Month: April 2020
Fractured Tarot for the Anthropocene (5 of 10)
by Sarah Sousa
Sarah Sousa is the author of the poetry collections See the Wolf, named a 2019 ‘Must Read’ book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, Split the Crow and Church of Needles, as well as the chapbooks Yell, which won the Summer Tide Pool Prize at C&R Press, and Hex which won the 2019 Cow Creek Chapbook Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Massachusetts Review, North American Review, the Southern Poetry Review, Verse Daily and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. Her honors include a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. She is a member of the board of directors of Perugia Press.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Fractured Tarot for the Anthropocene”? Around 13 vintage source texts went into the creation of these tarot cards, as well as original watercolor and gouache art and some ink prints for backgrounds. My favorite source texts are old Boy Scout and Cub Scout manuals from the 40s to 60s. They’re loaded with interesting drawings, illustrations and text. The found poem on the three of swords card: “How well do you know America- how much does it mean to you?” was from a chapter on citizenship in one of these manuals. The guns in that collage are from ads in the backs of the books. I’m also drawn to images in vintage magazines, botanic and wildlife guides. by JC Reilly and I’m JC Reilly’s most recent collection, What Magick May Not Alter, will be out in April from Madville Publishing. She serves as the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review. When she’s not writing she plays tennis or practices her Italian (badly). Follow her @Aishatonu. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “My Sister Is Writing a Memoir”? I knew the memoir that my sister was writing was focused on her relationship with her best childhood friend, Lisa. In fact, they were writing the memoir together. But when I read an early draft, it was almost as if she didn’t have a sister at all, and I was completely flummoxed (and maybe a little hurt). So I think I wrote the poem “My Sister Is Writing a Memoir” as a way to write myself back into literary existence–but used the metaphor of vanilla to demonstrate how insignificant I am to her book. (Also, why DO we put a teaspoon of vanilla into chocolate cake batter? That seems bonkers.) by Christopher James When he was a young boy, his family took him to ride a hot air balloon. On the way there, the mother described the view from on high. You can see everything, she said, and the houses are so small they look like lego. But when the balloon was only six feet above the ground, the father stopped it. This is far enough for us, he told his son. He kept them there until the boy was old enough to take his own balloons, but by then, unfortunately, the boy had already forgotten that balloons could reach for the sky. Christopher James lives, works and writes in Jakarta, Indonesia. He has been published online in Booth, SmokeLong, Tin House, and Wigleaf, among others. He is the editor of Jellyfish Review See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “The Hot Air Balloon”? I don’t know if this is fascinating or surprising, but I was reading a lot of Osama Alomar. He’s a wonderful writer who creates these very concise, very beautiful, very thought provoking stories. I wanted to write something in a similar spirit, and had been batting around a hot air balloon idea for a while. When it came, I jumped out of bed at five in the morning and this poured out almost exactly the way it is now. Love it when that happens! by Sarah Sousa
Sarah Sousa is the author of the poetry collections See the Wolf, named a 2019 ‘Must Read’ book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, Split the Crow and Church of Needles, as well as the chapbooks Yell, which won the Summer Tide Pool Prize at C&R Press, and Hex which won the 2019 Cow Creek Chapbook Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Massachusetts Review, North American Review, the Southern Poetry Review, Verse Daily and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. Her honors include a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. She is a member of the board of directors of Perugia Press. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Fractured Tarot for the Anthropocene”? Around 13 vintage source texts went into the creation of these tarot cards, as well as original watercolor and gouache art and some ink prints for backgrounds. My favorite source texts are old Boy Scout and Cub Scout manuals from the 40s to 60s. They’re loaded with interesting drawings, illustrations and text. The found poem on the three of swords card: “How well do you know America- how much does it mean to you?” was from a chapter on citizenship in one of these manuals. The guns in that collage are from ads in the backs of the books. I’m also drawn to images in vintage magazines, botanic and wildlife guides. by Sara Backer Field. Suddenly, she is three girls thinking. It’s just hair. But it isn’t nothing Sara Backer’s first book of poetry, Such Luck (Flowstone Press 2019) follows two poetry chapbooks: Scavenger Hunt (dancing girl press) and Bicycle Lotus (Left Fork), which won the Turtle Island Poetry Prize. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in the Merrimack River watershed with white pines, red oaks, and black bears. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Field Girl”? This poem was drafted in my mind one night at 4:30 AM. I was too stressed to sleep, thinking about fire and virus and politics. I thought about how ye olde childhood trauma primes the brain to accept more trauma, and I thought about nouns. Could I write a poem with nouns? I didn’t want to get out of bed so I memorized lines to remember them and when I finally typed it up, I liked the way repeated words mirrored the way the mind jumps around fitting pieces together. How something small turns into a life-shaping event by Christen Noel Kauffman Show me the belly of the swamp, how they pull her over crawfish mounds and the neckbone of a deer. Everyone watches her body stretched head to tip – marvels at the length of her spine and the gape of her jaw unhinged. They open her up to see what grows inside, count the seventy-three eggs she carried over mangrove roots, arthritic fingers holding the river in. When they say she’s gone, I imagine her coiled around the body of an egret, a perfect spiral tucked in the shallow stream. I pretend extraction means reborn in an Asian marsh. That her incisions have been pieced back together with a horsetail thread. See how her children have all hatched clean, their bellies filled with bouquets of white down. Christen Noel Kauffman lives in Richmond, Indiana with her husband and two wild daughters. Her work can be found in journals such as Cherry Tree, Booth, Willow Springs, The Cincinnati Review. DIAGRAM, and The Normal School, among others. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “They Pulled a 17 Ft Python Out of Big Cypress National Preserve”? I wrote this flash nonfiction piece while working on a chapbook manuscript about the difficulties of new motherhood during the first couple of months after having my second daughter. I kept coming back to mothers in nature and climate change and this idea of taking care of children in a world that’s out of our control. I remember reading an article where scientists pulled this enormous snake out of the Florida swamp and the details of inspecting her body and counting her eggs and there was a connection in that. I felt for this snake and her children that would never hatch. This piece emerged as a way for me to imagine a better ending for her, and in many ways hoping for a happy ending for myself after postpartum. Other than a few minor changes, this piece has stayed very close to how I wrote it that first afternoon, holding a baby that wouldn’t sleep consistently until many, many months later. by Sarah Sousa
Sarah Sousa is the author of the poetry collections See the Wolf, named a 2019 ‘Must Read’ book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, Split the Crow and Church of Needles, as well as the chapbooks Yell, which won the Summer Tide Pool Prize at C&R Press, and Hex which won the 2019 Cow Creek Chapbook Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Massachusetts Review, North American Review, the Southern Poetry Review, Verse Daily and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. Her honors include a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. She is a member of the board of directors of Perugia Press. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Fractured Tarot for the Anthropocene”? Around 13 vintage source texts went into the creation of these tarot cards, as well as original watercolor and gouache art and some ink prints for backgrounds. My favorite source texts are old Boy Scout and Cub Scout manuals from the 40s to 60s. They’re loaded with interesting drawings, illustrations and text. The found poem on the three of swords card: “How well do you know America- how much does it mean to you?” was from a chapter on citizenship in one of these manuals. The guns in that collage are from ads in the backs of the books. I’m also drawn to images in vintage magazines, botanic and wildlife guides. by Robert Garner McBrearty When I was a young man, I had my palm read by a psychic. She worked out of a café and she had a reputation of being accurate. She was in her early sixties, a little tired looking as if she had made a few too many predictions along the way. She did not go into a trance, but she assumed a quiet, concentrated demeanor as she traced my palm with her finger, frowning, shutting her eyes, speaking slowly and softly. I had not gone into the session taking it all that seriously, but over the years some of her predictions have come true. She said that I would be married and have two children, one son and one daughter, and that has been the case. She said that I would go into the arts and have some minor success but make little money, and that too has been the case. Unfortunately, she also predicted the year of my death. At the time, since I was only twenty, my death in late middle age seemed far away. Unfortunately, that year is upon me now and I’ve gotten a little jumpy. Recently, hoping for a second opinion, I consulted another psychic. She was young, a graduate of a school for psychics apparently, and a friend had recommended her. He found here a little assertive, but he trusted her. At her suggestion, he’d even put a little money into the stock market and made a few bucks. When I told her about the first psychic’s