THE
BLUE MOUNTAIN Issue 30
REVIEW
dECEMBER 2023
DOROTHEA LASKY ON POETRY, ASTROLOGY,
The Truth of the Matter with Moni Basu Annie Kotowicz & What I Mean When I Say I’m Autistic’
AND THE SHINING
OLIVER DE LA PAZ WRITES US A WAY HOME
Christa Wells Sings a Calm Across Chaos
LYNNE KEMEN COMES CLEAN IN SHOES FOR LUCY
Caridad Moro-Gronlier: From Roots to Full Bloom
Anders Carlson-Wee: Disease of Kings & Dumpster Diving
Poetry, Fiction, Essays & Microfiction
A JOURNAL OF CULTURE ANDERS CARLSON-WEE
ANNIE KOTOWICZ
Oliver DE LA PA Z
TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTIOn ................................................ 1
BOOK REVIEWS ............................................ 125
Sailing through This to That by Carmen Acevedo Butcher
L.A. Breakdown by Lou Matthews ................................ 127
LITERARY INTERVIEWS.......................................7 Adam Deutsch ..................................................................... 9 Anders Carlson-Wee ......................................................... 15 Annie Kotowicz .................................................................. 21 Caridad Moro-Gronlier ...................................................... 25 Dorothea Lasky ................................................................ 29 Jennifer Gravley ............................................................... 35 Justin Hamm .................................................................... 37 Lynne Kemen ................................................................... 41 Meilani Clay ...................................................................... 45 Moni Basu ....................................................................... 49 Nicole Tallman ................................................................. 53 Oliver de la Paz .................................................................. 59 Robert Bensen ................................................................... 63 Vernon Trey Keeve III ........................................................ 67
MUSIC INTERVIEWS......................................... 71 Christa Wells ..................................................................... 73 John Lomax III ................................................................. 77 Phat Man Dee ................................................................... 81 Robin Dean & Afton Seekins ........................................... 87
SPECIAL FEATURE INTERVIEWS......................... 91 Chelsea Risley, Amy Martin, Chaney Hill, Jennette Hozworth & Anna Harris-Parker ..................... 93 Misty Fletcher ................................................................. 101 Jeff Walt ......................................................................... 105 Riley Roberts .................................................................. 109 Jarrod Shusterman & Sofia Lapuente ............................. 113
My Kindred by Paulann Peterson .................................. 129 The Girl From the Red Rose Motel by Susan Beckham Zurenda .......................................... 133
MICROFICTION ............................................ 137 It’s Not Stealing If the Person Is Dead by Beth Sherman ............................................................ 139 The Fentanyl Kid Tames a Cloud by Beth Sherman ........................................................... 140 Dnipro by Beth Sherman ................................................ 141 Sidewalk by Devon Houtz .............................................. 145 Worth by Devon Houtz .................................................. 146 Plant by Devon Houtz .................................................... 147 Move the Panchett to Yes! by Epiphany Ferrell ....................................................... 149 How to Tell If Your Oven Is Possessed by a Demon by Epiphany Ferrell .................. 150 The Ballad of Tommy Two-Face by Epiphany Ferrell ........................................................ 151 Man at the Bus Stop by Joshua Michael Stewart ............................................ 152
Essays ....................................................... 153 Homestretch by Cynthia McVay ................................... 155 Don’t Tell Me by J.D. Isip .......................................... 161 Arms Outstretched by Tawney Gibson .......................... 165
Fiction ....................................................... 169 Under the Bridge by Caroline Malone ............................. 171 The Middle of the Night by Douglas Nordfors ...................................................... 173
FASHION INTERVIEWS .................................... 117
Zip by Duane Horton .................................................... 181
I am a Grown Man Now, How Should I Dress? by Jay De-Robison .......................................................... 119
Note to Self by Mark Jacobs ....................................... 187 Saint Anonymous by Marck L. Beggs .............................. 191
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
POETRY ....................................................... 195 A Tribute to Maureen Seaton ....................................... 197 False Cognates by Allyson Jones ................................... 217 Spirits by Anders Carlson-Wee ..................................... 219 Lay It Bare by Anders Carlson-Wee .............................. 221 Why Write by Bungkong Tuon ................................... 223 [C]ars Poetica by Candice M. Kelsey .............................. 227 Departered Passing by Cheryl Whitehead ................... 229 A Crowd of Crows by Chloe Firetto-Toomey ............... 233 Dearth of the Cool by Gordon Johnston ....................... 235 Advice For a Young Poet by Kendel Hippolyte ...................................................... 239 Suppressed Red, Desired Orange by Lynne Kemen ........................................................... 241 Summer of Emergency Powers by Michael Mintrom ...................................................... 245 Fruit in the Strange Animal by Nathan Spoon ........................................................... 247 Moonrise by Richard Blanco ........................................ 249 Old Movies by Robert L. Petrillo ................................... 253 Conundrum by Robert L. Petrillo .................................. 255 Quantum Leap by Robert L. Petrillo ............................. 257 Yes Ma’am by Stevie Edwards ....................................... 261 Odysseus Descends Into the Land of the Dead by Wayne Karlin ............................... 263
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SAILING THROUGH THIS TO THAT by C a r m e n Ac e v e d o B u t c h e r Wide-and-open-eyed in our liminal month I feel the need to summon words for healing. If you’ve ever heard a poet read and your world was changed forever, you know. I heard Lucille Clifton read at Georgia Tech with Thomas Lux in 2002. Restored, I wrote a poem for her. I typed it up carefully, then added a handwritten note. Your poetry means so much to me. Your courage. I teach at a small college in the town of your mother’s birth. . . . I mailed my love with a stamp and forgot. Until I got a phone call at my office. It was her personal assistant, saying, “Is this Carmen?” “Yes?” “Lucille Clifton wanted me to thank you for sending her that lovely poem.” My total fangirling was answered by kindness. I caught kindness from my gentlest school teachers too. This also saved me. It’s near impossible to capture how it feels struggling to read a sterile opaque standardized test passage in school as words are glide-stepping like marching band members to an invisible drum major who’s drilling a shrill commanding whistle — Fweeet! Watch d’s and b’s swap places. Fweeet! Now know and no collide, now and won slide, how and who switch spots. Fweeet! Spy c’s which are really s’s and words like access and assess become labyrinths. This wordy mess wasn’t just mechanical, either. Dyslexia disrupted my sense of self. Being undiagnosed made it worse. Ashamed, I told no one, convinced I was dumb. Dyslexia made reading then so undoable I felt I was going crazy. I mean crazy’s original definition, “a person affected by mental illness,” not the colloquial one, “wildly foolish.” Discouraging both uses, the Oxford English Dictionary kindly reminds, “Now offensive.” Today I understand it like this — my dyslexia contributed significantly to my severe anxiety and underlying sense of utter inferiority growing up. Dyslexia is also why I began studying words’ backstories. Etymologies stopped words from being just abstract things to memorize for scary SAT analogy questions like: PALTRY: SIGNIFICANCE: A. redundant: discussion B. austere: landscape C. opulent: wealth D. oblique: familiarity E. banal: originality Although PrepScholar’s Samantha Lindsay declares E “correct,” you could be forgiven, if rushed, for selecting D. I’d much rather know oblique’s roots in Latin for “ob-toward-(or)-against, licinus-bent upward” and banal’s history in feudalism, which explains a lot. Also factor in my family lived in a rural area and my mother made my clothes, so analogy questions could make me feel second-rate. (These have since been removed owing to their bias toward a higher social class.) Lindsay gives one example: RUNNER: MARATHON: A. envoy: embassy B. martyr: massacre C. oarsman: regatta D. referee: tournament E. horse: stable Cognizant of cornfields, cotton-mill-working neighbors, and chicken houses, my teenaged self would have missed that C. Such complex hurdles made standardized tests harrowing.
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It has taken me a long time to understand and an even longer time to say, I am disabled. I always have been. Dyslexia complicates and obstructs my daily life. Always I prepare out the wazoo and still my mind might stumble and mix up words when I speak or write. It takes me infinities to do things, and while the efforts are very worth it to me, I wish the world had more tenderness for such. In the absence of that, daily I wake up and intend to have more compassion for myself and for others. Because you never know what struggles someone is having. Understanding my limping, limpid mind is also ongoing, ever evolving. It grants me insights into learning difficulties my students increasingly seem to experience. When someone is having a hard time getting a concept that seems clear to me, I practice remembering all this. I’m the third-grade kid who could hardly read yet wrote books. For these reasons, I remain mindful of the kindness Lucille Clifton gave me. However small, any gentleness mends us and the world. I’m also grateful that she ended her reading at Tech with “blessing the boats.” Its calm sureness moves us with the shamanic power of words to heal. She knew our world is found(er)ed by power like King-Charles-I’s-chartered-400-ton-Ark’s-and-40-ton-Dove’s140-colonists’-with-their-thirteen-slaves debarking at St. Clement’s Island, forty minutes from Clifton’s St. Mary’s College where her poem’s title conjures the island’s ritual fall Blessing of the Fleet. Even after all the years and fears and hurts and abuse and illness — cancers, kidney failure, dialysis for Clifton — and to-come unknowns, her poem revives our hope in the liminal tide. It reassures us love has our back even knowing all we are. Clifton chants, “open your eyes,” and gives us her blessing: “may you in your innocence / sail through this to that.” My dyslexic, etymologically-inclined nous hears innocence saying to us: “Do (in-)-not-(nocere/noxa)-harm-nor-be-obnoxious.” May we thrive together in the growing-wise kindness of Clifton’s blessing.
blessing the boats (at St. Mary’s)
may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that 3
About Carmen: Carmen Acevedo Butcher is an award-winning translator and author, with a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies. She teaches in the College Writing Programs at the University of California, Berkeley. Her translation of Practice of the Presence is called “the new standard,” and her Cloud of Unknowing translation is a 46th Georgia Author of the Year Awardee, a Shambhala Pocket Series book, and Audible book. You can hear Carmen on BBC’s Compass, NPR’s Morning Edition, Dante’s Old South, Things Not Seen, plus the Abbey of the Arts’ Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color, Contemplify, Nomad, Encountering Silence, and more at https://linktr.ee/carmenacevedobutcher.
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
The SCE Press Presents
Lynne Kemen’s writing appears in various literary journals and anthologies. She published her chapbook, More Than a Handful, in 2020 with Woodland Arts Editions. She contributes as an Interviewer and Essay Editor for The Blue Mountain Review, a culture-focused journal. She is a member of The Southern Collective Experience and is on the boards of two not-for-profit organizations. She lives with her husband, William Rossow, and their four cats in the Great Western Catskills of Upstate New York.
Lynne Kemen’s Shoes for Lucy is a beautiful and relatable collection of poems that explores a wide range of emotions. From grief to rediscovery, Kemen writes with a deft hand, creating vibrant and introspective pieces that remind us to cherish life’s simple pleasures. — Kelli Russell Agodon Author of Dialogues with Rising Tides (Copper Canyon Press) Shoes for Lucy is like a beautiful summer storm on the porch - bursts of light, cool breeze, fragments of childhood dreams, and echoes spreading out in all directions. — Jack B. Bedell Author of Against the Woods’ Dark Trunks, Poet Laureate of Louisiana, 2017-2019 A genre-bending powerhouse of a collection. A spare, artful blend of poetry and fiction, Kemen combines masterful storytelling with lyrical prowess. A bit Oliver, a bit Forster, and a bit Bass, Kemen deftly invokes her literary heroes, while inking her heart on her sleeve. “I go outside and touch my flowers and wish it was you.” she longingly writes. Penned in the beautiful voice of a wise and witty friend.
Shoes for Lucy by Lynne Kemen 978-1-7362306-4-0
Athena Departs: Gospel of a Man Apart by Clifford Brooks 978-1-7347498-0-9
—Nicole Tallman Author of Poems for the People (SCE Press) and Something Kindred (SCE Press)
Exiles of Eden by Clifford Brooks
The Draw of
978-1-7347498-6-1
Whirling Metaphysics
Broken Eyes & by Clifford Brooks
Flutterby the Butterfly by Tracy Hagan 978-1-7347498-8-5
The Ghost Gospels by Laura Ingram 978-1-7347498-7-8
978-1-7347498-3-0
Something Kindred
Poems for the People
by Nicole Tallman
by Nicole Tallman
978-1-7362306-1-9
978-1-7362306-2-6
Things I Wish I Could Tell You
dreamterludes by Monica Kim
Tell Me What You Saw and What You
by Casanova Green
Think It Means
978-1-7362306-0-2
by Steve Bellin-Oka
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RARY RVIEWS
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ADAM DEUTSCH by J. D. I S I P
It’s hard to believe Every Transmission is a debut collection! There’s a carefulness, almost meticulousness to these poems. Your lines and images are packed and precise. Before we jump into the book, tell us a little about building this collection – how long you’ve been working on it, choices you had to make, how it came together. Thanks for the kind words! It’s a “debut” in that it’s the first time a press accepted a full-length manuscript, but Every Transmission is really more of an “editors’ choice” collection. I’d had four manuscripts before this one (titled Manual, They Should All Be Odes, Reactivate the Dust, Room Temperature, respectively) that I’d been shopping around from about 2008 to 2019. A friend once told me, when I was really cranking on the first one, to leave it behind and focus on new work; one of my mentors had said the same thing to me in grad school, so I’d work on a manuscript for a few years, then move into a new body of work after a while when it didn’t get scooped up. In 2019, just to goof around, I decided to take all the poems across those 4 that had been published, and put them in one file, then whittled that down from around 125 pages to 70ish. I think I sent it out once, then worked on that for another year or two. I could see the book in there, but with so many “old” poems with more recent stuff, I went through this process of reflection, and started to see elements that needed to be worked out — “fixed” feels like the wrong word, but there are ways I used to write something, and I knew I could do it better. Maybe that’s the “meticulousness” you mention. Maybe “modifications” or “fine tuning” is more like it. I tend to think about things in mechanical ways — parts interacting, and that view is what was guiding me (with encouragement from friends who are amazing writers). Eric Muhr at Fernwood Press picked it up in early 2022, and it went through more refinement from there. He’s an editor of kindness and awareness whose good sense shines in various spots in the book.
I enjoy the fun you have with vocabulary in this collection, your willingness to make up words (which made me think of Whitman) like “undecent,” “Luciferic,” and… “tagins”? “Tagins” is a transliteration of a Hebrew word. When I think about word-creation, I’m usually thinking about Milton (and he’s in at least one other poem in the book). Milton blew my damn mind in grad school.
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Tell us a bit about your poetic inspirations for this collection, anyone you had in mind or who might have directly or indirectly influenced you. Some of the folks I was thinking about when writing poems in this book are my teachers coming up (Duane Esposito, Phillis Levin, Janet Kaplan, Mike Madonick, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Tyehimba Jess, and Geri Doran), as well as William Matthews, Ada Limón, Frank O’Hara, and the writers I’ve published on Cooper Dillon Books.
Many of your poems in this collection juxtapose a human or human experience with an animal (monarch, salmon), a machine, or a thing. Whereas many a poet will do this to emphasize the superiority or preciousness of the human, you seem to have another aim. I think “Ode to the Knife” is a crystalclear example. What are you telling us about humans and about our world and our relationships with that world? When you break down “Ode to the Knife” there, I think about another poem in the book that mentions a knife, and that’s “Leave No Trace,” with the line: “At least there was the weight of pocket knives,/ though no lessons on their usefulness,” so that’s two poems with knives, one where it’s used with precision and another where we’re just children who don’t know anything. I think I feel like I oscillate between those two states. No matter how much I think I know what I’m doing, sometimes I feel like I’m completely clueless.
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I think many of us can relate! A Social Studies teacher in 7th grade talked to us about how every tool is an extension of the hand — and defined “tool” as something used to both create and destroy, like how a hammer can hit a nail or a body, or how we can fly into the air in a machine and drop supplies people need below or bombs. It was a lot about intention, and how something like a knife is neutral until someone decides how they’re going to use it. I do want to be wary of occupying a place where we feel superiority to the natural world or the objects we’ve collected around ourselves, because I don’t believe that we are. So much of this world we interact with — that we need to connect with to live — can also, and does, kill us. And I think I think about that almost all the time. Of course, human life is precious, but I don’t think I believe that it’s more precious than other life. We do not have a healthy relationship to the world. We (speaking super-broadly) destroy far more than we preserve or create, and we often create with little regard to the harm we’re doing. And we do this harm while going to wild lengths to avoid considering, reconciling, or accepting the nature of death. I think about this often when I’m riding a bike around, using technology that’s over 100 years old, and hoping nobody will kill me with their car, as I’m trailing a river that’s been moved a bunch of times for real-estate reasons. Another teacher in a high school Earth Science class once saw a button that said “Save the Earth,” and he said, “The Earth is gonna be just fine…we just might not be able to live on it,” and that’s always stuck with me.
Two of my favorite pieces are “Feast” and “Keel, Kiddo.” Each of them taps into something spiritual and holy in the everyday. However, in pieces like “In Paradise Lost” and “Gestate,” you
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poke at faith – as in this line from “Gestate”: “Most of a medical professional’s questions/are chanted hexes.” “Keel, Kiddo” begins with the Tao Te Ching, but would you ascribe any other spiritual sensibility to your writing? In other words, is there something in these poems, in your work in general, about belief (or even disbelief, or both)? The spiritual isn’t disconnected from poetry (for me, at least). I don’t know if I mean it to be heavy-handedly literal in the poems, but I have one that makes a direct reference to Hebrew school, and others that make various other references to other rituals or practices. The way I feel when I read poetry is — I think — the same way devoutly religious people seems to feel when they worship. I think I came to poetry from a place of disbelief in formal religious structures, but poetry brings me back to divinity in new ways that make things like faith, and my Jewish experience, provide a warmth that I didn’t feel when I was younger. This is not a unique experience though, right?
Absolutely. Not unique. It’s difficult to separate the ideas about faith in this question to what we were discussing before about the relationships between people and animals, machines, etc. For me, these are woven together in ways that cannot be undone without an annihilation.
I don’t mean to paint your collection in one hue. There’s actually quite a bit of humor in Every Transmission – “Courting the Meal” tosses off a fact about baby Komodo dragons, and it’s funny and perfect. Not only is there humor in this work, but overall joy. Was this intentional? I mean, I think I’m funny. I’ve always loved humor in poetry. I love Russell Edson, Dan Gutstein, Jennifer Michael Hecht, and Jennifer L. Knox, and I think that they’re all funny, in very serious ways. I also think Richard Brautigan and Ross Gay are funny, and some Creeley, and Szymborska, and Danez Smith. Jill Alexander Essbaum has taught me about the structure of humor in poetry, down to the syllabic sounds. It’s easy to laugh with other poets. It seems like a natural response to some of the catastrophe and monumental weight we see in the world. When I was in school, in a class with Mike Madonick, he asked us what we wanted to do in our poems, and I said that I wanted to be quiet. He was pretty quick to say something like, “The fuck you are! You’re trying to be loud!” I think about that, how I’m trying to shout a bit (“I’d love to sing out” I say in the second poem of the book, referencing Cat Stevens) and also about something Ailbhe Darcy said about Knox: “Knox’s humor is the kind of funny which is surprising, generous, and vulnerable, and which demands generosity and vulnerability from the reader… Absurdism, surrealism, camp, baitand-switch, jiggery-pokery: the kind of funny, you don’t get what you paid for, you can’t sell it on.” I think it’s really important to laugh when we read poems whether it’s out of surprise, generosity, etc. etc.. And I’m grateful for those writers who give us permission to do that when we engage their work. The times I’ve been invited to read from this book, I try to make selections that have some fun — like “Barking Spiders,” “Big Dummy,” or “Yes.” At an event, we can have a conversation, and the crowd often laughs in those exchanges between poems, which is intentional joy; in a book, it’s helpful if a reader has places to come up for air, and those moments are there by design.
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Please let our readers know what you are working on. The question feels like the end of a Hot Ones episode (which is a show they need to get some poets on). I’m giving some readings around southern California, and would love to get other places in the spring and beyond. There are some new poems that are forthcoming in places like Volume Poetry, South Dakota Review, and Thrush. And I’m working on a new poetry manuscript that I hope will shake out for submission toward the end of next summer.
Finally, please let our readers know how they can get their hands on Every Transmission and where to follow you online. It’s at Fernwood Press, Barclay Press, around San Diego at Book Catapult and La Playa Books, or at Bookshop.org as well as the other place you might feel guilty ordering from, and from my website, AdamDeutsch.com, where you can also get my chapbook, Carry On, and stickers and zines, and I can write nice things in your book! Insta is @adamsdeutsch, and I’m on the bluesky at @adamdeutsch.bsky.social. You’ll have to dig into San Diego Adams a bit to find me on the Strava, and if you like the bike stuff, I have a YouTube channel called Riding Bikes in San Diego.
ABOUT ADAM Adam Deutsch is the author of a full-length collection, Every Transmission (Fernwood Press, 2023). He has had work in Poetry International, Thrush, Juked, AMP Magazine, Ping Pong, and Typo, and has a chapbook called Carry On (Elegies). He teaches in the English Department at Grossmont College and is the publisher of Cooper Dillon Books. He lives with his spouse and child in San Diego, California.
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Are you, or someone you know on the spectrum? Do you constantly feel out of place due to Autism? Did a late-in-life diagnosis give you some peace of mind, but leave many more unanswered questions?
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- About Your Instructor Clifford Brooks is founder of the Southern Collective Experience and Editor-in-Chief of The Blue Mountain Review. Aside from his business ventures he is also a poet. To date Clifford has three full-length collections of poetry, Old Gods, The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics and Athena Departs: Gospel of a Man Apart, Exiles of Eden is a limited edition chapbook available solely from its author. Over the last twenty years Clifford traversed the traditional route in publishing and learned how to create, sell, and market creative writing. Throughout his tenure as writer and educator, Clifford stands as an advocate for those on the autism spectrum. As board member of Autism Speaks, he is intimately aware of the need for greater community and understanding. Here on Teachable, Clifford shares his wisdom on living the creative life and adulting
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ANDERS CARLSON-WEE bY C L I F F O R D B R O O K S
You graduated with a degree you designed. Tell us how that’s done, what you crafted, and what you took away from that experience. I went to Fairhaven College in Bellingham, Washington, a public school of about 400 students, where each student designs their own interdisciplinary degree. Mine was called “Writing through the Body” and combined creative writing with somatic psychology, emphasizing the physicality of my creative process. For fifteen years, I’ve maintained a writing routine that involves handwriting at a desk for a few hours in the morning, followed by exercising all afternoon — usually running, hiking, strength training, or rock climbing. I find my hours at the desk are more of a stubborn grind, while all my good ideas pop into my mind spontaneously while I’m exercising. But I can’t have those sudden ideas without all the hours at my desk. It’s as if the time spent at the desk primes my mind and allows subconscious ideas to rise to the surface when I’m no longer consciously thinking about my writing. I don’t know how it works but it does. And it leaves me feeling that my body and subconscious mind are both much brighter and bolder than my conscious brain. I believe Arthur Miller had a similar process: writing in the mornings and doing farm chores in the afternoons.
What’s the crux of DISEASE OF KINGS? Disease of Kings is about a fraught friendship between two scammers who dumpster dive for all their material needs and refuse to take traditional work. What they can’t find, they steal or barter for. When they need cash, they sell the things they’ve found in mock moving sales, though they’re not moving. While these young men seem to live outside the system, deep down, they’re profoundly capitalistic and materialistic, practically worshiping the American consumer culture that makes their lifestyle possible. What they want is boundless free time, which they see as the ultimate form of freedom. But while they share a common lifestyle, their familial dynamics couldn’t be in starker contrast: The speaker’s parents, who are both Lutheran pastors, provide a strong safety net as well as cash handouts; North, on the other hand, not only lacks a safety net, he’s also forced to provide for an alcoholic father. These differences of circumstance lead to a crux in their friendship, and ultimately wrench them apart.
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Both your parents are ministers. How does spirituality uplift your gaze when times hit hard? As a pastor’s kid, I’ve always struggled with the feeling that I’m supposed to have special access to the spiritual. But I’m no good with ethereal things. I’m a very tactile person. My imagination does best with concrete details, earthly realities, things you can hold in your hand. Perhaps because of this, dumpster diving has proven to be my most direct line to a sense of the spiritual: You go out late at night, into all that dark, all that cold, and you never know what you might find, but you always find something down in the dankest corners of the trash. For twenty years I’ve been going out and for twenty years I’ve always brought things home — things of precious value to me — For me, that’s as good a manifestation of faith as I can imagine.
How does music influence your flow? The musical cadences of human speech are an ever-present concern for me. I have dyslexia, and because of that I struggled to learn how to read and write. At an early age I distrusted the written word and instead relied on what I could hear. Due to that origin, I’m still more in touch with oral language than written language. When I started writing poetry, I was drawn to Robert Frost’s notion of “the sound of sense,” which is basically a study of cadence and how much meaning can be held inside it. To develop an ear for such a thing, Frost talks of listening to conversations from a distance that leaves you unable to discern the words being spoken, but able to hear the cadences of the speakers. Inspired by that notion, I spend a lot of time studying the music of the human voice.
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offer a young writer who wants to write dramatic monologues? Eavesdrop on conversations and write them down verbatim. Then speak the lines aloud to get the mouthfeel. Note their cadences, their rhythms, which words get emphasis, what agendas are revealed, what leaps are made, what non sequiturs, and so on. Then comes the hard part: altering the lines so they sound more natural than the original lines. This is a counterintuitive process: How can edited language sound more natural than raw language? There’s no shortcut here. You just have to practice a lot. And read a lot. Eventually you’ll start hearing voices inside your head: Don’t worry, you’re not crazy — those voices are your characters coming to life.
How do you edit your work? After I’ve drafted a piece, I set it aside for a few weeks. Then I read it afresh and edit it with new perspective. Then I set it aside again. After more weeks, I edit again, then show it to one of my closest readers, then edit again based on their advice. Next I memorize the draft and recite it to myself on long walks. At that stage, I’m editing for the musical qualities and for flow, cutting out any tongue twisters, and nailing down the rhythm and alterations in the rhythm. Since memorization is fairly easy for me, if I have trouble remembering certain parts of a poem, I interrogate those parts. Usually I discover some issue: maybe I have three images where I should have one, or maybe the dialogue is slightly expository, or maybe the moment can be cut altogether. Finally I toil over the title and its relationship to the text. Then I show it to more of my readers and revise again. And again. And again. I rarely finish a poem in less than a year, and some of my poems have taken me more than five years.
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What are you reading now? I’m reading Amongst Women by John McGahern. Other recent favorites have been: Antarctica by Claire Keegan, The Door by Magda Szabó, The Boat by Nam Lee, The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns, and The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
What do you consider a good day? Breakfast and coffee. Reading and Writing. Long walks alone to let my mind wander. Mountains and views. Rock climbing with friends. Music and the smells of food. Long dinners. Night walks among the lights of my neighborhood. Sleep. Also: any day where something new happens.
How do we find you online? You can find me at: www. anderscarlsonwee.com, which has poems, tour dates, info on how to order my books, and also a messaging system if you’d like to contact me directly.
ABOUT Anders: Anders Carlson-Wee is the author of Disease of Kings (W.W. Norton, 2023), The Low Passions (W.W. Norton, 2019), a New York Public Library Book Group Selection, and Dynamite (Bull City Press, 2015), winner of the Frost Place Chapbook Prize. He is represented by Massie &McQuilkin Literary Agents and lives in Los Angeles.in San Diego, California.
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“The poems in Disease of Kings are as sophisticated as they are innovative, the myriad voices and perspectives unsettling us with their hard-earned intimacy.” —Adrian Matejka, author of Somebody Else Sold the World
“A harrowing dive into late-empire America” —Patrick Phillips, author of Elegy for a Broken Machine
A vivid chronicle of friendship and loneliness amid the precarity of life in late capitalism, when every day is a fight for survival. AvAilAble Now
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wildhoneytees.com
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ANNIE
KOTOWICZ bY C L I F F O R D B R O O K S
Annie Kotowicz, tell us about how neurodiversity affected your childhood and how it’s molded you into the successful author you are today. True to my childhood nickname of “Little Miss Precise,” I’d like to begin by distinguishing “neurodiversity” from “neurodivergence.” Neurodiversity, like all forms of diversity, includes everyone – many kinds of minds. All of us must learn how to cross that divide and form connections of mutual understanding. Neurodivergence, on the other hand, means having a kind of mind that’s in the minority. Mine happens to be autistic, a form of neurodivergence seen in less than 3% of the population, although that number is rising as more people learn about autism and how it feels from the inside. As an undiagnosed autistic child, my drive for clarity and accuracy often got me into trouble. Some classmates thought I was being mean, some teachers thought I was being impertinent, and only a few people understood that I was trying to be helpful. They may not have needed that kind of help, but I needed it myself, not being able to fathom the intended meaning of an imprecise statement. Reading between the lines was not one of my strengths. Actual reading came easily, though – more so than listening. Likewise, I always found writing more natural than speaking. I was younger than 10 when I discovered that the easiest way for me to resolve a conflict was through a handwritten letter. I think of writing as my first language – not chronologically, but in terms of my comfort with it. That’s a big part of why I was always drawn to writing as a career. But first I detoured through various other careers, including graphic design and marketing. That was for the best, since it helped me develop the skills I needed to get my writing in front of a wider audience. Another way that autism has affected my life is that I easily get overwhelmed. I miss information that I’m expected to catch, but only because my brain is already full – noticing my environment, recognizing patterns, and analyzing how everything fits together. That made my childhood intense at times, but I also think it helped my writing become more observant and insightful.
What motivated you to write WHAT I MEAN WHEN I SAY I’M AUTISTIC? Many of the sentences in my book started within social media posts, spread out over five years leading up to the book itself. So the question of what motivated me to write the book is really entangled with what motivated me to post those sentences – first on Facebook as “Neurobeautiful” and later on my blog of the same name. Not long after creating the
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 Facebook page, I privately journaled, “I want to write things that autistic people will want to share with their neurotypical friends.” That’s where I started, intending to share general information about minds like mine. Over time, though, my motivation shifted in a more personal direction. I began to explain how I’ve been misunderstood in specific scenarios throughout my life, and the act of explaining felt both cathartic and redemptive. Surprisingly, no matter how unique my memories seemed to me, others kept finding themselves in my words. Then, to my satisfaction and delight, I saw autistic people borrowing my language to explain their own brains – a full-circle return to my original hope.
Who are your favorite authors? Shauna Niequist for nonfiction, and George MacDonald for fiction. Niequist captures the effervescent joy of everyday experiences, then distills them into universal ideas. MacDonald goes the opposite direction, exploring the implications of universal ideas through symbolic fairytales. His writing had a big impact on J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Lewis Carroll – but I prefer MacDonald’s aesthetic, perhaps due to our mutual Scottish roots. Both Niequist and MacDonald have a talent for writing on multiple levels at once, depicting both the forest and the trees, which has inspired me to look for the broader themes in my own experiences.
What are you reading now? I never like to share what I’m currently reading, at least not publicly and permanently, because I might accidentally promote a book that ends up taking a turn for the worse. Instead, here are the last three books I finished, which all happened to be excellent. Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath was a long overdue re-read, and I was amazed to see how the book’s advice really did stick over the years, helping me to write in a way that sticks for others. Writing Irresistible Kidlit by Mary Kole is about the kind of writing I hope to do next. And I finally finished A Mismatch of Salience by Damian Milton, a groundbreaking classic in the academic discourse about autism.
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What do you say to those who tell you, “You don’t look autistic?” I don’t think I’ve ever been told those exact words, but I’ve often encountered the similar claim that I “seem very functional.” Both are common reactions to autistic people who discover our autism in adulthood, and both are rooted in a lack of understanding about autism. I’ve heard clever responses from other autistics, fighting ignorance with snark. But my goal has always been to bridge the gap, not to drop a mic. With that in mind, I try to treat such statements as opportunities to explain that autism affects me in both visible and invisible ways.
What do you consider a “good day?”
ABOUT ANNIE: Annie Kotowicz is an autistic author on a mission to: ● describe the beautiful view from her brain, ● help other autistics see the beauty of their own brains, and ● show why neurodiversity is a beautiful thing. She studied Art and English at Trinity Western University, which led to various jobs in graphic design, editing, and website development. After an autism diagnosis in 2017, she created the blog Neurobeautiful to process her ongoing discoveries about autism and neurodiversity. Since then, she has become a Chief Technology Officer, Special Education Teacher, and member of Mensa.What I Mean When I Say I’m Autistic is her first book. She has also written articles and poetry for Edutopia, NeuroClastic, and Spaces Literary Journal. Annie is happiest when writing, dancing, practicing parkour, drawing Celtic knots, or organizing her cozy and colorful home near Washington, D.C.
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I feel most alive on days when I have a balance of input and output – or as I prefer to say, inspiration and aspiration. I think creativity requires that ebb and flow, the rhythm of soaking in and pouring out. It’s like breathing, you know? And I love how “inspire” and “aspire” both come from the Latin word for “breathe.”
ARTICLE PHOTOGRAPHY CREDIT: STEPHANIE VADALA PHOTOGRAPHY
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
https://neurobeautiful.com/book/
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CARIDAD
MORO-GRONLIER bY C L I F F O R D B R O O K S
You are a poet who champions the voices of precious youth. How did life hone you to be both poet and public-school teacher? I wouldn’t be a poet or a teacher without the love and support of influential English teachers throughout my life: Mrs. Wolf in 5th grade, Mrs. Webster in 7th, Mrs. Weinstein in 9th, Mrs. Wilson in 10th, and Professor Sheila Post-Laura during undergrad. They instilled in me a love of literature and language that lingers today. They showed me that a profound sentence can change a person’s perspective, paradigm, life! I wanted to affect people the way they affected me, both on the page and on the classroom stage. They taught me who I wanted to be — both as writer and educator — and their influences lurk in every line I write and every student I teach.
What are you reading right now? Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton by Gail Crowther and The Best American Poetry 2023.
How do you flesh out your identity through verse? The poem never lies. No matter what I think I know, I’m constantly surprised by how the truth always reveals itself in verse. When I was writing my poem, “In Defense of My Mother Who Never Bought Me a Barbie Dreamhouse,” I thought I was writing about that coveted house. I scoured the internet for everything I could find about the exact particulars of the Dreamhouse circa 1976, but the poem wasn’t working. Once I surrendered all my preconceived notions about what the poem should be, the miraculous happened — it revealed itself to be more about my young mother doing her best to give me what I most wanted than the toy she couldn’t afford to buy me. That revelation cracked open the poem, as well as my heart.
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Where do you consider home? As the first-generation daughter of Cuban exiles, the notion of home is more a state of mind than an actual geographical location. Less landscape than mindscape, home is an idea, a feeling, a construct that is dependent on memory and nostalgia more than cartography. Because my parents lost their homeland, “home” was wherever “we” were, and that sense of place still applies today. Home is where my wife and son are — whether they are in the same house with me, or off somewhere without me, they are my home.
Does poetry matter? Poetry always matters. It matters because it boroughs in the heart, influences the mind, nestles in the synapses, imprints on the memory. My father doesn’t remember what he ate for dinner, but he can still recite the Lorca he learned as a schoolboy in Cuba. Poetry matters because it endures.
Why was it so moving for you to check out your book from the same library you basically lived in as a child? The only place I was allowed to go unchaperoned was the library. The library taught me to dream, think, analyze, fraternize, pay attention, sit still, be quiet. My idols were writers, so I wanted to be a writer, too, and I never gave up the dream, even when I thought I’d never succeed. On the day I went to the library with my son and saw my name on the spine of a book standing proudly in the stacks, I wept in the very spot where I’d once sat as a girl. It was a triumph; it was an honor.
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Tell us about the book you’ve got out now. Part reckoning, part renewal, part redemption, part rebirth, the poems in Tortillera come clean, but more than that, they guide, reveal, and examine larger considerations: the role of language on gender, the consequences of compulsory heterosexuality, and the patriarchal stamp emblazoned on the Cuban diaspora.
