What’s Currently Shaping My Writing

by mainbrain@brainmillpress.com | Apr 23, 2019 | Feminism, Identity, Meet Our Authors, National Poetry Month, NPM 2019, Poetry, writer's life

What's Currently Shaping My Writing

Emily Corwin

1. The Slumber Party Massacre (1982, directed by Amy Holden Jones)

2. “lofi hip hop beats to relax/study to” playlist

3. Barbara Creed’s film theory on “The Monstrous-Feminine,” what it is about woman “that is shocking, terrifying, horrific, abject.” Creed explores the way the female body is coded in the horror film as victim and as monster, as sexual and virginal, as spectacle and agent. And that’s what I am trying to do as well.

4. Oculus by Sally Wen Mao (Graywolf, 2019)

5. Shiny Insect Sex by Stephanie Lane Sutton (Bully City Press, 2019)

6. The Criterion Channel

7. Glitter, specifically glitter paste

8. I’ve become nocturnal lately. My partner works at night and I’ve been adopting his schedule a bit. Last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I got in my car and headed west. I was aimless, just kept driving until I felt moved to stop. There’s this cemetery on the other side of town, and I found myself driving past its gate. My headlights passed over the red tulips sprouting at the low stone wall. I felt drawn to them—the tulips—and decided to park. There was moonlight, and I wandered down the gravel path, my eyes passing over the headstones and shadow.

9. Agnès Varda, French New Wave and documentary filmmaker who passed at the end of last month.

10. Taking the bus every day for work. It demands that I observe and take stock of my surroundings, inside and outside the bus. Looking at my phone makes me motion-sick, so I just look up instead. I get to see what people are wearing, what the traffic and weather is like; I get to say good-bye to this town.

11. Daughter-Seed by Arielle Tipa (Empty Set Press, 2019)

12. Ingmar Bergman’s spooky Swedish films

13. The flowering trees at night—the redbud and dogwood. I went for a night-walk recently. The air was warm as bath water, and I just had to slip out the door and try it on. I walked two miles toward the empty cornfield, intending to visit my favorite tree. But I heard this loud, reverberating noise coming from the nearby neighborhood. So I veered left and followed the sound. It was birds—hundreds of them—in this little copse at the end of the drive. The noise was overpowering and ethereal.

14. Paper Mate InkJoy Gel Pens (the 22 pack is very good)

15. This color-wheel tote bag

*My Tall Handsome* is available for purchase directly from Brain Mill Press and from print and ebook vendors everywhere.

“The twenty-first-century witchery that sprinkles glitter everywhere in My Tall Handsome allows for us to cheer on the speaker in her quest for finding love, seeking revenge—or even raising the dead.”—Ploughshares

The fanged fairy of Emily Corwin’s forest-mud-stained collection asserts and sings with short rhymes and glitter-spells, and just as you’ve followed her into the deepest and darkest part of the woods, terrified, you’re asked to run away together / and promise to never / do this heart-skipping thing / with anyone else.

Don’t be surprised when you find yourself answering yes, yes, yes.

Confronting and darling, every word a perfect warm circlet of pink blood, My Tall Handsome raids every crystal jar on the lace-topped vanity for truth, poison, and song until you can’t remember why you ever thought pretty was better than powerful, sugar was better than bitter medicine, or dancing needed more music than your own voice.

I sip the goblet down, tip it upside down / wear it as / a hat / I am a new shiny thing / and I steal you away from the hoopla hullabaloo rumpus

You won’t resist this kidnapping into the orchard, into the crabapple abracadabra—it is too crystalline a taking, and there are too many delicious chants to chant along the way.

“When the cutie-pie was opened, the birds began to sing, and what they sang was glittery and savage and fearless and dangerous—be careful with this book.”—Catherine Wagner, author of Nervous Device

A Selection from My Tall Handsome

Emily Corwin

my tall handsome, you are always

hydrangea in my rib, popped open

always dazzle of salt on my punched lip

love of life

the he & me I will devour

we beneath black cherry tree

all fruits and crystals on your chest

you were my first body—now and always

forever and ever, in the pink bed rippling

amen.

About Emily Corwin

Emily Corwin is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Indiana University-Bloomington and the former Poetry Editor for Indiana Review. Her writing has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Ninth Letter, Gigantic Sequins, New South, Yemassee, THRUSH, and elsewhere. She has two chapbooks, My Tall Handsome (Brain Mill Press) and darkling (Platypus Press), which were published in 2016. Her first full-length collection, tenderling, was released from Stalking Horse Press in 2018, and she was a finalist for the 2018 Pleiades Press Editors Prize. Her manuscript Sensorium was chosen as an Editor’s Choice selection for the 2018 Akron Poetry Prize and is forthcoming with the University of Akron Press.

