Horse Less Press Open Submissions

The deadline is the 15th, so be sure to submit quickly! There is an on-line entry form you can go to and send 5-10 pages of poetry or hybrid-genre writing as a single attachment for Issue #13. Make sure you include your name, address, contact information and check out their website which is also linked on the submissions page. You may use the link below:

http://horselesspress.submittable.com/submit


Good luck to all who submit! Please drop by again next week…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://arseniclobster.magere.com/290201.html
“Desert Cactus” by Laura Theobold

http://www.poolpoetry.com/poetsix.html
“From A Field Guide” To Verbs by Molly McQuade

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Carnival by Jason Bredle

Jason Bredle has published three books and three chapbooks, his poems have also appeared in journals such as Denver Quarterly and in anthologies. Mr. Bredle lives in Chicago and works in the patient-reported outcomes translation field. His fourth book, Carnival, has been published by The University of Akron Press in 2012 and encompasses a tilting and revolving world of animals, humans, and unusual encounters such as finding tiny people and towns in his bathtub. It is an entertaining read and I am happy to share below:

Suburban Love Song
Suddenly you realize you’re in the middle of it and it’s heartbreaking. You get a telephone call from yourself in the future telling you to run. All I want to know is if you’re mad at me. If I could, I’d tattoo your name on my skeleton. I love to look outside. I love to be outside. I love when you touch the back of my head. I love when you hold me in your arms. I hope summer never ends. It’s twilight. I hear children playing. I hear sprinklers, a lawn mower. Airplanes descend over the backyard onto the nearby runway. This is where we live. Hell at its most tranquil. To flee is life. To linger is death. The only thing wrong with this picture is everything. It’s the eve of a hostage situation. Will you do one thing for me tonight? Will you put on your favorite dress and sit with me?

This poem is one of the more “concrete” ones in the selection and I like it selfishly because I’ve been in search of a house to move into and I wonder with each house how I will really feel about it in the future. In this prose piece there is a telephone call from the future saying to run and if only that could happen for all of us. I love that the neighborhood is painted in the typical suburban light and then you find out airplanes land nearby and it is described as “Hell at its most tranquil” which sounds lovely and heartbreaking to me all at the same time. It’s a wonderful poem about life and living in a neighborhood and taking in the sounds and wondering about the present and the future.


Tiny Hurricane Season
My bathtub’s fishing industry has created a tiny community. They call themselves Tinyville. I’m a little disappointed, but I guess it’s the best they could do. At least they’re not like those dumb fucks in Tubtown. I know it sounds mean, but Tubtowners are a new breed of idiot. Yet they’re strong and athletic, which is why the Tubtown Tiny Champs continue to dominate the tiny baseball circuit. They destroyed the Kansas City Tiny Monarchs 13-3 last night. Did you see the game? I like to watch Tubtowners celebrate their success of their team and revel in their stupidity. They’re nothing like the citizens of Tinyville. Tinies are hard working, proud, and they’ve created a striking image of me that they worship, though I have no control over their lives. And that’s the thing. That’s why I’m so nervous about the upcoming tiny hurricane season.

This poem reminds me of the wild imagination I had as a child, that a whole world would exist in a bathtub and that its occupants might worship the giant that enters their world from time to time. It could also easily be a reference to God standing off to the side and watching the world at large unfold and not being able to do anything about the world’s surroundings, environment, and its creatures. Either way it is an entertaining poem that gets my imagination reeling again.


Carnival
You forget so much, and it makes me sad. I like holding your hand on the Ferris wheel because it makes you happy. There’s one little dude in the Gravitron. A girl with a bloody nose is escorted from the Himalaya. Do you like corndogs? I’m committed to living and dying in the fast lane. I want to lose my wallet on the Hellbender while the operator enjoys a fried chicken dinner with a side of baked beans and coleslaw. I want to win an enormous stuffed pig and save the lives of hundreds of goldfish. Everywhere there are lights and music and children with blue lips. Have you ever wondered what it’s like to bury yourself in candy? I’m a little paranoid. If only I knew that in a few months we’ll never speak again. Now it’s the time to celebrate—wear white all week, wear red all weekend. After I die, I want my friends to take my corpse to all my favorite places. I want them to begin at the carnival.

