Tag: swimming with elephants publications

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NEW RELEASES!!!

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Our first official releases since our relaunch are now available for direct purchase with the authors and editors, and at select bookstores across California! IN ADDITION, You can get Honeysuckle and Nightshade by Brennan Defrisco here, and you can get Reflections: Mirrors to the Queer Experience by email order ONLY redwoodreflections@gmail.com, as they are a limited edition with less than 200 available copies. There will be a ton of more information coming soon, THANK Y’ALL FOR YOUR PATIENCE!!!!!

Happy New Year from Swimming with Elephants

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After much contemplation and reflection, Swimming with Elephants Publications has made the decision to close its doors for the year of 2021.

We will be taking a hiatus to reflect on our goals and presence in the community and decide, over the next year, if there is still a place for SwEP in our ever changing world. We hope this time off will provide the opportunity for us to decide whether are best course of action is to recuperate, or if it is time for us to go gentle into that goodnight.

We at SwEP have been incredibly grateful for the support and encouragement of our community over the past several years. The opportunity to work with such a vast selection of poets and artists across the United States and beyond has been more than any small press could aspire to achieve. We are grateful to have been able to represent new and emerging voices, as well as provide awareness to various social issues and public concerns through topical anthologies.

All our publications are still available at this time through Independent Bookstores, like Bookworks Albuquerque, as well as the major distribution centers. If it becomes clear that it is not possible resume our business, these publications will go out of print at the end of 2021.

If you are published with Swimming with Elephants Publications, you can expect your annual statement within the next two weeks which will include more information regarding the break and options concerning your publication.

Much love, respect, and gratitude to everyone who has helped us become and maintain the small presence we have. Please remain safe and compassionate to each other during these trying times.

News: Wrapping Up 2020

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In is no secret that this has been a difficult year for our small press. We have struggled over the last several months to complete the contracts from the beginning of the year, and are happy to say with the publication of Unlocked Poetry, we have fulfilled our obligations.

Now that we are caught up with all of our outstanding projects, we will be suspending our publications for the undeterminable future. We have already canceled our Weekly Write and this year’s Open Call for Poetry Chapbooks. I would very much like to say we will be back next year, but I am hesitant to make any promises at the time being.

If you are one of our authors, we want to remind you that according to your contract you retain all the rights to your work and if you choose to take work previously published by Swimming with Elephants Publications and publish it elsewhere, we will wish you the very best of luck in your endeavor. If you are interested in retiring your publication from SwEP to seek publication elsewhere, please send us an email and we can conclude the production of your work. I assure you, there will be no hard feelings on our end.

As I have previously stated, the publication of chapbooks is a luxury and not a priority in the world we are currently trying to navigate. I would much rather put the press to rest than attempt to conjure new publications that of a lower quality and/or are not meeting the needs of our authors and community.

We will know early in 2021 if our doors will be shut for good and what the outlook will be.

Currently, all our publications are still for sale through the major book distributors, but as always, we encourage readers to seek their purchases from independent bookstores or from the authors themselves.

We continue our affiliation with Bookworks Albuquerque and encourage our readers to purchase our latest releases through Bookworks or other independent Bookstores.

Find our complete catalog here: https://swimmingwithelephants.com/catalog-by-author/

Be safe and be well!

Order from Bookworks

On By awhitetrashpoetIn News
Swimming with Elephants Publications always encourages our audience to purchase books from independent books stores and author sales.
Our official independent bookstore affiliate is Bookworks Albuquerque, and we encourage purchases through their website to people all over the United States of America.

You can now order our most recent release, Worn Out Gorgeous by Aaron Ambrose, from Bookworks Albuquerque. Click here to order today!

 

COVID Updates and Hard Choices

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New Releases

Due to COVID in the United States, our production has slowed tremendously. Whereas last year we had almost 17 publications by this time, we are now only presenting our fourth completed collection.

“A Duet of Dying is a poignant and honest approach to surviving terminal sickness, living disabled, and the constant navigation of the healthcare system of the United States. From honest confessions like remaining with somebody caught cheating “Because I was on his health insurance,” in Why Did You Stay? part 3, to the foreign and familiar feeling of not knowing yourself apart from the “alien” in Pathogen, this collection is a special one for its approach through — and more aptly: with — sickness. Then there is the raw cruelty that is given a voice so aptly in Ringtones into Dirges; here, at last, are words for the battle with collections calls for MRIs and diagnostic tests; those which are necessary to life, but the collected debt of which could easily drive somebody to death. And I think, finally, finally, here is an honest testament — of love, of life (while actively dying), of death (and still living). And wonderfully, a narrative from two powerful queer voices, who offer this bittersweet collection, so purely.”

~Reviewed by Maxine Peseke

As always, we encourage ordering the collection from the authors personally or through an independent bookstore, but the collection is also available through Amazon and other distributors.

Click here to order today!

About the Authors

 Shanna Alden (they/them) is a queer poet, photographer, barista, and bartender living in Seattle, WA with their chosen family and a couple very soft cats. They sit on the board of Rain City Poetry Slam and consistently host weekly poetry shows.

Erin Schick (they/them) is a queer, trans, and multiply disabled social worker living in upstate New York and focused on disability justice and queer liberation. Their interests include the Pacific Northwest, women’s soccer, and sled dogs.

Coming Soon

Before the end of the year we have two more books scheduled for release: Worn out Gorgeous by Aaron Ambrose and Double-Knotted Shoelace by Trixi Rosa. We are also working on putting together an anthology called Unlocked Poetry from the Lyrical Vagabonds in Denver. Hopefully, we will still be able to create our annual anthology, but we won’t know the details until December.

Effects of COVID 19

Since the beginning of the COVID situation in the United States our office has been closed which means all work for the press is being done via my home computer. My outdated, slow, simple home computer. This has already lead to many unforeseen troubles with formatting of the books we are currently producing.

Not only has the production time has slowed tremendously and we have had to switch back to a print on demand service after the closing of the local printer we only recently acquired. We are still committed to putting out quality publications but our ability to produce publications the way we want has changed greatly.

Because of this, we are postponing our annual Open Call for Chapbooks this year, and possibly our Weekly Write series. This is not a decision I have come to easily, but I do believe it is the right decision at this time. I would much rather slow down and survive, than push through and burn out.

What’s to Come

The ability to publish is a luxury which should not be the top priority of our society at the moment, but we do believe we will return to a place where a small press like ours has a purpose and a future.

Although we have no idea what the future holds for our small press, we have our fingers crossed that we will survive this difficult time and come out on the other side better than before.

You can continue to support us by supporting our poets and supporting independent bookstores.

Kat Heatherington to Feature at Mindwell Poetry September 18

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Kat Heatherington is the featured guest at an upcoming poetry reading, and we would like to invite you to attend! 

Please read the following invitation from Kat to learn how to attend and get a copy of The Heart is a Muscle:

Mindwell Poetry’s The Poet Speaks series will be held over Zoom on Friday, September 18th, at 7pm – so  you can attend from anywhere in the world.  There’s an open mic, and then the host will briefly interview me , and then I’ll read from my new book, The Heart is a Muscle, which came out in March – and for which this is the first feature-length reading I’ve done, given how this year has turned out. 🙂

I’m really looking forward to sharing this work with you, and I’d love to see you there!

Event details are here: https://www.facebook.com/events/315470969761143/
<https://www.facebook.com/events/315470969761143/> and the Zoom link
will be available from there as well, a little closer to the date.  Even if you are not on facebook, this page should be accessible.

If you haven’t picked up your copy of the book yet, they’re available directly from me, as well as at Harvest Moon Books, https://harvestmoonbooks.com/category=Poetry<https://harvestmoonbooks.com/?category=Poetry>, and Amazon, along with my first book, The Bones of This Land.

And if you enjoy my work and would be interested in receiving poetry in your inbox a couple times a month, check out my Patreon page! Patreon has been a source of deep delight in this difficult year. For as little as $1/month you will receive brand-new and unpublished poems in your
inbox, or for $5/month, you can have a handwritten postcard poem mailed
to you. Both the postcard photo and the poem are my original work.
https://patreon.com/yarrowkat <https://patreon.com/yarrowkat>

I hope to see you on the 18th!

Weekly Write: “edges burn more readily than centers” by kat heatherington

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edges burn more readily than centers

edges burn more readily than centers.
setting an edge alight is a simple matter,
though putting it out again may not be,
if it is inclined towards fire.
the center doesn’t light so well
unless you reach it through the edge,
take the slow route in, open its defenses.
only water will put the center out, once alight.
anything else just picks up the blaze,
amplifies, and burns.
you came pretty close to the center,
smoldering your way in from my furthest edge,
taking a lazy course through the perimeter,
tossing sparks, until suddenly, you had arrived
in the flammable heart,
and everything around you ignited.
surprised, you could only
watch it burn, turning in slow circles,
observing, unable
to reach your hands out toward the flame.

Click the image to order the heart is a muscle from Bookworks ABQ.


the heart is a muscle
by kat heatherington

Kat Heatherington is a queer ecofeminist poet, sometime artist, pagan, and organic gardener. She lives south of Albuquerque New Mexico, in Sunflower River intentional community with a varying number of other humans and cats. Kat’s work primarily addresses the interstices of human relationships and the natural world. She has one previous book, The Bones of This Land, published in 2017 by Swimming with Elephants Publications and available at Bookworks and Harvest Moon Books in Albuquerque, as well as on amazon.com. She can be found online at https://patreon.com/yarrowkat and on instagram at @sometimesaparticle. You can contact the author at yarrow@sunflowerriver.org.

