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Random

Emerson Whitney + Diana Arterian’s To-Read Piles (July)

written by Diana Arterian
Emerson Whitney, author of the incredible memoir Heaven recently published by McSweeney’s, shares their to-read pile for July. They write from where they’re quarantined: “Those are literally the only books I have right now. It’s bizarre not to have my normal library but that’s what it is. (Even my normal to-read pile is like twice this.)”


Mindful Masculinity Workbook, ed. Rocco Kayiatos
How We Fight for Our Lives, Saeed Jones
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, Ross Gay
Paris France, Gertrude Stein
The Groundings with My Brothers, Walter Rodney
Fiebre Tropical, Juliana Delgado Lopera

I’m so thrilled the LA Public Library does curbside pickup on holds now! I have been missing the library terribly during these months of quarantine. I’m proud of  all the books I’ve read! And excited to dive into these. My shelf is bursting with books compared to even just a couple days ago.

– NEWIES –

Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, Jake Skeets
The Door, Magda Szabó (trans. Len Rix)
Maps and Transcripts of the Ordinary World, Katheryn Cowles
Splinters Are Children of Wood
, Leia Penina Wilson
Boy Oh Boy, Zachary Doss
The Book of Delights, Ross Gay
The Lonely City, Olivia Laing
Hiroshima, John Hersey
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby (trans. Jeremy Leggatt)
Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit
Oculus, Sally Wen Mao
Lima  :: Limón, Natalie Scenters-Zapico
A Lucky Man, Jamel Brinkley
Soft Science, Franny Choi
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, T.  Kira Madden
Teaching  Shakespeare,  Susan Montez
Neighbor, Rachel Levitsky
gowanus atropolis, Julian T. Brolaski
Feast During the Plague, Alexander Pushkin (trans. Matvei Yankelevich)
The World Has Been Empty Since the Postcard, Simon Cutts
Notes Toward a Pamphlet, Sergio Chejfec (trans. Whitney DeVos)
Thirty-Odd Functions of Voice in the Poetry of Alice Notley, Steven Zultanski
Translation is a Mode = Translation is an Anti-neocolonial Mode, Don Mee Choi
Golem Soveticus: Prigov as Brecht and Warhol in One Persona, Aleksandr Skidan (trans. Kevin M.F. Platt)
Second Factory, Ugly Duckling Presse

– OLDIES – (only 1!)

Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks

Emerson Whitney + Diana Arterian’s To-Read Piles (July) was last modified: July 2nd, 2020 by Diana Arterian
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Final PoemsPoetry

#finalpoem from Diana Raab

written by CCM-Entropy

#finalpoems / [?]


Life Journey

There were times when I’m also tired
of this journey we call life.

You see, I’ve done all that needs
to be done, welcomed many moons,

climbed many mountains, nurtured
children from my aging womb,

welcomed grandchildren, cherished
loyal dogs, battled cancer, taught,

many to write, cared for a volatile mother.
I’ve paid my dues. I paid them all.

I am ready to wave goodbye to memories
and bow to gratitude—

offer a love, profound now, and take in
the passion which has sustained us.

And so it is. Please let me
go now…please.


Diana Raab, MFA, PhD, is a poet, memoirist, blogger, teacher, and award-winning author of ten books and 1000 articles/poems. She blogs for Psychology Today, Wisdom Daily, Thrive Global and many others. She frequently speaks and facilitates workshops on writing for healing transformation. For more information, visit: dianaraab.com. 

#finalpoem from Diana Raab was last modified: June 29th, 2020 by CCM-Entropy
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FictionPoetryRandomRequired ReadingSmall Press

Victoria Chang’s To-Read Pile + Timely/Timeless Anti-Racist Literature (June)

written by Diana Arterian
Victoria Chang, author of the acclaimed and incredible poetry collection Obit (Copper Canyon), shares her to-read pile with us this month. She writes: “I usually have stacks and stacks of books lying around for a few juries I serve on. This year is different because many books are coming in via email in PDF form. But here are a few books that I’m in the midst of reading or have started. I look forward to reading so many more this year and am just beginning to get my bearings. I think it’s going to be an exciting year in literature.”

