New World Writing

The Sea

Its cakes put me at ease
Beyond painting
a sea creature changed into Hemingway
There are obituaries in these echoes
Myrtle devils a Panama City beach
Empress oil explorer robot, egg lyrics
The sea floor is constantly shrinking
I will be a seahorse hunter
of reductions
an awakening island experiment
This movie is full and boiling hot
with Nantucket helicopters
A lamprey can best be described as a grapevine
near our mammal alphabets
Sea nymph shipwreck treasure print
Nettle nymph
The earth floats on a sea of troll energy
Monsters summarize Galilee
There was a prince, a fire child, a pig
Postmodern poets continue
to populate Greek mythology
with their sea quotes, sea queens
Sea spirits kill devil hills
Shells, urchin embryos
Jack London will eventually claim everything

~

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The Winter Issue features work by Bob Hicok, Gerald Fleming, Jennifer Pashley, Pia Ehrhardt, Jane Armstrong, Bobbie Ann Mason, Jeffrey Allen, Simeon Berry, Allan Rossi, and others. Available from the main menu. Please help yourself.

The Fall 2013 issue of NWW is up with new work from Andy Plattner, Eric Pankey, Joe David Bellamy, Rose Hunter, Alfred Corn, Richard Mirabella. All that plus Quincy Lehr’s wonderfully abundant poem, “The Dark Lord of the Tiki Bar.” Click NWW, Fall 2013.

Notes From Buffalo, August 9, 2013

On March 7, 1965, the Sheriff of Dallas County, Alabama threw one of the most famous punches in American history, on the steps of the courthouse in Selma. The man that Sheriff Jim Clark punched in the face, C.T.Vivian, was named yesterday as a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

(more…)

Repurposing Your Big Box

Before you begin, you must divest yourself of sentimental memories of your grand opening.  The parking lot was full, cars circling, spilling out onto the surrounding streets.  The customers waited on the sidewalk for hours, sprawled on folding chairs, bundled in blankets, gulping big gulps. They nearly crushed one another when the doors first slid open.  (more…)

Lake Resort

Almost fifteen years ago, Lane bought a lake resort with her sister, Elsa. It was a wild thing to do. It was the sort of thing you did when the world was blaring around you, when everything seemed too real and impossible anyway and danger was familiar enough that you were tired of being afraid of it. Maybe some people would do drugs or cut off all their hair or go out dancing and bring home a stranger. Lane took out an enormous loan and bought a row of housekeeping cottages on 400 feet of lakeshore.   (more…)

Three Pieces

A Red, Red Rose

When you shiver in heels, there is always the chance that you will fall in a hurry. I would like to learn the trick to not turning to confetti when dressed up. Until that time, which will no doubt be never, I will stick with these extremely unprovocative crepe-soled shoes designed to prevent romantic encounters; they work, essentially, like helmets for the entire body (and soul, whatever that is). My mother did not avoid rock and roll, or heels, or the practice of unfolding her body (and maybe even her soul) in a flash, even when she had young children, even when she had old children.   (more…)

Three Poems

On Birds, Women and Fire

The goldfinch needs fire,
the cold slip of her flicks past
as soundless as a thought
lost to a question.  But you,
you need water.

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We’re working hard to finish up the summer issue of NWW. Starting now we have several new pieces online, with more to come.

Delighted to report that we’ve added a terrific new Jennifer Pashley story “Hearts” to the Spring issue, along with four wonderful pieces by Diane Kirsten Martin. And last but not least, an intriguing short nonfiction work by Tiff Holland.  Click ‘em at right or drop down the drop down menu above. Note that sometimes that menu drops down, and sometimes not, depending on the “theme” being used. We change our “theme” sometimes, just so you know. Hygiene, etc.

We’ve published the Spring 2013 issue tonight, cleverly avoiding publishing it on April 1. The issue includes work by Baron Wormser, Peter Shippy, Sidney Rifkin, Paul Lisicky, Robert Lopez, Lydia Copeland Gwyn and more. All of the work is wonderful and thrilling, so you’ll want to read up right away. Also be aware we’ll be adding material to the issue as the days go by, so keep an eye out.

Gypsy Cante

Inside my mother’s closet it was cool and dim. Everything fell away: the sound of raised voices, closing doors. I’d breathe in the musky scent of a pashmina embroidered with vines and lilies, run my fingers over a beaded clutch the azure of the Himalayan sky—things my mother brought from India when she boarded the plane that long ago day in the 50s and flew to America. (more…)

Four Shorts

Now I Am Doubled Over

Allow me to say a few words, he says, and then he says, people think backwards. I say to the person next to me, I can’t believe we’ve allowed this to go on and the person next to me says, I don’t know what you mean. At this point I’m livid, I am beside myself. I think about starting a fire or setting off an explosive but I don’t because that’s not a nice thing to do on a Sunday morning and I don’t have matches on me or kindling or anything that even resembles dynamite so I remain seated beside myself. And it feels especially true because at this point it’s as if I’m both the one who said, I can’t believe we’ve allowed this to go on and the one who said, I don’t know what you mean.   (more…)

We’ve gotten an early start with our Winter 2013 issue which you can find at the top of the column to the right. We want to thank particularly Denise Duhamel, Cathryn Hankla, Bruce Smith, Nin Andrews, Teresa Svoboda and Randall Mann for their contributions, solicited by one of our new Associate Editors, Diann Blakely, and anointed by our long time poetry editors Angela Ball and Julia Johnson. Kim Adrian graciously consented to do an interview which you’ll find, along with a lengthy essay on knitting, in the Kim Adrian Feature. And there’s a second piece of Kim’s as well. Mary Miller is an old friend and always a sure bet for first rate fiction, and we’d like to welcome newcomers to New World Writing Susannah Luthi, Jessica Jewell, Caroll Sun Yang and Lynn Kilpatrick who have supplied some startling new work we’re very proud to publish here. We will likely add more material to this issue, so even if you read it all now, be sure to check back in a couple of weeks to see what’s new on the menu.

BlipMagazine has changed its name to New World Writing after the great literary magazine of the 1950′s. They were, of course, thinking of world writing, whereas we are thinking more of the (perpetually) new world. We hesitated in any case, as it is a grand old name and we are perhaps insufficiently grand. Still, with some squinting, we are in the ballpark, or near the ballpark, or in a position from which we can sort of see the ballpark. Or so we hope and imagine.

I Won’t Get Lost

On the bus, the guy wants to know where he should go tonight. He’s in from San Diego, sleeping on a stranger’s couch. The strangers are at work and he’s wandering the city by himself.

I explain the difference between East and West 6th—hipster versus drunken college student, older versus maybe underage.

I hear the East Side’s dangerous, he says. (more…)