Nicole Callihan's first book of poems, SuperLoop, was published in 2014. Find her on the web at www.nicolecallihan.com.
It was the year that stranger took up in our front room and left wadded-up gumballs in the ashtray. Outside the window, there was a hole in the earth, and I’m not just talking about any hole, I’m talking about THE hole. Remember how we carried our grief around in gallon-sized Ziplocs and Sharpied our phone numbers into our scapulas lest we be forever lost? My brother flew in to count bone shards on his abacus, but mostly I remember standing in the kitchen with a dead man’s pretty wife, how she chided me for putting the spoons so close together in the dishwasher. What we thought were birds were not birds, but smoke was smoke, and even if we had wanted to, we couldn’t have seen past our hands. I fingered SAVE ME into the dust on a windshield. Inside, the laughter grew boozy, and the dead man’s young daughter—she looked an awful lot like you—curled up at my feet and played possum. It would be months before I realized that I could be the one to carry her to bed, and more months still, before I found the courage to gather her into my arms. Even now, among the foxes and the trees, I can see the light burning over the Hudson. Can you?
Nicole Callihan's first book of poems, SuperLoop, was published in 2014. Find her on the web at www.nicolecallihan.com.
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It was the year of under-eyelid camera bras.
At first we would disguise indigo veins, matching the bras to our skin color like Band-Aids then a flaunt of brights, fluorescents, two-tone, and even glow-in-the-dark no one ever looked tired, even if they were feeling tired. Digital arteries with skin-matching blood and voxels replaced the bras so we could document every living moment. I stayed awake for days and days until I saw sparkles of light dancing in space. Some people didn’t sleep for months and turned into spongecake. Later that year those of us who gave in took a long nap and discovered our dream-cams recorded the future. --Boni Joi Boni Joi was born in North Miami Beach, Florida, raised in New Jersey and discovered her lost lineage in Salem, Massachusetts. She has read and performed her poems at numerous venues in New Jersey, New York and elsewhere including Switzerland, Canada, and England. Boni works an archivist and lives with her husband musical chef Tobi Joi in Brooklyn. http://www.spdbooks.org/producte/9780979149535/before-during-or-after-rainstorms.aspx it was the year computers were invented
they were so large we had to hire cars to carry them around I mean huge cars the size of queens speaking of which people were all into Tarot then and Jack Spicer and cinnamon so we said let's go to a park read the cards and some poems and have cinnamon toast which we had made in our toasters not realizing by the time we got to the park the toast would be hard and the butter would have congealed so we said let's go to a Be In and talk to Ginsberg instead we did and I met him told him I loved that poem at the beginning of his latest book, Snacks for Creeps, and he replied, Oh that old thing, I'm not even sure it's a poem --Ruth Lepson Ruth Lepson is poet-in-residence at the New England Conservatory and often collaborates with musicians. Musical settings will be available at the Pressed Wafer website when her book with them appears in the spring. ruthlepson.com It was the year of lick the pages. Walking with solitude, and her baggage. Another opera crisis averted in Italy.
It was the year of midterms, bulging pockets & Pentagon reveals, tax overhauls. All this got into Rikers with greater exposure. Chemical arms for the Clinton term. It was the year of doing good, in harm’s way. Star offers rewards & risks. Charity. It was the year of not trusting America and bad news, my boy’s home from happiness is a warm robot. The object lesson of the moment. It was the year of continents in conversation, blah blah blah at the Armory. It was the year of homeless, because they are abused at home. Hacking is easy. And prison is hard. It was the year of colossal ambition, a Oklahoma oilman’s billion dollar divorce , more transparency & more pay for CEOs. It was the year of a topsy turvy world where the survivor hates the spotlight. The opera in Rome is a hotbed of chaos and China warms to sci fi. It was the year of a tricky transition from fossil fuel. A rendezvous at 34,000 miles per hour. Buying is easy. Delivery is hard. It was the year of how to dazzle without the frazzle. Romantic passion with a whiff of ambiguity. When three into one equals more. It became a game of spiraling costs. It was the year of uncertainty in Washington. Long list of economic perils. The man with no fixed address. It was the year of flying by the seat of our pants, a look at looking different. A storybook heroine igniting a debate on race. It was the year of distress at sea. It was the year of four decades of inhaling deeply. It was the year of a steady loss of confidence. It was the year of rewriting war. It was the year of learning, how little we know. --Cat Tyc Cat Tyc is a writer & new media artist that lives in Brooklyn, NY. She is a MFA Candidate in Writing/Activism at Pratt Institute. http://cat-tyc.tumblr.com/ it was the year of epiphanies, rising from pure white highway lines. or potholes. i’d take them from anywhere, sucked through a sliver of open window like a vacuum. casualties smacked the windshield, leaving behind glass spider webs.