Ruth Stone, The Essential Ruth Stone
Robert Hass, Summer Snow
Traci Brimball, Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod
Danez Smith, Homie
Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem
Marianne Chan, All Heathens
Natasha Trethewey, Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir
Carolyn Forché, In the Lateness of the World
Jim Harrison, Collected Ghazals
Tess Taylor, Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange
Stephanie Burt, After Callimachus
Sejal Shah, This Is One Way to Dance
E.J. Koh, The Magical Language of Others


TIMELY/TIMELESS TITLES

Doing a business-as-usual post isn’t how I want to approach the beginning of a month, considering the protests and uprisings around the country. So, in lieu of my own to-read pile, I’ve amassed a list of anti-racists reading lists for people who are interested in educating themselves further about what is at the heart of the unrest and mobilizing action across the United States right now. You can likely find a majority of these at your local library (which, if it’s closed because of COVID, may offer a digital copy). If you want to buy a copy, I recommend BookShop.org as an ethical alternative the bookseller than shall not be named. I’ve also included a handful of PDFs/links to powerful and important literature/media that directly impacted my comprehension of how Black people are forced to live and move within the United States, as well as pieces that illuminate elements of whiteness and white mobility.

PDFS/LINKS

James Baldwin – “On Being White…and Other Lies”
James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston – “Hollywood Roundtable” (30-minute video)
Gwendolyn Brooks – Riot
Ta-Nehisi Coates – “The Case for Reparations”
Kimberlé Crenshaw – “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” (where the term “intersectionality” comes from)
Angela Davis – “Rape, Racism and the Myth of the Black Rapist”
Angela Davis – Interview in Black Power Mixed Tape (4-minute excerpt)
Peggy McIntosh – “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” (where the term “white privilege” comes from)

The End of Policing is available as a free e-book (have not read, yet)

ANTI-RACIST READING LIST ROUNDUP
EDIT: First, a really compelling and urgent essay on what, exactly, these lists do, are about, promise, but potentially fail  to do by Lauren Michele Jackson: “What Is an Anti-Racist Reading List For?”
Ibram X. Kendi via New York Times(and his book How to Be an Anti-Racist is on many of the lists below)
Harper’s
LitHub
Litquake
Loyalty Bookstores
Readings
Town&Country
Vogue
Vroman’s Bookstore
40+ Books for Anti-Racist Teachers

If you’ve gotten this far, and need some relief in something cute (which I know helps me), enjoy this absurd cat picture (source):

Victoria Chang’s To-Read Pile + Timely/Timeless Anti-Racist Literature (June) was last modified: June 4th, 2020 by Diana Arterian
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Final PoemsPoetry

#finalpoem from Arielle McManus

written by CCM-Entropy

#finalpoems / [?]


Green June, late
Morning, bright
Light

Make your coffee, make
Your eggs, meet
Me out back

Water the plants,
Move some things around,
Pick some arugula

When was the last time I washed my hair?
When was the last time you said you loved me
And meant it?

Soap up each other’s backs in the shower
Tell me that all of your firsts
Have been with me

Just love me,
Or at least lie to me
Just a little longer


Arielle McManus is learning as she goes and writing one liners from a tiny, sunlit room in Brooklyn. Her work has been published on Literary North, and more of her work can be found on her site, ariellemcmanus.com.

#finalpoem from Arielle McManus was last modified: May 6th, 2020 by CCM-Entropy
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FictionPoetryRandomSmall Press

Alice Notley + Diana Arterian’s To-Read Piles (May)

written by Diana Arterian
The poetry goddess-among-us, Alice Notley, shares her to-read pile this month. Her latest collection, For the Ride, is just out from Penguin!