Weekly Write: Your Mind Tricks Won’t Work on Me, Jedi by Shanna Alden and Erin Schick

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Your Mind Tricks Won’t Work on Me, Jedi

There’s a kind of music
often played by the sort of therapists
who think EMDR is a panacea for everything
or by the sorts of “doctors”
who think sticking needles into you
while you consume 5lbs of raw broccoli
will cure cancer.
Slow, beatless, meandering treble
just on the mass-produced side
of spiritual
or soothing
The kind of music some executive
with a bottom line hanging over his head
engineered from a formula
of a thousand songs
someone called “calming” once.
A cacophonic story telling the sick
and the dying that
“everything’s going to be fine”

Every time I’ve been admitted to an ER
I stare in terror
at the curtains in the trauma rooms
usually some sort of pastel gradient
just on the institutional side of
easter egg
or sunset
faded towards beige
from the industrial sorts of detergent
needed to turn a biohazard
back into a privacy screen
yellowed from iodine and vein rust
The kind of durable, stain-hiding pattern
some executive, with a bottom line hanging over his head
engineered from a thousand surveys
distilling down the 5 or 6 colours
people call “calming”.
Rows of visible barriers
between the sick or dying
and the world
a cacophony
of “everything’s going to be fine”.

A story whose moral is only denial.
But the oldest fairy tales,
don’t have happy endings.

Once upon a time,
you will die.
When you die, you will be alone.
Even if you are surrounded by loved ones,
or the arms of a person you’ll call your soulmate
until the very moment you start to fade,
and start to doubt whether souls even exist.
Even if someone dies right next to you at the very same second,
in a car crash,
or an explosion, or holding your hand,
you will still go through death alone.
Alone and dying will be the last things you ever are.

And for so many people
these curtains
are the last image
they’ll ever see.
Swinging softly in the bustle
As calming music plays over a p.a.
In a hospital with a bottom line hanging over its head,
as someone whispers in their ear,
“everything is going to be fine”

 

Shanna Alden (they/them) is a queer poet, photographer, barista, and bartender living in Seattle, WA with their chosen family and a couple very soft cats. They sit on the board of Rain City Poetry Slam and consistently host weekly poetry shows.

Erin Schick (they/them) is a queer, trans, and multiply disabled social worker living in upstate New York and focused on disability justice and queer liberation. Their interests include the Pacific Northwest, women’s soccer, and sled dogs.

Find this poem and many others in SwEP’s latest release: A Duet of Dying

Now Available!

 

“A Duet of Dying is a poignant and honest approach to surviving terminal sickness, living disabled, and the constant navigation of the healthcare system of the United States. From honest confessions like remaining with somebody caught cheating “Because I was on his health insurance,” in Why Did You Stay? part 3, to the foreign and familiar feeling of not knowing yourself apart from the “alien” in Pathogen, this collection is a special one for its approach through — and more aptly: with — sickness. Then there is the raw cruelty that is given a voice so aptly in Ringtones into Dirges; here, at last, are words for the battle with collections calls for MRIs and diagnostic tests; those which are necessary to life, but the collected debt of which could easily drive somebody to death. And I think, finally, finally, here is an honest testament — of love, of life (while actively dying), of death (and still living). And wonderfully, a narrative from two powerful queer voices, who offer this bittersweet collection, so purely.”

~Reviewed by Maxine Peseke

As always, we encourage ordering the collection from the authors personally or through an independent bookstore, but the collection is also available through Amazon and other distributors.

Click here to order today!

Weekly Write: “What is Precious is Never to Forget” by Bill Nevins

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Publisher Note:

The team at Swimming with Elephants Publications was greatly saddened to hear of the passing of one our authors, Bob Warren. We are dedicating this week’s Weekly Write to a poem by Bill Nevins which honors him.

To learn more about Bob and his poetry, head over to: https://swimmingwithelephants.com/2019/12/18/r-b-warren/

What is Precious is Never to Forget

Eulogy or Elegy for the Living Poet, Ever Near this Poor Man’s Ear

Dear teacher Stephen Spender taught me long ago
“Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields . . .
The names of those who in their lives fought for life . . .
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.”
Soour poet of Litanies Not Adopted singed and signed the air here with his fierce honor
His love of life, of even poor Christ
Whom he saw in every parched or vibrant face he found
In this weary land, in Detroit City, and in this dry desert town.

As Donne told us the toll sounds for each however mean
SoBob preached love too would ring in us every one
If we found that buried note that stream
It might be blood of the lamb, flowing free in our deeds
It might be only buried deep in our unborn seeds
It might need be wrested forth
By words of fire, touch of light, fury, oh cold star- light.

Bob wrestled with God, he did, and surely still does,
and no holds barred.
When and where none but angels saw.
No one won. None lost. The Holy Ghost, Bob’s second, called a draw.
“Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds
From every searching Eye?”
With Blake, Bob challenged the coy deity to Be HERE Now!

I think the sky god only laughed and saw itself in the house of store among the lost,
In the mirror of Bob, son of man, and knew revelation needed no more
Knew no airy sky god need be found when Bob and such walk solid ground.

But that’s just me, agnostic mystic disrespectful American rebel son.
I would not mess with Bob nor Barbara, armed lovers ever, love in arms.
And that warning applies to the god of grief, that holy thief-
-Don’t mess. Best, just bless.
And move along, now, Daddy-O. You done your best and worst.
Bob abides. Bob never hides.
Bob may go, but Bob is here, right here. We know.

Ah won’t Detroit howl and mourn when they hear?
Ah won’t Sonny that strong hero of Motor City laugh and cry for the tall brave man called Whitey X—who knew Black Lives Matter deep in his heart and needed no one to tell him so?
And won’t this second tier rhymester raise his beer, shed a tear?
And won’t sweet Jesus smile to know that Bob is near? Always near.

Bill Nevins grew up Irish Catholic near and in New York City in the 1950’s and 60’s. He moved to northern New England and raised his three children, one of whom, Special Forces SFC Liam Nevins, died in combat in Afghanistan in 2013. Bill has lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico since 1996.

 

 

Now Available: A Duet of Dying

On By awhitetrashpoetIn News

The latest release from

Swimming with Elephants Publications

is now available!

 

“A Duet of Dying is a poignant and honest approach to surviving terminal sickness, living disabled, and the constant navigation of the healthcare system of the United States. From honest confessions like remaining with somebody caught cheating “Because I was on his health insurance,” in Why Did You Stay? part 3, to the foreign and familiar feeling of not knowing yourself apart from the “alien” in Pathogen, this collection is a special one for its approach through — and more aptly: with — sickness. Then there is the raw cruelty that is given a voice so aptly in Ringtones into Dirges; here, at last, are words for the battle with collections calls for MRIs and diagnostic tests; those which are necessary to life, but the collected debt of which could easily drive somebody to death. And I think, finally, finally, here is an honest testament — of love, of life (while actively dying), of death (and still living). And wonderfully, a narrative from two powerful queer voices, who offer this bittersweet collection, so purely.”

~Reviewed by Maxine Peseke

As always, we encourage ordering the collection from the authors personally or through an independent bookstore, but the collection is also available through Amazon and other distributors.

Click here to order today!

About the Authors

 Shanna Alden (they/them) is a queer poet, photographer, barista, and bartender living in Seattle, WA with their chosen family and a couple very soft cats. They sit on the board of Rain City Poetry Slam and consistently host weekly poetry shows.

Erin Schick (they/them) is a queer, trans, and multiply disabled social worker living in upstate New York and focused on disability justice and queer liberation. Their interests include the Pacific Northwest, women’s soccer, and sled dogs.

Weekly Write: “Save the Elephants” by Erin Conway

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Save the Elephants

Mamá liked travelling. Mamá liked to talk about what to bring,
Or what not to bring.
Mamá grabbed a palm sized ball
Of masa dough ground from Gloria’s trip to the molino.
It tapped and tapped around to tell the story of her hills and nestled village
Monte and cayukos.
Mamá loved to plan trips she would never take
Behind Mamá’s steps rested her shadow.
The elephant’s mother always casts
The largest, the longest
Shadow on its skin.

I was only four when Mamá packed for Mexico City.
I was only four when she did not return.
Ten years later, I study geometry. Gloria counts micro credit.
I study history. Gloria listens to stories.
I study geography. Gloria walks between rural villages.
I study physical education. Gloria brushes toddlers’ blackened teeth
Left by the fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers who headed North.
Spanish. Maya. Large, expansive names.
San Cristobal de las Casas.
All missing paint in lime green.
Yaxchilán. Chipapa de Corzo.
Jungle. Pine trees. Coffee. Chocolate.
Drunk on mist.
¿Y yo?

My skin tone is a blend,
A highland blend of coffee
That gringos drink
In large mugs that are not supposed to have bottoms
In large mugs Gringos find the energy
To step on and over the stones, the stories,
Of our past.
I close my eyes.
I hear Mamá empty frijoles parados into my dish.
I smile and add chilé.
I close my eyes.
I hear Mamá pour coffee into my mug.
I smile and add sugar.

“Where are you working today Gloria?” I ask.
“The woman’s coop.”
“Can I come?”
“Instead of school?”
“I love sitting near the weavers.
Untangling strings. Cutting knots.”