This poem strikes me because I love carnivals and all the colors, lights, people. The view from the Ferris wheel is typical of what I’ve often seen, and the fact that the poet has someone he cares about by his side only to lose them later begs the question of what happened? As a reader, I search for some clue but there is none, just the idea of living in the moment, watching the children with blue lips and wondering about burying yourself in candy. The end makes me think of the movie Weekend at Bernie’s, since the writer wants his corpse, not ashes, brought to his favorite places. Plenty of visual moments in this piece which make my imagination soar again.


If you enjoyed this sample you may order a copy of Carnival by Jason Bredle in paperback for $14.95 at:
http://www.uakron.edu/uapress/browse-books/book-details/index.dot?id=2336857

Thanks always for reading, please click in again tomorrow…

Strange Girl Press

While the Open Submissions are closed, their guidelines make me excited to read what they choose to publish in the way of stories, poetry and art so please check them out and stay tuned for their publications because I know I’m looking forward to seeing what they produce:
http://www.strangegirlpress.com/

They also have beautiful work at their blog which is being converted over to the website above, so check it out at:
http://strangegirlp.blogspot.com/

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for another featured poet…

Bolts of Silk Open Submissions

You may send between 3-6 poems up to 40 lines each, editor prefers poems that speak about nature, though cautions against poems that are about nature being beautiful, she is looking for poems with a message. Please check out Bolts of Silk to see what kinds of poems are generally accepted, poems about other subjects are welcome also. Send a brief cover letter addressing Juliet Wilson (editor) by name when sending your poems in an e-mail that has the subject line as follows: Juliet.M.WilsonATgmailDOTcom
Check out more details at:
http://boltsofsilk.blogspot.co.uk/p/submission-guidelines.html

Good luck to all who enter, please stop by again next week…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

https://sites.google.com/site/whiteknucklechaps/poet-anon/introduction/ds2
“Dream Song 228” by Anonymous

https://sites.google.com/site/whiteknucklechaps/poet-anon/introduction/ds11
“Dream Song 321” by Anonymous

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Poems Found by Poet Hound

https://sites.google.com/site/rhpquestions2012/deborah-scott
“The Hostile Witness” by Deb Scott

https://sites.google.com/site/rhpquestions2012/sara-amis
“How Fairy Tale Girls Get Lost” by Sara Amis

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Michael Grover's americanEyes V.1

Published by Alternating Current’s Propaganda Press in 2012, Michael D. Grover’s americanEyes V.1 is a collection about his view of the world as an American. The poems are stark and cynical. Below are a few of the poems that reflect the “wool being pulled off the eyes” as it were:

9.
I see through these americanEyes
& I see nothing
Can’t see past
The politics of fear
Everyone could be dead outside
& I wouldn’t know
& somewhere bombs are raining
From the sky
In the name of submission
& I wouldn’t know

I know in the mourning
mcdonald’s will be open on the corner
Pushing buttery death breakfast
Even in the hood
Especially in the hood
& who can refuse it
They kill Poets & ordinary people
Every day they will kill someone
Every hour
Every quarter of an hour
Every minute they are killing nonstop
& if you’re poor enough you can’t refuse
They are killing us

& I am blind
Seeing the world through americanEyes

In this poem, politics and corporate culture are killing innocent people abroad and just down the street. The poet says he is blind to it as an American and I have to say that the majority of us who watch the news turn a blind eye after a while. The information fed to us on the news is overwhelming and never-ending and so it may go in one ear and out the other while “Poets & ordinary people” die every minute. It is a morbid poem and touches a nerve in the reader as we recognize that we are blind, too.