 

 

Geronimo: My Life, Geronimo
Le vocabulaire des tragédies de Jean Racine, Charles Bernet
L’écriture Runique et les origines de l’ecriture, Alain de Benoist
Scenes of Life at the Capital, Philip Whalen
Some Habits, C. Violet Eaton
Hávamál Words of the High One, Anonymous (trans. W.H. Auden)
What the Lyric Is, Sara Nicholson
La Femme de l’Ombre, Arnaldur Indridason
François Villon, Jean Favier

 

With the public library closed, I keep accumulating books through my local bookstore. (Check out BookShop.org if you are wanting to do something akin to this, too, and don’t have a bookstore you know of!) All this quarantine time has given me space to do a lot of reading, at least.

– NEWIES –
The Tower, Paul Legault
Almonds Are Members of the Peach Family, Stephanie Sauer
Travesty Generator, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
Hard Damage, Aria Aber
Toxicon and Arachne, Joyelle McSweeney
Upend, Claire Meuschke
There There, Tommy Orange
Heaven, Emerson Whitney
Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks

– OLDIES –
Conference of the Birds, Farid Ud-din Attar (in-progress); Social Poetics, Mark Nowak; Dunce, Mary Ruefle

Alice Notley + Diana Arterian’s To-Read Piles (May) was last modified: May 1st, 2020 by Diana Arterian
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Final PoemsPoetry

#finalpoem from Ryu Ando

written by CCM-Entropy

#finalpoems / [?]


Dreaming in the Teahouse of Infinite Light

i. Taking tea in silence

Who dreams the dreamer

dreaming of you
in the garden?

Who dreams the ouroboros
warming in the sun

watcher of the changing skies
falling into cloud and
shadow?

…

Click here to read entire poem [PDF]


Ryu Ando lives and works in Los Angeles. His writing has appeared in a number of speculative fiction and poetry journals including Strange Horizons and many more. His most recent collection of poetry, [零] A Phantom Zero, is available through the Operating System Press. He can be found online here: ryuando.wordpress.com/ and on Twitter @ryu_ando_98. This poem was composed while sheltering in place in L.A., thinking about family and friends in Saitama, Japan.

#finalpoem from Ryu Ando was last modified: April 30th, 2020 by CCM-Entropy
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Final PoemsPoetry

#finalpoem from D. R. James

written by CCM-Entropy

#finalpoems / [?]


Mobius Trip

I flinch then I drift into reverie…
wing-swept and flake-wept to swooping footpaths
past a curved door’s stoop, rapt in a gashed globe
that’s descending, ascending, clutched embrace,
alarmed commuter, reconstituted
deserter, survivor of unveiling.
What can I do but hover then plunge,
lunge then stall? When you’re small, mote-sloughed, speck hid
like a splinter, dislodged, squad-shirked, slivered,
every current re-collects, returns you.


D. R. James has taught college writing, literature, and peace-making for 36 years and lives in the woods outside Saugatuck, Michigan. His most recent of nine collections are Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2020), Surreal Expulsion (The Poetry Box, 2019), and If god were gentle (Dos Madres Press, 2017), and his micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is free, fun, and printable-for-folding at the Origami Poems Project. https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage

#finalpoem from D. R. James was last modified: April 28th, 2020 by CCM-Entropy
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Final PoemsPoetry

#finalpoem from Sony Dalia

written by CCM-Entropy

#finalpoems / [?]


Let Smiles Bloom

Dawn and dusk teach a lesson
tough times last not, carry on;
lighting a lamp noble act
tracking culprit needs more tact.
As fools mock, devils dance
men fall like leaves in trance
Death knows not faith or colour
Corona cares not men in power.
Stay at home, join not mob
nurses, doctors doing great job
weary souls need claps to cheer
unruly cattle need cane to steer.
Self-restraint need of the hour
hygiene matters most my dear,
positive mind helps and heals
let smiles bloom, drive away gloom!


Sony Dalia is an academic, poet. translator and critic. 3 Published anthologies of poems in English Delightful Dawn, Graceful Green, and Hopping on Hope. One more work is in pipeline. Extensively published in print and online journals museindia.com, boloji.com, poemhunter.com apart from print journals like Chandrabhaga, Sarasa among many othersLives in Hyderabad,India.

