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Back Story: Returning by Linda Leschak

2012-01-18T14:24:24Z

The story “Returning” was born from a few different concepts that had been bouncing around in my head. I’d been reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and found myself fairly amazed at how the Tibetan tradition looks at death. Death is neither the end, nor the beginning—it’s just another part of the long journey of a person’s life(lives). The idea that this life is a training ground and dying means going somewhere we’ve already been. That the lessons learned this time around are cumulative and every life we live builds on wisdom we’ve already acquired.

To me, that melds right in with the famous quote from Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin when he said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” I’ve been known to take that concept in a few different directions—like pondering the notion that this body of mine was created only to be inhabited by a spirit seeking purchase. Regardless of which tradition I examine that through I find myself conjuring up images from a science fiction movie where aliens invade and take over our bodies.

Ah, but when I find myself going too far in that direction, I try to navigate back toward the less deviate. Like how our bodies are, in fact, created and born of water: the egg tucked away in its mucous membrane, the seed and its inexplicable swim through the watery murk, the fetus, floating, living and breathing the amniotic fluids. All culminating in a rush of broken birthing waters. And from that emerges a human being comprised, as it were, mostly of water!

So, into these ponderings wanders Beatrice who not only knows all of this at a cognitive level but feels it viscerally. After Dan’s death she feels the lure of the water drawing her. She moves to the beach, positioning herself closer to what she knows is her own source. She hears it calling her from deep within her dreams, she paints its images into her canvases. For Beatrice Dan’s death becomes a turning point, a time to start again, to find a new beginning. She begins to feel that this life—the life of Beatrice—had been about relationship and that she and Dan had both learned that lesson well. She realizes that what she had with him can never be matched, and she sees that now it’s simply her time to return home.

Linda Leschak lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, son and two Boston Terriers. She earned her undergraduate degree from the Union Institute and University at Vermont College. She’s had her work included in several publications including the Lone Star College’s Inkling Magazine, the International Poetry Festival at Round Top Texas, and the E-zines, Rose & Thorn Journal and The Criterion. She’s an active member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and is currently juggling two works in progress: a middle grade fantasy and a contemporary young adult novel. Find Linda LALeschak.com or lindaleschak.blogspot.com. Read "Returning" in the fall 2011 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal.

Special Announcement: Changes for Rose &Thorn in 2012

2012-01-15T16:53:05Z

Announcement! Announcement! Announcement!

Rose & Thorn Journal is undergoing a major change. We are currently in the process of transitioning from a quarterly to a semi-annual journal beginning with our spring issue this year, which will go live May 15 (instead of April 15), and following with our fall issue, which will go live November 15.

As a result of these changes, our submittal period dates have been updated on our website for both prose and poetry. Please make sure to familiarize yourself with these new dates so we don’t miss out on receiving your wonderful submissions due to technicalities! From now on, submissions will only be accepted and read during the following months:

Submittal Period                       Issue                      Publication Date
December 1 – February 28           Spring                     May 15
June 1 – August 30                      Fall                         November 15

Along with these new changes to R&T, we’re also excited to announce the addition of Robin McAndrew to our Poetry Department and Alaine Benard as our Art Director-at-large. Robin has a long history of working in both the written and visual arts, and Alaine will expand our visual art offerings by creating a virtual gallery that readers will be able to peruse on our site and the blog. Please join us in welcoming them aboard, and please take a moment to stop by our Staff Page to read their bios and to get to know them better. As always, we consider our readers to be the best, most generous readers in the cyber sphere, and we are delighted any time you help to spread R&T news and buzz across the social media waves.

Back Story: A Vivid Portrait in Black and White & Promiscuous Saxophone by John C. Mannone

2012-01-11T21:11:12Z

Sometimes the genesis of a poem is just as fascinating as the poem itself. In an essay, “Seducing your Muse,” I suggest creative outlets might be the stimulus to creativity. If that proverbial “writer’s block” occurs, then a respite in another creative art will often recharge the creative mind. Therefore, it should not be surprising to find literary works stimulated by visual arts. The surprise might be that abstract art might be a better stimulus than concrete art. The mind desperately tries to “make sense of it.” I think this is how “A Vivid Portrait in Black and White” originated.

