Month: October 2025
CNF: Lilith’s Song
by Sunmisola Odusola
It may appear that a woman is always on the verge of becoming—a god, the moon, a still brook, a fruit, crockery, a mass of blackened blood, a daughter, so what she feels the need to do is to contain herself. In the room, a loaf of flesh brooding over ink-filled dead leaves, ink on her body, ink on her teeth, her blood warming up against her. The woman herself is a container. In the role of a daughter, not much is done, a lot is replicated instead. She wears her mother’s skin, and sheds it later on to become her own mother. But a container must forget, or be confined to a single use. Likewise, a girl must become and become, until her skin turns translucent, until she wakes up without a body, and until she feeds herself her own body. This consumption happens on the inside—the shedding of the lining—a metaphor for a body that cannot live with itself. A body that must run and run until it becomes the path it is chasing. First a daughter, then a lover, of the world, of art, of paper, of beauty. The first time I came in contact with beauty, it was the skin of a snake, and I had almost picked it up before I heard the hissing.
Sunmisola Odusola writes on existence, love, and death, and daydreams about making surrealist art someday. They were shortlisted for DKA Poetry Prize (2024), and have had their works published in Backwards Trajectory, Brittle Paper, Fiery Scribe Review, Witcraft, April Centaur, and Eunoia Review.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Lilith’s Song”? Milan Kundera wrote in The Unbearable Lightness of Being about life being a sketch of itself, lived without rehearsal and preparation. I wrote Lilith’s Song in a moment of the same unpreparedness he wrote about. I had just resumed university, and it was the first time away from my mother. What came easily to me became quickly exhausting. The roles were irreconcilable (daughter, student, lover, person, writer). Each of these roles demanded a different version of me. It was then I realized that there was nothing more “woman” than the perpetual state of becoming, of resisting confinement. The feminine is represented and mythologized in the media by this very transformation: as the abject (the possessed woman), the cursed, the divine feminine—even in Lilith herself. This brings to mind the process of becoming, which is in a way similar to birth itself—to take on, to consume, and to shed. The work is in itself a response to Barbara Creed’s “The Monstrous Feminine.” by Carolyn Zaikowski my rugs and tiles, I love them. yes, this is the correct word, love. my sinks, chairs, forks, these fronds on my ferns, and all my deep purple hearts. my primrose as well. and the atlases, those ancient ones I carried with me, with all their keys in code. and the mishappen stones, hoarded strings, dull tacks. for forty or a hundred days, or ‘til all that remains: yes, this vow is correct. for I left everything for here. left his home and his, too. was caught in phonebooths downtown and in fields stuffed with what were called, by trusted sources, wild things. I was brashly scissor-cut from the elegies and odes of my mothers and fathers and their mothers and fathers all the way back. which wasn’t far, to be fair. and from rooms crushed by walls toppled by the unpacked crates of others. barred from the only room I had a key to, driven from the bed I’d, as in a dare, named mine. and so I lay my body down: my paper stacks and dishes, my sprays. my notebooks and jumpers. lights and switches. all the shoes on my feet imprinting floors just because they can. crusty chairs, the links on my chains, forty or a hundred days for my body forty or a hundred days for my bruise— all the way back, foreseeing my autumn fern and its fronds, I someway waited. predicted my fern’s primordial lace, the glories of its slits and arrowy points. patient. maybe not serene, but patient. the man who never arrives will tell you: I’ve always been so patient. studying with a hustle and hope only to be attained with the glasses I was born with, and my abacus, my astrolabe, my camera obscura. all these trances I loved within, stubborn, years before I could aspire to meet lace, let alone the lace of a fern. Carolyn Zaikowski is the Poet Laureate of Easthampton, MA and the author of the novel In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared widely, in such publications as The Washington Post, Alaska Quarterly Review, Everyday Feminism, DIAGRAM, West Branch, and Denver Quarterly. Carolyn holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University and currently works as a creative writing instructor and volunteer death doula. She can be found at www.carolynzaikowski.com and carolynzzz.substack.