How do you edit your poetry? My wife is my first reader. I give her a copy and read it aloud while she reads along and later gives me feedback. She is not a poet, so her perspective is invaluable. Next, I’ll share the edited draft with a tight group of poetry peeps who provide keen commentary. After that, I’ll wait about a week for the poem (and this poet) to breathe before I decide what to cut, what to keep.
How does teaching influence your creative process? My students are often a source of creative inspiration because there is a poem within every single one of them. I want to reach them, and to do so I must know them. Once I do, they make me take notice, keep me current, and keep me striving to move them, reach them, be that one teacher they will never forget.
How do we follow your radiance online? Keeping up with my online presence isn’t quite my jam, but my twenty-year-old son keeps me honest by scrolling on my socials and reminding me to post.
ABOUT Caridad Caridad Moro-Gronlier is the author of Tortillera (TRP 2021), winner of The TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series: Florida, The 2022 Eric Hoffer Book Award Honorable Mention 2022 First Horizon Award Finalist and 2022 International Latino Book Award Honorable Mention, as well as the chapbook Visionware (Finishing Line Press 2009). She is a Contributing Editor for Grabbed: Poets and Writers Respond to Sexual Assault (Beacon Press, 2020) and Associate Editor for SWWIM Every Day an online daily poetry journal for women identifying poets. Her recent work can be found at America’s Best Poetry Blog, She resides in Miami, Florida with her family.
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the Southern Collective Experience presents
Latin-American POETRY CHAPBOOK CONTEST
OV ERV IE W
W IN N ER S
Entrants must identify as a writer of Latinx, Hispanic and/or Latina/o descent. Former students and close friends of the judges are not eligible.
$300: 1st place and 25 copies $200: 2nd place $100: 3rd place
The entry fee is $25. No more than 20 pages of poetry. A page of acknowledgements and dedication is counted in the 20 pages. Please note in acknowledgements any previously published poems. The contest is blind. Please put your name and contact information in the cover letter, but nowhere on or in the manuscript.
All place-winners will be interviewed in the Blue Mountain Review and on the NPR show, Dante’s Old South. Submission deadline is January 31, 2024. Winner and honorable mention announcements to be made on February 29, 2024.
JUDGE: RICHARD BLANCO
JUDGE: CARIDAD MORO-GRONLIER
Se le cte d by P resi de n t O b a m a a s th e f i f t h i n a u gu r al poet in U .S. h i st o r y , R i c ha rd B l a n c o i s t h e f i r st L a ti n o , imm igran t , a nd g ay p e r s o n to s er v e i n su ch a r o le . B or n in M ad ri d t o Cu ba n ex i le p a re n ts a n d r a i s e d i n M i a mi, t he n ego tia ti o n o f c ul t ura l i de n t i ty c h a r a c ter i z es h i s f i v e c ol lectio n s o f p o et ry . B l a n c o ha s wr i t ten o c c a si o nal p oe m s fo r t he r e- o pe n i n g o f t h e U . S . E m ba ss y i n C u ba, Fr e ed om t o M a rry, t he T e ch Aw a r d s o f S i li c o n V a l l ey, and th e Bo s t o n S t ro ng b en e f i t co n c er t fo l l o w i n g th e B os to n Ma rath o n bo m b i ng s. H e i s a Wo o d r o w W i ls o n F e llo w and h as recei v ed n um e ro u s h o n o r a r y d o c to r a t es . He h as t aug ht a t G eo r get o w n U n i ve r si t y , A me r i c a n U n i ve rsi ty , an d Wes ley a n U ni v e rs i ty . He s e r ve s a s t he f i rs t E duc at ion A m ba ssa do r fo r T he Ac a d e m y o f A m er i c a n P o e ts .
C ar id ad Mor o-G ronl ie r i s th e a uth or o f Tor tillera (TRP 20 21 ) , w in ner o f T he T RP Sout he rn Poet r y Bre ak t hrough S er i es: Fl or id a, The 2 02 2 Eri c Hof f e r Bo ok A ward Honor abl e Me nt i on 2 02 2 Fi rs t Hor iz on Aw ard Fin alist an d 202 2 I nt er nat i onal Lat in o Book A wa rd H onorable M en tio n, as w el l as t h e chapb ook V i sio nw a re ( F i ni s hin g L in e Pr es s 200 9) . S he i s a C on tr i but in g Ed it or f o r G rab bed: Poet s and W ri t ers R es pond t o S exu al Assau lt (Be aco n P res s, 20 20) and As soci at e Ed i tor f or S W WIM E very Day an onl i ne da il y poet ry jour nal f or wome n i d e ntify ing po e ts . H er rec ent w ork c an be f oun d at Ame ri ca’ s B es t Poe try Bl og , S he r e si d es i n Mi ami, F lo ri da w it h h er f ami l y.
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DOROTHEA
LASKY by N I C O L E TA L L M A N
What does your writing life look like? Do you have a particular schedule, habits, or process? My writing life for poetry has always been haphazard. Usually poems happen to me at the most inconvenient of times and I have to rush around trying to write them down before they escape me. I’ve been writing prose lately too and I’ve found that the ideas for prose happen to me in the same way that poems do — in the middle of something else. I’ll have to answer the urgent call and write down whatever language I hear.
I think my happiest moments writing now are a form of generating/editing with these notes or starts of poems. My favorite days are those when I can wake up very early and work on writing where I am in the flow because these initial thoughts are something to work from, rather than something to chase after. I love these writing moments where I know where I am going and yet the language can still surprise me.
How do poems come to you? Do you have any specific muses? I believe that possibly creativity in general, and definitely poetry writing specifically, is a demonic force. This is not to say it is “evil.” Instead it has trickster energy. But like any trickster, I am careful to not pressure poetry or ask for anything too specific from it. I worship poetry and it gives me language when it wants to. I’m really into the dynamic between us, although it isn’t always an easy one.
Your latest book, The Shining, which is absolutely fantastic by the way, is described as an “ekphrastic horror lyric.” Tell us what led you to choose the Overlook Hotel from Stephen King’s The Shining as a subject and ekphrastic horror as your genre of poetic exploration. Thank you so much for reading it and liking it! When I wrote The Shining, I was in a space of self-enforced poetic blockage. I wanted to write prose (and I still do) and was obsessed with learning how to write it well. Poetry is almost like
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my heartbeat by now, and when poems would come to me during this time, I’d push them away. I saw them almost as a nuisance. The Shining has been an obsession of mine for over twenty years. I see the characters within it almost like old friends in my imagination. And so, even though I put all my energy into pushing poetry away, eventually the poems won because they commanded my attention by coming in the form of the hotel characters. It’s almost as if poetry knew I couldn’t resist anything in Shining form. And I couldn’t. So then I had this book.
Have you ever stayed at The Stanley Hotel in Colorado? I’m curious about The Shining Suite. No, but I will soon.
You are one half of the Astro Poets duo, and I’m kind of obsessed with your zodiac guide, chart readings, “The Signs as” Substack posts, and horoscopes. Tell us your sun, moon, and rising signs and how those influence your art. You’ve followed the Astro Poets Substack from the very beginning — thank you! Thank you for putting your encouraging comments on there and just being so wonderful. My sun is Aries, my moon is Scorpio, and my rising is Sagittarius. My moon in Scorpio governs a lot of who I am and I think especially affects my poetry and emotional life. When I really love something, it’s my Scorpio moon loving it. But lately, I’ve been thinking that my Sagittarius rising has influenced my poetic persona a lot and particularly the language it uses.
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All that being said, I think that The Shining is an Aries book. Well, technically it’s a Libra because its birthday is 10/3. But the mood of it is pretty Aries. My love of horror is very Aries, too. I know that my Scorpio moon influences this love, but I think my horror persona is an Aries.
In addition to writing, you also teach at Columbia University. Tell us how teaching fits into your life, and what classes you teach. Education is very important to me and I love my students! Currently, I teach workshops and also seminars to both graduate and undergraduate students. Some of the seminars I have taught are: a class on occult poetry, a class called “Beyond Ekphrasis” that looked at texts that have not been traditionally thought of as ekphrastic, a class on Confessionalism in poetry, and more. My happiest moments teaching are when I do generative exercises with the students and also just generally when I teach seminars. I love turning new and old ideas over and over again in the space of conversation.
PHOTOGRAPHY CREDIT, article and cover: Sylvie Rosokoff
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What are you working on next? Any preview you can give us regarding themes, form, or subject matter? I am working on a novel that explores demonic possession and an essay book about memory. I have finished a couple of poetry books that I hope will be out sooner rather than later, and I am also working on a new poetry book. I just started writing a book of horror stories.
What does a perfect day look and feel like to you? A perfect day for me is free of obligation. I’d wake up early, drink lots of caffeine, and write. Maybe in the early afternoon I’d meet someone I really love at the art museum and write poems or just be one with the art or both. Then I’d go with that friend to eat huge salads outside in the bright sun. We’d also drink really icy water or iced tea with lots of ice cubes and also have lots of fresh fruit to eat, too.
Next I’d go on a long walk with this friend or alone and go home and take a nap after. Once it started getting a little dark out, I’d be somehow magically transported to Italy, LA, or Western Mass (or some combination of these three favorite places) and we’d eat a several course dinner somewhere outside, with sparkling lights. There would be no drama or stress and just like romance everywhere for everything, and then I’d go to sleep without any worry, ready for the next perfect day.
How do we keep up with you online? (Website, social nedia handles, anything else you’d like to promote) Here is a website for The Shining: room237.org My other website is dorothealasky.com. My Substack is dorothealasky.substack.com. I am @dorothealasky on Instagram and Twitter (X). If you like colors and fashion, please visit my Instagram @styleisjoy. A book I edited, called Essays, is also out this fall from Essay Press. It explores the idea of the poet’s essay and includes essays written by poets. You can order it here: https://www.essaypress.org/essays/.
ABOUT DOROTHEA: Dorothea Lasky is the author of seven books of poetry and prose, including The Shining (Wave Books, 2023). She currently teaches poetry at Columbia University School of the Arts.
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PERFUME BY D O R O T H E A L A S KY Pink flamingos meet in the head There was one rose and one violet I kept them so close to me On the tabletop A sense of confusion But I couldn’t stop it, I permitted I let in the odor of another rose Melting into a peony I murdered the hydrangea into tiny petals A vocabulary of bears I crouched down There were so many flowers In the space of the garden I ordered each mouthless opening Until they formed into spirit mouths Birth and death Are not the same thing Every pretty floral is painted On the wall, a key to the whole thing I pressed it and the walls turned around There was wallpaper everywhere It smelled just like the wilderness
(As published in The Shining (Wave Books), and The Rumpus.)
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JENNIFER GRAVLeY by A H N A P H I L L I P S
When and why did you begin to take your own writing seriously, and start investing real time and attention to your craft? I think I always took my writing seriously — probably too seriously — even when I was a kid, but I think my decision to get my MFA in my twenties was a crossroads. I got to step away from having a day job for a few years and be surrounded by people who also cared deeply about craft. Another crossroads was when I kept writing after grad school. No one was waiting for my work anymore, but I kept writing anyway. It feels more consequential to do the work purely for myself and my own enjoyment of growing my craft.
What are the practices you employ to keep yourself motivated to write? Do you have consistent routines, or do you tend to go in seasons of fluctuating creative output? I firmly believe that writers write, but I also firmly believe that writers don’t have to write every day. We have lives outside of writing and most often jobs as well. I do enjoy coworking with my writing friends when I can, and my writer husband and I go to a coffee shop together every Sunday evening for “Submission Sunday,” which started as a time to submit our work and has morphed into a more general catch-all for the tasks of the business-y side of writing.
I do have to say I really loved the time I was at Ragdale [in Lake Forest, Illinois] for a residency. Removed from most of my daily responsibilities, I was able to finish just one long story in my almost-month there, but it was a story I had been working on for years. The time to reflect, to perform experiments, to do the work uninterrupted — that is irreplaceable.
Congratulations on your recent publication, The Story I Told My Mother. It’s a very moving collection of writing, and there is a deeply personal quality to the work. I’m curious what 35
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distinctions you might make between the narrative voice in your work, and your own voice as a person? That’s definitely something I adore playing around with. Writing can provide a distance from the personal, but it can also be an invitation to the personal. I think my narrative voice is much more formal, less sarcastic (though I also find myself less sarcastic as I age), and much sleeker. I think both are me though. My narrative voice is just a filtered me, a type of code switching. I was quite the little perfectionist as a child, and I think writing gives me a chance to dabble in that urge to get things just right. Of course with writing, I get to decide what “just right” is, so maybe that’s cheating a little from the perfectionist standpoint, but it’s extremely satisfying to feel I’ve nailed something nebulous and shifting.
It’s an oft-pondered question these days, but in the age of attention grabs online, reels, and reactions, what do you think poetry does that keeps it relevant and makes it worth a reader’s time? I think poetry taps into a lot of primal energies — the rhythm, the sounds, the images, the carefully chosen words and syntax. It also taps into a lot of things that can result in that same “I feel seen” response as memes, social media posts, etc. Poetry has a way of breaking through our barriers and our ideas about ourselves and the world, and connecting us to something bigger than ourselves and yet contained within all of us. Poetry is magic — now, writing it isn’t! Writing is actual work, but the effect can be awesome, in several senses of the word.
What advice regarding writing or creativity would you like to steer aspiring writers either towards, or away from? I think most writing advice is bogus, unless it happens to ring true to you. That said, I do love to hear/read writers talking about their craft and what drives them, what discoveries they’ve made about themselves or their art/craft/ technique/etc. If you find something that’s applicable to you or your project, that’s great, but if it doesn’t jibe with you, ignore it. Someone else will come along in a minute with a totally different take, and then someone after them — and then one day you with yours! In the meantime and always, surround yourself with talented and kind people. Jennifer Gravley has published widely in such venues as
ABOUT JENNIFER: Southern Poetry Review and North American Review, among others. She has an MFA from the University of Alabama, where she was a winner in the AWP Intro Journals Project in fiction and held a Teaching- Writing Fellowship. She has attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and been awarded a residency from the Ragdale Foundation. Gravley, assistant director of an academic library, hails from the North Georgia mountains and now resides in the middle of the middle of the country with her husband and his plant.
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JUSTIN
HAMM by j. d. i s i p
In your poetry and photography, and in these two projects, the museum of americana and Poet Baseball Cards, you insist on finding “something worth celebrating” in American culture. It’s a thesis, or throughline, which sets your work apart. There’s a positivity to what you do in my reading. How would you put it? What is your “project” so to speak? I’m glad you’ve picked up on how the different endeavors intersect. Of course, I want to be as honest and authentic as possible in whatever work I’m involved with, so I’ve never shied away from criticism of American history or culture, in either my own art or during my original tenure as editor with the museum. I think we all know we can’t be honest without criticism. But I definitely believe honesty means to honor and celebrate what’s worthwhile, too. That’s part of the truth. Bob Dylan says the highest purpose of art is to inspire, and I find I need to be involved in at least some projects that aim to inspire. So, I guess that’s the through line that connects everything. Whether it’s about the Midwest I live in, America as a whole, those in the poetry community, whatever, I just want to make work that inspires people to take a close look around them and see, yes, what’s wrong, but also what’s beautiful, heroic, powerful, silly, endearing, and unsung.
Poet Baseball Cards is such a unique and special project. Like baseball cards of old, you produce these beautiful cards of poets with their “stats” on the back. Of course, people are loving these! You’re on your fourth series as of this writing. Tell our readers a little about your inspiration for the project, the response from poets, and maybe how you choose the poets you include (and it is a range – you have Walt Whitman and Rita Dove alongside many folks not as well known, friends I’ve done readings with!). Baseball has always been a major part of my life. I played until I was a freshman in college. I coached at the high school
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level for years. And I’ve followed professional baseball closely since I was six. I collected baseball cards, too, and have this deep nostalgic love for the old designs. Since I’m in a lot of baseball groups on Facebook where members post vintage cards, I saw an advertisement for the Rookies app, which allows for the design of custom baseball cards. Meanwhile, poets and poetry are in my feed constantly. Seeing that juxtaposition a few times is what generated the idea. At first, I thought maybe I only wanted to make a small set so I could collect them myself. To present-day me, poets are every bit the legends ballplayers were to nine-year-old me. But I posted a couple, and right away everyone showed a lot of interest and–better than that–a lot of joy. So, I ran with it. I love seeing how everyone really takes the time to celebrate the poets when their cards come out. I should say thanks here to Diane Seuss, who was the first “giant name” to agree to be part of the project. She added an immediate legitimacy to what I was doing and made reaching out to others so much easier. Cornelius Eady, too, who agreed right after Diane. There’s a reason for the wide range of poets I’ve chosen. I want to mix well-known poets with poets who deserve to be better known. The hope is someone will buy a series with poets they know but feel intrigued enough to seek out other poets whose cards they own. Every poet chosen has one thing in common, though: I love their work and want to collect their card myself. That’s the criteria. So, in a way it’s a very personal undertaking.
You’re returning to the museum of americana after taking a little time off. Editing a journal is a labor of love, and nobody can really blame the many, many editors who have decided to walk away. What is striking is when an editor returns! What made you decide to come back? And has running a literary journal changed in the decade or so since you started americana? It was a natural move. It was my baby back in the beginning and I spent a long time there. I’ve never stopped being proud of how it has continued successfully publishing for over a decade. Allison Blevins and the rest of the editorial team did a wonderful job of honoring the original vision but also improving and diversifying. When Allison decided to step down, I thought I could in turn repay all those editors and contributors by making sure the journal continues to thrive. I don’t know if running a journal in general has changed since I started, but running the museum has. The organization is much stronger than when I was there before–a testament to Allison and her team. I have pretty big shoes to fill.
I see firsthand working with my friends here at The Blue Mountain Review, and especially with our editor in chief, Cliff Brooks, what it means to be a “good poetry citizen.” You are
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very much a good poetry citizen in my estimation – your projects lift up fellow artists, you’re inspiring (Mr. TED Talk), and you are generous with your talents and time. If you could give advice to poets, fellow artists, especially those just getting started, what would it be? About the writing, the publishing, the networking, the real work of what we all do? J.D., I really appreciate the kind appraisal. I hope being a good poetry citizen is just a byproduct of being a good person in general. It took me years to understand that art isn’t a competition but a way of life, a way of moving through the world. Once my mindset shifted, it was easy to root for other writers and poets. Every time a poet or writer is recognized, it’s a win for what we do. It’s maybe a little easier for me to see it this way because I exist outside of academia, so I don’t have to stress over publication or awards. I’m careful in handing out advice because I think everyone’s path is unique. But I do have a few thoughts on what has worked for me. First of all, the writing is the writing. Do it and do it without any consideration for what comes after. You have to want to do the writing or the rest of it means nothing. It doesn’t matter how or when you get it done. Some people write every day. Some save up and write in bursts. Every method can be successful. Just do it.
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 If you are fortunate enough to publish, either individual poems or books, work for them. Republish them. Read them to friends and family. Share them on social media. Collaborate with an artist friend and make a broadside. Convince someone to put them on the side of a building. Make videos. Make free origami books and give them away. Write them in letters and mail them to strangers. We have to work for our audience. I’m not talking about career advancement like entering contests or things like that. It isn’t about acclaim or recognition. I’m talking about getting your words to readers. There is no shame in hustling up readers. My dad was a self-employed carpenter for almost fifty years. He had to hustle up work. No one would shame him for advertising or trying to get his name out there. He was seen as industrious, a hardworking small business owner. Also, get good at giving readings. Learn to be comfortable in front of an audience. If the work is good and you can frame it in an entertaining or moving way, it will have a big impact on getting your work seen. I do events as often as possible and work to make sure no one leaves one of my events feeling they’ve just had to sit through something boring or stuffy. As for networking, please, just be an authentic fan of literature and writers/poets. Reach out and compliment folks you admire without expectation of what they can do for you. Become friends with people you really want to be friends with. Talk about other things besides writing with them. Tell the world about what you love. In general, don’t think of the relationships you build in the writing community as climbing opportunities. There’s not much to climb for anyway. The relationships and the community are the accomplishments, not the ladders to help us reach the accomplishments.
That is very well said, my friend. Please let our readers know how to follow you online, what you are working on right now, and how they can get their hands on their own copies of Poet Baseball Cards or any of your books, including Drinking Guinness with the Dead (Spartan Press, 2022). My website is justinmm.net I’m on Facebook as Justin Hamm Poet and Photographer. On Instagram and Threads, I’m @midwesternscribbler On X, I’m MdwstScribbler On all platforms you can search Poet Baseball Cards and find that project. the museum is at themuseumofamericana.net Message me on any of these platforms to pick up a signed copy of Drinking Guinness With the Dead.
About JUSTIN: Originally from the flatlands of central Illinois, Justin Hamm now lives near Twain territory in Missouri. He is the author of four books of poetry, Drinking Guinness Dead: 2007-2021, The Jared BeloffWith is thethe author ofPoems WHO WILL CRADLE Inheritance, American Ephemeral, and YOUR HEAD (ELJ Editions, 2023). He is the editor of Lessons inpoetry Ruin,anthology, and a bookMarvelous of photographs the Marvel-inspired Verses entitled Midwestern. Justin the foundingfor (Daily Drunk, 2021), and has been a is peer-reviewer and returning editor of work the museum of Whale Road Review since 2021. His can be found americana: a literary review and the creator at Night Heron Barks, Barren Magazine, River Mouth Poet Baseball Cards, both of which we are He Review, TheofShore, Contrary Magazine and elsewhere. discussing in this interview. lives and teaches high school English in Queens, New York, with his wife and their two daughters.
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LYNNE KEMEN BY J. D. I S I P
One of the things I love about Shoes for Lucy is the story-like quality of your collection. Poems, even the very spare ones, contain whole stories and multiple characters. You’re playing with genre, somewhere between poetry and fiction. Charles Jensen calls this kind of writing Genre Bending. I like that. I love all kinds of writing and forms–it’s a chance to play, contort yourself into a particular kind of pattern and figure out how to write within that constraint.
In pieces like “Nuns in an Egg” and “The Best Advice,” you take sayings and aphorisms, and you try to dissect them, even turn them on their heads. That’s the way my brain works. I love word play. Some words are delicious to say, to roll around in my mouth. I was just talking with a friend about how we both like to describe scudding clouds. Other words are distasteful to say, like eutrophication. It’s mostly about how the words feel when I say them. I like to use words, turn them around, use something that sounds like the word but has another meaning. My neurons are firing away and making new patterns. I guess that’s my sense of humor.
It makes me think of how poets handle “wisdom” – or whatever it is we’ve been taught or pick up on our own. Regarding such wisdom, what do you think our poems should be doing? What should we, as poets, be passing on, if anything? I call one of my poems “Breaking Free of Mary Oliver”. Mary Oliver, Carl Phillips, Ellen Bass, Mark Doty, Robert Pinsky, Robert Frost – I have so many favorite writers. It’s not just poets – Richard Russo and Elizabeth Stroud are wonderful. I admire writers who can surprise me. Tom Stoppard’s plays and his own use of wordplay always delight me. As writers, I believe we each try to interpret the world in our own way and share it with our readers. It’s a kind of storytelling. If we’re lucky, we write something that makes the reader care.
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This collection contains several ekphrastic pieces including ones about famous works by Mondrian and Van Gogh. These are interspersed between poems about places in New York – a general store, a high school. What is your poetry telling us about observation, art, and appreciation? In writing these poems, what did you learn about these things? Ekphrastic poetry was invented by ancient Greeks. It was a way of describing things they saw in their travels. Post cards and iPhones weren’t there, so they wrote descriptions to send back. It can work with a piece of art, sculpture but also with dance and music. I love to try to climb inside a song. I must have listened to Pete LaRocca’s "Lazy Afternoon" hundreds of times. And then I listen to other musicians play their interpretation of it. Each artist shades their work a little differently. My background is in English, theatre, and psychology. It’s all about observation and trying to interpret and understand people and how they work. I love to peopleand -animal watch.
With a chapbook under your belt, and now a full-length collection, what advice would you have for writers who want to publish their own collections? Write and write and write. The same applies to reading. Oh, and then go out and watch the world. Walking can be wonderful for thinking and observing. Reading your work aloud is useful–if you run out of breath or stumble in a spot, that’s a clue that you should work on that part to fix it. Sometimes, a long run-on sentence can make you breathless and convey the mood.
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If you want to publish your collection, first submit lots of individual pieces to journals. Don’t be crushed if you get rejected. If you receive constructive criticism, use it to rewrite. Remember that it’s your poem. You can end up with a mess if you try to put in every suggestion that people make. Many of us find our collections by spreading our poems out on the floor and seeing which belong together. I have poems that “talk to each other” either on the same subject or mood. And I also like to mix things up. You can think of a book of poetry as a meal. You don’t want all spice or all dessert or the same texture or color.
Finally, as a fellow contributing editor for The Blue Mountain Review, please share with our readers what you look for in submissions? It’s not a formula. When you know, you know. I love something that immediately engages me, that is thoughtful. Sounds are important to me and I’m working to put more music in my own writing. I primarily read essays for BMR, but it’s the same for anything I read. I want to be engaged, to have a description that I can think about and if the writer does all the work by simply telling the reader, that’s not as compelling.
And please let them know what you are working on. I am working on my next full-length book of poetry. I hope I can keep writing and keep publishing. I stopped writing for nearly fifty years, so I feel that I need to make up for lost time. I am so grateful for friends, mentors, teachers who inspire me and encourage me to keep writing.
Please let our readers know how they can get their hands on Shoes for Lucy (I am positive there’s a link in this issue of The Blue Mountain Review but go ahead and share it again here). The book is available from Amazon or from your local bookstore. I’m on Facebook (Lynne Kemen Author), X, formerly Twitter (@psychadv), Instagram (@lynnekemen) and my webpage is https://lynnekemen.com/
ABOUT LYNNE: Lynne Kemen lives in Upstate New York. Her chapbook, More Than a Handful was published in 2020. Her work is anthologized in Seeing Things (2020) and What We See on Our Journeys (2021). She is published in The Ekphrastic Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and Blue Mountain Review. Lynne stands on the Board of Bright Hill Press. She is an Editor for the Blue Mountain Review and a lifetime member of The Southern Collective Experience. Lynne’s full-length poetry collection, Shoes for Lucy, was published by our own SCE Press this fall, and it is the focus of this interview.
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“My work is about bringing to light the women ancestors whose strength flows through us all” klookinghorse.com
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MEILANI CLAY by C A R M E N AC E V E D O B U T C H E R
After helping your Bay Area team take the top prize at the Poetry Grand Slam Finals held at the Apollo Theater in New York City, you have become a well-known figure in the Bay Area poetry scene and elsewhere, reading recently at the Lincoln Center in NYC, at San Francisco’s City Lights Books for its 70th anniversary poetry reading, at SF Public Library, and at many others. How have your deep roots in Oakland and in the Bay Area poetry community influenced your path as a poet? I appreciate the generosity of referring to me as well-known. I’m not sure what path I would be on if not for growing up in the Bay Area poetry scene. Even my connection in college to the DC poetry scene was facilitated by meeting a fellow poet who had on my alma mater’s sweatshirt at the NYC Brave New Voices festival that you mentioned in your question. The Bay taught me the importance of finding your own voice and style, of being inspired by but not envious of your fellow artist, and in the circles I was rolling in, how critical it is to learn to “walk the talk” so to put it. Not to say we don’t have our share of imposters, but I felt like I always had to be authentic.
Your full-length collection of poetry, and the creek don’t rise, was the winner of the 2021 Michael Rubin Book Award from San Francisco State University’s Fourteen Hills Press, and your work has also appeared in Patrice Lumumba: An Anthology of Writers on Black Liberation, and elsewhere. Has your work as an educator influenced your poetry, and when readers engage with your poems, what do you hope they learn and/or experience? My work as an educator encourages me to constantly confront and refine my values, judgments, aspirations, and what I want for my community and the world. I write to communicate all of these things, and so what I write about shifts as my pedagogy evolves. When I share my writing, I hope that people learn something about themselves. When people share the lines that stood out to them or their reaction after engaging with a poem, I experience it as them sharing some part of themselves that could have lived or written or wondered about that same thing. I appreciate the way people go “oh, that line, mmph,” and there’s not even really an explanation but still I understand what they mean. I write to provide that for myself and just hope that other people can come along.
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If a book of your poems became an artifact that someone discovered fifty years from now, what would it inform that generation about this time period? Putting aside that fifty years from now feels almost insurmountable to imagine, I think my poems would inform a future generation of the fact that not all of us were hopeless (which contradicts how pessimistically I started, I know), not all of us stopped believing in joy, and not all of us were full of vitriolic ignorance. This book of poems would inform them that a great number of us got busy with more than writing poems when it came to the fall (because it all is falling), and someone caring about poems in fifty years will just be proof of how well we overcame.
How do you take care of yourself while writing, especially when the topics get heavy? I’m a big fan of walking away. While I no longer believe I need to wait for some mystic inspiration to write, I still don’t force myself through material that I simply need to walk away from. I’ve learned that some pieces take more lived experience or precision of craft than I currently have, and so I leave them alone to go do the living or studying and come back able to work with the page instead of against it. Sometimes it’s not more knowledge or experience that I need, but just the shift that can come from getting a night’s sleep.
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What are you working on now that you would like to share with us, or any events coming up, and how do we keep up with you online? I’m headed into the last few semesters of my MFA in Poetry at SF State and have mostly turned my attention to working on my thesis, which will be a cross-genre exploration of a topic I’m still refining. I just know I want to explore mythology and memory and don’t want to limit it to one genre. In October I’m at LitQuake in San Francisco on the 15th and the Writer’s on the Edge series at CSU Monterey Bay on the 26th. I post performances and publications on my Instagram @meiclaywrites.
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About MEILANI: Meilani Clay is a writer, mama, and educator from Oakland, California. Her work has appeared in Nomadic Press’s Patrice Lumumba: An Anthology of Writers on Black Liberation, and online literary journal The Ana. Her debut poetry collection, and the creek don’t rise, was the winner of the 2021 Michael Rubin Book Award from San Francisco State University’s Fourteen Hills Press. A graduate of Howard University, the University of San Francisco’s Urban Education and Social Justice program, and a current MFA Poetry candidate at San Francisco State University, Meilani aspires to be in school forever, to bridge worlds with her words, and to one day build forts out of books written by Black folks.
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MONI BASU
by LY N N E K E M E N
Welcome! I want to start by asking about a quote of yours “I like to tell extraordinary stories about ordinary people.” I worked for almost 20 years for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where I matured as a reporter and editor; and I covered presidential elections, earthquakes, and hurricanes, you name it. I covered the biggest stories of the day. And I always thought you had to write these sweeping stories as a news reporter. In Iraq, I realized that when you focus on one person, when you narrow the lens, it deepens the story. I learned how to tell stories through one ordinary person who readers could connect with in some way; I learned how to tell stories that evoke empathy. People tend to remember those stories. You can’t just get stories like that from a 10-minute interview. I’m asking people to share their lives with me. That means I want to come sit on your couch for the next seven days and see what’s happening in your household. So trust is important. The two things we talk about in narrative journalism is, first of all, you have to have a great idea, but then the second step is to find someone to tell that story through. But how do you gain access to that person? Well, they have to trust you.
These days, you are Director, MFA in Narrative Nonfiction & Charlayne Hunter-Gault Writer in Residence, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia. Tell us about your program. The program is housed in a school of journalism. And so one thing that is really stressed to the students is that everything must be grounded in truth and fact. This is not a fiction program; it’s a narrative nonfiction program. And as such, students have to learn how to be strong reporters, because the truth of the matter is you can’t ever write what you don’t know. We have a wide variety of students because we’re a low-residency program. Some folks are journalists. I mean, I would say a good majority of our students have some background in journalism. But some people have come into this program who have never done a single interview in their lives, and it’s up to us to teach them the mechanics of doing a good interview — how to be prepared for one, how to ask questions that give you high-yield answers.
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The two components of our program that I cherish the most are the diversity and the fact that it’s a really nurturing community. Once you’re in the program, you have adopted a community for life, a writing community for life.
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What do you read and what do you listen to? I read both fiction and nonfiction, but I think I read more nonfiction usually. I read the books with my students, and often they’ll pick books that I had not ever read, Most recently I read All That She Carried, or Diary of a Misfit. I read a lot of poetry. I’m from India, so I also read a lot of Indian literature and Indian poetry written in the vernacular, not even in English. I’m from the state of West Bengal. Bengali literature and poetry is beautiful. In India, even a lot of the English-language writers have come from Bengal. I also read a lot of English language South Asian literature. It’s very comforting for me to read about the places that I know and the culture that I know best. I also listen to a lot of podcasts. I’m always asking my friends to tell me about a podcast that they really like, especially my audio journalist friends, because I think some podcasts succeed in great audio storytelling. I also find it fascinating to read stories that have been written in text form, in print form, but there’s been an audio version of the story that’s been told in a totally different way. And it’s very interesting for me to compare why the audio version tells the story in this way versus the print version. I think that can be instructive to my own writing.
Moni, thank you for your time. Where can we find you on social media? I have a Facebook page, a professional page. And I’m active on Instagram. I’m EvilReporterChick. That was my Army moniker, And I used to write a blog that was called Evil Reporter Chick when I wrote from Iraq. It’s since migrated to monibasu.com.
About MONI: Moni Basu is the director of the MFA in Narrative Nonfiction and the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of Georgia. She is an award-winning journalist who has worked at CNN, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and various other news outlets. Born in Kolkata, India, Basu grew up straddling two cultures. As such, her work has explored issues of race and identity. She has also reported exhaustively on trauma and resilience, focusing on stories from South Asia and the Middle East. Her 2012 e-book, Chaplain Turner’s War grew from a series of stories on an Army chaplain in Iraq. A platoon sergeant named her “Evil Reporter Chick,” which became the name of her blog, and she was featured once as a war reporter in a Marvel comics series.
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T he U ni v er si t y of Geo r gia ’s lo w -re s ide ncy M a ste r of F i ne
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NICOLE TALLMAN by
C A R I DA D M O R O - G R O N L I E R
What books are you reading right now? Way too many to list here, but everything I’m reading right now is Sylvia Plath. I’m re-reading her Collected Poems; I’m re-reading Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark, which I think is the best biography I’ve ever read, period. I’m all things Sylvia right now, for research purposes. I’m trying to get back into her headspace for a horror novel I’m working on.
If you could have a conversation with any writer living or dead, who would it be and what would you ask them? My answer is going to be so obvious here, but it’s Sylvia Plath. You know, there weren’t a lot of interviews of her published when she was alive, so I’d really like to ask her about craft. I’d like to ask her how she approaches her poems, how she works each poem. She didn’t talk a whole lot about craft, but toward the end of her life she gave an interview in which she said that the poems in her first book of poetry, The Colossus, bored her. She said she couldn’t stand the poems anymore because she’d learned that she must read her poems out loud for them to sound right, and she hadn’t done that with The Colossus because she had written those poems specifically for the page. Sylvia applied that lesson to the Ariel poems, of which she said something along the lines of, “I must say them out loud, I must sing them! I’m in love with these poems because I can hear them now.” That really stuck with me because you can hear the musicality evolve between The Colossus and Ariel, and that was her craft taking shape. That interview was an important lesson for me — if you’re going to write the poems down, you have to say them aloud because otherwise you’re missing so much of it.
You are organizing a literary dinner party. Who do you invite? Well, I think six-eight people is the perfect number for a dinner party, so I’m going to keep it small. Are you ready for this? I’m going to say you, me, and Richard (Blanco) along with Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and George Starbuck. We
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would have dinner at The Ritz in Boston, where they used to have their three martini afternoons, but we’re going to bring Richard as our date because he would keep George entertained so that we can talk to Sylvia and Anne. I’m keeping it to six because I don’t want anyone to share Sylvia’s attention with anyone!
What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? That’s a tough question, but probably on classes and workshops. I’m fortunate to have been able to take classes taught by writers I’ve always wanted to study with. Workshops with writers like Alex Dimitrov, Richie Hofmann, Jericho Brown, Victoria Chang, Patricia Smith, and Dorianne Laux. Any time that I get a chance to take a workshop with a writer I admire, to me, that’s money well spent.
