Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile

Dear Slushies, we have a confession. The first draft of these show notes included references to Wawa, Jason's sweet tooth, the relative repulsiveness of hot milk shakes, and professional wrestling. But then we realized that approach eclipsed what this episode illuminates: the poetic trend of self-reflexive gestures like the one we just made, confessing that this isn't the first draft! Listen in as we discuss Krysten Hill's poem "Are We Still Good?" The poem challenges us to think about analogy, metaphor, and narrativity. How poets can stage the occasion for a speaker's confessional reflection via the spark of a story plucked from our information dense mediascape -- revealing what it means to feel terror when that terror might otherwise be dismissed. How does she do this? Manatees and memes, silence, and a meta-textual turn. Enjoy! PS Samantha also references this great essay by John Shoptaw on eco poetry. Dig in! At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Dagne Forrest, Jason Schneiderman, Samanatha Neugebauer Krysten Hill is the author of How Her Spirit Got Out (Aforementioned Productions, 2016), which received the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. Her work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming from The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day Series, Poetry Magazine, PANK, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Winter Tangerine Review,Rust + Moth and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the 2020 Mass Cultural Council Poetry Fellowship, 2023 Vermont Studio Center Residency, and 2024 SWWIM Residency. Author website Are We Still Good? According to officials, the animal does not appear to be seriously injured. Someone adds in the comments that, Obviously, it was just a joke. Calm down, Liberals. Highlights the part in the article where the man’s name was scraped onto algae growing on its skin. From what they could see, nothing was truly threatened. The sea cow was probably too dumb and fat to feel anything. I think of all the ways cruelty begins as a joke until it chooses to finish what it started. The friend I’d known for years didn’t stop when I asked and asked again. I thought maybe he didn’t hear me. Later, he told our mutual friend that, Things just got out of hand. I thought she knew I was just playing. I remember when I was sure he heard me, I recognized it was my fear that made him smile so loud. Still, I attempt to explain the surprise. At least I didn’t die there, I tell myself. Even here, I wrote that as the first line of this poem and buried it. Anyways, he had work in the morning, offered to drive me home. I didn’t have to walk back to my dorm in the snow. I laughed at everything he said on the way and tried not to let him see my hands shake when I took the gum he offered me. He asked, Are we still good? I chewed my tongue, relieved that I could do something else with my mouth until he parked, unlocked the door to let me out. I thanked him. I was so scared that I didn’t run.

Episode 123: The Catholic Episode Dear Slushies, we have a confession. We love being close readers as much as we love being close listeners. And if you are a fan of this podcast, we know the same is true for you. We’re delighted to consider Charlie Peck’s poems “Cowboy Dreams” and “Bully in the Trees” in this episode. We’re talking about unreliable narrators, homeric epithets, dramatic enjambments, and the difference between small “c” catholicism and capital “C” Catholicism. Confession and exultation, Slushies! Floating signifiers and The Sopranos. It’s a doozy! We hope you love listening in as much as we loved considering Charlie Peck’s poems for PBQ. (Oh, and we excitedly celebrate Jason’s fifth collection launching in April, Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire!) At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Samanatha Neugebauer Charlie Peck is from Omaha, Nebraska and received his MFA from Purdue University. His poetry has appeared previously in Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter, Massachusetts Review, and Best New Poets 2019, among others. His first collection, World’s Largest Ball of Paint, is the winner of the 2022 St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press and is forthcoming April 2024. Twitter: @chip_nutter Cowboy Dreams Winedrunk along the river on a Tuesday, boy howdy, my life. I ignore another call from my mother because today is about the matted grass and the skipping trout. When my brother jumps companies after the Christmas bonus, it’s Ruthless. When I pillage the family silver to slick forty bucks at a pawn shop, It’s time you start thinking about recovery. Instinct makes me wreck anyone who comes too close. You ever snapped a dog’s stick just to watch his ears drop? I’m Catholic with how quick I loose my tongue to confess, my guilt just a frequency my ears quit hearing. One snowy May in the Colorado mountains, I stripped to my underwear and raised my pack to wade the glacial river. Dried by a fire with a pot of beans. All night I dreamt of my lasso and revolver, riding the hot-blooded horse alone across the plains, no one in sight to hurt. Bully in the Trees Indiana cornfields leave so much to be desired, and lately I’ve desired nothing but clean sheets and pretzel bread. For a decade I was ruthless, took whatever I wanted: last donut in the office breakroom, merged lanes out of turn. I stole my roommate’s change jar, sat on the floor of a Wells Fargo rolling quarters to buy an eighth. In this new year, I promise I’ll stop being the loudest in the room like a bear ravaging a campsite just to be the bully in the trees. For so long I thought my cruelty was the world’s fault, my stubbed toe blamed on the coffee table’s leg, not my stumbling in the dark. Throwing every fish back to the river doesn’t forgive the hooked hole I caused. Once, I undressed a woman in the giraffe enclosure, but maybe that was a Soprano’s episode. Once, my life was so ordinary I replaced it with the things I saw on television. I ate fifty hard-boiled eggs. I robbed the bank and screamed Attica! I stood in the trees cuffing the Nebraska suburb and watched my mother set the table through the window. A porcelain plate at each chair. My ordinary life stranged by the window frame. If I fall asleep before the credits, let me dream the rest. My pockets are empty, but the metal detector still shrieks.

Dearest Slushies, we’re so happy to be back in the saddle! We took a mini-hiatus and return with this episode devoted to the poems of Jodi Balas. You’ll hear us mull over her artful use of concrete poetry and dive deep into her thinking about poetry, the body, and NFTs. How does a poem’s form entwine with its image system in order to serve its sense? How is taste also (always) about power? All of these questions are wrapped in a glittering cascade of editorial acumen and quirky dishing: Listen as Dagne explains the difference between NFTs and Cryptocurrency, reminding us of Rattle’s prescient issue dedicated to NFT poets. Or let us know what you think: should “mini cocktails” ever be a thing for happy hours? Is “drinkable” ever a compliment? Can we make a meme of Jason’s seductive eyebrow skills? In addition to the following links you might dig– NFTs explained in 5 Minutes & Brit Bennett’s “Ain't That Good News”-- we invite you to contemplate the ritual of champagne sabering (if you try this in your backyard, shout “Poetry!”) With best wishes for a happy new year from the Slush Pile Crew. At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Dagne Forrest, Samanatha Neugebauer Jodi Balas is a neurodivergent poet from Northeast Pennsylvania. A lover of words (salacious, being a favorite – it just rolls off the tongue), her poetry has been accepted in Hole in the Head Review, Wild Roof Journal, Humana Obscura, Pinch Journal, and elsewhere. Jodi’s poem, “His mouth, mine” was selected as a finalist for the 2023 River Heron Review poetry prize and her poem, “Bone Density” won the 2023 Comstock Review Muriel Craft Bailey Award judged by Danusha Lameris. Jodi is in the process of developing her first chapbook to market to the poetry world. You could follow her musings on Instagram @jodibalas_ WALKING TO SURRENDER The ghost at my side, the knife in my coat pocket hanging on the coat rack. I yield to morning in apprehension almost every morning. I’m hardening, becoming the weight of two dead trees. A spool of thread wound so tight, it’s hard to find the starting point - the dull tip of a needle is useless. I try and unknot the shoelace from yesterday, the muscle of memory below the ribs and figure out which direction I’m headed or which route is correct for my mental state I’ve been trying to correct but cannot correct until I surrender entirely to the blinding wave of fear. MY BODY AS AN NFT Allow me to unshackle your wrists, bring you up off your knees & up to speed. Call me a good investment, the original copy. Non-refundable, metallic over bone, wire over skin – untethered, the virtual sin. You cannot use me in some side hustle, sleight of hand deal. I am my own creator. Watch how I catapult through your veins and rush you faster than a thief with a shank. Electric/cryptic #mytongueisdigitalweight Begging for a bit of action you’re not sure how to obtain. Tell me, is there mutual interest? I can tell you that I’m priceless. Watch closely before I become a liability, before your pockets explode, before the scales begin to re-balance themselves.