As a Chattanooga Writers Guild member, I attend a monthly poetry workshop at the founding member’s home. The artistic atmosphere of paintings and sculptures in a spacious home is visually stimulating. A Rothko painting (No. 61) hangs on her wall—layers of purples, blues and grays striate the “canvas,” with the texture paint plainly visible in the large reproduction. Its “simplicity” is intriguing. The geometry and texture of paint made me think of planks of wood and other shapes. I could almost make out ships, or people in them. The blue hints at sky and sea, the purple at something painful, like sacrifice. But the violets also appear in a natural twilight. There is something about twilight that is inescapably symbolic about transitions: day into night, life into death. All of this worked in my subconscious giving me a collage of glimpses linked by associations: ship’s planks, sorrow, life and death, color…people of color, black & white, slave ships. I remembered reading about the Henrietta Marie, which went down in a Florida storm, with all hands onboard. Though the slaves were sold in Haiti before the fateful storm, I imagined other situations when a slave ship might have gone down in a storm, the shackled human beings drowning with the crew. I am haunted by images like that.

I quickly jotted down initial images, but it would take another year to fashion the poem you now see. I wanted imagistic movements with smooth transitions. That required rhythms and fluid language. To preserve starkness without a disturbing staccato effect, I used internal consonance to achieve a consonantal rhyme of sorts often found in elegiac poems. I used this together with the roll-off pitch of words. It’s like having B-flat rhythms in the minor keys that Blues musicians use. The sad or melancholy effects are handled by language, not just the images of words.

“Promiscuous Saxophone” on the other hand, arose rather quickly to a finished product in a few revisions. It’s funny how that happens. It’s rare, but true. At a monthly Barnes & Noble open mic, we were tasked to write a poem inspired by a ten-item list. It's amazing what strange things come out of such prompts. Word association is a great prompt (see the essay linked above) that has led to dozens of published poems since I began writing poetry seriously in May 2004. There is something creative about trying to use words in ways we don’t normally do.

Here is the list: voice, aim, scrub, annoy, course, thrust, color, patient, an exotic fruit, a type of musical instrument, and embouchure (an optional word). This last word, provided by a trombone player/slam poet in the crowd, intrigued me. It has texture and I decided to use it. According to Microsoft Word’s Encarta dictionary, embouchure could be (1) the mouth of a river, (2) the mouth of a valley where it becomes a plain, (3) the adjustment of the lips and tongue in playing a wind instrument, or (4) the mouthpiece of a wind instrument.

The musical instrument category would surely facilitate that word. But why didn’t I use trombone? The word is not as musical to my ear as saxophone. And I was thinking of saxophone because of another venue near Chattanooga — a coffee house called Pasha’s in St. Elmo — where the jazz beats of “The Undoctored Originals” (a group of musicians, each just happens to have a Ph.D.) accompany poetic voices. There’s something sexy about a saxophone, maybe from it’s a linguistically subliminal effect or the melancholy atmosphere it can produce — loneliness inviting comfort. This is the genesis of the poem, but context was still missing.

Why not love? It’s generally good advice is to stay away from writing about it unless one can do it with freshness and avoid the usual catharsis and sentimentality. Someone once said to me, “kiss me with poetry.” I recalled that, flexed it to “kiss me with music,” and used a variation of that beautiful line here. So yes, I wrote a love poem and let the sensuality of language enhance the images.

John C. Mannone is a physicist who claims his right-brain came out of comatose in 2004 as he discovered the poetry of words as well as that of equations. In fact, life is poetry. He is passionate about all of it. He lives in beautiful east Tennessee. He is widely published in both literary and speculative fiction journals (and is the poetry editor of Silver Blade). Recent work appears in Conclave: A Journal of Character, Magnapoets, Numinous: Spiritual Poetry, and Hinchas de Poesia. Read “A Vivid Portrait in Black and White” and “Promiscuous Saxophone” in the fall 2011 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal.

Back Story: (Parent)hetical by Jessie Carty

2012-01-04T17:44:24Z

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Two of my poems have appeared previously in Rose and Thorn Journal, but I want to tell you a bit of the back story regarding my most recently publication: "(Parent)hetical."

The first thing you may notice about the poem is that the title uses parenthetical marks. In 2010 I became interested in using parenthetical marks in poetry. Part of my fascination came after reading work by Cati Porter (who also has a great blog post about the ways parenthesis may be used as a rhetorical device in poetry).

In the case of “(Parent)hetical” I used the parenthesis to find, and set apart, words within words. As I was working on the poem, I found that I could also make a bit of a phrase out of the words within words. Thus you could read the poem, just in the parenthesis, as Parent - as if it was a title- our fine ailing parent who is an idea.