17.
I see through these americanEyes
There’s a poor man forgotten
He was exiled by his own country
For the crime of being homeless
They don’t see him anymore
No one sees him anymore
He walks around like the walking dead
like the invisible man
Foreclosures are all the rage on the news
Because they are real
Funny how there’s not a lot of reality
On the news
Probably why I don’t watch it
Truth is we are all a step away
From being him
From joining him
He’s saved a space for you
Right in the front
He was exiled by his own country
He sleeps in the park
He sleeps in the car
He sleeps by the river
He sleeps in the woods
He sleeps in the streets
He sleeps in a shelter
He sleeps in an abandoned building
He sleeps on steam grates
Leaving a burn on his body
He sleeps on a bench
He sleeps where he can
He could be sleeping in your neighborhood
I know he’s sleeping in mine
Truth is we are all a step away
From being him
From joining him
No matter how hard we all try
To walk away from him

& I want to go blind
Seeing the World through americanEyes

This poem I feel more closely than any other. No matter how “secure” people were financially a few years ago everything we knew about a secure financial future crumbled around our ears. Retirees saw their accounts plummet, housing prices collapsed, countless people lost their jobs and plenty are still unemployed. Our friends, family, and neighbors are all falling on hard times and this poem above captures the scary truth. Any day now it could be me or you. One major disaster or several small misfortunes or any combination of things could put any one of us on the street joining the homeless man we’ve ceased to see with our eyes, our “americanEyes.”


27.
I see through these americanEyes
I see pharmaceutical ads on the tv
They tell you how sick you are
How much you need their pills
& the side effects they list
In a friendly manner
It’s all so friendly
Everyone is active & smiling
They all seemed so harmless
No side effects
No going blind
Seeing the World through americanEyes.

This poem hits home since I work in healthcare and there seems to be a pill for absolutely everything. Co-workers, colleagues, patients, they are all convinced that if they can just get the right combination of pills that their lives will be better, they believe the ads and the doctors. Personally, I take very few things, one of them being a multi-vitamin, but I’ve had many conversations with people who tell me they take 10 or 20 pills a day and they do not have any long-term illnesses or diseases, they are just regular people convinced they “need” these medications. One of the people I talked to simply began walking after work five days a week and marveled at the idea that they were now taking fewer pills because the exercise was lifting their mood and making them feel better health-wise. Imagine. This poem captures the whole sentimentality perfectly of pharmaceutical companies convincing people that pills fix everything.

If you enjoyed this sample of poems, you may purchase a copy of americanEyes V.1 by Michael D. Grover for $5.00 from Alternating Current’s Propaganda Press at:
http://alt-current.com/pp/pp_item.html#americaneyes_v_1

Thanks always for reading, please click in tomorrow...

Stony Moss Blog

Deb Scott out in the world! This is how you’ll be greeted at Deb Scott’s blog about her poetry, other poets, and other wonderful things. Be sure to check it out at:
http://stoneymoss.org/

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Bone Orchard Poetry Open Submissions

This is a blog that publishes poems on its site, the guidelines are simple and straightforward which I love: Submit 1-6 poems or 1-3 prose poems, paste these into your e-mail to boneorchardpoetryATgmailDOTcom. Make sure you include a short bio and in the subject line include “poetry submission/last name” so they know it isn’t spam.
Check out the blog to get a feel for poems they publish and for the details verbatim at:
http://boneorchardpoetry.blogspot.ie/
Good luck to all who submit, please drop in again next week…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.blossombones.com/winter_spring2012/darling_ws2012.html
“Noctuary: by Kristina Marie Darling

http://www.blossombones.com/winter_spring2012/henney_ws2012.html
“Blueprint” by Theodosia Henney

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Doug Draime's More Than The Alley

Doug Draime’s More than the Alley has been published by Interior Noise Press this year and is a full-length collection of straightforward, hard-knocks poems that many fans know and love. His poems are inspired by Bukowski and the grit of life, below I am happy to share some samples:

Red’s Tavern

Pete’s stab wounds
were a badge of honor.
Pulling his beer stained
Dodger t-shirt up
showing me
a 5 inch scar
across his huge
beer belly.

That’s something, man
I said.

He jumped up from his stool
turned around and
with both hands
pulled his t-shirt
up to the back of his neck

revealing a large, imbedded
nasty looking gush
in the middle of his back
clear down to
the cheeks of his fat ass.