What did you edit out of the book? My books didn’t have much breathing room — any of them — because I wrote them rapid fire. Yet, when I went back (during the editing process) there were a few things I took out, out of deference to my dad, who’s still alive. I was a little bit careful and deleted some things that might have been too revelatory in a way that might embarrass him. If I’m honest though, I added more to the book than I took out. When I was working on my first book, Something Kindred, I sent the manuscript to Maureen Seaton, who suggested the book was less about the pandemic and more about my experience of processing my mother’s death. I then took out almost all the pandemic poems and focused more on the grief aspect of my mother’s death. When I sent Poems for the People to my publisher (Clifford Brooks), he said, “I love it! I want ten more poems!” And I ended up writing them at The Betsy — shout out to The Betsy Writer’s Room Residency! — to add to the manuscript. And with FERSACE, the publisher (Ariana Den Bleyker) felt that the narrative of the book was a little loose and she wanted me to find a way to make it a bit tighter, so I wrote more poems to make it more cohesive, which led me to reorganize the manuscript by using seasons and incorporating Ouija board symbology to underscore the act of communicating with the dead.
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What do the words “writer’s block” mean to you? I don’t understand them because I’ve never had it. I don’t mean that to sound obnoxious, but I’m the type of person who things are always coming to, and I don’t believe in writer’s block. I believe more that if you’re having a hard time writing, then maybe you just don’t know the subject well enough. There have been times when I’ve been procrastinating about starting something and I must ask myself why, and again, maybe it’s because I’m not comfortable with the topic, but I don’t suffer from writer’s block. I’ve never had the luxury of being able to have it because I’m a writer by profession and I get paid for it, so if I must write a speech in an hour, I have to crank something out. That doesn’t mean that the first draft is always good, but I force myself to write something.
What does literary success look like to you? Success is a word I struggle with a lot. I think if people are reading my poems or my writing in general, that’s a degree of success because I’ve reached readers. It’s a bonus if I’ve touched people in some way, but even having the luxury to have your work out there is a success. Having active readers is a success. Of course, I would love to win big awards because I’d love to have a big publisher, and I’d love to publish poems in The New Yorker and The Paris Review, for example, but is all of that necessary to be considered a successful writer? To some degree, in my mind, success is having achieved certain accolades, having a renowned publisher, but I’m not there, yet. That’s not to say that I’m completely unsuccessful because I have published poems and people are reading my work, but I definitely don’t think I’ve reached the height of success because it’s often measured in awards, like the Pulitzer or a Lambda or a Nobel, as well as in who’s publishing your books and poems. For example, when Maureen Seaton died, The New York Times didn’t run her obituary even though she was a greatly loved, highly accomplished poet who won the Iowa Poetry Prize and published two dozen books! Yet, when Louise Glück died, there was an instant obituary in the NYT, tributes, mourning, and everyone was talking about it because fame or success is measured in a certain way in every industry, including the industry of poetry.
If you had the opportunity to travel anywhere for a year while writing a book that took place in that same setting, where would it be and why? Without hesitation, I’m going to Paris! And although my heart belongs to Provence, I say Paris because there’s a lot of literary inspiration there, including the women of the Left Bank. I’ve been fascinated specifically with Natalie Barney, Renée Vivien (Pauline Tarn), Colette and Gertrude Stein. More than research, I’d go there to excavate all those treasures left by the Women of the Left Bank, that whole movement, and to learn more about Camille Claudel and Adèle Hugo.
How do you handle negative reviews? Well, I’d have to get one first to know how to react to it! That may sound cocky, but it’s the truth. I’ve never had a negative review. (Knock on wood.) Then again, I haven’t been publishing that long. I think that if someone has something bad to say about my work, that’s their prerogative. What can I do? I would probably just say, “Wow, that hurt my feelings,” but really, if people are saying negative things about your work, that means they’re paying attention, which means you’ve actually kind of made it, right?
Does writing energize or exhaust you, or both? It never exhausts me; writing energizes me 100%. If I’m tired, I’m tired for another reason and not because I’ve been writing a poem. I’m exhausted by pulling myself in 10 different directions. I’m exhausted by other aspects of my job at times, but the exhaustion doesn’t come from my creative writing. On the contrary, when I am writing creatively, I am exhilarated and energized.
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FALL BY N I C O L E TA L L M A N Fall — died on January 3, 2006, when I officially moved to Florida. Fall was my mother’s favorite season before she died. I think it was probably mine, too. But I’m no longer sure what I love. Do I just love everything that my mother did? The leaves falling from trees turning blue.
They say blue is the warmest color, but I say it’s orange. My mother painted so many stills of trees. She said her favorite color was red, but she painted all the leaves bright orange. I never asked her why. I was too selfabsorbed to ask her much of anything.
When my friend L mailed me two of my dead mother’s paintings, I cried for days. All the bright orange I remembered had faded to brown. My mother hated brown. I fingered the canvases of our past for clues. They told me to look inside.
(First published in HAD, and later published in FERSACE.)
ABOUT NICOLE: Nicole Tallman is a poet, writer, and editor. Born and raised in Michigan, she lives in Miami and serves as the official Poetry Ambassador for MiamiDade County, Editor of Redacted Books, Poetry and Interviews Editor for The Blue Mountain Review, and Associate Editor for South Florida Poetry Journal. She is the author of Something Nicole Tallman is a poet, writer, and Kindred and Poems for the People (The editor. Born and raised in Michigan, Southern Collective Experience (SCE) she lives in Miami and serves as the Press), and her latest book is FERSACE, official Poetry Ambassador for Miout now from ELJ Editions. Find ami-Dade County, Editor of Redacted her on social media @natallman and Books, Poetry and Interviews Editor nicoletallman.com. for The Blue Mountain Review, and Associate Editor for South Florida Poetry Journal. She is the author of Something Kindred and Poems for the People (The Southern Collective Experience (SCE) Press), and her
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the redheaded stepchild
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
a home for rejected poems The Redheaded Stepchild only accepts poems that have been rejected by other magazines.
We publish biannually, and we accept submissions in the months of August and February only. We do not accept previously published work. We are open to a wide variety of poetry and hold no allegiance to any particular style or school.
visit www.redheadedmag.com for more information & submissions 58
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Oliver DE LA PAZ by
C L I F F O R D B R O O K S
Oliver de la Paz: What is “home” to you? How does place factor into your poetry? That’s, honestly, my key obsession — it’s the thing I’m trying to figure out, and I feel that I’ve been writing about this very question for years, either in the form of poems or short essays. My book Requiem for the Orchard was really about interrogating the place that made me who I became. And whether or not that’s “home” for me is still in dispute. I’m quick to point out that I’m an Oregonian, but I honestly haven’t been back there for years.
Was there ever a time you nearly abandoned poetry? If so, what pulled you back from the edge? No, I’ve never abandoned it. I’ve taken breaks. I’m not always writing or reading poems, but I am taking in the world. One of my teachers who recently passed, Norman Dubie, took a break from writing books for about ten years. He used that time to meditate and to rest and then, when I started studying with him, he had a sudden and urgent output of books. I’m never worried about not writing poems. I think they’ll always be there for me.
How does your family influence your creative output? So in 2007 I was diagnosed with thyroid and parathyroid cancer and I was really really worried. My wife was expecting our first son and so I suddenly had a vast amount of urgency to write. I think now my obligation to write stems from my need to tell my kids about who their grandparents were and why we are where we are. The writing years with children have been pretty fruitful in this regard.
Few talk about the importance of exercise in relation to sanity and creativity. What does exercise do for you? I’m a gym rat. I love exercise and I often take walks or go to the local Y to shove around iron. I spend so much time in the day in my headspace that it’s sometimes good to take a break from that space. So I’ll walk the dogs. I’ll concentrate on exercising. I have no goals when I do these activities other than to wear my body down a bit, which makes my brain tired. And that’s a necessary thing for an over-analyzer like myself.
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Music permeates every word you splash down. What does music do for you? I write poems to music. Usually stuff without lyrics. I try to ride the wave of a rhythm or a beat sometimes when I write. And much of the time when I’m drafting I’m just putting together sentences that sound good. Eventually I can craft meaning. Often that drafting process is to music in the background.
What music are you into? Oh, everything. When I lived in Los Angeles in the early 90’s, I was friends with DJ’s for KXLU which was the campus indie radio station. So they’d introduce me to a lot of punk, grunge, and eclectic stuff. I went to so many concerts when I was in my young 20’s — saw one of 10,000 Maniacs last performances with Natalie Merchant as the lead singer. I saw the Drummers of Burundi and Sheila Chandra perform. I got to hear John Prine at the Pantages Theater. I’ve seen Diana Ross perform. I’m all over the map.
What are you reading now? Just finished Mahogany Brown’s exquisite Chrome Valley as well as Katie Farris’s Standing in the Forest of Being Alive. On my bookshelf is Nathan McClain’s Previously Owned.
Gaming is one of your guilty pleasures. How do they help you chill and which ones are your favorite? Right now I’m playing Diablo IV because it’s mindless. But I was also playing Baldur’s Gate III because it’s a fantastic story. I was into sports games for awhile but I grew out of that because they became too repetitive. I’m terrible at Overwatch 2 but I play it with fellow poet Gary Jackson. He and I are poet-gaming buddies.
How do you approach the editing process of new poems? I edit as I write. I used to keep a notebook and write freehand and all that but after having kids I didn’t have time to transcribe from the notebook to the computer. And on top of that I had/have
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daddy-brain which means that I’m pulled in a million different directions and so, even though I’m fairly organized and on top of things, there’s always the chance of a slip up. I read all my lines aloud as I’m composing, and I try different permutations of line breaks as I do that. Sometimes I’ll recite lines as I walk dogs or do groceries. I don’t save drafts. I used to, but I edit as I go on the laptop. And it has lead to some moments of regret and loss, but that’s part of my process — trying to recover something that, a moment ago was a spark of something.
When do you consider a poem, and a collection of them, “done”? When I’m tired of it. Ha! I quit working on some poems by working on others, so they’re not really “done” ever. In fact, I’ll make changes to things mid-reading when I’m doing readings in support of published books. I’m a serial reviser, so sometimes what you get during a reading may differ from what you get in the book slightly.
How can we find and follow you online? I’m on so many platforms. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (I refuse to call it X), Threads, and Bluesky. I have a TikTok account but I never post.
ABOUT oLIVEr: Oliver de la Paz is the author and editor of seven books. His latest collection of poetry, The Diaspora Sonnets, was published by Liveright Press (2023). In 2023 he was appointed as the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA. He is a founding member of Kundiman and he teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at PLU.
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robert bensen by
LY N N E K E M E N
After retiring from teaching undergraduate students at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, you started a writer’s workshop for adults through Bright Hill Press and Literary Center (Seeing Things is in its tenth iteration) Please tell us your thoughts about both experiences. The Bright Hill workshop was a brave new world, to have such accomplished poets in it. It’s my second community workshop. Forty years previously, I founded the Red Herring Poets in Urbana, Illinois. I enjoy rooms full of bright faces of all ages. College students are mostly at one stage in their development. Poets in community workshops have vastly different preparation and experience — and are often highly motivated.
We’ve had long talks about how poets read their works. How do you read your work and what can you suggest for other poets? Embody the poem, inhabit it, let the poem speak through you, don’t let the text stand between you and the audience. Speak to the farthest persons and those drifting away. Know the poem practically by heart. Take acting and voice classes. Break out of your poem-reading voice. Get the audience connected to you. Make them laugh and surprise them and get them on your side, and then if you lose them, it’s your fault. The reading can be either a live creative performance space or dull as paper. I’ve done the latter so I try for the former.
When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? At our junior college in Joliet, Illinois, I became friends with Tom Bojeski (who published as Thomas James). Tom was already a considerable poet. He made writing a way forward. His cult-classic Letters to a Stranger is a must-read.
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Derek Walcott also had a huge impact on you. In 1974 a former teacher at the University of Illinois gave me his review of Another Life by Derek Walcott. Here was a poet of ambition and talent commensurate with John Milton, whose work I’d studied for four years. Walcott was the first poet I brought when I came to Hartwick in 1978. He would visit Hartwick at least 25 times in the next four decades. He wrote The Ghost Dance, a play for our theatre students. He brought me to study — and teach — West Indian literature, taking students to St. Lucia, Trinidad, and Venezuela, which he facilitated. Through Derek I made friends with many, many Caribbean writers, I’m happy to say. Anyone who came within a few feet of Derek would be under his spell and influence. He was criticized for sounding like his mentor Robert Lowell. He countered by asking how anyone who knew Lowell could NOT be influenced by him. I can say as much about Walcott.
Who are your favorite writers/poets? Walcott, Seamus Heaney, John Milton, John Donne, Carter Revard, Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, Anne Sexton, James Welch, Earl Lovelace, Jamaica Kincaid, Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel García-Márquez, Baudelaire, Michael Schmidt, Neruda, Césaire, and many, many younger writers as well.
You have a new book out, What Lightning Spoke. It’s a gorgeous book. Can you tell us about it? Charlie Bremer’s encaustic photo-painting on the cover is gorgeous. The image is of a very old and shapely bottle, etched and painted with dazzling colors. The form of the bottle holding that crazed energy is a visual metaphor for poetry. The book contains selections from six previous books, a book of new poems, and translations from four languages. (Note: Charles Bremer was interviewed in the previous issue of The Blue Mountain Review).
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Besides an educator and a poet, you are also an editor and a publisher. You have experienced writing from so many different sides. What would you like a writer to know? I teach because I write, not the other way around. I was once told there is writing and the business of writing. Do both and neglect neither. Treat editors well, especially those who reject your work. Keep sending work to editors until they can learn how to read you. As Charlie Brown said to Snoopy, “Editors are sort of human too.”
What are the worst things that editors have said about your poems when they rejected them? The worst was that each poem seemed written by a different person. I thought that was the idea! For a couple years I tried for consistency in form, voice, and subject. Then I was told they were repetitious and boring. I went back to writing poems by different people.
What are your favorite non-literary things to do? Cook, eat. Go to the post office. Loiter. Carve wood. I used to have an old Triumph motorcycle to keep alive. I collect old handwriting.
How do we reach you on social media? I have a Facebook page, but pay no attention to it. My webpage is https://robertbensen.com/
ABOUT ROBERT: Robert Bensen’s seventh book of poems is What Lightning Spoke: New & Selected Poems (2022). He taught and directed the writing programs at Hartwick College from 1978-2017. Poems and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Callaloo, The Caribbean Writer, Native Realities, AGNI, Poetry Wales, Ploughshares and other journals. His writing has earned awards from the NEA, NEH, Newberry Library, NYSCA, Harvard University, and NY State Fair. He conducts the Seeing Things Poetry Workshop at Bright Hill Literary Center and directs Woodland Arts Editions. More info @ www.RobertBensen.com
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vernon
TREY KEEVE I I I by
C A R M E N AC E V E D O B U T C H E R
You’re originally from Virginia, have spent years teaching in Oakland, California, and are also now a graduate student in New York at Columbia. How have your developmental years and this interplay of geographies and cultures shaped you as a writer? Virginia is definitely where I became a writer. I don’t think a person can grow up in a place like Fredericksburg, Virginia, and not develop some affection for history. Of course, a lot of the history glorified in that place is steeped in imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy — but I always looked for the narratives of resistance in those places. Narratives of Black people doing great things throughout time, and Fredericksburg, Virginia, has a strong history of Black resiliency. When I was in undergrad and decided to focus on writing, it was originally to write fiction. I still enjoy mixing history and speculative fiction. I was very much inspired to write this based on what I was learning about southern history as a growing observer in the South. I moved to California to get my MFA in writing at California College of the Arts (CCA). Luckily, CCA allowed me to explore different genres. I entered the program still hoping to become a fiction writer, but Professors Al Young and Ishmael Reed really pushed me to write more poetry. California pushed me to write more poetry, because it gave me distance from what my life in the South was–which helped me write about it. I was no longer immersed in it, so I could visualize it differently. Poetry felt like a safe space to explore the trauma I experienced there, because I was able to capture moments. I wasn’t ready or equipped to write about it in longhand. Being back on the east coast now has been a wild experience. It has allowed me to reflect on my father’s death in a different light, especially when I drive to Virginia and I’m in landscapes that I traversed with my father as a younger person, and that has allowed me to think about the good times I had with my father, as well as remember more of the moments that made our relationship difficult and complex and beautiful. My migrations have allowed me to reflect on it and see it in ways I was unable to when I was in it–and that gives me a lot to write about. It’s surely helping me write my way through this doctorate program, but I honestly cannot wait to return to Oakland and teach again.
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Your full-length collection of poetry, Southern Migrant Mixtape, received the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and much acclaim. It’s a vulnerable and moving work. Can you tell us more about it and what you want readers to take away from it? Vulnerability is what I want people to take away from it. Getting people to open up and be vulnerable drives both my teaching and my writing. I found safe writing spaces in which to be vulnerable in undergrad. Those spaces made college make sense for me. The poetry workshops I encountered in undergrad had all of us sharing deeply personal works. I always liked being in community with poets. I want people to write the stuff that hurts. I know it is hard to share that work. I know that work is deeply personal and painful and it feels unshareable. But I want more writers to share it. Because it has a way of freeing a person of the things that haunt them, and it also connects you with people who relate to the work so you don’t feel alone. I’ve lost count of the people who’ve approached me after sharing something deeply personal and who engage me in a conversation about how they related to my work — and how it helped them write through their own trauma. The bulk of my teaching was done with expelled youth. There was a great calling in that work to model vulnerability and to create safe spaces for students to be vulnerable in asking questions or writing. My entire journey through writing and teaching has shown me that expressing vulnerability has the potential to build and connect communities in ways that can truly change the world in the ways in which I would like to see it change. I strive to create learning spaces where my students feel safe enough to be vulnerable — to be themselves — and to heal. Education has the power to heal when it is not centered in exceptionalism.
What projects are you working on that we should be aware of, and how do we keep up with you online? Most of my writing these days is for school; however, I am still writing creative works. I got two poems published in the English Journal this year which are products of me diving
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into poetic inquiry — which is a framework for creating poetry from qualitative data. I am still slowly writing a novel that speculates what my father would’ve looked like if he was afforded safe spaces in his lifetime. My father was a very guarded man. I do remember moments when he was vulnerable, but they were very few and far between — which might be one of the reasons I am the total opposite.
ABOUT TREY: Vernon (Trey) Keeve III is a doctoral candidate in the Teaching of English Program at Columbia University, Teachers College. They previously taught in a continuation school in Oakland, California. Their book Southern Migrant Mixtape (Nomadic Press) was the recipient of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award in 2019.
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I have also started a document that I consider to be the sequel to Southern Migrant Mixtape. I currently have it titled as The Interludes, and it speaks to the world I am living in now — a world without my father in it. I am hoping this project shows how complicated grief is. If anyone does wish to keep up with the many projects I am working on, feel free to email me at thirdvernon@gmail.com.
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
CHRISTOPHER SWANN
Photo by: Steve Pelosi
AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR, GEORGIA AUTHOR OF THE YEAR
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"Christopher Swann never disappoints . . . A must read." —J. T. Ellison, New York Times bestselling author
SHE'S A WEAPON FORGED IN THE FIRES OF HER PAST
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christa wells by a l i c i a b l u e
You released an album this year titled “Redwood”. The title track deals with the very human trap of falling into “playing it small”. Obviously Redwoods are ancient, tall, strong and beautiful. Where did the motivation to write this come from? Is it personal based off of a particular experience? Redwood was definitely inspired by my own experience. I had so much fear about being seen, even as I went about creating a vocation that relied on being seen and heard. That fear makes you shrink from opportunities and invitations and makes life and work so hard. But I also saw this tendency in my mother, so I thought of her as I wrote. As a creative coach and facilitator, I have seen how artists hold back because of this unconscious fear. It’s maddening actually to watch it play out in someone else, especially when you see their potential. So when I play Redwood, I play it to remind all of us that we are worthy of love and have potential we haven’t even imagined yet.
There is an intimacy in all of your tracks that I believe is led by your vocal delivery. It can be hard to achieve this “closeness”, but it’s the best part (in my opinion) of many modern records. Is this something you worked on over the years as a recording artist in order to develop? I love that it landed that way for you, because I also value that sound. But I would have to credit my producer, Latifah Alattas, for fostering and protecting that. There is a natural softness of my voice, which I’ve not always been glad about. I don’t project very well and can feel a temptation to push harder. Latifah encouraged me to lean in close and use my head voice more than I would have otherwise. I was heavily influenced by power vocalists, across genres in the 90s, but one thing I appreciate about many modern female voices is the gentleness they allow themselves.
Before It Gets Lighter, your 2022 poetry release, is a book that deals with transformation, sparked by the grief winter brings. The cover artwork is stunning and says it all. But on a 73
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deeper level, why do you think the best books that stand the test of time deal with sorrow? What made/makes you go there in your art? That one is actually a collection of simple prose I wrote around themes relevant to my experience of loss. It uses winter imagery because I wrote it as a companion to my song released that same winter called Lighter From Here, which was inspired by the winter solstice. It had occurred to me that by the time winter starts to really feel awful, the longest night of the year is actually behind us. That felt really profound to me, and the metaphor hit when I most needed it. So I decided to write this little book to pair with the song release, sharing a short reflection on themes such as solitude, compassion, community, and resilience. Many of our beloved books–and songs--deal with sorrow simply because it’s one thing we all get to experience in this life. Not everyone gets happiness, but we all get sorrow. Sorrow hits us on a heart level; so does art. So when you bring the two together with skill, and someone finds it in their moment of suffering, that book or song is going to be with them forever. I go there in my art because I don’t know how not to. I have to write about what’s real to me, about what I actually care about.
Your lyric video for “Redwood” is beautiful. Who did you work with for the illustrations ? In an ever changing social media world of mass content being pushed onto people everyday, your music and video creates a lot of calming space separate from that bombardment. Did you know the vision for the “Redwood” lyric video before working with the artist, or let them take the reins? The eloquent simplicity and minimalism keeps it fresh and poignant. Thank you! I love those words: eloquent, simplicity, minimalism! I agree there is plenty of noise out there; I feel a responsibility to be thoughtful about everything I share and consider whether it will serve my community or only myself. The lyric videos for Redwood, Here For You, and Body and Soul were all created by an Egyptian artist I discovered named Youssef Mostafa. I loved his animated drawings and gave him minimal direction other than describing my audience, the intent of the song, and my desire for the images to be inclusive in terms of gender, age and ethnicity. He created a vision from there and invited my feedback.
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Your 2020 poetry book release Beloved courageously explores life during and post heartbreak and divorce. When was the moment you knew this book had to be written? I knew it on the day I added it to my Kickstarter campaign in 2019! Poetry had become vital to my personal journey. In grief, it was almost all I could read, initially the work of Mary Oliver and then others like Hafiz and David Whyte. Then I began writing poems for the first time in many years, as a therapeutic practice, and I was surprised by the responses of friends and followers. I had no delusions of grandeur–my poems were impactful because they were honest, artful and devoted to the possibility of life after loss. So I followed an intuitive nudge to add it into my crowdfunding campaign. Following through was so much harder than I expected! I learned a lot from the process, and now I’m about to release another collection, A Safe House, before the end of the year.
What can we expect from you in the near future? Any poetry readings or music shows our readers can attend? I’m asking myself the same questions! Imagining new creative forms is what I live for, and a lot of what I’m creating has to do with community–bringing people together into shared spaces for transformative experiences. I have two retreats for women planned for 2024 centered on “Finding Your Voice”--not only for artists but for any woman who feels she’s silenced herself (playing small) long enough and is ready to discern what form(s) her expression will take. It’s all very connected to the themes of my songs Redwood and The Voice. I also plan to host several poetry campfires in Nashville this winter after the release of my new book, perhaps including some music, and I’m excited about that. I’ll continue to serve fellow artists through my work with ARTIST AND, including our nine-month Creative Mastermind and our Songwriters Retreat.
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ABOUT CHRISTA: Christa Wells is a songwriter, singer, poet and community leader living in Nashville, Tennessee. She has released eight solo albums along with several collaborative music projects and three collections of poetry and prose. She also directs artist community ARTIST AND and teaches songwriting at Lipscomb University.
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
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LOMAX III by C L AY T O N J O N E S
What’s your story? How did you get started in the music business and journalism? I realized in my early college days that I was spending heaps of time listening to music, going to shows, and hanging out with musicians — that I should figure out a way to get into the business though I had little knowledge of it, played no instrument, and thought I sang too badly to even sing in a choir. So, around ’66 or ’67 after I had written some liner notes that my dad [folklorist and performer John Lomax Jr.] gave me on a few blues artists, I began doing show reviews for the Daily Texan, the University of Texas student paper. Then, I landed a piece in CREEM magazine and never looked back. I figured if people told me my writing sucked then I’d quit but so far no one has. I really got my chops going during my nearly two years with Space City News, a leading “underground” paper of the day. I started as a reviewer for them and after a few weeks, appointed myself music editor — unpaid of course but more leverage in getting free LPs, concert tickets, shirts, and other stuff label reps were glad to get rid of to make room for more.
In what way did your family influence you professionally? Any memories about this you’d like to share? My dad and others, including Ed Badeaux and Howard Porper, started the Houston Folklore Society in 1951, the same year my dad “turned pro” and began performing — first at Rice University, then many other spots. I got a transistor radio early on and could pick up stations in New Orleans, Dallas, and even Nashville. I would listen as I lay in bed. I really enjoyed hearing R’n’B and soul music, as I then thought folk was boring. I distinctly recall when I first heard “Rock Around the Clock” at a day camp north of Houston. All the kids were in the pool, swimming and going off the diving board. The loudspeaker was tuned to a popular station and once “Rock Around the Clock” came on, every single guy who went off the diving board danced to the end before diving! When the song ended, normal diving resumed. It was like a 2:30 or so time warp or something. I was hooked on rock from that moment onwards and still enjoy listening to that genre.
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Who is your favorite songwriter of all time? Why? Townes Van Zandt beats out Guthrie, Dylan, Guy Clark, Steve Earle, and even Dennis Linde. Townes songs have stuck in my head for over fifty years and it’s gratifying to see him still popular with his songs in TV shows, films, and covers galore. I can recite lyrics from dozens of his songs. They have welded themselves into my mind since I first heard him at the Eleventh Door in Austin in ‘65 or ’66. There are many reasons why he is considered “the Rembrandt of songwriters.”
Any new songwriters or musicians you are into? Why? I have to say I have not kept up with much new as my focus has shifted now that I have become a performer. There is so much to learn and explore from Guthrie, my dad and uncle’s [folklorist Alan Lomax] recordings. Chris Stapleton isn’t “new,” but he towers over everyone else in country music like the Rock of Gibraltar over the Straits below. I’m very curious to see what Oliver Anthony comes up with next as “Rich Men North of Richmond” clearly struck a nerve with people and has the music execs here scratching their heads and wondering WTF. It was hilarious when the Repugnants used the song before the first debate and Oliver said, “Don’t they realize the song is about them?”
What has changed since the beginning of your career? Pretty much everything, from 45s to LPs to reel to reel to cassettes to eight-tracks to CDs and now stREAMING [sic] and the whole social media thing. Radio and labels have constricted so much that there are three or four major entities ruling it all while the rest of us pick up the crumbs. It sadden me that people don’t care that stREAMING cuts out the top and bottom and they are listening through a speaker slightly larger than a doodle bug. Convenience trumps quality it seems. With record contracts so onerous now, one lawyer called them a modern version of “indentured servitude.” The artists can only earn serious money by going on the road. Labels, and especially terrestrial radio, sicken me as it’s an extreme case of the tail wagging the dog.
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What is it about the Texas songwriters that makes them so wonderful and prolific? I can’t say about the prolific part but you are exposed to lots of genres there with strong blues and Hispanic elements mixed in with country, rock, and even (gag me) rap. Of course now that radio is so rigidly formatted it’s hard to find other styles besides the twenty or so “currents” radio morons play over and over and over and over until you want to tear the radio out of the car and throw it out the window. As for Texas, there are so many places to perform that it’s encouraging to a budding performer.
What advice might you offer budding music journalists? Get a gig with a paper or some entity where you can make an actual living instead of writing articles for pennies and then having to wait months for payment. MOJO, for example, is offering a penny, yes one cent per word to established writers, asking a friend to give them 7,000 words on Mötley Crüe for $70!
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ABOUT JOHN: John Lomax III is nephew of the great Alan Lomax, best known for his field recordings and work with the Smithsonian Institution. Lomax III continues the family business as a music journalist, author, and manager who has worked with Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle.
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
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PHAT MAN DEE by D E B B I E H E N N E S S E Y
“A Thousand Miles” is your seventh album. Tell us a little bit about how this one came together. My original composition, “A Thousand Miles,” started as a love song of loss and longing for everyone I missed over the pandemic. It became the title track for the whole album because, through it, I wanted to craft the finest thing I could possibly make. The pandemic taught me well that tomorrow isn’t promised, so I wanted to leave behind something approaching worthy of what all my mentors and teachers have poured into me these many years. This album took me three years and an entire village of seasoned jazz artists to manifest. I have more originals on this work than in my previous albums. In addition to my composition “A Thousand Miles,” I co-wrote “Virgil and Kae’’ with trombonist Reggie Watkins, and with Jeff Franzel, I co-wrote a love song for my husband of 21 years called “Easy to Say.” I also created a loving break-up song called “Bigger Smile,” which I sang as a duet with my co-writer for that tune, Julian Victor Hinton. My jazz poem “Groovelight,” well, there wasn’t much musical composing happening for that track per se. In the studio, I just told my band to swing the chaos, and saxophonist Lynn Speakman attempted to conduct their madness as I was orating madly in the booth. And then, we used both instrumental takes simultaneously in the final mix. I had started that poem half-stoned at my old bass player Tony DePaolis’s CD release party in 2013 and then revisited those lines for this project, but adding in more of a world view, thinking about what trumpet player Sean Jones had said recently, about how if some of the world leaders would just study jazz maybe they could learn to communicate. I wanted this record to be more than just another Phat Man Dee record. I wanted it to beautifully showcase generations of Pittsburgh jazz artists with both my mentors and my students. In working on it, I realized this project also wanted to be more than an EP or a series of singles. It wanted to be a full-length album. Just before the pandemic, I had enrolled in The Songwriting Academy based in London, UK. I spent my lockdown zooming with working hit songwriters in one-to-one mentorships and studying their incredible catalogue of videos discussing various techniques for songwriting. That’s how I met 2 of my co-writers actually, Julian Hinton and Jeff Franzel. While I have been producing albums since 2002 and I haven’t had a hit...yet... so I decided it was time to get the advice of people who have experienced success doing what they love. And while I was afraid and lonely and just missing my family, friends, fans, and fellow musicians, I decided that I needed to make an album that was also a love song to the audience and the world. Without an audience, I am just a short, fat, tattooed, retired sideshow marvel singing alone in a corner; it’s truly the fans
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 that make it possible; it’s for them we do any of this. I reached out online, over socials, and did my very best to maintain my connections, but whether they were truly thousands of miles away or just down the block. Zoom brought people into my life, and Zoom made it possible to write songs in a way I never had before. It took 3 years and the love and dedication of my jazz mentors and fellow working musicians, but we did it. I hope folks like it. I am eternally grateful to everyone who helped me manifest “A Thousand Miles,” it truly took an international team of incredible artists at the collective tops of their games, and I am beyond humbled to see it become a reality.
You have worked with some incredible musicians over the years. Please tell us who you have on this new record. I truly feel that the Creative Divine gave me every present under the stars when they honored me with the personnel on this work. The musicians featured on this work include three generations of fellow Pittsburgh jazz artists. Reggie Watkins, my co-writer on Virgil and Kae, served as musical director for Maynard Ferguson. He has played with the Temptations, Jason Mraz, Postmodern Jukebox, Dumpstaphunk, and he’s a beast. The other horn players include Pittsburgh legend Tony Campbell on alto sax, who is a big mentor to our jazz community here in Pittsburgh, as well as Dr. Emmett Goods on trombone, who is currently serving as Director of Jazz Studies at University of Rhode Island, as well as Chris Hemingway on alto sax, Matt Ferraro on tenor sax, Rick Matt on tenor sax, and JD Chaisson on trumpet who also recorded and mixed several of the tracks on the record. I was blessed with a rhythm section that was above and beyond any dream combo I could have ever fantasized about. I had pianist Deanna Witkowski on most of the tracks; she is currently pursuing a Ph.D. and is a nationally touring artist who wrote a very well-received book about one of the founders of bop, Pittsburgh native Mary Lou Williams called “Music for the Soul.” I was also blessed on a couple of tracks by the piano artistry of Dr. James Johnson, who co-founded with his wife, Mrs. Pamela Johnson, the Afro-American Music Institute, 42 years ago. To have his touch on my record is beyond a gift. He has influenced 3 generations of Pittsburgh music. We wouldn’t sound the way we sound without him. He is in his late 70s and still teaching classes. I was a vocal instructor at the institute for 5 years prior to the pandemic and am honored to have him on “Moanin’” and “Virgil and Kae.” My bassist was a very talented young artist, Eli Naragon, currently serving as an adjunct professor
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at Washington and Jefferson College. I introduced two of my advanced jazz vocal students, both still in their teens, on the track “Moanin,” where we attempted the harmonies of Jon Hendricks, Annie Rodd, and Dave Lambert. The crowning glory of the artists who played on this CD was a living legend, a gentleman who helped define the genre of modern jazz itself, Dr. Roger Humphries. He played on the early Horace Silver records and recordings like “Song For My Father” in 1963. He came home and spent his life teaching multiple generations as a founding professor at Creative and Performing Arts High School, and he’s still working and gigging today. I didn’t call session players for this work. I called my fellow working artists, both mentors, and students, because I wanted to paint a picture that was representative of who we are as a community and how we lift each other up in our common pursuit of jazz and musical excellence. I should mention that Lynn Speakman made original arrangements for me on “Jeanine” and “Everything Must Change,” and I would be remiss not to mention Julian Hinton, who, in addition to co-writing “Bigger Smile” with me, wrote the arrangements for that, and “A Thousand Miles.” He has worked with the Trevor Horn Orchestra, Rod Stewart, Seal, and Madonna, among others, and was happy to meet me over Zoom during the pandemic and even sing our song with me in a duet. He recorded at his studio in England, while I recorded in Pittsburgh at The Church Recording Studios and George Heid Studios. It was an honor to introduce him, even if just over Zoom, to my wonderful ensemble.
The song “Virgil and Kae” is based on two very real people. Who were they? The first track on the album, “Vigil and Kae,” was meant to be a one-off, a single that would serve as a love song and tribute to two very special jazz fans, Virgil Scarfo and Kae O’Brian. If it was hip and happening, they were there with their berets, snapping their fingers like it was the Beat Generation all over again. They loved Pittsburgh jazz, and they never missed a show. My dear friend and trombonist Reggie Watkins, who has been on nearly every album I have made since 2002, agreed to co-write that track with me. He feels the same gratitude for the good people who take time and money out of their lives to love and support local music, especially jazz. And though we lost Virgil a couple of years ago and Kae just a month into the Pandemic in March of 2020, we still feel their presence at every gig. All the musicians on this track knew them and loved seeing them in the audiences of concerts going back decades. I hope through this song that my audience members understand that they are some of the most important members of the band. The emotional, energetic, and soul exchange between musicians and audience is sacred, and I really feel like when the audience is missing, or in this case, joined the ancestors, then a harmony is missing from the arrangement. When my co-writer Reggie was working on the arrangements for this tune, I felt he composed those horn arrangements like he was channeling legendary jazz saxophonist Richie Cole. Richie chose to bless our city, Pittsburgh, PA, with his artistry and presence for his final years. I think he did that because his best friend, the great Eddie Jefferson, was from here. I chose to do one Eddie Jefferson track on the CD, his lyrics over Duke Pearson’s tune “Jeanine.”
