First time. There’s a first time for everything. The obvious: first kiss, first love, first sex. The first day of school. Less obvious: first time around the block, first poem, first loss, first Christmas you remember. This first time for everything theme is wide open, so we don’t want to limit you with our suggestions. Surprise us!
We are looking for memoir and essay, for poetry, fiction, photography, artwork. For a form that perhaps we’d be seeing for the very first time.
Submissions may begin immediately and will be considered through December 15, for publication throughout November and December. The word limit remains at 3,000.
– Tom Montag and Kasturi Mattern
Just last week
I wrestled expectations
to the ground again.
Today I’ve added
eleven lines of verse
to the bank account,
stitched a single quilt
from sheaves
of disparate sources:
page of Talmud
thick with Rashi-script
nestled beside the koans
of a Zen poet
whose brush
spills only virtual ink.
Even in the way
Hebrew letters
recombine
there’s a lesson
about how to reveal
our true faces.
by Rachel Barenblat of Velveteen Rabbi
by Lori Witzel of Chatoyance
The difference between reading a poem
and writing a poem is just not fair.
Like Miss Plath assigned this red
wheelbarrow poem for Friday. Like right,
I’m gonna see a red wheelbarrow?
Gramps maybe has one in his garage -
rusty, dented, & all scratched up.
Daddy doesn’t have a clue if to push it
or pull it, and glazed chickens? Come on,
gimme a break, you mean the glaze on
the sweet and sour at Wongs
in the mall? Will yum Car los Will yums.
It’s enough to make you hurl & this
T.S. Eliot. Don’t even get me started.
He wants a wasteland? Let him come
check out the nerds in my 5th hour.
So see, we have to bust butts reading
Modern Poetry just for a measly grade
to take home to mommy poo?
But take my best poem on my blog
where I have put in all the good stuff
& class weirdoes and even my best friend
never even get it that my boyfriend
in my poem is not my boyfriend
but is a metaphor for the great romance
of my life which may or may not
be happening now, or if you care, may not
ever happen. There. What’d I tell you?
You take off all your clothes and lie down
on a piece of virtual real estate like your
whole freaking life and nobody gives a rat’s
assets to say anything but oooh, gross. I say
the difference between reading a poem
and writing a poem is just not fair.
by Paul Dickey
I remember walking up the cold dark path
to the tall mesh gate to the school,
wearing my brown blazer and beret,
my hair thin and frizzy at the back
from sleep and fiercely twiddling strands
that grew so tangled I had to pull them out
and put them down the side of my bed.
I remember all the pegs in the cloakroom
and the awe I felt for the boy
who taught me how to tie my shoes;
and the day we all sat and gazed
at the giant television on its mighty stand
as men in space-suits lurched and floated
over the sandy surface of the moon.
by Polly Blackley
A portfolio of photographs
STATEMENT
We live in a bit of a schizophrenic time. On the one hand, we realize how modern sciences have brought improvements that have greatly enhanced the quality (and actual durations) of our lives. On the other hand, we have become increasingly suspicious of science and, especially, academia – where it is not directly involved in the development of new weaponry. We have seen deep cuts in funding, especially for sciences deemed not useful enough – in particular liberals arts, or – oh, the horror – art itself. And we have come to call scientists “eggheads” who are out of touch with reality, in particular if the results of their research clash with our political beliefs.
But what does academia really look like? In what kind of environments do those people work who, it is assumed, are overly pampered “liberals”, out of touch with the common people?
And if we do not want to dwell on the conditions of work of academics, let’s not forget that those academics fulfil the role of educators. So by asking what the academic environment looks like we’re also asking what the environment looks like that young students are subjected to when learning the skills that are supposed to help them in life.
“Higher Education” is an effort to portray academic environments. It is an ongoing project.
by Joerg Colberg of jmcolberg.com and Conscientious