prediction about my death, she exclaimed, “That is highly inappropriate! It’s extremely unethical to tell someone when they’re going to die!” She frowned at my palm, turned it this way and that, traced a line down the middle, paused with a tremble in her finger. “For instance, this interruption in the lifeline here might simply be a nick. Do you wear gloves when you work outdoors?” She sighed deeply. “That break could mean a lot of things. But…Be careful crossing streets. Don’t stay too long in one place. Set an unpredictable pattern. I will try to send you mental warnings.” She’s been true to her word. I hear her voice now as I stand in a bank line, whispering I’m seeing masked robbers come through the lobby door. You’re the first one they shoot! Get down! Now! On my belly, the floor smells of ammonia. I stare at the trouser cuffs of the man in line in front of me. With my nose near his legs, his calves shift nervously. He turns and frowns down at me. Really, I’m only on the floor for a moment. Maybe people thought I’d dropped something, or I could be an exercise junkie, working in a quick push-up or two. I bolt out of line and into the parking lot. I’m a little angry with her. I don’t see any bank robbers coming in, I tell her. I feel like a fool. Okay, dodged a bullet there, but watch out for a home invasion. Wait, don’t drive! I’m sensing an accident. Walk. No, take a bus. Get an Uber. Have your wife pick you up …Oh my, I’m tapping into a lot of negative energy! I see plagues coming your way, pestilence, war, famine, earthquakes, tornadoes. There are boils covering your body. Get your shingles shot! Watch out for rabies, tetanus. I keep getting these visions of sinkholes. How’s your blood pressure? Relax. Worry can kill you. There’s that sinkhole again. Better come in for another reading. That other psychic was so inappropriate! Robert Garner McBrearty’s most recent book is a collection of stories, WHEN I CAN’T SLEEP, published by Matter Press. He’s the author of four other books of fiction, one which received a Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award. For many years, his stories have been appearing widely, including in the Pushcart Prize, Missouri Review, New England Review, North American Review, StoryQuarterly, New Flash Fiction Review and Fiction Southeast. His writing awards include a New Mexico State Arts Grant and fellowships to the MacDowell Colony and the Fine Arts Work Center. Currently, he teaches short story writing at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in the Denver area. He’s at work on another collection of stories. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “An Inappropriate Psychic”? I often write about an experience only after many years have passed, and the experience combines with other experiences and imaginings until it takes on the form of a story. In a way, it becomes easier to fictionalize long ago memories as they already are seen through the haze of time, drifting into a dream-like world. As in the story, when I was a young man, I had my fortune told by a psychic. When she told me how old I would be when I died, it seemed not too bad, a long way off, almost reassuring really. Some years later, I met another psychic at a social gathering who was outraged by that earlier prediction. I was intrigued by the notion of a psychic code of ethics. Still, there were more years to go before I put the two psychics together in a story, and there was still some piece missing. I started thinking about how a character might be quite anxious when that year arrived, and that merged with a kind of universal anxiety of the fate that hangs over us all, heightened by the anxiety of the age and yet timeless, biblical in the nature of the warnings the psychic sends. An image stuck with me: a dark café, the psychic’s concentrated demeanor, her soft voice. I often don’t describe in great detail. I tend to use a more impressionistic touch. But certain images stay in my mind. If an image is held long enough, keeps resurfacing, there’s a story calling. Partly, it’s a matter of finding the way the pieces fit together, and rewriting is often about finding the missing pieces. by Agnieszka Filipek remember that summer when in the morning as my foot the housekeeper barged into the room then she pulled a box of lavender Agnieszka Filipek lives in Galway, Ireland. She writes in both, her native tongue Polish and in English, and also translates in these languages. Her poems have appeared in over 40 publications internationally, including countries, such as Poland, Ireland, India, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Germany, Canada and the United States. Visit www.agnieszkafilipek.com. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Provence”? I was doing some research about scorpions and read that they don’t like lavender. Then I remembered the beautiful lavender fields stretching for miles in Provence. The people there put lavender on windowsills and around the house to keep insects out. I’ve travelled to France many times and wanted to write something about my time there. Thankfully, nothing like this ever happened to me, but as I began writing this poem, I imagined what could have transpired if the lavender wasn’t there. by Sarah Sousa