#finalpoem from Sony Dalia was last modified: April 28th, 2020 by CCM-Entropy
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Final PoemsPoetry

#finalpoems from Bryce Lillmars

written by CCM-Entropy

#finalpoems / [?]


Dear Human

all I ever wanted was everything
repeated

milk and
honey over the face of the ocean

and behind each gill
hyacinths

it’s hard

to get it
even once

the calm arrangement oblivion
offers
the body

a star
in the mouth

every fountain dissolved by zinc
and copper

when all I ever dreamed
was déja vu
and the future buried

alive in the fifth stomach of my
past

like an ancient fortune cookie

unfolding dimension
lifting a hand into the air again

holding it
in my hands again

fanning it out and out and out


Dear Human

I am leaving the light on for you

a string could be drawn between our windows

of course a pane of glass
can be a shield

but every night it is a portal

my mortality lies prostrate inside its frame inside
my body waiting

if love is patient if love is
a kind of mourning

my wingspan is feather-by-feather
a pigeon pacing its sill

passing shadows over
your last trace

a book you left glows
within its glossy cover

poems at the foot of my bed about a lover’s feet

my fingers almost entirely reach

dear flux dear decay dear
vibrations buried between vibrations buried

between space


Bryce Lillmars received his MFA from UC Irvine’s Programs in Writing where he served as Art Editor for Faultline. Most recent ‘Dear Human’ poems have appeared in Conduit and are forthcoming from Green Mountains Review, American Literary Review and Southern Humanities Review. He’s at work on his first collection and lives in Los Angeles collecting succulents on his sills.

#finalpoems from Bryce Lillmars was last modified: April 22nd, 2020 by CCM-Entropy
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Final PoemsPoetry

#finalpoem from Jennifer Stitt

written by CCM-Entropy

#finalpoems / [?]


The Unspoken Not-yet

What can be said at all can be said clearly;
and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein

What can you say?
You can say:
nothing.

No cacophony of choristers, no
operatic arias adjusting
to affliction, to the tender anguish

of the somatic suggestion that
your warranty might soon expire.
You say what you can say

in a body;
there is nothing
that can be said

outside of this.
There is nothing but this body—nothing
but this slow slaughtering of self.

As if you ever aspired to stay
earthbound. You’d prefer
rootless asphyxiation.

No. More like:
the sudden silent breathlessness
of isolation—just before you are

marooned; shipwrecked; a hull, shattered.
Not altogether capsized, nor drowning;
and then, this, quickly now, the quiet

promise of the unspoken
not-yet, of becoming everlastingly
unchained. You say nothing

except what you can say.
Nothing else can be said
outside of this:

body erased;
soul
flown.


Jennifer Stitt is a poet as well as a historian of modern American thought, culture, and politics. She earned a B.A. and M.A. in history from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. intellectual history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her writing has appeared in Aeon, Aura Literary Arts Magazine, Big Think, Chronically Lit, Essay Daily, On Being, Quartz, Quiet Storm Literary Arts Magazine, Public Seminar, and other places. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and is currently working on a book about the history of solitude.

#finalpoem from Jennifer Stitt was last modified: April 11th, 2020 by CCM-Entropy
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Final PoemsPoetry

#finalpoem from Robert W. Monk

written by CCM-Entropy

#finalpoems / [?]


Blinded

Right before the end,
Just up to the point of annihilation,
Hovering over the off-switch for this world of ours,
Heading for a no-repeat shutdown,
I had one small hope;
To be a part of something
Greater than my fear.
To be linked to a phenomena
More firmly rooted than my own internal mush,
My stellar I-am-not-doing-this-right regime.

That desire was realized
By the flashing white light
Of acceptance
Blinding all other concerns
With pure unclouded luminosity.


