“Nine Months,” “Cryptic Crossword LV,” “Her / Him / Our / Their / Us / Them / They Body,” and “Jaws Was on TV on a Saturday Morning”

by mainbrain@brainmillpress.com | Apr 5, 2019 | childhood, faith and religion, Identity, LGBTQIA+, NPM 2019, Poetry, Racism

“Nine Months,” “Cryptic Crossword LV,” “Her / Him / Our / Their / Us / Them / They Body,” and “Jaws Was on TV on a Saturday Morning”

Editors' Choice Picks

We are delighted to present this week’s selections from the Brain Mill Press Poetry Month Contest, Break Poetry Open, by talented poets Raymond Luczak, Holly Painter, henry 7. reneau, jr., and Mercury Marvin Sunderland.

We hope you’ll enjoy these editors’ picks as much as we did.

Nine Months

Raymond Luczak

mom still wonders how i lost my hearing she mentions having a miscarriage in april 65  & being surprised to find herself pregnant  again in june 65 dr santini said id be born in january 66 instead i arrived in november 65 fully formed  not a preemie i go home two days later

not long after my sister carole takes to reading out loud from a book she is learning how to read to me as i am trapped in my crib i have apparently cocked my ears  to her voice laboriously decoding words

then mom changes her story  she remembers having the miscarriage in march 65 it fell out of her while she sat on the toilet  at 16 i constantly wondered  if that was indeed possible  a body expelling her own fetus

a heatwave in july 66  i turn pink & hot but everybody is hot anyway  mom wonders maybe somethings seriously wrong  at the hospital i am found to have double pneumonia  & a high fever i look close to dying so a priest is called in i survive my last rites of death but my hearing doesnt

then mom changes details again  she says she had a d&c done in february 65 when she felt her fetus wasnt growing  it wasnt even two centimeters long no idea whether it was a boy or girl i no longer am sure what to believe

after i come back from the hospital  carole reads to me again  this time i bob my head around  she doesnt realize ive lost most of my hearing no one has either she gets frustrated with me & gives up

by the time i turn 2 & a half  mom asks her doctor why i havent begun talking  he says maybe hes deaf  she comes home & tells dad to stand me up & turn me  so i can face the wall up in the tub since he was washing me i don’t respond to my name

research indicates a twin in the womb could miscarry leaving behind its other half  in the 60s technology hadnt existed to detect  such a tiny baby thats why moms pregnant test results in june 65 had so surprised everyone

up & down oak street where i once roamed the trees are mostly gone  but the shadow of my other half  still runs a mean yellow stripe right through the road of my life the mystery of never knowing him

Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of 22 books, including Flannelwood (Red Hen Press) and Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman (Squares & Rebels). He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His online presence includes: raymondluczak.com, facebook.com/raymondsbooks, and twitter.com/deafwoof.

Cryptic Crossword LV

Holly Painter

Holly Painter lives with her wife and son in Vermont, where she teaches writing and literature at the University of Vermont. Her first full-length book of poetry, Excerpts from a Natural History, was published by Titus Books in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2015. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have also been published in literary journals and anthologies in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, Singapore, and the UK.

Her/Him/Our/Their/Us/Them/They Body

henry 7. reneau, jr.

henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words of conflagration to awaken the world ablaze, an inferno of free verse illuminated by his affinity for disobedience, like a chambered bullet that commits a felony every day, an immolation that blazes from his heart, phoenix-fluxed red & gold, exploding through change is gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author of the poetry collection, freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press) and the e-chapbook, physiography of the fittest (Kind of a Hurricane Press), now available from their respective publishers. Additionally, he has self-published a chapbook entitled 13hirteen Levels of Resistance, and his collection, The Book Of Blue(s) : Tryin’ To Make A Dollar Outta’ Fifteen Cents, was a finalist for the 2018 Digging Press Chapbook Series. His work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Jaws Was on TV on a Saturday Morning

Mercury Marvin Sunderland

Mercury Marvin Sunderland is a gay Greek/Roman Wiccan autistic transgender man who uses he/him pronouns. He’s from Seattle. He currently attends The Evergreen State College, and his dream is to become the most banned author in human history.