Many of your songs, shows, and activities are a meld of music and social activism. Fill us in on some of the causes closest to your heart and Social Justice Disco, a collaboration with Liz Berlin of Rusted Root.
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My personal history as an activist began really in middle school. I was raised in the Jewish faith in Altoona, PA, and when I was in 3rd grade, someone
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 spray-painted our synagogue with antisemitic slurs. In high school, I saw flyers from the local KKK groups scattered around a site used for local indigenous gatherings for sweat lodges. My mother and grandmother before me had fought both for civil rights and Native rights in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My personal experiences with bigotry and my family upbringing made me realize that it is our sacred duty to speak up against bigotry and injustice. I look white. I am white. You can’t tell I am a bisexual, queer pagan Jew from the outside, so I use whatever privilege I have to help break down systems of white supremacy and injustice. I have been part of many wonderful organizations over the years, including Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, Pittsburgh Racial Justice Summit, and People’s Music Network. I am currently the co-chair of the DEI Committee of the Songwriters of North America, and I sit on the board of the Rosencomet Project. In all of my professional endeavors, I strive to make sure we are centering and uplifting marginalized voices. In my creative and artistic practice, I make sure to hire a diverse bandstand. As a jazz artist, it would be wholly inappropriate to engage in this art form and not pay respects to the modern living descendants and practitioners of this music. I offer anti-racist workshops at festivals where I sing. I’ve spent my life speaking out against injustice, and I just kept writing protest songs. I was so inspired by artists and songwriters like Nina Simone, Sam Cooke, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Buffy Sainte Marie, and the Staple Singers, and I couldn’t stop myself from writing songs about anti-racism, police brutality, environmental issues, but I didn’t really have a good destination for them until my collaboration with my longtime friend Liz Berlin. She was a founding member of Rusted Root; their single went triple platinum, and they toured for over 30 years. Twenty years ago, she and her husband opened Mr. Smalls Theatre and Mr. Smalls Recording Studio. For the past 12 years, I have worked for her as a vocal coach for We Rock Workshop. We serve Allegheny County foster youth and teach songwriting and recording skills to at-risk youth between 14 - 24 years old. You can listen to our body of work at www.reverbnation.com/werockworkshop. In 2015, I had been working for her for about 3 years, and Trump announced he was running for office while I was in Scotland for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the verses for my song “Fourth Reich Arising” just flowed out of me at my 4 story walk up in Leith. I made a demo but couldn’t think of how to work it into my jazz set. Later next spring, I ended up making an April Fools Facebook post tagging Liz and saying she, myself, and Rusted Root were collaborating with me and the Pittsburgh Symphony to make “Social Justice Disco: Songs to Fight Fascists By” and so many of our fans were bent when they realized it was a farce. Liz called me from the road and said, “What the heck, Mandee??? But for real though, do you actually have songs for this???” ‘cause our fans were annoyed, we weren’t really making it!! And I was like, yeah, I have a bunch of them actually, songs about killer robots and drone warfare, big brother, you name it.... and she listened to what I had, and we told our fans that if they really wanted it, we would make it, and so we did. We raised the money on Pledge Music (insert sad trombone here if you remember what happened there) and recruited her band, my band, and the Lemington Gospel Chorale, local indigenous activists who went on to be Water Protectors at Standing Rock, hip hop artists, drag queens and more to join us to make a 13-song cd. I still sing these songs, and I really want to get the whole crew back together for a performance sometime soon, but it’s a lot of people. Maybe someone reading this interview will say, “You know what? Social Justice Disco is EXACTLY what I need at My festival!!!”
Each of your records honors your musical influences while presenting something new of your own. You have also covered a wide range of styles. How do you decide what goes on your records? That’s so kind of you to ask it like that - other folks say, “You really can’t focus, can you???” My styles do tend to ramble and rumble along the roads of musical destinations. I like to make sure my records have a variety of things: ballads, up tempos, songs of love, songs of loss, songs of justice. Many of my albums feature songs in other languages. Oddly enough, a foreign language song did NOT make it onto “A Thousand Miles,” but I think to make up for it, I just finished recording an album called “Confluencia” with Alba Flamenca 412, and that one is entirely in Spanish. I just pick what is strongest and what needs to come out. You can tell when a song is ready to be introduced to the world or reinterpreted so folks can hear it in a different light. I do genre hop a lot, but I like to think of it all as jazz. Even if it’s not specifically a “jazz song,” I feel like jazz is a legacy that requires extreme musicianship, so you have the ability to be in improvisational musical conversation with your co-performers. It’s not just playing scored parts, which is an art in itself, but it’s beyond that. It’s playing scored parts
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and then being able to listen to each other tell their own stories through those chord changes and then being able to intelligently and soulfully respond. I hope my work has done that. I hope I get better as I continue to grow and teach as an artist. I hope the songs I choose display this in myself and the musicians who have trusted me enough to play with me.
Pittsburgh is your home base. What should we know about the area’s music scene? Pittsburgh has an incredible music community. Our legacy goes back a long time. Pittsburgh had the first ever commercial radio station in 1920, KDKA, still on the air today. We were also instrumental in giving the world jazz. Earl “Fatha” Hines is from here, and his piano playing shaped the history of jazz. The most famous jazz duet in history, “Weather Bird,” was recorded in 1928 with him and Louis Armstrong. Pittsburgh is perfectly situated between Chicago and NYC, so everyone stopped here. It used to be said we were the “land of the giant killers” and that you shouldn’t mess up if you were on the road and touring through town because one of the garbage men could jump off the truck and take your place on the gig without even blinking. And it’s true. Influential musicians from Pittsburgh include Stephen Foster, Mary Lou Williams, Billy Strayhorn, Ahmad Jamal, Art Blakey, Billy Eckstein, Phyllis Hyman, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Errol Garner, Kenny Clark, George Benson, Maxine Sullivan, Sonny Clark, Eddie Jefferson, and more recently, folks like Mac Miller, Christina Aguilera, Wiz Khalifa. And for every one of those names, there are hundreds who didn’t make it but are still writing, working, singing, and playing out today. We are blessed to still have some amazing small venues left and some ginormous ones for the superstars, and we have a bunch of lovely recording studios. It’s kind of hard to make money as a musician here, but I am blessed; I gig often, and I have students, so I get by. I love to travel, and I love to meet people and learn their music and learn about them through our music together, but I really love coming home ‘cause no one really sounds like Pittsburgh.
ABOUT phat man dee: Phat Man Dee, a visionary in the realm of jazz music, is celebrated for her distinctive style, powerful vocals, and captivating stage presence. With an illustrious career spanning seven studio albums, Mandee has continuously pushed the boundaries of jazz, fusing it with elements of blues, soul, and world music. Her commitment to uplifting the jazz community and mentoring emerging talents shines through in every note of her seventh studio album, “A Thousand Miles.” You can follow her online at https://phatmandeemusic.com/ https://www.instagram.com/ phatmandee/ https://www.facebook.com/PhatManDee
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https://n8ivbeauty.com
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robin dean & afton seekins by
C l i f f o r d b r o o k s
What’s your story, morning glory? Who are you? Robin Dean Salmon, Afton Seekins Salmon: We are Surrender Hill. We are a husband and wife duo who met in Sedona Arizona. I, Robin, landed in Arizona purely by accident while on a trip through the southwest. I was on a bit of a findmyself-journey and it turns out I was in Sedona, AZ. Afton had just moved home from 8 years of New York City-living. We both started playing music in Northern Arizona and finally found each other and started performing together as we kicked off a relationship. Our music falls into the Americana country genre.
How do you blend to create the sound of Surrender Hill? Afton and I both write individually as well as together. Regardless of the process, the song either resonates with the both of us and blends into “Surrender Hill” or it doesn't seem to move forward. Our sound and blend found itself. We never set out to sound a particular way. It's just the way we sound together and that's what makes it so exciting for the two of us. We fall into it naturally.
What’s your philosophy behind making music that lasts? It's pretty simple. We write and perform songs that make us feel something.
How do you categorize your sound? We call our sound Americana Country with a lot of Soul. However this new album will have a lot of rock and roll too!
How do you maintain peace of mind? Afton is a yoga and meditation person. That's her space. I mainly struggle.
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What books are you reading and what music keeps you tapping your feet? As far as books, I'm all over the place. I like to read a lot of historical fiction. I love Africa stories from around the turn of the 19th century. World war 2 stories I love. Then I love good pioneer western oriented stuff. Cormac McCarthy ETC. Afton likes to read more inspiring novels. Self enlightening stuff. She's what holds us together. We listen to a lot of older country music, songwriter oriented music. As far as contemporary, We both like Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile, Drew Holcomb. Good writing.
How do we keep up with you online? Www.surrenderhill.com, facebook.com/surrenderhill, instigram. com/surrenderhillmusic, youtube.com/surrenderhillmusic
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texasreviewpress.org
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IAL URES
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Southern Review of books’ (SRB)
CHELSEA RISLEY, AMY MARTIN, CHANEY HILL , JENNETTE HOLZWORTH, & ANNA HARRIS-PARKER by C L I F F O R d B R O O K S
What about your love of words made work for the Southern Review of Books a groovy fit? Chelsea Risley: Experiencing art grows empathy and just generally makes us better people, and I think that’s how we build a better world. I hope that my work at the SRB – celebrating and promoting stories and writers – is a part of the fight for a brighter future, and especially a better South. Jennette Holzworth: The number of books I was purchasing was becoming a point of contention
in my marriage, so joining SRB and getting a steady supply of ARCs eased that – at least a bit. I think what often makes a hobby more enjoyable is sharing it with others, and SRB has given me that opportunity. I enjoy not just reading but digging into the meat of a story and pulling out meaning and connections, experiencing growth and evolution as a result of walking in the shoes of another character. So all that, together, sharing that in the books I’ve read and fine-tuning reviews of other contributors, makes all this feel more useful.
Amy Martin: My association with the SRB was serendipitous, in that I was a student in the MFA program at the Queens University of Charlotte, under whose auspices the SRB was founded. This is how I came to know the publication. Working for the SRB has allowed me to actively engage with contemporary, largely Southern literature and to maintain a writing and reading community with my fellow editors and contributors, some of whom went to Queens and some of whom didn’t. My father, too, is a writer and a reader and a born-and-bred Southerner, so in some sense, I do what I do to honor him. Chaney Hill: At the time I joined the SRB I was reading a lot of Southern literature and thinking
about the South more broadly — what defined it? Where did it begin and end, temporally and spatially? What ‘counted’ as southern, or for that matter, what counted as literature. I think that it was
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 this deep fascination with the South — its people, its culture, its history, its myths — and how writers convey these topics through the written word that drew me in and made it a great fit.
Anna Harris-Parker: An expectation of my position in higher ed is to “give back” to my profession.
I already admired SRB for its commitment to celebrating work by debut authors and indie presses, so when I saw a call for daily editors in 2022, I reached out to Chelsea. The sample review she asked me to edit was for one of my favorite Hub City Press titles: A Measure of Belonging: Twenty-One Writers of Color on the Amy Martin New American South, Edited by Cinelle Barnes. It felt fortuitous – a sign this was an initiative I should spend my time with.
What are you reading for pure, personal joy? Chelsea: Though poetry is my first love, I’ve been reading more short story collections lately – I recently finished Lot by Bryan Washington, and I’m very excited to pick up Peach Pit soon. Jennette: YA. As a teen/young adult, I was a slacker and didn’t
read nearly as much as I wish I had, and as a result missed this genre. Those years, for me, were full of a lot of pain and trauma, and somehow stumbling upon these stories has been incredibly healing for me. Two recent favorites I’ve read were John Green’s Turtles All The Way Down and Looking For Alaska, and I’m looking forward to All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir.
Amy: I just finished Volume 4 of the Manga series, “All Villains Are Destined to Die,” by Gwon Gyeoeul, and am anxiously awaiting publication of Volume 5. I’d never read any Manga before this. I’ve also just finished Curtis Sittenfeld’s “Romantic Comedy.” And I’ve been really into audio thrillers lately. Lucy Foley’s “The Guest List” is wonderful, with multiple voice actors taking on the novel’s multiple points-of-view.
Anna Harris Parker
Chaney: I mostly read literature based in and around Texas (writers like Darcie Little Badger, Fernando Flores, and LaToya Watkins have been in circulation recently). However, I’ve also taken to reading fantasy novels recently. Right now, I am finishing up R. F. Kuang’s The Poppy War trilogy.
Anna: For a change of pace, I sometimes enjoy celebrity
memoirs, and I’m almost finished with Thicker than Water by Kerry Washington. I have a 45-minute commute to work and so I’m listening to it through Libro.fm. My next listen is Peter Heller’s latest novel, The Last Ranger. Heller was a visiting writer at my university a few years ago and he’s a lovely person and a great talent.
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Has the book industry changed for the better for inclusion and diversity? Please explain. Chelsea: There is always more work to do to dismantle oppressive systems and strive for equity in
this industry. It is encouraging to see that there are more and more people in all kinds of roles in the book world fighting for change, seeking out diverse voices, and honoring their work.
Jennette: I definitely echo Chelsea on this one. Is it better than, say, the 1800s? Sure. But I think this
pursuit of “diversity” can still be exclusionary if there isn’t a true transformation of the industry. One of the things I hear often is a writer from a traditionally excluded group being told, “Oh, we just did a story about that,” because the gatekeepers of the industry can’t see the uniqueness of these “diverse” stories and lumps them in. There’s a lot of work left to do.
Amy: Bringing about change of this kind feels glacial. Despite the widespread – and indeed welcome – conversation about diversity and inclusion, publishing is still disproportionately white. Inequality is rampant. There is a 2020 study entitled Rethinking “Diversity” in Publishing that is well worth a read. It details problems and solutions. Who gets to tell their stories matters, and increasing diversity, I believe, is a moral imperative. Chaney: I agree with what everyone said above. I also think that in addition to disparities surrounding
race, ethnicity, and the LGBTQ+ community, the book industry also needs to consider where stories are coming from. By and large, much of the publishing industry (academic and trade) is based in the ‘global north,’ not the global south. So in that regard, the book industry is still lagging behind.
Anna: I also agree with my fellow editors. What I’ll add is this: while publishers could be doing more,
other groups could be doing more to assist the cause as well. Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil, in a lecture on teaching, said something to this effect: the books educators assign teach our students what we value and what they should value. I think about that a lot and try to be increasingly conscious of the diversity of my classroom reading lists.
What are you passionate about off the clock? Chelsea: I honestly just really love books, so most of my life revolves around them in some way.
Sometimes it feels like there’s a right and wrong answer to give when someone asks what you like to read, so that’s something I’m trying to unlearn for myself, and hope to encourage other people in too. Reading is educational and wonderful in many ways, but above all, it’s fun, so I’m always excited to talk to people about the books they love. I especially love talking to folks who thought they hated reading until they finally landed on the right book.
Jennette: I wear a lot of hats and books have wormed their way into many of them. I’m a mom of
two book nerds, so we spend a lot of time reading together. I’m launching a publishing house with a former classmate, focused on championing stories from writers of traditionally excluded groups. I think the only time I really “clock out” of books is when I “clock in” for my day job.
Amy: Like Jennette, I’m a mom. I spend a lot of time taxiing my kids to cheerleading, dance, and
band practice. I can’t say I’m passionate about the taxiing, but I am passionate about the kids! As a screenwriter, I enjoy watching TV and going to movies. I’m working on a couple of pilots right now. There’s nothing I like better than writing “Fade In” at the top of a blank page. I love all things Jane Austen. And I’m currently driven by an interest in advocating for women’s reproductive rights.
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Chaney: I’m currently writing a dissertation about public memory in Texas at Rice University, so
there isn’t much time off the clock these days. However, in the spare time I do have, I like to stay active. I run at my local park, play basketball, lift weights, hang out with my pets, and try to spend time with cherished friends.
Anna: I’m a writer (poetry and creative nonfiction), but it can be difficult to make time or find energy
for my own work during the school year. I look for other creative outlets, be it redecorating by rearranging a room in my house or drawing sidewalk chalk with my son. I also really love fashion.
How does the Southern Review of Books stand out from other similar entities? Chelsea: I like to think we are just a few of the many wonderful people working to remind the world
that the American South is vibrant, many-layered, and ever-changing. We celebrate writing that engages with both the beautiful and the ugly parts of our corner of the world and aim to highlight marginalized voices and small presses.
Jennette: Chelsea said it best! Amy: The SRB’s focus on the literature of the American South is undoubtedly one of its differentiating
features. We also review television shows, documentaries, and features that have a Southern connection. It makes sense really. So many of us grew up reading Faulkner, Welty, O’Connor. I’ve heard it so many times: There is just something about storytelling and the South. The SRB explores that compelling but somewhat ineffable relationship. I also think we try to focus on work by small presses, which are publishing some remarkable books. I enjoy being part of something that gives a boost to these outlets.
Chaney: I honestly think the grassroots aspect of the SRB is what makes it special. SRB is run by volunteers, so it is a labor of love. I think that shows in our work — both the reviews and interviews we publish and the work the editors put in behind the scenes. I also think we are CHELSEA RISLEY a great place for newer writers and reviewers to get their feet wet and publish a few things. We are very friendly to new writers (both those who write for us and whose work we read to review!). Anna: I really admire SRB’s mission to celebrate writers of and work about the American South. If there’s a book that doesn’t really elevate the region’s image, then we don’t usually cover it. Overall, the writing in SRB is very positive and I think that can be hard to find. Does your work at the SRB feed/impact/dovetail with your day job or your writing life at all? Jennette: Absolutely! I come from a journalist/reporter background, and writing about the books I’m reading has been a rewarding exercise that’s served to enhance what I’m writing
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creatively (currently, a literary speculative fiction piece that follows two families as the United States descends into the second American Civil War), helping me to also think about how what I’m writing will be interpreted and if my intentions are matching that.
Amy: Yes, indeed. So much of being a good writer stems from being a good reader. Wasn’t it Stephen
King who said that in order to be a better writer, you’ve got to read? And read a lot? And I believe you have to be a good reader of what’s currently being published and marketed. My default is to read and re-read classic works of literature, which I love, so working at the SRB challenges that default. As an editor at the SRB, I become aware of who’s writing today and what they’re writing about today. And I am motivated to read closely, to understand. I read each book for its story, sure, but Jennette Holzworth I also read it for its craft. How does this author structure his story? How does that author evoke empathy in her reader? What can I learn about how an author does what he or she does so that I can apply lessons learned to my own work?
What do you love most about your corner of the South? Amy: I was born in D.C. and grew up in Maryland, but I’ve lived
for three years now in Virginia. Virginia is a beautiful state with a lot to recommend it! I am driving distance from the mountains and from the sea, and close to all D.C. has to offer (e.g., museums, historical sites, theaters, restaurants). I like the strides the state has made in recent years toward inclusivity and equality from a public policy standpoint. It is very much a state in transition, trying to become the best version of itself.
Chaney: You really don’t want to get me started talking about
Chaney Hill
my corner of the South: Texas. I find it hard to stop! I’ve made my career based around Texas literature and literary production, and so I write and think a lot about this question. But, for here, I’ll keep my response limited. I think the thing I love most about my corner of the South (which is currently Houston, Texas) is the food! Houston has, in my opinion, one of the best culinary scenes in the U.S. It is very culturally diverse and you can find nearly any type of cuisine. I am rarely disappointed with the food here.
Do you remember anything about the first piece you edited for the SRB? Or does any particular piece or response from a contributor or author stand out to you? Jennette: I have added so many books to my TBR pile after
having edited a piece from a contributor. It’s actually becoming a bit of a problem.
Anna: Me too, Jennette! For a while, I was editing “Not
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Abandon, but Abide,” a series of interviews with women and
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 genderqueer poets of the South. I really loved it. It exposed me to voices I may not have encountered otherwise, and it also made me think about writing in new ways.
How has your editorial voice or focus developed since starting at the SRB? Amy: I think my work on the SRB has made me a true advocate for small and indie presses and for the
authors they publish. There is some exceptional work out there that would not have been on my radar otherwise. I’m so glad to be exposed to it. I also seem to have developed a strong interest in femaledriven and female-focused work that speaks in some way, either directly or obliquely, to gender inequality.
If you write reviews or conduct interviews for the SRB, do you think also being an editor changes the way you approach your subject? Jennette: Starting out as a contributor, and continuing to contribute now as an editor, has been
incredibly helpful because I’ve learned to view my own work in a different way, so hopefully that means I’m contributing better, more in-depth pieces.
Amy: I spend more time and effort thinking about what I’m doing and thinking about how what I’m
doing fits into the SRB’s overall mission and gestalt. I take great care because I feel ownership of what I’m writing.
What is the most challenging thing about your work with the SRB? If balancing it with your regular life is difficult, why do you keep doing it? Chaney: Because it is a labor of love and it is important. Many Americans, and I suppose, for good
reason, see the South as a backward, hot and humid place rampant with racism. And while it can be that, the South is also a place of joy and resilience. Many of the social justice movements and fights take place in the U.S. South. It is the frontline for all kinds of regressive policies. It is a contended region and there are people out there fighting for the future they want to see in the world — oftentimes through words. So, I keep working for the SRB because it is one way I know how to uplift the voices doing this important work.
Chelsea: I absolutely echo everything Chaney said. Despite the ways the South is a broken and
dangerous place for many people, it is also beautiful, complicated, and interesting. I love it here, so I choose to stay and do what I can to make it a better place. I think our work at the SRB is a part of that, and I hope it helps complicate the conversation about the South by highlighting the many different faces and stories of the people here.
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w i l d h o n e y t e e s ’
misty fletcher by
C l i f f o r d b r o o k s
What inspired you to create Wild Honey Tees? I’ve always wanted to be my own boss & do something creative. I’m a t-shirt & jeans girl at heart. I would rather wear a comfy vintage style tee & broken in jeans any day!
What challenges have you faced in running your business? How do you overcome those? Competition. Trial and error helps me overcome. I’m always on the hunt to find my niche and flesh out what makes me different in the industry.
How do you stay up to date on the latest trends to keep your options you offer relevant & trending? Social media and research tip the scales in my favor. Trends change daily so it’s super important to keep a check on trends & what social media influencers are wearing & talking about.
Are there any upcoming trends in the industry that you’re excited about? Vintage is & always will be on trend. I love all things vintage & can’t wait to get through the busy holiday season to really research new techniques to bring some of my favorite prints to life!
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What is your proudest accomplishment since starting your business? My first online organic sale on my website. I was so freaking excited & proud of myself. I did a happy dance
What music do you put on to get in the right design mindset? 70’s & 80’s Southern rock mostly...or LEGIT oldies from the 50’s & 60’s. That music automatically puts me in a good mood.
What do you hope your customers take away from their experience with you? I hope they take away that I take time & care with each order. I get excited about every single sale & try to make the customer feel that in my tee as well as my packaging.
What advice do you have for young women looking for a means of independence? Find what you are passionate about, research all the ins-and-outs, pray about it, and then go for it. Investing in yourself and the things that you care about will never fall flat.
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introducing
Marco Rafalà SCE
ck
B
oo k Club Pi
“ “ “
“ “ “
First
How Fires End is a raised fist of a novel, one filled with men’s brutal tenderness and tender brutality. It is both a subtle and powerful indictment of the silences between generations and a poignant testament to the bond between sons and fathers of all kinds. A blazing debut by an important new Italian-American voice. —Christopher Castellani, author of Leading Men
Beautiful, mesmerizing, consoling, and under immaculate control, Marco Rafalà's How Fires End is a powerful novel about the religion we create for ourselves as we face that which perhaps even God has not imagined for humanity.
—Alexander Chee,
author of Edinburgh, The Queen of the Night, and How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
Marco Rafalà’s debut novel, How Fires End, avoids Mafia tropes for a moving depiction of multi-generational loss and love, grief and gratitude, heartbreak and hope.
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Desert Rat Residence for writers’
Jeff Walt
BY C L I F F O R D B R O O K S
Who are you? My interest in the concept of a sharing economy heavily influenced my decision to start The Desert Rat Residency. But I am also a writer and my poems have appeared in Los Angeles Review, Alligator Juniper, Cimarron Review, The Sun, Connecticut Review, Inkwell, New Millennium Writings, Harpur Palate, Cream City Review, The Ledge, Slipstream. My book, Leave Smoke, was published in 2019 by Gival Press and was awarded the 2020 Housatonic Book Award given by the Western Connecticut State University MFA Program “…to promote excellent writing, to identify authors who serve as professional role models for writing students….” Several poems were selected and scored by composer David Sisco and performed at Carnegie Hall.
What’s your inspiration and motivation for creating this desert paradise? In the bustling winter months, when the Coachella Valley is hoppin’ with festivals and visitors, we advertise our 600 square foot suite as a vacation rental on VRBO. Of course, we don’t get as many tourists trekking to the desert during the hot summer months (June, July, August, September). So, I got creative and thought why not share the space with writers who can take the heat? Here we have a pool, solid wi-fi, a comfy bed, and television. We are a short drive to Palm Springs and Joshua Tree with plenty of hiking, dining and shopping options. Surrounded by dramatic mountains, blue skies, unique plants, and palm trees,
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I am often mesmerized. I’ve also been on several residencies which all helped me develop my work — MacDowell, The Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts, and Kalani Eco-village on the Big Island of Hawaii — so I know the value of the gift of time & space.
What are you reading now? My Mother’s Red Ford: New & Selected Poems, 1986-2020 by Roy Bentley.
What bands move you? I’ve been listening to country these days — the old stuff: Jim Reeves, Cash, Pasty, Loretta, Elvis.
How do you express your creativity? Primarily by writing poetry though I love design and collage.
How do you want people to feel when they arrive, stay and then depart your piece of Heaven? I want the visiting writers to feel comfortable, of course, so everything is sparkling clean when the they arrive. Each person is given a four-digit code for the front door (keyless entry), so they can easily come & go at their leisure. Hopefully, their needs are met with some creature comforts (vodka, bubble bath, eye masks, reruns of Mad Men) thrown in to help carry them along. The fridge is stocked (water, hard-boiled eggs, milk, snack cheese, yogurt, ramen) and many pantry items are available (soup, cereal, crackers, oatmeal, tea, coffee). I like people to go out and explore the Coachella Valley, which can be hypnotic, but that is up to them. So far, I’ve had diligent writers with desert curiosities — some have even written amazing drafts of poems inspired by their visit. And there is no requirement to hang out with me — that said, my partner and I have shared pool time with the visiting writers, and I
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strive to take them to lunch at least once during their visit if they’d like. There has been a shared convivial energy with all the visiting writers so far.
Tell me about The Desert Rat Poetry Prize. The submission window is July and August with the prize announcement on October 1st every year. Moving forward, 90% of our visiting writers will be chosen from The Desert Rat Poetry Prize, and the other 10% are Director-discretionary, which means I can invite whomever I choose. I simply coordinate the prize while the final judges do the heavy-lifting. Kelli Russell Agodon is our judge for 2024 and David Groff in 2025. Jeannine Hall-Gailey did a great job judging this year--we were able to choose two top winners (Abby E. Murray & Sarah Freligh) plus two queer writers (Bryan Borland & Michael Montlack) thanks to a local LGBTQ donor.
How do we keep up with you online? #desertratresidency @desertratresidency www.desertratresidency.com www.jeffwalt.com @jeffwaltpoet Facebook
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RILEY ROBERTS by
C l i f f o r d b r o o k s
How did life bring you into the business end of art? Originally from Macon, GA, I bounced around between there, Atlanta, and Charlotte before finally landing in St. Augustine, FL. By chance, I was hired at the Phillip Anthony Signature Gallery as an art consultant. Due to Covid-19, I saw an unstable future in art, so I moved on to be a Sales Manager at Acura back in Macon. Sometimes, you have to leave something to truly appreciate it and that is exactly what happened to me with art. As soon as I left the gallery position, I knew I had to get back. I spent the next couple of years working to keep myself relevant in the industry while searching for the right gallery home. Luckily, I was able to find that for myself at Vinings Gallery in Roswell!
What are you passionate about outside of the gallery? Outside of the gallery, I really enjoy being outdoors - hunting, fishing, hiking, swimming … anything. If it is outside and has to do with nature, I’m there. Additionally, I love to play guitar and piano.
What music cranks your tractor today? What books move you? I’m a fan of it all, but being from Macon, I’m partial to the Allman Brothers, Otis Redding, and Little Richard. I also love the Beatles, the Black Pumas, Leon Bridges, and Arthur Lee. The Great Gatsby would have to be my all time favorite book. However, out of the more modern authors, I like John Gresham and Vince Flynn.
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If you could sit down with one visual artist, alive or dead, who would it be and why? It would 100% have to be Salvador Dali. From a master standpoint, he is head and shoulders above the rest. The scenes that he painted and the stories his work portray are incredible. He is the only artist I have ever seen that I would like to sit down with and talk and just pick his brain to see what was going on in his mind while he was creating his masterpieces.
What advice do you have for those who wish to break into your line of work? Find your appreciation for art first, and not for a specific type of art, but for art in general. The best part about art is that everything is subjective, and as Picasso said, “learn the rules so you can break them.” My favorite part about what I do is learning why each individual piece inspires the person that collects it!
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Simon Kenevan | A Perfect End
Thomas Arvid | Vessels of Freedom
Steven Quartly | Into theLight Michael Flohr | Historic Romance
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UCLA EXTENSION WRITERS PROGRAM’S
JARROD
SHUSTERMAN
& Sofia
Lapuente BY C L I F F O R D B R O O K S
Who are you? Jarrod: Bestselling authors Jarrod Shusterman and Sofía Lapuente here. Thank you for this interview! We’re writing partners, and partners in every sense of the word. I’m from California and Sofi is from Madrid, Spain, and together we write books, scripts, and instruct courses YA Literature 1 & YA Literature 2 at the UCLA extension writers’ program. We’ve got many books out in stores, but our most recent is a YA thriller called RETRO! What professional advice do you have for writers who want to break into this industry? Sofi: As authors who are traditionally publishing, we are dug deep in the trenches. First off, we recommend to always have a stable source of income and let writing be your side hustle until you get to quit. Plan for it to take some years to get established. Many of our author friends who are successful have their first few manuscripts on a shelf collecting dust. (Yes, unfortunately it can take time to learn what you need or for the industry to realize what you have to offer) The only way to get better is to have critique groups and workshops. Rely on online groups, and people who share your passion. Once you’ve landed an agent, you’re almost there! What projects currently possess your attention? Jarrod: Because the entire process from submission to publication usually takes us anywhere from
two to three years per book, we have three or four stories simmering at all times! Right now we have a YA horror, and YA romance, an adult fiction novel. And next year we have a short story publishing in Weird Tales Magazine!
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How does music influence your creativity? Jarrod: It’s huge for us! In our book, RETRO, every chapter title is a Retro song, so the index is actually a big playlist! What’s a question you’ve been asked so many times you never want to hear it again? Jarrod: Everyone always
asks, are you two just at each other’s throats all the time? And the truth is we don’t fight too much. No story could ever be more important than our relationship so if things ever get heated in discussion, they cool off pretty quickly.
Sofi: It’s like any other
amazing dream you have with your partner, whether it be creating a home, a family. In a way writing books together is much like making a baby, except it doesn’t cry and it can actually make you money.
What does “success” look like to you? Sofi: Success is a
combination of happiness and fulfilment. Physical health. Mental health. Amazing relationships. Love. It’s is having the confidence, power and recourses to not have to work. Then to choose to work plenty because you love it and it fulfills you. It’s doing work that makes you feel like you’ve left a mark on the planet. It’s also paella on the Mediterranean coast, dancing all night, and sunrises!
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How do you edit your work? Jarrod: Because we are a team and two parts of a big collective brain. We are constantly editing each other’s pieces of the manuscript. Then we combine them for our finished project! Sofi:: First, manuscripts go to our beta readers, Sofi
friends we trust who are the target audience. Then we send it to critique readers. These are author friends who give us technical level notes. Next it goes to our agents, who give us technical and sales driven notes, and last our editor sees it. Once it’s all edited, we send it to authenticity readers if there are any cultural nuances we’d like an opinion on. Lastly it goes through the copy editing processes!
Do you have peers who we should follow? Who are they? Sofi: We are biased because we would just tell you to read a bunch of authors we love. That being said, if you’re into YA fiction Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson are amazing, Aimée Carter is a must-read author! Adalyn Grace is so kind and her books are fantastic. Susan Lee, Kat Cho, and Claribel Ortega rock! Not to mention Kristen Dwyer who can make you cry in one second. I’d follow them all on social media because these authors are making huge moves in YA ☺ Any fun facts? Jarrod: One fun fact for me is that Stephen King has one of my books in his library! DRY, and he gave
us a very kind blurb.
Sofi: I have, in a past life, worked for Google, produced and written television, traveled to 40+
countries, and although I write in English my first language is Spanish. Which is the language that I think and feel in!
