My Present


This smiling face is the best present for my 40th birthday or any day:

 

“At my vindication I shall see your face; when I awake, I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness.” Psalm 17:16

My Writing Career Continues to Thrive in My Absence


Since Shane was born in April, I have written one serious poem (about baby poop) and one parody poem (ditto). However, like Noah’s dove, the contest entries I sent out in the winter and spring are still returning to me, bearing sprigs of green in their little beaks.

“Poem Written on the Side of a Cow” won the 2012 Betsy Colquitt Award for Poetry. This $500 award is sponsored by Descant: Fort Worth’s Journal of Poetry & Fiction, the literary journal of Texas Christian University, for the best poem published in the magazine in the past year. Their annual submission period is September 1-April 30. This poem, which I wrote in 2003, was inspired by an anecdote I read about Sylvia Plath setting out bread and milk for her children before she committed suicide. Adam suggested the title and I figured out a plot to go with it.

After a dozen years of trying, I will finally be published in the excellent journal New Millennium Writings, which selected my poem “Robot Deer Shot 1,000 Times” as an honorable mention in their winter 2012 contest, the 33rd New Millennium Writings Awards. This twice-yearly contest awards prizes of $1,000 for poetry, fiction, flash fiction, and essays. The 34th contest is currently open through July 31. The poem was based on a “news of the weird” story that Adam sent me, about a mechanical deer that game wardens use to entrap poachers.

My poem “I Wish I Were in Love Again” was one of 20 International Publication Award winners in the Poetry 2012 International Poetry Competition from Atlanta Review. The most recent deadline for this $1,000 prize was March 1. Late one night, last winter, Adam and I were driving home from some high-pressure, adoption-related event, and Sinatra’s song by that name came on the radio. The tongue-in-cheek ballad romanticizes what social workers would call a high-conflict relationship, complete with black eyes and broken dishes. Adam said, “‘Love’ sounds like it should be the name of a violent town in Texas,” and that’s what the poem is about.

The guy is pretty good luck, don’t you think?
 

In Memoriam: Martin Steele


Winning Writers lost one of our most prolific and imaginative subscribers this year, the writer Martin Steele, who passed away in February after a battle with cancer. (We only received the notice this week.) Martin won several prizes in our contests over the years, representing only a small portion of his vast output of prose-poems, humorous tales, ghost stories, and poetry on subjects from African wars to tennis.

Probably my favorite piece of his writing is the flash fiction “The Girls in the Tree“, which we reprinted on this blog last year. Some of his war poetry can be found here and here. Also check out his Poet of the Week page at Poetry Super Highway.

If you’ve been touched by his work, please sign his guestbook on the website of Beth Israel Memorial Chapel and make a donation to the American Cancer Society.

Gemini Magazine Is My Happy Place


My poem “Depression Is My Happy Place” was published today in Gemini Magazine, one of my favorite online journals, as an Honorable Mention winner in their 2012 poetry contest. You may enjoy it (or you may not) below. Also don’t miss the 2nd Prize poem by my friend Gerardo Mena, “A Nursing Home Boxer to a High School Volunteer”. Tony Mena is not only a talented poet; he’s a decorated Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran and a musician. Check out his website.

Depression Is My Happy Place

that lake waits anytime
for me to slip
under its threaded green hush
i don’t need summer or parking
to arrive
where my hurtling family
is already one less

depression is easy to get to
even on holidays
the standards are lower than church
or kindergarten
you can run with scissors there
but you probably won’t bother

it’s my tight light box
where i turn back the sun
to a pale hum

i don’t need fattening pills
or fermented dizzy bottles
i can spin it on my own
straw into lead
because a lead house
never blows down or burns

side effects of depression may include
eating more or less
than people in magazines
sleeping more or less
by yourself
sudden loss of interest
in what your mother thinks

it’s my soft dust pillow
under the boxspring where grandma money
refuses the bankers’ conjurations
of brown fields into winking green numbers
racing round the globe
like a tornado-spun house

