yea, a heart is a lively creature, filled
with quiet musings,
subtle thrummings,
murmurous hummings.

aye, she is rapturous and verdant,
swindling common sense
with fictive branches
white with blossoms.

yet, she is the taproot of things,
descending through
the earth warm
with worms, and moist.

nay, she does not die.

(Click image twice to enlarge)

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Elizabeth Pinborough graduated from Yale Divinity School with a Master of Arts degree in religion and literature. She desires to resurrect women’s voices from the past, and through her writing she seeks to create a space for feminist historical and theological exploration. Her poetic journeys include “A Shaker Sister’s Hymnal,” which first appeared in Dialogue and which now appears in Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poets. Most recently she collected a series of essays and photographs titled Habits of Being: Mormon Women’s Material Culture, which is being published by Exponent II in spring 2012. Her credo is, “Snails are people, too.”

Roses are red;
Their odor is heady.
LONNOL month’s here–
Are your Valentines ready?

It’s Love of Nature Nature of Love Month on Wilderness Interface Zone, and we’re looking to publish love abroad.  Do you have a message of friendship and love you’d like to send someone? WIZ is looking for original poetry, essays, blocks of fiction, art, music (mp3s), videos or other media that address the subject of love while making references to nature.  We’ll also take the flipside: We’ll publish work about nature intertwined with themes of love.  Besides original work you’re welcome to send favorite works by others that have entered public domain.  So if you have a sonnet you’ve written to someone dear to your heart–even and perhaps especially your pet hamster Roley Poley or faithful horse Old Paint–or perhaps a video Valentine or an essay avowing your love for a natural space near and dear–please consider sending it to WIZ.  Click here for submissions guidelines.

Besides rolling out a (hopefully) heart-embroidered carpet of love-art, we’ll also be running two WIZ, nature-laced, romantic DVD giveaways, Typhoon, starring Dorothy Lamour and pre-Music Man Robert Preston, and a Pre-Hays Code movie, King of the Jungle, starring scantily clad Buster Crabbe as Kaspa the Lion Man.

We hope you’ll join the celebration.  Let’s warm up February with fond feeling.

The larks trilled their cries that
Nested in my ears in birdsong.

I saw the thaw of winter had begun.

Soon spring would rush in on her
Pastel heels bringing forth blooms.

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To read Linda’s bio and enjoy more of her verse on WIZ go here, here, and here.

the hand of winter stretched out
his grey gloves and poured snow
out of his pitcher it fell upon the
world in cold numbing waves it
washed away all the colors of fall —

it beat back my favorite lilies into
the hand of white dust like people
are prone to beat one another into
the dust for a sense of self worth. I
don’t understand why winter thinks

he needs to be such a bully he beats
his cold fiercely upon the land blasts
his wailing banshee winds upon the
zephyr and rips remaining leaf missives
from trees with such force they yelp.

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To read more of Linda’s verse on WIZ, go here and here.

I watched as the white of snow
starched the earth clean of sins —

like the Savior washed me white
by his blood.  It seemed a stark

contrast of his shedding white for
red and the earth shedding scarlet

for white, but I think He favors the
irony just as much as we do. I stood

in the bone numbing cold of winter,
letting its reflection embrace me tight.

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To read Linda’s bio and more of her poetry on WIZ go here.

I watched the world around me;

winter swallowed me in snow —

the skies were somber and grey.

Only a cardinal pierced the scene

of melancholy waves that washed

their newness upon the earth with

the promise of renewed hope.  As

the pains of yesterday were taken

from the land in ivory tears, I was

poured into chalices of reflection.

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Linda Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh and raised in the rural town of Conneautville. She has a Bachelors in English-Literature from Edinboro University. Her poetry has appeared in several magazines the latest of which include: Skive, The Scarlet Sound, Speech Therapy, Itasca Illinois & Willowtree Dreams, Dead Snakes, Carnage Conservatory, and The Camel Saloon.

In the tar-like black sky
structures float like ghosts
through the illumination from bulbs
hovering like flying saucers over
the road. No heavenly
luminaries accompany me on this lonely journey.
Only those cones of light brighten the route ahead.
Nevertheless, I must persist.
I am a modern Hebrew
fleeing the Egypt of the office, escaping to
the Promised Land of the field. There,
as I stand on nude ground,
a lunar face and stellar eyes will look
upon me from the depths of the universe
and remind me of the Creator of this grandeur.

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Ashley Suzanne Musick was born in Fountain Valley, California, on February 26th, 1989, and raised and homeschooled in Anaheim.  In 2010, she moved to southwest Kern County, where she lives and works on a farm and writes in her spare time.  You can read more of her verse on WIZ here.

Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poetry, edited by frequent WIZ contributor Tyler Chadwick, made its debut at 2011 end in impressive style. Tyler reports that Fire in the Pasture has “risen as high as #2 in both Hot New Anthologies and Hot New Inspirational & Religious and #12 in Hot New Poetry.”  The Kindle edition “slipped into the Kindle Store’s top 100 Best Sellers in 20th Century American Poetry.”  Congratulations, Tyler and Th.!  For WIZ readers’ information, several WIZ contributors, including Sarah Dunster, Jon Ogden, WIZ’s new contributing editor Jonathon Penny, Steve Peck, Sarah Page, and myself have work included in its pages.  Ángel Chaparro Sainz, another frequent WIZ contributor, wrote the anthology’s afterword.  It’s a pleasure to see that so many WIZ folk threw kindling into Fire in the Pasture’s multi-colored flames.  A poem by Elizabeth Pinborough, another poet published in Fire in the Pasture, will appear on WIZ in February.

Karen Kelsay, a fine formalist poet and constant lyrical presence here at WIZ, has begun a publishing company, White Violet Press. You can reach the press’s accompanying blog with submission guidelines by clicking on the image to the left.  While most publications are by invitation only, WVP will look at unsolicited manuscripts year round. White Violet Press is now open for submissions, so WIZ writers–especially WIZ writers of a formalist persuasion–please go have a look and support Karen in her new creative venture.

In November 2011, my essay, “Plato’s Alcove,” was awarded finalist status and an honorable mention in Torrey House Press’s creative nonfiction competition.  The essay tells about my first trip to the desert.  An earlier version won 1st place in the 2003 Utah’s Original Writers Competition.  The version I sent to Torrey House is a more highly stylized, mixed-genre experiment. Want to read “Plato’s Alcove” at Torrey House’s website?  Go here.

Profound apologies for the lateness of this next announcement, but Fortunate Childe Publications published its autumn anthology, Vintage, in October 2011.  WIZ contributors Karen Kelsay and Carla Martin-Wood also have verse published therein (search on their names in the search bar to the left to read their poetry published on WIZ).  Also featured in Vintage: four of my poems, including “Deer in the City,” “Closing Time,” and two poems not on WIZ.  Leslie Ellison, publisher of Fortunate Childe, nominated my poem “Deer in the City,” which also appears at WIZ, for a Pushcart Prize.  This is my second Pushcart Prize nomination. Thank you, Fortunate Childe!  To find information about Vintage or purchase copies of this lovely seasonal anthology, click on the picture to the left.  I will soon be buying a few for myself. Several poets included in the anthology recorded readings of their work that you listen to here.

WIZ will be running its popular Love of Nature Nature of Love event again in February.  To celebrate Valentine’s Day, all month long we’ll publish poetry, essays, blocks of fiction, art, music (mp3s), video or other media that address the subject of love while making references to nature.  Or it could go the other way around: We’ll publish work about nature that also happens to give a nod to love.  We’re seeking submissions of original work or you can also send favorite works by others that have entered public domain.  So if you have a sonnet you’ve written to someone dear to your heart–even and perhaps especially your pet hamster Roley Poley or faithful horse Old Paint–or perhaps a video Valentine or an essay avowing your love for a natural space dear to your heart–please consider sending it to WIZ.  See the submissions page in the navigation bar above for submissions guidelines.

We’ll breakfast at Las Brisas when we’re gray,
Discussing all our commonalities
And differences, admiring the breeze.
We’ll chatter and remark about the way

The rocking eucalyptus branches seem
To hammock threads of morning sun along
The coast. Pale clouds will sift to butter-cream
And melon, swimming through a blue sarong

Of tinctured sky. I’ll scan the beach and sea
Where I once played in tide pools as a child,
And you will say: The waves are much more mild
On Devon’s shore, I really miss Torquay.

I’ll point to where the purple mussel shells
Are found, then Catalina’s outline might
Appear beyond the shoals of blue-green swells.
We’ll venture down the path and look for white

Sails cutting southward, tilting toward the shore
Where long ago we bathed and sunned before;
And like two cockle halves worn from the weather,
We’ll linger by the oceanfront together.

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To read Karen’s bio and more of her verse on WIZ go here, here, here, here, and here.

Today I read your verses, and I wept.
Your loss, transcending centuries, has torched
a hole in my self-pity, scattered ash
across four hundred years, and scorched

my martyrdom into the oak-slat floor.
The sad account of how your house burned down,
your passing of the ruins every day.
Each broken brick of future, smudged and brown.

And now I know the leaving of my home
cannot compare. The maple gum and oak
will always weave through bougainvillea blooms,
a mourning dove will flutter in her cloak

of spring magnolia leaves. The window seat
and lattice will remain. My children played
their games with our old dog along this hedge.
And still, I read the words your hand has laid

across the page, that all is vanity.
I hear the crackle of your faith renew.
And realize you never asked for more
than hope in Him who hath enough to do.

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To read more of Karen’s bio and more of her poetry on WIZ, go here, here, here, and here.

If you would like to read “Verses upon the Burning of our House, July 18th, 1866,” by Anne Bradstreet, go here.