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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
It’s here I pause with each December, where
the snow-trimmed walls of timeworn brick align
beneath the windowsill and winter’s bare
limbs bend beneath a delicate and fine
glossing of frost. It’s here I garner all
my thoughts of months gone past, beside the sheers
and yellow paisley chair. A woolen shawl,
a pearl and knit of smiles and raveled tears,
is wrapped [...]
WIZ readers and writers: Remember that the deadline for Torrey House Press’s Creative Literary Nonfiction Contest (2,000-10,000 words) is midnight, September 30th. First Prize: $1000. Second Prize: $250. Third Prize: $100. There’s a $25 entry fee.
Torrey House is offering a special arrangement for entrants who can present “reasonable evidence” that they’ve bought Torrey House’s first [...]
Frequent WIZ contributor Karen Kelsay’s new book of poetry, Lavender Song, is out and available for sale here. Karen’s formalist poetry is a well-kept garden of lovely sensibilities. For samples of her work published on WIZ, go here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Writers: The deadline for Torrey House Press’s creative non-fiction contest is [...]
While we’re teetering on the very edges of our seats gripping our arm rests watching the heated race for the Most Popular Poem Award, I have a few announcements I’d like to make.
________________________________________________________________________________
Thanks, Karen, for providing this photo.
I never knew you held a rosary
of lilies in your heart, or meadows filled
with songbirds in your hand, that chirped and trilled
into the night. I could not sense the sea,
or brimming emerald pools that filled your days
and buoyed you up, when morning could not find
one star. Your quiet life is intertwined
with jasmine flowers, washed in [...]
_________________________________________________________________________________
Botanical gardens rock.