In this episode we discussed three very different poems by Oregon poet Lorna Rose, all three resulting in juicy conversation and resulting in three tie-breakers (none of them involving the same voting configurations amongst our team!). This was a big first for us. The episode was kicked off by a larger discussion (prompted by the first poem) around aspects of cultural appropriation and touched on facets of trauma and language. This wide-ranging discussion and the split in our voting pointed to the power and ambiguity of various elements in these poems. In the end, a tie-breaking editor helped deliver two of these poems into PBQ’s pages! Have a listen! Note: This episode was recorded in December 2021, so there will be a bit of time travel involved. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Alex Tunney Absentee voter for the tie-breakers: Samanatha Neugebauer Links to things we discuss you might like to check out: "Declaration" by Tracy K. Smith, an erasure poem of the Declaration of Independence https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147468/declaration-5b5a286052461 "Native Son" by Richard Wright https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/07/20/the-hammer-and-the-nail "Appropriate: A Provocation" by Paisley Rekdal https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324003588 "How-To" by Anders Carlson Wee and retraction by The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/how-to/ "Inside Kate Winlset's Mare of Easttown" Pennsylvania Accent, Vanity Fair https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/04/kate-winslet-mare-of-easttown-accent Lorna is a Pacific Northwest writer and speaker. Her narrative nonfiction and poetry have been recognized by Pacific Northwest Writers Association and the Oregon Poetry Association, and have appeared or are forthcoming in Scary Mommy, Jellyfish Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Writers Resist, and elsewhere. She's also a speaker and workshop leader. When not wrangling her two small children, she fantasizes about being interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air. Author website Leaving Libya I flood my lungs with the wet stench of fish and bodies and fuel. Dinghy motor whines against the night. Salt air grinds my skin ‘til it’s threadbare and there’s no sitting since leaving Sabratha. Body clenches tight to its bones and shrill muscles shriek and weep and lock up. Damp t-shirt clings to goosebumped flesh under a tattered orange life jacket. But what life? Next to me a shaking woman holds her boney baby and cries. She has shit herself. Behind me a man mumbles and mumbles for water. His eyes roll hollow, mouth slacks open. From his breath I smell the thick stink of rot, the gray smell of forgotten humanity. Lights of the Italian coastline appear and my heart races, vision blurs. From somewhere behind there’s a jolt. Yelling. Floor tilts. And the lights of Lampedusa go black. Surviving the Rush No music plays in the general store in Circle, Alaska, which is full of mukluks and Wonder Bread. Villagers fish the Yukon, memorize river rise, bet on breakup. Long ago miners arrived from Outside to sift, chip rip fortunes from earth. Stilts were drilled into permafrost and structures were imposed and all bustle and rage. Then claims fell dry and no patience and Circle started to wither. The locals picked up pieces of buildings, tried to heal the pock-marked ground. Today a tourist’s crisp dollar might mean something, except the locals would have to tolerate the perfumey tourist. Villagers fish the Yukon, memorize river rise, bet on breakup. The soil smells of fool’s gold and blood.

Slushies, in this episode we consider two poems by C. Fausto Cabrera, both of which speak, in very different ways, to the imagination in building our sense of self. The notion of being seen, a topic of universal relevance to any writer or artist, is explored in the first poem, which ends with the line “stuck in between the covers wondering when you’ll be back”, simultaneously exploring themes of incarceration or imprisonment. This discussion leads us to consider the many layers of being seen and Jason takes a moment to appreciate the “sexy time” of having a book tucked in your pocket. The second poem takes us on a related yet palpably different journey and reveals one of the paths our editorial discussions can take us to. Take a listen, you won’t be disappointed! This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, and Dagne Forrest. C. Fausto Cabrera is a multi-genre artist and writer currently incarcerated since 2003. His work has appeared in: The Colorado Review, The Antioch Review, Puerto del Sol, The American Literary Review, The Water~Stone Review, The Woodward Review, among others. "The Parameters of Our Cage" is his prose collaboration with photographer Alec Soth. To Be Seen at All , "What makes us so deserving of space in other people' s minds?" -Daniel Ruiz My boss in the kitchen asks me how it felt to be famous after looking up my Washington Post Magazine essay & cover art online. The question left me stuck I didn't feel famous. I hadn't received much mail in years. What does celebrity mean separate from saturation, fame to the incarcerated— but infamy? I question the value of telling people about accomplishments, about publishing at all— in a place where your spades game gets more respect, & swagger's stuck in the last time you punched a muthafucker in the face, what' s the point? I just felt petty for wanting to be seen at all. Guards are more concerned with how many towels I have than who I become. I'm being heard— & that should be the focus, right? Is the nobility of a thing in or on purpose? Or the other way around? Cause who ever does anything for nobility— I'm starving to be objectified: stripped down by the new young blond guard like a Skinamax late nite B-movie, why else do hundreds of burpees if not to play into the bad boy fantasies of anyone watching? I went away before social media, but had my Lil’ cousin Artesia build me a platform to stand upon, thinkin' it'd present me somehow, someway, maybe keep me present— be on someone's mind or wall, admired even for a moment. The Past says they miss me, but since they never reach past the screen it's not the real me, only their memory. It’s not about me at all—and neither should the work be. There is a point to this poem, in its lack of trust. & none of it is an answer. How can I count on anything through a 2-way mirror? I am just a writer, the world through my eyes glows different due to the depths of my damage. When you close this book & move on I'll still be stuck in-between the covers, wondering when you'll be back. In the Sun that Seeps from the Dungeons/ Window/ Everything is Bright Because God is in an algorithm I hear through the toggle of my shuffle button/ from a playlist I composed/ I tell myself/ that if I listen, while the TV projects a pretty face to see when I look up from what I'm reading of poetry, mechanical pencil, click, click, underlining & taking notes in the margins— sipping a mug of French vanilla creamer laden coffee w/thoughts swirling in my cinnamon head/ the sheer alchemy of it all should/ naturally combust! What butterfly wings must taste like/embers floating/escape the chaos, wondering west to set fires/troublesome/I want blood in the cut, I want noise/they...