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

For this year’s National Poetry Month at BMP Voices, we seek to celebrate the ways in which we’re interconnected — highlighting community, gratitude, and the ways in which creativity redounds upon itself, fed by collective energy and goodwill. Our fee-free contest is open to all styles and forms of poetry, with an eye toward our mission of discovering voices that are immediate, immersive, and urgent. Poems inspired by the work of others are welcome. We also welcome poems written to other poems or poets.

Animal Rescue

by mainbrain@brainmillpress.com | Apr 23, 2019 | animals, grief, Identity, Meet Our Authors, NPM 2019, Poetry, writer's life

Animal Rescue

Wren Hanks

My position as liaison between the open-admissions city animal shelter and almost four hundred rescue partners skews mostly toward crisis management. An injured gannet arrives, stunned and unable to fly. A shedding python someone tried to mail to California, a neonate squirrel drinking Pedialyte from a syringe, a red dog with matted fur and a mammary tumor—my department rushes them to rehabbers or twenty-four-hour vet hospitals.

I do not think about poetry during my day job, unless coaxing moms away from their two-day-old kittens long enough to gently place the whole family in a crate counts as building a poem. I only write on my days off, in slices between laundry and the long walks I take to process the worst of what I’ve seen during the week. I struggled last year when it became impossible for writing to be my whole world, or even a large part of it. I thought in terms of survival and the next therapy session, the minutes when my ideation quieted as I led a dainty pit mix through the rain.

But reconnecting with animals, my first love, has driven me back to poetry. Caring about the survival of others helps me (most days) to see the value of my own.

I wanted to share a few drafts from #NaPoWriMo that touch on those feelings:

Draft 1:

I watched a vet tech caress a swan down their neck, down the wing pulled tightly against his body. I watched a man caress a swan with a beak too cracked for panic. I tell him you make me that swan, cut my panic with tenderness. My co-worker sends an email titled “11 Rats, can you help?” with a photo of white rodents arranged in a loose braid of a nausea. Imagine they climb my shoulders, pepper my movements with their lozenge eyes. I’m so unlike the Black Swan I saw last Halloween, cloaked in enough tulle to choke a bigot politely. My rats will make me that polite, crown my body with their tails in the air.

Draft 2 (Radical Revision):

I watch a vet tech caress a swan down their neck, down the wing pulled tightly against his body.

I watch my friend hold a python as close as she can to her chest, his shed flaking on her gloves.

The only children I love stray far from what I could make: pinkie squirrels with dark nails,

small lizards in a cricket frenzy. I watch the accolades pile up when a straight friend posts

ultrasound pictures. Her fetus somersaults away from the camera. My own uterus contracts,

the pain elegant and ribbed, like the ribbon crack in that swan’s beak that made eating impossible.

Draft 3:

The further I get I am a gulper eel, I hope, a mouth like the black box in Are You Afraid of the Dark? I open this mouth and you fall inside. The further I get I am the Black Lodge, a row of tiles that kiss muddy feet, a thick curtain grazing your neck. I speak rewinding cassette, I speak marine snow as my eel body ribbons between water zones. It is effortless to be such a horror, and your clues dissolve like shrimp in my stomach acid, like a face blurred by a net of ink.

*The Rise of Genderqueer* is available for purchase directly from Brain Mill Press and from print and ebook vendors everywhere.

Tender and brutal, luminous and dark, raucous and gutting, Hanks’s poems are so alive that you can almost hear their heartbeat.—Foglifter

A truly incomparable collection, The Rise of Genderqueer constructs a voice with unmitigated and authentic yearning. Its poems soak ink into page from margin to margin, pressing into the reader’s assumptions about gender unmercifully. These poems demand, carry authentic wisdom, deliver keen argument, and disarm with sly wit. Wren Hanks challenges the status quo as neatly as a flower slid into the barrel of a rifle. These are utterly convincing prose forms studded with rhetoric he’s deftly remastered and sampled from our culture and conversations right now.

“I’ll never be denatured, // I am nature,” Hanks’s poems insist, as the reader bears witness to a bigger world, light flooding into every corner, revealing what has always been true, vigorous, and expansive.

“We are witnessing the birth of an extraordinary voice in these poems.”
—Roy G. Guzmán

The Ghost Incites a Genderqueer Pledge of Allegiance

Wren Hanks

Deny girl and the blood galaxies trailing it; there is a ghost in me who loves each egg, who won’t let me throw up when I’m seasick from my period.

There is a ghost in me riffing on fertility & chocolate almonds. We grow organs in pig ribs, ghost. Surely swelling and blossoming are not the same.

Swelling’s for an injured brain, a uterus drunk on the repetition of cells. I place my hand on my bound chest, pledge allegiance to the rashes and the scales, the fold and petal.

It’s a mess inside me, ghost.