Señoras squint through donated lenses.
Elephants do not have good eyesight.
I know I don’t know the strings’ colors,
My colors, I don’t know.
In the women’s midst, I return to a herd.
But it’s not my herd.
I’m an orphan. I’m homeless.
I’m an immigrant? Migrant? Refugee?

I sit on the front step,
Leaned back against the stones,
I stretch forward. I write.
“Related elephant females stay together for life.
Related elephant families share resources,
Avoid danger,
Care for young.”

The flowers reflect days’ yellow brightness through ever present dust.
Their husbands saw the same
Scattered in corn kernels. Spread out to dry.
Free trade brought new colors in cotton string.
New demand for old traditions. Cheap corn
Unemployment.

Mamá had wrapped her faja
Like the ones strapped in these looms
Mamá had covered her guipil in her rebozo.
Inspired by Comandante Ramona
Mamá had boarded a bus to the First Indigeneous Congress.
If Mamá had reached México City, I don’t know.
I watch the women’s fingers.
The women pick up strings and drop them.
If only one string had been long enough
To help Mamá find her way home.

I think of elephant matriarchs.
Which woman will throw herself
On the electric fence?
Or learn to open the gate?
For the rest to escape.
I stare upward, beyond
Barbed wire. Chipped cement. Broken glass.
The sweep of the mountain is also the sky.
The top is not a peak.
There is more room than people would say,
Would want me to believe.
We can all fit on the mountain though I started farther down.

Blue, the green of grass.
White, the water spray of clouds.
Gloria’s heavy feet climb.
Others feel her trail in their soles.
Like elephants, I lean forward on my toes.
We refuse to be on our heels.
When I stand on tiptoes, I know
The mountain is not so high.

In the evening,
We turn beans from parados to colados to volteados.
“The thicker the better,” I say.
“But less to go around,” Gloria reminds.
I was only four when Gloria kept me.
I was only four when Gloria became the leader of our orphan band.

Gloria shows me nothing directly.
Instead she shows me
Hooded sweatshirts, holy cards and birth control.
I eat my supper alone. Flip cable channels.
I trace my finger along the tortilla
Wrinkled, elephant, skin.
I dig through the garbage
Between two fingers gently, I hold buried papers
With my elephant’s trunk

$2,000. $8,000. Mexico.
Petitions. Protests. El Salvador.
Felony. Theft. Guatemala.
Muertes. En camino. Honduras.
Sanctuary.

Night steps forward.
I fall asleep and dream.
Baby elephant. Orphan elephant.
Surrounded by lions. Far from home.
Baby elephant. Orphan elephant.
She screamed to keep the jaguars away, for the family to accept her.
Baby elephant. Orphan elephant.
She wrecked her vocal chords.
It was her voice,
Or, her life.

I completed my undergraduate and graduate degrees at UW-Madison. I began my professional career as a bilingual teacher in the Madison Metropolitan School District, but this work stems from my desire to seek a deeper understanding of my students and foster intercultural connections in the field of education. I accepted a Peace Corps assignment in Guatemala. For the past ten years, I worked both teaching and training teachers in Guatemala, including Atitlan Multicultural Academy, and most recently I worked as the Director of Literacy Staff Training and Curriculum Development with Child Aid. Previously, working in education in Guatemala, I currently work for UW-Madison, Division of Extension. My literary efforts focus on diverse books initiatives. Publishing credits include Midwest Review, Sonder Review, Vine Leaves Press, The Hopper, Cleaning up Glitter, Kind Writers and Adelaide Literary Magazine. I manage a blog and website, http://www.erinconway.com.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “The Sunflower Song” by KilhaPoetry

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

The Sunflower Song

I dreamed that I stumbled upon a field full of giant sunflowers
And lay my head there down to die.
While the heavens gathered up all their stormiest rain clouds
That fell from the tubular sky’s.
Too great was my sadness to fight.
Too lost to the tragedy now begun.
Alone in my field full of sunflowers
With no life to wish to carry on.

I dreamed that the earth consumed me.
My wretched body decaying outwardly in.
Until there was no memory of my presence or being
And no one could remember even who I had been.

I dreamed that sunflowers grew wilder and strong,
Their mighty stalks growing thicker with height.
They grew into the horizon and up into the sky’s,
There petals looming with grandiose might.

Cocooned in my deathly slumber,
From the peace in which I now lay.
A curiosity stirred awaking a part of me,
A part no earthly death could just wash away.
And deep in that place of unexistance,
deep in my transient state,
I felt such heavenly beauty
Breath new life into the loneliness place.

Adrift on the wings of salvation,
With courage retuning and restored.
I marvelled at the world so vivid and true
With enough beauty and love for us all.
Now in my field full of sunflowers
that mourned for the life I couldn’t save,
I dreamed of a love to unfold without tragedy.
Without fearing loss or fear itself to be the reason for blame.

I dreamed that I died in a field full of sunflowers,
With such beauty that I had never seen.
And deep in my field full of awesome giant sunflowers,
I’m rebirthed each night in my dreams.

 

MMKilha is a London born poet with Egyptian and English/Irish heritage. She started writing when she was very young as a way of processing and surviving an abusive environment. She says, “I started writing because I couldn’t talk about what was going on. I wasn’t trying to be creative, I just needed a way to communicate”.

She has continued to use it as a method of reflection ever since. 

With a back catalogue of work big enough to fill her garage, she only became public in 2017 after a friend encouraged her to overcome her insecurities being dyslexic and having ADHD.

She says the impact of writing means she no longer feels the need to apologise for herself; “If people like the work that’s great. I’m over the moon when my words speak to another person but if they don’t, that’s fine too. Since being open about these issues I have received so much support from other dyslexic writers who tell me how much my honesty has meant to them.”

MMKilha is currently in her final year of her Masters in Childhood and Adolescent

Psychotherapy working with children from abusive backgrounds to help them make sense of their own stories though creative interventions. 

MMKilha performs independently on the London spoken word scene as well as with the @Poetical_Word collective  poeticalword.org providing them with a vital Therapist in Residence service for their outreach programmes.

For a selection of her work or to get in contact she can be found on Instagram @kilhapoetry. 

Please feel free to get in touch.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Pre-orders are Available for A Duet of Dying

On By awhitetrashpoetIn News, Reviews

“What is it to face something defined as inevitable and find some still breathing beauty within, however imperfect that beauty may be? If you are Shanna Alden or Erin Schick, then the answer is: sing your heartsong as vibrantly, fiercely and unapologetically as possible. With this collection, they do all of that and more. These are poems that do not attempt to define or even simply describe the experience of living with disability, or surviving terminal illness within a broken system of care. No, these are poems that translate every breath into a minor miracle, speaking to the blossoming of pain as eloquently as the slow simmer of determination beneath the surface. A Duet of Dying is, almost, improperly titled – because with every poem, you can almost hear the swelling voices of the choir, of all of those out there in the wide world who have experiences that will make this work invaluable. This collection is so utterly, inevitably human, it will leave you shaken.”

Zachary Kluckman, CPSW

Author of Some of It is Muscle and The Animals in Our Flesh

Pre-order A Duet of Dying today: https://py.pl/AMg6UcckG7C !

Coming Soon: A Duet of Dying

On By awhitetrashpoetIn News, Publications, Shameless Self Promotion

Down, but not Out

It is no secret that the pandemic has affected Swimming with Elephants Publications in several ways. Since the office has been closed, and will likely remain closed for the rest of the year, creating publications have become difficult and time consuming. However, we are still kicking.

We would like to announce the upcoming release of A Duet of Dying by Shanna Alden and Erin Schick, the first of three chapbooks which were chosen for publication from our 2020 Chapbook Open Call. Originally scheduled for release in May, the pandemic has pushed our release date to August 15, 2020.

Follow our website and Facebook page for upcoming release and performance information.

 

An additional note to our followers:

The ability to publish is a luxury which should not be the top priority of our society at the moment, and it has not been the top priority for our staff. However, we have every intention of fulfilling the contracts we made before the pandemic.

Although we have no idea what the future holds for our small press, we have our fingers crossed that we will survive this difficult time and come out on the other side but it is far too soon to know what we will look like in the next year.

We still have two more chapbooks from last year’s Open Call which we hope to release before the end of 2020 and are hoping to still be able put together our 2020 anthology. We have extended our timeline for these publications and we appreciate the patience of our followers and poets.

You can continue to support us by supporting our poets and supporting independent bookstores.

Weekly Write: “The Astronaut” by Rachel Glass

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

The Astronaut

One day, I’ll look out of my bedroom window
and smile, even if the world is ending.

The world is ending,
I tell my doctor.

My doctor tells me I shouldn’t fantasize
about smiling out of my bedroom window.
Smiling out of my bedroom window
is the opening scene, of a sitcom based on my life.

The sitcom based on my life makes others laugh.
Others laugh, and I am jealous because I cannot laugh.
I cannot laugh because I am too tired.

I am too tired,
is something else I tell my doctor.

I tell my doctor,

I am an astronaut,
readjusting to a normal life.

This normal life is making me homesick:
I miss the emptiness of space, and being wrapped in stars.
Being wrapped in stars is a distant memory,
and now, I am wrapped in blankets.

I am wrapped in blankets because a normal life
has too many people, too much noise,
and too much gravity, holding me in my bed.
In my bed is where I am happy.

I am happy when I’m alone,
I tell my doctor.

I tell my doctor,

I am happy,
even though my world is ending.