each time i got where i was going and opened the car door, they’d flap out, desperate, like they had been flying into cellophane windows the entire drive, then springing backward into my lap, over and over. seeing the brilliant sky but it’s a little hazy, like pavement on a hot day, or opening your eyes in the morning before you've reached for your glasses -- only slight astigmatism. when i’d finally open the door, they’d fly straight up until i couldn't see them anymore. i could not jump high enough to make the colors stay. --Danielle Adamowitz Danielle Adamowitz is a student at Rutgers University studying to be an English teacher. She is also currently an editor and contributing writer at Flurt Magazine. Danielle can be found at danielleeleanor.wordpress.com. It was the year of the broken heart, of voluptuous
panic, the year I worked in the convalescent wing of the hospital. They were sick, some of them, and others, members of a happiness cult. I was jealous of their childhoods, so many arguments populating their cells. My husband at the time said If you’re leaving me do it fast, like a Band-Aid. I made a list of items I wanted to borrow from God. I had the illusion of nobility, the notion i didn't need to dig my heels in to succeed. Breaking up is never easy, like a cut or a piñata pulling you down. Kate Lutzner's poetry and stories have appeared in such journals as Antioch Review, Mississippi Review, The Brooklyn Rail, BlazeVOX, Rattle and Barrow Street. Kate holds a J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from City College and has been featured in Verse Daily. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well as the Best of the Net Anthology.: Spring Quarterly - Urban (May 2014 / 14.10) It was the year black holes sucked in the videos while people were watching them. And they sucked in the power lines, TVs, iPads and video games.
People driving in the night saw little plastic Princess Lunas. People driving home saw little plastic Princess Celestias. In one really tall building made of bricks, people went in the door and ended up in another universe. --Elliot Elliot is 7 years old in 2nd grade. He loves books about machines and space, and loves building giant robots out of legos. He also loves to hear any spooky stories you might have. It was the year, and it was not. The bricks were shining, and the miserable Christmas paused over us. The signage was difficult, and all was New Jersey. So much was opaque. Some part of everything was broken. My parents were now moths. Everyone was married like a song. Stars hung on the walls. It was the year of being stretched out on the ground. I should have written the four and half hours of Michael Brown. If you want to be happy in an earthquake…if you want to be yellow, you must memorize what the white moths said. You were still alive. That was the theory. The parents disappeared so quickly.
--David Shapiro David Shapiro has written some twenty volumes of poetry, literary, and art criticism. His most recent book is David Shapiro: New and Selected Poems, 1965-2006. He recently completed a new manuscript, Cardboard and Gold. It was the year we wove vests of night-blooming
jasmine. We wore them lightly. Our breasts fell in love. It was the year enchantments sold two-for-one or five for a blessing. Our pillows filled with grasshoppers. Crickets deciphered our dreams. That year children became pinwheels. That year Ferris wheels spun out-of-control. It was the year birds held a conference. At scheduled breaks they perched on our shoulders, singing songs of love and loss. After a rain the land wept at the beauty of life. --Sarah Sarai Sarah Sarai rides buses and subways on and under the infinite boroughs of New York City. She recently checked some links to her poetry and fiction at My 3000 Loving Arms, and confirmed that even in the universe of poetry and fiction, it's all mutable.Less mutable is The Writing Disorder (writingdisorder.com),
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AuthorHi. I'm Joanna Fuhrman. This is a prose poetry/flash fiction blog in conversation with my serial prose poem "The Year of Yellow Butterflies" (The Year Of Yellow Butterflies, Hanging Loose Press 2015). I had fun writing these poems about fads and trends from imaginary pasts. If you would like to add your own section, write me and I can post it (along with a short bio). Start with "It was the year...." Categories
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