About Wren Hanks

Wren Hanks is the author of The Rise of Genderqueer, a 2018 selection for Brain Mill Press’s Mineral Point Poetry Series and a finalist for Gold Line Press’s chapbook contest. A 2016 Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow, his poetry has been a finalist for Indiana Review‘s 1/2 K Prize and anthologized in Best New Poets. His recent work appears or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, Waxwing, Foglifter, and elsewhere. He is also the author of Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press), an Elgin Award finalist. He lives in Brooklyn, where he works as a liaison for Animal Care Center of NY’s New Hope program, a proactive community initiative that finds homes for pets (and wildlife) in need. He lives in Brooklyn and tweets @suitofscales.

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

This Winter, Poetry Said No

by mainbrain@brainmillpress.com | Apr 5, 2019 | National Poetry Month, NPM 2019, Poetry, writer's life

This Winter, Poetry Said No

A National Poetry Month Essay by Christine Brandel

This winter was a lonely one for me, poetry-wise. It’s not for lack of trying on my part. I’ve sent poetry countless invitations—requesting its presence at late night rendezvous at my desk, quick chats as I drive to and from work, a chilly but cheerful New Year’s Eve party, and every single one of my dreams.

But poetry said no. Without even sending its apologies.

It’s hard not to take it personally. I kept reading others’ work—why do the poems show up for them but not me? I kept teaching new writers, watching as they develop their voices and styles. I tried writing along with them. I tried finding brand new prompts to use on my own. I opened old drafts and worked to make something new. I re-read all the poems I’ve loved since I was a child, reliving those moments of pure magic. I re-read my own poetry, remembering each poem’s conception and birth.

Poetry said, Appreciate the effort, Christine, but still not interested.

I wondered if poetry now finds me boring or obsolete. Perhaps it thinks I’m too tired, no fun anymore, past my sell-by date. Am I? This possibility made me shift my perspective. What if this wasn’t about writing a poem at all, but instead about rekindling a romance? How could I make poetry remember what it used to be like when things were good between us? I don’t have a lot of experience in that department, so I did the only thing I’ve ever tried to revive a dead relationship: I got a haircut. True, it hadn’t won back anyone in the past, but it’s all I could think of. Alas, freshly shorn locks didn’t make a difference with poetry either.

This winter was difficult. It was long and cold and grey. If I could have, I’d have hibernated all season, tucked up in bed, lost in dreams of honeybees and sunlight. But I am not a bear. No den, but a poorly insulated house. I spent hours at the door, staring out the icy window at the grey skeletons of trees. I spent hours at my desk, staring through the cold screen at the ugliness of the world.

Eventually, I gave up. No one finds desperation appealing, I know. I’d given it my best go, but I had to stand down.

It was out of my hands now. If poetry wanted me, it knew where to find me.

_________________

Then came April. The air was warming, and life was waking. In me? I don’t know, I was too afraid to ask. I was trying to accept the feeling of not knowing anything anymore.

Today I went out to do some errands. Though it was my day off, I drove the same route I take to work, passing the same landscape I passed every morning and evening all winter. Things were different today. Things felt different today. The sun was shining. The sky was blue. There were blossoms on the tips of the trees’ branches: pink, white, gold, green. The trees were alive.

I am, too.

Despite the errands, I turned back and went home to retrieve my camera. I parked my car on a side road and got out to take photographs. The wind had a chill as it blew through my hair. I breathed it in, sensed it filling my lungs and moving through my veins. I felt like laughing, so I did. I smiled at the car that honked as it passed. I walked up and down the road, catching all those colors in my camera.

When I got home, I took pictures of the violets which seemed to have suddenly filled my yard and of a dozy bee who was resting in the sunshine on my porch.

Inside, I looked at the photographs—the warm light, the vibrant hues, the delicate lines. None of these things had been there yesterday. Maybe they had been, but were not yet ready to be seen. Or maybe they were just waiting for me.

For me to be willing and able to see.

A Wife Is a Hope Chest

by Christine Brandel

A wife is a hope chest in which you keep
the things you will need for a good life.
1: A kettle. Tie the cord to her wrist, she should
never be out of its reach. 2: A snapshot of the woman
you wish you had married. Push it through her
eyes, put it in her head. 3: A pen knife. Good
for cutting bread, package strings, the ring
from her finger. 4: Coins. They will make sounds
so you know when she’s coming. 5: Silence.
Do not read the letters she writes you, do not
speak even if she pleads. 6: Cotton wool. To stop
the flow. Because she will bleed. 7: A book.
One heavy hardback you never intend to read.
8: A skeleton key. Trust her. She won’t use it to get out.