 

Rachel Glass currently lives in Scarborough, England and has been writing poetry since she was was sixteen. She has had a number of poems published on the Poetry Society’s website and a poem was featured in a Valley Press anthology. She is usually found writing, drinking hot chocolate and wearing glittery shoes.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Body Talk” by Sara Brown

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Body Talk

Days stretch like unruly vinca vine spilling out of upright, Bernardo red geranium baskets; we snip them with tough-handed scissors and Katie weaves them into crowns to place upon our heads, tiny limelight leaves cascading over our faces.

Nights are short as flats of youthful monoecious begonias sprouting, thick with moisture, heavy. I dream of unloading dust-bottomed trucks and wake myself in sleep as my arms support imaginary trays and pass empty air onto my spare pillow, rolling beads of sweat tucked behind my ears for the demand of a defeated body even sleep cannot stop.

The heat scoops out the mind, replaces it with rhizomes and rootstalks grasping at water. I see petals pressed to my eyelids. It is more than just labor I exchange for paper, it is the way I learn to breathe, reaching for water like flora, beginning to crave the burn of sunlight in any enclosed space.

I trade in smooth skin for dirt ingrained into each lined path of my fingerprint, collections of bruises I hold on my legs; the slopes of kneecaps, deep blue like that of fertilizer droplets onto sundried concrete.

Pushing hot metal loading carts of hanging Boston ferns, I rely on brass guitar hamstrings, twisted tight, and round back corners of greenhouse plastic to spill out with the backfield breeze tucking more water behind my ears. The peppers grow in the adjacent field, sun hats and beaten flannels hunch to pick lines. I count my steps and check at lunch, rubbing ice in paths across my calves.

My stomach dives a flip when I see the tapeners, a vine and plant tying tool, under the counter next to the sandwich bag of stale cigarettes. August, burning, I spent days propping up hungover shoots of blackberry plants, plump black fruit at the tips, clinging to stems. Hot blackberries melted on our tongues as we tried to keep count of the early crop, tried to coerce photosynthesis into biting its own tongue as we snipped off the white flower buds.

No one grabs my weight, assists my kneecaps when I collapse in iron-efficient orange dirt, my body pushing up dust into nostrils. Buckets for catching weeds thrown in the air sit at the wood line, good containers for vomiting out heat stroke. I heave the remnants into the flower graveyard back towards the edge of the property, where my DNA and failed, moldy bulbs of lilies meld together, hold a plot in the fertile soil where pansies sprout up each spring. The life always returns.

I walk at the end of October, retire my bones until the next planting season. In our language of the flower, the root, the bee, what can you say about a woman and her body that mine has not already said?

Sara Brown received her BA in literature with a concentration in creative writing from Stockton University in December 2018. I have had my photography published in Into the Void, Midwestern Gothic, Camas, and my poetry and creative nonfiction in Tiny Leaf, the Raw Art Review, Permafrost, and Toho Journal.

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: 2.0 by Sahar Fathi

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2.0

Today, midday
While walking down the street
I inhaled and smelled Iran
And for a moment
I forgot my people were
Banned 2.0
Travel restricted
With bills pending for
Sanctions
And preemptive force
To rain bombs
On my cousins
For a moment
I forgot the hate and
Instead
I smelled the honeysuckle
In my grandmother’s front yard
And I was
Transported to the bazaars
Filled with people
Who look like me
Who tweeze one eyebrow
Into two
Like me
Who can pronounce my name
Properly
People descended
From poets like Rumi
And super hero attorneys
Like Shirin Ebadi
For a moment I forgot
My blood shot eyes
And my pounding headache
From restless nights
And aggressive headlines
Spewing lies
For a moment
I was just me
Unapologetically
Bound between two countries
Me

Previously published in ‘ARTS by the People’ on March 21.

Sahar graduated from the University of Washington Law School and is a member of the New York bar. She also earned a Masters in International Studies from the University of Washington, and graduated cum laude from the University of Southern California with a dual Bachelor of Arts in French and International Relations. Additionally, Sahar attended the Sorbonne Université in Paris, France from 2003-2004 and received a diploma in International and European Law from the Université Jean-Moulin in Lyon, France in 2008. She has served as adjunct faculty at both Seattle University and the University of Washington School of Law. Sahar is a past president and co-founder of the Middle Eastern Legal Association of Washington, as well as the founder of its Legal Clinic – the first Middle Eastern Legal Clinic in the country. She is a past board member for the ACLU, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and the UNA – USA. She is a current board member for One America Votes. She has been published in the Seattle Journal for Social Justice, the Seattle Journal of Environmental Law, and the Gonzaga Law Review. Her poetry has been printed in ‘Writers Resist’ and the ‘Writers Resist: Anthology (2018).’ It has also been featured in the Feelings journal and Not Your Mother’s Breastmilk. Her favorite Persian dish is Fesenjoon, and in 2016 she finally mastered her Tadiq technique.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Predicated” by M. Eileen

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Predicated

now I sit
with eyes on my wrists
thinking they’re real
thinking they’ll heal
protect and deflect all
ill will, thinking
they’re true, swallowing
pieces of light, staining my smile
and I have to fight battles
that are not easily won.
I fight. and I win.
repeat. repeat. repeat again.
and I do not rest.

so the words bursting from my mouth
volcanic with syllables
and traceable soundwaves
heavy vowels and consonants
slipped and hissed are
suitable signs of a life that’s alive
slightly displeased with boundaries.
blanched like a cloud,
stained with scars of blood vessels, ruptured,
raw my voice creases like
fistfuls of paper
I am swallowing sobs and
choking in the process
my timing precise
I don’t desire condolences while
wishing the guilty the worst

nothing protects against villainy
stomach revolts from hypocrisy

 

“Predicated” was previously published in S/tick.

M. Eileen writes near water. Her work has been featured in Hanging Loose, Monkeybicycle, and others. She can be found @m_e_g_writes.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

SwEP Mid-Month Review: the heart is a muscle

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Mid Month Review, News

Review by Lizzie Waltner

Kat Heatherington’s poetry collection, the heart is a muscle, brings to light ideas of love that address all aspects of life in a powerful manner and has a deep connection to nature throughout. Her use of, or lack thereof, of capital letters throughout her collection gives the pieces a softness. There are no sharp edges in this collection, which makes it very comforting. These pieces are bright and playful but not downplay the serious issues that wring our hearts.

In her first section, a house by the river, Heatherington’s poem ‘planting poem’ we not only get a taste of spring, but also the touch of the past and endings. For example,

i need to plant more food this year, and less flowers,
but that thin pale green leaf lifts my heart,
and i pray for rain enough to give them all blossoms.
the cat’s grave, her small lilac,
is undisturbed and thriving.

In this small section we see her powerful use of the past contrasting with the present. It not only reflects on the past, the previous dirt being flower filled and a resting space for her cat, but also what it can become which is more sustainable and hearty for the soul, growing more food and the ability of there still being beauty in her memories of her cat that can be represented by the thriving lilac.

This idea of needing more food, could also be applied to more than just nutritional value, and how sometimes all we can do is hope to get through the next months. We all need a little rain sometimes.

The central section is aptly named, stunning transitional moments, as it is not only done stunningly, but addresses some of the toughest realities everyone learns as an adult. In ‘breathing room’ Heatherington tackles the idea of distance and leaving, and the complexity we all feel when walking away from something we love.

now we both have room to breath
and are using it to cry with.
now I can see your stormcloud eyes
filled with pain, and watching me walk away
and not feel all the wind in my sails
fly towards the storm in your heart.

The piece ends with ‘we are both standing’ and I think that hits home hard, because despite sometimes leaving being a difficult idea to grapple with it can have a positive ending, such as being able to stand on ones own.

The last section of this collection, the flammable heart, is admittedly my favorite. This entire section made my heart ache, but in the best way possible. My favorite piece in this section is, maybe. It’s simplicity about wishful thinking with the simple phrase ‘or maybe not’ got me every single time it’s used throughout this piece. This repetitive technique in this poem is repetition at its highest.

and you will visit now and then,
or maybe you won’t,
and i’ll love you anyway,
and send you postcards and text messages
about the rain and the corn and the sweet desert stars,

The way the poems presents this idea of unconditional love, despite being aware of things not working out makes it that much more heart-breaking. At the end of the day, there is always wishful thinking for love and always a realization, that maybe it won’t work out.

Overall, this collection really gets under your skin and claws itself in, sometimes making you feel warm and fuzzy, other times letting those emotions sting throughout. It makes you feel alongside the narrator and presents itself in a relatable manner and uses wonderful metaphors and similes to give visual representation to emotions. Kat Heatherington does a fantastic job in this collection, and anyone with a heart will adore it.

 

Click the image to order the heart is a muscle from Bookworks ABQ.


the heart is a muscle
by kat heatherington

Kat Heatherington is a queer ecofeminist poet, sometime artist, pagan, and organic gardener. She lives south of Albuquerque New Mexico, in Sunflower River intentional community with a varying number of other humans and cats. Kat’s work primarily addresses the interstices of human relationships and the natural world. She has one previous book, The Bones of This Land, published in 2017 by Swimming with Elephants Publications and available at Bookworks and Harvest Moon Books in Albuquerque, as well as on amazon.com. She can be found online at https://patreon.com/yarrowkat and on instagram at @sometimesaparticle. You can contact the author at yarrow@sunflowerriver.org.

Weekly Write: “Brown’s Legacy” by Amoja Sumler

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Brown’s Legacy

“Fouding Fathers” are the school lunch
today. The patriotism was a bit salty
but the homies were bred on fatback
so we just added hot sauce
and slurped it down anyway.
John took eight years of spoonfuls and walked away hungry
for the flash of the D-boys,
’cause they were ’bout dat ‘rithmetic,
and a little homie had to get paid. He lurks late.