Mercury is a 2013, 2014, 2015 winner of ACT Theater’s Young Playwright’s Program, a 2015, 2016 selected playwright for ACT Theater’s 14:48 HS, a 2016 winner of the Jack Straw Young Writer’s Program, a 2016 selected participant for the Seattle Talent Show hosted by Rainier Beach High School, and was hired as a paid representative of Youth Speaks Seattle in 2016. In 2017 alone, he was selected for and won the 2017 Youth Speaks Seattle Grand Slam, and went off as one of the top five youth slam poets representing Seattle at Brave New Voices 2017, an international slam poetry tournament treated as America’s national tournament, and was selected to perform slam poetry alongside former Seattle mayor candidate Nikkita Oliver at the University of Washington. In 2018 his illustrations were selected for While Supplies Last, an art show hosted by Anthony White, a Cornish College of the Arts graduate. In 2019 he received his first literary journal acceptance from Fearsome Critters Literary Magazine Volume Two, his second from the February 2019 issue of Marathon Literary Review, his third and fourth from Across & Through Literary Magazine, and his fifth from The Dollhouse Literary Magazine.

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

For this year’s National Poetry Month, Brain Mill Press & Voices want to add to your #TBR pile, sing siren songs of unsung heroes, and signal boost living poets we should be reading more. By the end of the month, we hope you will have acquired 30+ new books of poetry and that they continue to multiply in the darkness of your library. Explore new voices & new forms — re-read some old favorites — play if you liked this poet, you’ll like… the old-fashioned way, algorithm-free — just poetry lovers talking to poetry lovers, as the Universe intended. Happy #NaPoMo2019 from Brain Mill Press.

“Demons Are Not Fearless Black Boys with Imagination,” “Lake Girl,” and “Baby Island”

by mainbrain@brainmillpress.com | Apr 5, 2019 | childhood, Feminism, Identity, NPM 2019, Poetry, Racism, Representation

Editors' Choice Poems

We are delighted to present this week’s selections from the Brain Mill Press Poetry Month Contest, Break Poetry Open, by talented poets Jeremiah Davis, Meg Eden, and Riley Welch.

We hope you’ll enjoy these editors’ picks as much as we did.

Demons Are Not Fearless Black Boys with Imagination

Jeremiah Davis

Shape a universe into a butterfly then release it. Bribe the
dark spaces in your heart to let you create an estuary of
flowers. Pray like an off key piano and celebrate the fifth
grade memory when it was so simple it was a blessing to
dream and live it again. Tell your broken maestro he is
worthy of the song he’s been practicing. Talk with the
instrument in his passion. Let go. Let go. Let’s go. Let it go. I
never understood why crows were not called ‘black doves.’
They are just as beautiful. I never understood why the black
boy was never allowed to know he had the liberty of
dreaming off topic. They are just as beautiful.

Jeremiah Davis is poet as well as an author. He has been writing poetry since grade school. Jeremiah started writing to better battle mental illness and overcome bullying. He has been published in The Perch Magazine, Phemme Zine, Junto Magazine, and more. He is twenty-two with aspirations higher than his age. More of his work can be found here.

Lake Girl

Meg Eden

Meg Eden’s work is published or forthcoming in magazines including Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Crab Orchard Review, RHINO and CV2. She teaches creative writing at Anne Arundel Community College. She has five poetry chapbooks, and her novel “Post-High School Reality Quest” is published with California Coldblood, an imprint of Rare Bird Books. Find her online at www.megedenbooks.com or on Twitter at @ConfusedNarwhal.

Baby Island

Riley Welch

Riley Welch is a poet from Texas living in Denver. Her work has previously appeared in The Write Launch and Authentic Texas Magazine, among others. More of her poetry can be found at her blog, arhymeaday.com

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month — Break Poetry Open

For this year’s National Poetry Month, Brain Mill Press & Voices want to add to your #TBR pile, sing siren songs of unsung heroes, and signal boost living poets we should be reading more. By the end of the month, we hope you will have acquired 30+ new books of poetry and that they continue to multiply in the darkness of your library. Explore new voices & new forms — re-read some old favorites — play if you liked this poet, you’ll like... the old-fashioned way, algorithm-free — just poetry lovers talking to poetry lovers, as the Universe intended. Happy #NaPoMo2019 from Brain Mill Press.