“There’s a sense of earned-ness about these poems—it’s palpable. They seem to address matters non-theoretically; they seem to raise matters from the author’s direct experience. … Recommended.” —Galatea Resurrects

Brandel’s formally structured lyrics, as carefully arranged as a chest packed with tissue paper and clove oranges, lure and invite the reader with beauty and craft, then hiss and coil and buzz with needled wit and blade flashes of human insight. These are poems Emily Dickinson would have delighted in and sent daringly to friends. This is a collection where six lines and twelve words in a poem about a teakettle sear and brand so hot, the reader finds relief in the white space on the page. Domestic objects are both weapons of war and charms of love, often simultaneously, and the cycle of poems circling around each presented object — kettle, snapshot, penknife, coins, silence, book, and skeleton key — work both as a dance and the creeping threat of a predator pack.

A Wife Is a Hope Chest demonstrates brilliant facility with form and capacious understanding of the capabilities of plain-language verse. This is a poet’s poetry collection, even as it is a volume that invites any reader to become infected with its unforgettable imagery, pointed humor, and dark charm.

In these surreal lyrics, romantic love is a repository for emotions sweet, bitter, and blazing. Brandel’s language—rich with visual and tactile imagery—delivers us into a world where domestic objects transform into amorous talismans. —Kiki Petrosino

Christine Brandel is a writer and photographer. Her work has recently appeared in Callisto, Public Pool, Under the Rader, Blue Fifth Review, and The Fem. She also writes a column on comedy for PopMatters and rights the world’s wrongs via her character Agatha Whitt-Wellington (Miss) at Everyone Needs An Algonquin. She currently lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where she teaches at a community college and serves as a hospice volunteer. More of her work can be found at clbwrites.com.

Buy Now

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.

Jessica Mehta, Iulia Militaru, and Levi Cain

by mainbrain@brainmillpress.com | Apr 5, 2019 | Activism, Identity, National Poetry Month, NPM 2019, Poetry, Racism, writer's life

Editors' Choice Poems

Jessica Mehta, Iulia Militaru, and Levi Cain

We are delighted to highlight this week’s selections from the Brain Mill Press Poetry Month Contest, Break Poetry Open, by talented poets Jessica Mehta, Iulia Militaru (translated by Claudia Serea), and Levi Cain.

Iulia Militaru’s poem “This Is Not a Poem,” translated by Claudia Serea, was included among the picks but is not reproduced below.

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

Two Antipodes Poems

Jessica Mehta

Author’s Note: Antipodes are an experimental form of poetry with roots in both palindromes and reverse poetry. However, unlike reverse poems which can be read forward and backward line by line, the antipode can be read forward and backward word by word. Poems are intended to be read with the original version on the verso page and the reflected antipode on the recto page.

America de’Colonizer

De-colonizer: America—we’re coming. You are
too prideful, too vain. Your destruction bred
warriors. Overseas invaders brought ships
full and pulsing. For generations, lost children
remain reticent. To listen, says Creator, you need
ancestors. Homecoming, we’re nobility displaced.
Dethrone well-mistaken kings. You’re uncertain still;
that’s okay. Washing white, the stain’s disappearing
now. Missing women, murdered women, all we’re
saying is Creator understands. Who are we?
Strength of centuries—come. Be Natives.

***

Natives become centuries of strength.
We are who understands Creator is saying
we’re all women murdered, women missing. Now,
disappearing stains the whitewashing. (Okay, that’s
still uncertain). Your king’s mistaken, we’ll dethrone
displaced nobility. We’re coming home. Ancestors
need you, Creator says. Listen to reticent remains.
Children lost generations, for pulsing and full
ships brought invaders—overseas warriors
bred destruction. You’re vain, too, prideful, too.
Are you coming? We’re America, de’Colonizer.

Alone, He Pictures the Sea

See the pictures? He, alone, recalls it all. And memory
lingers here. Sick heads make regrets
huge and away swim mistakes like whales.
Sorry, he’s human. He’s sorry he’s scared—
he’s Jonah of full bellies. Our broken
system’s the offender, another
mishap, another bias. Here’s to oceans of dreams.
Lost, he’s landlocked. All we’re doing,
we are what hatred spawns. Suspicion
means this: forced solitude and life in prisons.
Everyone made deals—
all for views, water painted views.

***

Views, painted water views for all.
Deals made everyone
prisons in life and solitude forced. This means
suspicion spawns hatred. What are we
doing? We’re all landlocked. He’s lost
dreams of oceans, too. Here’s bias: another mishap,
another offender. The system’s
broken … our belly’s full of Jonah. He’s
scared, he’s sorry he’s human, he’s sorry.
Whales like mistakes swim away and huge
regrets make heads sick. Here lingers
memory and all it recalls. Alone, he pictures the sea.