Does that fit in with the theme of the poem? Did I cheat a bit by having “ail” and “ing” in two different words? Maybe yes on both, but the joy of trying something new—like playing with parenthetical marks—is that you can determine what rules you want to use.

In other poems, I have used the parenthesis to indicate that the words inside the marks can be read separate from the rest of the poem, or you could say that they add a different meaning if you put them back in.

If you haven’t played with parentheticals, I’d highly recommend it. It was a fun exercise.

Jessie Carty's writing has appeared in publications such as, MARGIE, decomP and Connotation Press. She is the author of four poetry collections which include Fat Girl (Sibling Rivalry, 2011) as well as the award winning full length poetry collection, Paper House (Folded Word 2010). Jessie teaches at RCCC in Concord, NC. She is also the editor for Referential Magazine. She can be found around the web, especially at jessiecarty.com. Read (Parent)hetical in the fall 2011 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal.

Back Story: Courtesy Kiss by Kim Bond

2011-12-14T22:26:32Z

“Courtesy Kiss” was originally inspired by When Harry Met Sally. If it’s a good movie, it makes good inspiration for a short story, right? From the popular film, I borrowed the idea of two strangers who exchange views mainly through dialogue with some romantic tension and light humor. I decided a discount store was an ideal setting for the unlikely couple to meet.

Once I had written the first paragraph, I saw the crossing boundaries theme emerge. Humans create boundaries around things we consider sacred, such as our time, morals, and money. Alternately, we trample other people’s boundaries to fulfill our own needs and desires. Bit by bit, I wrote this tango between my two characters. When it came time to conclude the dance, I examined myself for insight into human nature. One boundary I confess to standing firm on is my emotional boundary line. Like the main character, I refuse to let others cross it, and sometimes deny myself access to it as well. Nonetheless, I recognize emotions are finest when shared with other people. “Courtesy Kiss” is the culmination of cinematic inspiration, cultural observation, and deep self-examination behind the scenes, but it reads like a charming tale.

Other ponderings by Kim Bond can be found in Gloom Cupboard, Midnight Screaming, and Full Armor Magazine. The author enjoys life in St. Louis with her compatible quarreler and their two children. Read “Courtesy Kiss” in the fall 2011 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal. Email Kim at k.bondofstl@yahoo.com to discuss writing, human nature, culture, faith and/or tailless cats.

Back Story: Tug and Pull by Ruth Hill

2011-12-07T15:48:53Z

“Tug and Pull” was written at the 2011 Summer Literary Seminars in Montreal. Tony Hoagland gave us five minutes to respond to his classroom prompts. He had us study differing styles of poetry, rather than poets or poetic principles. In the same way, one might listen to a good guitar lick, then write a new song. His prompts focused on soulful inspiration rather than structural analysis. His class expanded our views of poetry beyond our personal limits.

Ruth Hill was born and educated in upstate New York. She has traveled North America extensively, including one year in VISTA Appalachia, and two years exploring Alaska. Ruth has sailed all over British Columbia, working on light stations, log scaling, and is now a Certified Design Engineer. In her first two years of writing, over 100 of her works have received awards or publication. Ruth lives in isolation, and therefore, craves email. Read "Tug and Pull" in the fall 2011 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal.

Back Story: Rescue by Lou Gaglia

2011-11-30T14:40:11Z

The idea for “Rescue” came from looking at an old photo of me coming out of my grandparents’ cellar. I wrote the story all the way through the first time and liked it.

Hooray! Finished!

Soon after, though, I hated it but didn’t know why for a long time except that I felt there was too much past and not enough of the present. Gradually, as it swam around inside me, the past events of the story took over, until eventually, almost the entire piece became the story of the kids, Rosemarie’s and the narrator’s. I could only finish writing it when I realized that the narrator’s reaction to a past memory was the story, and that the memory had to be clear. All of this took me many rock-headed months to figure out.

Rosemarie was a composite of some people I’d known, which is why I liked her best, because I saw them in her. The boy was an eleven-year-old who really only wanted to play and watch baseball. He had no idea who was in front of him, suffering. The hardest part of writing the story, really, was staying out of it—letting Rosemarie suffer without interfering. There was nothing the boy could do, and there was nothing his older self could do, eleven years later. There was nothing I could do as the writer, either, except let her get walloped and just take it.

Lou Gaglia’s stories have appeared recently in Bartleby Snopes, Breakwater Review, and Lowestoft Chronicle, and are forthcoming in Sheepshead Review and Spilling Ink Review. Read “Rescue” in the fall 2011 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal. And contact Lou at lou.gaglia@yahoo.com.