Sarah Sousa is the author of the poetry collections See the Wolf, named a 2019 ‘Must Read’ book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, Split the Crow and Church of Needles, as well as the chapbooks Yell, which won the Summer Tide Pool Prize at C&R Press, and Hex which won the 2019 Cow Creek Chapbook Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Massachusetts Review, North American Review, the Southern Poetry Review, Verse Daily and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. Her honors include a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. She is a member of the board of directors of Perugia Press. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Fractured Tarot for the Anthropocene”? Around 13 vintage source texts went into the creation of these tarot cards, as well as original watercolor and gouache art and some ink prints for backgrounds. My favorite source texts are old Boy Scout and Cub Scout manuals from the 40s to 60s. They’re loaded with interesting drawings, illustrations and text. The found poem on the three of swords card: “How well do you know America- how much does it mean to you?” was from a chapter on citizenship in one of these manuals. The guns in that collage are from ads in the backs of the books. I’m also drawn to images in vintage magazines, botanic and wildlife guides. by Kim Magowan How many times had Jacqueline told Jerry to stop ripping off chunks of bread? The least he could do would be to neatly slice a piece, to bother with cutting board and knife. She always had to saw off the mauled part. When the kids complained there wasn’t enough garlic bread she’d glare at Jerry, and he’d look oblivious. And yes, she recognizes this grievance is a cliché, akin to complaining about husbands leaving socks on the floor (how hard is it to deposit them in the hamper? No harder than taking out a damn cutting board). But the biggest cliché of all: what she would give, now, for a mauled loaf of bread. How Jerry of Jerry, for his absence to be as intrusive as his presence was—his greedy hands, his abandoned socks, his farts that lingered, like he lingers, now that Jacqueline reminds herself again (and fucking again) to use past tense for Jerry. Kim Magowan lives in San Francisco and teaches in the Department of Literatures and Languages at Mills College. Her short story collection Undoing (2018) won the 2017 Moon City Press Fiction Award. Her novel The Light Source (2019) was published by 7.13 Books. Her fiction has been published in Atticus Review, Cleaver, The Gettysburg Review, Hobart, Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, and many other journals. Her story “Madlib” was selected for Best Small Fictions 2019 (Sonder Press). Her story “Surfaces” was selected for Wigleaf’s Top 50 2019. She is the Fiction Editor of Pithead Chapel. www.kimmagowan.com See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Mauled”? This story has an autobiographical basis: I often buy loaves of Sweet Batard to make garlic bread (my daughters’ favorite dinner side course), and I literally have to hide the bread or my husband will tear off hunks of it. (I will not identify the hiding place here, in case Bryan reads this, but suffice to say, it’s a good one). The day I drafted this micro, he got to the loaf before I could tuck it away. I channeled into this story first my irritation (why is no bread safe from him!?), then my fantasy of what would secure the safety of the bread (absent husband), and then, immediately, my feeling of loss at what that absence, if it were literal and complete, would mean in my life. by Curtis Smith Suzy’s flying. Or so she thinks. Above, a spine of lights, and no, she’s not flying—she’s being swallowed whole, and with each heartbeat, she sinks deeper. She closes her eyes, hoping there’s courage in the dark. She hears doctors, nurses. Her mother. Hears the gurney’s rolling wheels. She tries to speak, but her words die beneath the mask pressed over her face. The gurney crashes through swinging doors, and Suzy is a child again, her mother’s helper, her little hands clapped, and in the kitchen’s slanting sun, a cloud of flour. Then the same kitchen, the same hands, only bigger. A plate smashed after her mother asks if Suzy really wants to be that kind of girl. The kitchen fades. The sway of her body in Danny’s arms. The smoky bar. The jukebox’s shine, and Bobby Darin crooning “Dream Lover.” She doesn’t want to be that kind of girl—she just wants to be the girl she is right now—the world so still and Danny’s heart thumping against hers. But between their hearts, a folded letter in his shirt pocket. A notice to report. Suzy’s head on his shoulder, and she whispers another kind of news. He holds her tighter, and she closes her eyes, wanting to lose the understanding of where she ends and he begins. He says they can do this. They just can’t be afraid. She writes every night, her pen wagging as she searches for the truest words. On her fingers—a simple wedding band, nicks and scars from the factory’s sewing machines. His letters arrive every other day. She reads them alone, still in her work clothes, her bedroom door shut. His longings. Their lovers’ shorthand. His boredom punctuated by jumps from the clouds. She clasps the letters to her chest, her gut twisted as she imagines him falling, falling. An August Sunday. A drive to Fort Dix. His training done, and his unit set to deploy. Flat New Jersey, pastures and cranberry bogs and wooden