About Jessica Mehta

Jessica Mehta is a multi-award-winning poet and author of over one dozen books. She’s currently a poetry editor at Bending Genres Literary Review, Airlie Press, and the peer-reviewed Exclamat!on journal. During 2018-19, she was a fellow at Halcyon Arts Lab in Washington DC where she curated an anthology of poetry by incarcerated indigenous women and created “Red/Act,” a pop-up virtual reality poetry experience using proprietary software. As a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and native Oregonian, place and personal ancestry inform much of Jessica’s creative work.

Jessica is also the owner of a multi-award-winning writing company and founder of the Jessica Tyner Scholarship Fund, the only scholarship exclusively for Native Americans pursuing an advanced degree in writing. She has undertaken poetry residencies around the globe including at Hosking Houses Trust with an appointment at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England and the Acequia Madre House in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her doctoral research focuses on the intersection of poetry and eating disorders.

Jessica’s novel The Wrong Kind of Indian won gold at the 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPYs). Jessica has also received numerous visiting fellowships in recent years, including the Everett Helm Visiting Fellowship at the Lilly Library at Indiana University at Bloomington and the Eccles Centre Visiting Fellowship at The British Library. Visual representations of her work have been featured at galleries and exhibitions around the world including IA&A Hillyer in Washington DC and The Emergency Gallery in Sweden. Jessica is a popular speaker and panelist, featured recently at events like the US State Department’s National Poetry Month event, “Poets as Cultural Emissaries: A Conversation with Women Writers,” as well as the “Women’s Transatlantic Prison Activism Since 1960” symposium at Oxford University. Learn more about Jessica’s creative work at www.jessicamehta.com. Twitter: @ndns4vage.

FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE WHEN THE TWIST OUT WAS NOT ENUFF

Short-List Selection

Levi Cain

swear on my mama
no–swear on something more
simple and sacred.
swear on my brother’s future mixtape,
swear on pig fat in collard greens and
freshly whipped shea butter,
arroz con what the fuck ever–
that the cracked cushion chair of
my hairdresser’s closet is
in fact a cathedral,
packets of yaki and remy dotted
with the same angels,
skin the color of good brandy.
the nollywood movies blaring
on the thrifted television is
the preacher.
there is one constant truth–
the half-room in waltham is
a tabernacle for second generation girls
who never learned how to cornrow.

a blackgurl’s bond with a hairdresser
is tighter than the binding of isaac,
requires more faith than you
ever know how to give
after years of lye being applied
to your scalp,
after years of being teased by
whitegirls who crow that
your hair looks like brillo pads
that they wouldn’t let their housekeepers
scour the sink with.
the same whitegirls who now quiz you
on coconut oil
and ask you to anoint them
with the wisdom of
deep conditioning.

i and every other blackgurl
who grew up in the suburbs
are haunted by visions of hot combs
and strangers putting their hands in our hair,
pulling so sharply we swear
we hear the echo of a whip crack.

but those ghosts have no place here,
in this space that has only space enough
for you,
your hairdresser,
and maybe her friend from haiti
who you do not know the name of
but who twists braids so gently it is
as if she wants to be your mother.

this is an act of love,
but all gods are not filled with goodness
and so neither is the woman
who stands with jojoba in her right hand,
84 inches of kankelon in her left,
who asks why you never
seem to have a boyfriend,
who told you she would rather die
than break bread with faggots
but passes you plantains as communion,
presses your forehead
to her chest as madonna,
calls you daughter,
welcomes you with open arms
to a rented room
in a part of a town that would make
a principal’s lip curl
–this blackgurl bethlehem,
this satin covered resting place,
this plane of being where
you are you
are blackgurl,
are celebration,
are miracle,
are nothing but holiest of holies.

About Levi Cain

Levi Cain is a queer writer from the Greater Boston Area who was born in California and raised in Connecticut. Further examples of their work can be found in Lunch Ticket, Red Queen Literary Magazine, and other publications.

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month — Break Poetry Open

Break Poetry Open Contest Winner

by mainbrain@brainmillpress.com | Apr 5, 2019 | disability, Identity, LGBTQIA+, National Poetry Month, NPM 2019, Poetry, Racism, Representation, sexism

Break Poetry Open Contest Winner

Hannah Soyer

—C. Kubasta, Editor, BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month 2019

Winner

“what do i know about consent anyway” by Hannah Soyer

Short List

“A composing book, 1973” by Daisy Bassen

“FOR COLORED GURLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE WHEN THE TWIST OUT WAS NOT ENUFF” by Levi Cain

“[mispronunciation]” by Uma Menon

Editors’ Picks

Week Five

“To: that nought in da jcemestry” by Penelope Alegria

“To Cry Out” by Cassandra Hsiao

“This Cosmic Dance” by Natasha McLachlan

what do i know about consent anyway

Contest Winner

Hannah Soyer

About Hannah Soyer

Hannah Soyer is a disabled creative writer and artist interested in perceptions and representations of what we consider ‘other.’ She is the creator of the This Body is Worthy project, which aims to celebrate bodies outside of mainstream societal ideals, and the founder of Freedom Words, a program to design and implement creative writing workshops specifically for students with disabilities. She has been published in Cosmopolitan, InkLit magazine, Mikrokosmos Journal, Hot Metal Bridge, Rooted in Rights, and her most recent piece, ‘Displacement,’ has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

thisbodyisworthy.com

Twitter/Instagram: @soyernotsawyer

A composing book, 1973

Short-List Selection

Daisy Bassen

The book is old.
The book has a yellow cover.
The book was given to me by my father.
My father was a teacher.