Back Story: Because He Went Unshaven by Patricia Esposito

2011-11-16T13:46:04Z

Flannery O’Connor said, “The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.” I was staring. He was beautiful. I stared long enough to imagine a world of possibilities around a man I didn’t know.

Writers aren’t the only people who people-watch. But they tend to get captivated by their observations, enough so that they find it necessary to devise a life for what they’ve seen. In small public exchanges, we can know only so much about a person, and the rest develops from tiny observations and what we imagine from them.

I’m reminded of when we played pretend as kids. The point of pretend and storytelling is to step into another’s shoes, to discover more about life, and in turn, more about ourselves. In pretend, think what a new prop did to the action at hand! Suddenly, a forest walk turned into a battle as a stick in the pathway became a sword to the imagining eye.

I was staring. I couldn’t know who the person really was, but I could imagine a creased brow was frustration at work, or a slight grin was fond remembrance of a night with friends. “Because He Went Unshaven” came about when a familiar person in a polite setting came in unshaven. Like a photographer wanting to take a new photo at every shift in lighting, here was a new detail, a prop that needed exploration.

So, like a kid on an adventure, I thought why not explore the exotic, why not imagine him in lands I’ve never seen? And yet, stepping into those shoes through the images, I found myself winding closer and closer to home, to what the man’s real life might be, an ordinary person in a familiar land. And it felt equally exotic. Maybe because staring does that to life, makes it fresh, makes it full of possibility.

Patricia Esposito is a freelance editor, the mother of two daughters, and is long-time married to "the boy next door." Her fiction and poetry have appeared in the anthologies Apparitions and Lights of Love, as well as numerous speculative and literary publications, including Rose and Thorn Journal, Not One of Us, Hungur, Sounds of the Night, Midnight Street, Karamu, Byline and Clean Sheets. She has recently released her first novel Beside the Darker Shore and has received honorable mentions in Ellen Datlow’s The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, as well as a Pushcart Prize nomination.

Read “Because He Went Unshaven” in the fall 2011 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal. Visit her at patricia-j-esposito or email her at esposito@yahoo.com.

Where For Art Thou, Writing Confidence? by Susan Girolami Kramer

2011-11-02T14:47:19Z

For the last five weeks, I’ve been a participant in a writer’s workshop at a local library. I’ve taken these workshops before on different aspects of writing with the same instructor, and they always give me plenty to explore. Plus, I get to meet other writers and hear what they’re working on and what their writing lives are like.

In the last two workshops, I’ve been struck by the comments made by my fellow writers before reading their homework or the exercises we do in class—mind you, I have been apt to make these comments myself. Some pass on sharing their work or preface what they read, saying things like, “This is awful,” “I don’t think I did this correctly,” or “This isn’t very good.”

Too often, they feel the need to apologize or prepare others for their writing before sharing it. Even though I have held back several times, I want to encourage them not to feel this way or to stop comparing themselves to others in the class or to the instructor. To remind them that they are writers and have it in them to trust their writerly instincts.

Oops, look who’s talking now! Me, who only this week did the very same thing by panicking that I’m not as far along as I’d like to be in my own novel, or as far as those in my inner circle of writers. I soon realized I’ve been comparing myself a lot lately to other writers, not feeling ‘good enough’ or ‘fast enough.”

I brought this up to some writers in an online group, and one piece of advice that hit home most clearly was that maybe I’m using this as an excuse not to write. “Who me?” “Yes, You.” So I also had to learn how to trust my own writerly instincts and discover ways to aid myself in feeling more confident and productive in my writing. Not just panic and accept that “I’m not as successful.”

Now, I’ve made a plan to help boost my confidence as a writer and take action. I’m going to do the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) next month to delve into my novel-in-progress (almost 10 chapters) and get out of this mindset. In other words, dismissing the gray clouds over my writing as an excuse not to write!

Susan Girolami Kramer is Newsletter Producer for Rose & Thorn Journal. She wears many hats at her job as a Communications Specialist and at home on her off-hours. She's a photographer, fiction and poetry writer, editor, and publication designer. She has won several awards during the last two decades. By day, she writes articles for an Association's newsletter; by night, she taps into her more creative writing skills. Susan lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with her husband, son, and pug, Truman.

