Month: March 2016
A Gust of Wind Blows in through the Window
by Anne Weisgerber
Am I the only one who hated the weather this morning? I just wanted to punch someone in the neck. I did hear Mercury is in retrograde, and I’m not all groovy-groovy hipster thing, but still…. All I’ve been thinking about the past few classes is what I’m going to have for a snack when I get home. I was taught an Einstein quote by an old friend of mine, a Native American chief. (Stands on chair and starts chanting.) Here’s the deal: If you use relatable, I will make you cry. These announcements in the middle of the period are killing me. Robert Burns was a very sexy guy for his day. Two mornings ago at 2:47 I heard this: (knocks on board twice). I immediately thought my childhood cockatiel Frito had returned. Is the vocab due tomorrow? Are you high? There’s a Breaking Bad called “Ozymandias. ” Stop putting so much swagger on your sentences. They’re commas, not Maori tattoos. This morning I was sitting in my car in the parking lot giving myself a pep talk. I was saying “Come on! Get in there! ” What do you think it’s like to be a Kardashian puppy? The Citroen DS 19 is a perfect example of epicene design, as is David Bowie. My tombstone will say: she despised Spielberg. Schindler made everyone believe the world was full of rescuers. The whole point of Private Ryan was to make people vomit. There are no healthy adult relationships. I’m super cranky with this testing schedule. Like, if there were a kitten, I’d kick it. If you don’t say Goethe correctly, it’s like saying Shakes-pee-airy. I’ve been having anxiety attacks. I don’t know if you can see this, but my brain is sparkling. Did you hear that? Edmund just sold out his dad. That BASTARD. Gordon Ramsay’s AMA yesterday was amazing. We blame all the weird noises in my house on a ghost dog. This guy tied weather balloons to a webbed aluminum lawn chair—I think he bought it at Sears—and took off. There he is! We were just talking about you! I wonder if there will be snacks at the meeting. Do you now what an earwig is? “Oh my God, there was one in my basement that was THIS big and…” STOP! Let’s read Huckleberry Finn, a work of troubling greatness.
Anne Elizabeth Weisgerber has a BA in English and an MBA in Marketing, and is a freelance journalist whose work has been appeared in numerous pubs, including New Jersey Monthly, The Courier News, the Madison Eagle, the Echoes-Sentinel, and the Wall Street Journal. She has interviewed Henry Kissinger, David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Al Franken, and won first place for feature writing from the Society of Professional Journalists for a story about a ghost tour operator. She has seen the light, and now writes fiction as a DIY MFA working on her first novel. She is at home in New Jersey with her family, including two adorable goats named Snapdragon and Socrates. This is her first published work of fiction.
What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “A Gust of Wind Blows in through the Window”? What if students, instead of working on class assignments, wrote down all the odd things their teacher said? It might resemble this prose poem, and show a teacher to be, like everyone else, a great and troubling piece of work. Speaking of which, the name of the guy who flew (on July 2, 1982) in the chair from Sears is Larry Walters. He was a 33-year old Vietnam Veteran living in North Hollywood, California. Larry fulfilled his childhood dream, and tied 45 weather balloons filled with helium to a lawn chair, and ascended, not at all according to plan, to 16,000 feet. He said in an interview afterward that he was “so amazed by the view” that he “didn’t even take one picture.” When he landed, he gave away the chair to a kid. Larry Walters committed suicide in 1993. If you look closely, under the heart of the rose, my scar still rises — a wrinkled mountain range skirting an indigo river. It’s a wonder that I’m not dead. (more…) I. I had a brother once. (more…) In Which Paul, the Lonely Boy, Makes Friends (more…)CNF: a suicide note, revised
by Sasanka Jinadasa
Seven
by Laura Pavlo
Last of the Faithful
by Electra Hunzeker
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again March 15, 2023. Submit here.
Upcoming
09/09 • Rae Gourmand
09/16 • Chiwenite Onyekwelu
09/23 • TBD
09/30 • TBD