How do we keep up with you? Jarrod: Thank you so much for this interview! If any of you want to keep up with our new releases,
our upcoming classes, or see behind the scenes author content, you can find us on TikTok and IG @ sofiandjarr
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https://brooks-sessions.teachable.com/p/the-working-writer
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I AM A GROWN MAN NOW, HOW SHOULD I DRESS? BY
JAY-DE ROBINSON “Mr. Classic”
A
s we men embark on our daily journeys of tackling the world’s problems and building empires as titans of industry, one thing for some tends to find itself further down the ladder of importance: wardrobe. As one advances through school, learning and developing at different levels, it would be an added benefit to see in conjunction with a course on developing an appropriate wardrobe as you progress into adulthood. Seldom do we find traditional institutions of higher education providing such an added value. Now, that is not to say there aren’t those trailblazers taking to the ocean fronts of the world, adding a much-needed ripple in this uncommonly discussed topic. So, allow me to join the cause. As young men, we enjoyed the luxury of our caretakers or parents shopping for us. The majority of our wardrobe choices were based on our parents’ budget as well as what was available in the nearest children’s store. This lasted till about high school when our social groups and celebrity trends became of higher importance to us. Depending on where you grew up, your influence on style and fashion varied. Being brought up in the inner cities of New York and Atlanta, I was exposed to quite an eclectic mix of fashion and style. Now that we are all grown up, past the age of someone shopping for us and social trends dying out, what does a young man’s wardrobe transition into? After the collegiate life of sweatpants and hooded sweatshirts, what does one put in their closet? To come to a precise level of understanding, we must consider first what men find as important when speaking of wardrobe. Being in the classic menswear business for many years, I decided to go to my trusted clients. After posing the question, “What is one thing they believe every man should have in their wardrobe?” to roughly 100 men, the responses were quite repetitive. Interestingly enough, most gravitated towards the business category, and the majority stated a navy blazer or a navy suit to be that one thing. Considering our findings, this has revealed most men think about business the majority of the time and also have little experience in other areas of dress. I want to offer assistance in laying the foundation for a man’s ideal wardrobe in the areas of formal, business, casual, and athletic. We will start this journey off with the most formal: Black tie. Traditional attire has and will always be a tuxedo. Though you might find tuxedos in various colors, an excellent black tuxedo is ideal. Wearing a more defined color, like blue, gray, or even burgundy, limits the amount of use you will get out of it. Showing up to a formal function in an everyday work suit can be particularly cringe-worthy. A tuxedo will show not only that you have range but also that you understood the assignment. Dress for the occasion. With a tuxedo, you will also need a tuxedo shirt. These shirts differ from your traditional tuxedo, one must have the proper shoes as well. A regular leather shoe will not work in this department. You will need a patent leather shoe, lace up or slip on. Another form of formal shoe would be a velvet no-lace opera pump. This
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 particular shoe is great for, as the name mentions, operas. Frankly, any stage shows of that kind will work. Moving from formal to business attire, we will need to discuss one important thing first. Does your job setting place you in an office, or is freelance outdoor work a more appropriate description? More and more companies are laying back on business attire and taking a “smart casual” approach to their everyday dress. Jeans, chinos, and polos have become the standard. This style of dress works well for individuals who have a more freelance type of position. For those who are in an office setting, it does allow for experimentation in your wardrobe. We’ll entertain three different looks to build on, the first being the suit. You can find a suit in two or three pieces, including the waistcoat. To start your business wardrobe, you will want to get two suits. The all-purpose navy and midgray suits will be your everyday workhorse suits. These two are particularly popular in classic menswear due to their versatility and reserved appearance. When appearing more professional, pairing these suits with a white, light pink, light blue, or fine-striped shirt is recommended. Avoid bold colors that tend to steal the focus from the suit. Your shirts should act as a canvas for your suit and tie. Speaking of ties, you should always have it be darker than your shirt. Geometric, paisley, and dots are great tie patterns that add depth and contrast to your look. When pairing a patterned tie with your suit and shirt, make sure not to have the same size pattern throughout. For example, do not wear a striped suit with a striped shirt and a striped tie, especially if the stripes are all the same scale or dimensions. In addition to your work suits, one defined sports coat or blazer will benefit you greatly. The typical sports coats and blazers you find today are quite expressive in their patterns and colors. These patterns allow for them to be worn in many different settings
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and with a wide array of pant options. Common patterns you will find them in are gingham check, windowpane, prince of wales, and houndstooth. Your sports coats and blazers are great for those who would rather not wear a full suit but still want to appear professional. This option works well for dates, evening or weekend business meetings. Pairing them with a checkpoint shirt and odd-colored pants in gray, tan, or navy will undoubtedly add some variety to your closet. Continuing with our needed business attire, you will find having a good pair of dress shoes indeed rounds out your wardrobe. I would suggest one black, mid-brown, and a loafer, preferably cognac or beige. To finish this section on business attire, polo shirts are a great filler when you are not feeling up to putting on an entire suit. Whether under a sports coat or standing alone with chinos or dress pants, polos are a must-have for every man’s wardrobe. This, for the most part, covers the formal and business side of things. Transitioning from formal and business to more casual, here are a few items to consider. you might want to go a bit heavier or lighter with your coat weight selection. We tend to find comfort in
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 familiarity, and diverting back to the hoodie and sweatpants look for colder outerwear, I would urge you to reserve these items for lazy home days or in the gym. An alternative option to the hoodie would be a turtleneck sweater, cardigan, mock neck sweater, or brigadier shawl collar sweater. Black, gray, burgundy and brown are some popular color choices. To avoid ordinary athletic wear while running errands, an overshirt in wool, denim, flannel, or linen, or long-sleeved button pullover shirts are an excellent choice for tops. All are easy to pair with jeans. For short-sleeved options, non graphic t-shirts and team-based polos are good go-tos. As mentioned, jeans have always been the most sought-after option for casual pants. In addition, a pair of light brown or gray chinos and dressier shorts for warmer days can also be a good option. As a quick disclaimer, when selecting jeans, if farming or nature is not on the agenda, your jeans need to be dark. There are vast amounts of casual clothing options out there. Using this guide as a base will help to prevent unnecessary and unflattering purchases. Along with your tops and bottoms, footwear should never be disregarded, in the casual department. When speaking of informal settings, sneakers are one of those items we quickly gravitate towards that should be worn sparingly. If you are not a sneaker enthusiast or playing sports, you will want to focus your attention more on the realm of pro-casual, such as driving loafers, penny or tassel loafers, chukka shoes, chelsea boots, trainers, or boat shoes. These options can be mixed with all sorts of outfits and are great for casual wear. Colors and patterns may present themselves a bit hurdlesome, but fret not. Following these simple rules will keep you steady until you are prepared to venture out. Having to question if your tops, bottoms, or shoes are too bright will more than likely let you know that they are. Outside of athletic wear, your clothing should not draw too much attention regarding color. The safest place to start for tops would be earth tones and muted colors, and adding subtle patterns of checks, windowpane, and heather fabrics. Limiting these designs to two to three colors will carry you a long way while steering clear of pastels and bold patterns. The same goes for footwear. Keeping it in the family of black, dark brown, cognac, and white will save you a lot of time arranging your outfit. For athletic wear, you can have a bit of fun with the multitude of color options available. Understanding the occasion and what are the simple base requirements will help alleviate most of the wardrobe stresses. To bring this guide to a close and hopefully allow the wheels of creativity to start turning, the simplest thing to remember and allow to guide you is and will always be: Dress for the occasion. Whatever the event, spend some time slowly building in each expressed area. Formal wear, business wear, casual, and athletic wear are the main areas to start building a solid wardrobe. I certainly hope this has given you a sturdy foundation to build on.
Cheers for now, and Stay Classic My Friends.
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BOOK REVIE
K EWS
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
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B O O K
R E V I E W
LOU MATHEWS’
L.A. BREAKDOWN R E V I E W E D BY DA R R OW FA R R
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hrough a series of injustices all-too-normal in the publishing industry, L.A. Breakdown, Lou Mathews 1999 novel about street racing culture in mid-1960’s Los Angeles, went out of print for two decades before Tiger Van Books reissued it early this year. The reemergence of this classic of California literature feels almost poignant considering it portrays the last days of a local scene as well as a national one. The period of mid-century techno-optimism when the American automobile was the embodiment of US supremacism – a shiny bubble that would soon burst.
The story is mainly chronicled through Charlie — a middling racer but good gossip who acts as the default bard of the scene — and chugs towards a showdown between Reinhart, the golden boy with a ’58 Chevy and back payments of child support, and Vaca, who’s used the settlement from a crippling diving accident to build a tricked-out Ford, piloted by lovable bonehead Brody. As in his previous novel-in-stories, Shaky Town, Mathews spotlights another often-overlooked slice of Los Angeles, the intersecting worlds of working-class Chicanos, African-Americans, and the whites who speak Spanglish as well (or poorly) as their first-gen neighbors These characters are carhops, mechanics, junkyard owners, and kids who own slick cars but still live with their parents. You don’t have to be a gearhead to appreciate the descriptions of racing or the shop talk. Like a hyper-modified car, Mathews’s prose is sleek and stripped to its essential parts, and all the more powerful for it. He makes sound in particular reverberate, as engines speak to drivers in a “loping, resonant bass,” “an eerie whoosh,” or disastrously, “like someone banging a bat in a trash can.” It’s a paradoxical, utterly unique experience to quietly read a novel that makes so much noise. That said, it’s not all deafening, macho rumbles, as in the moment when a ball peen hammer tapped against a crankshaft rings “like a bell, a clear true note that continued in the approving silence until the weight was too much to hold and [Reinhart] had to grasp the bottom, muffling the fading ring.” The kind of work deemed “trade,” so often neglected in literary fiction, is portrayed with the consideration an art critic might show for Brancusi. A paint technician is described as “a classicist who expected to lose money on his serious jobs,” and a detailer with “the world’s steadiest hand” is “considered too talented to survive.” The labor required to make these machines is detailed explicitly, reverently. The machine shop that hires Reinhart after he gets out of prison bands together to weld a stroker crank that “represented forty or fifty hours of shared works, at odd hours, necessarily.” Humbler examples of inventiveness, too, are exalted; to shed weight from the Ford so it will go faster, Vaca picks out insulation material “a tuft at a time.” The sacrifices made to construct these cars aren’t just a matter of time or money, but tactile costs tallied on the drivers’ bodies (nearly like performance art). One racer’s car has “clutch and brake pedals… the size of half dollars, the accelerator pedal, the diameter of a quarter.” “Sanitary,” Charlie quips as he examines the handiwork. “He probably didn’t have any dinner either.”
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 But these automobiles, so deconstructed that “you could lift the whole front end… with one hand,” thrum not only with creative potential but with the constant threat of serious harm. If drag racing expresses the life drive via the artistic vision required to build these machines, the specter of a fatal crash expresses the death drive — every car becomes a Chekhov’s gun. The shadow of the Vietnam War compounds the specter of death hanging over the novel, as characters consider enlisting in order to escape difficult homelives and dead-end futures. The women of this world aren’t spared either, although they have an inherent understanding of what’s to come that the men either fail to grasp or choose to ignore. Connie, the female protagonist with some of the novel’s best banter, is savvy in all things but her choice of men. However, when she finds herself pregnant by Vaca, she resolves not to be a martyr like the men who surround her. She’s wise enough to find a more suitable father for her unborn child and engineer an escape plan. For the men, racing isn’t considered a ticket out — it’s a way of life, an organizing principle in an otherwise directionless world. As Charlie says, “Either you’re in the life and there’s nothing to talk about, or you’re not and there’s nothing to talk about.” The push-pull between life and death, the sublime and the vulgar, pervades the novel. When Reinhart enters Southern California for the first time, “He smelled his first orange blossoms. Then onions.” The novel embodies the “gray-yellow haze” of the real place — paved-over, smoggy, with burning-hot days and freezing nights — but winks at the candy-apple gleam of Hollywood as an abstraction. At one point, a former child celebrity descends from the heights of the latter Hollywood, insistent on buying Reinhard’s Chevy; but among the drag-racers he’s an annoying, interloping gnat imbued with the opposite of a moviestar’s magnetism. Predictably, he escapes the world-altering disasters that impact the main characters, but he does so without dignity, confirming he was just another wannabe. In this L.A., the demigods are petty thieves, high school dropouts, and machinists: the people who know a day’s work, whether it’s honest or not. The people who make things. Before the novel’s climax, in one of the most thrilling chapters of the book, we see Van de Kamp’s frenzied line cooks as they scramble to feed the hungry crowd who’ve convened at the drive-in before the big race. In Mathews’s hands, burger flipping requires a focus, organization, and athleticism that rivals that of the drivers — or the soldiers we understand that many of them will soon become. In the midst of the rush, fresh out of trays, the manager of the drive-in stares into the parking lot, “white faced and shaking.” It’s a grim presage of the future. L.A. Breakdown chronicles the end of an era, yet its primary interest is upending cliché narratives about California, shifting the focus from the few stars and starlets to everyone else. American manufacturing began to decline in the 1980s and went into free fall in the 21st century. Now, our major exports are cultural — movies, TV shows, and software, deeply Californian products. Literature and publishing, however, have never been associated with the West Coast. “Important novels” are tony, credentialed, serious, whereas California is pop, flimflam, and frivolous. In his fiction, Mathews displays a deep, infectious respect for the potential of American cultural and industrial production both. He teaches us to see how the noise of the automobile and the quiet of the page, the literary and the unliterary, are not incompatible states.
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PAULANN PETERSON’S
MY KINDRED R E V I E W E D BY M E L O DY W I L S O N
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approached Paulann Petersen’s My Kindred expecting a collection of poetry about family, but I had simplified the word “kindred” and realized immediately that I needed to think more broadly. The first poem in the collection, “Inhabited” rewarded that impulse. “Inhabited” begins with the image of the speaker’s eyes imprinted by the “veintracery” of a maple’s “leaf-children.” I imagine veins in the speaker’s eyes, her arms outstretched into limbs, her hair leafing. Owls populate the limbs of the maple and by extension its sister, the poet, who “moans, then creaks” right along with the tree. The tree/sister/poet’s ear reverberates with all of nature including “the tongue of raptors” (11).
“Inhabited” establishes the breadth and intent of My Kindred while serving the classical function of an invocation, which draws the muses into the work. But here the poet invokes all of us into herself, a collective muse rather than the traditional version. And to reinforce its importance, the invocation appears at the precise center of the first page: What to do, but invite them all to come and live here, inside me? (11). The second poem in the book, “First Task” continues our induction into the collection by describing the poet’s preparation, the speaker sweeping away fallen blooms from her porch along with illusions, creating ...an openness Ready for a next spent bloom to fall. An emptiness where I can place my feet (12). The action is both domestic and spiritual. And like an anchorite, a shaman, or a homemaker, the poet is ready for the third poem in the book “My Muse.” Petersen begins “My Muse” with an epigraph from Heiltsuk tradition. It reads: --A wolf does not appear to us unless it wants to tell us something The Heiltsuk culture has its roots in British Columbia, an apt antecedent for the opening of the poem: On the Alaska Fur Shop label
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 inside each jacket, stole, and cape my grandfather made, a she-wolf lived. Then... When I finally began to write poems, she told me... To what I make, she is sister. She and my poems speak the same tongue. Both have guard-fir glinted by silver... (13). First, the reader pictures a child in her grandfather’s shop studying the embroidery of the label. Then, we imagine the label itself: the wolf, pointed nose, sharp eye, ruff, the child’s thumbnail ticking over “tiny gray stitches” (13). The poems in this collection follow each other effortlessly as we follow the poet through her catalogue of kindred — wolves, trees, owls, raptors, readers, women. All of them forged into sisters in this beautiful, open-hearted explication of a sliver of world by a poet who has nothing to prove and a great deal to share. But there’s another kindred as well. Petersen’s literary kindred occupy the collection, from the structural presence of classical forms such as the invocation and the muse to the more specific use of the phenomenon of metamorphosis (“Sown,””A Piscine”) and evolution (“Moths Have Their Say”) to the inclusion of several spiritual systems. Some of these legions of kindred are mentioned by name, countless others lurk between the lines, but they are there, forging a common language, a general ambience that binds the book together. For example, Anais Nin provides the epigraph to the poem “The World After,” which reads --Surely our parents give birth to us twice, the second time when they die. and Petersen opens the poem: My second birth comes parceled out in two halves (28). In this poem the speaker finds herself an adult without parents, a common event and one we see sometimes in poems, but it’s the close of the poem, I stand alone. Too new, too raw even to fill my lungs and let loose a first cry (28) that is particular to Petersen. The interpretation of this essential loss is viewed from the position of a child even though it’s experienced as an adult. But being orphaned, even as an adult, is a kind of birth into the unknown, and the appropriate response is to cry. A few poems later, in “My Parents’ Ashes,” Petersen describes the remains of her parents after cremation with even more honesty, Mostly they’re dust...
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...a powder that muffles every gleam — one intent on taking to the air and flying away into nothing” (30). The paradox of these lines is heartbreaking. The parents’ have such influence, “muffling every gleam,” but are also intent on “flying away into nothing” (30). It becomes more visceral when we picture, in the speaker’s palm, more tangible remains, “bits of bone./Chips. Nubs. Tiny beads” (30). The speaker identifies these corporal remains of these most important of kindred as “sacrum” the bone she says is “least likely to burn.” The sacrum is traditionally thought to protect the genitalia and by extension “the seed.” Petersen uses that tradition by applying it to the “Words on this page,” which she instructs to: ...carry My father and mother, my Whitmans. Be the seeds that remain when burning is done. Be sacrums, too. Make this much of my parents stay alive” (30). With this beautiful dedication to her parents, Petersen steps into the ferry with a perpetual line of literary predecessors, stretching backward from Shakespeare’s So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee (Sonnet 18)
ABOUT MELODY: Melody Wilson’s poetry appears in Pangyrus, VerseDaily, Crab Creek Review, and San Pedro River Review, and Kestrel. Her reviews appear in Colorado Review, Sugar House Review, and Cirque. She received 2022 Pushcart nominations from Redactions and Red Rock Review and was semi-finalist for the Pablo Neruda Award. She is pursuing her MFA at Pacific University. Find more of her work at melodywilson.com.
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and back forward. In My Kindred, we hear from Ophelia, from Calypso, from voices both named and unnamed. For example, in “Eve Explains The Fall,” we learn from the source that “From the start, most things/were horizontal,” that the apple was eye level, that “What’s called/the Fall from Grace/was more a lateral move,” and in fact, that the only mention of “falling/came from Adam” (49). Petersen borrows from and addresses masculine sources as well, Rilke, Whitman (the “New World Braggart” [34]) but always with an open-handed, unflinching feminism. The book is engaging, insightful, sometimes ironic, and always iron-clad. My Kindred is part love letter, part modern day metamorphosis spun by a poet who has earned our trust with the intricate delicacy of antlers and storm. It’s a book with the sensuality of apple flesh and the intricacy of a hornet’s eye. It must be read multiple times; you’ll find yourself on every page.
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
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R E V I E W
SUSAN BECKHAM ZURENDA
THE GIRL FROM THE RED ROSE MOTEL R E V I E W E D BY P E T E R S C H M I T T
W
hen privileged, smartass senior Sterling Lovell and meek junior Hazel Smalls meet one day in in-school suspension at Ramsey High, they have no idea how their lives will change. Sterling, with several cronies, is there for disrupting his AP English teacher’s class. Hazel, “the girl from the Red Rose Motel,” is in ISS because she can’t afford to have her JROTC uniform dry cleaned. But the beautiful, alluring Zell catches Sterling’s eye and an unlikely love affair begins. That English instructor, the widowed, attractive, 50-something Angela Wilmore is also Zell’s teacher in a general level class. As she gradually learns more about Zell’s difficult home life — cleaning the motel rooms with her mother, supervising her little sister Chloe, her father a drunk, unemployed trucker — Angela finds herself caught up in the opposite-side-of-the-tracks romance between her students. Set in the author’s native South Carolina in 2012, this exemplary novel evolves from Susan Beckham Zurenda’s 33 years of teaching at a public high school and community college. Zurenda’s poetic, moving, multi-prizewinning debut Southern novel, Bells for Eli (Mercer University Press, 2020) set the bar very high — but no sophomore slump here. She has successfully expanded a published short story into a page-turner, alternating points of view by chapter among the three primaries — a narrative challenge she more than meets. Despite Zell’s best efforts at concealment, Sterling discovers that she lives at one of his slumlord father’s dingy properties, and his interest, and the complications, only deepen. Zurenda pulls the tattered curtain on the thousands of children and adolescents forced to reside today in tawdry motels because their families can’t afford security deposits on apartments or down payments on houses. Sterling’s snooty parents aren’t at all thrilled with their son’s new love, and his erstwhile girlfriend Courtney, a blonde, blue-eyed cheerleader prone to jealousy, is even less accepting. Zurenda draws on personal experience portraying the obstacles public school teachers face each day (with insufficient compensation). When Courtney’s father, a fundamentalist preacher, tries to intimidate Angela into dropping a Margaret Atwood story featuring a strong female character (and an occasional “f” word), she finds a welcome ally in her principal Finley Copeland. Tragedy strikes Hazel’s family, and Angela goes beyond the call in caring for her beleaguered, homeless student. To
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 watch Zell grow from “scared rabbit” to plucky young woman, and Sterling from cocky to compassionate, is exhilarating. And one roots for Angela and the divorced Finley when their academic alliance develops into her first relationship since her husband’s passing. So many hot button contemporary issues permeate this story — abortion rights, addiction, bullying, foster parenting, LGBTQ concerns, and more — and Zurenda handles them all nimbly and with grace. The life-altering decision Hazel makes near the novel’s conclusion packs a punch, and she, Sterling, and Angela will stay indelibly with the reader long after the last page is turned in this splendid book. — Peter Schmitt, author of Goodbye, Apostrophe, and five other collections of poems
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IT’S NOT STEALING IF THE PERSON IS DEAD by b e t h s h e r m a n You tell yourself as you reach into Nana’s jewelry box and grab an aquamarine ring she wore on special occasions. It’s part of Nana, like the stale candy hidden in the armoire or her collection of porcelain dogs. She’s left you three cherry red Tupperware bowls in her will. Nothing more. Nana didn’t approve of your job, your hair color, your pronoun choices, your “lifestyle.” But Tupperware seems a bit much. It says marry a man. Cook him dinner. Make sure the leftovers don’t rot. Although Tupperware is useful too, preserving your portion of this morning’s steak and eggs before your father had a chance to dump them in the trash. You weave through mourners making small talk, step onto the terrace. From there, you can see the parking lot and a sliver of ocean sandwiched between hi-rises. The ring is gorgeous, a perfect fit. You could pawn it and use the proceeds towards a downpayment on your own apartment or a used car. Buy a bus ticket for Portland, pretend you’ve never met these people before. What would that solve? They’d clank after you like tin cans tied to a rear bumper. Was Nana happy? Once, you saw her dancing in the kitchen with an invisible partner, swaying to music only she could hear. That’s the closest you ever saw her get. Closer than you’ve ever gotten. You set the ring on the iron railing. Study its fragility, the way sunlight makes it glitter. Tupperware is the sturdier bet, but why does it have to be one or the other? The terrace door opens, releasing a wave of sound. You lean over, purse your lips and blow, the ring tumbling away from you, a whisper of blue, then sky, parking lot, gone.
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
THE FENTANYL KID TAMES A CLOUD by b e t h s h e r m a n Maine in winter: ice-capped mountains, pine trees, more mountains. Snow blankets the potato fields, forming sloppy drifts. My brother and I watch from the top of the hayloft in the barn. They’re moving, see? But to me, the snow is rooted in the dark, frozen ground. He’s 15, two years older. Without him, I will fade and disappear. The pill he offers is light blue, a Sweet Tart someone scratched a smiley face on. This’ll be good. Maybe it will be. I want his euphoria, the sense that anything’s possible. His pupils have morphed into pinpricks, his skin the pale blue tint of snow. We’ve got wings. His laughter spooks the cows below, who bellow, edge closer together. I take the pill, smaller than my pinkie fingernail. It’s like holding the answer to a question I never asked. Come on. He says something else I can’t understand and fear washes through me, colder than snow, packed into an unforgiving ball. The wind moans, icicles dangle from the pines. It’s been snowing for a week. Drifts lick the side of the barn. I wonder if it will hurt to hit the ground or if it will be like entering a cloud. I slip the pill onto my tongue, swallow, wait. There’s a moment when I could make it stop. Go back to the house where our father’s passed out and our mother sits for hours, staring at her hands, but then I see love in my brother’s face – for me, for the universe – it doesn’t matter. I feel flakes kiss my face and before I know it, we’re falling.
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DNIPRO by b e t h s h e r m a n
After the Russians bomb the power plant, Sofiy goes to the Dnipro River to scoop yellowish water into a bucket for her grandmother to cook with. What should have been a ten-minute walk takes over an hour because she’s missing half her left leg. From the knee down, there’s nothing but air. She’s nearly 18. Her mother has enlisted; her father is dead. On the other side of the Dnipro, half a mile from the torn-up riverbank, Sofiy can barely make out the silhouettes of Russian soldiers, some no older than her, shoveling more trenches, hollowing out the soil until it heaves. She hates them but can’t stop imagining the acne blooming on their cheeks, their oily hair and dirt encrusted fingernails, the furtive way they smoke cigarettes, as if it’s forbidden. Last summer, she and a boy from a village outside Kherson spent the night in a hayloft near the river. His breath smelled of oranges. His hands skittered over her breasts like dragonflies on holiday. Everything he did to her body took her farther from the war, until she could pretend she was a farmer’s daughter, not a soldier’s, a milkmaid skipping through wildflower fields. When she was younger, she was the third fastest runner in school. Watch you don’t outrace the wind, her father had teased, hugging her at the finish line. The memory a stab now. His love for her fading like the not quite there sun obscured by smoke. She had been a speed machine, not the maimed goose she’s become, never quite achieving lift-off. Slow-hopping along, a branch shoved under each arm. She doesn’t look down. What would be the point when mines explode without warning, shearing limbs off, exposing membranes and thoughts, tender red, her body a reed trembling on its stem?
ABOUT BETH: Beth Sherman has an MFA in creative writing from Queens College, where she teaches in the English department. Her stories have been published in Portland Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Blue Lyra Review, Sandy River Review, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dreams, Flash Boulevard, Sou’wester and elsewhere. She is also a Pushcart Prize and multiple Best of the Net nominee, including a 2023 BOTN nomination for flash fiction.
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thefabulous.co
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new poetry release from J.d. ISIP & Moon Tide Press
Kissing the
WOUND
Now available for
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here’s the scoop In J.D. Isip’s second full-length poetry collection, Kissing the Wound, readers are asked to look at “this long life” through a multiversal lens, to consider how our lives and our loves, our traumas and our triumphs, fold in on one another, how we are all connected to and reflected by one another. Isip crosses genres and poetic styles, nods to X-Men and Star Wars as well as Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and the Bible; he shows readers what wonders we miss between breaths and days. “When you pay attention,” Isip seems to tell us, “You just might find the healing you were looking for.”
receiving rave reviews If our memory could shatter like glass and be reassembled with no regard given to time, it would look like these poems: a shimmering window of stained glass whose patterns and glow create unexpected resonances of the many lives one voice can be given. As identities — familial, sexual, spiritual, amicable — intersect and intertwine, time folds in on itself. Everything can and does happen at once. Kissing the Wound is expansive, enveloping. With cross-genre bravery and unfettered honesty, J. D. Isip’s collection examines, at its core, a question of love: for each other, and for ourselves.
- Charles Jensen, Author of Instructions between Takeoff and Landing and Nanopedia There is a palpable struggle against powerlessness in J.D. Isip’s Kissing the Wound, and in its expertly crafted poems, the path to victory in that struggle always originates from within. Although its external expression varies from poem to poem (telekinesis, immense empathy, razor-sharp wings, conquering love), Isip shows us that the greatest power we have is our ability to remember, to render, and to navigate the “mess of lights and music” that is the human experience.
- Gustavo Hernandez, 143 Author of Flower Grand First
J.D. Isip is the author of Pocketing Feathers (Sadie Girl Press, 2015) and several other works of poetry, fiction, and theater. His second full-length poetry collection, Kissing the Wound will be out in January 2023 from Moon Tide Press. He is also a full-time professor in Plano, Texas, and a contributing editor to The Blue Mountain Review.
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
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SIDEWALK by D E VO N H O U TZ
You’ve never counted cracks in the sidewalk until your husband is pushing you uphill in the latest post-op wheelchair. The sun is on your face. You close your eyes, trying to bask in it, trying to feel warm, trying to remember sweating. He must be sweating. He is flushed, muscles flexed, pushing you upward and forward. He tries to maneuver one of the wheels over a chunk of broken pavement. The bumps radiate through you like waves of energy bouncing against bone, like another x-ray. He cusses the cheap materials of the chair. He blames the manufacturer, the hospital, the insurance, the sidewalk, the city. Then he touches your shoulder, apologizes for cussing, and keeps pushing. This hill won’t last. When you reach the top, blue sky stretching around, it will be something like victory. You’ll crane your neck to look at him. You’ll touch his hand, knuckles white from his grip on the handles, and maybe, finally, he’ll let go. No more pushing upward. No more forcing forward. Just wind rushing through your hair. Arms spread wide. Speeding down so smooth, you might be flying.
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WORTH by D E VO N H O U TZ They sprinted across hot asphalt, quick and light, tricking themselves into believing they could outrun the burns. They held on to each other beneath the water, watched glistening pockets of breath float to the top and didn’t care about the chlorine stung eyes, the blurred vision for the rest of the day. All worth it to them, to see what air looked like when it was trapped. They ripped grass, threw fistfuls of dirt, threw fists at each other, play-acting and re-enacting. They took turns kicking at a locked door with the rubber of their sneakers until the wood finally splintered. Breathing in the dust from the minivan’s aged carpet, they listened to heavy footsteps coming closer. One pressed the heels of his palms into his closed eyes, tracked bright spots swelling and receding. The other flattened herself over his small body, whispered, be quiet be quiet be quiet. If the slope of the hill wasn’t steep enough, they twisted their hips and shoulders. It felt good, the momentum, the jerk and pitch of their bodies their own, no one else’s. They gathered more and more speed, rolling down somewhere, anywhere else. In the doctor’s office, they trailed fingertips along the glass tank, hoping a fish would take a liking and follow, then ran away before it could.
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PLANT by D E VO N H O U TZ Man on the apartment building rooftop waters his plant. Man on the rooftop is maybe not a man. Is certainly the owner of the plant, which may be a fern. Man-maybe-notman (can’t be sure) enjoys their fern, considering all the watering, all the careful examinations, leaning close to the leaves. Maybe-not-man (must be person) traces a finger along the plant stem. Person whispers something to fern. Must be soft words. Must be kind. Person on the rooftop has easy roof access. My apartment building has no roof access, easy or not. My apartment has this: a window. To watch apartment building across the street. To see the watering of plants, plural. There are two, now. First plant is decidedly a fern. Second plant, plant beside Fern, new plant, gets lots of attention (trimming and spraying and soil-checking). Plant is decidedly tomato. Note: Dangling red spheres. Note: Person popped one into their mouth. Even from here, all the way across the street, I see the seedy juice burst at first bite. Person has not watered today, or I have missed it. Tomato plant has three ripe tomatoes. Might have more tiny tomatoes that are not ripe, not ready to be picked. I’m not sure, can’t be, because those tiny tomatoes would be surely green, would surely blend into the plant leaves. Sometimes, Fern’s leaves ripple. When there is wind, surely. Sometimes, the ripple is more like swaying. Maybe even waving. May be the wind. Note: Fern’s leaves have grown too long, need trimming. But it has been three days, and person has not watered, let alone trimmed. Urgent: squirrels have taken the ripe tomatoes. Can’t be sure. Can’t be sure. But there is only green, no red gleaming through leaves. Tomato plant no longer droops from the weight of offspring. Tomato plant is stoic. Empty. And the squirrels? Can’t be sure. But they skitter across the rooftop. They cross the street to mine, skitter up there, too, sharp nails burrowing holes into places they don’t belong. Scratching and thumping along my ceiling. Thumping more loudly lately, bellies full of seeds. Can’t be sure. For the first time in a week, person is here! I watch them walk towards plants, slow at first, then rushing. They put hands on the tomato plant, check leaves, check soil. They pick up tomato plant with both hands, walk to rooftop access door, bringing tomato plant along to safety. I am lucky to see it. Good to know what’s happened, lest I suspect the squirrels. Not so good to watch Fern watching person walk away. I wait with Fern for person to return. I squint into sun, looking for little brown spots on the leaves, for edges that need trimming. The squirrels wait, too, salivating at the memory of flavor, of soft skin tearing easily against their teeth and nails. But they’re impatient. They dig claws through Fern’s dry dirt bed, just for something to do. They climb up her limbs, heavy bodies bending her frame. They leave droppings of last week’s tomato seeds in Fern’s fertile soil. When the man returns, days later, he doesn’t bother to bring a watering can. Just a trash bag for the forgotten Fern. He is, I see, pre-angry. Why aren’t plants sturdier. Why do they need so much. So much time. And attention. And for what? Just to stay green? Is that all? What a pleasure, then, for the man, to make his way across the rooftop and see, beneath Fern’s withered, brown leaves — more like feathers now than they have ever been — a small, green sprout. It has been shaded perfectly from the blazing sun by Fern’s bent, dead branches, by wilted foliage.
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With his index finger, man on apartment building rooftop gently props up the underside of the sprout’s leaves, lifting them like the hem of a skirt. A new tomato plant, by his assessment. A blessing. A survivor, growing up and through and over what was once just Fern.
ABOUT DEVON: Devon Houtz was born and raised in Sunnyvale, California. She has a background in journalism, technical writing, and education. Devon earned her MFA in Creative Writing from University of Washington in 2020. Shortly after graduating, she joined a creative content agency, where she now leads a team of writers crafting high-quality and strategic editorial. At present, and in fits and starts, she is finishing her short story collection about reflected and refracted perspectives. Her non-fiction piece "DEXA" has been published in Redivider. When Devon isn't wording and re-wording, she's on a long walk with her pup Huey, somewhere in Seattle, hopefully near a waterfall.
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MOVE THE PLANCHETT TO YES! by E P I P H A N Y F E R R E L L
I read in the paper where this woman in Florida married a ghost. “Why, that’s insane,” I thought at first. And then I thought, “Why not?” I’m going to ask my spooky, Lil Wookie, Ouija board girlfriend to be my wife. We met in the usual way. Usual for a Ouija-board girlfriend anyway — at a séance. It wasn’t going well, the séance. Poor old Mr. Brown in 8A was simply trying to contact his dear, departed wife, to tell her he loved her still, and to find out what jewelry should go to which daughter, and all he got was a montage of acrimony. It’s quite a thing to have your neighbors hear all about your private shortcomings. The séance ended when the lights went crazy and the candle poofed out and an unseen wind yanked down the curtains. Madame Shiver insisted that a second séance another night would go better — sometimes the spirits are mischievous and vex her, she said. We dispersed to our apartments, and that, I thought, was that. Arabella came with me. She was one of the spirits present, she told me. She’d been the one to yank down the curtains and blow out the candle. I seemed nice and she was tired of Madame Shiver bossing her around — and that’s not even her real name, Arabella said. We’ve had such a wonderful courtship — watching movies, playing duets on the piano, and lots of board games. Arabella is great at backgammon. We talk for hours on the Ouija board. So, why not ask her to marry me? I’m not so much with the flesh-and-blood girls, but I can make Arabella happy, I just know it. Here goes: “Arabella, are you there darling?”
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HOW TO TELL IF YOUR OVEN IS POSSESSED BY A DEMON by E P I P H A N Y F E R R E L L
Burned again. This is the third tragic event this July. You are living on beverages and microwaved dinners now. It’s the oven. You set the oven for 350F. Opening the door is like opening the gates of Hell. The heat rolls out at you, blowing back your hair. You’ve been to the hospital twice. They look at you like you’re insane, coming in gasping for breath, eyebrows scorched, face blotchy. They tell you to stay out of the spa. The appliance repair shop can’t send anyone for weeks, they say. They’ve never heard of the brand: Forneus. You describe the problems. They laugh. “Sounds like you need an old priest and a young priest,” they say. “Or maybe you are just a lousy cook.” The oven snaps its door at you. The stove burners blink furious red eyes. You can’t bear it anymore. The fuse box is in the pantry. You shut the door behind you to disguise your intention. You throw the switch labeled “kitchen.” The oven light flickers, you hear the oven scrape over the floor, aiming heat at the pantry door, blocking you inside while the doorknob melts and the door warps. Your ex-husband will find you, two days later, dehydrated and hysterical, and he’ll suggest a long rest, and you’ll agree, and you’ll sign papers without reading them. The real estate agent will sell the house with appliances included.
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THE BALLAD OF TOMMY TWO-FACE by E P I P H A N Y F E R R E L L Tommy was 14 when he climbed through Jake McGrath’s bedroom window and stole a wad of cash out of his nightstand — money Jake acquired by selling loose cigarettes. “Don’t,” Tommy wheezed under Jake’s fat ass straddling his chest. Jake braced Tommy’s head between his knees, “Quit squirmin’.” In his army jacket, Jake fumbled for a box cutter. “Everybody’s gonna know whatcha did and who ya did it to.” Now, Tommy works at the Gas-N-Go. Customers look past him, asking for lottos. They eye the candy when purchasing sixpacks. No one stares at the scar running from his forehead to his chin. From the register, Tommy watches delinquents chug sodas and block the entrance with BMXs. They glare. Smirk. He knows what they call him. He was one of them.
ABOUT EPIPHANY: Epiphany Ferrell lives on the edge of the Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois. Her stories appear in more than 50 journals and anthologies, including Ghost Parachute, New Flash Fiction Review, Best Microfiction, and other places. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee, and a Prime Number Magazine Flash Fiction Prize recipient. Follow her on Facebook or Twitter, or learn more at epiphanyferrell.com.
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MAN AT THE BUS STOP by J O S H UA M I C H A E L S T E WA RT
Not mumbling as much as he’s humming. Not a song — more like a refrigerator. Without provocation, he turns to me, “You don’t regret what you did, but what you didn’t do.” He then recalls all the girls he didn’t fuck back in high school. Their names rise from his mouth like ghosts. His eyes reach to grab them before they float away. He says he hasn’t seen his mother in years. “She never wanted children, and I spent my life reaffirming her thoughts.” Snow falls, backlit by streetlights. He fumbles a harmonica from his peacoat. Plays I’ll Be Home for Christmas.
