Dreamland for Keeps // Sarah Nichols

Dreamland for Keeps by Sarah Nichols (cover artist: Nicci Mechler)

Dreamland for Keeps is a whisper in the dark giving voice to Elizabeth Short through poetry of erasure. Nichols’ poems return agency to the spirit of a woman so often sensationalized, examining Short’s many names, her impression forever etched on the American consciousness. For her, death is not the end of the story; in some ways the puzzle is never solved.  (Porkbelly Press, 2018) » more info

Excerpt

WHAT DARKNESS BRINGS ME

When I ask,
the dark

offers me its
gifts.

A tree of eyes. A
hand in a jar,

its owner, lost.

I swallowed a
wedding ring,

once.

It tasted like
dust and tears.

Bone and gold.

Blackbird Whitetail Redhand // Lindsay Lusby

Blackbird Whitetail Redhand (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Blackbird Whitetail Redhand (by Lindsay Lusby) is a book of chaos, transformation, and all the little possibilities tangled beneath the night clover. It is a simultaneously tumultuous and quiet narrative of bodily autonomy and the sacrifices needed to achieve it. These are poems rattled with the snapping of bear traps and the sharp, tangy bite of an ax kissing the trunk of a tree. Lusby leaves you asking: is she the sweet flesh of the fruit fruit or the sharp teeth? Listen for cloven feet over the thicket. If you catch sight of her, marvel at her mottled heart. Be careful not to make a sound, “she’ll move like scattershot” if you do. (Porkbelly Press, 2018) » more info

excerpt

February’s Good News & Good Reads

(News, reviews, happenings, and readings from our Porkbelly poets & authors)

Ghost Skin by Wren Hanks (cover: Alexandra Eldridge)

Pray, Pray, Pray by E. Kristin Anderson (cover: Nicci Mechler)

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

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

The Autobiography of a Love Not Mine, Hilda Weaver

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

How Darkness Enters a Body by Sarah Nichols

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

Love Me, Anyway by Minadora Macheret (cover artist: Sharmon Davidson)

Bodies in Water, P. Andrew Miller (special edition cover)

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

Vein of Stone, Sarah McCartt-Jackson (special edition cover)

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Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the Middle of the Night (Porkbelly Press, 2015) by E. Kristin Anderson » www.ekristinanderson.com

• EKA’s poem “Jumping the Fuck Shark” appears in the new Tinderbox Poetry Journal.
• another erasure, “The light fell in,” appears in Cotton Xenomorph.
• Come As You Are (Anomalous Press, 2018), an anthology of 90s pop culture, edited by EKA, is just out!
• Her new chapbook, Seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press, 2018), is available.
• Other achievements, including a chapbook, are listed in her latest blog post!

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The Autobiography of a Love Not Mine (Porkbelly Press, 2014)
by Hilda Weaver

• a recent micro-review of Hilda’s The Autobiography of a Love Not Mine (Porkbelly Press, 2014) via Christine Brandel’s blog.

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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 of Amorak’s poems appear in Tinderbox Poetry Journal: “God, the Father” & “Putting the Fun in Fungible.”

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

• Wren’s poem “Dear Ozma,” appears in Pittsburgh Poetry Review.
• Wren’s chapbook The Rise of Genderqueer was selected by Brain Mill Press for the Mineral Point Poetry Series (series editor: Kiki Petrosino). His chapbook is due out in August 2018!

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

• Chen Chen in conversation with Francesca Ekwuyasi at Winter Tangerine: “I Forget Myself When I’m Not In Conversation with Other Minds.”
• “The School of Song,” “Elegy While Listening to a Song I Can’t Help But Start to Move to,”  and “One Year Later: A Letter,” and “Summer” appear in Winter Tangerine‘s A LINEAGE OF MIRRORS.
• Work in Come As You Are (Anomalous Press, 2018), an anthology of 90s pop culture edited by E. Kristin Anderson.

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Love Me, Anyway (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Minadora Macheret

• Minadora’s poem “Baba Yaga: Her Almost Origin Story” from Bramble & Thorn (Porkbelly Press, 2017) is nominated for a Rhysling Award.

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

• Feeding the Dead (Porkbelly Press, 2017) is nominated for an 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

• Work in Come As You Are (Anomalous Press, 2018), an anthology of 90s pop culture edited by E. Kristin Anderson.

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Dreamland for Keeps (Porkbelly Press, 2018) & How Darkness Enters a Body (Porkbelly Press, 2018) by Sarah Nichols » @onibaba37

• Work in Come As You Are (Anomalous Press, 2018), an anthology of 90s pop culture edited by E. Kristin Anderson.

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

• Kanika Lawton interviews Melissa about her new collection, Knock (Half Mystic Press, 2018).
• Featured on Sundress Publications’ The Wardrobe!

