Sunday Focus: The Puffery

Photo by Meg Boscov

[Editor’s Note: This ongoing Sunday feature pairs photographs from Meg Boscov with a thought (or two) from the managing editor about focusing on tiny things to find something significant. Paired with this photograph is a prose poem from the series AFTER, a series of photographs & prose poems that imagines the world without us, after the melting.Click on the picture itself to view at full size.]

 

 

In that now sunken way of life, they permitted puffery—peacock words—to exaggerate an image: Most Liked, The Finest, Quicker, Most Effective, All-Purpose, The Best a Man Can Get, As Cold As the Rockies. They clung to an odd Truth: no one can prove it is; no one can prove it is not. The new adverts promise what you see is what you get. A bumblebee rows toward land inside a sombrero; a dove rides a snowboard down the slope of the floating firehouse. All around, Nature expresses an au courant agency; no longer subjected, the views expressed feature a for-itself objectivity. The only puffery produces real puff, a draw of curl, an invitation to the blowout.

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Meg Boscov is a photographer who lives and works outside of Philadelphia where she continues to pursue her careers in animal-assisted education and dog training. She can be reached at her website or on instagram at megboscov.

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 September 15, 2025. Submit here.

Upcoming

05/04 • Leath Tonino
05/11 • Chris Pellizzari
05/18 • Chris Clemens
05/25 • Clayton Eccard
06/01 • TBD
06/08 • TBD
06/15 • TBD
06/22 • TBD
06/29 • TBD
07/06 • TBD
07/13 • TBD
07/20 • TBD
07/27 • TBD
08/03 • TBD
08/10 • TBD
08/17 • TBD
08/24 • TBD
08/31 • TBD
09/07 • TBD
09/14 • TBD
09/21 • TBD