it’s my black screen
i won’t trade

there may be a cost-saving generic
alternative to depression
ask your doctor about marriage
smiling often and wearing a good suit
may cause people to leave you alone
did you know that your natural skin tone
adds a layer of protection at no extra charge
(some restrictions may apply)

depression is not recommended
for unattractive women

My Story “An Incomplete List of My Wishes” Wins Bayou Magazine’s Fiction Prize


My short story “An Incomplete List of My Wishes” has just won the James Knudsen Editor’s Prize in Fiction from Bayou Magazine, the literary journal of the University of New Orleans. Contest judge Joseph Boyden said, “This gorgeously written story snuck up and walloped me. It’s beautifully conceived and executed. A gem, with a last line that made me shiver.”

Thank you, Mr. Boyden and Bayou! The story will appear in the spring 2012 issue. Order a copy here. Meanwhile, enjoy the opening paragraphs:

An Incomplete List of My Wishes

The best funeral I ever went to was Wallace P. Chandler’s. I didn’t know him hardly at all, I just went because everyone else was going, and because his death was unexpected it seemed important.

You know how it is, on a warm and buzzing May afternoon, with those bits of tree fluff lazing through the air, and the campus seeming half-empty but tense with last-minute cramming, all those boys and girls discovering where’s that library their parents paid for — on that kind of day, especially if you don’t really know the dead person, the mildewy cool of the college chapel feels kind of nice, and the sawing of the cello makes you tired, and you start to wonder about things like how Wallace P. Chandler, who was so fat and short that his thighs made you think of elephant-leg umbrella stands, could possibly fit in that coffin. And when you realize how interesting you find all this, you know it’s wrong, but it’s the only thing you can feel, hard as you try.

I can guess why I’m remembering this today, but I wish it would stop until this plane hits the ground in Dallas, where I’ll have more than enough to occupy me. Not hits, no. Glides through the air, a south-west beeline from Boston, bulleting like the football my ex used to throw to our boy Scotty every sunny weekend in our fenced-in backyard in Watertown. The grass never grew back right; the stood-on, skidded-on patches still show.

The stewardess clip-clops down the aisle in her fake military jacket and pencil skirt to offer us coffee, tea, orange or tomato juice. If this silver tube of stale air and us packed inside it began to smoke, to dip and lurch, to maybe hesitate for a second on a tilt and then, with a shrug, scream nose-down into one of the fruited plains, there’d be no time to find out our favorite hymns. No time to ask which priest, or whether gardenias were a better choice because Aunt Peggy was allergic to lilies. Some of us on this flight may have made a list like that, tucked into a safe-deposit box, but I haven’t.

Feeling incomplete? Order a copy of the magazine to find out how it ends!

Call for Anthology Submissions: Survivors in Solidarity with Prison Abolition


This call for anthology submissions is reprinted from the Survivors in Solidarity website. Hat tip to Lois Ahrens at The Real Cost of Prisons, a Massachusetts-based prisoners’ rights weblog, for alerting me to this project.

Working Title: Challenging Convictions: Survivors of Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence Writing on Solidarity with Prison Abolition.

Completed submissions due: April 15, 2012.

Like much prison abolition work, the call for this anthology comes from frustration and hope: frustration with organizers against sexual assault and domestic violence who treat the police as a universally available and as a good solution; frustration with prison abolitionists who only use “domestic violence” and “rape” as provocative examples; and, frustration with academic discussions that use only distanced third-person case studies and statistics to talk about sexual violence and the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). But, this project also shares the hope and worth of working toward building communities without prisons and without sexual violence. Most importantly, it is anchored in the belief that resisting prisons, domestic violence, and sexual assault are inseparable.