The rest of us stayed
juxtaposed between firm expectations and indoctrination,
Between “I can not tell a lie”, and “I have a dream”
between uniform day and my brother’s passed down shoes.
High I.Q.’s mean little to attention starved kids on test day.
The homie Rob is an alarm startled eye. I am an empty belly.
Mike is field tripping acid,
We are a collective: failing.

Teacher does what she can
a mumble of breath & disappointment.
We bring her apples anyway,
(by way of confiscated smart phones).
The science lesson today was “matter”.

We learned.
We don’t.

A current resident of Washington, DC. Amoja Sumler is a nationally celebrated poet and social activist known for fusing the art of the intellectual into the familiar. As “The Mo-Man,” he has headlined spoken word festivals such as the Austin International Poetry Festival, the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Write NOLA in New Orleans and Rock the Republic in Texas. A member of Arts in Education rosters all over the South for over a decade has seen Amoja serve as a 5 time Poetry Out Loud final judge and an artist in residence to universities and literacy nonprofits across the country. Amoja has also presented at social advocacy conferences like Long Beach Indie Film Pedagogy Conference and Furious Flower as a panelist with The Watering Hole.

Currently pursuing an MFA at the University of Baltimore, he graduated from the University of Arkansas in Little Rock with a Bachelor of Arts in English/Creative Writing a William G. Coopers English Scholar and a Ronald McNair Fellow. H has dedicated himself to the concepts of knowledge, action, and voice.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

SwEP April 2020 Newsletter

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New Releases

Due to the outbreak of COVID 19 and the closures it caused, our new releases of 2020 have yet to be celebrated and recognized. However, Swimming with Elephants Publications has created and released four titles since the beginning of the year. These four publications are available at all major book distributors but we encourage our audience to please consider picking up these new releases from the poet directly or an independent bookstore.

Awe
by Bill Nevins

This is a slender volume of poems of great depth. Nevins braids themes of loss, grief and rage about the senseless loss of beautiful young people (including his beloved son) in wars that never end; historical conquest and current betrayal of indigenous peoples in the Americas; and cruel policies that cause the death of children today in immigrant detention camps. Sweat lodge incantations tell ancient stories of immigration, land theft, and the greed that drives wars for natural resources, and the legacy of curses that follow in the form of natural disasters.

Irish history with its own long sorrows also threads through Nevins’ work with allusions to Yeats and poems printed in Irish. Like all poetry, these poems should be read aloud to reveal their internal rhymes and the cadence of old oration as the poet writes of universal themes. Quiet declarations of truth are woven through these poems that urge us to live safe in “shared loving energy,” as Nevins puts it, not afraid of anything at all.

“Awe” is essential reading for this time of great unknowing and uncertainty, when truly we can live only in the present. In the title poem, Nevins reminds us that all the past is in the here, in this now.

Review submitted by Mary Dudley 

The heart is a muscle
by kat heatherington

Kat Heatherington is a queer ecofeminist poet, sometime artist, pagan, and organic gardener. She lives south of Albuquerque New Mexico, in Sunflower River intentional community with a varying number of other humans and cats. Kat’s work primarily addresses the interstices of human relationships and the natural world. She has one previous book, The Bones of This Land, published in 2017 by Swimming with Elephants Publications and available at Bookworks and Harvest Moon Books in Albuquerque, as well as on amazon.com. She can be found online at https://patreon.com/yarrowkat and on instagram at @sometimesaparticle. You can contact the author at yarrow@sunflowerriver.org.

The Emigrant and other poems 

by Jan Slauerhoff (Author) &  Jack Hirschman (Translator)

Though he lived only 38 years, Jan Slauerhoff (born in 1898 in Leeuwarden, the capitol of Friesland in The Netherlands, and died in 1936) is considered the only poete maudit of Holland in the 20th Century, a late Romantic poet influenced by Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Corbiere.

His first poem was published as a teenager in the communist magazine the Neeiuw Tijd. After university study of medicine in Amsterdam, he worked for the rest of his life as a ship’s doctor on different ships and therefore visited many different continents, including Asia, Africa and the Caribbean of the Americas.

His longing for the passionate love for a woman and his restlessness in being a wanderer at sea, with especial sympathy for the poor and the downtrodden, figure importantly in his poetry.

There’s a story doubtlessly true that toward the end of his life, he was on a boat in the China Sea where Chinese would row out to receive shots against typhoid and diphtheria from him. Two years before his death, his final book of poems, Soleares, was awarded the Van der Hoogt Prize in The Netherlands.

He was also the author of the romantic semi-documentary novel of the 16th century Portuguese poet Luis de Camoes with whom Slauerhoff deeply identified in The Forbidden Kingdom (1932), and Life on Earth (1934).

But it’s as a poet that Slauerhoff is most deeply remembered by the people of The Netherlands, for his embodiment of the themes of modern anxiety, and the home-away-from-home that his poems evoke. Indeed he was among the first European, African or American poets in the last century to write not simply of  but within the Orient, and many poems among the 31 here reflect that domain.

Querencia is a connection with land, and with water, which sustains life. It is a remembrance of one’s history; where one began. It calls upon a place of origin. Yet, it also transcends a want and desire for where our future will take us. Querencia is not grounded by the traditional concept of Aztlán, that of the U.S. Southwest. Rather, it follows the Latinx diaspora; wherever it lands, wherever it develops roots.This project builds upon the querencia developed from the historical knowledge and social factors regarding ethnic enclaves such as the immigrant neighborhood of Roosevelt Park along the Grandville Avenue “César E. Chávez Boulevard” Corridor in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Chicanos/as, exiled Cuban-Americans, Dominicans, and refugee Central Americans have reestablished their querencia in the Latinx diaspora within this barrio. Thus, Nuestros antepasados y la nueva generación en SW Michigan observes through photography and bilingual poetry how this West Michigan community represents its ‘latinidad’.

Current Events & Projects

Currently, all in person events are on hold until the stay at home order is lifted and events can be rescheduled, but there is still a lot going on in the poetry world.

Several of our poets have begun virtual Open Mics or virtual Poetry Slams, where work can still be shared. SaraEve Fermin has begun a group called: I need you so much closer: a virtual bi-monthly artist talkspace.  Kai Coggin has taken her Wednesday Night Poetry to the web and is hosting her show on April 1st (WNP Virtual Open Mic, Poetry Through the Pandemic). Zachary Kluckman and his Mindwell Poetry Team are also hosting a weekly Open Mic with a featured poet: The Poet Speaks: Open Mic & Featured Poet.

These are just a few of the many, many virtual shows which have popped up. A quick search of Facebook or Instagram should reveal several more events all over the world which you can participate in. (If you have a show, leave a link to it in the comments on this page to be shared).

Please support these poets and organizers by virtually attending or participating in their shows, purchasing their wares directly from them, and/or sharing the information with interested parties . Also, be willing to tip or donate a little extra to their cause.

Effects of COVID 19

As far as the current situation has affected Swimming with Elephants Publications, it should be noted that all of our upcoming publications and much of our advertising is currently on hold while we are out of the office.

We apologize for these delays and encourage our authors to continue to share their work and promote their publications in anyway that suits them at the moment, and, as always, let us know how we can help.

We have faith that once our offices reopen we will be able to tackle the already scheduled projects with little delay.  

What’s to Come

The ability to publish is a luxury which should not be the top priority of our society at the moment, but we do believe we will return to a place where a small press like ours has a purpose and a future.

Although we have no idea what the future holds for our small press, we have our fingers crossed that we will survive this difficult time and come out on the other side better than before.

We still have five upcoming publications scheduled, including the selected manuscripts from our 2019 Open Call and our Annual Anthology. We have extended our timeline for these publications and we appreciate the patience of our followers and poets.

You can continue to support us by supporting our poets and supporting independent bookstores.

 

Would you like to contribute to May’s Newsletter?

Send a message via the Contact Us option regarding upcoming events, projects, or any other poetry related information we might include in our monthly update.

Weekly Write: “The Cuff of That One Sweater” by Mycah Miller

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The Cuff of That One Sweater

one day in our future I’ll paint for you in a room filled with more color than I can see right now and you’ll come in to greet me and after we’ve kissed hello we’ll realize I left paint on the collar of your favorite shirt and I’ll laugh and you’ll sigh and I’ll tell you not to worry because in all these long years I know now to paint only with that that can be washed away, I’ve learned now the importance of solubility because what good is love if it doesn’t teach you how some things need to be dissolved sometimes in order to savor the self-professed blessed and you’ll remind me of that one sweater that I have with paint on its wrist in an entirely different color than your new additions but you’ll call it the same anyway and remind me how you’ve learned that while you’ve loved this holy thing you’ve always seen how my ink bleeds seem to leave behind more than I think they will and this too, is a type of compromise.