Robert W. Monk is a writer and poet originally from London, England currently residing in Sydney, Australia. His work has been featured on the poetry webzine Ink Sweat & Tears. He is also the vocalist and lyricist with electronic music projects Echo Rescue, and Points of Convergence. He blogs at https://robertwmonk.wordpress.com/

#finalpoem from Robert W. Monk was last modified: April 4th, 2020 by CCM-Entropy
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\m/ New Hotness \m/CommunityPoetryRequired Reading

Bad Poet: A Big Heart Floating on Dark Seas

written by Sheldon Lee Compton

House of Vlad Press

Release Date: July 15, 2020

$12.00

For years now Brian Alan Ellis has been serving up original voices from House of Vlad Press. Among several other titles he will release over the next year will be his new collection of poetry, Bad Poet. Leave it to Ellis to say a great deal in the title alone. But that has been his modus operandi for a long time; he’s trying to be honest in every word. The first words of Bad Poet follow the table of contents and states simply, “I write bad poetry…” Two pages later, Ellis reminds us this: “…and I don’t care.”

And so begins his new collection.

Throughout the poems, Ellis continues his starkly honest evaluation of himself in all his racked emotions and self-doubts, often bordering on self-hate. But beneath it all there’s this shimmer lying one layer below the dread, there are moments of small hope, hope that flashes just long enough to enable the reader to continue on with this confession. 

A perfect example of how the confession becomes a call for strength comes late in the book and reads, “Don’t give up./You need to continue being miserable just so you can give other miserable people/the strength to go on being miserable.” It becomes clear pretty quickly that, despite the self-deprecating wit and charm, Ellis is the big heart floating on a dark sea in search of connection. He says again and again in so many interesting and imaginative ways that to live in this world means to be slowly broken by the general weight of surviving. But not all is lost. Ellis also calls out from the dark sea to say that even death can be dealt with on our own terms, titling one poem, “Dying is pretty goth, meaning we’re all kind of goth in the end.” So, a confession, one fused with Ellis’s own brand of playfulness and goodwill. Such as this poem, included here in its entirety and titled “If your brain still works then there are no safe spaces.”

 

Perhaps I seem easy going to some,

but inside I’m really just a person trying

to escape a burning building.

 

With this new collection, Ellis is not only confessing, he is acting as rescuer, a liberator who is battle-scarred and full of insight, a voice to friends in need. His statement that he might seem “easy going” to some of his readers is his way of directly speaking to the possibility that, in the midst of his word play and satire, he hopes his larger message isn’t lost: yes, the world is difficult, life is hard, but you are not alone. Ellis is the host standing in the doorway saying, Come on in, join the club; we have jackets. 

And this is more than a poet hoping to share with the reader that he has been through difficult times and was strong enough to make it through. Ellis is too sincere for that to be his only point. He is saying that you can make it through, too. He is saying this in the most grounded and truthful way possible. But Ellis is at his most powerful when openly contradicting himself to reveal his true center, such as with this poem, in which the title creates the underlying point:

 

Being my own therapist may or may not be going okay

 

Will someone please tell me

what’s wrong with me,

mainly so I can just ignore them

and continue being wrong?

 

The body of the poem is straight-forwardly saying the speaker is fine without input from anyone as to his general well-being. However, the title leaves room for the possibility that the speaker may be completely wrong in his self-assessment and may even welcome help if it were made available.

The take away should be this: Brian Alan Ellis is not a bad poet; Brian Alan Ellis does not write bad poetry. His poems cut swiftly to his and our baser instincts with more genuine honesty than nearly anything else being written. In fact, with this collection, he has written his most complex and deeply moving work to date. The result is a collection of poems that question the reality of an easy or normal life while, in the same breath, harboring that small refrain of hope rising up beneath the hurt for the hearts of anyone willing to listen. My advice is to do just that—listen closely, and learn what Ellis is truly offering.

Visit House of Vlad Press and learn more about Bad Poet, along with several other HOV titles.