Organizers of this anthology want to hear from survivors in conversation with prison abolition struggles. We are interested in receiving submissions from survivors who are/have been imprisoned, and survivors who have not. Both those survivors who have sought police intervention, as well as those who haven’t, are encouraged to submit. We are looking for personal essays and creative non-fiction from fellow survivors who are interested in discussing their unique needs in anti-violence work and prison abolitionism.

Discussions of sexual assault, domestic violence, police violence, prejudice within courts, and imprisonment cannot be separated from experiences of privilege and marginalization. Overwhelmingly people who are perceived to be white, straight, able-bodied, normatively masculine, settlers who are legal residents/citizens, and/or financially stable are not only less likely to experience violence but also less likely to encounter the criminal injustice system than those who are not accorded the privileges associated with these positions. At the same time, sexual assault and domestic violence support centers and shelters are often designed with certain privileges assumed. We are especially interested in contributions that explore how experiences of race, ability, gender, citizenship, sexuality, or class inform your understandings of, or interactions with cops, prisons, and sexual assault/domestic violence support.

For complete submission guidelines and suggested topics, read more on their website.

Reiter’s Block Year in Review, Part 1: Best Poetry


Loyal readers, I apologize for the three-week blog hiatus. I was writing 30 poems and poem-like scribblings for the month of November to raise money for The Center for New Americans, a literacy program for immigrants in Western Massachusetts. You can still sponsor me through the end of 2011 here. (I’m still writing poems, just in case.)

This year-end roundup will be posted in several parts since there are so many good reads that I want to highlight. Today, I’ll be recommending a few poetry books that caught my attention.

Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg, eds., Gurlesque: The new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics (Saturnalia Books, 2010).
Unicorns! Masturbation! Dead cows! As Glenum writes in her introduction to this anthology, “The Gurlesque describes an emerging field of female artists…who, taking a page from the burlesque, perform their femininity in a campy or overtly mocking way. Their work assaults the norms of acceptable female behavior by irreverently deploying gender stereotypes to subversive ends.”

Juliet Cook, Thirteen Designer Vaginas (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2011).
Punning, darkly playful, experimental poems inspired by vaginal reconstructive surgery websites. “They can’t quiver and whimper/if they’re not real, he said, referring to some breasts./We all know they’re implants, not live puppies”. Chapbook cover even has pasted-on fake jewels. What more could you want for $5? Visit Cook’s website for links to other titles, including a free download of Mondo Crampo.

Jason Schossler, Mud Cakes (Bona Fide Books, 2011).
Winner of the 2010 Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Prize, this quietly powerful autobiographical collection chronicles a Midwestern Gen-X boyhood, where exciting dreams of Star Wars and movie monsters give way to the more drab and painful struggles of his parents’ divorce, and the losing battle of his Catholic conscience against teenage lust. Schossler narrates the essential facts of a moment that stands in for an entire relationship, allowing the reader to make the connections that his childhood self couldn’t see.

Nick Demske, Nick Demske (Fence Books, 2010).
Insane sonnets compiled from the data-stream of our decadent culture. Read my blog review here.

Ten Years After 9/11: Poetry and Some Thoughts


This weekend marks the tenth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Back then, our family was still living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. At 9 AM, I came upstairs to my office at a publishing company in the West 30s to find everyone peering out the window at smoke billowing from the WTC. We could only see the top floors in the distance so we were not sure what had happened. We saw the flash that was the second plane hitting, but only found out later what had caused it. After that, the grey cloud of smoke and ash was all we could see. Shortly thereafter we learned from the radio that the towers had collapsed and another plane hit the Pentagon. It was then that I became really scared: this was not an accident, it was an attack, and anything could happen now. I don’t remember how we evacuated from the 21st floor, but I assume we must have taken the stairs. Fortunately my husband worked in midtown too and I could email him to come meet me, since the phones were not working.

