—by Mary Buchinger
Mary Buchinger is the author of Aerialist (Gold Wake Press, 2015, shortlisted for the May Swenson Poetry Award, the OSU Press/The Journal Wheeler Prize for Poetry and the Perugia Press Prize). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Cortland Review, DIAGRAM, Fifth Wednesday, Nimrod International Journal, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere; she was invited to read at the Library of Congress, and received the Varoujan and the Houghton Awards from the New England Poetry Club. Her collection, Roomful of Sparrows, (Finishing Line Press) was a New Women’s Voices’ semi-finalist. She holds a doctorate in Applied Linguistics and is Associate Professor of English and Communication Studies at MCPHS University in Boston, Massachusetts.
What can you tell us about this piece—from its origin as an idea to the journey that brought it to us in this form? One morning in early spring, heading in to teach a class, I was riding the Red Line, which lifts out of a tunnel in Cambridge and crosses the Longfellow Bridge before dipping back down into the tunnel in Boston. Emerging into the relative light and quiet aboveground often feels like a slight miracle. On this particular morning, a rainy fog enveloped much of the Charles River, but I could just make out a little dinghy in a small harbored area along the river edge and in that dinghy was someone standing in a yellow slicker, glowing in the gloom. There was vulnerability and a frail balance—that standing figure in a tiny boat—and, also something stalwart and assertive in that yellow slicker, I felt a strong sense of recognition in that ‘tableau vivant’ and this gave rise to the first poem in what became of a collection of many poems entitled, Vagrancies of the Heart.
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