qarrtsiluni

by Julene Tripp Weaver

I still mourn Judy Garland
with the queers at Stonewall—
I was one of the flamboyant ones
who’d had enough. Salt-sweat
mascara running my face
getting on with my grief for
my girl. Cop raid ire-fire
this is my right, my life,
you bet I snapped.
Don’t push us
when we mourn.

Judy Garland (June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969)

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Julene Tripp Weaver lives in Seattle. Finishing Line Press published her chapbook Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails her Blues, with poems inspired by her work for 18 years in HIV Services. Her poems are published in many journals and several anthologies, including Hot Metal Press, Gemini Magazine, Chicken Piñata, Outward Link, Blossombones, The Smoking Poet, Drash and Future Earth Magazine, and in the anthology A Dream in the Clouds, featuring art inspired by the 2008 Presidential Election. Her first full size book will be published next year. She does wordplay on Twitter @trippweavepoet.

by Hannah Stephenson

In all of this turning, the station remains still,
stationary. The stairwells and platforms are teeming
with bodies. These people are projectionists,
time travelers. Their minds beam forth
like the steady light cast from miner’s helmets
into the future: thirty minutes, an hour,
three hours, twelve. Busy human shells
flood the turnstiles, spin the metal racks
volunteering magazines, brochures,
postcards, correspondence. Autopilot
propels each person to a destination.
bodies arrive into humming, taupe offices,
fall into slate blue pneumatic office chairs
and find their minds already sorting inboxes.
What a relief, to sit alone and spin
in the privacy of ergonomic bliss.

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Hannah Stephenson is a poet, writer, and instructor living in Los Angeles. Her poems have appeared in ouroboros review, Mankind Magazine, Spoonful, The Birmingham Arts Journal, and Artsy!Dartsy!. You can visit her daily poetry blog, The Storialist, at www.thestorialist.com.

by Alan Hayes

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Alan Hayes was raised on a defunct goldfish farm in Western New York. In 2000, after a lifetime wasted on trivial matters, he began making pictures. He also operates, with his wife, Rosemary Starace, the newly formed chapbook press, Elephant Tree House. For more of his photography, see his retrospective installation catalogue from a show in Buffalo, New York last year, or his Portraits of the American Dead gallery.

by Robin Chapman

Over Wyalusing, riding thermals, they shine
and disappear, vanish like thought,
re-emerge stacked, stretched,
a drifting fireworks’ burst.

We can’t stop looking up from paddling,
imagining how high they must be
to look so tiny, flecks of light.
Battling against headwind, we thrill

to see—we think we see—
their third dimension of effortless life,
scattershot, high in the blue sky,
turning in sun—white, silver, ash, gone,

how we could ride, carried
on rising currents of air, wide view,
steadily accompanied. As they are.
And on the river’s back, we too.

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Robin Chapman (webpage) is author of five chapbooks and six books of poems, most recently Abundance, winner of the Cider Press Review Editor’s Book Award. She is recipient of the 2010 Appalachia Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared recently in Prairie Schooner, Poetry East, and online in Qarrtsiluni and Valparaiso Poetry Review.

by Kristin Berkey-Abbott

The dishes crash and clatter
as her husband unloads
the dishwasher. The cereal sings,
the children bicker,
and her husband herds
the pets through the morning routine.

She sinks into the car
hoping for some solitude
during her solitary sojourn
to the office. Instead, noise surrounds
her: horns honk, brakes squeal,
and the thumping
bass beat never relents.

At the office, the secretary slams
file drawers while the supervisor shouts
into the speakerphone.
Two offices down, her colleague curses
at his computer. Students stomp
through the hallways, shouting
into their cellphones.

She closes her office door,
but she can still hear
the noise of working life,
like distant whalesong.
She thinks of those poor creatures
who once had the sea to themselves,
but now prefer to beach
themselves, rather than listen
to the noise of ships and Navy sonar.

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Kristin Berkey-Abbott earned a Ph.D. in British Literature from the University of South Carolina. Her poems have appeared in many journals, and Pudding House Publications published her first chapbook, Whistling Past the Graveyard, in 2004. Finishing Line Press will publish her second chapbook, I Stand Here Shredding Documents. She currently serves as Chair of the General Education department at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. Her website, which has connections to the blogs that she keeps, is kristinberkey-abbott.com.

by Laura Genz

November 5th 2008: The Cleaning. 188th day of occupation.
(Click all images to see larger versions.)
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by Cynthia Cox

We wait our turn
on a weekend
when tourists and teens
converge
on the peninsula
to stretch their skin
in the sun: engines off,
windows down,
radios up,
as if the beat
proclaims
some inner rhythm
of parched hearts.