When to break a line, Slushies. And why? What’s the shape your poem takes, and how does the poem’s form serve its complexities, subtleties, and heart? Three poems by Karl Meade are up for consideration in this episode of The Slush Pile, and they call the editors into conversation about trauma in literature, narrative (in)coherence as craft, and the pleasurable risks of stair-stepped stanzas. Poet L.J. Sysko joins the conversation on this episode of The Slush Pile as we discuss “Beach Fall,” “Christmas Break,” and “Doom Eager.” (If a tree falls in the woods, Slushies. Ammiright?) At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, L. J. Sysko, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, Alex J. Tunney Karl Meade’s work been published in many literary magazines, a few of which he didn’t even donate heavily to, or previously serve as editor—including Literary Review of Canada, Tusculum Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Grain Magazine, Chronogram, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, Event Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Open Letter, Under the Sun, and Dandelion. His work has also been mistakenly longlisted for four CBC Literary Prizes, shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Open Season Creative Nonfiction Award, and Arc Poetry Magazine’s Poem of the Year. His novel, Odd Jobs, written as a solemn literary manifesto, was a finalist for the Foreword Reviews Book of the Year for Humor, and an iTunes Top 20 Arts and Literature podcast—“Laugh Out Loud,” one listener said of this grave work. Karl’s chapbook “Doom Eager” has just been released in September 2023 by Raven Chapbooks, just in time for us to publish this podcast, which has waited longer than it should for release! Author website: www.karlmeade.com Guest Editor: L.J. Sysko L.J. Sysko's work has been published in Voicemail Poems, The Pinch, Ploughshares, Rattle, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She is the author of a poetry chapbook, BATTLEDORE (Finishing Line Press, New Women's Voices series). Poetry honors include several Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg awards, two fellowships from Delaware's Division of the Arts, and poetry finalist recognition from The Fourth River, The Pinch, and Soundings East. Sysko holds an MFA in poetry from New England College. X: @lj_sysko Instagram: @lesliesysko Facebook: @lesliesysko Author website: http://www.ljsysko.com beach fall for Holli and Terry Mountain to stone, prairie to sand, redwood to ash, from here I can see the heart of the sea, but not the beach he fell on. I can see the picture window you sit in—waiting, watching the shore, iPad in lap, short-haired Flossy at your side, the one who dug your dad’s water bottle from under him. I don’t know why you brought his suitcase to his wake empty—what it was between you. Only he knew the words you could not say. The doctors’ words for you—non-verbal, spectral—sent him back to rage. He said they weren’t worth the hair on a dead chicken, that aut-ism was just too much self for them to take from you. He knew what his raging love could do: four hours a night on the couch, talking through your iPad. He called himself Manitoban, the prairie farm-boy who watched his dog run away for three days, the rain-man to lead you out, teach you how to mouth the O, the awe in Holli. Yes, from here I can see the redwoods fall, the mountains decay, his sea-bed— they say all the big hearts of the earth love where they fall, that his heart stopped before he hit the beach. But we both know why his mouth was full of sand. Christmas break for Doug and Arlene The earth heaves, the ice cleaves. Erosion cuts the heart from every stone, while every night I watch you drive your family past a starving glacier, turn from a truck laden with salt. You head off the head on, take the bumper to the heart, leave your family straining your lungs’ last words from the floor of the minivan. I’m on the floor beneath my desk, straining to plug in the...

A wonderful sense of wordplay permeates the poems we were able to discuss from Barbara Diehl. Sadly, one of three poems we’d flagged for the podcast was snapped up before our discussion was recorded, and we talk a bit at the start of this episode about our process and timelines. Barbara’s work gave us space to consider how word choices, sequencing, and combining can lead to new experiences in a poem, as well as a debate over the roles of joy and darkness in poetry, including the balance we seek as readers in the world we find ourselves living in these days. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer and Dagne Forrest. Barbara Westwood Diehl is senior editor of The Baltimore Review. Her fiction and poetry appear in a variety of journals, including Quiddity, Potomac Review (Best of the 50), SmokeLong Quarterly, Gargoyle, Superstition Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Atticus Review, The MacGuffin, The Shore, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Raleigh Review, Ponder, Fractured Lit, South Florida Poetry Journal, Five South, Allium, The Inflectionist Review, Switch, Split Rock Review, and Free State Review. Socials: Twitter @BarbaraWestwood, Facebook @ barbara.w.diehl.3, Poets & Writers listing December Goodnight it’s sunfall, and the papersky is grayed with erasures of bestlaid plans all the daymistakes forgiven the brokenpencil points of planes thumbsmudged away their grumblechatter hushed the blackening windows shuttered * so sleep in the nightsee in the skylisten so dream a planetdance breathe a metronome so keep time to a ticktock moon to evening’s pocketwatch its face a dozing chaperone so humfade, so eyes closed nothing to shudderfret allsafe

In the midst of excitedly preparing for AWP 2017, we record this episode in which we discuss two poems by Rita Banerjee, “The Suicide Rag” and “Georgia Brown” This week’s discussion both took us back and made sure that none of us would see the world the same way again. With images of breakdancing, gospel choir, and the not-so-innocent Georgia Brown, we were in it. Whether we’re distinguishing jazz from jazz or figuring out what a clapper is, this episode is filled with risky moves. Join us in the campaign to have your local library carry lesser-known authors and small presses. Let us know what books you’ll be requesting with #getsomebooks! Let’s support libraries, small presses, and the authors who write for them. Make sure you follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and let us know what you think of this episode with #longandskinny! Stay tuned to hear about our AWP 2017 experience–we hope to see you there! And of course, most importantly, read on! At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Tim Fitts, and Sara Aykit Rita Banerjee is the author of Echo in Four Beats, CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps, and Cracklers at Night. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard and her MFA from the University of Washington, and her work appears in Hunger Mountain, PANK, Tupelo Quarterly, Isele Magazine, Nat. Brut., Poets & Writers, Academy of American Poets, Los Angeles Review of Books, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere. She is the co-writer of Burning Down the Louvre, a forthcoming documentary film about race, intimacy, and tribalism in the United States and in France, and serves as Senior Editor of the South Asian Avant-Garde and Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. She received a 2021-2022 Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the opening chapters of this memoir, “Birth of Cool” was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. The Suicide Rag Billy played ragtime on the church organ but we lunch hour kids, kept time by another name. Behind St. Augustine’s we learned to hit the pavement, sound like an anvil crack hammers hitting steel, Billy playing skeletons on the fifth, we arpeggioed haloed, froze on the black top. Learning to cakewalk This was our battle— tar-mat babies doing handsprung suicides for the girls standing ’round with knife-like eyes That’s all we needed— a rolling beat, a firing squad and schoolyard skirts scouring the lot as we fell face forward hands locked & stiff, the only thing that could’ve come between us was a kiss. Georgia Brown Harlem had yet to be born, the globe had not been spun, but we knew how to whistle, how to call clappers and skirts on cue: That summer, we first met Georgia, she was an echo in four beats, we learned to hum her story. Mike played her with a licked reed but she was all brass, sharp like an abandoned railroad cutting through wild wood, and when she took stage, she made those trombone boys whisper, “Sweet Georgia, Sweet.”