The Jefferson Project by Thor Duffin

2011-10-26T02:07:47Z

The Jefferson Project
by Thor Duffin
Steinwald Books, 2010

Reviewed by Wil Hough

The country groans under the weight of self-serving, corrupt government officials. Politicians fan the flames of class envy and racial tension to divert attention from their own failings. Wall Street and many other financial districts across the country and around the world are under siege. Citizens are angry, as am I, but the majority of the rich and powerful do not seem to care, if they even notice. Riots are certain to break out as unemployment soars and entitlement programs are cut back. A well-known personage has already called for a return of the guillotine. The time certainly seems ripe for authoring alternatives to the system now under siege.

Thor Duffin has already taken advantage of the subject with a compelling novel blending both intrigue and potential solutions to the present political state of affairs. In his novel, The Jefferson Project, a Political Science instructor at the University of Virginia asks his students to propose solutions to the various problems of modern day Democracy. David Archer and a few other classmates take him seriously. Some of their essays get national attention when posted on the Internet. When they propose real, fundamental changes to the government, the students are joined by forces powerful enough to help make it happen.

With their “real good thing” now threatened, Washington’s power elite fight back, doing everything possible to hinder the movement. When it looks like it might succeed anyway, they decide to take more direct action, which put the students’ lives in imminent danger. As things come to a head, Congress attempts the ultimate political end run to seize power and discover they are not the only player in the game. Can Democracy survive?

How would YOU change things? It’s obvious there are puddles on the floor, but what is leaking? Too often we deal only with the symptoms and ignore the source. What Duffin manages through his main character, an engineering major, is to lead us through a root cause analysis. The end result is both mind-blowing and encouraging. For instance, how can we possibly hope to make real changes with a government headed by “improperly motivated incompetent people elected by an ignorant electorate that is also improperly motivated.” There is a solution. But can our leadership be forced to seek it out?

The problem is not with the people but the system. Many a newly elected reformer has ridden off as to the Crusades only to be gobbled up by the election machine. After all, how is a congressman supposed to find the time and inclination to fight for real change when the moment he has been elected he must turn around and fundraise for the next election a mere two years hence? And to whom is he beholden? To the electorate he represents or the contributors who expect a return on their expensive investment? You do the math and come up with an alternative. Better yet, enjoy Thor Duffin’s engaging political thriller while considering the solution presented through his characters as well as the style by which he presents it.

I found The Jefferson Project to be both exciting and thought provoking. Duffin’s style, much like that of science fiction author Robert Heinlein, is worth study by those of us interested in sharing ideas layered between the lines of “fiction.” Rather than driving away potential readers with dry essays, the general public can be lured into taking part in arguments and re-evaluating inbred preconceptions without ever realizing what is taking place.

Thomas Jefferson famously stated, “Should our government once again fail to represent the needs of its citizens, it will be the responsibility of those citizens to rise up and set things right again.” The journalist, A.J. Liebling, also said, “Freedom of the press belongs only to those who own the press.” Well, with access to the Internet, each of us now owns our own printing press. It is our sacred responsibility to make good use of it.

Wil Hough is Poetry Editor and Graphics Editor for Rose & Thorn Journal.

Back Story: The Empties by Matthew Muilenburg

2011-10-19T20:14:46Z

I write at night. I write during the day, too, but not as well as I do when the sun has left the Midwest for locales more exotic than the Westside of Wichita. The night I wrote “The Empties”– and I stress the night, since it is the only work of mine that I’ve spent less than three hours composing– was one to which many graduate students, and GTAs in particular, can relate. I was editing my thesis project, a beast of novel that had ballooned to 499 pages, and as I tried to get it down to 250 – which I eventually did a few days later – I happened to glance up to the television. Now, when I write, I prefer to do so with loud music leaping from my earphones and bludgeoning my ear canals; there, the music tunes out that little fella thrashing about my brain who loves to tell me that everything I write is as sub as subpar can be. Therefore, although the TV was on, I couldn’t hear anything but Tom Petty casting away Mary Jane; the image on the screen, however, was one that I had seen a thousand times and never thought it weird before: Barbie-breasted chucklebots running their fingers up and down a throbbing 800 number.

So there I am, working on a novel that is centered in my off-kilter Catholic community, when the idea strikes me: why would anyone, in this day of free sex chat rooms and internet pornography, still pay fifteen dollars a minute to fulfill their sexual needs?

It was a question that led me to this story, but the story became something all together different. Yes, there is still a forlorn, envious, bitter old man calling an 800 number, but he doesn’t punch up the digits for the erotic thrill one typically assumes a man of his person would.