ABOUT JOSHUa: Joshua Michael Stewart is the author of Break Every String, The Bastard Children of Dharma Bums, and Love Something. His work has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, Salamander, Plainsongs, Brilliant Corners, South Dakota Review, Permafrost, and many others. He lives in Ware, Massachusetts. www.joshuamichaelstewart.com
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HOMESTRETCH BY CY N T H I A M C VAY
The house where I grew up and spent my formative years — and I adored — burned down while I was in college. Hand built in the woods by a squatter Scotsman, it was a charming compendium of repurposed materials. Railroad ties and bulky river stone formed its core and character. The front door — salvaged from an old Trenton Church — had to be bolted from the inside before we raced through the side door to catch the bus. The oscillating orange and blue roof which looked like Spanish tejas came from an old Howard Johnson. There was a small, elevated loft in the den where my sister and I played Monopoly and endless War. Alongside the fireplace, sparkling Moroccan mosaic doors covered deep ovens, to roast a potato, say. I always thought it odd that a stone house could burn down almost entirely — it was less stone than it looked, I guess — but it did. Other than the front façade, the two-story house and wing out back and everything we created and coveted turned to ashes. An hour after the repairman “fixed” the furnace, a dripping valve ignited a raging fire. My parents rebuilt on the same acre outside Princeton, New Jersey, which backs into a woodland reserve, surrounded by two wandering streams. The new, passive solar contemporary house never felt like home, at least not to me. But as I approached from wherever I was living at the time — Washington, DC, New York City, the Hudson Valley — a feeling wafted over me. My connection to place was as strong in the approach, in the journey, as in the arrival. No matter how often my parents explained the fastest way to get there (as if I didn’t know, as if I didn’t have GPS), coming from the north, I insisted on driving through town. An extra minute or two was worth it. I optimized not just travel time but time-travel. As I made my way, I traversed places steeped with laughter and wonder, saturated with the essence of childhood, an amalgam of millions of everyday moments. Why rush? Instead, I pulled off Route 1 and its infinite non-descript strip malls, stoplights, and carwashes before hitting Princeton, at — I had to look this up — Raymond Road, indicated by a simple green sign. I never remembered its name until I saw it, although I’d seen it hundreds of times. The anticipation made me feel as if I had maybe missed it. I never panicked because there were many options beyond that could deliver me to town. But just as I thought, maybe I’ve passed it, that I’d missed that modest sign while I passed a truck trailer on its left, maybe, then, there it appeared, after the water tank, as always, off to the right. I signaled, leaving Route 1. The road bumped past a gas station at thirty degrees then widened. A tennis bubble swelled on the right; my parents played there with friends on Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings. Housing sprung up on the left before I hit the entrance to Route 27, a little hairier than it used to be. From there, I enjoyed heading through the small, inviting outcropping of older clapboard colonials, the town of Kingston, where I wanted to stop, but was eager to push on. Next time. Past Kingston on the left, the sky opened, as Lake Carnegie languished, then spilled over a waterfall. A few times,
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 over many years, I saw the sculls of Princeton University rowers either on the racks or on the water’s surface through the spring blooms or fall foliage and had no inkling of what it was to be out there, until I took up rowing myself. Nonetheless, the picturesque scene, in season, was something to look forward to. From there, Princeton was palpable, Nassau Street imminent. If these neighborhoods were developments, they were chopped up so long ago that mature trees now softened their edges and brought a self-assured grace to the mostly low-lying ranch homes and forty-year-old azalea. A mile or two down, on the right, appeared the Whole Earth Center, an organic food store, whose expanse always jarred me. In my decades-old memory, it was a small enterprise set back from the road. WEC survived Whole Foods and the onslaught of other options. It was a town landmark, a destination, but especially for our family, since my mother was part of its origins story. She still gets a discount which she encourages me to use when I’m in town. It seems almost a regular grocery store now — the brands and products blur with those I buy elsewhere — but at the beginning, granola and whole wheat flour were sold only in bulk, from bins. We brought our own jars to fill with freshly ground peanut butter. It was strictly vegetarian. A hundred feet later, Harrison Street intersects Nassau Street and the town officially beginsand town officially begins. Princeton University owns pretty much everything on the left-hand side of the street, and the town filled the other. A couple blocks deep to the right was Westminster Choir College, where I took piano lessons for ten years. I never practiced my Beethoven enough for my humorless teacher whose hands pummeled the keyboard with intimidating ferocity and precision. I wish I had. On the left, Princeton University’s underground library expanded and evolved over the years, and there was a secret parking lot we used when we visited campus before it became inaccessible. Witherspoon Street, a retail hub, comes in from the right, beginning for all intents and purposes at the cemetery where my grandparents lay and my parents have plots, collects the Public Library, and stops at the campus gates, in front of Nassau Hall, where my father worked for the President for years. I have a signed, framed photograph of the Nassau Hall’s worn stairs that was given to my grandfather when he retired as Assistant Athletic Director. My grandfather, father and sister all attended Princeton. Older alumni convene during reunions for the Princeton P-rade in the green expanse between Nassau Hall and Nassau Street. Although not a Princeton graduate, I lined up most years — donned in orange and black — with my family to walk towards the lower ballfields. I danced away many reunion nights to live bands under open tents all over campus with friends and with strangers. I feel a little like the Stage Manager in Wilder’s Our Town, a role I played in high school. Just beyond lies Palmer Square, altered significantly over the years. My father’s parents lived in the corner apartment on the second floor overlooking the square, above Clayton’s before it became, I think, Ann Taylor, and other chain stores, before Princeton became owned by outsiders. My grandfather told yarns about working in a bowling alley and selling vacuum cleaners growing up in O-hi-ah. He drove an orange and black Dodge Dart. My grandmother was petite and made crustless cucumber sandwiches. The
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Post Office moved from the center, and the whole square is now crowded with expensive apartments and a multi-level garage. The big conifer in town lit up over the holidays, and was the site of caroling, where in years past we might have bumped into someone we knew. Not anymore. And then I was through town. I chose whether to exit on Elm Road past the old Princeton Packet headquarters, Governor’s Mansion, and St. Thomas Aquinas, where I went to church with my grandparents for many years of Sundays, or via Hodge Road. Not really: I always chose Hodge Road even though speed bumps and bike lanes have altered its countenance. To get there, I drove down to the YMCA and exercised extra care at the light because an admirer of my sister’s was killed by an oncoming car taking that turn one night. But, true to form, and my memory, Hodge Road is lined by enormous light-camouflage mottled sycamore trees. At least I can count on them. For years I thought they were hodge trees because of the road’s name. But there is no such thing as a hodge tree, of course. “Hodge” means rustic or rural or countryman, but there is nothing hodge-y about Hodge Road, lined by stately older mansions, set back from the road, which seem to be out of disfavor by the new wealthy who prefer open-format kitchens, media rooms and exercise basements. My parents’ friends, the Bordens, whose family owned the New Jersey dairy, used to live here in a rambling, comfortable white house. My parents rented a beige Tudor across the street for a spell while they rebuilt on our charred plot. It was in that house that a brown recluse bit my sister one night, in her bed, over the holidays. She still has a depression on her shin to prove it. Then, right onto Great Road, which if we carried on for a couple miles would pass an active farm and Princeton Day School and then take us to Stuart Country Day School of the Sacred Heart, which I attended for fourteen years. But I’d go only as far as the light and take a left onto Rosendale Road. From here, each road segment became cooler and leafier and more inviting, particularly in the summer, from Rosendale to Province Line Road and then into the gravel driveway. I passed DN&R Greenway, one of the old Johnson estates, now a preserve, where my parents endowed and created a Poetry Trail, with fifty poems on plaques, a trail that makes you pause. Two of my favorite farms which provided openings, sky, vistas, were cut up by developers long ago who gave them names that mock their provenance. Enormous houses with the right zip code (everyone wanted to live in Princeton it seemed, and not just for the schools) erupted from the artificially curvaceous suburban roads; small ornamental trees were planted as if to lend balance to their ostentation. A left onto Province Line, and down a half mile. Only a half mile but packed with neighbors we knew too well: boys I had crushes on, families with whom we celebrated and commemorated graduations, birthdays, holidays, deaths. Mrs. Lambert’s estate was long gone, and a closely shorn golf-course replaced her semi-wild spread through the trees. The Wilson’s yard and house seemed smaller than I remembered, but will always be traditional, with boxwood and a formal rose garden, tennis court and pool. My sister and I and the neighborhood boys played basketball in their driveway and Marco and water polo in their pool. We spent a lot of time at the Wilsons’, who were generous New York City weekenders. Just beyond, our driveway was on the right, before the sharp, dangerous turn in the road where we bore audio witness to many accidents: screech, thump. I could have stayed on Route 1 longer and experienced the splay of highway, what, ten lanes wide in places, trailers hurtling by, and then turned at the big boxes and malls, foregoing Princeton town, and come down Province Line
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 directly, through sod farms that have turned into more housing, with suburban tree plantings. Squibb became Bristol Myers Squibb, and then acquired dozens of other companies that never made it into their name. As far as I was concerned — what was corporate America up to in there anyway? — BMS was a pond with an enormous flock of Canada geese, that “migrated,” occasionally, to Educational Testing Service (home of the SAT and other standardized tests) a mile away, as the goose flies. The extensive parking lots were empty at night, and, given considerably laxer security at the time, the site of some serious make-out sessions with a high school boyfriend or two. BMS was always doing something with the open space between the building and the road which was trying to be a meadow. On the right, there was another 140-acre Johnson estate, owned by Seward Johnson. The driveway was lined with full-grown trees, helicoptered in for $30,000 a pop in the 1990’s. The much younger Polish chambermaid Basia married and survived Seward, which provided the community whispers and winks of scandal for years. My sister and I picked blackberries by the gallon across the street in the wild brush. Alfie, our fluffy, foster Afghan hound, occasionally sprinted past the imposing stone gatehouse in the middle of the night. My mother, in her nightgown, was stopped at the gate when she went to retrieve him, apologizing profusely. Coming either way, as I turned into the driveway, there was the familiar crunch of gravel, and a sense of being enveloped by dogwoods and mature oaks and being home. We shared the driveway with the Marucas, who moved out decades ago, and whose house on the right was repainted a variety of vomit hues over the years. Our house was in back, beyond a small stream which swelled after a big rain, barely fitting through the four-foot culvert, and ever threatening to wipe out the driveway. Once, after a little school gathering at our house, one of the nuns, possibly tipsy and in the rain, almost toppled into the drink on her way to her car. Awkward! We built Megaptraville in the woods across the stream with an outdoor theater and a chin-up bar, a balance beam, and a few “roads.” I sat in the chilly brook with small fish nipping air bubbles off my legs. With a slight bend, the driveway delivered me to a cobblestone turnaround, a lovely landing. My parents’ hybrid and mini were tucked away in the garage. Climbing hydrangea clambered the fence and gate. The breezeway passed by a Japanese rock garden with a Chinese maple, sculptures, and grasses. If Mom and Dad were not out front, which they usually were, greeting me, asking me how my drive was, I knew they’d be beyond the shiny red door, or out back on the bluestone patio reading The New York Times. A couple years ago, my parents moved from where they lived for almost a half a century into a retirement community on the edge of Princeton. I no longer drive into Princeton the same way, and only drove by their old driveway last week for. . . I’m not sure why. I just wanted to see. Okay, to spy. To see what the new owners were up to. I slowed down but didn’t stop, certainly didn’t turn in. There was more traffic than there used to be, a truck on my tail. I couldn’t see anything from the road, and the feeling of comfort, of homecoming, was gone. In its stead was a sense of loss. I’d lost my home once in the fire, and now again: packed and moved with my parents’ books and furniture, with my parents, and some to my own home in the Hudson Valley. As I drive to where they live now, the destination and journey are altered, but the memory fragments remain. The new route is a reminder that my parents are on their own homestretch, and I am not far behind.
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ABOUT CYNTHIA: A graduate of Harvard College with a degree in biology and studio arts, Cynthia McVay grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. After 25 years as a strategy and management consultant, she has turned her attention to writing full-time. Her essays and stories have appeared in dozens of anthologies and literary journals including Orion and The Pennsylvania Gazette, and Gray Love: Stories about Dating and New Relationships after 60. Cynthia is currently working on a memoir entitled A Field of My Own, a chronicle of her two-decade relationship with a defunct orchard in New York’s Hudson Valley where she writes, forages, rows and paints. She spends her winters on the island of St Croix, USVI.
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DON’T TELL ME BY
J. D. I S I P
for Brandon Barnes Nothing you’ll find more orphan than the heart.
Anders Carlson-Wee, “Lodestar”
“Everyone tells me you are a fake, but I believe in you.”
That the Great Pumpkin is a meditation on faith may not be news. That Linus and Lucy and Charlie Brown are all always telling us something about ourselves may also be old hat. Still. Here at the makeshift pumpkin patch at the Dallas Arboretum, by myself as usual, I hear Linus writing out his letter to the Great Pumpkin, continually interrupted by friend after friend telling him he’s crazy.
There’s no such thing as the Great Pumpkin. You might as well believe in Santa Claus or Superman. You might as well believe in falling in love. Or even finding love when you’re this close to 50. You might as well believe in peace in the Middle East. Or Jesus. It’s crazy what people will believe.
“P.S. If you really are a fake, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
Brandon holds that Linus, fool in the pumpkin patch, is a “criticism of apocalyptic preachers.” It’s hard to argue with Brandon. Like so many of my friends here in Texas, there’s a different kind of wariness of religion. Whereas Californians are, so far as I can tell, turned off by religion in the usual ways – met too many hypocrites, maybe we tried it out and became hypocrites ourselves – the Texans I’ve met were almost all “religious from the start.” Their skepticism, even cynicism springing from an inescapable indoctrination. So many of my friends here don’t even talk to their families anymore. Or they do, but it’s always guarded.
Charlie Brown comes waiving a letter in the air, “I got an invitation to a Halloween party!” He proceeds to do a little dance.
It’s easy to sit back and tell folks, “I told you so.” A friend who thinks she can change her boyfriend. Another who thinks she can make her kids choose a different path; she just has to try a different angle of influence. Everyone I know is waiving some sort of hope in the air, running straight for people like me to verify that what they are holding is, in fact, real.
“Charlie Brown,” Lucy says, “If you got an invitation, it was a mistake.”
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 Who knew Lucy was a Pharisee? That old Groucho Marx chestnut, “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member,” makes its round in the atheism circuit. In the old days, it was a disdain for the harlots and tax collectors, then generally the sinners, but then people got real honest. They thought of their fucked-up parents or high school bullies, celebrities they hated who “found Jesus,” and, of course, the ick-factor of being offered salvation themselves… knowing exactly how absurdly fucked-up they were – who would want to be a part of that?
“Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere.”
Linus can’t help himself. Like Paul, he must add “works” to his faith. It’s a clever way out, too. If you are in an insincere pumpkin patch, the problem is not the Great Pumpkin, but you and your lousy choice of waiting places. Or maybe the lack of sincerity is in the one waiting. I understand Brandon’s take on the apocalyptic preachers – how can one begin to argue with a faith based on a paradox? If the Great Pumkin never shows up, there’s always – always – the possibility the error is in the translation. It’s why people will wait millennia for a promised return. Why some even hold out after the cheating, the abuse, the addiction, after all the wreckage.
Lucy sets her alarm to get dressed and bring her brother home from the pumpkin patch.
My favorite scene in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is when Lucy, stone-cold as she is, gets up at 4 in the morning to get her little brother and put him to bed. He’s shivering under his trusty blanket. There are no words exchanged. She gets him up and walks him home. Even though she has her usual frown on, she lovingly takes off his shoes before Linus falls back into his bed. She pulls the covers over him and walks out. I told Brandon I think this is the real message – not that we are supposed to be believers or, as he would argue, we are supposed to be skeptics, but that whatever our faithbased proclivity, it should engender in others something good.
I argue Lucy is never a better person in all of Peanuts than in this scene.
It’s fall 2023. The world is once again at war. I admit, I am a bit numb to it. With Russia and Ukraine, there seemed to be clear good guys and bad guys. Now, as with so many previous generations, it is Israel and Palestine. The lines do not seem so clear. Honestly, writers can sometimes be the worst – with our platitudes and equivocations. We can’t help ourselves. We know the answers, of course. If only people would listen to us. What is our answer anyway? That this time we just have to make sure our peace accords are “more sincere”? I hate to sound so cynical. I’m supposed to be a person of faith, after all. But I gotta say, I am terrible at it. Sure, I’m a Jesus Freak.
“Everyone tells me you are fake, but I believe in you.”
This world is all about perspective. The loneliest thing in this world is to have a perspective and find nobody who shares it. It will cause you to doubt. You might even try to see it all differently. You’ll try. But sooner or later, you’ll be back in that pumpkin patch. You’ll be back on that dating app. You’ll be back in the pew singing the hymns. You’ll be back to believing something like peace, even in the darkest of times, is a possibility. You’ll believe in some long ago promise, forgetting that maybe it wasn’t a promise at all, maybe it was lost in translation. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you went all in on the wrong guy.
“P.S. If you really are fake, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
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ABOUT J.D.: J.D. Isip is a contributing editor for The Blue Mountain Review. His collections of poetry and prose include Kissing the Wound (Moon Tide Press, 2023) and Pocketing Feathers (Sadie Girl Press, 2015). This piece is from his latest collection, tentatively titled I Wasn’t Finished, to be published by Moon Tide Press in 2025. J.D. teaches at Collin College in Plano, Texas.
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https://teachable.sjv.io/c/3209676/1301476/12646
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ARMS OUTSTRETCHED BY TAW N YA G I B S O N
In my dream I’m walking down the middle of the two-lane highway that runs in front of my grandmother’s little stone house, arms outstretched, face tilted to the left and lifted toward the sky. I’m uncertain whether I’m praying or crying or searching for something, but I can hear the familiar jar and rumble of an 18-wheeler speeding over the cattle guard a couple of miles behind me. I don’t move. I don’t hurry. I continue past the old service station, situated at the dip in the hill, white and red with cars amassed in front, old gas pumps obscuring the porch from immediate view, sauntering and arms prostrated and drooping.
It stops then, my dream. I close my eyes and will my mind to play more. To see what happens. To give me a clue of meaning. But my mind stops flickering the image behind my eyes and I slide out of bed.
A few nights later, as I begin to dream, I’m back in the same town, younger, wearing cut-off shorts and a t-shirt, wading into the river and with every turn feeling the water snakes slither near my skin. The river isn’t high, barely reaching midthigh, so the fact I can’t swim seems beside the point until it’s the whole point and I’m suddenly miles under the surface and fighting to find light. The snakes swim fast and seem to point the way out and then are gone, leaving me disoriented and trying to find anyone near the surface to help. Suddenly, I’m back standing up straight in the river. I don’t see my grandmother anywhere and I wonder how anyone could be so careless as to leave us unattended in such a dangerous circumstance.
This time as I wake I don’t want the dream to continue. I’m upset it took a snippet of real from my childhood and twisted it for unknown reasons. Why am I dreaming of my grandmother’s hometown? Why is it foremost on my conscious as I drift to dream? I can’t shake the feeling there is something there, something for me to learn.
Growing up I heard the story of my great-grandfather (or was it my great-great-grandfather), being struck by lightning while walking across a field. The story I remember had him carrying a shovel over his shoulder as he walked, the bolt finding the metal and killing him. Walking along the highway as a child, the same stretch of road from my dream, I often imagined that story. Did his hair stand on end as he hurried his steps? Did he think he would be safe, walking home with the shelter of tall pines? What did he think as the high desert storm roiled first on the horizon and then directly overhead? Did he hear the rumble and think it was a getting closer 18-wheeler hitting the cattle guard at the top of the valley instead of the low rumble of thunder that would take his life? I would stare across the fence at the empty openness and try to fill in the blanks of the one-line story told simply as a cautionary tale, defining details cruelly omitted. I’ve never been scared of lightning. Not after hearing the story of my great-grandfather and not after living through too many deep desert storms.
This town is the final resting place for so many of my family, but it will not hold my bones. Sometimes I am ashamed I don’t want to be buried amid the pines, close to my namesake and others long not known. Sometimes I wonder why any of my siblings would. Often, now, I know the trips to honor and break dirt will come more frequent. Often, now, I try to stop time in my mind.
I try over and again to get back to my dream. Find out what it’s trying to tell me, with my arms outstretched and face toward the sky. Sometimes I try to marry the image of me standing in the river, snakes swirling to the beginning or the
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 end, and see if the separate messages can turn into one. It never does. I sometimes try to think of my grandfather walking across the field as a storm rolls in or stories of those both known and unknown to me that are buried deep in the grove of pines not far from beloved homes and favorite memories and ask them to speak to my dreams. Finish the reel. Tell me what I need to know. But it doesn’t work.
I sit, still, and can plainly see myself in my dream, arms outstretched, face toward the sky, deep rumble of wheels across cattle guard immediately behind, and wonder about the gathering storm and if I’ll be able to face any of it at all.
ABOUT TAWNYA: Tawnya Gibson is a freelance writer who grew up in the high desert of southwest New Mexico. She received her degree in journalism and public relations from Utah State University. Her work has appeared in TODAY online, Zibby Mag, Under The Gum Tree, Sky Island Journal, Kitchen Table Quarterly, New Plains Review, and she was longtime contributor to Utah Public Radio. She currently lives and works in the mountains of Northern Utah, but her New Mexican roots still occasionally bleed through her work.
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UNDER THE BRIDGE BY
C A R O L I N E M A L O N E
Cinders floated into the night and landed on Sami’s legs. She sat cross-legged by the dying fire, waiting for Cornbread to return to the camp with fuel. Two new faces had entered the circle, drifters, probably going south to Florida for the winter. All Sami could see of them were there eyes like white pushpins stuck into a black fabric bulletin board and long white beards like exhaust from a car’s busted tailpipe. “Ain’t you got nothin’ but cardboard for that fire?” Sami looked up from tracing a lifeline in the palm of her hand. “Well, do you see any wood here that ain’t nailed down? He’ll be back,” she said, already irritated with the bearded men. The two men had not asked to join the group around the fire. Instead, they had stood at a distance for a while, watching before they walked over and formed the start of a third circle. leave.”
“Sure is takin’ a long time,” said the bearded man with a Confederate flag bandana around his head. “I seen him The small group of locals remained silent, watching the wisps of flames. “It’s getting’ colder,” whispered Annette. She wrapped her arms around her torso and shivered. “Ain’t colder. Fire ain’t as hot,” said Sami. “You got thin skin and skinny bones, girl.” “That ain’t no lie,” said Annette, and rubbed her hands on her arms to generate warmth. “Where is Cornbread?”
circle.
“He’ll be back.” Sami was quiet and then asked, “Y’all ever look at your bodies?” Sami glanced at the faces in the “Huh?” Annette always took Sami seriously. “I said, you ever look at your body? I mean, buck naked look at your body. In a mirror.” The Confederate beard chuckled. “You into kink?”
Sami ignored the bearded man’s remark. “I’m gonna tell you somethin’,” she said to no one in particular. “One time, I seen this man down at the 640 overpass. He was climbin’ up the concrete to his bed between them steel beams when all the sudden his bones come loose and tumble down that cement slab and busted up on the asphalt. I swear ever single bone that man had come apart.” The bearded men exploded into laughter, the silver grillz of one of the men shining in the darkness. “What happen to his skin?” Annette paused rubbing her arms. “Didn’t his skin hold in his bones?” “I ain’t a doctor,” said Sami, irritation flooding her voice. All I know is I was walkin’ to Pappy’s Pawn over that way when I seen it happen.” “You do standup, don’t ya?” chuckled the Confederate beard. “Look, most of that man’s bones done turn to dust. But them two long leg bones was still perfect. You coulda used ‘em to stir a big ol’ pot a soup.” The bearded men started to laugh again when they saw a figure of a person walking toward the group. It was a shirtless, thin-bodied man with a pudgy face. The Confederate beard drew his gun from his waist band and aimed it toward the steel girders above the group. “You scared of wood?” Cornbread dropped a box of compressed sawdust fire logs on the dirt. The box split open, the plastic holding the cardboard loosely together. “Naw, brother,” said the Confederate beard, “just on guard against cheetos.” He tucked the gun back into the waist band of his pants.
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 “Damn, Cornbread. Where you been?” said Sami. Cornbread kicked at the damaged box and two logs rolled toward Sami’s feet. Sami took the logs and tossed them into the smoldering cardboard. Small flames shot up. “Thank you, Cornbread,” said Annette. “I been shakin’ from the cole like I been shot out.” “Where you get them logs?” asked the bearded Confederate. “You dip into your trust fund or somethin’?” Cornbread didn’t look at the man. “I done robbed the Kroger.” Sami reached for Cornbread’s hand. He sat down beside her and stretched his legs out, his feet at the fire. His big toes stuck out of holes in the soles of his shoes. The Confederate beard watched Cornbread take Sami’s hand in his. “Your girlfriend’s been tellin’ ghost stories.” He stroked his beard, avoiding a thin braid of gray tied off with a piece of fishing line. Cornbread locked eyes with the Confederate beard. “I don’t recall asking you a question.” “Nobody had to,” said the Confederate beard. Cornbread was silent for a moment. “I had about enough a you. I been here all a 5 minutes, and you already under my skin.” Cornbread stood up and walked over to the Confederate beard who raised himself from the ground to stand in front of Cornbread. “What? You don’t like ghost stories?” The Confederate beard smirked. Cornbread grabbed the Confederate beard by the neck and tried to work him into a head lock. The man slipped away from Cornbread and ran toward the concrete abutment of the bridge, trying to work his gun out of the waistband of his pants. Annette began to cry. “Oh, hush up,” said Sami. Cornbread spun around and started after the Confederate beard. As the man neared the steel girders, the bridge shuddered, and a hollow popping sound echoed through the camp. The cab of a semi had crashed through the guard rail and dangled over the edge of the bridge deck. The group watched as the Confederate beard fell, his bones cracking into the earth. Sami squinted at the fragmented skeleton. “Reckon there’s anything left we can use?”
ABOUT CAROLINE: Caroline Malone is a writer who lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, East Tennessee. Her fiction has appeared in Still.
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THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT BY
D o u g l a s N o r d f o r s
He wasn’t touched by how the two of them were being so quiet. They weren’t being consciously kind to him so much as robotically sensitive to their power to disturb. He couldn’t quite figure it out. He couldn’t help but believe that some part of them wished he was awake and worshipping their power from afar, behind his closed bedroom door. After their whispered, unintelligible banter, accompanied at one point by the dull clink of his roommate’s keys as he placed them in the bowl that he usually tossed them into, was over and done with, his roommate’s girlfriend laughed the way she would have in a bar, consciously competing with the loud hum of conversation and the near-screaming strains of live music, and then gasped in drunken, unashamed embarrassment. “Stop,” his roommate clearly whispered. “I did. Didn’t I?” “Not so loud,” his roommate said in a too loud voice. Did he have the power to shock them? It was worth a try. “I can hear you!” Both of them began laughing sharply, as if in an attempt to match the decibel level of the flat-out screaming in their heads, and didn’t stop until it seemed that they were having trouble breathing. “Go back to sleep!” his roommate said. “You mean go to sleep!” “Isn’t that what I mean?!” “You tell me!” “Tell you what?!” “You can’t disturb someone who’s not disturbed!”
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 “Sounds good!” Maybe his roommate’s girlfriend saw their unwhispered, to say the last, banter as intelligent, more on his part than his roommate’s, or maybe she had passed out, and wasn’t seeing anything. Though she and Brian had been together for a while, he had only met her once. He wanted, now, her name to be something more ordinary, like Katie, and not Caitlin, which was too beautiful to mesh with the way he was feeling. He remembered that her haircut made her face look like a framed portrait, not a painting but a photograph. What was the difference? Looking at a painted face, he couldn’t imagine it moving on to the next moment, disturbing its stillness, and eating up with its mouth and eyes all the moments leading down to the end of time. He heard them settling down in the living room, and then heard one of them, Brian no doubt, banging around in the kitchen, before returning to the room that once again contained two living bodies. Now they were talking in their regular voices, but he couldn’t quite make out the words. Why didn’t they go into Brian’s bedroom and join their bodies together even further, each other’s skin as if making contact with ice and not sticking? Still in bed, his eyes on the ceiling, the blanket up to his neck, he considered how his near-screaming at Brian through the door was at odds with his shyness, and how Caitlin’s inexperience in regard to him prevented her from noticing anything out of the ordinary. Then he felt certain that his never having had a girlfriend weighed on him more than it ever had, ever since society or his soul had begun to dictate that being without a romantic partner was a deficiency on par with a lost limb. When exactly was that? How could he be certain that the sour freshness, so to speak, back then didn’t make his deficiency more intense, more blinding, than it was now? At the moment, he couldn’t remember what it was like without this added dimension to his life, except for a few flashes of childhood innocence, the cold thrill of shoplifting a comic book, and, before that, letting go of the monkey bars to see if the ground would break one his arms or one of his legs. It didn’t. Would getting dressed and going out to the living room be like the opposite of not getting caught? He wasn’t making sense, just like Brian and Caitlin, who had still not gone into Brian’s bedroom. Delayed satisfaction didn’t really make eventual satisfaction better, did it? Maybe catching sight of him as he entered the living room would awaken them to the error of their way. He forgot them, or at least believed that he succeeded in doing that. The abstract idea of tenderness lay within him, consumed by its own importance because he hadn’t been asked to give it away, to leave its shadow behind, in darkness. The sound of one of them, or possibly both of them this time, banging around in the kitchen returned him to the simpler sensation of thinking about the three of them, and not himself alone. Added to the sound now was an ambulance siren outside closed windows, muffled even more by how he couldn’t help but feel that safety itself was safe, retreating into the distance. Then it was so quiet, no sounds, no voices, nothing. He found that he was unable to conclude that Brian’s bedroom was occupied at last. Everything in it, including the bed, was a bed of moss that had multiplied like a sheet of snow on which more snow had fallen, and now no one could get in. The image was as impossible as flakes of moss descending from the sky, but it was enough to convince him that he was correct. He needed to get dressed and come out from behind
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his door and confirm his correctness. He hesitated, wondering if clothes were enough to protect Brian and Caitlin from his sheer, naked loneliness. Wearing not clothes exactly, but a thick robe that was almost like something that he could wear outside the front door, he made the next-to-nothing trek to the living room and saw two things that, surprisingly, didn’t surprise him, the absence of Brian, and Caitlin slumped down on the couch, her eyes closed, her eyelids like little knots sticking out, like outie belly buttons, a feature that he lacked, a feature that his particular pre-embryo wished for and wasn’t granted, or didn’t wish for. He went to the kitchen to see if Brian was there, then returned and again saw his absence. The next-to-nothing sound of his movement from room to room had caused Caitlin’s eyelids to slide up behind her forehead, and the difference was minimal. He imagined her asking him what her eyes were for, since she was looking at something but couldn’t focus on it and tell what it was. “It’s Charlie.” Her eyes weren’t cloudy. Her eyes were clouds, and her whole body was the sun trying to break through. Actually, he wasn’t thinking of her so much as the uncovered window filled with darkness behind her. “Is it?” Charlie went around the side of the couch and slid the curtain over the window, wondering why he had forgotten to do this before going to bed, and also why Brian hadn’t rectified the situation when he got home. When it was, thanks to him, and not to Brian, he said, “Why wouldn’t I be?” “Have we met?” He almost told her that she had changed her hairstyle, as if she didn’t know. “I think we have.” “I think so, too.” Standing in front of her again, he thought of how he couldn’t have caught a glimpse of the back of her neck, which was covered now by the length of her hair. Her eyes were closed again, and her eyelids didn’t look like anything, and his small, cramped bed behind his back, through his open bedroom door, was as pure as the grave of an infant, an image that he didn’t disown, though he didn’t know what to do with it. Her changeable hair had nothing to do with his memory of feeling a kind of fearful attraction in her presence, in contrast to how she had become like a kind of ghost that he was trying to fear into existence. He couldn’t quite get a handle on where his mind had led him, whereas there was a question that could be easily answered. “Where’s Brian?” “I think he’s taking a walk.” Charlie knew, as opposed to thought, that if he knocked on Brian’s bedroom door and got no answer, he could be sure that Caitlin was on the right track, but that didn’t stop him from seeing Brian wandering lost streets for no clear reason. “What happened?”
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 “What do you mean?” Her eyes opened again. “Sit down, please. I already feel sorry for waking you up. I want you to be comfortable, at least.” He did as he was told, choosing what he believed was her choice, the big chair beside him, and not one of the empty spaces on the couch, certainly not the one right next to her, which he wouldn’t have chosen anyway. Conscious of how he had yet to answer her question, he marveled at the three sentences that had followed it. All together they seemed like a sign of a quirky intelligence that he had gotten no inkling of the first time he had met her, while if anyone asked him to describe Brian in three words, “quirky” wouldn’t even come close to making the list. “Did you have an argument?” She smirked, wrecking her objectively beautiful face. He hoped that she felt that she didn’t have to answer his question, but he had the odd feeling that he knew her well enough to know that she would. “How did you end up roommates with Brian?” He felt that the way to erase his annoyance — with her or with himself? — over how he had interpreted her wrong was to not shrug his shoulders and say nothing. “We’ve known each other for a few years, since our sophomore year of college. We weren’t great friends, but I guess he thinks of me as trustworthy, because a while back, he called me and told me he had found this half of a duplex that he liked, but needed to share with someone.” “Tough times,” Caitlin said. “Yes.” She turned her face and looked at the unoccupied spaces of the couch. Then she resumed her former pose and said, “What do you do?” Trying not feel ashamed, the way he would if a woman he deeply cared about had asked him the same question, succeeding in not feeling ashamed, he said, “Just work at a convenience store, for now. Brian, to his credit, is actually using his degree. Not that I’m jealous.” Charlie didn’t succeed in not feeling afraid that Caitlin was thinking that he was trying to tell her that he wished that she was his girlfriend. “You shouldn’t be.” As if he hadn’t already said so, he said, “I’m not.” She nodded. Just to have something to do, he looked over his shoulder as if at Brian back from his journey to wherever, breathless, saying nothing.
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“Do you have a girlfriend?” He could see in her eyes that she instinctively knew what the answer was. “Not at the moment.” It was her who said this, and the words jolted him into thinking that any moment his life would change. “So you’re feeling what I’m feeling,” she said. The words jolted him into being completely confused. “What am I feeling?” she said. “Yes, tell me.” “That it’s not worth the trouble.” It seemed clear that there was something else that she wanted or needed to add. “A love of love is all well and good.” “But...?” “Then…” “You can’t figure it out?” “You tell me.” He thought he knew what to say, that he might be better off without all the trouble, but it didn’t sound right to him, maybe because he was with her in the living room, rather than in his solitary bedroom, dreaming. “I don’t know what to say.” She made no gesture. And she didn’t flinch at the sound of rattling keys outside the front door.
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 “There he is.” It was he who said this, and he appreciated how undeniable it sounded. “Finally,” she said. Her tone of voice didn’t suggest that going against the flow of time was impossible but desirable. Her tone of voice didn’t suggest anything. The sound of rattling keys had stopped, and the front door wasn’t yet open. Looking nearly directly at each other, they waited for that to happen.
ABOUT DOUGLAS: In addition to self-publishing three so-called “literary” novels, “Jane Davies,” “Wokokon,” and “Little Book,” Douglas Nordfors has published poems in over 70 print and online journals, including “The Iowa Review,” “Quarterly West,” “Poetry Northwest,” “Poet Lore,” “The Louisville Review, ” “Chariton Review,” “Potomac Review,” “California Quarterly,” “The Evansville Review,” “The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review,” “JuxtaProse Literary Magazine,” and “Valparaiso Poetry Review,” as well as three books of poetry, “Auras” (2008), “The Fate Motif” (2013), and “Half-Dreaming” (2020), all with Plain View Press.
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ZIP BY
D ua n e H o rt o n “Well,” Paul began as they grabbed a drink from the bar at the Bone Shop. “How do you feel? Like a new man?”