Poetry Month Spotlight

by mainbrain@brainmillpress.com | Apr 1, 2019 | Feminism, Meet Our Authors, National Poetry Month, NPM 2019, Poetry, Reading

Poetry Month Spotlight

The Bare Lit Anthology

Literature by writers of colour published in the UK remains overburdened by a bulk of constraints. Often it fixes complicated narratives to personal struggles, consigning them to domains of the confessionnal, inner moral clashes, and the impossibly tragic.

The inauguration of the Bare Lit Festival in February 2016 marked a significant turning point. Rather than centring writers’ work around prescriptive themes, the festival looked to open possibilities beyond them. Through readings, conversations, panels, and performances, we were adamant to overcome the anachronism that exists between the vast spectrum of work produced by writers of colour and the kind of exposure they receive. With the generous help of our audiences and supporters, Bare Lit was able to honour their work both artistically and financially.

The accompanying anthology builds upon this achievement. Calling on participants and writers of colour UK-wide, we asked contributors to submit their writing in line with the aims and ethos of Bare Lit. The response was overwhelming—thank you to everyone who contributed.

We received over a hundred submissions of prose and poetry covering an impressive range. Writers took us on flights of fancy, pandering to multiple worlds while engaging us in their literary imaginations. Every submission was carefully discussed and considered on the premise of originality, relevance, and often a certain kind of gut feeling.

The selection presented here brings together original, previously unpublished works of contemporary prose and poetry by established as well as lesser known writers, giving both the opportunity to work with this volume’s brilliant editors, Kavita Bhanot and Courttia Newland, who have honed each piece to its utmost and without whom the anthology would not have been possible. The final pieces cover an unimaginably vast scope, reflecting the wide, and at times irreconcilable and contradictory, range of themes and the political élan present in the work of writers of colour in this particular period. In this sense, they are not canonical but anticanonical, and vested in the many global and diasporic vernaculars.

—From the foreword by Bare Lit co-founder and anthology co-editor Mend Mariwany

A fiction and poetry anthology in support of the Bare Lit Festival, showcasing award-winning British authors of color.

In 2016, a group of UK authors of color founded the Bare Lit Festival: the first ever literary and author festival featuring only UK writers of color. Bare Lit collects short stories and poetry by literary luminaries whose work represents the values and mission of the festival. Edited by Kavita Bhanot, editor of Too Asian, Not Asian Enough, Courttia Newland, author of The Gospel According to Cane, and Bare Lit Festival cofounder Mend Mariwany, all proceeds of this anthology go toward direct support of the Bare Lit Festival for authors of color.

The Bare Lit Anthology is an excellent way to read and discover talented BAME poets working in the UK.

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month — Break Poetry Open

For this year’s National Poetry Month, Brain Mill Press & Voices want to add to your #TBR pile, sing siren songs of unsung heroes, and signal boost living poets we should be reading more. By the end of the month, we hope you will have acquired 30+ new books of poetry and that they continue to multiply in the darkness of your library. Explore new voices & new forms — re-read some old favorites — play if you liked this poet, you’ll like... the old-fashioned way, algorithm-free — just poetry lovers talking to poetry lovers, as the Universe intended. Happy #NaPoMo2019 from Brain Mill Press.

—From the foreword by Bare Lit co-founder and anthology co-editor Mend Mariwany

A fiction and poetry anthology in support of the Bare Lit Festival, showcasing award-winning British authors of color.

The Bare Lit Anthology is an excellent way to read and discover talented BAME poets working in the UK.