Oscar Well, father to an award-winning novelist who is far more accomplished as a writer than he ever was, is looking to reconnect with his daughter, even though he has no conscious desire to do so. His yearning is subconscious.

When my wife read this story, her first question went like this: Is Vary really there?

The inquiry, to me, was curious. I had every intention of making Vary a real person, but, like Oscar, my own subconscious was at play here, and it decided that the best way for Vary to be an active participant in the story was for her to be a figment, a specter there to haunt the man who wouldn’t admit that he could be frightened.

For the most part, I’d rarely been a fan of writers who write stories about writers. I certainly had planned on never composing one of my own, but Oscar, to me, needed to be a writer; after all, he’s basically an amalgamation of several writers I’ve met, mixed in with some sad, tired faces I’ve seen around other corners.

He’s had success, publishing six novels, but his daughter, who slipped out of his chromosomal pool dragging along stories that Oscar could never compose himself, has had more. He is jealous and loathes himself for not being more proud. His subconscious begs him to be proud, manifesting the image of Vary as real (and don't most of our best characters come from our subconscious?)

I set the story at the millennium to signify inevitable change, the passing of the guard that comes when fathers give way to the immovable force that is youth’s enviable progression.

Although I am, right now, less successful than many of the other writers who have been published by Rose and Thorn Journal, I would like to share this thought: write when you are tired, when you cannot possibly think of another metaphor. Like I mentioned earlier, your internal editor has gone to sleep and is too tired of being right to toss up a stop sign. Work with your subconscious at the point when it is so close to taking over your dreams that it spins magic and pushes those weird, surreal images into your stories. I doubt that this is an original thought, but it works for me.

And Vary.

Matthew Muilenburg is a graduate of Wichita State University’s Master of Fine Arts program. A sports journalist by trade, Matthew is the former editor of Wichita State’s two literary journals, Mikrokosmos and MOJO, the latter of which he and his staff founded during the 2010-11 school year. His creative work has most recently appeared in ScissorTale Review. Matthew currently resides in central Illinois with his wife and two young sons. Read “The Empties” in the summer 2011 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal.

Back Story: Tip Your Waiters by AJ Pearson-VanderBroek

2011-10-13T18:44:36Z

“Tip Your Waiters” stemmed from an actual experience about three years ago. I was visiting my hometown to see family and we went out to eat at our favorite Chinese restaurant. We were immediately laughing and joking with the waiter. When he was away the waitress, who knew that the people who had just left never tipped, slipped money into the napkins on the table. When the waiter discovered the tip, he was ecstatic. We left that night and I never found out the waiter’s or waitress’s names, and I never saw them again. I thought the incident was a perfect story in itself, but it morphed into a sort of memoir-fiction. I used the experience for the main action but incorporated all the wonderful imagery and sensual details that the restaurant offered, with ideas of isolation, anonymity, and how a person’s behavior affects other people. It was interesting to reflect upon such a seemingly simple incident and transform it into a somewhat mysterious story that not even I have all the answers to.

AJ Pearson-VanderBroek recently graduated with a B.S. in language arts. Her work has been published at Rose & Thorn Journal, Anatomy, The Fertile Source, Breath and Shadow Magazine, The Legendary, and has appeared several times at Short, Fast, and Deadly. Her poetry will be included in The Untidy Season: An Anthology of Nebraska Women Poets set for release in 2012 by The Backwaters Press. Visit her blog or send questions & comments her way to ajpvb@hotmail.com. Read "Tip Your Waiters" in the summer issue of Rose & Thorn Journal.

Book Review: Compendium by Kristina Marie Darling

2011-10-05T01:04:15Z

Kristina Marie Darling
Compendium
Publisher: Cow Heavy Books

Reviewed by: Wil Hough

Kristina Marie Darling’s latest poetry collection is a paradox. At first, second, and even third reading Compendium came across to me as the disjointed renderings of a bizarre female not at all to the taste of this Dylan Thomas fan and his drunken verse. Upon further review, however, a pattern began to take form. It seemed to me Darling had posed a puzzle for her readers—a mystery novel in sparse verse. Her latest submission to the world of poetry reads as neither verse nor prose poem, but a marriage of the two… quickly followed by a divorce and deconstruction into a unique and strange construct beyond anything I have ever experienced or even imagined.