 

Mycah Miller is a Santa Cruz, CA-based poet, artist, and student, and most recently was a member of the 2018 Legendary Collective Slam Team, the winners of the 2018 Southwest Shootout held in Albuquerque. She currently attends SJSU as an English major. She creates art as an escape from and commentary on the outside world in a continuous attempt to both understand and connect with others. Her poetry is done on whatever paper, napkin, or phone is closest, and her art is done with various materials in various places in various bursts of sudden inspiration. In her free time, she can be found not writing enough, drinking tea, and riding her motorcycle(s). Her work is a protest, a love letter, and a canvas she has weaved herself thoroughly into. She can be contacted through her facebook page “Mycah Miller Art,” Instagram @MycahMillerArt, or emailed at mycahmillerart@gmail.com.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “A Missing Love Letter” by Liza Wolff-Francis

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A missing love letter

lost, hidden under a flower
when the moon was a mouthy
revolutionary, its paper unfolding

from yellow petals, its words,
a design meant only for you.
All of the cyclones of this life,

sharp curve hip of color and line.
The words we hear and don’t,
the sound, the noise, all of it

is the outbreath of the deflection
of the moon when it is full.
Its waves are the ways we call

each other, the footprints of stories,
drip paint scrawl, as if we try
to understand each other through love.

I loved you once
and as my letters to you were lost,
so were our moments.

 

 

Liza Wolff-Francis is a literary artist with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She was co-director for the 2014 Austin International Poetry Festival and on the 2008 Albuquerque Poetry Slam Team. She has a poetry chapbook called Language of Crossing (SWEPublications).

 

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

SwEP Mid-Month Review

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Mid Month Review, News, Reviews

Into the Sunset

A Review of Courtney A. Butler’s Wild Horses
By Beau Williams

Like the name suggests, Wild Horses is the struggle of an unbridled soul ready to escape from the reins. Courtney A. Butler dissects the intricacies of a fierce heart under stress and scatters them through this collection in twenty-two poems.

This collection is a frustrated soul screaming from behind a crumbling barrier. In the book’s introductory poem, “Words, Like Meat,” the first line reads:

“I scrape words
like meat
from the inside of my ribs
They have hung there
clinging desperately to what
oxygen they could”

This line summarizes why this book exists. Butler portrays a person that has had this “meat”, these weighing parts of her that needed to be released, and Wild Horses is that release. Butler tackles the delicate topics of loss of a loved one, being the “other” girl, carrying secrets, searching for love, and (like true wild horses) learning to break free. This collection has the longing and reflection of Plath, the fierceness of Ke$ha, the nature influences of Wordsworth, with a hint of zany like Lewis Carroll.

This book has hidden its structure quite well. There are no full-stops, though there are commas, hyphens, italics, and capitalized letters to subliminally guide the reader’s eye through the pages. The lack of full-stops gives the book a sense of uncertainty that Butler carries with grace; a slight unease that really sets the tone ahead of time and prepares the reader for the topics soon to follow. There are no sections, no interludes, and no quotes, Butler just gets straight to it and gives you exactly what you came there for.

As previously mentioned, the introductory poem seems to be Butler giving herself permission to write the rest of the work; “Words, like Meat” is Butler strapping the bomb to the dam, once the switch is flipped, whatever has been pushing itself against the walls will finally be released, and it was.

After that, the book really dives into relationships between the subject and the people closest to them. The second poem: “DNR,” lays out the concept of the book. It is about a person who is trying to come to terms with a situation in a relationship that neither of the participants have any control over. This is a recurring theme throughout the book. In “DNR,” the topic is death. In later poems the topics are love, lust, miscommunication, and distance.

It can be argued that one of the most intimate, relatable, and touching poems in the collection is “The Importance of Being Broken (Or Sitting in a Bathtub with Your Clothes On and the Lights Off).” Here, Butler describes the deafening moment of collapse; the moment where all the stress and all the worry has finally become too much.

“because all the shit has been hitting all the fans”

This poem gets into the mind of a person who has reached a breaking point and literally crumples into a ball, fully clothed, in their bathtub with the lights off; contemplating turning the water on, the light on, removing their clothes, finding strength but ultimately doing none of these. The content of this poem is relatable to nearly everyone. Everyone has hit rock bottom. Everyone has given up hope. Everyone has crawled into an unlikely place in an awkward fashion in search of any sort of comfort. Butler doesn’t sugarcoat anything about this mental state.

“Maybe you were pushed off that cliff
Maybe it was your fault
or maybe you got caught in the landslide
The reality is
everything you were was on that cliff
and now everything you are is
broken in a bathtub?”

Though raw and heavy, Butler ends the poem on a strong note; describing how, at the end of this, you will start to mold your new shape together like a carved bar of soap — highlighting the brand new you that will finally be able to stand up and turn on the light.

Butler also has a fun, cutesy side which is apparent in her poem “The Long Slow Huzzah! (or Tea Time Going Over a Cliff).” This one has a very surreal feel, like Salvador Dali meets Alice in Wonderland. In this poem, the author describes falling in love as a metaphor for having a tea party… while tumbling off a cliff.

“Pale yellow tablecloth rippling in the breeze
taking all the fine china with it (…)
Well then, I’ve gone and fallen in love with you ”

This might be the most animated piece in the collection. Short and sweet, “The Long Huzzah!” is quaint and joyful, with underlying tones of terror. There is no mention of fear, no imminent crash to end the plummet, just weightlessness. The mention of a cliff face insinuates it is connected to a ground and with no mention of the ground throughout the poem or plans to get out of this situation, one can only assume the postscript is bloody and riddled with shattered porcelain.

Wild Horses is a solid collection that would find home on the bookshelves of the strong-of-heart. “Closer to One” is one of the last poems in the book and sums up the target audience very well. Here, the subject considers themself as two people: the untamed animal in a cage, and the caregiver.

“Yes! I say, finally
Yes to your thirst
Yes a thousand times
to the nectar you crave (…)
You are right to thirst
and I will answer you”

This book is for any static heart who has ever felt tied down or unheard. This book is for the wild of spirit; for anyone who has needed to scream and doesn’t have the haven. Wild Horses lets you know that you are never alone in these places, and that others have been where you’ve been and (like you) survived to ride free.

Click here to help support Independent Bookstores during this time of social isolation by purchasing Wild Horses from Bookworks Albuquerque. 

 

Review by Beau Williams:

Beau Williams is a fairly optimistic poet based out of Portland Maine. He co-runs a weekly poetry class at Sweetser Academy and facilitates workshops at high schools and colleges around the New England area. His work has been published in numerous poetry websites and journals.

Beau has performed internationally and nationally both as a solo artist and with the performance poetry collectives Uncomfortable Laughter and GUYSLIKEYOU. He was the Grand Slam Champion at Port Veritas in 2014 and was the Artist in Residence at Burren College in Ballyvaughan, Ireland in January of 2017. Beau’s book, Rumham, is available for purchase on Amazon.com.

Weekly Write: “Bloodletting” by Rene Mullen

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Bloodletting

When someone bleeds
the brakes of a car, nobody asks
“What’d you do to your arm?”

When a levy is drained
to keep the floods from destroying
that which it protects, nobody
says, “Hey, you know that ain’t healthy.
That ain’t natural.”

Painting on your body is both beautiful
and telling.

When I see a new tattoo
I praise the artist savior
keeping dams from giving in.
I thank the still breathing canvas
for allowing the pressure
to be bled out.

I thank my lucky stars
at least one more canvas
knows there’s a difference
between drawing out dark pigments
and tearing the canvas apart.

Rene Mullen is managing editor for a public relations company in Albuquerque, a performance and traditional poet, and a mental health advocate. Mullen is also one of two 2018 Albuquerque Slam Champions and member of three slam teams that have been on multiple regional and national stages. Their poetry and fiction has been featured in Peachfish Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, 50 Haikus, and Stronger Than Stigma: Poetry from the 2019 Mindwell Poetry Slam Team. Their poetry focuses primarily on mental health and family.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Red Mist” by Scott Wiggerman

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Red Mist

Home is but a footprint
hardened deep in his heart.
Not a word from family
since he left Georgia for Texas
two decades ago as a teen,
not a chance he’ll seek them out—
pride tenacious as nutmeat to a shell;
his disease, the stain on the fingers.

Some nights his ache for love
is so labored, he wakes
with blood on his tongue,
a sour excretion on the sheets.
He lies for hours in moonlight,
a barren stretch of rock,
watching clouds murk away the glow.

Mornings, with arms
that can barely lift his torso,
with legs unsteady without a cane,
he stumbles to the bathroom
and slouches naked before a mirror.
Though the flesh is sexless,
a patchwork of sags and sores,
he puckers his lips
like a grand Southern belle,
stares disaster in the face,
and reaches for his favorite lipstick.

 

Scott Wiggerman is author of three books of poetry, Leaf and Beak: Sonnets (finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters’ Helen C. Smith Memorial Award), Presence, and Vegetables and Other Relationships; and editor of several volumes, including the best-selling Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry (I & II) and three anthologies of Southwestern poetry, most recently, Weaving the Terrain.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “49 years of bargaining” by Scott Ferry

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Featured Writers, Sunday Poem, Weekly Write

49 years of bargaining

8: I don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore, so why
should I believe in you? Old man with a white beard
holding a stick. One has a red coat, one has a golden coat.
I know my dad doesn’t think you are real.
Are you also the God of aliens? Of dolphins?

12: I will have better luck in a swim race if I do good things,
like pick up gum wrappers, discarded A & W cans
on the pool deck before the race. I don’t care
if people think I am weird if it makes me go faster.
God, that race did not feel different, it felt terrible.
I did those things and I didn’t better my time. Where did I get
the idea that God rewards good deeds? I’m never doing that again.