July 2023 Update: Sarah is preparing to appear at the New York City Poetry Festival at the end of July. Sarah will read a poem and be interviewed as part of an appearance with the monthly poetry show "There's a Lot to Unpack Here". Sarah also has a new book of poetry, “The Familiar”, coming out from Texas Review Press in Spring 2024. Welcome to Episode 19 of Slush Pile! For this episode, we have two “creepy” poems submitted for our Monsters Issue by Sarah Kain Gutowski. While these poems, part of a suite, did not get unanimous votes, we all felt they enveloped us into a universe of magical realism. True to the tradition of scary stories, these poems demand to be read slowly, deliberately, and out loud. Additionally, Gutowski’s work is more than simply scary. Like Kathy says, “Sometimes freaky shit happens,” and these poems force our team to consider the ambiguities of life, or pre-death, as Tim puts it. Listen to the outcome, but one thing is for sure: these poems are stronger together. Comment on our Facebook event page or on Twitter with #frogtongue and sign for our email list if you’re in the area, and even if you’re not! Read on! At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Lauren Patterson, Tim Fitts, Caitlin McLaughlin, Jason Schneiderman, and Marion Wrenn Sarah Kain Gutowski is the author of two books, The Familiar (forthcoming) and Fabulous Beast: Poems, winner of the 14th annual National Indies Excellence Award for Poetry. With interdisciplinary artist Meredith Starr, she is co-creator of Every Second Feels Like Theft, a conversation in cyanotypes and poetry, and It's All Too Much, a limited edition audio project. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Threepenny Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and The Southern Review, and her criticism has been published by Colorado Review, Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, and the New York Journal of Books. Chapter VI: The Children Have a Request The season stretched itself thin, weakened by storms and heat. Inside the damp, shadowy space of the children’s fort, the woman with the frog tongue wove baskets and bowls with tight, interlocked laces, while her silk stitches began to fray and lengthen. The gap between her lips widened to where the children could see the white of her teeth. They stared at her, sometimes; she saw them clench their jaws and try to speak to each other without moving their mouths. Before long they’d begin to laugh, and she’d shake with relief at the sound. Then one day, when the trees broke into glittering shards of gold and red and green, and light spun pinwheels above their heads as they walked together between the falling leaves, the girl looked at the woman and asked if she had a name. At this, the woman jerked to a stop. The old surge, the impulse to speak that rose within her belly and chest, overwhelmed. She wanted the girl and boy to know her name. Her tongue, rolled tightly and barred from moving inside its cage, strained against her teeth and cheeks, contorting her face with its rage. The boy stepped back when he saw the change on the woman’s face. The girl moved closer, though, to pat the hand she held like she might a frightened kitten or skittish, fallen bird. Let’s guess your name, she said. The woman’s jaw fell slack, as much as the stitches allowed. Her panic passed away. The boy saw her relax and began to hop around. A game, a game, he chanted. Across her eyes the sun sliced its blade, and though her vision bled with its light, she felt cheered by the girl’s hand and the boy’s excitement. Aurora. Jezebel. Serafina, guessed the girl. Her brother laughed and grabbed a fallen branch, whacking the moss-covered roots of the trees surrounding them. The woman laughed, too, short bursts of air through her nose. Her happiness shocked them all. The boy laughed again, a raucous sound, and she looked the little girl in the eye. A curve tested her mouth’s seams, more grimace than...

In this short trailer, we tease the next three poets to be featured on the Slushpile: C. Fausto Cabrera, Barbara Westwood Diehl, and Jodi Balas. We are so excited to be featuring poetry from these three very diverse writers. Have a quick listen for a taste of each poetic voice! (And remember – we pull our featured poets and writers from our submissions slushpile – polish up your work and submit it to Painted Bride Quarterly, knowing we might choose to feature it here!) This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller and Dagne Forrest

What were you wearing in the ‘90s, Slushies? Sleeveless flannel and crochet? Paco Rabanne? We’re beguiled by Emily Pulfer-Terino’s poems on this episode as we discuss how she slides us back to the ‘90s. She has us sniffing magazine perfume inserts and marveling at the properly cranky voice she invokes for an epigraph, borrowed from Vogue’s letters to the editor. What were we thinking wearing all those shreds? Only the girls on those glossy pages know for sure. For more context, check out Karina Longworth’s excellent podcast, You Must Remember This, and her recent deep dive into the bonkers eroticism of the 1990s. Plus, Sentimental Garbage’s episode on Dirty Dancing featuring Curtis Sittenfeld. For a great collection of poems that draws its title from grunge-era jargon (kinda, sorta, wink, wink), we recommend a book we love by our pal Daniel Nester: Harsh Realm: My 1990s. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. At the table: Jason Schneiderman, Marion Wrenn, Kathleen Volk Miller, Samantha Neugebauer, and Dagne Forrest Emily Pulfer-Terino is a poet and writer whose work has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Hunger Mountain, The Collagist, The Southeast Review, Poetry Northwest, Stone Canoe, The Louisville Review, Juked, and other journals and anthologies. Her poetry chapbook, Stays the Heart, is published by Finishing Line Press. She has been a Tennessee Williams Poetry Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and has been granted a fellowship for creative nonfiction at the Vermont Studio Center. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University, and she lives in Western Massachusetts. Author website: http://emilypulferterino.com/ Instagram: @epulferterino Grunge & Glory “You’re kidding. Tell me you’re kidding. At least I’ll know where to find my new wardrobe this year...in the nearest dumpster…talk about the Emperor’s New Clothes. Tsk, tsk.”—(Letter to the Editor)[1] What’s more glorious than a girl in a field, curled in the whorl of a deer bed, alfalfa haloing her dreams of fashion magazines while she plies matted hay, untatting her world? Bales score the landscape, parceling endlessness, parsing this solo tableau, while her heroes wrench their music into being in Seattle, gray, time zones away. What’s grunge if not her dense crochet of castoff couture curated from dumpsters and worn with a frisson of pride and shame: flowering nightgown, old ski boots, sweater turned lace in places by moths and age? And this field like where models pose in Vogue, each page itself a piece of land and an ethos framed inside a storyboard. Scala Naturae Like prying pods of milkweed so those astral seeds effuse— unseaming magazine ads for perfume. Anointing my wrists with scented glue, running each over the edge of a page, testing scents I aspired to buy and classifying my olfactory taxonomy. Grass evoked the world I’d known with hints of rain and magnolia slight as fog above an unmown field. DNA’s rosemary, oakmoss, and mint, ancient and clear as purpose; glass spiraled bottle signifying sentience and enduring iteration. Both ethereal and hyperreal, Destiny offered apricots, orchids, and roses-- bottle opaque as an eyelid, veil of petals sheer as promise. Samsara was amber, sandalwood, ylang ylang, peach. Syllabically lulling, its s and a extending, repeating, suggesting endlessness. Cycle of birth and death rebranded as serenity in ongoingness. Angel’s burst of praline and patchouli lit the crystal facets of that star, making heaven of my pulse and ordinary air. [1] Wynne Bittlinger, letter to the editor in Vogue US, February 1993

