Sara Backer has two chapbooks: Bicycle Lotus (Left Fork) which won the Turtle Island Poetry Award and Scavenger Hunt (dancing girl press). A book of poetry, Such Luck, is forthcoming from Flowstone Press. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has recent or upcoming poems in Qu, Nonbinary Review, Crannóg, Tar River Poetry, Noble/Gas Qrtly, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Gargoyle. Website: sarabacker.com.
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Thanks so much to everyone who submitted to our 2019 Spring Writing Contest. This year’s theme was fury. We received hundreds of submissions, and it was a hard choice, but after careful consideration we’re thrilled to announce this year’s winner:
“Incensed” by Alison Theresa Gibson
Congratulations, Alison! She will be receiving $50. We’ll also be publishing a special print edition with her story and all of this year’s finalists:
FINALIST: “I Didn’t Cry At Her Funeral” and “Instead” by Rachel Nix
FINALIST: “Butcher” by Courtney LeBlanc
FINALIST: “School Bus” by Sara Backer
Photo credit: Russ Rowland
by Tess Tabak
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma is gloriously weird, an experimental triumph. It forever changed the landscape of Broadway when it debuted in 1943. Previously, songs tended to be interchangeable – removing them would have little impact on the story. Oklahoma set a new standard where songs were expected to advance the plot.
Last year, director Daniel Fish opened a conceptual, pared-down revival meant to reveal Oklahoma’s “darkness.” It’s received heaps of praise for revealing the show’s uncomfortable center. His pretentious, sexist, creepy production is up against Kiss Me Kate for Best Revival of a Musical this year. Oklahoma is almost certainly going to take home the Tony, and I hate it.
More than celebrating Oklahoma’s darkness, the show seems like an exercise in onanism for Fish, who basks in his “auter” vision. The actors sit around and pout, much like they do in the promo video below. Continue reading
Prospect Park is “Brooklyn’s beating heart,” according to Lucie Tiberghien. This year, she and her co-producer Garth Belcon brought a staged reading of Moliere’s play The Misanthrope to the Le Frak Center. She says that “just like Shakespeare has a home in Central Park, I thought Molière (who, if he were alive today, would most
certainly live in Brooklyn!) should have a permanent home in Prospect Park.”
certainly live in Brooklyn!) should have a permanent home in Prospect Park.”
POEM FOR KATIE, QUEEN OF OHIO #88
Speak to the cicada.
They have the violent
sounds we need
to coal the ridges
of Ohio, to set the fires
& watch the state run
away from complacency.
The rich will cover
their ears, Katie.
The rich will drop
their guard. Take all
that you can.
POEM FOR KATIE, QUEEN OF OHIO #89
I have great hopes
that you will have
your mother’s dark
hair. If you can be her
continuing, if you can
be her without
all of that goodness
you might just take
the unpretty state
of things here
& thrive amidst
your revolution.
POEM FOR KATIE, QUEEN OF OHIO #90
Dear young lady,
if anybody else
addresses you
in this way,
you should probably
take their property
first, then give
their lilies to the sky,
& then burn your name
in their field.
Fuck any minimizing
of your ecstatic.
Darren C. Demaree is the author of ten poetry collections, most recently “Lady, You Shot Me”, which was published by 8th House Publishing. He is the recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louis Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.
Photo credit: Matthew Dunivan
It occurred to me at some point during our second date that Mike might not exist in real time.
When we first met, he seemed friendly—cruelty-free, like a human-sized rabbit. We ate at Lenny’s Subs off I-35. On the way, he wheeled his big, white Texas truck backwards through the drive-thru of a shuttered restaurant. It seemed like the perfect accident—a ploy to make me accept his wonky habits.
Waiting in line at the shop, he cracked jokes that made me roll with laughter. I told him I used to work there—that I was once a struggling sandwich artist who was so busy fixing cold cuts and meatball marinara, I hardly had time to sit down and eat them. Continue reading
I’m dreaming
Always
Of my grandparents
My preacher
Of you as a small boy
The nights are days
Of finding you all
In turns
And patterns
Fields and haunts
Unearthing
Old treasures
And smiling
They minister
To the migratory in me
But you look at me
Helpless
As a broken-winged bird
And I’m trying to figure out
How to mend you.
Oak Ayling is an English poet whose work, both current & forthcoming, can be found in the Literary Magazines Anti Heroin Chic, From Whispers to Roars, Foxglove Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Memoir Mixtapes & in print anthologies ‘For the Silent’ from Indigo Dreams Publishing & ‘Light Through the Mist’ from author Helen Cox.
Follow her on Twitter @OakAyling and on Instagram @oakayling
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