Submissions to The BeZine, June 2019 issue are open. Submissions should be emailed to bardogroup@gmail.com. A detailed announcement will post soon. For now: June 2019 issue, Deadline June 10th.Theme: Sustainability; September 2019 issue, Opens for submission July 1st, Deadline September 10th, Theme: Human Rights/Social Justice
SEPTEMBER 28, 2019 is 100,000 POETS FOR CHANGE, GLOBAL, 2019 and THE BeZINE 100,000 POETS FOR CHANGE VIRTUAL EVENT
AGNI ONLINE, a literary publication of Boston University, publishes essays, fiction, hybrid, and poetry and is open for submission through May 31st. No submission fees. Paying market. Details HERE.
THE CHERRY TREE, a National Literary Journal @ Washington College, publishes poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and literary shade and is open for readings between August 1 and October 1 (mark your calendar). Payment: $20 and copies. No submission fee. Details HERE.
BLACK WARRIOR REVIEW, a publication of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and art twice yearly. The next reading period is June 1 through September 1 (market your calendar). Submission fee. Paying market. Details HERE.
HYPERALLERGIC describes itself as offering a “playful, serious, and radical perspective on art and culture in the world today.” Details on how freelancers can pitch ideas are HERE.
LEMON THEORY, The Digital Magazine “Our Troops,” publishes the work of “officers, responders and those who make the community a safer place. This doesn’t have to be United Sttes based, we want to publish stories on an international standpoint.” English only. No submission fee. No payment. Details HERE.
LUNCH TICKET, the online literary and art journal of the MFA Program at Antioch University, publishes creative nonfiction, fiction, flash prose, literary translation, visual art, and writing for young people. No submission fee. No payment. Details HERE.
NARRATIVE MAGAZINE publishes poetry, fiction and nonfiction and has open calls in several categories and others that will open shortly. Entry/submission fees. Cash awards. Paying Market. Further details HERE.
SPRY LITERARY JOURNAL is looking for “concise, experimental, hybrid, or flashy” work “modern … vintage.” This journal publishes creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, flash, and art. No submission fee. Details HERE.
ZiN DAILY, Literature Happens Every Day is “the living document and online creative laboratory of ZVONA i NARI, where literature happens every day. ZiN Daily is specifically looking for boundary- and border-crossing work that illuminates underexplored connections between different segments of culture. Send us work that will electrify our readers, as we build a common platform for mutual solidarity and exchange.” This publication based in Ližnjan, Croatia is open to submissions from writers around the world writing in “Bosnian, Croatian, English, French, German, Italian, Montenegrin, Serbian and Slovenian, or any playful combination of these languages.” ZiN Daily publishes stories, essays, articles, reviews, and poems. No submission fee. No payment. Details HERE.
THERE ARE NO CONTEST/COMPETITION ANNOUNCEMENTS THIS WEEK.
Poet and writer, I am a former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. Currently, I run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded. I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read byNorthern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”
“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
Last year passed the golden glove
You know, the one with a fist of iron.
She wanted no more of it. Nor I.
Those glossy, glittering, glistening,
shining products of a golden age
had lost their sheen and the age of
growth and worshipping at the alter of
God. Demands. Profit. … is so last year.
Meanwhile, in the town, at Star Books, reading over our tax-free coffee, batting ideas on who could pay the bill and how you make your money work, if only we had some …
Consumption was her daily bread
and the disease that strangled
generations, who died of terminal debt.
The improper death of innocents,
but where is their misplaced virtue.
Are they free of blame … still free?
May be no more, and yet we must
pay due heed to plant the seed of hope. To fight for nourishment…
A visit to Gretchen’s blog today brought another dimension of peace and inspiration to my day. In sharing her work here this evening, I hope it will add to your peace as well. Thanks to Gretchen for her quiet and colorful wisdom.
‘A warrior’s strength is measured by the size of her heart. She is respectfully humble. She will stand with honor. She will fight with love. In the face of adversity and for the ones she loves, she will be a voice and a shield. She will be a beacon to light the way home for the old. she will gently make way for the young. She is a sister, mother, daughter, grandmother……….she is a warrior.’
Another collection, eclectic and often magical, in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, Oxygen Hunger,March 27, a prompt on the necessities of life. Well done by poets: Gary W. Bowers, Paul Brookes, Irma Do, Gen E. Goldie, Frank McMahan, and Anjum Wasim Dar. Thank you! and special thanks to Irma and Anjum for their illustrations and to Anjum for the addition of a music video she found inspiring.
Readers will notice links to sites are included that you might visit these stellar poets.
“scars” – we can’t breath through scarred lung tissue. It’s not permeable so there is no exchange of gases; i.e. oxygen and carbon dioxide
“oxygen hunger” – more commonly call “air hunger” is real. It happens as organs are shutting down during the dying process, when it is treated with morphine and sometimes supplemental oxygen. When people suffer from oxygen hunger due to lung and heart issues but are not yet tripping over the door to Eternity, oxygen hunger is then treated with supplemental oxygen and other medications to slow the processes of deterioration and provide comfort and functionality.