The collection is small, a mere chap book of 55 pages. And, even at that, a full half of Compendium is devoted to footnotes and explanation of terms. Small as it appears, however, it is voluminous in content. The collection cannot simply be read through and stuffed away on a shelf. It must be read over and over in order to pick up and connect the clues Darling has woven upon and between the lines. For that endeavor, the chap book size is perfect. Fitting comfortably in the wallet pocket of my jeans, I was able to keep it handy for study at every free moment, which was like being led, wandering about a haunted Victorian Mansion, by a lovely yet very proper lady. Was she quite mad? The rooms of the mansion framing recollections in a mind haunted by lost love? I’m still pondering the clues to her allure and what it means to me:

…a journey to the countryside, her descent into madness, and the jewelry box with its silver nameplate and tiny golden key.

“And before long," she whispered, "I’ll have famed a portrait of him for each room of the house.”

The portrait, like a letter, requires a subject. And only by considering the other, she thought, will I come to understand intention, its hazy yellow glow. Somewhere in the picture, a declaration. The door to the gallery groaning on its hinges.

Again the delicate clasp of her pearl earring. Room after room of paintings in their tiny wooden frames. A series of odes in a strange language.

I say “means to me” because the mystery concealed within would have different meanings for me than I would expect for you or anyone else. That is, after all, the true difference between poetry and rhymed essay, the latter telling us what to think whilst the former presents an image for us to interpret. Still, I struggled to even read the collection let alone understand it. Was Darling mad, cunningly obtuse, or incredibly gifted with a new style? Then a fellow poet smacked me upside the head with a single word clue: Jazz. “Isn’t this what we are doing in all the artistic disciplines?” she explained. Is there anything new under the sun besides how we twist what already is to suit our vision, making the foundation one’s own through improvisation?

Ah, yes, of course. Essay would be like a classically charted symphony from which many a genre finds its base. Such variations might be compared to rhymed verse in all its manifestations. Some easily comprehended by the masses (popular music); others more challenging to discern (Jazz), like Miles Davis blowing Bitches Brew with his back turned to the audience to demonstrate his contempt for popular opinion. I wondered, could it be that Darling, like Davis, was expressing the same contempt for her readers, turning her back metaphorically to our desire towards understanding her meaning? But further study of Compendium dismissed that idea. Like a master of jazz in word form, Darling keeps building variations upon each chord, deconstructing and modifying boundaries, seeing how far she can stretch her interpretation without it all descending into chaos. In Compendium, her style seems more like that of John Coltrane’s classic jazz interpretation of “My Favorite Things.”

Coltrane’s jazz interpretation of the popular tune from The Sound of Music begins with a straight up rendering of the basic melody, much as Darling begins Compendium with chapter previews, each short paragraph describing a specific object or moment in time. Even here there is mystery. Rather than being titled sequentially, all seven of these chapter previews are titled “Chapter One” as if each were meant as separate portals into seven entirely different realities rather than being related aspects of a single story line beginning with:

She unlocked the door and began wandering the empty rooms, her pearl earring still glistening beneath the nightstand.

The “Chapter Verses” are followed up with the next set of clues; as that of supporting characters in this mystery:

The Box: "One must never open the smallest compartment,” he explained.

The Lockets: “Really,” she would plead, “I don’t understand why we cannot just forget them.”

The Homage: “…one should not pass judgment until the instruments have been properly tuned.”

The Dress: Madeleine began by choosing the most somber dress she could, its dark green taffeta rustling through the halls.

The Elegy: She whispered to the Connoisseur, “One’s feet may not inhabit the shoe until a song of mourning has been sung.”

From here, Darling’s verse turns Concrete, as obtuse as anything Miles Davis might have blown, back turned to his audience. However, like that of Coltrane, Darling’s free-form verse is grounded to its introduction. As a result, the deconstructed verses morph into clues to what the mysterious lady of Compendium might be all about—further dots for us to connect.

The most somber    green taffeta
                          Adrift
                An elegy with                          starched shirts

The second half of Compendium is devoted to footnotes and explanations. Initially, I thought them to be condescending explanations of items mentioned in the preceding verses: lockets, footwear, architecture, and even a history of desire. With each new reading, however, I began to see these notes as subtle redirects, discovered poems designed to tease open Darling’s poetic moment just in case her readers might have lost perspective along the way—the same way Coltrane finishes his free association with a return to the basic theme. What had seemed at first a disappointingly short collection of confused verse has proved to be a tome to be solved somewhere beyond the intersection of parallel lines As Darling writes at the conclusion of her notes, “For the work to succeed, one must recognize the difference between life and art. In other words, partaking in a lush pastoral scene is not the same as observing it.”