17: There has to be something more
than just praying to get things. Everyone
is so focused on their chicken sandwiches, or their car’s new rims,
or their Ivy Leagues. I am rarely lucky and I have to grind
my ass off in the pool to get a scholarship and maintain a 4.0
and try to ask out Katy but I know she doesn’t like me
because I look like I am 14. I roll the rock up…

18: The sky is clicking and the incense tastes
like lemon lavender and the asphalt ripples under my legs.
How do I speak with this LSD silvering my sinuses?
When do the doors open to see the Grateful Dead?
The sky blooms inside veins and cherry stems pulse.
Someone looks at me and she looks like God with echo pupils.
I was wrong. Every molecule springs with words.

21: I can’t have a baby now. Please, whatever Old Man
with whatever robe. Forgive me. I am going to ask her to end it.
I will have to find money. She cries, I harden and dry in the parking lot
next to her car. I know people do this. I never thought I would be one.
Now I have something to cut off my body to repay.
I bury my reasons for praying. I promise nothing.
I blame and remember, even though I leave myself for a while.

24: Father, you are going. Where? I saw you deflate
as I gripped your shoulder. Your presence around me
deafens the blinking machines and crow-call alarms.
Let him go, nurses. Let him go to wherever he is going.
He rejoins where nothing can be broken.

28: I have tried to open every image for my students
by reading novels out loud, by using all of my light
to shine out until, Lord, my liver and lungs and kidneys
lie empty as damp shells and my hands shake.
This is not why I came here, is it?

35: My wife cheated on me
and I have been a good husband and she loves someone else.
God damn you! Why did I love and waste years?
We did laugh but she never wanted to have sex.
Why didn’t I realize? Why, God, did I have to witness
every vow starve on the ends of wires?

36: This glowing girl? She is interested in me?
The starlings bring each crushed bit of wing into
a bright body, three hundred birds turn in unison
over the rocks of the jetty at Westport,
our feet red and brown in the evening sun.

41: Nausea and waking to a well
that bounds with heartbeats. If this anxiety persists,
I don’t know if it is feasible to continue.
Why did you place me in this terrible workplace?
Do I believe in you enough to blame you?
I cannot reason with the howling and thrashing. I cannot eat.
This is the only time I don’t want to live.
And every morning I wake again.

42: My daughter, pink twisted scream of glass
coming out of her uterus and into our hands.
Thank you, God. I can’t swallow all the passion.
Our boat tips in the swell, tears and milk pour off the deck.
I forgive by virtue of drowning.

45: The screen cracks because of my addiction.
All lies open and darken our new house,
the windows full of flies, the basement and attic
full of rats chewing on our bonds like spies.

46: I will clean and promise again.
Salt into gums, rat feces under nails.
Years of telling the real truth
and tearing the groin from its fixations.
My love, my God, all the soiled covers come off the words.
I did this myself, God. Don’t take credit.

49: Pregnant again?
I don’t know whether to curse you or praise you
for delivering on our wishes so quickly.
Please God, let the child be healthy and whole.
I won’t tell you what I am willing to sacrifice to make that so.
You might just demand it.

 

Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as an RN. He has recent work in Cultural Weekly, KYSO Flash, Slippery Elm, Prometheus Dreaming, and many others. He was a finalist in the Write Bloody Chapbook Contest in 2019. His first collection The only thing that makes sense is to grow comes out in January 2020 from Moon Tide Press.

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Seed Memory” by Liza Wolff-Francis

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Seed Memory

“The future of food must be reclaimed by women.”
Vandana Shiva

Most farmers in India are women,
wrapped in wheat-soaked
pink and yellow under
the dome of cerulean sky.
Spiced recipe, a moonlit field
growing thousands
of women who will harvest
cycles of hunger.

Stale breadcrumbs scattered,
high-priced seeds pressed
into palms, the scratch
of their patent like an allergy.
The threat of death in the dirt
under fingernails at sunset,
labor’s brief hiatus.

When the memory of a seed
no longer recognizes itself
in the till of the crop, in bent
backs, calloused hands,
the dance of sun and rain
and careful tender of land,
a woman’s freedom
has already been
bought and sold.
This, they say, is all
in the cost
of going forward.

Mornings await,
heat heavy in the soil,
in the thunderous
voices waiting to hatch.
Hold on to the seeds.

 

Liza Wolff-Francis is a literary artist with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She was co-director for the 2014 Austin International Poetry Festival and on the 2008 Albuquerque Poetry Slam Team. She has a poetry chapbook called Language of Crossing (SWEPublications).

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Tommy Gun Boy” by Haolun Xu

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Tommy Gun Boy

Haolun Xu

it’s a remarkable thing, to see a town that trusts.
i come in to thame street with all the shining people
wearing my dirty yakuza-suit and my face looking like a tommy-gun.
i’m the only foreign man, walking through this area and i pass by white families
that all collectively wear the same khaki flag. and yet,
they don’t see me in their happiness.

now within the town is a small building by the sea, and to my horror i can walk right in.
i don’t need an invitation, so i waltz in,
where the small staircases lead to a beautifully empty library.
it’s a demonstration by the whole town,
because who would steal or ruin such dusty and venerable naval books,
and alongside the library is a small room with no people in it.

when i walked in i notice pillows on the floor and gasped,

gasped because it’s a room for praying and it’s open to everyone.
who owns this room, i say out loud, a ghoul lost within a safe-house –
who takes it upon themselves to make such a small study,
an altar within a library
within a town
within a person’s heart
within a person to violate in privacy

 

Haolun Xu is 24 years old and was born in Nanning, China. He immigrated to the United States in 1999. He was raised in central New Jersey and is currently studying Political Science and English at Rutgers University. Transitioning from a background in journalism and activism, he spends his time between writing poetry and the local seashore.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Happy New Year from Swimming with Elephants Publications

On By awhitetrashpoetIn News


We want to start by thanking everyone for all their support over the years. As we enter year seven of Swimming with Elephants Publications, it is amazing to see how what started as a small chapbook publication agent has bloomed to be the publisher of close to 100 publications supporting authors from all over the world.

As you know, this is a not for profit venture, which means that the resources and time spent making each publication is undertaken without charge. We sustain our business model through the sales of our anthologies and the reimbursement of the first 25 internet sales, along with the occasional submission fee. We are a fragile beast, but at this point we are persisting and that wouldn’t be happening without the hard work of our authors and supporters.

Thank you to our authors for having faith in our little sideshow and allowing us to spread your words in print. Thank you to our supporters and readers, who continue to pick up new SwEP titles and get to know our new authors.

What’s New?

We have become an official affiliate of Bookworks Albuquerque, a local, independent bookstore. Bookworks has always been a great supporter of Swimming with Elephants Publications. Not only do they carry our books on their shelves and website, they have hosted several events and releases for Swimming with Elephants Publications authors over the years. We encourage everyone who wishes to purchase a title online, to do so through Bookworks Albuquerque. By doing so, you are supporting not only Swimming with Elephants Publications but our local independent bookstore. Shop small. Support Local.

Another collaboration which has occurred over the past year, has been with NMTESOL and Central New Mexico Community College (CNM). Over the past year we have been working with the ESL Program (English as Second Language) at CNM to produce two publications created by ESL students and the ESL Club, Open Language. We are excited to share the voices of these students who might otherwise have been unable to express themselves. We look forward to more collaborations with the ESL community in 2020.

Time to Get to Work

January of 2020 is already a busy time. We are currently working on creating author statements which will be sent out by the end of the month. If you are an active SwEP Author and do not receive a statement by the end of January, please email us. You must reply to your author statement to remain an active SwEP author and to receive any available royalties for 2019.

This month also has us busy with selecting manuscripts from the Open Call for publication in 2020. Although our Open Call judges will select three manuscripts for publication, all submissions are still considered as our 2020 publication calendar is created. Please stay tuned to our website and Facebook page to get a look at this year’s publications as soon as they are announced.

Speaking of publications and submissions, Swimming with Elephants Publications has made an important change. Beginning in October 2019, submissions for chapbooks and poetry collections will only be accepted through the fall submission Open Call. We no longer have the ability to put together last minute collections or begin midyear projects. If you or someone you know would like to submit a manuscript, the next Open Call for submissions will be in October 2020.

Many of our authors have projects in the works and are continuing to promote their publications and their work. Keep your eye on the website and the Facebook page for the announcements of tours and shows in 2020!

New Releases from 2019

(in no significant order)

Sad Bastard Soundtrack
By Paulie Lipman

Cement
By Sarah Menefee

Immigrant Memories & Poetic Ambitions
By Laura Jijon

Intersex, Truth and Spirituality
By Maria Sanchez

Trumpet Call: A Swimming with Elephants Anthology
By Maxine Peseke

OM Boy
By Manuel González

Among God & Other Drugs
By Matthew Brown

Belly Up Rosehip
By Tyler Dettloff

Sell Me Insanity
By Marcial Delgado

I’ve Been Cancelling Appointments with my Psychiatrist for Two Years Now
By Sean William Dever

disaster in die / an overdose sunrise
By bassam

Small World: Central New Mexico Community College
By Yueh Ni Lin

Shorn: apologies & vows
By Benjamin Bormann

Provocateur
By Jessica Helen Lopez

Trauma Carnival
By SaraEve Fermin

Light as a Feather: An Anthology of Resilience
By Courtney Butler

Thalassophile: a chapbook of poetry
By Abigayle Goldstein

Click here to see the full Swimming with Elephants Publications Catalog.

Thank you for reading and for being a part of our Parade! Have a wonderful 2020!