He turned around with a goofy
drunken smile on his face
pulling his shirt down. “The ex done
that with a broken beer bottle the
night she left and went to Tucson.
They say I lost 4 pints of blood.”

That’s something, man
I said again and bought him a
Beer for that one.

I love that this poem talks about the battle scars of relationships and that it shows that men aren’t the only ones who are violent. The older I get the more I learn that relationships can be brutal for both sexes and while women may compare emotional battle scars it is interesting to read a poem where men show off physical battle scars of relationships. No one gets out of a bad relationship without some scarring and the fact the poet buys him a beer for “that one” of the battle scar stories makes me smile. Women might buy their lady friends a cocktail or treat them to a mani-pedi, men buy each other beer. We all have our way of coping and of comforting our friends, or fellow hard-luck strangers.



Someday I Will Write A Poem That Will Flood The World

And I will own all the
arks, boats, ships,
rafts, and canoes,
and tug boats, ferries—
all forms of water transportation.

People will have to come
to me for their means
of survival.

The stubborn and destitute ones
will drown in my poem
sinking to the bottom
screeching like anchors on
rusty
chains.

The rest of humanity will plead
for cut-rate discounts. But fuck them.
I’ll make them pay out
the ass. No rainbows
this time.

This poem makes me grin, what writer hasn’t wanted to write an epic of some kind that grabs the whole world’s attention? I feel that way when I’m experiencing writer’s block or read someone else’s work that is so great that I’m immediately jealous that I cannot write like that. This poem is my own selfish indulgence to share with you all, I simply love it. I wonder what the inspiration was for Mr. Draime for this poem?



Burning Bag of Shit

She found the last 50 poems I wrote
in my notebook, cut them out
put them through her office shredder
twice: once lengthwise and then
width-wise. She told me all
of this, as she was standing
screaming and crying on the stoop
in front of my apartment, with the pieces of
my poems in a small paper bag. She
took out my Zippo from her ass-tight
jean pocket, lit the bag, waited for it
to get going good, before she
dropped it at my feet and turned
still crying and ran to her car. I watched
her drive away and walked back into
my apartment, letting the bag of words
burn like a bag of shit on Halloween.
I made a cup of strong black tea and sat down
at the kitchen table with a new notebook
and I started another poem…
just for fucking spite.

This poem makes me laugh, actually. Maybe that’s cruel of me, but I feel like saying “that’s what you get for snooping!” Mr. Draime is like myself, what we really feel is written in poetic form and most of those poems aren’t left out for public consumption, it’s in a journal/notebook/private space of sorts. This poem is the ultimate example of such a scenario and as true testament that Mr. Draime is a writer he goes right back to writing more poems after his notebook is shredded and then burned to a crisp.





To be honest, there are a half dozen more poems I’d love to share with you but I limited myself to the ones that made me grin big. If you enjoyed this review, you may purchase a copy of Doug Draime’s More than the Alley for $15.00 at:
http://www.amazon.com/More-Than-Alley-Doug-Draime/dp/0981660665

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The Improvised Life Site

It’s not all poetry but what I love about it is that it incorporates my favorite things: Home design, art, and poetry. Check it out at:

http://www.improvisedlife.com/

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Blood Pudding Press Chapbook Open Submissions

There is a $5.00 entry fee through PayPal which is well worth it, if you ask me. Also, you may submit 10-25 poems (approx.. 12-30 pages for total manuscript) via e-mail with “BPP Chapbook Contest (your name)” in the subject line. You may attach your manuscript to the e-mail and be sure to include your full name and contact information along with your bio in the body of the e-mail to the editor, Juliet Cook to:
julietcooATgmailDOTcom
*Make sure you check out the website to get a feel for what is published, the deadline is October 15th and you must read all the details at the blog to make sure you submit your manuscript correctly.

Check out all the details at:
http://www.bloodyooze.blogspot.com/2012/09/blood-pudding-press-is-accepting.html

Good luck to all who submit, please stop by again next week…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://fictionaut.com/stories/tina-barry/white-legs--2
“White Legs” by Tina Barry

http://juked.com/2012/09/secondperson.asp
“Second Person” by Perie Long

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