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BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month — Break Poetry Open

For this year’s National Poetry Month, Brain Mill Press & Voices want to add to your #TBR pile, sing siren songs of unsung heroes, and signal boost living poets we should be reading more. By the end of the month, we hope you will have acquired 30+ new books of poetry and that they continue to multiply in the darkness of your library. Explore new voices & new forms — re-read some old favorites — play if you liked this poet, you’ll like... the old-fashioned way, algorithm-free — just poetry lovers talking to poetry lovers, as the Universe intended. Happy #NaPoMo2019 from Brain Mill Press.

About The Bare Lit 2016 Anthology

—From the foreword by Bare Lit co-founder and anthology co-editor Mend Mariwany

A fiction and poetry anthology in support of the Bare Lit Festival, showcasing award-winning British authors of color.

The Bare Lit Anthology is an excellent way to read and discover talented BAME poets working in the UK.

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month — Break Poetry Open

For this year’s National Poetry Month, Brain Mill Press & Voices want to add to your #TBR pile, sing siren songs of unsung heroes, and signal boost living poets we should be reading more. By the end of the month, we hope you will have acquired 30+ new books of poetry and that they continue to multiply in the darkness of your library. Explore new voices & new forms — re-read some old favorites — play if you liked this poet, you’ll like... the old-fashioned way, algorithm-free — just poetry lovers talking to poetry lovers, as the Universe intended. Happy #NaPoMo2019 from Brain Mill Press.

Brain Mill Press Celebrates Poetry Month 2015 Winning Poets

by mainbrain@brainmillpress.com | Apr 1, 2019 | NPM 2015, Poetry

We’re overwhelmed by the positive response to our first poetry month. Both weeks, we had talented poets participate, and it was a particular joy to showcase their poems on our blog. During the events, when we received a new poem in our inbox, it was genuinely exciting. We read them right away, and we read them out loud. These poems provided respite and conversation to a very small but very busy publishing house, and then provided discussion and ideas to our audience when they were shared.

So one might ask, if these poems, all of them, already did so much, why recognize “winners?” It’s a valid question, and an important one, and the answer reflects this — because poetry is important and it is valid, and there is significant skill and craft and self employed in the writing of a poem in addition to singing. All of these poems sang, all of them, and it is a human impulse to sing of ourselves and for others, and also, there are poets seriously dedicated to making poems as beautiful as can be borne, and who are in conversation with formal constraints, history, language, and influences. Recognizing such poets forwards poetry for all of us — in the reading and writing of it, and of its significant use in activism, which is desperately required in our world.

Poets are still executed, detained, imprisoned, and otherwise silenced, all over the world, for writing poems. Iranian peace poet Hashem Shabaani was hanged for his work by a tribunal last winter. Susana Chávez Castillo (Mexico), an outspoken poet and women’s rights activist, was found brutally murdered, a crime believed to be associated with her political and artistic expression. Currently, poets Aron Atabek (Kazakhstan), Mohammed Ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami (Qatar), Enoh Meyomesse (Cameroon), and Liu Xia (China) are imprisoned for their poems and speech by their governments or government factions — all in inhumane conditions.

Poems and poets are important. Recognition and promotion of poems is vital. Poems are a vital contribution of speech, and they have often been the speech that has sang the purest, and the loudest, and the most human.

Elizabeth Berry is our 2015 overall winner of Brain Mill Press Celebrates Poetry Month events. Her poems, On Growing Up, submitted to the WORK event, and Stars in the Sky, submitted to the LOVE OR FEAR event, are arresting for their authority, the intensity of their anger at where the women they speak of find themselves, honed with plain language and sharp metaphor. Her two poems resolve nothing in their ending lines, and yet push to the reader to feel catharsis.

Additionally, Brain Mill Press would like to recognize two runners up, G.B. Gordon and Pam Faste. you by Gordon showcases a lyrical attention to language and is deeply romantic without sweetness. We found you to be both spare and heavy with the feeling of the speaker. Faste’s poem, Moment Before, captures beautifully a small and breathless moment of infatuated anxiety that all of us deep in love or like or crush have felt so keenly.

Thank you, everyone, and please share this announcement far and wide.