Sincerely,

Kat Crespin & Maxine Peseke

Weekly Write: “I have seen the ocean once” by Liza Wolff-Francis

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

I have seen the ocean once

its monstrous size hummed
over earth, its tides pulled
my body like wind pulls
at the wings of gulls.

Its water melted into sand
and I sank into it, becoming
for an instant, one
with ocean and land.

I saw to the end of our planet
like it was the future, sun
glistening on the blood
of earth, waves on and on.

My mother said we must
take inspiration from ocean,
as a force as ongoing as time
and none who try to conquer it

will be able. I loved the cool
melt between my toes, the rinse
and cleanse on my hands,
my face with its grit,

salt on my tongue, like it
would eat me. Part of me
wanted to let it, but that is not
why we could not stay there.

My mother brought me there
to understand how my body
also holds an ocean, one they
also want to conquer.

Closer to the ocean,
there is more danger, she said,
because conquerors come
and ocean and earth can only

fight them off sometimes.
On days when it rains here,
I remember how each drop
of water acts on its own,

how water stays together
as a force. I feel ocean move
inside me and how I bleed
and dance with the moon.

To protect ocean
is to protect my body.
Crabs scurry away from it, hide
from it, run to it, to become it.

Gulls dive, hunger calls them
like the moon calls my tides,
all of us salt and sand
and ocean blood running alone

before the earth’s edges
as if ocean were the part of us
we had felt inside us
but only met once.

Liza Wolff-Francis is a literary artist with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She was co-director for the 2014 Austin International Poetry Festival and on the 2008 Albuquerque Poetry Slam Team. She has a poetry chapbook called Language of Crossing (SWEPublications).

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2019 Anthology.

Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.

Weekly Write: “Visiting Back Home” by SaraSwoti (Sara) Lamichhane

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Visiting Back Home

I left it 13 years ago
And
Came back 3 times

I brace defrosted memories

I hear the laughter of
My younger self
Her howl into the wild
Unafraid

The storm slams on her face
Nothing stops her

Now,
The person that is me
Sits by the fireplace
With
A husband and two kids

Makes dinner, does dishes,
Folds laundry and phone calls
In between

I merge the divide
Two sets of houses
Two sets of families
Two sets of cultures

If my roots grow deeper
In either land,
My butterflies will lose their wings
And leave me a caterpillar

I either have both or none.

SaraSwoti comes from Alberta, Canada, originally from Nepal. She is a life celebrator and loves exploring beyond her world. She draws inspiration from nature and people around her. She is an optimist and a continuous spiritual learner. She serves as a board member with Parkland Poets and her poems have appeared around Canada, India, USA and Nepal.

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.

Weekly Write: “Scent of a honey made of many flowers” by Jose Luis Oseguera

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Scent of a honey made of many flowers

— for Soledad Ramírez Marrón

What a romantic Grandpa was
when he first courted Grandma
against her father’s will—
his drinking buddy—
and bought her a cow
to go with the house he built her
out of mud and sticks and promises
of a better one once they had
enough money to leave behind
his farmlands, ex-wife and unwanted son.

Grandma got so good at cooking
carne con chile verde
because she made it every day,
and she went through the trouble so often
because Grandpa was pickier than an unbroken horse
trying to buck a rider off its back.

It was all he ever wanted to eat,
and hated eating other foods
as much as he despised
the way other people ate—
the lip-smacking, slurping, moan-breathing,
the sheer enjoyment of eating was the worst—
so, if you were going to eat with him,
you’d better eat right.

Of course, he’d never tell you what was right,
not even Grandma knew,
only what was wrong:
“Just don’t do anything to make him mad,”
she’d whisper as he’d place
a spoonful of her liquid fire in his mouth,
the metal edges never once clinking with his teeth.

“The secret to a good salsa,”
Grandma mused as she carefully
unfolded the crinkling paper from the garlic cloves
as if each were a note written only to her,
“is very similar to that of a good marriage:”
the things that can withstand
some degree of burning
should be roasted golden
until what remains
tickles the nose,
waters the corners of your mouth,
warms the throat
and reaches the heart;
if the smell is suffocating,
run away, it’s all ruined,
and you have no one to blame but yourself.

Grandma would lay the tomatillos to rest
next to their green cousins, the poblanos,
on a warm cast iron bed—
that wasn’t really a skillet,
but a top burner cover plate
from an antique wood stove
she fell in love with at a second-hand shop.

She cooked everything on that old thing,
every tortilla bore a raw spot
left untouched by the indentation
originally used to pry the plate off the heat:
it was rusty, no matter how many oil baths she gave it;
it was reliable;
and it was the way Grandpa saw her,
something to come home to that he could depend on.

Once the onion and garlic began to wiggle awake,
yawning, their waxy pearls hissing off the heat,
Grandma would season them with a salt
from a jute pouch where she hid her tears,
encrusted deep in her fingernails—
scratched off as she exited her mother’s womb—
and a cube of chicken bouillon;
she’d smile and shush anyone
who saw her dropping it into the blender.

She never once burned
Grandpa’s chile verde
because, in her mind, it was the reason
why he kept coming home to her,
because no one could burn up his mouth
and make his forehead and forearms swelter—
watering his honeycomb wrinkled, yet fierce, bewitching hazel eyes—
the way her picante fried with pork meat could.

Of the many times he left her,
to work and live and be happy abroad,
she stayed;
even as his way of laughing changed,
she stayed;
even when the townspeople told her
that they saw him again with another’s wife,
she stayed;
even when her daughters—
old enough to notice—
called her a cheap, little woman,
she stayed;
even when he knew that she knew
and would no longer hide around,
she stayed.

Nothing made her cry,
not even as she chopped a lot of onion—
oozing their white, milky blood—
for her delicious chilaquiles.

Even though she was burned
and could’ve left, letting the peppers burn until
their flames consumed the home
Grandpa built around her, not for her,
she stayed and kept it all
because the burnt parts
were what held the flavor;
the charred bits were what made
the salsa’s flavor spicier
and not even the man
for whom she made the chile for every day
and birthed 11 children for—
the one she once loved
as much as he once told her that he loved her—
could take away who she knew she was:
she simply refused to live her life any other way.

Jose Oseguera is an LA-based writer of poetry, short fiction and literary nonfiction. Having grown up in a primarily immigrant, urban environment, Jose has always been interested in the people and places around him, and the stories that each of these has to share. His writing has been featured in The Esthetic Apostle, McNeese Review, and The Main Street Rag. His work has also been nominated for the “Best of the Net” award (2018 and 2019) and the “Pushcart Prize.” He is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection “The Milk of Your Blood.”

 

 

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.

Weekly Write: “ii. 1915 Overture: Domino Queen’s Leave-Taking Organ Recital Begins” by Gerard Sarnat

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

ii. 1915 Overture: Domino Queen’s Leave-Taking Organ Recital Begins

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. — Mark Twain

It started on the day Tsar Nicolas’ stallion took control of Russia’s Army.
And over 102 years later — exactly when it was learned POTUS was called
a Moron by his Secretary of State — Mother’s life began to end in earnest.
Mom had already shed most of this earth, including the names of everyone
but her firstborn son and maybe daughter, but now both lips turned blue black.
Although recovering, upon awakening from the grasp of some nether world
enough to sit up and blink then accept a tablespoon of Gatorade or Ensure,
she’s not uttered a word. Even temptation of playing Dominos elicits nothing.
Tilting toward new existence, FT exhortations from great/grandkids’re ignored.
With Mother’s passing, there won’t be a soul left from my parents’ generation…
Dawn — eyes popping — Mom requests buttered English muffins and game board.
Via Skype, she greets: Hi, Gerry! so I guess all she needed was a good rest.
Animated, expressive and paying attention, better than during my last six visits;
it is very hard to believe or understand as her son or as a physician. What a kick!!
Made it from Wilson to Trump. Guess Mom didn’t get to this age just for nothing.
Dwindled as she was, old warhorse maintains vital signs anon’s orphan’d kill for.

 

Gerard Sarnat is a physician who’s built and staffed homeless and prison clinics as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently Gerry is devoting energy/ resources to deal with global warming. Sarnat won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for a handful of recent Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published in academic-related journals (University Chicago, Stanford, Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Pomona, Johns Hopkins, Wesleyan) plus national (Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, MiPOesias, American Journal Of Poetry, Poetry Quarterly, Poetry Circle, Poets And War, Cliterature, Qommunicate, Texas Review, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review and The New York Times) and international publications. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids, five grandsons with a sixth incubating.

gerardsarnat.com

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.

Now Available from Swimming with Elephants Publications

On By awhitetrashpoetIn News, Shameless Self Promotion

The latest release from

Swimming with Elephants Publications

is now available

Click the link below to order from Bookworks Albuquerque.

 

Cement

 

Sarah Menefee has helped found a Union of the Homeless in the ’80’s and currently is a co-founder of the homeless-led ‘First they came for the homeless.’ She has written articles and published poems on the homeless and their struggles in the People’s Tribune, the newspaper of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America (LRNA).

In this volume she reveals the underlying depth and compassion in her poetic pen for the most vulnerable people in this society. Her method or “style” is to epiphanize the bare fragments of perception seen or felt along the streets, and of the voices she hears there.

The reader will recognize himself and herself immediately in relation to their own fears about the possibility of becoming homeless in the richest of all the thieving governments on earth, and that’s the key to the r e v o l u t I o n a r y intent behind Sarah Menefee’s words.

 

          —Jack Hirschman

from the Introduction to Cement

          Emeritus Poet Laureate of San Francisco

          June 2019