Enjoy this collection. It just might inspire some more of your own poetry. The Poet by Day will be on hiatus for a Spring and Easter break and the next Wednesday Writing Prompt will post on April 24. All are invited to come out to play, beginning, emerging or pro poet.
in solitary refinement
guilty said
the paper the judge read
so the system did a trick
it learned from the cult novel
NORSTRILIA
by cordwainer smith:
they put a thinking cap on her
and it imprisoned her
for eight hours
but due to wireless accelerants
and virtual reality mushware
the eight hours were as eighteen years
for her offense was extreme
and doing her time
was not a walk in the park
no “club fed”
ghosts-or-not mocked her
bribed ghost guards to get her alone
packratted her with hurting things
and she fought back
and ended up in solitary
bread and water only
(plus oxygen)
(plus dreams)
she found though
that virtuality had its virtues
the bread could be any bread
the water any water
and so she feasted
pumpernickel dense as brick
cinnamon toast richly steaming
lavosh pita arrowwheat
and she slaked
smartwater dumbwater sparkling cold
and her oxygen’s purity could be amped
and her dreams could be imagineered
she could dance with Fred
sojourn through oz
change endings
create worlds
so she asked that her term of solitary “confinement”
be extended indefinitely
and the mushware obliged
eighteen seeming years were up
she had learned who she was
what she wanted
and the rudiments of a new trade
she woke
and marvelled at disappearance
of liver spots and despair
she was indeed free
bore no burdens
no grudges
and no guilt
As some of you know, Gary is multi-talented, combing visual art with poetry or prose narrative. He is also a potter. A sample of his work is pictured below. Gary’s pottery is available for purchase. Further details HERE. Note the business care. We appreciate Gary’s wry humor.
The Terminal
Stretched thin
he spits out
of his car door
as I get in,
and we drive out
the short stay
carpark below
the train station.
“What are you
going to do
day I die?”
he asks. I tell him
what I need to know.
“Oxygen tanks are no use
as they don’t
increase surface
of my lungs that
take in oxygen.
Doctors can do no more.”
Dad replies.
My dad collapses into himself
disappears into black hole
in space
of his lungs on
where there is
no oxygen
for his brain
or heart,
only coughs
to loosen phlegm
for the spit bag,
he carefully seals air tight.
(From a forthcoming collection of my late dad’s drawings and paintings and my writings about him, No title as yet)
Christ passes a Bakers shop,
smells new bread,
Says to disciples
” Fetch us a loaf.”
The Baker says
“Thas nowt for free here.
Get him to miracle up his own”
but,
Bakers wife
and six daughters
secretly stuff couple of loaves
in disciples bag.
For this Christ sets them
in spring sky
as Seven Stars
He makes the baker a cuckoo
the Dusty Miller,
who so long as he sings in Spring
St. Turbutius Day to St. Johns
can see his bright wife and daughters
warm the night.
II
Me Mam dies as she gives birth,
to sis and I.
Our new mam murders us.
Feeds our cooked sinew and muscle
to our dad. Separates heart and bones,
crams rest beneath
gables of our home.
Buries our heart and bones
in a hole in a tree,
that coddles us.
Our bones lock our refreshed hearts
in a new cage, so we fledge
in dusty grey feathers.
We fly to local miller’s
pick up a millstone
in our strong beaks
let it fall as we fly
over
our new mother
whose blood and bones
grind beneath its weight.
III
After my sis and I disappear,
Christ knocks on Dad’s door
Says, ” I’m parched mate,
can tha spare a drop
of thee water.”
Our Dad brings stranger
a cup of fresh water.
As he sups Christ says:
“Tha looks badly, cocker.
What’s up with thee?”
Our Dad says ” Me kids
are no where to be seen.
Pain right here says they’re
both dead.
I miss them summat chronic.”
“Aye, it’s a bad going on.
Perhaps, next Spring
from East gables of this place
tha’ll see summat
to buck thee up.”
FYI: Paul Brookes, a stalwart participant in The Poet by Day Wednesday Writing Prompt, is running an ongoing series on poets, Wombwell Rainbow Interviews. Connect with Paul if you’d like to be considered for an interview. Visit him, enjoy the interviews, get introduced to some poets who may be new to you, and learn a few things.
In my villanelle, I have ranked “dreams” as the number one necessity needed to survive life. Food, water, oxygen are all needed to sustain life, but to survive the hardships of life, to thrive in this sometimes unforgiving environment, we need our dreams, our hopes. To me, it is the difference between living and Being Alive.
Does it have to be like this? My hands trapped
in this ectoplasmic blob. It seemed harm-
less last night when I laid it down to rise.
I really should have picked a simpler task:
making sense of quantum physics, riding
a penny-farthing in a force nine gale.
No use now as I wrestle with this dough,
nay, monster. First proving, I slathered you
in olive oil. Was I too rough as I
pounded and pummelled, stretched, stretched, stretched you out,
a line of white intestine? Entrapment
was your game, yet I have tamed you with my
farinaceous hands, caressed and then reformed
you, laid you in the tin, a baby in its cradle.
Say not that the struggle naught availeth
as the firm, warm bread nestles in my palms.
“POETRY PEACE and REFORM Go Together -Let Us All Strive for PEACE on EARTH for ALL -Let Us Make a Better World -WRITE To Make PEACE PREVAIL.” Anjum Wasim Dar
Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded. I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read byNorthern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”
“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
Poet and writer, I am a former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. Currently, I run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded. I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”
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