Finding flow in modern life is increasingly challenging, Slushies, but we sure found it here in two poems by Erica Wright. Loosely defined as the melting of action and consciousness into a single state, flow in poetry allows us to fully inhabit the world or experience conjured up by the poet. Nothing serves to distract or pull the reader out of the poem. How do we get there? There isn’t just one way. It helps when the poem’s form is attuned to the pacing required by the subject matter or focus. Strong beginnings always help -- and there are two fantastic ones here -- as well as a system of imagery that’s both relatable and unexpected. In “Marine Biology”, we see a conversational style used in parts of the poem that’s deeply grounding, and in “Too Many Animal Stories” the poem’s form supports its dense mosaic of images and moments. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, and Dagne Forrest. Erica Wright's latest poetry collection is All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned (Black Lawrence Press). She lives in Knoxville, Tennessee with her family where she enjoys looking at the mountains and not camping in them. Socials: Twitter @eawright, Instagram @ericawrightwrites, Facebook @ericawrightauthor, Author website Marine Biology Not even my dog knows me, hovers outside the bathroom as I wash blood from the porcelain, wipe up the floors. I feel more at ease with the mess than the pain. We’re not supposed to talk about that anyway, my fleet of would-be mothers who never labored but birthed something too. Mine half-seahorse, half-anemone like something you’d find in an off-season coastal gift shop after looking for whales and not finding any whales. And now my skin turns blue as if my veins are submarines surfacing after too long underwater. Did you know the Navy studies sharks in hopes of making better ships? Can you imagine? Mariners on megalodons. Let’s name them after our ancestors. Let’s hold the notion of them inside our heads until they’re real. Too Many Animal Stories In the same town where a man’s gun discharged, killing a woman across the street, we ordered sandwiches and watched tourists rent inner tubes to hold their bodies up in the river below. I’ve been sick for weeks now, bad sick at first, and now I can hold myself up. You started grinding your teeth at night, and it hurts to move your jaw in the morning. We joke about low points. We joke about how we’ll never leave this house again. Of all the days to miss, I can’t say why I latched onto that one in Helen, Georgia. We find a movie about the Trans Am Bike Race, and I make a joke about my dad’s old car with a phoenix on the hood, its wings spread with such precision that they never spilled over the sides. Sometimes a snake hid underneath and was so long it could stretch its body from one side of the two-lane road to the other— tail in one ditch, head in the other— a perversion of that joke about the chicken. The thing about being sick while the world has stopped is that I start to wonder if it’s all a carousel game, and we’re being punished for trying to jump off. When I push myself off the bathroom floor again, the tiles won’t stop spinning. Asbestos. I remember the real estate agent warned us about asbestos and not to take them out ourselves. I like the bathroom. The porcelain tub feels like ice when I rest my head against the side, wait for stillness. You take out the trash for us because of the rats. I don’t mind them, but once when one ran across my foot, I couldn’t get clean enough after. The neighbors coo over our new dog, leave chicken bones for her, which we pry from her teeth. Sometimes the incisors scrape my skin, and she never apologizes for her...

For a really fresh take on obsession, take a look here Slushies! Lisa Gordon’s short story is a masterclass in taking a popular form and quietly exploding it (pun intended). By turns deeply human, comical, sad, and just a little bit “out there”, Gordon’s story sweeps alongside a protagonist whose undying love for civilian astronaut Christa McAuliffe drives a story with the hallmarks of space exploration. NASA’s obsessive attention to detail, understanding of real world factors, and commitment to thinking outside the box are shared by Gordon, who tells a surprising and rewarding story. You might want to jump down the page and read or listen to it in full first, as there are spoilers in our discussion! Listen to the story Paul on Earth in its entirety (separate from podcast reading) And in the spirit of confession that permeates this story, our team is confessing their obsessions: You might want to read these related links: All Addicts Anonymous Christa McAuliffe and the 1986 Challenger explosion Parasocial relationships The Week in Longing, Dagne Forrest on Rust+ Moth (a recent poem by one of our editors that references the Challenger explosion and the late 2022 recovery of a piece of the shuttle off the Florida coast) This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, Marion Wrenn, Dagne Forrest, and Samantha Neugebauer, as well as technical team Ta’Liyah Thomas, Anthony Luong, and Sebastian Remetta Lisa Gordon's short fiction has been published in Paper Darts, ANMLY, Hypertext, Storychord and elsewhere. She lives in the Boston area and is working on two novels. Paul on Earth Paul had a hard time concentrating on the wedding. Maybeth had tears in her eyes, but then again, she cried at everything. The rabbi was saying words about how important trust is when it comes to love. Maybeth took his hands. She had nice, soft, small hands—Paul always liked that about her. She could do a lot with those hands: not least of which, much earlier in the morning, even though they weren’t supposed to see each other until the wedding (Maybeth had wanted it that way) he knocked on the door of her hotel room. Tap tap, tap tap, tap tap, so she would know it was him. He needed her, he said. He needed her to touch him. And she did. And he’d felt better, but only for a moment. He still couldn’t get Christa out of his mind. He still looked her up. Often. All the time, you might say. It had been years since 1986, but still—she was a household name. Christa McAuliffe. The whole thing had affected everyone, especially school children. It was one of Ronald Reagan’s most celebrated speeches, and he’d been a former movie star! Not that most people remember that. Now, there’s a show about it on Netflix. He still hadn’t watched it. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. She was still alive inside him like a constellation, burning layers through his skin. And now he was getting married, again, to another very, very nice lady. She knew everything, and she forgave him. He was getting a chance to start over. “Paul, Maybeth, do you take one another?” the rabbi said. “I do,” Maybeth said, squeezing his hands. “Yes,” Paul said. “I mean, I do. Yes.” Little lines crinkled adoringly around Maybeth’s eyes. Her eyes were the color of limestone. “Then it is my honor. To announce. You as husband and wife, to one another.” The guests roared as ceremoniously as a small crowd can, gathering to their feet, a wave of low thundering applause ebbed and flowed as they kissed. Paul knew next to none of them, but luckily, Maybeth had many friends. She was liked by many people, unlike Paul. It was one of the things Paul told her when they first met: I won’t bring much to your life. I’ve tried to change but— She had interrupted him. “That’s for me to decide.” Maybeth’s lips were slick...