The book is simple.
The book is deceptive.
Deceit is valuable.
Deceit is proscribed.

The sentences are short.
The sentences make a song.
The sentences want involution.
A clause has claws.

The claws are yellow.
The claws are old.
The sentences are about bombs.
The sentences are about immolation.

The book belonged to a girl.
The girl was a student.
She learned about bombs.
The yellow of immolation.

The sentences are about runaways.
She ran away.
The girl.
Clawed.

About Daisy Bassen

Daisy Bassen is a practicing physician and poet. She graduated from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Oberon, The Delmarva Review, The Sow’s Ear, and Tuck Magazine as well as multiple other journals. She was a semi-finalist in the 2016 Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry, a finalist in the 2018 Adelaide Literary Prize, a recent winner of the So to Speak 2019 Poetry Contest and was doubly nominated for a 2019 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.

FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE WHEN THE TWIST OUT WAS NOT ENUFF

Short-List Selection

Levi Cain

i and every other blackgurl
who grew up in the suburbs
are haunted by visions of hot combs
and strangers putting their hands in our hair,
pulling so sharply we swear
we hear the echo of a whip crack.

About Levi Cain

[mispronunciations]

Short-List Selection

Uma Menon

i try to pull out a chameleon’s
tongue from inside my throat,
change the color, change it all
before another
……………[mispronunciation]
leaves my colorless mouth

instead i find my mother tongue
stuck inside my throat, a lump
forgotten only by me
& i find a desire, tucked away,
to strangle her and choke myself
before another
……………[mispronunciation]
escapes without explanation

i am afraid that i have stained
the english that i speak
that it yearns to be bleached
in cold sand

i watch my mother chug down
womanhood,
let it slide through the grip of her
mother tongue,
into the stomach of America
……………[& her mispronunciations]

About Uma Menon

Uma Menon is a fifteen-year-old student and writer from Winter Park, Florida. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Huffington Post, The Rumpus, and National Poetry Quarterly, Sahitya Akademi’s Indian Literature, and the Cincinnati Review, among others. Her first chapbook was published in 2019 (Zoetic Press); she also received the 2019 Lee Bennett Hopkins Award in Poetry.

To: that noght in da jcemetsry

Contest Editors’ Pick

Penelope Alegria

Th city light s r beutiful 2night.
Sky twinkles starligt on sidwalks
with cracks that almost shape like ur
sillhouette in twinkling moondust.
Clay polish tatters blu on ashes of
cigar wrappers flickering burnt blac
n im thinkn of the time u rolled roun
in somebody else’s ashes in that gravyard
next to the church with the clouds
rdy to snow upside down crosses.

Did u kn o th grass smells lik tequila
n th boys breaths smells like lilac
flickering burn t blqck sparks n my
legs feel like pillow n l8ly it dpens’t feel
right wrapping myself up in white
bedsheets bc they dont feel wuite as
electric as ur fingertips n m drunk

Im drunk im dunk m drnk n i want
u nex to me w legs like pillows n
breath like lilac burnt black n u
rollin around in someboyd else’s ashes
n i dk y u wouldnt want that eithr

About Penelope Alegria

Penelope Alegria has participated in Young Chicago Authors’ artistic apprenticeship, Louder Than a Bomb Squad. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in La Nueva Semana Newspaper and El Beisman. Penelope was among the top 12 poets in Chicago as a Louder Than a Bomb 2018 Indy Finalist and was awarded the Literary Award by Julian Randall. She has performed spoken word at The Metro, University of Chicago, and elsewhere.

