heart like a thin-throated flower,” she writes, “the small lamp of your face beside me.” (Porkbelly Press, 2017) » more & excerpt

about the poet

Melissa Atkinson Mercer is the author of Saint of the Partial Apology (Five Oaks Press) and five poetry chapbooks, including Star-Blind in the Family of Fortune Keepers (Hermeneutic Chaos), After the Miracle Season (Seven Kitchens Press), and ghost exhibit (Glass Poetry Press). Her work has recently appeared in Ruminate, Zone 3, Blue Earth Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and others and has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. She has an MFA from West Virginia University, where she won the Russell MacDonald Creative Writing Award in Poetry.

cover art

artist » Danial Powers
portfolio » Empress Dragon Arts