We are enswirled in this episode, Slushies, enswirled! We discuss three poems by John Sibley Willliams, two of which are ghazals. Williams’ poems are the gravitational force around which our conversation about craft, form, fluidity, identity, and the flux and spaciousness found inside poetry spirals. Williams’ poems draw the swirl of our attention not only to the choices he makes on the page but to Agha Shahad Ali’s rules for real ghazals, Williams’ poetic conversation with Tarfia Faizullah, and his nod to Kavek Akbar’s “Gloves”. There is a pun these show notes want to make about guzzling ghazals, Slushies, but we are trying hard to resist it… At the table: Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Kathleen Volk Miller, Dagne Forrest, Samantha Neugebauer This episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist A.M.Mills, whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. John Sibley Williams is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Scale Model of a Country at Dawn (Cider Press Review Poetry Award) and The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award). He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review, Poetry Editor at Kelson Books, and founder of the Caesura Poetry Workshop series. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his partner, twin biracial six-year-olds (one of whom is beautifully transgender), a boisterous Boston Terrier, and a basement full of horror movie memorabilia. Author website, Facebook @ john.sibleywilliams Ghazal for Transparency / for Reflection My ghosts breathe accusingly—a winter mass, a mirror’s impermanent erasure—again shaving I’m sorry from the face over my face in the glass. It’s not just the birds—their abridged flight, the stains the sky wears today through this washable window—but my children’s tiny hands absolving the glass. Of guilt? Of shame? Is it his blood raging generations through my veins or this white- washed silence compelling me to pull our history, face-by-face, from its frames of glass? All this uneaten grain filling silo after silo—always at dusk, in my mind—swarmed now with mealworms & mites & someone else’s hunger. How it cuts the tongue like shards of glass. & those goddamned honeycombs, failing again. How our neighbor’s unable to keep his bees close enough to cultivate. Our house too is a small box of dust & wing & against the glass separating us from the world curtains blur our reflections like rain. Like stars cutting through cloud, a sustainable song. May my girls never be dead enough to fear themselves in our glass. Ghazal Beginning & Ending with Lines from Tarfia Faizullah Let me break free from these lace-frail microscopic bodies. My breath (always shared); trace it back to unmasked foreign bodies. Taking that last winter deep into her lungs. Breathe, I remind her. & remember me a child, Mom, not this unrecognizable foreign body. The sky’s aperture widens. Sight ≠ witness. The organ’s rusty song catches in the rafters (unascended). & all this rain leaking down on us like foreign bodies. Grey fox. White cells. Families fleeing one home for (hopes of) another. Some borders, perhaps, are meant to be trespassed by unforeign bodies. Row after perfect row = harvest. Harvest ≠ everyone is fed. Sated. Breaking up from the earth beneath, star thistle & bindweed. To us, foreign bodies. The day an autumn orphan, & we’re yanking roots. My daughter’s tiny misgendered fingers in mine, (pulling. Together), no body is foreign. Field of Anchors — for Kaveh Akbar Darkness on both sides. & wild grasses. Sun-hurt. Browning. So as not to drift. Too far from shore. A man. Palms the tiny church inside. The warm casing. Inside a god. Prays to another god. For more. Of himself. More devotion. One more detonation. Of roses. Less blood next time. Less field. Without end. Or is it more. That’s required to make a mirror. Of each window. All that untilled...

Are you ready to get primal, Slushies? We look at poems of birth and mothering that call on the senses as they shift between what’s animal and what’s human in us. Kathy celebrates the pure, messy pleasure of a classic tomato sandwich and Jason reminds us why an irregular opening line can be the hook a poem needs, while we all marvel at a poem’s ability to dazzle us with changing perspectives, locations, and personas. Oh, and strong titles get some much deserved love too. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, and Dagne Forrest Sarah Elkins lives in southern West Virginia where she is rounding the final curve of a four-year term as a councilperson in the City of Lewisburg, population 3,700ish. She is also chair of the Parks Commission (Yes, you should be thinking Leslie Knope). Sarah and her husband Max run Hammer Cycles, a bicycle shop in White Sulphur Springs, WV. She and Max founded and coach the Greenbrier Valley Hellbenders Youth Mountain Bike Team and work tirelessly on trail advocacy and mountain bike initiatives throughout the region. Sarah’s son, Tad, is a high school freshman and loves hearing poems about his birth and progression through puberty. Oh, yeah, Sarah writes poetry. That’s what she loves to do most. Therefore, she fills her time with all the aforementioned stuff to remain at an appropriate level of disequilibrium from which the poetry springs. Website: SarahElkins.com Birthing The summer before my son was born, I ate tomato sandwiches with mayonnaise, salt and pepper. The rain was so heavy in June, the fruit swelled on the vines and their skins ripped. I took big bites holding thick bread with two hands, pink rainwater running down both forearms to my elbows—everything reduced, then, to hunger. At night, curled on my side in the un-airconditioned dark I dreamt of big cats’ razor tongues dragging the length of my back, saber teeth at my throat, not tearing the skin but feeling for pulse, their muscled hips coaxing me into the sweaty delirium of my final weeks. The cats returned every night until twenty-six hours before I howled him into being, I opened. All the rain of June, and July leaving me for the hardwood floor where I crouched on all fours looking for flecks of vernix, tasting my wet fingers, sniffing the sweet water for signs it was time. The cats slunk away until now, eating this tomato sandwich, my first in twelve years— I recall I was a panther once. From the Tall Grass I floss at night after steak and butter. My house: unguarded range, bison huffing, ice-faced, hooves stamping an echo stutter. I do nothing in this boundless nothing. No thought, no synapse firing. Still hands still stained—berry juice of an empty morning. This room-less space, a translucent thin will through which I, good sow, whiff my boy’s homing. His trek complete, except for the recount— bighorn sheep, bull moose, near miss, eagle plume. I toss one sleek mink to the catamount. The grass lies down; walls rise around my room. Ursa fades. A house cat lurks in willow. I sip gin, smooth the pelt of my pillows.