We walked about three miles downtown to our apartment, part of a stunned crowd. The funereal silence and slowness of these typically high-adrenalin New Yorkers really brought home to us that our world had changed. (I am so proud of the residents of my birth city for not panicking and responding with such courage.) My moms lived across the street from us so we went up to their place to let them know we were all right. One of them was there and the other was making her way downtown from West 96th St., driving her co-workers home, as far as the emergency personnel would allow cars to go. Like everyone that day, we obsessively watched the televised footage of the disaster, hoping for information that would make sense of it all, although it was clear that only speculation and tragedy were on offer.

We were spared the pain that thousands of our fellow New Yorkers endured, in that we did not know anyone who was in those buildings. Our upstairs neighbor lost his brother, Robert Foti, a firefighter. We went to his funeral a few weeks later. Rest in peace, Robert. I will never forget his mother’s words when we paid her a condolence call. “They’ll never find their bodies,” she said, wiping her hand along the table. “See this dust? We’re breathing them in right now.”

What I remember most from those early days was the fear of what might be demanded of us. What sacrifices would we have to make? Would it be like World War II, when the homefront was part of the battle? I was worried that Adam would feel a sense of duty to enlist. Though I am the least bureaucratic person in the world and had just escaped from my legal career, I sent away for a pamphlet about joining the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

Our preoccupations of the week before were tinged with tragic irony. Walking home from dinner, in a rush to watch the U.S. Open, Adam and I got sidetracked into an argument about his wish for children. Newly independent of my parents, I was afraid I wouldn’t get to experience life and make progress in my writing career before being submerged in someone else’s needs. After 9/11, I felt keenly the truth that “no one knows the day nor the hour”. Plans are uncertain; family matters most in a crisis. (Double irony since we still haven’t been able to make this happen…)

There was something beautiful about the mindfulness and tenderness with which New Yorkers went about their business in the following weeks. On a crowded midtown bus at rush hour, truly one of the more unpleasant aspects of New York life, I noticed that people gave way to one another instead of jostling and taking offense. We were suddenly grateful that each person next to us was still alive.

And simultaneously there was the crassness of the “Fight Back New York: Go Shopping!” campaign, the alarming speed with which the sidewalk vendors cranked out death-to-Osama T-shirts and flag-festooned junk. The mutual contempt of the pro- and anti-war camps, everyone desperate for a simple narrative, as if death always came to people with a reason and a forewarning, visible if we looked hard enough.

It was supposed to be the end of irony. Even if that had been true, I don’t think it would be a good idea. We need all possible interpretive tools to make our way in a world where 9/11’s happen. What it was, instead, was a collective moment of appreciation that life is precious and mysterious, and that no one is really a stranger. That consciousness was too painful, though, and too unprofitable, to keep up for long. “Go, go, go, said the bird; humankind/Cannot bear very much reality.”

But for that little while, we cried at baseball games, we wore our flag lapel pins and bootleg NYPD and FDNY caps, we prayed over the names in the newspaper and asked forgiveness for being unable to read one more obituary, and we wrote poetry about crashing planes and falling towers and heroes.

Adam and I had just started Winning Writers that summer, and we were putting together the rules for our first annual contest. Distressed by the simplistic verses being written by both the blame-America liberals and the kill-the-Muslims conservatives, we decided that our contest should solicit high-quality and nuanced poetry about war. (2011 will be this topic’s tenth and final year, to be replaced by the Sports Poetry Contest.)

These poems from Israeli author Atar Hadari, honorable mention winner in our 2003 contest, best express how New York felt to me in the aftermath. The “two lights” are the memorial Tribute in Light that represented the lost towers with spotlight beams.

Read more 9/11 reminiscences at the WNET-Channel 13 public television website.
****

SUMMER RAIN

by Atar Hadari

This is the season people die here,
she said, Death comes for them now.
Sometime between the end of winter
and the rains, the rains of summer.