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Bodies in Water (Porkbelly Press, 2014)
by P. Andrew Miller » pandrewmiller.com

• Transforming Harry: The Adaptation of Harry Potter in the Transmedia Age (Wayne State University Press, 2018), edited by John Alberti & P. Andrew Miller, is freshly pressed and will be available for order in May!

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Vein of Stone (Porkbelly Press, 2014)
by Sarah McCartt-Jackson » sarahmccarttjackson.com

• Sarah’s chapbook Calf Canyon was selected by Brain Mill Press for the Mineral Point Poetry Series (series editor: Kiki Petrosino). Her chapbook is due out in November 2018!

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Says the Forest to the Girl (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Sally Rosen Kindred » sallyrosenkindred.com

• We’ve accepted Says the Forest to the Girl, a chapbook of poetry, for our 2018 line of chaps!

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Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Sara Ryan » sararryan.com

• We’ve accepted Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned, a chapbook of poetry & creative nonfiction, for our 2018 line of chaps!

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Light Experiments (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Madeleine Barnes » madeleinebarnes.com

• We’ve accepted Light Experiments, our very first chapbook of photography, for our 2018 line of chaps!

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Found Footage // Maggie Woodward

Found Footage is visceral little book of freckled skin, fox-bellies, and sparrow blood. There are erasures scribbled out in pen and secrets released into the night—girl stories, horror stories, love stories, a little bit of each one ominous.: “this is how the story goes: there was a girl & / there was a river.” They feel like confessions pulled from a diary stained around the edges in blood and darker things, each one “fanged  (but lovely).” (Porkbelly Press, 2018) » available from our shop »  more info

excerpt

ABOUT THE POET

maggie woodward is an mfa candidate in poetry at the university of mississippi, where she is senior editor of the yalobusha review & curates the trobar ric reading series. she is also a programmer for the oxford film festival. her work has appeared or is forthcoming from The Atlas Review, Devil’s Lake, Witch Craft Magazine, Cloud Rodeo, & New South Journal, among others.

Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem // Kristi Carter

Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem (Kristi Carter) cover: Nicci Mechler

Carter’s work investigates the intersection of intergenerational trauma, survival, feminism, and power. Body-heavy and image-rich, these poems evoke a landscape of the scars and blood we carry with us, all the things that make up our lineage of memory and modes of recovery/survival/learning. It’s an intensely intimate series of poems about the claiming and finding of voice, body, and agency. “And ever since I anchored myself to the ground / and split off from myself, from the cracked husk / of girlhood finished, I return replenished. /  I return, to burn. / I return, with the wound / like a medal—in its gleam, how it sings.” (Porkbelly Press, 2017) » available in our shop » more info & excerpt

about the poet

Kristi Carter is a PhD student in Creative Writing–Poetry with a specialization in Women’s and Gender Studies at University of Nebraska Lincoln. Her poems have appeared in publications including So to Speak, poemmemoirstory, CALYX, Hawaii Review, and Nimrod. Her work examines of the intersection of gender and intergenerational trauma in 20th Century poetics. She holds an MFA from Oklahoma State University.

 

Eloisa Amezcua’s MEXICAMERICANA (poetry)

MEXICAMERICANA by Eloisa Amezcua (cover artwork: Sharmon Davidson)

Eloisa Amezcua’s Mexicamericana becomes both a demarcation and blurring of the line between states, identities, culture, and selves. This meeting-place is investigated in mother/daughter, English/Spanish, citizen/citizen—how these things are seen from outside as separate, but are quite entangled—how a  woman finds her way walking with both, whatever the two may be, “furious and alive.” The river does not separate places—it touches both and nourishes both. This collection borrows its epigraph from Alberto Ríos: “The border is a line that birds cannot see.” (Porkbelly Press, 2017) » more info & excerpt

about the poet

Eloisa Amezcua is an Arizona native. She is the author of the chapbooks On Not Screaming (Horse Less Press) and Symptoms of Teething, winner of the 2016 Vella Chapbook Prize from Paper Nautilus Press. Eloisa is the founder/editor of The Shallow Ends: A Journal of Poetry. You can find her at www.eloisaamezcua.com.

cover

Sharmon Davidson » sharmondavidson.com

Donna Vorreyer’s THE GIRL

The Girl by Donna Vorreyer (cover image: Alexandra Eldridge)

Vorreyer’s The Girl is sharp and clear from the dedication: “To all the girls I have taught. To all the girls we once were.” These small prose poems are strung together like a chain of dolls cut from steel, each stronger for her connection to the other, but capable of claiming her own ground—each poem is a portrait of a girl, nameless. Each girl moves beyond that designation, none are just a girl, and their anonymity does not strip identity or agency. These are girls who stand where they will, treat their own wounds, heal broken things, fear little or nothing, persist in spite of, because of—”If she cries, she opens a window, knows her ghosts need a means of escape.” (Porkbelly Press, 2017) » available in our shop » more & excerpt

About the Poet

Donna Vorreyer is the author of Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (Sundress Publications, 2016) and A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications, 2013) as well as seven chapbooks, most recently Encantado, a collaboration with artist Matt Kish from Redbird Chapbooks and Tinder, Smolder, Bones, and Snow forthcoming from dancing girl press. She serves as the reviews editor for Stirring: A Literary Collection and teaches middle school in the suburbs of Chicago.