Can you lean into experience without always needing meaning, Slushies? The psalm is a Christian form similar to a song or poem where meaning is often elusive unless the reader is prepared to put in the work. Sometimes, though, things just are, and we certainly encounter that here in some very satisfying ways. We talk about the importance of the pause or caesura in poetry, proofreading, and powerful image systems. We also just enjoy the experience of reading two gorgeously rendered poems full of both the specific and the mysterious. Links to things we discuss that you may dig: Poetry Foundation: Caesura definition Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. At the table: Marion Wrenn, Kathleen Volk Miller, Samantha Neugebauer, and Dagne Forrest John T. Leonard is a writer, educator, and poetry editor for Twyckenham Notes and The Glacier. He holds an M.A. in English from Indiana University. His previous works have appeared in Chiron Review, December Magazine, North Dakota Review, Ethel Zine, Louisiana Literature, Jelly Bucket, Mud Season Review, Nimrod International Journal, The Indianapolis Review, Genre: Urban Arts, and Trailer Park Quarterly among others. He lives in Elkhart, Indiana with his wife, three cats, and two dogs. Socials: Twitter @jotyleon and @TwyckenhamNotes Psalm Prone to wonder. Lord, I feel it. Nomad, no man, no son, father, sun. I am bright, rusted, and wretched. You turned the doorknob right, hot shower and cold bathroom tile. I was wrapped in that small, soaked rug. A place that filled the garden of our souls, superior and sewn, stones dancing across a lake. Look how Christian a puddle of vomit can be. You held me, let me breathe into your arm. You forked my tongue and sewed a map to North Dakota with that black medical lace. For Hell’s sake, I am holy, holy, calm, and true. Be escaped. Be fallen, black, and blue. My call to evaporate, pulled upwards to the real adventure. Wide awake now, bruised vanity, summer of head colds and bodies washed up on the pebbled shore. If I took it back, my sunglassed future glance, my walk of muses, my pacing lonely apartments, spitting on each and every brick. If I took it back, but not what I’ve suddenly become: a contrail of promises, sci-fi crimes, Saturn in the traffic. I’m chasing altars to the daylight of you. Feels like I feel it, prone to rip the husk of your lips. Still, the rusted son of red starlight, gospel music touching lovers in the limo behind the hearse. I am lime, let moonlight citrus me further. Then Sunday will come and sweep it all away, back into the rose quartz river of a psalm. Fledgling Waking up to the white bone of dawn; memory of light, half-life of darkness, a daily prophecy of frozen floorboards. This cold, fading silence of Sunday morning, falling like the ash of a thirty-year volcanic winter. The way all of our merit would vanish, if we gave up a moment of the day to plunge back into our dreams. Light, now imagined as radiant cloud or burning crown. The slow trudge outside, curse and prayer of woodpile. Eastern red cedar still asleep: erasure of termites, black snake of phone line limp with snow, sick fledgling whose eyes didn’t close, not even once throughout the night; who waited out the insectile buzz of street lamps, waited for one final glimpse of flame. Moments now, moments, and the flick of my lighter will catch its eye. The soft glow of cherry, the ritual of my ignorance, the weeks of feeling watched—so full of myself that I thought it must be God. By dusk, one of us dead and the other, none the wiser.

There’s a lot packed into this episode, Slushies, including sibilance and balancing gravity with a light touch. Differing perspectives and the resonance of history, both real and mythical, cascade through a trio of poems by Danielle Roberts. Jason worries that his erudition has collapsed momentarily, Kathy loves the rush of wanting to immediately re-read a poem, and Samantha reminds us of an Anne Carson line: “Aristotle says that metaphor causes the mind to experience itself in the act of making a mistake.” Oh, and Marion brings to life the idea of hearing a baby’s cries in the ceiling when she recounts living in the apartment below a family with newborn triplets! Links to things we discuss that you may dig: Jeanann Verlee’s Helen Considers Leaving Troy George Eliot’s Middlemarch Anne Carson’s Essay on What I Think About Most Elizabeth Bishop’s Collected Letters Jason Schneiderman’s How the Sonnet Turns: From a Fold to a Helix, APR Volume 49, Issue 3 British Antarctic Survey: Ice cores and climate change The Norton Reader Smartless Podcast (Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, Will Arnett) This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Samantha Neugebauer, and Jason Schneiderman Danielle Roberts is a queer poet from California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, DMQ Review, Okay Donkey, Prairie Schooner, Reed Magazine & others. When not writing poetry, she can be found drinking too much tea & pestering the nearest cat. Read more of her at sonnetscribbler.com. Socials: Instagram: @sonnetscribbler How can I leave this behind? after Jeanann Verlee’s Helen Considers Leaving Troy after a floral gin cocktail Do I want to live and die my whole life here— buried in county lines—or is it time to stretch the map? There’s more to plan than simply running away. while holding my niece Picking up the baby doesn’t help: I smell her hair & wonder if she thinks of me when I’m out of sight. Will she know? Her eyes stare into the distance along with mine. Maybe she travels in her dreams. Maybe she lives elsewhere. while eating dinner Gorging myself on routine, I chew bread & think about the bagels in New York. I live these sour- dough rituals—oven baked in centuries of families. A young tradition bound by water on all sides. They say it’s in the water. Doubtful, I gnaw on my nails. when people ask if I’ll have kids Come on, Karen—I just blew up my life & you’re asking if I’m ready to be a sacred vessel? The only answer I can give is to flee far away from anyone who had dreams for me or thought I could be marriage material. Go where all folks care about is which street I live above in the gridlocked graph or whether I’m walking fast enough. Blend. It would be easier than questions of barreness. when my ex wants to get back together Absolutely not. from the freeway exit Behind the wheel of my car, I carve trenches again—circle and retrace my path—map the small universe on foot, pace my cage. Maybe I take to the night sky or simply head east until I hit water. Gorges and grooves heal, scarred cutting board life. Do I keep driving? Where do I even go from here? These dreams that weren’t mine festering in my wake. What city takes such hazardous rot? How do I leave my family behind? How do I tell them I’m already gone? Extracting memories[1] Speak to me in layered tongues of bitten snow, slow molars carved with frost collected in the valleys between your teeth. The scientist bores a core— plucks the long memory from each glacier—this meter holds your first bicycle ride, this a bridal veil of volcanic ash from Pompeii, six cylinders of centuries trespass the sterile air—blink at the unforgiving sun. From the dentist chair, you look up at the light and this persistent body shrinks—cracked...

Slushies, get ready for some trailblazing poems in the form of mathematical proofs, theorems, and other types of mathematical reasoning that level their gaze at heartbreak. One poem even embeds a second poem as a footnote. Alex reminds us all of the hermit crab essay/poem format, prompting Sam to recall Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, in which the end of a powerful love is likened to the experience of shedding yet still living with an abandoned skin or shell. Come along for a ride with some poetic work that’s furious and logical in equal measure! Links to things we discuss that you may dig: Joe Wenderoth’s Letters to Wendy’s Samantha Hunt’s The Seas Maggie Nelson’s Bluets This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Samantha Neugebauer, Alex J Tunney, and Dagne Forrest Rei Alta is a black writer, disciple of science, artist, and proud supernerd. She resides in Massachusetts where she was born and raised. Rei spends most of her time supporting brilliant young people from historically marginalized communities in their exploration of science and engineering. Socials: Instagram: @reialtaspeak Inflection Point 1b Theorem 1.1. The pain, longing, and ambivalence I feel related to this particular past lover (hereafter “him”, “he” or “you”) is not unhealthy. Proof: By definition, “Time heals all wounds.” Suppose for all purposes, 11 years is considered to be ‘Time’. It is true that 11 years have passed, however I am not healed. Thus, this thing I feel is not really a wound. Theorem 1.2. There exists a value in this lover that I use to cope with a deficiency in my current state of being. Proof: By Theorem 1.1, this lover does not represent some larger, unresolved issue. It is true, however, that I still have been unable to let him go. Therefore, he must be notable for a different reason. By supposition, that different reason is that he and I had an unrivaled connection. I.e. While there is no such thing as soulmates, our cognitive compatibility was substantially higher than that of my previously observed matches. Hence, I feel an intensity through recollecting him such that most other things pale in comparison. Therefore, I remember him in order to feel something when I don’t. Theorem 2.1. There exists an absolute truth about why I loved him and why I haven't been able to let go. Proof: By definition, “All things happen for a reason.” Since it is true that loving him and being unable to let go has happened, there must be a reason that caused it. This reason must be the truth. Suppose not; i.e., suppose this reason was not the truth. Then it would not have possessed the power necessary to cause such a consequential thing to happen. Such a consequential thing did happen. Thus, there is an attributable reason that is the truth. Theorem 2.2. I must understand why I have not been able to let go—in order to let go. Proof: By my own definition, I am a finder of truth. By Theorem 2.1, there is a truth to be found. If there is a truth I have not yet found, then I must find it in order to exist since finding truth defines me. Thus, I have no path forward but to find the truth. ____________________________________________________________________________ CAVEAT: Due to the following factors, the validity of the proofs outlined above is questionable: As a result, extrapolation based on the conclusions laid out in the preceding section is not advised. ----more---- wave height CREST you approached after cycles of fire there was a tectonic shift fueled by molten rock and dressed up decay i believed your promise this time around — i felt it lift my feet TROUGH1 you receded re-defining “forever” as “only thirteen days” (a real trailblazer!) and like eddies forming behind Pinnacle Rock the reverse current...