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 “I am here to lay my body down”? This is part of a poetry manuscript I began writing, largely by accident, during the early months of the pandemic, where I was living alone in a post-divorce apartment. The spiritual significance of “forty days” to me was dancing with the etymological significance of the word “quarantine”, which originally meant “space of forty days” for ships to isolate after their journeys during the plague. There was a lot of contemplation and emotion happening around the theme of physical space, objects, and inside-ness, and the fraught history of homes and safety going back to my childhood. The symbolism of the journey, the waiting, of arriving at last, having earned a home that was mine, that I could be the priestess of, a home I had finally earned that no one could touch, control, make unsafe, or tell me what to do (or not do) within. It was the first time in my life I’d had that, despite imagining its possibility as a child, where I waited in a hell-home. Writing this piece, I was so aware that despite my severe depression and the depths of horror that were happening in the world, I finally had a home and, goddamnit, it was mine. A humble little priestess-dom within which I would lay my body down, and which I would lay my body down for, stubbornly, if ever I had to fight for home again. by Joseph O’Day I once got scolded in first grade because I needed to sharpen my pencil. Sister Rose had told us to take out a piece of paper and prepare for a quiz, but my pencil’s lead had broken. Before I could make my way to the sharpener, she hovered over me, and in raised voice declared, “No wonder you need to sharpen your pencil, Mr. O’Day. You’ve been writing all over your desk!” I started crying and Sister Rose sent for my sister Maureen in fifth grade to come see how bad I’d been. That scene lived in my head for forty years, until I wrote it out. I had an image of short, stocky Sister Rose and of my desk in the back row behind the other kids, and of the patch I wore over my right eye to exercise my weak left eye. I believed I never wrote on that desk, but couldn’t be sure; I was only six at the time and lost touch with most of the living witnesses. I also believed the story’s essence centered on Sister Rose’s oppression, how she pulled my chair and me to the back wall of closets (which stored our coats and lunch bags), and on my mother’s tepid reaction when I got home – “Those nuns make such a big deal out of everything.” But the more I rewrote and reviewed my memories, the shakier seemed my “facts.” I wondered for instance where the pencil sharpener was located. Was it next to Sister Rose’s desk in the front of the room like I thought? Was I seated in my chair when Sister moved it furiously to the back wall? How had she gotten from the front of the room to the back so quickly? Did she really strut through aisles of frightened students like I’d written, knocking them aside like Moses parting the waters? Some elements stayed true, like Sister Rose showing Maureen the markings on my desktop, and her directive to tell our mother I’d “damaged school property.” There was another, overlooked, moment I recalled, that occurred away from Sister Rose’s grasp, when Maureen’s facial expression told me how ridiculous this was, when she looked into my eyes and whispered, “Jody, don’t worry. Don’t worry about it.” How soothing her words had felt, how great to have had her on my side. No wonder I didn’t worry about my mother finding out. I realized my story wasn’t about Sister Rose’s stridency, or my mother’s scoffing about nuns. It was about my ten-year-old sister’s kindness in that moment. It was about how Maureen had knocked away my feelings of humiliation and isolation and replaced them with love. Joseph O’Day’s writing focuses on family relationships and life transitions. His work has appeared in The Bluebird Word, Oyster River Pages, Spry Literary Journal, The Critical Flame, bioStories, and other publications. He served as Director of Pharmacy at Brigham and Woman’s Faulkner Hospital for many years until his retirement and received his MA in English from Salem State University. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Finding My Story”? Most of my writing is nonfiction based on my life. I want to get the details right, so when my memory begins to fade someday, I can return to my pieces and trust what I read. When I revisited early drafts of “Finding My Story,” I was surprised to find that I’d embellished. Perhaps unconsciously, I’d added drama, and some of my main points felt weak and untrue. I decided to strip the piece down and to challenge the truth of everything I’d written. The more I rewrote with this mindset, the less concerned I became for the embarrassment I’d felt as a first grader, and the more did the significance of Maureen’s actions come to the fore. Maureen had stepped in when my six-year-old self needed her most. That’s why I got emotional whenever I returned to the story, and why, despite setting it aside several times over the years, it never left me. All I needed was to find its truth. by Jennifer Edwards Home on winter break, unshowered, slightly buzzed, overtired, binge-watching 90-day Fiancé, hedging bets about which relationships will last. My husband says, Babe, you’re blending in! He sends a photo to our friends group chat documenting my obsession with Buffalo Plaid. My disembodied head floats in a congealed mass of my fleece-lined long sweater, knit blanket, and throw pillows of the same black and white print. I’m dissolving into comfort. He grins & waves his whole arm from across the sectional, smiling hello like Forrest Gump on a shrimp boat. I laugh & he pretends to be startled; Oh, I didn’t see you there! We’re confused when a girl on TV talks of Tylenol or first child an all. How long were we not paying attention? Wait, is there a child involved? We rewind. Oh, she meant tell all! It’s funny being wrong in different ways. Nobody speaks clearly anymore, I complain. Mmmhmm, he agrees. Or actually listens, I continue. Ya, exactly, he mumbles, down to his phone. Jennifer R. Edwards’ collection, Unsymmetrical Body (Finishing Line Press) was an Eric Hoffer Honorable Mention, First Horizon Finalist, and Boston Author’s Club Julia Ward Howe Award Finalist. Her poems have received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations, the New England Poetry Club Amy Lowell Prize, 6th place for the Poetry Super Highway contest, the Thomas Lux Poetry Fellowship from Palm Beach Poetry Festival and other support. Her poems appear in several anthologies and journals including Iron Horse Literary Review, The Shore, Beaver Magazine, RHINO, ELJ, MER, One Art, and Terrain. She’s a neurodiversity-affirming speech-language pathologist in public schools, and MFA in Writing candidate at Bennington Writing Seminars. She’s a curator for Button Poetry and serves on the board of the New Hampshire Poetry Society as events coordinator. https://linktr.ee/JenEdwards @JenEdwards8 See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “I’m the Teacher They Make Memes About ”? This piece really was a frank depiction of some biographical events that I wrote immediately the night it occurred. I’m a speech therapist for a public school and last winter break was so worn out that I found myself really dissolving into watching reality TV, getting takeout, and practically hibernating as never before. Suddenly, I could recognize myself in circulating teacher memes, the long sweaters and lounging and avoiding interaction. I think the turn at the end surprised even me a little, how hard it was for us to carefully listen. How the show and our discussion of it transported us into a vaguer exploration of our communication. The presence of phones was felt to the level that it had to be present in the poem. Maybe reality shows about relationships interest us, in part, because we now don’t have that level of concern over appearances. This poem acknowledges allowing yourself comfort, silliness, and the familiarity of years which is wonderful but sometimes feels a little dangerous. I really love the freedom prose allows me, especially when writing first drafts. This piece originated in prose poem, and was revised and lineated as poetry, but returned to prose because the form depicted more energetic movement. I wanted to move the reader through the flash of the show and conversation of people watching it, the same way flashing moments add up and information is missed or misunderstood. I wanted some personal jokes, some disorientation, distraction, obsessive negative thought trying to creep in but ultimately a speaker who’s aware and (mostly) OK with how they’re changing. CNF: I am here to lay my body down
I am here to lay my body down;
I love them, yes—this is the correct word, love, my love.
there’s no tracing or touching me now, here at this arrival. I am here to lay my body down.
forty or a hundred days.
forty or a hundred days for my body forty or a hundred days for my home. Finding My Story
CNF: I’m the Teacher They Make Memes About
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
12/15 • Isabelle Ness
12/22 • Catherine Bai
12/29 • Stephan Viau
01/05 • Allison Blevins
01/12 • Justin Ocelot
01/19 • Yejun Chun
01/26 • Mathieu Parsy
02/02 • Robert McBrearty
02/09 • Sarah Daly
02/16 • Wayne Lee
02/23 • Terena Elizabeth Bell
03/02 • Michael Mirolla
03/09 • Nicholas Claro
03/16 • TBD
03/23 • TBD
03/30 • TBD