Paul looked at him with some compassion in his eyes, his shoulders hunched with his elbow pressed on the bar, his head laying towards his right side. Ken sighed out deeply, a certain happiness surrounding him that also exhausted him ten times over. It is hard work being happy and Ken knew firsthand how the pathway towards happiness was a winding highway curved around mountainous highs and low valleys on a busy day. “That’s one way to put it,” Ken began, taking a sip of his beer. “I guess I feel more like a haunted man.” “By ghosts of the past?” Paul mused. “Let them go. Besides don’t you want to celebrate and tell me all about it?” and Ken had wanted to do that so badly he could see stars in his eyes, but he couldn’t. There was something very real in the way. “Yeah,” Ken replied. “I do, but I have to tell you something first.” … The Bone Shop was the busiest place in this small southern town. Being that it was an arcade, a bar, a diner and a shopping mall. But it had just gotten busier. It was hard enough for Ken to believe that somehow a grown man had driven a car out of his mouth. But it was another thing for that same grown man to still be hanging around town. The same town Ken had grown up in and never left, not like his older brothers did. They moved away for college and never moved back. Living in bigger cities, while Ken felt like he had cities living inside of him. Horns that beeped from the inside of his mouth. That was until Zip came barreling from behind his teeth, taking that feeling with him. Maroon Mustang, sleeveless cut leather jacket, cigarette hanging from his dusky lips and all. Ken even coughed up smoke bringing him into existence in this small southern town. “So, you’re telling me that a full-grown man in a car came from out of your mouth?” Paul asked incredulously. “And that now he hangs out at the Bone Shop?” Ken nodded his head, in a desperate manner. Quickly and passionately. “The Bone Shop that we’re in right now?” Paul sighed out deeply then turned around, his eyebrows knitted together made his whole face look both serious and concerned. He turned back around, now looking exhausted. “Well, where is he then?” and Ken pointed to the arcade section of the Bone Shop located behind them. Zip’s height was his most notable feature. The next notable thing was Paul’s gasp for air as his fingers touched his chest. Ken took another long sip of his beer, hoping Zip wouldn’t turn around and see him but it was too late. Zip waived his hand at Ken who quickly turned away, acting
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 like he couldn’t see. Which became harder to do as he headed their way. … “So, who are — ” Paul couldn’t get another word in before Zip had turned his back to him and faced Ken’s way. A smirk on his lips. He dug in his back pocket for a pack of cigarettes. “You got a lighter?” Zip asked Ken. Ken shook his head. Zip dug in his front pocket this time, then in his leather jacket pocket before pulling out a green lighter and lighting it up. The Bone Shop allowed it. Zip blew out the smoke behind him. Ken narrowed his eyes and cocked his head to the right. “What are you?” Ken asked, attempting to get straight to the point. Wondering how in the world this man had come out of his mouth and where in the world he’d come from. And wondering why he’d been so rude to his friend. Maybe this man came from inside of him, but that made less sense the more and more he thought about it. Zip just chuckled, ashing his cigarette in a tray on the bar. “Thanks man, for finally letting me out,” Zip ignored his question. “I’ve been meaning to be in this world for as long as I can remember.” “This world?” Ken asked him, almost afraid to ask him anything else. Zip made his skin crawl in a way he couldn’t quite explain. Maybe it was the way his ears were pointed like elves’ ears. Or the fact that his eyes were so round and big that they looked like an alien’s. Ken couldn’t make heads or tails of it. “Yup,” Zip said, stubbing his cigarette out on the ashtray. “But,” Zip began. “You still have more to get out, don’t you?” Zip asked. “Because I wasn’t the only thing that was looking,” Zip stared at him now. His big eyes seemed to bare into his soul. His brown skin was so vibrant it seemed to pulse to the rhythm of his own heart-beat. It was all he could look at before he was snapped out of it by Paul. Reminding Zip that they had church in the morning, and that they shouldn’t be out too late. … “So, you said he came from out of your mouth?” Paul asked him on the way to the car outside the Bone Shop. “When?” Paul’s curiosity felt as sharp as the turn on Left Street which led to the Bone Shop. The streetlights outside flickered on and off, mosquitos buzzed in the air. Ken shrugged, so tired all of a sudden, he barely knew what to do. “We were on the way from church, going home,” Ken began. “I was in my mother’s car and it was just us. And then I told her what I’d been wanting to tell her for most of my life, that I’m gay,” Paul put a knowing hand on his shoulder as they walked, which turned into a gentle rub. “Then I got the hiccups,” Ken continued as they walked, feeling his energy being zapped from him more and more. “But it wasn’t so bad until I started getting dizzy.” “Then what?” Paul’s curiosity was shooting through the air like an arrow, stabbing Ken in his side. The tiredness he felt from before seemed to double. Now it was as though he was dragging his feet to his car, trying to remember the
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moment he had birthed Zip on to this planet. “I rolled down the window to get some air and that was when it happened, him and his car just threw themselves out of my mouth, on to the road, and swerved away. I only caught a glimpse of the license plate and it read ‘zip’,” Ken stopped to catch his breath, as though he had just gotten finished running a marathon, a sudden fatigue that felt like a bursting of something on the inside taking over him. “Ken, are you alright?” Paul asked, his expectations of Ken’s coming out story thrown out of the window. But Ken could feel it coming again. Something trying their hardest to barrel its way out of his mouth. Ken pushed Paul away from him with the last of his energy. He could feel himself start to convulse as his mouth widened and the top half of his head was pushed back further and further until he could see everything behind him. Suddenly, he felt a hand covering his mouth. The hand was thick, coarse and rough. It wrangled itself around him and then he felt a body behind him, keeping him in place until the feeling passed and his own body stilled. The man moved his hand from around his mouth. Ken looked up and behind him, it was Zip. “Be careful,” he whispered in his ear. … “Where did you come from?” Ken asked. Zip had offered a ride home, and with how his energy had been drained, he doubted he could make the 45-minute ride home alone. That’s how it was in this small southern town, not too many things were close by. And leaving his car in the parking lot of the Bone Shop was the least of his worries now anyways. Zip was smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke out of the window. Ken coughed a bit. “I finally got free from the traffic thanks to you,” Zip said. “The traffic?” Ken replied. “Yeah, that dark space inside where everything is held up and no one can really move,” Zip explained. “That was until, miraculously, an exit on the highway appeared right in front of me, full of light. I took it with no hesitation. You must have been the one who opened it. You must have been the one who set me free,” Ken rolled his eyes, still tired but not as drained. “But there are no dark places in town, and definitely no traffic,” Ken said, straightening up from leaning on the window in the passenger’s seat. “Oh, no not from here,” Zip said. His car’s leather interior was cold, all black and smelled like smoke. There was an emptiness about his backseat that almost made it feel like it didn’t exist. Like the only part of the car that did was the part that carried them. Like if he looked at the backseat long enough it would disappear from his view. “Traffic doesn’t really exist here,” Zip finished. “Why did you tell me to be careful before?” Ken asked.
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 “Because you want to be careful,” Zip stated plainly. “Not everything stuck in traffic needs to be expressed in this world. Trust me, I know,” he made clear. Zip grabbed another cigarette, tossing one over to Ken. “Want one?” he asked but Ken shook his head. He began to feel like he did in his mother’s car. Safely held. Even though Zip didn’t seem like a safe person per say. He did seem interested in protecting him. “How do I make it stop?” Ken asked. “You don’t,” Zip replied. “Probably can’t,” he continued. “Well, maybe you could.” … “Feeling any better?” Paul asked. It was the next day at the Bone Shop. They had come to pick up his car and ended up walking through the mall. “Honestly?” Ken asked. “I’m feeling more haunted now than ever,” and Paul nodded his head and lightly bumped his shoulder into him, letting him know he was there with him too. “Did Zip say anything to you on the ride home?” Paul asked. “He low key carried you in to his car.” “He said if I wanted to stop it, I had to be sure to say everything that was on my mind. That way I don’t create another exit for something else to come barreling out.” “Damn, everything? I mean, we all hold some things back. Right?” They walked by the food court, past the retail stores and past the kiosk that sold phone cases. Ken sighed out. “I think I was holding on to things for too long. I think I created a habit out of it too,” Ken stopped walking and Paul looked behind him after noticing that Ken wasn’t beside him anymore. “I think this is the closest exit,” Ken pointed to their left. Paul looked twice before noticing that Ken was right. The two of them walked out of the nearest exist towards Ken’s car. Ken, deciding to take things little by little at first, trying to figure out what that meant for him. He had only come out to his mother, next was his father. And after that, he promised to wrap his courage all over him like this small southern town had wrapped itself around him. Zip was in the parking lot smoking a cigarette, tall with his vibrant brown skin shining golden underneath the sun. Ken thought about how beautiful things can be that are trapped inside as he approached his car. As he began to feel something else behind his teeth. It felt soft and smooth unlike the last time. He burped and it smelt like roses. Ken decided that if something good was coming it would feel like this. Knew that whatever it was he’d have Paul and Zip close by to help him navigate the traffic inside. “Can you feel that?” Zip asked, suddenly behind them, Paul’s eye became wide, wondering how he had just appeared like that next to them. “To be in such a small town, you sure have a city living inside of you.”
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ABOUT DUANE: Duane Horton is a black queer fantasy writer who believes in writing his intersection of identity into his fantasy pieces. To widen the cannon of literature and also so that folks who share his intersection of identity can see themselves written on the page. He has previously published with Green Mountains Review, Sapphire Hues Press, SeaGlass Literary and more. And holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College.
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www.southerncollectiveexperience. com
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NOTE TO SELF BY M A R K JAC O B S You’ve thought about it for months now, about ink and skin and the pernicious illusion of permanence. You picked the design and changed your mind a dozen times. Finally you settle on a broken heart, color(s) TBD although red will be involved. Where, though? Thigh, you think but it’s an automatic response, conditioned by a lifetime of holding back. Nobody knows how to hide better than you; nobody knows what you think, what you feel, who you are. By the time you pull off Route 220 into the Jaggers End lot you’re angry again. Here is one thing you know: if unauthorized touch is a crime, refusal to touch is a sin. It’s September, the rain is steadily gray, the pine trees are running up the mountain in slow-motion terror. Not that they can get away. You remember when the mall had healthy stores and brisk business. Mr. Benjamin’s Notions & Sundries was the name that fascinated you because already those words were not common, notions and sundries were disappearing from the roadface of America. Now it’s shuttered shops and a part-time tax preparer and a frozen yoghurt joint that’s on its last legs. And Jaggers End Ink Arts. Once you park you’d like to sit there a minute to compose yourself. If the windows steam up so much the better. But alongside Jaggers End there’s a field of uncut grass. In the field, a Viking in studded leather sits under an umbrella. Also under the umbrella, which is one of those large cantilever models, sits a plump woman wearing a denim dress too tight for her body type. Both of them are inked to the max. You hardly see any skin. They are cooking sausages on a small charcoal grill at their feet, out of the rain, and drinking hard lemonade from pop bottles. The smoke from the grill blows slowly sideways as though it doesn’t really want to go anywhere. You roll down your window and look at them. They don’t look at you, why should they? You’re not the kind of person other people notice, you’re the opposite, the kind who blends into the scenery. Which is why it’s so surprising when you ask the Viking if he is too drunk to work. Not surprising, unbelievable. You’re a mousey mouse, properly prim. Your question encourages you to find out what else you’re capable of. The Viking opens the red mouth in his battered warrior face and says, “Say what?” “It’s ten in the morning. You’re drinking. Can you work a needle, or will your hands shake?” “What the fuck, lady.” “Don’t call me lady. My name is Constance.” So this is what you can do. Just a start, you think. It’s like a dare. “Well hell, Constance, come on over and have a drink.” You get out of the car. The rain remembers your old face. Because it’s rain it is not able to imagine your new one. Neither can you, not yet.
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 You stand under the umbrella, and the woman hands you a bottle and tells you her name is Trixie Ann, she is from Louisiana, the only reason she came to Pennsylvania is she believes in the healing power of Skut’s vision. You ask the Viking what kind of name Skut is, but he feels no need to respond. He turns the sausages with a long-handled grill fork. As he bends forward you notice that his blonde thick hair runs down his back like Rapunzel’s, and a coil in the disused heap on the floor of your heart glows for a fraction of a second. You take a swig from the bottle. The lemonade is too sweet, but you drink greedily and ask Skut what his vision is. “We’re animalcules,” he tells you. “That’s it?” “Everybody’s got a little bit of the divine force in them, but they waste it, we all waste it. People want to own the world, not live in it. Put all that force together and we could change everything. Peace will break out.” “That’s vague.” Trixie Ann shifts in her chair. Criticism of Skut makes her uncomfortable. She emits an odor of jasmine there under the umbrella, and you picture two burning sticks of incense, one in either ear. Her breasts are large. You are pretty sure some day she will wish they were smaller. Knowing this makes you feel sad, not wise. Trixi Ann tells you, “I used to get headaches. Bad ones. Couldn’t walk, couldn’t think, couldn’t look at anything.” “All that’s changed,” you say, “since you’re with Skut.” She nods complacently. Skut puts three sausages into buns, and you eat quietly watching the rain. A car pulls into the parking lot but changes its mind and roars out having acknowledged a mistake of some sort. “Capitalism isn’t the enemy,” Skut tells you. “Then what is?” “Hate. Capitalism is the byproduct.” He seems proud of his insight, the way a small boy might be the first time he catches a fly in a jar. “You’re different,” Trixi Ann tells you. “How am I different?” “Most people, they stare at the artwork like we’re freaks. Sometimes they want to take our picture.” “It’s because the art is private,” you tell her. “People can see it, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s meant for public consumption.” “Fuckin’ A,” says Skut. He wants to clink bottles with you. You hold out your bottle. You let him. Then you tell him you want a tattoo. “Big step,” he tells you. “Are you trying to talk me out of it?” He shrugs. He licks his fingers, which are greasy from sausage. He says, “I want to hear how come.” “That’s private,” you tell him. “Same way a tattoo is private.” “Sure, I get it. It’s just I can’t pick up a gun and grind if I think maybe the person is doing it for the wrong reason. Why the fuck you think I’m going broke?”
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“Are you, going broke?” “Little bit broker every day.” “We want to start a commune,” Trixie Ann tells you. “We just have to find the right people to go in on it with us.” “I was engaged,” you blurt. This is interesting because you are the opposite of a blurter, you’re a keeper of secrets. You explain you were engaged for ten years to a man and they do you the courtesy of not being freaked out by the ten years, which it occurs to you is one advantage however small of Skut’s animalcule vision. He and Trixi Ann are free to have nonstandard reactions. You further explain that Ted grew increasingly distant and began telling lies about his absences. You didn’t mind the lies as much as the lazy way he went about concocting them, as if he didn’t care enough to deceive you in a serious way, you weren’t worth the bother. And then you learn totally by chance that Ted has a wife and two kids two counties over. “By chance?” says Skut. You tell the rest of the story keeping it short and dry because sweet it will never be. You put your hand in the pocket of his chinos the way you always do before you toss them into the washing machine to be sure there is nothing that should not be washed such as a lottery ticket or a receipt from the dry cleaner or a Q-tip. Out comes a picture of Ted and his family and instantaneously you know why he is so frequently indifferent to your body and seldom condescends to touch it. “Maybe,” Skut thinks, “he wanted you to find the picture.” “What he wanted,” you clarify for him, “was to break my heart.” “Or else the mistake was doing his laundry for him,” Trixi Ann thinks. You nod. The conversation dies down, which is a relief to you and quite likely to Skut and Trixi Ann as well. You listen to the rain on the cantilever umbrella. It’s an emphatic sound. The clouds have a sloppy, tattered appearance as if they haven’t practiced enough and will be gone before they get it right. “We could put out a contract on Ted,” Skut offers but it’s just a joke. “I feel like I ought to feel sorry for Ted’s other family,” Trixi Ann says, “but I don’t. Is that wrong?” It doesn’t bother you that she is thinking out loud. If you were differently constructed you would do the same instead of waiting until you had your thoughts matched with your sentences before ever opening your mouth. “No broken-heart tattoos,” says Skut. You know he means it and are open to his suggestions. Maybe he sees customers with case histories like Constance’s every week and has learned to be wary of the predictable. The three of you watch four crows winging their way across the dark sky, sculling with dumb purpose. You realize you would not have noticed the aching beauty of birds in the rain if your heart had still been broken but you went to another tattoo parlor. This causes you to feel grateful although the gratitude is amalgamated with profound regret, which is your primary emotion now and will almost certainly go on being into the indeterminate future. Go to hell, Ted. You think you have said the angry words in your head until you hear Skut and Trixi Ann repeating them in a chorus of solidarity in which for all of you there is something fine and funny and worth repeating.
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 Go to hell, Ted. “Let’s go inside,” says Skut. He stands up and moves the grill out from under the umbrella so that the rain will put out the fire. You no longer wonder whether he is too drunk to work a needle. No broken hearts, you say to yourself. It feels like new knowledge, handed down from young to old. From where you’re standing it’s only a hundred yards to Jaggers End. The arm, you decide. Right there where anybody can see the design and fail to understand it if you happen to roll up your sleeve. The End.
ABOUT MARK: Bio: Mark Jacobs has published more than 190 stories in magazines including The Atlantic, Playboy, The Hudson Review, and The Iowa Review. A complete list of my publications including books can be found at markjacobsauthor.com.
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SAINT ANONYMOUS BY M A R C K L . B E G G S
1 I performed my first miracle at the age of nine, shifting barefoot across the ragged, white-quartz yard behind my mother’s house on the outskirts of Tucson. The Santa Rita mountains flickered, mirage-like, in the brutal heat as I bled, tearless and determined, and walked. The prophets prefer to slip over the surface of ponds or hover in the air like insects, but the saint requires absolute searing pain to complete the vision. A saint never leaves the Earth. In the turquoise Plymouth, on the way to Tucson General, mother smoked Pall Malls and cursed me between fits of coughing and sighs. But I was not the problem. I brought her to light. And when the medics wheeled me through the woosh of electric doors into a hallway buzzing with white illumination, I knew I had arrived. I knew mother was nearly gone. I knew my own life was lurching into a long tunnel. Mother died in the waiting room while a nurse whistled over the deep cuts lacing the soles of my feet. It was like being treated by a sentient tea kettle. “Oh, my. You poor thing. The arch of the foot is so tender, just a mass of exposed nerves. In ancient cultures, that’s how they tortured criminals: hang you upside-down and beat a confession out of your feet.” All I felt was the glory. In my mind’s eye, however, I was aware of the aneurism popping within my mother’s brain, her eyes widening to take in the whole of the truth. The end was closer than near. A doctor entered the room and whispered into my nurse’s ear before they both turned to me, mournfully, and asked where my father might be. But father never existed. Just a lucky sperm cell hitting the egg-lottery on a Tuesday night beneath desert stars. As I stepped down from the bed, the nurse pleaded with me to stop, but Mother needed me and so I trudged slowly down the hallway, blood soaking my bandages and streaking the floor. Her green eyes were still open and as I gently kissed each lid closed, the weeping in the hallway consumed us like fog.
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023 2 The fostermom drinks like a Baptist and thinks no one notices the smell of vodka seeping from her pores. She spends hours tending a vegetable garden and flowers, pausing often to suck Tito’s from a short hose plugged on either end. She fills the hose each night after her husband passes out, his head slowly lowering into the wrath of Leviticus. His dreams fill with the cruelty he will demonstrate the next day. Each morning begins with prayer and lashings as he prepares us for whatever allotment of sins are waiting just outside the front door. At school, I am accused of honesty, for telling the math teacher that Arabs must be smarter than us since we are using their numbers. She and the principal take turns with the paddle until I stop laughing. They both curse. There is a deaf girl in my class and I envy the silence she must know like her own pillow. To be free of all noise beyond the immediate mind must be exhilarating; the universe contained within a single brain. Occasionally, the teacher moves closer to her and they wave fingers in complex and awkward gestures. I decide to write the girl a note: “What does music sound like inside your head?” She responds: “Why do you have so many cuts and bruises on your face and arms?” She, too, is possessed by the sin of honesty. I also notice that she is pretty and that her green eyes look confident and curious at once. I am now twelve and unnerved by her stare. But soon I will be a teenager. Invincible. I ask her to teach me her language and after school she walks home with me. The fosterdad is at work and the fostermom is taking one of her five or six daily naps. Stumbling into the kitchen, she is confused by our hand-signaling, so she slaps my new friend across the face, yelling, “Speak! We harbor no secrets in this house!” My friend runs outside crying and screaming words she cannot hear. I sit quietly, enraged, as the fostermom pounds her fists on the countertops, shifting about the kitchen. But I know she wants to sleep and after she works herself into exhaustion, she passes out on the paisley fainting-couch in the foyer. Upstairs in her bathroom, I pour out all the pills from her special blue bottle, dump them into a spice crusher, and grind them into dust. Using a small funnel, I carefully issue the powder into one end of the hose, shaking it back and forth. It is all over by the time the fosterdad arrives. I have checked her pulse three times. She is now asleep forever among the cabbages, worms, and lost dreams of her garden. I feel kindness spreading throughout my body like warm milk. Before he even calls for an ambulance, the fosterdad informs me that in the morning I will be returned to the state.
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3 When I turned eighteen, the state turned me over to myself. I was given $150, a bus pass, and directions to a transitional house for women. After years of therapy for the distress they believed I had suffered from witnessing the fostermom’s “suicide,” the state sanctioned me with adulthood and a clean slate. The therapist was keen on the idea that important decisions must be made in a slow and thoughtful manner. She loved ancient stories warning against rash choices or judgments. A Chinese farmer buys a horse and it runs away. His neighbors declare this to be bad luck, but the farmer is not so sure: “Good luck, bad luck; I don’t know.” The horse returns with another horse and the neighbors change their tune. Such good luck! But the farmer is not convinced: “Good luck, bad luck; I don’t know.” His son is thrown from the new horse and suffers a broken leg. The neighbors express their dismay. Oh, such bad luck! But the farmer remains neutral: “Good luck, bad luck; I don’t know.” A couple weeks later, the emperor’s soldiers arrive at the village to round up any and all able-bodied young men for his army, but the farmer’s son is spared. Such good luck! the neighbors exclaim. And so on. Much of the time, it felt as if the therapist was talking to herself. God, prayers, luck, fate, prescription pills—to a saint, these are the fearful musings of a childish world. All I have the power to do is to inhale suffering into my bones and resolve it. The transitional house was filled to the brim with broken women, snapped and whipped into submission by drugs, men, and religion. It was run by a woman so thin she might have just stepped out from a Holocaust film. Her eyes were a vibrant green like moss in sunlight. Her name was Myrtle and she carried a thick, zippered Bible at all times, wielding it like a club, thumping heads left and right. Inside the book was a metal flask providing heft to her thumps and spirit to her proselytizing. In seven months, I never once saw Myrtle eat food. She seemed to feed off the fear left in her wake as she walked among the women and children, informing them of a hell worse than the present moment. In particular, she focused on the children, popping them with a belt as she waved the Bible at their mothers. Lecturing them on the dangers of idleness. Then, she might turn to some blue-eyed juvenile and ask, “Do you want to wind up with your mother in the den of Satan?” The tears of children brought a glow to her face. When I left, I took two girls with me: Luxy and Evanon. A saint requires witnesses and their mothers were going nowhere. I, on the other hand, am heading straight for God’s jugular, and these girls will count the bodies and reveal my story: miracles rendering the sleep of the ancients to the awakened.
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ABOUT MARCK: Marck L. Beggs is the author of four collections of poetry: Godworm, Libido Café, Catastrophic Chords, and Blind Verse. His new solo album, Negative Light, is now available on Spotify. In 2009, he was selected as one of the top 10 sexiest vegetarians by PETA. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.
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A TRIBUTE TO MAUREEN SEATON F O R E WA R D BY N I C O L E TA L L M A N
“All along, I’ve meant to hold music in my hand and give it to you.” — Maureen Seaton Maureen Seaton, an award-winning poet, professor, and LGBTQ+ activist, passed away on August 26th. The author of more than two dozen solo and collaborative books, Maureen was as prolific as she was generous, supportive, and kind. Maureen was a dear friend, and I had the pleasure of collaborating with her on several poems as well as editing her final solo book, The Sky Is an Elephant (ELJ Editions, July 2023). As I mourn her passing, I find myself turning to her books for solace, and in re-reading her expansive body of work — spanning more than three decades — I am struck by the sheer volume of music present in her poems. In an interview for The Massachusetts Review published in February of this year, Edward Clifford asked Maureen if she could work in another art form, besides poetry, which form she would choose. Maureen replied that she would be a music composer. Maureen also told Lambda Literary in 2016, “I’d be dead without music. It’s how I write everything.” And she told Gregg Shapiro in a 2012 Wisconsin Gazette interview, “I would rather die of music than anything else, and when the time comes, I know that whatever comes next is made of music.” In the spirit of paying tribute to Maureen’s passion for music and her own musicality, I have assembled a collection of some of her most musical poems — whether thematically, sonically, or both. These poems are published here with the permission of Maureen’s lovely daughters, Emily Blank and Jennifer Steele, and we invite you to celebrate and enjoy the music of Maureen’s words along with us.
P OEMS PAGES 199-213
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MAUREEN SEATON
OCTOBER 20, 1947 - AUGUST 26, 2023
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MANGO IN RETROGRADE BY
M AU R E E N S E AT O N
Be aware that this may or may not be the first day of summer. And the music that winds into your brain’s dark furrows may be full of violins or trumpets, or the voices that still your nerves may be in your native tongue or they may salute another god or another star. Be aware that on yet another day of blue blue blue when the ocean brims in your sink and overflows onto your toes, blessing you with salt, you are alone as a spoke in a wheel is alone. That is, not exactly, but for all practical purposes, infinitely.
(Source notes: Published in Ocean State Review)
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PALM SUNDAY BY
M AU R E E N S E AT O N
The hour is holy, says Rilke, so I try to speak into the hour, but every time I press unmute a song by Ravel I love wildly startles those in charge of the hour — my children, the sea, mountains, the light that arrives in the tree unbeckoned. Rilke speaks in his wise way that makes me sad. Maybe Ravel met Rilke while composing his Pavane for a Dead Princess, dolce ma sonoro, I think, or they passed each other in Paris and felt a rush that Rilke would later describe as mystical and Ravel as interesting, although Rilke claimed he never felt close to music, and Ravel that holiness was as helpful to him as practicing the piano (which it’s said he did not enjoy). Now the hour slows to the last two minutes, and my daughter’s fever has gone down, which makes this hour holy, a rarefied time in the midst of a plague. Peace in the house. Peace in the early afternoon. Rilke and Ravel were both born in 1875. If I love them today it is because they had so much to say to each other over one hundred years ago, although I cannot prove they ever met.
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ELEGY BY
M AU R E E N S E AT O N
This is where the poem holds its breath, where the usable truth sways, sorrowing, and the people sway with the truth of it, and this is where the poem enters the dark. This is where the book closes and the clock opens and the clock closes and the book opens to song so the snow geese murmur and the coyote swaggers along the aspens. This is where the geese fly unabashedly out, and the sky turns white and wild with sound. This is where tumult, this is where prophecy. This is where the poem repents of language. This is where the poem enters silence, where the child holds the book in her lap whose pages are aflame with life, whose song sways with a usable truth, sorrowing. And this is where the poem holds its breath, and this is where the poem enters the dark. This is where it leaps wild about the child, where the snow geese seize the seamless sky and the universe splits open for one poem — the way a life lived calls on us to praise it.
(Source notes: First published in Poem-A-Day as “Etta’s Elegy,” and later as “Elegy” in Fisher.)
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POEM ENDING IN A LINE BY NTOZAKE SHANGE; OR, DEATH BY MUSIC (2020) BY
M AU R E E N S E AT O N
The nuns used to say I was vaccinated with phonograph needles. It’s true. I was slain in the spirit of song when I was little more than three feet tall. Listen: forte, fortissimo, fortississimo. You can hear the way the heart son claves itself:
You can hold your breath and syncopate a poem. Your breath could catch fire. You could die right now while you hold yrself in a music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJtq6OmD-_Y — Playing for Change | Song around the World (2011)
(Source notes: Published in Limp Wrist).
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ROMANCING DEBUSSY BY
M AU R E E N S E AT O N
1 Seventeen and sick to death of Bach. In fact, all those B-boys and their prodigious Viennese offspring, all those deep purple pathétiques and crimson gavottes bored me. I’m a virgin, I said to water lilies, my own reflection in cologne – I need blue, not bagatelles or rhythmic blood of birth and war. Save me, I said in third-year French. Sauvez mon cœur.
2 Daubs of sound divert me from gin fizzes, that tipsy raft of sneakered fauns bounding around gymnasiums with their pockets bulging. Wanna kiss? They’ve learned to grope in damp hallways, facial hair hatching as they speak. My own fingers meander in sevenths and ninths, gusts of blue-green breath the boys call frigid.
3 Once he was a cloud. Once Chagall made him fly without wings above symphonies, I saw him at Lincoln Center with the other nerdy kids who hushed in the dark as if slain. Oboe, bassoon, first violin! A hundred little chosen Future Composers of America poised in their seats with abandon. Forte, fortissimo, fortississimo: a hundred contrapuntal climaxes.
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4 Before it was over I’d play nothing but his inventions: “Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum,” “The Snow Is Dancing…,” “Jimbo’s Lullaby.” My family propped me up on pillows, anointed me with holy oil, thinking I would die of innocence. My bother robbed houses in my honor. My sisters were born. My parents raised glasses to the genius in their playroom.
(Source notes: First published in POETRY Magazine, and later in Little Ice Age, and then in Fibonacci Batman)
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SELF-PORTRAIT, BEGINNING WITH ZAGAJEWSKI, ENDING WITH THE BEACH BOYS BY
M AU R E E N S E AT O N
those who love music for itself are few and far between — Adam Zagajewski, from “Three Angels”
lthough I’m intrigued by those who love music for itself A are few and far between, I have absolutely no idea what Zagajewski meant when he wrote that line-not really, not enough to make the same pronouncement myself on a Tuesday afternoon in the lackadaisical beginning of September when music has seemed to halt for a time except for the pop of crabapples on the roof and the occasional woodpecker laughing itself silly from one dead tree to another, but I believe I’m often spied upon by angels, although I mostly ignore them, which, I’ve been told, is not the best course of action-still, think how they just show up when they feel like it, how they make extemporaneous speeches, much like the three angels in Zagajewski’s poem, “Three Angels,” and since I’m not Zagajewski, more a wilting sunflower (you know how their heads droop in September), who’s completely self-absorbed and often detached from the mutilated world, which is, after all, why angels show up in the first place (though not the only reason-birth announcements, tidings, sex), I must admit that when I realized, as a result of Zagajewski’s discerning words regarding music and those few who love it for itself, that I can’t absolutely swear that I care about music that way, without strings (pun intended), or, for that matter, without the horn player who dropped by when the band needed someone to announce its new song. French horn or angel? God only knows.
(Source notes: First published in Jet Fuel Review, and later in The Sky Is an Elephant)
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WHERE I ONCE SPOKE PIANO, I NOW SPEAK BY
M AU R E E N S E AT O N
stone. Where I once spoke cello, I now speak salt. Where I once spoke oboe, I now speak scalpel. Where I once spoke flute, I now speak arpeggio, now fugue, now biopsy. Where I once spoke waltz I now speak coda, where I once spoke time, I now speak cease, now sightless. I speak myself speaking hands pushing hands pushing walls speaking. Where I once spoke death I speak death squared. Exponential death, deaths before death, music where song extols silence, where holy, where both hands lie as if hushed.
(Source notes: First published in Triquarterly, and later in The Sky Is an Elephant)
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TIT, WITH FOREPLAY BY
M AU R E E N S E AT O N
I too would like the leisurely mind of men. I would hold my mind in my own two hands and pet it. If I could be anything it would be a composer. The one who provides the soul. Not the body, all modulated and linguistic. Play, they call it. Play. Or, not the mind of men. The leisurely mind of God. Which reminds me of the mind of music. Which reminds me of the mind of sex. I would write an oratorio. Me. Your lovely mate with one fickle surviving breast. I predict a pause in this musical composition, a shift in the direction of time. All along, I’ve meant to hold music in my hand and give it to you.
(Source notes: First published in Posit Journal, and later in Sweet World)
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https://www.nuci.org
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FALSE COGNATES BY
A L LY S O N J O N E S
I confuse lips and cows Embarrassment and pregnancy To be and to be forever No puede ser. I confuse things that can be with things that already are. Beaches and players Journeys and old men Travelers and truth Spring and vegetables. Beauty and bones. Flags and highwaymen. The bus travels through the night. The light warm enough, like this, like time. Tortillas like cheeks. Like mothers. Like hills. It’s true what they say about softness. About pearls and swine. Oceans and people. About the jungle and the self. About circling your leafy heart. The one that teems in messy harbors. And the one that runs too clear.
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ABOUT ALLYSON: Allyson Jones is a writer living in Denton, Texas. Her work has been published in journals such as The Rumpus, Bluestem, and the Bayou Review.
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SPIRITS BY
A N D E R S C A R L S O N -W E E
We’d lift gin from your mother’s cabinet and walk the hallways of Robert Asp Middle taking swigs in plain sight from a 20oz Pepsi Clear, your gap tooth flashing at teachers we passed, your hands forgetting to pass the bottle, screwing and unscrewing the cap. After that I moved. We lost track. The news was six months old by the time I heard. When they don’t say what happened you know what happened. We used to catch rides from highschoolers out to the Red to jump the bridge. Water thick with clay. Red with clay. We kept close watch for underwater logs. Smoked Menthols. A 40-foot drop into swirls of currents. One time you stayed under and kicked downstream to trick me. Nervous, I stared at the surface for signs. No signs. I stumbled down the bank to dive in. The moment you were certain you had me the valley cracked with your laughter.
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LAY IT BARE BY
A N D E R S C A R L S O N -W E E
I know you’re hungry for it. More money. More news. Desperate for any laurel that parades you as happier than you know you are. A car. A cruise. Some haircut reeking so deeply of depression no one with a nose could miss it. Making more each year. Spending more. The pride of how little time you have to spare. I know I embarrass you, still living on expired food I find, dented tuna I squirrel away, spending at a pace slower than a pulse. Slow, that’s what I have. I’m not happy either. I walk past bars where flush people drink. Markets where I dumpster what I eat. Down streets quiet enough to hush the last ten years. Parks dark enough to find Gemini, Lyra. I don’t wish you were poor. I wish you were here.
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WHY WRITE BY
B U N KO N G T U O N
For the tiny red tail bopping outside my window. For first snow. For burned villages and orphans. To turn bombs into tulips. To learn if I was ever loved. Because I don’t know how to talk to my uncles and aunts. Because my mother didn’t have a proper funeral. My father needed an altar in his name. Because you listen when ghosts speak to you. To keep Lok-Yeay from dying. Because doctors can’t fix me.
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ABOUT BUNKONG: Bunkong Tuon is Cambodian-American writer and critic. He is the author of several poetry collections. His writings have appeared or are forthcoming from World Literature Today, New York Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Massachusetts Review, The American Journal of Poetry, among others. He is poetry editor of Cultural Daily. His debut novel, Koan Khmer, is forthcoming from Curbstone Press. To read more about his life and writing, please visit: https://www.bunkongtuon.com/
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[C]ARS POETICA BY
C A N D I C E M . K E L S E Y
Imagine a world where automobiles are not named after endangered animals, virtues, & forces of nature. The Tahoe is no mirror-glass lake of green. The Avalanche doesn’t tremble or threaten mortal drifts. & Honestly, the Leaf? Why can’t I fall into an anthologized sunsetorange Sonnet, drive off the lot waving farewell to the balladeer salesman, singing in abab Blue Book meter? Perhaps lease a Pantoum & always make perfect time. Or finance the metallic gold Sestina— six wheel drive & sleek envoi with such great lines! Truth is I’d rather bike a Haiku’s syllabic gear-switch 3rd to 7th to 3rd. Wheels like seasons turning through kigo: cherry blossoms & snow, I’d coast kireji, hands off the bars— cutting the moon.
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ABOUT CANDICE: Candice M. Kelsey [she/her] is a poet, educator, and activist living bicoastally in L.A. and Georgia. Her work appears in Passengers Journal, Variant Literature, and The Laurel Review among others. A finalist for a Best Microfiction 2022, she is the author of six books. Candice also serves as a poetry reader for The Los Angeles Review. Find her @candice-kelsey-7 @candicekelsey1 and www.candicemkelseypoet.com.