To Cry Out

Contest Editors’ Pick

Cassandra Hsiao

yellow: the cold echo of collapse muddled muddied
house of decay return to the ground that bore me
grow betrayal roots below mold my fingertips
bleed flag i no longer show pale yellow: crayoned
sun shine shield i risk changing colors if i don’t
yellow: aroma that does not lie trapped in tin pots roasted
crisp red brown duck i can taste home cannot find home
sell home know home remember touch of yellow: lazy tongue
remarks sting firecracker never cool enough to swallow yellow:
taste morning hours sunrise son rise sweet victory to open shop
open bells jingle lucky cat licks its paws yellow: eyes
glass over cat looks white yellow: light

About Cassandra Hsiao

Cassandra Hsiao is a rising junior at Yale University, majoring in Theater Studies and Ethnicity, Race & Migration. Her poetry, fiction, and memoirs have been recognized by Rambutan Literary, Animal, Claremont Review, Jet Fuel Review, and National YoungArts Foundation. Her plays have been selected as finalists for national playwriting competitions held by The Blank Theatre, Writopia Labs, Princeton University, Durango Arts Center, California Playwrights Project, and YouthPLAYS. Her work is currently being produced in theaters across the nation. She has also won a Gracie Award for her entertainment journalism and was recognized as a Voices fellow for the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA).

Instagram/Twitter: @cassandrahsiao

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LoveCassandraHsiao/

This Cosmic Dance

Contest Editors’ Pick

Natasha McLachlan

About Natasha McLachlan

Natasha McLachlan is a poet currently living in Southern California. After losing her speech in 2018 due to unforeseen circumstances, she fell in love with reading all over again, as it helped her cultivate self-care–this, she hopes, will be a cure for others in a hectic and frantic lifestyle. She was a first-generation college student, graduating from California College of the Arts with a bachelor’s degree in Writing and Literature. As a minority, she takes pride in breaking the barriers and stigma around individuals of color by simply being herself. When she is not writing, she is spending time with her family or bonding with her 9 siblings, whom she considers her best friends. Her inspiration comes from the moons and stars around her, nature being her greatest muse.

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month — Break Poetry Open

Robin Gow, Jessica Nguyen, Danny McLaren, and Uma Menon

by mainbrain@brainmillpress.com | Apr 5, 2019 | Activism, disability, Feminism, Identity, LGBTQIA+, National Poetry Month, NPM 2019, Poetry

Editors' Choice Poems

Robin Gow, Jessica Nguyen, Danny McLaren, and Uma Menon

We are delighted to present this week’s selections from the Brain Mill Press Poetry Month Contest, Break Poetry Open, by talented poets Robin Gow, Jessica Nguyen, Danny McLaren, and Uma Menon.

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

i had a dream they took out my uterus & handed it to me.

Robin Gow

my uterus was an ornate vase
& i asked, “what am i supposed
to do with this?”
the doctor shrugged
he was in a suite & tie &
had lavender gloves
he suggested i use it to collect something.
i stuck my hand in deep to see
if there was already anything in there,
found a ring i lost maybe four years ago
& i wondered how it got there.
silver claddagh waiting
scraping up against the glass
lining of the vase.
it had something to do with hope,
i think a uterus does even if you
take it out
& discover it’s
a shoe box or an urn or a vase.
i tried other items, starting
with buttons, snipping them off
all my clothes so that i would
have more. clear buttons, black buttons,
brown buttons, red buttons, all of them
inside the vase, i thought they might
transform, i thought that might
be the point of the strange object
but nothing happened. i slept
holding the vase & imagining
what it was like inside me
what kind of objects it hungered for.
i talked it, i told the vase that
i was sorry this was how
everything had to happen.
i bought flowers after flowers
to let sprout from the vase’s mouth:
lilies, carnations, roses
& i’d keep asking
the uterus, “are you happy?”
but the vase wouldn’t respond.
emptying out the greenish stem-water
left over from the flowers
i stuck my hand in again
only this time i felt an ache
in my chest as i did, a kind of
phantom connection, a hand under skin.
i wept, it was something about hope
for something; a hand searching
under skin for lost objects,
the ring like a kind of opening
for beetles or other insects
to crawl through. i was scared
it might always be like this
if i kept the thing around.
i had to break it.
no, not in the driveway or the street,
a push from the counter in the kitchen
where all glasses & plates
will eventually shatter.
the pieces on the floor like
teeth of an unknown monster.
i apologized to the uterus
as i cleaned up its pieces.
i took a bowl from the cupboard
& began filling it with buttons
out of habit or maybe
some kind of hope. from the buttons
grew the stems of flowers,
only the stems.