On Growing Up

On the day that my grandfather died my grandmother lit a cigarette looked down at the stricken faces of her children and said well, we still have this farm to take care of. My mother, then eight, looked out the window at the cows that crowded the fence, waiting for food, for release from the swollen udders, and beyond at the hay, tall in the fields, and at the tractors resting in the sheds, waiting for the long legs of morning to walk up and turn the key.

At eighteen, my mother, as lean and brown as a leather strap covered her face and veiled her reasons to follow my father a hundred miles from home.

Three kids in three years.

Mortgage

yard

car

pool

PTA

Low money, no money, grocery store clerk, pregnant daughter, baby crying all night, no lights, pay that bill but another’s coming.

And so it went for thirty years. Yet every month they would drive back over the mountain as visitors, and sit, drinking tea until the cows moaned and the others rose to go to work.

Occasionally, reluctant to unclasp ourselves from the circle of laughter and soft shadows that floated down from the familiar ceilings, we would follow them to the cool concrete floors, and clanging gates of the milking barn. My mother, face lit by the glow of the yellow interior lights, moved quickly to lead, to coax the herd into position and nodded with satisfaction when they lined up, and did their jobs.

Stars in the Sky

Maybe your cancer has come back and that is why it is so hard to sleep and when you do sleep you wake up with a throat full of sand and you stumble across the worn wood floors to the kitchen for water and gulp it down by the glassful trying not to look at the window because the moon might look back and once you lock eyes with it it’s hard not to notice the blanket of stars that spreads out forever

and there’s just something about a blanket of stars spreading out forever that is destroying you making your heart literally ache in your body as you yearn for a boy’s fat hand in your hand his face a moon shining back in a picture that you keep hidden in a drawer with all of the other sharp knives safe there from stars raining down from skies from windshields exploding on impact.

You rub the scars. Stare out the window.

For this year’s National Poetry Month, Brain Mill Press & Voices wants to add to your #TBR pile, sing siren songs of unsung heroes, and signal boost living poets we should be reading more. By the end of the month, we hope you will have acquired 30+ new books of poetry and that they continue to multiply in the darkness of your library. Explore new voices & new forms — re-read some old favorites — play if you liked this poet, you’ll like . . . the old-fashioned way, algorithm-free — just poetry lovers talking to poetry lovers, as the Universe intended. Happy #NaPoMo2019 from Brain Mill.

“A Meme Reimagined,” “The Sound + The Fury,” and “B (If I Should Have a Son)”

by mainbrain@brainmillpress.com | Mar 31, 2019 | NPM 2018, Poetry

Editors' Choice Poems

“A Meme Reimagined,” “The Sound + The Fury,” and “B (If I Should Have a Son)”

We are delighted to present this week’s selections from the Brain Mill Press Poetry Month Contest. We received many outstanding entries, from which these pieces by Paramita Vadhahong stood out. We hope you’ll enjoy them as much as we did.

Poems by Paramita Vadhahong

A Meme Reimagined: Love between the Gaps

the sound + the fury = the unwritten sister

B (If I Should Have a Son)

About Paramita Vadhahong

Paramita Vadhahong is a Thai teenage poet and writer. She has lived in Thailand, Bahrain, and Dubai, and is currently settled in Houston. Her work mainly focuses on female strength, queerness, and the struggles and triumph of creativity. She is a contributing writer on Mindfray and has self-published a poetry chapbook (Raise the Black). Her writing can also be seen on Quora and Medium.

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month 2018

Maybe you have lines living in you. Maybe you’ve been walking around like the speaker in Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones”: “This place could be beautiful, / right? You could make this place beautiful.” Maybe you’ve been inspired by Isobel O’Hare’s erasures, and have an urge to address some things. Maybe you’ve woken up in the spiked night, with a line swimming out of the deep. Maybe you have a story to tell. Or, maybe you memorized Jericho Brown’s “Colosseum” and have been repeating to yourself: “I cannot locate the origin / Of slaughter, but I know / How my own feels, that I live with it / And sometimes use it / To get the living done . . .”

These poetic efforts have touched me in the last few months, in that strange trigonometry of language, chance, and seeking, that we readers and writers do. Brown’s lines resonated with me, brought me low, and offered something – if not quite comfort, then a kind of recognition.

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