A sheen of boys
begins to volley
for attention, girls
in open truckbeds
cake makeup,
spray hair
already starched
with heat.

The shoreline
brings the sleaze
out of everyone,
the steam
that shimmies up
from the concrete,
the stick, the sweat,
the hidden grit
that slicks
to the surface.

We are waiting
for Bolivar Ferry.

When it docks
we’ll all pull forward
in tight metal rows
onto the boat
that will slick us
like plastic
six-pack scrap
across the sea.

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Cynthia Cox (blog) taught high school English for ten years, and is currently working towards a Master’s degree in counseling. Her poems have appeared in various publications over the years, most recently in Cider Press Review, Albatross, and Epicenter magazine.

by Karl Elder

The real mystery is that with an order like that you’d have to phone-in ahead. You’d have to say something like, “Yes, for a party of five thousand,” and the voice would have to be convincing. Well, you know how that goes. With cynicism running rampant in the world, your story better be good.

For one thing, there are requirements. The loaves must be of a certain size so that your disciple hunkered down in that hollow rock upon which a false-bottomed basket rests has room to maneuver. Perhaps it isn’t so preposterous when you consider a gross of a gross of loaves would cut it. Why, there would even be enough for seconds all around and maybe leftovers!

The tricky thing is the fish. In that blazing sun it’s got to be a fresh catch. Then there’s the problem of distribution, especially with the fish. Do the people form a line? Or do you allow them to circle the mountain, given the distinct possibility that before lunch is over there are those who, fishtails in hand, will be slapping one another as if with rubber chickens.

Logistics. Better to go with canned sardines.

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Karl Elder’s long poem The Houdini Monologues, with accompanying CD, is available from Word of Mouth Books, the imprint of his magazine Seems. Commentary from Elder on his poem “Ode in the Key of O” in Beloit Poetry Journal’s 60th anniversary chapbook, comprising new work from Chad Walsh Award recipients, appears in the journal’s blog, Poet’s Forum.

by Monica Raymond

Click on image to view a larger version.

Cambridge Carnival. Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. August 2003.

Monica Raymond won the Castillo Prize in political theater for her play The Owl Girl, which is about two families in an unnamed Middle Eastern country who both have keys to the same house. She was a Jerome Fellow for 2008-09 at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, among many other honors and awards. Her poetry has been published in the Colorado Review, the Iowa Review, and the Village Voice.

UPDATE (12/1): Here are our six nominations. Thanks to everyone who left comments and emailed suggestions.

“24” by Barbara Young (New Classics issue)

“Tantric” by Clayton Michaels (Watermark)

“Relics” by Sherry Chandler (Health issue)

“Sea of Stars” by Dick Jones (The Crowd issue)

“So soft his neck, so distant from the thought of stone” by Jee Leong Koh (New Classics issue)

“Apart” by Aline Soules (Chapbook Finalists 2010; originally published in The Houston Literary Review, May 2009)

***

Once again we are soliciting suggestions from readers on our nominations for this year’s Pushcart Prize. (See last year’s post for more on our thinking about this.) Any work of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry that has appeared in qarrtsiluni since January 1 would be eligible: basically, the Health and New Classics issues, the chapbook series, and the currently unfolding Crowd issue. Remember to hit the “Older entries” link at the bottom of each page to navigate through an issue. Grab permalinks by clicking on the titles.

Please leave suggestions in the comment thread for this post (or if you’re shy, email us: qarrtsiluni [at] gmail [dot] com), up to six nominations per commenter. And tell us why. We are much more likely to be swayed by articulate arguments and personal reactions than by numbers of “votes”; this isn’t a popularity contest. Please don’t nominate your own works, or tell all your friends to nominate them for you! Aside from that, anyone is welcome to make suggestions, including first-time readers, but we will give greater weight to suggestions from those who regularly comment here, indicating a long-term engagement with the magazine.

We need to print out and mail in our nominations no later than December 1, so we’ll be making our final decision before the end of the month, and will announce the nominations by an update to this post, as before. In the meantime, we’d really appreciate your help in combing through the archives. Incidentally, last year, although none of our six nominations made the anthology, one of them was also later nominated by one of Pushcart’s official advisors (we don’t know who): Khadija Anderson’s poem “Islam for Americans.” It felt a bit like a vindication of our crowd-sourcing approach.

—Beth and Dave