If your story had a sound, Slushies. What would it be? A rush, a zuzz, a sizzle? David Landon’s “Bach, Onomatopoeia, and the Wreck” triggers a discussion of stories and sounds, and poems that resist narrative closure. Shane Chergosky’s “Headwind” takes us down a different path. Erasures, Slushies. Ammi right? Listen to us puzzle over the way erasures “make it new” and simultaneously obliterate and conjure the from which they’re made. Special note: Jason reads the erasure twice. First as a robot, then as a human. We love both versions-- of the poem, and Jason. And if you are hungry for more: take this and this and this. At the table: Marion Wrenn, Alex Tunney, Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, Larissa Morgano This episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist A.M.Mills, whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. David is never quite sure whether he is an actor who writes poetry or a poet who acts. And perhaps he can be forgiven his obsession with iambic pentameter: he has done a lifetime of Shakespeare, as an actor (New York, Nashville, and Alabama Festivals), director, and coach. His poetry—all iambic pentameter—has been published in Able Muse (Write Prize, winner), Georgia Review (Williams Prize, featured finalist), Southwest Review (Marr Prize, runner-up), the Dark House, Think Journal, and elsewhere. Officially, he is the Bishop Frank A. Juhan Professor of Theatre Emeritus at Sewanee, the University of the South. Bach, Onomatopoeia, and the Wreck For all we knew, it was a random chunk of interstellar rock, the rear-end crash that brought us to a halt. Dinner was out, of course, and the Bach too, I realized, feeling it in my neck, and standing there in the rain, examining my totaled car, the guilty driver soaked, in tears. The cops were nice enough, did what they had to do efficiently. The wrecker did show up, eventually, and we began to cope. And since it’s now collision story time, the word I’m hearing in my head is ‘thud’. There’s ‘clunk’, of course, or ‘jolt’, ‘wham-bang’, or ‘thwack’. ‘Thwack’ has that sudden, can’t-be-happening feel, as in, “I was just sitting, reading Kant, when suddenly, inside my head, I felt this ‘thwack’, and everything went blank.” But no! The word that truly bongs the knell is ‘thud’, essence—onomatopoetically— of impact, ‘thud’, from dice, to hand-grenade, to asteroid. We need the stupid ‘d’ of ‘doo-doo’, ‘dodo’, ’dude’, or ‘dud’, or ‘dead’. ‘You’re-done-for-d’ is what we’re up against; you never know when out of nowhere, ‘thud’! But on the other hand, there’s Bach: the Bach we missed, the works for cello solo. Bach: initial ‘b’, a kind of plosive bump, terminal ‘ch’, a bit of friction in the throat, but in between the ‘b’ and ‘ch’, the ‘ah’, release: sustained and open, ‘ah’. Think of the bow colliding with the string, a subtle thud, a scrape, and out floats Bach, genial Bach-analia of dark and light, a theory of the universe as music: bang, and then the sarabande, the minuet, the allemande, the gigue. Shane Chergosky was born in Minnesota where he was raised on stuffed cabbage and heavy metal. His work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, HASH Journal, Juke Joint, and is forthcoming in Adirondack Review. He holds an MFA from George Mason University and lives in Washington, D.C. Headwind ? When I think about the story she told me about that I don’t even wanna hurt the guy. I don’t know if I could meet that person and act normal. I remember I did that when I was about 20,21. I didn’t go into CVS with Xunaxi to What a bastard I was . And // ith what courses I take.Luckily I can only take two (!!!). Maybe a lit course and…an elective? It’d be SO cool to do screen- writing. Finally would have a chance to write that SciFi…I ordered “The Art of Syntax” after Phebe brought it over. I honestly get so...

How much meaning do you need, Slushies? When language lingers, when images form a spiral, a murmuration, might a poem’s mood hold meaning close to its heart and simultaneously at bay? And, also, how do you pronounce ‘ichor’? All this and more in a rollicking conversation about poet Nick Visconti’s new work, “Burial” and “Unmake These Things.” And speaking of things, listen for Samantha on Anne Carson’s zen koan dollop of insight from Red Doc>: “To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.” Or for Kathy and Marion confessing their North Carolina ritual groping of the Dale Earnhardt statue in Kannapolis, NC. And finally: geese. Nick Visconti’s poem triggered a reverie-- that time when we accidentally stumbled into the annual Snow Geese migration in Eastern Pennsylvania. At the table: Dagne Forrest, Kathleen Volk Miller, Alex Tunney, Samantha Neugebauer, Marion Wrenn. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. Nick Visconti is a writer living with an artist and a cat in Brooklyn. He plays softball on Sundays. Burial It is love, not grief, which inters the deceased in a hill made of clay. Sod embraces crossed arms, legs, eyes shut looking forever at nothing beneath our feet—a container for men unmade, no boat to speak of. No oars darkly dipped in water as we pictured it would be. Instead, a single shred of light piercing every lens it catches. Instead, a pathway none cross, just follow through and up and up—the cusp of ending, nothing at all like the end. He isn’t in this yard when his children roam. Still, they dig, they expect to find him: braided leather, steel-wound aglets, his black opal intact. Unmake these things The sand before me like water, fluid and holy under the cratered crown nearly half-awake, circling as I draw the one way I know—stick figures in a backdrop scenery, thick- headed and content, wheeling psalms of birds, wide-sloping M’s grouped in permanent murmur. I don’t bother with the sun’s face, bare in the upper left corner of the page. I’ve made a habit out of hoarding ornaments, given them their own orbit like the russet ichor dashed with cinnamon I choke down every morning and afternoon. The city’s puncture-prone underbite nips the sky, consuming the bodies above—thunderheads, billboards notched, alive in the glow of that always- diurnal square. There’s been talk lately of irreversible chemistry, an acceptable stand-in for cure among believers and experts in and on the subject of Zoloft-sponsored serotonin. A first weaning is possible. Do not bother with a second.