Bad Poet: A Big Heart Floating on Dark Seas was last modified: April 2nd, 2020 by Sheldon Lee Compton
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FictionPoetryRandomSmall Press

Amina Cain + Diana Arterian’s To-Read Piles (April)

written by Diana Arterian

Amina Cain is the author of the incredible novel Indelicacy just out from FSG. She shares her to-read pile with us this month, when hopefully we all are wrapping ourselves in literature a little more closely for comfort:

This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart, Madhur Anand
Rerun Era, Joanna Howard
The Criminal Child, Jean Genet (trans. Charlotte Mandell and Jeffrey Zuckerman)
Margery Kempe, Robert Glück
The Door, Magda Szabó (trans. Len Rix)
Cinema of the Present, Lisa Robertson
Music & Literature No. 9

 

I didn’t attend AWP, but I tried to spend my book money on books through presses and my local bookstore. (Check out BookShop.org if you are wanting to do something akin to this, too, and don’t have a bookstore you know of!) Pretty pleased with this pile, which I’ve read a lot of at this point (including Amina’s amazing novel)!

– NEWIES –
DMZ Colony, Don Mee Choi
Social Poetics, Mark Nowak
Dunce, Mary Ruefle
SoundMachine, Rachel Zucker
Turning into Dwelling, Christopher Gilbert
Anarcha Speaks: A History in Poems, Dominique Christina
The Crying Book, Heather Christle
Children of the Land, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
Garments Against Women, Anne Boyer
Letters to a Stranger, Thomas James
Cenzontle, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
Indelicacy, Amina Cain (!)
How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi
God’s Green Earth, Noelle Kocot
The Shore, Chris Nealon
You Can’t Catch Death, Ianthe Brautigan
Not Here, Hieu Minh Nguyen
For the Ride, Alice Notley
When Death Takes Something from You, Give It Back, Naja Marie Aidt (trans. Denise Newman)
A Journey Round My Skull, Frigyes Karinthy (trans. Vernon Duckworth Barker)
Postcolonial Love Poem, Natalie Diaz

– OLDIES –

Conference of the Birds, Farid Ud-din Attar; Animal, Dorothea Lasky; The Poetics, Lucy Ives & Matthew Connors

Amina Cain + Diana Arterian’s To-Read Piles (April) was last modified: April 1st, 2020 by Diana Arterian
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Final PoemsPoetry

#finalpoem from Gretchen Adams

written by CCM-Entropy

#finalpoems / [?]


And pity sits beside me,
tongue lolling long, jerking with every breath,
And I think that if I were ever to be alone
it would be better than this
and that the skies in that place
redolent of shivering constellations and laundry soap
would bend their backs just a little
to whisper
there can be joy, even here.


Gretchen Adams is a writer of speculative and historical fiction. Her work has appeared in Canvas Literary Journal and Lunch Ticket. She lives in an increasingly damp apartment in Portland, Oregon.

#finalpoem from Gretchen Adams was last modified: March 26th, 2020 by CCM-Entropy
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Final PoemsPoetry

#finalpoem from Zoe Eudene Grace

written by CCM-Entropy

#finalpoems / [?]


Do not just play a role,
accepting that this world
is normal. Do not fall into
the trap. Run the Gamut
of experience. Then run it
again. You never know what
You missed the first time.

Do not live as a Queen among
the lay people, live as though all
are worthy of love. This life is too
Short to pretend to be anything
but divine.

Live and let live. Do not
Hold onto old grudges
This world doesn’t need more of that.

Find something positive
And live each day for that.


Zoe Eudene Grace is a poet from the Treaty 7 territory on Turtle Island. She spends most of her time watching the collapse of the empire from her twitter account: @beingandzoe. Previously she has been published in In Media Res and Wax Poetry and Art under a dead name. Most of her free time is spent watching sports, wrestling, and re-reading old fantasy novels.

#finalpoem from Zoe Eudene Grace was last modified: March 13th, 2020 by CCM-Entropy
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Random

Claire Meusche + Diana Arterian’s To-Read Piles (March)

written by Diana Arterian

Poet Claire Meusche shares her book pile with us. Her poetry collection, Upend, is fresh out from Noemi Press (which I had the total honor of editing). If you’re into stories of archive, family, immigration, secrets, this book is for you. Anyway, here’s Claire’s list!