And the funerals followed that summer
like social engagements, a ball, then another ball
one by one, like debutantes
uncles and cousins were presented to the great hall

and bowed and went up to tender
their family credentials to the monarch
who smiled and opened the great doors
and threw their engraved invitations onto the ice

and dancing they threw their grey cufflinks
across each others’ shoulders, they crossed the floor
and circles on circles of Horas
filled the sky silently with clouds, that chilled the flowers.

And funeral trains got much shorter
and people chose to which they went
and into the earth the flowers
went and no one remembered their names

only that they died that summer
when rains came late and the streets emptied
and flags flying on car roof tops
waved like women welcoming the army
into a small, abandoned city.

TWO LIGHTS
by Atar Hadari

Two lights were fixed over the town
high up, higher than any star had business being
and yet they shone, not like helicopter beams,
like flames, like something burning and not being consumed.

I stepped two steps toward the fence
to see, to try to see, the fire –
they stayed two gold balls in the sky
and I trod on some stones and smelled dog piles.

Whenever I tried to hear roar
of propellers’ wings, the milk trucks
would careen by in their floats
and commuters late home whizzed by in droves
like ice cream vendors.

Eventually one went out
then the other and suddenly
way above them both
another lit, preternaturally still,
an emptying cinema’s white bulb.

A jogger came out of the dark
my side of the fence
I waved, “Do you know what that is?”
“It’s light to find the terrorists,” he said

and ran and I walked away
looking thru at darkness
and left one bulb in the middle
of the empty cinema

like traces of a flame
after you’ve closed your hand
and clenched your lids
and walked out of the shot

and lights still burn in that sky
and I translate the word of God
out of Hebrew. And wanderers in that dark
mistake those lights for guides through the ruins.

My Poems “Inheriting a House Fire” and “touching story” in Solstice Literary Magazine


Solstice Literary Magazine, an online quarterly, selected two of my poems as the “Editor’s Pick” from their contest submissions this year. “Inheriting a House Fire” and “touching story” appear in their Summer 2011 issue. Launched in 2009, Solstice has published such authors as Kathleen Aguero, DeWitt Henry, Leslea Newman, and Dzvinia Orlowsky. Enjoy (if that’s the right word?) “touching story” below.

touching story

not the turn to gold but touch he
wanted most, no object that
flesh of his
supper gelled to shining
ore lumps when he bit, that sepals
stiffened on the rose
like nipples bared to frost. not
the lark that lasted but the scar
its moneyed weight peeled
down the tree. not the trophy
hound, that sudden andiron
dropped from his lap,
but the fox, stinking, invisible,
unchased.
                
myth to asses’ ears,
no nodding velveted clefts
named his errata, not a page
or armed barber kissed the riverbed
to scandalize the reeds
into singing true. and when his
   daughter,
as he’d tell it, sprang
into his transmuting arms, and after,
there was no god to take the
   hardening gift away.

Sponsor Me for the Soulforce Virtual Equality Ride


One of my favorite GLBT activist groups, Soulforce, counters religion-based homophobia through nonviolent activism in the tradition of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Their annual Equality Ride takes GLBT youth and straight allies on a bus tour of U.S. colleges whose official policies include discrimination against non-heterosexuals. The Riders initiate dialogue with school administrators and offer support to sexual minorities on campus. Since the first ride in 2006, several Christian schools (including Mormon heavy-hitter Brigham Young U.) have softened their anti-gay policies, and Gay-Straight Alliances have formed on a number of campuses.

Soulforce, a nonprofit, pays for all the expenses of the Equality Riders. Besides food, lodging, and transportation, the program includes training in nonviolent activism, so that the young people can remain peaceful and spiritually safe when confronted with hate speech during their silent vigils and sit-ins. The Riders raise money for their work through sponsorship pages on the Soulforce website.

This year, those of us who are too old to get on the bus can still be part of this courageous campaign as a Virtual Equality Rider. The sponsorship idea is the same, and the money goes to the general expenses of the ride.

Please visit my page and make a contribution! If I raise $1,000 by March 2012, they’ll put my name on the bus.