About Robin Gow

Robin Gow’s poetry has recently been published in POETRY, The Gateway Review, and tilde. He is a graduate student at Adelphi University pursing an MFA in Creative Writing. He is the Editor at Large for Village of Crickets, Social Media Coordinator for Oyster River Pages and interns for Porkbelly Press. He is an out and proud bisexual transgender man passionate about LGBT issues. He loves poetry that lilts in and out of reality, and his queerness is also the central axis of his work.

perks of a half-deaf wallflower

jessica nguyen

one.
it’s so much easier to sleep
lying in bed,
on my “good ear”
– whether it’s thunderstorms or my partner’s snoring,
I am able to slip past silently through the night
no baby can wake this baby up.
everyone envies my mornings
since they see no traces of dark circles
under my eyes
they’d ask,
“what’s your secret?”
who knew that my disability could be a celebrity-level beauty hack?

two.
the drill fire alarm comes in-oh wait, that’s not a perk.

two.
I can pretend to not hear you
and use my deafness as a legitimate excuse.
–
this especially works when I am not particularly fond of you.
this also works when I am not paying attention to something that I should’ve been paying attention to
“oh, sorry. what’s that? I couldn’t quite hear you the first time. can you repeat what you said? thanks.”
(smirks)
I swear it’s the truth sometimes.
.
three.
during trials and interviews,
“we can’t hire you because you-“ oops, that’s not a perk either.
.
three.
I got extra time on my ACT tests.
didn’t think that having my time limit doubled would help me on this kind of standardized testing, since only one of the four of the subjects required listening to begin with…
but I did get a small private room to myself with no pencil scratching and people breathing
.
four.
I got the same ACT score as my last one.
and I wasn’t even given the extra time last- wow, I need to stop. what is the definition of self-actualization again?
.
four.
I am everybody’s right hand person. the ones who’ve passed my friendship test re the ones who remembered to walk on my left. you can tell who the strangers are – they are the ones who I dance tango with as I quickly sashay to get to their right side.
.
five.
walking into every classroom
I wore an fm unit like a prop, which consisted of a hearing aid for me and a microphone for the teacher to speak into, which means having to blow my cover as I approach

now, I could expect the spotlight to be on me – yes, the star actor who deserved an oscar for passing as a full hearing person, coming up on stage to deliver her speech:
“I’d like to thank lip-reading and body language – I wouldn’t have been able to get to where I am today without them.”

all confused eyes would be on me,
sometimes awkward silence,
but mostly attention
to the quiet girl sitting in the front
because isn’t what being half-deaf means?
getting all the special attention?

six.
I can find my teachers easily when I need them. it’s great because if the teacher rushes out of the classroom, I always know where they go.

one time, the bell rang and it was the quickest I’ve seen a teacher leaving the room (I can understand his urge, though)
the problem was that he was wearing my microphone so I had to chase him down.
and of course, I thought it’d be cool to spy on what he was doing through my hearing aid. so, I did.

and what I first heard seconds in
was the sound of of a stream,
which lasted for…. a while.
then, a toilet flushing.

About Jessica Nguyen/Nguyễn Thị Mai Nhi

Jessica Nguyen/Nguyễn Thị Mai Nhi is a world traveler, activist, and writer. Though having lived in the U.S. for most of her life, she hops from one country to the next in hopes of discovering pieces of home to fill her Asian American soul. Known to be a soft-spoken person in the real world, she often channels her feelings through her writing as she finds written words to be just as powerful as when they’re spoken. Jessica plans to publish her own chapbook, “softly, I speak” in the near future. To learn more about her current projects, please visit her website at byjessicanguyen.com or follow her @byjessicanguyen on social media.

Spark Joy

Danny McLaren

Do you ever wonder if your gender sparks joy?
If it fits you like a glove, if you love the way the words sound in your mouth or leave your lips,
How it feels to say ‘they’ with your own tongue
And know better than anyone else how to say your own name?

Does your gender excite you?
Does it hum in your veins, electric, ignited,
Keep you up at night, tossing from panicked to delighted, thinking
what if I’m a boy?
or what if I’m nothing at all?

But ‘nothing’ seems scary.
My gender isn’t scary.
Sure, it’s loud, and it’s big,
It takes up too many seats on the bus, makes the up-tight man on the left of me scoot over one.

But it’s dynamic, and powerful, and strong.
It repels close-minded like a magnet,
And pulls kind and ‘knowledgeable about feminist theory’ my way.

It’s ‘too many beers on a Saturday night’ euphoric,
It spills across my clothes when I’m not careful,
Or, on some days, when I try really hard to make it seen.

My gender beats in my chest when I run,
or while I wrestle into my binder.
Constricting my chest with freedom, just to look a little more me.

My gender kisses me goodnight, and greets me with the sunrise,
And marks up my skin with ‘I love you.’

Do you ever wonder if your gender sparks joy?
If you feel ‘just right’ with the words you choose to use
To tell others who you are?
Maybe you should
Because it feels damn good.

About Danny McLaren

Danny is a queer and non-binary writer who uses they/them pronouns. They are an undergraduate student studying Gender Studies, and beginning to dabble in queer, anti-racist, and anti-colonial theory. They have an interest in exploring themes related to equity, resistance, and intersectionality in their work, and often write about their gender, sexuality, and mental health through these lenses. They can be found on twitter at @dannymclrn.

shopping for a necklace

Uma Menon

About Uma Menon

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month — Break Poetry Open

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