Myung Mi Kim, Civil Bound
Stacy Szymaszek, A Year from Today
Fanny Howe, Second Childhood
Sherwin Bitsui, Shapeshift
Rosmarie & Keith Waldrop, Well Well Reality
Maoshing Ni, The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine
Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence
Elizabeth Hoover, The River Is in Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community
Brandon Shimoda, The Grave on the Wall
Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead

I am in awe, amazed, shocked, at only *one* new book. But AWP, and all the books I paged at the library. Trouble’s brewing for my wee bookshelf…

– NEWIES –
The Poetics, Lucy Ives & Matthew Connors

– OLDIES –

Conference of the Birds, Farid Ud-din Attar; Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault; Animal, Dorothea Lasky;

Claire Meusche + Diana Arterian’s To-Read Piles (March) was last modified: March 2nd, 2020 by Diana Arterian
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Final PoemsPoetry

#finalpoem from Stephanie Garon

written by CCM-Entropy

#finalpoems / [?]


Templo Mayor

I centered myself, pressed lips to salty sandstone, pivoted towards
Thousands watching then strutted higher:
I inhaled as you carved my heart
And threw the shell of my body down 30 steps to meet Coyolxauhqui,
Who, despite being displaced herself, cushioned the fraction remaining of my soul, soothed my
cuts, and shared her ground. My blood transfused to strengthen Tlaloc, igniting red rain swells
Flooding plain grasses like combed hair of a doll.
Swollen valleys cradled your bed laden lovers, submerging their passion like
The pinching of a flame with bare fingers. Waters creeped to your chin, pushed it East, where I
rose and watched as you
floated.


Stephanie Garon received dual science degrees from Cornell University, then attended Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Her environmental art has been exhibited internationally in London, Colombia, and South Korea, as well as across the United States. Her writing, a critical aspect of her artistic process, has been published in international literary journals and performed adjacent to her artwork. When she’s not in her studio, she’s jumping across river beds to comb through pine needles.

#finalpoem from Stephanie Garon was last modified: February 25th, 2020 by CCM-Entropy
February 26, 2020 0 comment
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Final PoemsPoetry

#finalpoem from Ann van Wijgerden

written by CCM-Entropy

#finalpoems / [?]


GARDEN PATH REVISITED

Gold on green
Sunlight kisses sway
Freshness, affinity
Absorb into my bones, yet
Layered in the undergrowth
A waiting

Time
You perplexing burden
Heavy hypnotising snake
Unfathomable
Unfolding and unleashing
Years upon seasons
Generations
This torrent vanishing all
I know

Caught in the current

We are
I am

But not lost

 


Born in the U.K., Ann van Wijgerden has spent most of her life in the Netherlands and the Philippines. She has had nonfiction, poetry and fiction published in a number of literary journals. Ann works with an NGO providing education for children living in Manila’s slum areas. www.youngfocus.org

 

#finalpoem from Ann van Wijgerden was last modified: February 23rd, 2020 by CCM-Entropy
February 24, 2020 0 comment
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\m/ New Hotness \m/Fiction

An Old Literature, a New Literature: Sara Rauch’s What Shines from It

written by Sheldon Lee Compton

Sara Rauch takes on familiar territory in her short story collection What Shines from It, out next month from Alternating Current Press, and also unfamiliar territory.

For the most part, Rauch’s stories read like Raymond Carver’s—two people intimately involved in one another’s lives; the deep tension that can bring those two people at odds, and how both men and women handle such interactions.

What Rauch brings that is new is a view from more than just the husband and wife relationship. In her stories there are female couples who are trying to figure out where they stand on having a second child, complete strangers spending an afternoon trying like hell to connect to something, as well as a couple who are faced with a decision about a pregnancy that becomes just as complicated as those kinds of decisions can become.

Creating life, creating cohesion in life, connections, missed connections. It’s all here. And it’s handled with the deft hand of an author confident in her voice and what she has to say.