» donnavorreyer.com

Cover Art

artist » Alexandra Eldridge
portfolio » alexandraeldridge.com

March & Porkbelly

(Good news, happenings, publications, awards, and general good stuff by/with/for our poets & writers.)

The Girl by Donna Vorreyer (cover image: Alexandra Eldridge)

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)

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

Dry Spell by Patrick Kindig (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Pray, Pray, Pray by E. Kristin Anderson (cover: Nicci Mechler)

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

How to Leave a Farmhouse (Beth McDermott, cover: Nicci Mechler)

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)

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

• Feeding the Dead was released just this month!

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The Girl (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by Donna Vorreyer » donnavorreyer.com

• “Our Bodies Are More Than 50 Percent Water” is up in Waxwing.
• “In the Hand, In the Bush” appears in Whale Road Review.
• Published a review of Portrait of the Alcoholic (by Kaveh Akbar) in Tinderbox Poetry Journal.
• The Girl is now available for pre-order & releases the first week of April!

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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

• Three poems this month in Masque & Spectacle!

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

• “Self-Portrait As So Much Potential” appears in The New York Times Magazine.

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Dry Spell (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Patrick Kindig » pdkindig.wordpress.com

• Three poems in minor literature[s].
• Three poems up at Hobart!
• “What Will Survive of Us Is Love” appears in Hermeneutic Chaos Journal.

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Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by E. Kristin Anderson » www.ekristinanderson.com

• “Even a Song” appears in Southern Women’s Review this month!
• “Flowers at Lunch” appears in Quaint Magazine issue 6.

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

• work in Southern Women’s Review this month!
• “Evaluating an Elegy Based on a Rubric” appears in Tinderbox Poetry Journal. You can hear it as well as read it there.
• Sarah’s Exhibition Catalogue Pamphlet from the Grimm Forest Open Air Museum has been accepted by Yellow Flag Press! Congrats, Sarah! ❤

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

• Congrats on a 2017 New Jersey Council on the Arts poetry fellowship!
• Nicole has joined the staff of Thrush as an associate editor.
• Hear Nicole read “Gift” published in Tinderbox Poetry Journal.
• (Essay) “The Obligation to Be Happy” reprinted, originally appearing in Ruminate Magazine‘s blog in 2014.

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How to Leave a Farmhouse (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Beth McDermott

• new work appears in Bayou issue 66!

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Apples or Pomegranates (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by Anita Olivia Koester » www.anitaoliviakoester.com

• poem “Tapestry with White Columns” won the Sable Books Poetry of Protest contest judged by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

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

• Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2016) was nominated for an Elgin Award.

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Feeding the Dead // M. Brett Gaffney

 

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

These poems are the knife edge, the hot blood, the wolf’s howl, and the fang of the girl who hunts him down. This book holds the haunted-house-horror and everything real underneath, the costume, the bruise after, the smoke curling in the heart of a hellhound. “After supper she pulls on boots, prepares her heart” and goes out to collect his “sharpest fang.” These poems are demons and strawberries and bones, and teeth, and agency, self, girl-power, woman-power—assertive figures preoccupied with agency, not beauty—not prettiness for the observer. This chapbook of poems is the bone-yard, the skeleton, the strength. “I am here to stay / … / I am just as real as anything else.” (Porkbelly Press, 2017) » more info & excerpt

about the poet

M. Brett Gaffney, originally from Houston, Texas, holds an MFA in Poetry from Southern Illinois University and is the art editor for Gingerbread House. Her poems have appeared inExit 7, Rust+Moth, Permafrost, Devilfish Review, museum of americana, BlazeVOX, Rogue Agent, Apex Magazine,and Zone 3, among others. She currently works as a library associate in northern Kentucky and lives in Cincinnati with her partner and their dog, Ava.

Cover artist: Mary Chiaramonte »  www.merrysee.com
Cover art: “The Fables,” acrylic on wood, 24 x 36 inches.
Title typeface: Brain Flower by Denise Bentulan.

2017 Chapbook Lineup

Thank you to everyone who sent manuscripts to our 2017 chapbook call, for your patience in our review process, and for your gorgeous poems, essays, and fictions.

This reading period, we’ve selected four works of poetry. We’re excited to welcome these poets to the press family, and so very honored to be part of bringing these titles into the world.

chapbooks

Found Footage by Maggie Woodward

Mexicamericana by Eloisa Amezcua

Blackbird Whitetail Redhand by Lindsay Lusby

Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem by Kristi Carter

notes

M. Brett Gaffney’s Feeding the Dead, a chapbook of poems accepted last year, is scheduled for release later this month.