roadside stands. Ahead, a purple sky. Veins of lightning. She undoes her waist’s button and lays a hand on her bulge. She talks to the baby, an assurance all is well, that they’ll get through this together. Gusts buffet the car. Leaves tumble. She sees Danny in the sky, the Earth rushing to meet him. The first drops, then more, and the echoes crowd her thoughts. She grips the wheel. A breath to calm her heart. Her foot steady on the gas. Then this morning. Water on the bathroom floor, a pain three months early. Her fist at her mouth, her knuckle bit as her mother speeds to the hospital. On the radio, updates from Washington and Moscow. The car’s speed blurs October’s beautiful leaves. A red light and a man on the corner hawks the morning paper. On the front page, a map. Circles as neat as a pond’s ripples. Their city just inside the widest ring—and much closer, Danny’s base on the coast, and for all she knows, he might be in the air right now. They’re together, in a way. Bound by the rings on their fingers and the rings on a map. Their fates surrendered. The tides she tried to keep at bay with a slow, jukebox dance hurtling them to lives unimagined. A final set of doors, and the gurney comes to a rest. The doctors lean over her, eclipsing the light. Her face wet with tears she hadn’t realized she was crying. She speaks, her voice muffled beneath the mask. “I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid.” Curtis Smith’s stories and essays have appeared in or been cited by The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The Best American Spiritual Writing, The Best Microfictions, The Best Small Fictions, and the WW Norton anthology New Micro. He has worked with independent presses to publish novels, story collections, essay collections, and a work of creative nonfiction. His next novel, The Magpie’s Return, will be released in the summer of 2020. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Suzy Isn’t Afraid–1962”? My son and I are history buffs, and a few years back, we watched a documentary on the Cuban Missile Crisis. One scene featured a map on a newspaper’s front page—with rings radiating from Cuba that marked the missiles’ ranges. That image stuck with me—the fear and uncertainty and lack of control one might feel when they saw their city contained within these rings. And while soldiers along the Gulf braced for an invasion, the folks back home were left to struggle with their everyday lives. Then I imagined Suzy—and as I wrote, I found both her and her husband connected in ways I hadn’t imagined. Sometimes in times of crisis, all we have left is to tell ourselves—whether it’s true of not—that we’re not afraid. by Sarah Sousa
Sarah Sousa is the author of the poetry collections See the Wolf, named a 2019 ‘Must Read’ book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, Split the Crow and Church of Needles, as well as the chapbooks Yell, which won the Summer Tide Pool Prize at C&R Press, and Hex which won the 2019 Cow Creek Chapbook Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Massachusetts Review, North American Review, the Southern Poetry Review, Verse Daily and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. Her honors include a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. She is a member of the board of directors of Perugia Press. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Fractured Tarot for the Anthropocene”? Around 13 vintage source texts went into the creation of these tarot cards, as well as original watercolor and gouache art and some ink prints for backgrounds. My favorite source texts are old Boy Scout and Cub Scout manuals from the 40s to 60s. They’re loaded with interesting drawings, illustrations and text. The found poem on the three of swords card: “How well do you know America- how much does it mean to you?” was from a chapter on citizenship in one of these manuals. The guns in that collage are from ads in the backs of the books. I’m also drawn to images in vintage magazines, botanic and wildlife guides.My Sister Is Writing a Memoir
hardly in it,
except
as that odd
teaspoon
of vanilla
a recipe calls for,
inexplicably,
in a chocolate
cake.The Hot Air Balloon
Fractured Tarot for the Anthropocene (4 of 10)
Field Girl
Girl.
Barn.
Girl.
Hay.
Sunlight between boards.
Girl.
Where are the kittens?
Girl.
Door.
Man.
Oh, no, not the man.
Run, girl!
But she wants to find the kittens.
His hand.
Her hair.
Don’t touch my hair!
Why is he touching my hair?
Maybe I’m supposed to let him touch my hair.
She says nothing.
and she will not speak for a long time.CNF: They Pulled a 17 Ft Python Out of Big Cypress National Preserve
Fractured Tarot for the Anthropocene (3 of 10)
An Inappropriate Psychic
Provence
we found an old box with dusty lavender
on the windowsill in that rented
room with a view in Provence
we threw it away
not knowing any better
touched the white floor I saw
scorpions surrounding the bed
my screams must have woken
up the whole street
swept the scorpions off the ground
and threw them out the window
she waved her kitchen cloth at us
shouting something in French
none of us understood
out of the basket bin and put it
back on the windowsill with a smileFractured Tarot for the Anthropocene (2 of 10)
Mauled
Suzy Isn’t Afraid—1962
Fractured Tarot for the Anthropocene (1 of 10)
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