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DEPARTED PASSING BY
C h e ry l W h i t e h e a d
after Mark Jarman
My father returns as a field of tender radishes in snow, bright green stems & leaves holding on in white furrows, as a plow in the barn, & the dappled horse shivering in the pasture. He returns as snowmelt over-running a ditch, turning a low place into a river flooding the cemetery. He’s steam billowing from dry kilns at the sawmill, a clipped twist of barbed wire curled on the shoulder, a screen door slamming on the porch, a mockingbird roosting in a butterfly bush & a black snake’s innards littered with feathers. He’s honeysuckle roping poison oak, a gut-shot buck & cedar stump, an ax abandoned in the creek bed’s muck.
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ABOUT CHERYL: Cheryl Whitehead’s poems have appeared in Hotel Amerika, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Measure, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review and other journals. She won an emerging artist grant from the Astraea Foundation and read with other winners in New York City. Her chapbook, So Ghosts Might Stop Composing, was published in August, 2019.
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January 17 - March 26
UCLA Extension Writers’ Program
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING
Learn the strategies and tips you need to success and thrive as a professional writer and develop a strong, long-lasting career.
ABOUT THIS COURSE In the creative writing world, we often hear only what to do that might garner the coveted publishing contract. But say you get that deal. Now what? In this course, you’ll learn the strategies and tips to succeed and continue to thrive as a professional writer. This includes: vision-casting for your unique gifts and interests; marketing and branding yourself and your work (and how to partner with a publisher in this); whether and how to work with accountants, agents, and lawyers; selecting strategic venues and events in which to participate; diversifying revenue streams (through in-person appearances, workshops, sales, and more); making your live readings sought-after events that are engaging and resonant; and in all of it, knowing your worth and confidently discussing money with all the relevant professionals. Through focused lectures, illustrations, selected readings, and targeted video excerpts, participants will gain clarity about how to navigate the practical, behind-the-scenes realities to become—and remain—a working author.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN Get insight into how to diversify your income streams and sustain your career Identify the various roles you need on your professional "team," from accountants to lawyers Discover the unique value of your work and yourself as a writer to draw readers to your books and events Understand how to develop a personal brand as a writer
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR Clifford Brooks is the CEO of the Southern Collective Experience and Editor-in-Chief of the Blue Mountain Review. He is also the journal’s content editor. Aside from these duties, Clifford is the author of The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics, Athena Departs, Exiles of Eden, and his latest work, Old Gods. These collections of poetry can easily be found online. https://www.uclaextension.edu/writing-journalism/creative-writing/course/business-writing-writing-x-4652e
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
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A CROWD OF CROWS BY
C h l o é F i r e t t o -T o o m e y
We walk to the beach. The sky is a rising loaf of bread expanding to the edge of the world, gulls laugh and nip the tide. Under cloud-shadow the monochromatic current shifts — vampiric — how light might touch the skin of the undead; stones fracturing ashore. Then, the sun gleams. My grandmother is dying in hospice. She’s angry she’s not allowed to die her in own bed, in the room where she was born; silver hand-held mirror on the dresser. Waves lift us. We swim up current. Grandma wakes in the night, fists pounding. I wonder if she got the card I sent, if it consoles or soundboards her curses. If grandpa still sleeps in the recliner. He tells me not to call; no visitors allowed. She’s a strong-willed woman. She will never again know the ocean or how the squadron of pelicans arrow overhead. Last week, we rescued a hummingbird from the screened-in porch. Pulled webs from its wing and beak. The flaps of its awakening; silk thread tongue lapping sugar water from the damp flower. It perched the back of my hand for 20 min or so before flying away. Like the hummingbird, Grandma ascends an inescapable square. Try not to think of her as a crowd of crows waiting to disperse. This is how the mind whips and hums; sand in the lifelines of feet; how she played Chopin with her eyes closed. Life is short even at the longest, she’d say. What makes your life meaningful? We walk home and lay on the couch like two thrown gems.
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ABOUT CHLOé: Chloé Firetto-Toomey is a British-American poet and essayist living in Miami. She has an MFA degree from Florida International University and is the author’s assistant to Presidential Inaugural poet, Richard Blanco. Her most recent chapbook of poems, Little Cauliflower, was published in 2019 by Dancing Girl Press. A Pushcart Prize nominee, and recipient of the 2017 Christopher F. Kelly Award for Poetry, and the 2020 Scotti Merrill Memorial Award for Poetry, you can find her poems, essays, and short stories at poets.org, SWIMM, december, Tupelo Quarterly, The Offing, among others. Learn more at chloefirettotoomey.com.
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DEARTH OF THE COOL 2017 BY G o r d o n J o h n s t o n Little Five Points, Atlanta Word: that Wednesday in Wax N Facts, four decades of punching above my hipster weight had done my chill detachment in. No one notices even the earliest adopter once he’s as old as a velociraptor. Either the alt-culture’s current had ramped up to a blur or gotten slacker and slacker – I couldn’t tell for sure. Lots of the hyped things I’d been first to find now felt like lore – Red Stripe, flanged guitar, Let’s Active, DMs from thrift stores. Sick throwback a skate punk said in ‘07 of a cap I bought new in ‘92. Even then I’d footnote to death an ecstatic jam, lionizing or ironicizing a one-second sample of Miles or McTell. By my mid-40s, my go-to gab partners at def parties were peeling away at my approach. I started stopping myself pre-spiel. The gall of being blackballed from the prescient remnant grayed my goatee. 43 was Bizarro 13 – younger kids, not older, had the street cred. Not just invisible or boomer, man. Dead. An ex-roadie – he’s eighty if he is a day -- in a CBGB T turns from the dollar bin he’s mining to offer me a CD.‘Member Lou? The Dinosaur Jr. dude? This here’s his trip-hop band. It’s cool. I take it with a shrug. Folk Implosion. A buck, so I humor the old fart. I put it in as I drive home in the dark. I play it daily ‘til I hit 50. For every one of those spins, I pine to thank him for these tracks I could still not-know, stranger who didn’t get me my bogus groove back, but laid me a real one. Age-Nazi me recalls his pewter ponytail, the flake and fade of his OMFUG, but not his face. He’s in the actual Home of Underground Rock by now -- like all saints, uber uncool – and so, to that elder bro of Moreland Ave, martyred by yours untruly, I say: You rule and pour out the forty (actually a twelve of microbrew). Intercede, please, for depthless wannabe dipshits like me, we the o-so-righteous. Help us to seek and find and hand out free the funk, the b-side beauties. Give us your higher fidelity.
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ABOUT GORDON: Gordon Johnston is author of the poetry collections Where Here Is Hard to Say and Scaring the Bears, the short story collection Seven Islands of the Ocmulgee, and the field notes in Ocmulgee National Monument: A Brief Guide. A former journalist and avid river paddler, he lives in Macon, Georgia, where he teaches writing at Mercer University.
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ADVICE FOR A YOUNG POET BY
K E N D E L H I P P O LY T E
‘What is poetry which does not save nations or people?’ – Czselaw Milosz Ask the question. Not once but forty-nine times. And, perhaps at the fiftieth, you will make an answer. Or perhaps not. Then ask it again. This time till seventy times seven. Ask as you open the door of every book of poems that you enter. Ask it of every poem, regardless of how beautiful, that whispers: “Lie with me.” Do not spare your newborn. If the first cry, first line is not a wailing for an answer, abandon it. As for the stillborn, turn the next blank white sheet over, shroud it. Ask the clamouring procession of all the poems of the ages – each measured, white-haired epic, each flouncing, free verse debutante – to state their names, where they have come from and what their business is with you. You live in the caesura of our times, the sound of nations, persons, breaking around you. If poetry can only save itself, then who will hear it after it has fled from the nations and the people that it could not save even a remnant of for a remembering?
(This poem was first published by Peepal Tree Press, 2012)
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ABOUT KENDEL:
His poetry ranges across the continuum of language from Standard English to the varieties of Caribbean English. He has published seven books of poetry, the latest being Wordplanting (Peepal Tree Press, 2019) and his poetry has appeared in regional and international journals and anthologies. He has taught poetry workshops in the Caribbean and the UK. He has performed his work internationally at events such as the Medellin Poetry Festival and Havana Book Fair. He has been the recipient of a James Michener Fellowship to study poetry and an OAS scholarship to study theatre. He is the winner of the Poetry Prize in the Bocas Literary Festival, 2013.
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SUPPRESSED RED, DESIRED ORANGE BY LY N N E K E M E N
Wally pulls up her slip, reveals her white thigh, revels in my sharply suppressed sigh. A shy simple sylph? Nonsense. She emboldened in watching my face, used to being perused. Absently, she gently shifts her head, aware as I look at her legs instead. She’s not cheap, just ahead of society. Though there’s a price to be paid for triangles, she doesn’t mind. We both adore her. Hardship holding still and worth the price, haunting galleries, watching others watch. Most don’t know that thigh. Those who do, feel inclusion. Partnership is part of the inner circle, though they will never encircle that thigh. She’s allowed to be endowed by us both. We try to out-paint each other. The prize is her approval, that sunrise smile. Refuse recognition, immortalization itself? Never! I paint in orange desire, he in glorious gold.
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ABOUT LYNNE: Lynne Kemen lives in the Great Western Catskills of New York and appears s in various literary journals. She has a new full-length book of poetry, Shoes for Lucy published by SCE Press, 2023. Her chapbook, More Than a Handful appeared in 2020. Additionally, she contributes as an Interviewer and Essay Editor for The Blue Mountain Review, a culture-focused journal, and is a member of The Southern Collective Experience.
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SUMMER OF EMERGENCY POWERS BY
M I C H A E L M I N T R O M The beach swamped the suburbs. Boats perched in trees. When we flicked the light switch, nothing happened. Lugging plastic tanks from the water truck replaced walking the dog. Everything stunk. When mud covered the northern highway, our commuting ritual stopped dead. No work, no money. We had more time to sleep, but tossed and turned. Fear tastes like salt. The evidence bus made three visits. Officials in jump suits took photos spoke through masks. In those sweaty days a lot changed. Neighbors helped each other and talked more. Love, too, is an emergency power. We saw that looking back.
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ABOUT MICHAEL: Michael Mintrom is a poet from Melbourne, Australia. His work has recently appeared in Shot Glass Journal, SoftBlow, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Syncopation Literary Journal and The Ekphrastic Review.
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FRUIT OF THE STRANGE ANIMAL BY
n at h a n s p o o n
Holding the sky of an apple in my hand I stepped sideways into the shade of the tree that that fruit had fallen from. I was eight or nine. How I loved that big apple tree near the gate for letting the cows in or out for the endlessly lovely ways it was and is twisted and gnarled. Now that I am sitting under harsh lighting and writing I feel the tree is still revealing itself by revealing more of myself to me. I still love that tree and the ways it continues offering its fruit.
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ABOUT NATHAN: Nathan Spoon is an autistic poet with learning disabilities. The author of The Importance of Being Feeble-Minded (forthcoming from Nine Mile Books), his poems and essays have appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry, The Southern Review, and swamp pink, as well as the anthologies The American Sonnet: An Anthology of Poems and Essays, How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, Mid/South Sonnets: A Belle Point Press Anthology, and The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal. He is editor of Queerly.
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MOONRISE BY
R I C H A R D B L A N C O
I write: a giant tiger’s eye peering out from the dome of a dark thicket, then I write: the worn face of a doubloon, a gold fortune lighting the poor night, and the moon says: I am simply the moon. Yet I write on — an amber pearl rising, fading into a geisha’s porcelain pallor, a humble seductress, a chaste coquette. I write of the color of white chocolate, the fine texture of talc like the cinders of light settling out of the darkness onto my thought-filled page of inked words, when the moon pauses, tells me: Listen, I am as rough as you, merely hard rock, gray dust.
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ABOUT RICHARD: Selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco was the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in that role. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also authored the memoirs FOR ALL OF US, ONE TODAY: AN INAUGURAL POET’S JOURNEY and THE PRINCE OF LOS COCUYOS: A MIAMI CHILDHOOD. Blanco has received numerous awards, including the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize, the PEN American Beyond Margins Award, the Patterson Prize, and a Lambda Prize for memoir. Currently, he serves as Education Ambassador for The Academy of American Poets and is an Associate Professor at Florida International University.
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T he
BLUE MOUNTAIN
Review
call for
SUBMISSIONS The Blue Mountain Review is accepting new submissions of Poetry, Prose, and Visual Art.
The Blue is a Southern publication, but we draw no boundaries or borders on that interpretation. “Southern” is a soul more than a spot on a map, and everyone is south of somewhere. We seek pieces that boldly create something new from the ether of the timeless, works that go beyond sparking interest to ignite something that smolders. Works that matter today and will still matter tomorrow.
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Visit our submissions page at www.southerncollectiveexperience.com/the-blue-mountain-review
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
https://www.mupress.org
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OLD MOVIES BY
R O B E RT L . P E T R I L L O
Our memories are not what we suppose – a slice of time preserved in hardened amber as true to life as Dostoyevsky’s prose, as clear as that first kiss we can remember. The vision that we see with our mind’s eye is just the latest version of a film whose frames have been rewound and altered by repeated screenings over ample time. The neural network that records each scene has changed from year to year and only passes on a transposed replica, which means our memories are memories of memories. The biographical foundations of our lives are mere illusions stored in dusty archives.
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CONUNDRUM BY
R O B E RT L . P E T R I L L O
If I could choose to spend one night with you but never see your smiling face again, I’d wish that I could split myself in two: to be your lover once – and lifelong friend. One part of me would scarf you like a beast, devour every limb of you with lust; the other part would hold you like a feast year after year, to honor steadfast trust. Delicious memories might serve me well to live upon in lean years yet to come, or else on daily morsels I could dwell, to taste the parts but never have the sum. I do not know the choice I’d rather make: to eat it now, or ever have my cake.
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QUANTUM LEAP BY
R O B E RT L . P E T R I L L O
You say there is a gulf that lies between us – a barrier so wide it hardly moves, like cosmic space between fixed Mars and Venus that keeps us ever distant in our grooves. I am surprised by that cold thought’s intrusion, for we have often shared a closer bond, like sodium and chlorine’s salty fusion – two elements that may combine as one. There is, in fact, no matter that divides us – just waves of energy from low to high, like light that may illuminate or hide us, depending, on the spectrum, where we lie. My ultraviolet lover, won’t you spread your particles and join my infrared?
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ABOUT ROBERT: Rob is a retired English teacher. He must have absorbed his stylistic leanings from so many years of exposure, though his interest in dabbling with words has always been with him. He currently edits the OLLI (senior college) arts and literature journal at the University of Southern Maine, and facilitates a poetry workshop there, as well. He’s been published in Sky Island Journal, The Blue Mountain Review, Eunoia Review, Renaissance Review and others, as well as in the anthology A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis. His first book of poems and essays, What Passes For a Life, is forthcoming from SCE Press. He lives in the present in Westbrook, Maine.
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The Ghost Gospels
introducing
Holding the reader a willing captive in the liminal spaces between life and death, survival and surrender, recovery and decline, Laura Ingram dazzles the heart and mind with the tenderly-wrought insights of a young woman coming to terms with the aftermath of her eating disorder. As the narrator trains her own thoughts away from hunger, the reader is fed hearts from jars, blackberry brambles, and boxes hidden under beds, hearts that have been pickled and skipped like stones across the tops of creeks, hearts grass stained and wobbling and scrubbed pink in the kitchen sink. And bones—bones blooming and curved like question marks, bones kissed and buried and “scrawled against [the] skin like a pharmacist’s signature.” Yet, even as the imagery blooms and fills and increases, becoming ever more tangible, the poems by: laura ingram narrator fears she will dissipate into something no longer substantial, and “you will remember she is only ulna and aspartame and leave her in search of something more solid.”
the ghost gospels
This is a collection that will break your heart and hand it back to you illuminated between the cracks, for like Kintsugi, the Japanese art of using gold to highlight the cracks in repaired pottery, Ingram’s poems embrace wounds and imperfections rather than glossing over them, modelling that through careful attention and reflection, the selves we can create after we have been broken can be stronger and more beautiful than before.
To puchase your copy or contact the poet: subatomicteenager@gmail.com Each copy $10
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the latest work from
Laura Ingram
t h e
d e b u t
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
c o l l e c t i o n
f r o m
Wretire from her career as a
hen scoliosis pushed her to
massage therapist, Angela Dribben still wanted to be of service, so she began doing legacy work through her local hospice. She felt she needed to gather skills if she was going to honor others, and she started an MFA program at Randolph College. From there her work made its way into journals such as Crab Creek Review, Cider Press Review, San Pedro River Review, Blue Mountain Review, and Crack the Spine. Her first mixed media piece is coming out in Patchwork. Her first collection, Everygirl is now out in advanced sales with Main Street Rag
angela Dribben “Angela Dribben’s poetry does not look away, even from difficult truths. She brings to the page a gift for sound and image, but it’s her compassionate wisdom that makes Everygirl a book like no other, embracing both indictment and forgiveness, suffering and gratitude, its music that of the phoenix the moment the flames in her throat become song. Bring your broken pieces, your trouble with the world. Everygirl is the best friend to whom you may tell everything, in the dark beneath a fistful of stars, and come away more loving, more loved.” -Rhett Iseman Trull, author of The Real Warnings, editor of Cave Wall “How can I believe Adam/ came first when the flower precedes the fruit?” Angela Dribben writes in Everygirl. Coming of age in a Virginia of hunting dogs, pick-ups, and hog farms, these poems, evocative in their details of men “smelling like labor,” food, such as gelatinous ham, military school life for young women, menstruation, rape, and including occasional photographs, bluntly acknowledge the destructive impact of male prerogative when social class and rural life leave few ways out.” -Susana H. Case, author of Dead Shark on the N Train and Drugstore Blue “Wordsworth wrote that any great writer must create the new taste by which they’ll be enjoyed. In Everygirl, Angela Dribben doesn’t just offer a new taste, she’s created an entire menu. From tragically vivid poems about surviving military school, to surreal poems exploring belonging, Dribben had me eating out of the palm of her hand. Dribben writes “To love and to see are not the same,” and I agree. But I do both love and see this book.” -Paige Lewis, Spacestruck
to learn more & purchase visit: https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product/everygirl-angela-dribben/
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YES, MA’AM BY
S T E V I E E DWA R D S
I became a ma’am for the first time in Charleston & started wearing more sunscreen. A cashier at a fast-casual restaurant — a polite young man — hurtled it across the counter with my breakfast sandwich: Would you like something to drink with that, Ma’am? I was twenty-eight & too northern to understand it meant respect — not to point out that I had taken poor care of myself, too little water, too much coffee & cocktails, no gym membership, a lonely pink bicycle that scarcely saw the sun. Years later, I wear my ma’am card like a badge while teaching; I have grown into it. A size-twelve shift dress & sensible shoes with arch support. There’s something freeing in not having to walk around in my girlhood. To be a girl meant being uniquely capturable, uniquely seen by the eyes of men my father’s age. I want to transform into the meanest witch each time a catcall lands in my general direction, though it happens less with these burgeoning fine lines around my eyes & the cellulite clumping on my hamstrings. Thank God I am retiring from an idea of beauty that always fit uncomfortably. Make me all warts & cackle as I traverse the sky on a vintage Hoover. Make me as cruel & magical as I’ve earned the right to be. I must have earned something by staying alive.
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ABOUT STEVIE: Stevie Edwards holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of North Texas and an MFA in poetry from Cornell University. Stevie’s poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of poetry collections Quiet Armor (Northwestern University Press – Curbstone Books, 2023), Humanly (Small Doggies Press, 2015), and Good Grief (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012), as well as the chapbook Sadness Workshop (Button Poetry, 2018). Edwards is currently the Poetry Editor of The South Carolina Review and a Lecturer at Clemson University. In recent years, she has been a recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from Sewanee Writers’ Conference and a VSC Fellowship from Vermont Studio Centers. Originally a Michigander, she now lives in South Carolina with her husband and a small herd of rescue pit bulls (Daisy, Tinkerbell, and Peaches)
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ODYSSEUS DESCENDS INTO THE LAND OF THE DEAD BY
WAY N E K A R L I N
Even here the fucking wall. Everything before it mist. Everything after it mist. Everyone before it mist. Everyone after it mist. The crenelated ridge bristling with spears and mocking faces. Spun into myth by lying bards. Into mist. Into mysth. The bisection of his life. His life bisected by. He shakes the vision from his head. This is not the wall of Troy. It is the wall of Hades. The wall of the dead. It is black and smooth and mirrored and stretches to the horizon. It does not narrow to a point of perception. It continues, circling the world. Oroboros. It is a black band that presses against his eyes. It is a black mirror that swallows him as he draws closer. His reflection merciless. Aged. Creped neck, sagging balls. Scribbled over by the names carved in white letters into the black mirror of the wall. The names of the dead write themselves on his skin, across his forehead, his chest. The white names carve themselves into his skin. Their barbed letters rake his face like the nails of women. Tangle together like discarded clothing on the deck of his ship. Trench fires on his skin. Odysseus the Cunning, Destroyer of Cities. Offerings line the base of the wall. A dove with its throat cut. A pack of cigarettes. A bottle of beer. A gutted daughter. A pack of condoms. A pair of dogtags. The offerings fade, return as the dead themselves, draining into the dirt, their faces covered with rubber ponchos against sudden rain. It washes his skin, churns the earth at the base of the wall into red mud. The dead are all wearing his boots. His body strains against its need to step back, step away. He pushes against it, forward, as he would in battle. The corpses cave into themselves, into the earth, into dust that puffs up and settles in the creases on his face. He steps through the wall into the land of the dead. He will learn to fit himself, silent as moss, to the embrace of stone. He will learn to become moss, which is stone dreaming of life.
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ABOUT WAYNE: Wayne Karlin is a fiction writer who has published thirteen books. Lately, he has found himself going to poetry to express emerging memories of the war he went to fifty years ago. “Odysseus Descends into the Land of the Dead,” inspired by Homer’s ancient war poem, comments on the tragic and timeless universality of the experience of war. To learn more about Karlin, visit his website at https://wayne-karlin.squarespace.com/.
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BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
PAT M E T H E N Y ROAD TO THE SUN ALBUM OUT NOW : CD / VINYL / DIGITAL
Road to the Sun showcases Metheny’s developed musical hallmarks in compelling new and bravely wrought compositions, expertly performed by kindred spirits and modern masters. All Music
Harmonically adventurous...beautifully nuanced... toys interestingly with a musical language shared by Debussy and Django Reinhardt....it presents significant additions to the solo, ensemble and transcription repertory from an unexpected quarter. Wall Street Journal
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CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Jay-de-robinson contributing editor Mr. Classic is the CEO and designer of Mr. Classic’s Haberdashery at Thee Manor in Atlanta, Georgia. A one-stop shop for all things in custom made and classic menswear. From hats all the way down to shoes. His focus mainly being to help individuals develop their personal style. Through the education of fashion and in custom garment designs, he has become the go-to designer for the elegant and high class.
J.D. Isip Contributing editor J.D. Isip is a full-time professor at Collin College and a writer. His poems, plays, fiction, and essays have appeared in a variety of national magazines and journals. His first collection of poems, Pocketing Feathers (2015), was released by Sadie Girl Press, and his second collection,Number Our Days, will be released by Moon Tide Press in 2023. He grew up in Long Beach, California, served in the U.S. Air Force, and worked for Disney before he started teaching.
Ahna Phillips contributing editor Ahna is the executive director of a community-based philanthropic arts organization in metro Atlanta. Her professional experience includes book publishing in Nashville, Tennessee, as a literary agent and freelance writer and editor, as well as in nonprofit leadership in Austin, Texas, at an art studio and gallery for artists with disabilities. She holds an MA in Theology and the Arts and is a singersongwriter with two independent albums.
nicole tallman contributing editor
Nicole Tallman serves as Poetry and Interviews Editor for The Blue Mountain Review. She is the author of Something Kindred & Poems for the People (The Southern Collective Experience Press) and Poetry Ambassador for Miami-Dade County. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @natallman and nicoletallman.com.
kaitlyn young design & layouts
Photography credits Aaron Owens Alekon Pictures Alex Padurariu Alexandra Fuller Ben White Clem Onojeghuo David Raichman Huma Yardim Jakob Owens James Kovin Matias North Nathan Dumlao Nathan Lemon Nicole Wolf Priscilla Dupreeze Tamarcus Brown Timothy Eberly TunV
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Iris IzSw Jasmin Chew Masood Aslami Bulat Khamito George Milton Anthony Tran Kate Williams Lilly Rum Pavan Trikutam Andy Homes Lilartys Zac Gudakov Charles Tumiotto Vusal Ibadzade James Fitzgerald Arda Tutkun Deem Ride Malen Almonacid
Georgia-native, Kaitlyn Young is a freelance graphic designer, specializing in both print and digital creative collateral.
VERNON KEEVE III contributing editor Vernon (Trey) Keeve III is a doctoral student in the English Education department at Columbia University, Teachers College where they are researching
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
clifford brooks editor-in-chief Clifford Brooks is the CEO of the Southern Collective Experience and Editor-in-Chief of the Blue Mountain Review. He is also the journal’s content editor. Aside from these duties, Clifford is the author of The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics, Athena Departs, and Exiles of Eden. These collections of poetry can easily be found online.
NICOLE parry
CLAYTON JONES
SUBMISSIONS CONTENT COORDINATOR
contributing editor
Nicole Parry, M.Ed., BCBA, LBA is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, licensed in the state of Virginia, who writes care plans for children with Autism and supervises the ABA therapy provided to her clients. She earned her B.S. in Psychology from Bridgewater College and her M.Ed. in Educational Psychology: Applied Developmental Science from the University of Virginia. In her free time, Nicole enjoys reading, writing, singing, and playing piano. She has always had a passion for editing and proofreading, be it academic papers or creative fiction.
Carmen Acevedo Butcher contributing editor Carmen Acevedo Butcher is the translator of The Cloud of Unknowing, a Georgia Author of the Year Awardee, and Practice of the Presence by Brother Lawrence, among others. Her dynamic work in spirituality and the power of language has garnered interest from various media, including the BBC and NPR’s Morning Edition. A Fulbright scholar at University of London and Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Sogang University, Carmen currently teaches in the College Writing Programs at UC Berkeley. Online at www.carmenbutcher.com and https://linktr.ee/carmenacevedobutcher.
Clayton Jones is a writer, singersongwriter, and professor living in Chickamauga, GA. His poetry and prose has appeared in many journals and magazines including The Cortland Review, Boston Literary Magazine, and American Songwriter. He has written and recorded several albums of original music. He is founder of Southwind Media (southwindmedia.net) where he offers editing and other literary services. He is a professor of English at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and holds a M.F.A. in poetry from Georgia State University.
lynne kemen contributing editor Lynne Kemen lives in Upstate New York. Her chapbook, More Than A Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, was published In 2020. Five of her poems appeared in Seeing Things Anthology, Edited by Robert Bensen. Her poems are in La Presa, Silver Birch Press, The Ravens Perch, Blue Mountain Review, Fresh Words Magazine. She was Runner Up for The Ekphrastic Journal’s competition of Women Artists. She is on the Board of Bright Hill Press in Treadwell, NY. Her latest collection of poetry, Shoes for Lucy, is due to realease Fall 2023.
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Shannon Perri
tom johnson
Contributing editor
contributing editor
Shannon Perri holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University and a master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Texas. Her writing has appeared in various newspapers and literary magazines, such as Houston Chronicle, Austin-American Statesman, Joyland Magazine, and fields magazine. Her short story, “Liquid Gold,” was a finalist for the 2019 Texas Observer Short Fiction contest; her story, “The Resurrection Act,” was awarded a 2016 Joyland Magazine Publisher’s Pick; and her story, “Orientation,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in South Austin with her husband, son, and menagerie of pets.
Megan baxter contributing editor Megan’s first book ‘The Coolest Monsters, A Collection of Essays’ was published in 2018 by Texas Review Press. Her debut novel ‘Farm Girl’ is forthcoming. Megan has won numerous national awards including a Pushcart Prize. Her work has been listed in The Best American Essays of 2019. Recent publications included pieces in The Threepenny Review, Hotel Amerika, The Florida Review, and Creative Nonfiction Magazine. Megan serves as a mentor to young writers and loves developing cross-genre and innovative creative writing pedagogy for her workshops and classes. She is currently conducting research for an environmentally themed novel as well as writing personal essays and poems. Megan lives in New Hampshire where she loves walking her dogs, running, and cooking with local foods.
rebecca Evans Contributing editor
Rebecca Evans earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Sierra Nevada University. She’s hosted and co-produced Our Voice and Idaho Living television shows, advocating personal stories, and now mentors teens in the juvenile system. She’s the co-host of Writer to Writer podcast on Radio Boise. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Rumpus, Entropy Literary Magazine, War, Literature & the Arts, 34th Parallel, and Collateral Journal, among others. She lives in Idaho with her three sons.
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Tom Johnson was born in Roswell, Ga. He went to college focused on a career in Information Technology but to make ends meet, he worked in a few demanding sales jobs that taught him the ins and outs of marketing. He had always loved writing and he found that marketing gave him an outlet as well as a way to pay the bills. He enjoyed those aspects of his work so much that, after college, he decided on a career in sales instead of going straight into IT. Within a few months, he studied for and passed the Georgia Real Estate Exam. For the next four years he worked for Remax and later Lindsey and Pauly as a seller’s agent. After that, he became the Director of Marketing and Residential Support for a computer company. There he helped them to increase their visibility, develop new leads and on occasion, write content for client’s websites. In late 2009, he decided to go solo as a freelance copywriter for a wide array of clients. In recent years, he has been branching out into fiction and entertainment writing. His first book is slated to be published in 2020.
Mildred Kiconco Barya contributing editor Mildred Kiconco Barya is a writer from Uganda and Assistant professor at UNC-Asheville where she teaches creative writing and world literature. Her publications include three poetry books as well as prose, poems or hybrids in Tin House, poets.org, Poetry Quarterly, Asymptote Journal, Matters of Feminist Practice Anthology, Prairie Schooner, New Daughters of Africa International Anthology, Per Contra, and Northeast Review. Her nonfiction essay, Being Here in My Body won the 2020 Linda Flowers Literary Award and is forthcoming in the North Carolina Literary Review. She received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Denver, MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University, and B.A. in Literature, Makerere University. Visit her blog: http://mildredbarya.com/
asha gowan contributing editor
Asha Gowan, poetry editor, hails from Chapel Hill, NC. She writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Her subject matter usually revolves around matters of the heart, but natural world and its imagery also figure prominently in her work. She has publications in The Coraddi, Blue Mountain Review, The Gathering of Poets, and other magazines and journals.
BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW December 2023
Dusty huggings Music editor Dusty Huggins is a family man, musician, writer, and lover of literature. His interest in writing surfaced during his freshman year at Young Harris College due to an English professor nurturing his interest, stimulating passion, and building the confidence required to find his way as a writer. Dusty is the founder of the Atlanta blues-based, Southern rock band The Ides of June, and also performs as both the lead vocalist and bassist. He is a member of The Southern Collective Experience acting as the music editor for its journal of culture The Blue Mountain Review. In his spare time Dusty enjoys touring with The Ides of June throughout the southeast.
Emily Kerlin contributing editor Emily Kerlin has published poems in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Bridge, Cider Press Review, Storm Cellar, The Pittsburg Poetry Journal and Blue Mountain Review. Her chapbook, Eighteen Farewells, won second place in the 2020 Women of Resilience Chapbook Contest. She attended Antioch College and holds a Master’s degree from the University of Illinois in Bilingual Education. Her current home is in Urbana, Illinois where she works with international students and families. You can find her at emilykerlin.com
drew robertston contributing editor Drew Robertson is studying journalism and creative writing at Mercer University. When she’s not doing schoolwork, she can be found giving tours of campus, having a movie night with friends, or curled up reading a book. Her own fiction writing is interested in exploring small stories about real people, snapshots into the lives of women grieving, creating themselves, and reckoning with the force of commitment in modern female lives. She has been published in Discovering Bulloch, Prometheus Dreaming, and The Dulcimer. Upon graduation, she hopes to attend an MFA program in creative writing and pursue a career in academia or publishing.
andy whitehorne contributing editor
Andy Whitehorne is a writer and live music fanatic residing in Atlanta, Georgia. He spent two-and-a half-decades regularly attending live concerts and working in the hospitality industry. He holds a BFA in theatre, currently works in customer success, and is the Music editor of the Blue Mountain Review.
Angela dribbens Contributing editor Angela Gregory-Dribben lives with her two favorite redheads down in a bottom in Southside Virginia where they are hard at work growing the fattest sandwich tomato in the Piedmont’s trademark red clay. Her poetry and essays can be found or are forthcoming in Main Street Rag, Deep South, Blue Mountain Review, San Pedro River Review, Motherscope, Crab Creek Review, Crack the Spine, Cirque, decomp, New Southern Fugitive, and others. A Bread Loaf alum, she is currently a student in Randolph College’s MFA.
Heather Harris contributing editor
Heather M. Harris is an emerging writer of memoir, poetry, short-stories, children’s books, and an illustrator who lives and writes in the New Orleans area. Heather holds a Master’s of Arts and Teaching and a Bachelor’s of Arts and Sciences in Psychology both from Southeastern Louisiana University. Heather is a contributor for The Blue Mountain Review, and a member of The Southern Collective Experience.
Laura Ingram contributing editor
Laura Ingram is poetry editor and social media manager for the Southern Collective Experience. She has had work published in one hundred journals and magazines, among them Gravel and Juked. She is the author of four poetry collections: Junior Citizen’s Discount, Mirabilis, The Ghost Gospels, and Animal Sentinel.
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Debbie hennessey
jennifer avery
contributing editor
Contributing editor
Debbie Hennessey was named AC40 Female Artist of the Year by New Music Weekly and scored a Top 20 Hit on their AC40 Charts. A song she cowrote recently hit the Top 5 on Roots Music Report’s Americana Country chart. Her songs have been honored by Great American Song Contest, International Songwriting Competition, Billboard World Song Contest, and others. Her music and videos have aired on USA/UHD Networks, NBC, GAC, Extra, and The Next GAC Star. She has over a dozen releases on her label Rustic Heart Records and is a voting GRAMMY member. In addition, Debbie was the managing editor of LA411 & NY411 for Variety and has created several magazines and directories for various industries over the years. Through her company Entertainment Editorial, she works with a diverse range of clients to meet their editorial needs. She also writes for Dante’s Old South Radio Show blog and the Blue Mountain Review.
You can find Debbie at www.entertainmenteditorial.com and www.debbiehennessey.com.
slade gottlieb contributing editor Slade Gottlieb is a fiction writer born in Atlanta and raised in Milton, Georgia. He received his BA in creative writing from Oberlin College and his MFA from California College of the Arts. He’s published short fiction in print editions of the Plum Creek Review and Wilder Voice. Slade currently resides in Oakland, California, where he is at work on his debut novel. He currently co-edits fiction and poetry for The Blue Mountain Review.
Logan merill contributing editor
Logan Merrill: Born and raised in a small town, I’ve made my way through trade. From drywall to drumset to bartending, I fell in love with the power of experiences; the dormant potential of every moment. We’re all humans, being the best we know how to and I believe life is meant to be enjoyed.
Jennifer Avery is an editor and writer from the foothills of Northwest Georgia. Her poetry has been published in the Blue Mountain Review and featured on Dante’s Old South. She spends much of her time attempting experiments in skincare and wordcraft. She is currently working on her novel, Ezra in Every Dimension.
Chris terry contributing editor Chris Terry draws from his fanatic love of films & music when crafting his reviews. After receiving his Master›s in Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design, he’s gone on to work on numerous independent and major films along with producing film scores and music for a wide variety of genres. Chris is currently working with the film production company Fifteen Studios on upcoming projects.
Hester L. Furey contributing editor Hester L. Furey is a poet and literary historian who lives in Atlanta.
Jess Costello contributing editor Jess Costello is a fiction editor, writer, counseling student, and indie music nerd based in Massachusetts. In addition to The Blue Mountain Review, her work has appeared in Boston Accent and iO Literary, and she covers local art for Boston Hassle. She is at work on a novel.
edward austin hall contributing editor Edward Austin Hall lives in Atlanta, where he writes whatever he can get away with.
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