In “Addition,” a story that follows Alex and Rose and they deal with daily pressures while not dealing with a big decision: whether or not to have another child. Rose delivered their first and, due to circumstance, Alex would need to deliver their second. Alex’s failure to commit to one or the other becomes a point of contention. Through Rose, Rauch poses a question that speaks to anyone struggling to sync up to another human being as Rose, near her wit’s end, says, “At some point, not making a decision is a decision.”

And herein we have that familiar territory Carver, Updike, Cheever, and others explored during the heyday of kitchen sink realism, but with a contemporary concern and a richer, more elaborate landscape. Throughout What Shines from It Rauch expertly lays out this landscape as well as any author writing today.

In another story, “Slice,” we have a front row seat for the slow dying of a relationship that had hardly had time to get started. Emmeline and Sebastian. The couple. Names are important in this story. The entire rise and fall of their strained relationship is on display. It is in this story that Rauch shows how well she can stir nuance to create heartbreak on the page. During a phone call, we get an incredibly insightful moment in which Emmeline recognizes one of the first signs. She’s making plans with Sebastian.

“Can I come over? and I said, Of course, but I have to finish the buttons tonight, and he said, I won’t stay. What time? and I said, Seven. We hung up, and I stared at my phone, trying to remember when we’d last made such specific plans for no reason.”

The formality feels like the first tiny heartbreak on the road to a much more significant moment for both of them.

What Shines from It, which borrows its title from a line in Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband, is a collection of razor sharp stories from a writer with something important to say. And what she says certainly does shine.

An Old Literature, a New Literature: Sara Rauch’s What Shines from It was last modified: February 16th, 2020 by Sheldon Lee Compton
February 16, 2020 0 comment
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Final PoemsPoetry

#finalpoem from Lauren Miles

written by CCM-Entropy

#finalpoems / [?]


and the night recedes

you only feel ‘woman’
when he dyke-s you from his truck window
when she deems you worth your skin enough
to steal it
when they crown you “glorious burden”
you only feel ‘woman’
in the cacophony of poisonous masculinity
of Nair-hair and petite feet
& wow have you lost weight?
you only feel ‘woman’
when you don’t want to
and when you do want
you feel nothing else because to want
means the same as to        .        woman

you feel ‘woman’ that night
walking to your car far from campus
& an open facing yell screams—something
obscured from you        .          & you’re glad for the unknown

you feel ‘woman’        .          at dusk
driving 55 down an empty road
your favorite song bass-ing
with the moon watching your back
and through the speeding you never felt safer
you feel, well not woman but something close and better
when you wake to the orange sun on their face
and their sleepy hand     .       reaching for yours

you only feel you when you stand:          .      a false woman

unearthed from the stone-ash
of a self you never claimed—
on all those nights you’d rather forget
growing from a fire of noiseless hate
as the forest of street lights flicker—
you sing soft the night-edge
‘til the moment’s fading silence pulses
and the night recedes around you to the new dawn

of She


Lauren Miles (she/her/they/them) is a queer poet, playwright, and comic artist from Dayton, OH. You can follow them on Twitter (@andro_meyda2527) and Insta (lilypheonix1252) if you want to see more of her work or just to see retweets of tiny octopi or photos of overcast clouds and their sunshine partner.

#finalpoem from Lauren Miles was last modified: February 14th, 2020 by CCM-Entropy
February 14, 2020 0 comment
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We're coping.

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Welcome to Enclave

Welcome to Enclave, a community blog and internet space where the literary community can share their enthusiasm for literary & non-literary ideas, fiction, poetry, film, music, current events, and other forms of creative culture. Enclave’s contributors represent different literary communities, corners, and aesthetics but share one thing in common: the desire to express themselves openly, urgently, and without a shred of dishonesty. At Enclave, we are artists looking to share our passion for creativity and formal expression. We hope you’ll stick around. Strike up a conversation. We’re all coping here.

Enclave is the community blog of CCM-Entropy.

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Thank you, Janice, and thank you to Entropy Magazine for hosting these poems. It's such a fine thing you do. Best - Don
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