I have been turning Compendium this way and that for weeks now without perceiving a hint to the end of it as yet. As to the meaning of it all, I will not venture to say. Even had I figured it out to my private satisfaction it would most certainly not conform to anyone else’s. I suggest you pick up a copy and work out your own solution to the mystery of Darling’s latest poetic offering, both the meaning of her verse and the unique style she has developed. She concludes the work with:

I have overtaken you.

Indeed!

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of Night Songs (Cold Wake Press, 2010) and the editor of narrative (dis)continuities: prose experiments by younger American writers (VOX Press, 2011). Her work appears in The Boston Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Colorado Review, New Letters, Gargoyle, and other journals. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from the Ragsdale Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center, as well as scholarships from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and the Colgate Writers Conference. A graduate of Washington University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, she will soon pursue a doctorate in poetics at the University of Buffalo, the State University of New York.

Wil Hough is Poetry Editor and Graphics Editor for Rose & Thorn Journal.

Back Story: For the Birds by Andrew Brazier

2011-09-28T02:51:15Z

The geese gathered around me as I sat on the table of a picnic bench casting the crumbs at the gathering flock. First, a few, then several. Soon I was hoisting the bread that left my fingertips at a rate of a crumb per second just to keep the geese at bay. In the midst of this onslaught, I ran out of food and the rush was on. Well, unlike Michael in “For the Birds,” the geese did not continue to pummel me nor did they deliver a message, but I did realize something. It was all about the bread.

The more the thought process for this story came into shape, the more I found it a metaphor for life and its dysfunction. Michael has an obvious problem: birds are after him. We all have that voice inside us that always tells the truth but we never listen to, the same one that insisted to Michael the birds were after him. After his girlfriend, boss, and mother rejected all that he felt was true, he went on a determined quest to uncover what he already knew. His doubts, manifested by those closest to him, were laid to rest.

When Michael returns with proof that the voice inside was in fact correct, he is once again denied satisfaction. His girlfriend, who saw the bloody flesh and feathers, merely closes him off. Those who witness his demise submit him for psychiatric evaluation, and Michael is left to digest these facts alone. In life, there are things we go along with even when we know something isn’t right, something is out of place. From the end of the story, would Michael be wise to stay away from the park and maintain a normal existence, free of ridicule? After all, we all have our birds….

Andrew Brazier currently spends his nights punching keys and exhausting pencil tips for the sake of his fictional sanity. His work is currently featured in the summer 2011 issue Rose & Thorn Journal and slated for an upcoming issue of Conceit Magazine. The habit of writing, for fun, has kept Michael entertained since college and, he is seeking publication for two novels. Contact him at brazier1@gmail.com.

Guest Blog: Along the Self-Publishing Path by Laura McHale Holland

2011-09-21T15:29:31Z

In the mid 1970s, when San Francisco MUNI rides were a quarter, and you could rent an entire Victorian flat for $225 a month, I came to the city by the bay. I thought I would stay for a year, maybe two, and wound up staying for almost three decades.

I didn’t arrive with a list of goals written in a journal or eloquent intentions firmly emblazoned in my mind. It isn’t that I rejected such things; I knew nothing of them. I pined for happiness, peace, fulfillment, but didn’t know how to pursue them. I longed to write with originality and grace; instead, I meandered along, oblivious to many dead-end signs, making myriad mistakes.

The United States is different now, in many ways less forgiving. It’s harder for young folks to be footloose, to buy an airline ticket or drive across country on the spur of the moment and find a new home and job, essentially a new life, within weeks. Yet the present offers delicious possibilities: technology makes it easy to research just about anything, stay in touch with friends, work from home and even publish your own book, which I did this year because I was gun-shy: the first publisher to offer me a deal went bankrupt while I was reviewing the contract. I signed with another publisher, who sat on my manuscript for four, long years. Looking for another publisher just didn’t seem as appealing as going it alone.

So in this fast-paced, always-on, volatile age, I am trying to figure out how to market my memoir. The Internet is filled with advice on how to build a platform, become adept at social networking, position yourself as a subject-matter expert, write press releases, set up book signing events, run a business. And I read about all of this voraciously.

I have goals, written down (although I often misplace my lists). I check in with a buddy every morning to share a few objectives for the day ahead. I belong to a supportive writers club. I have a beautifully produced book in paperback and electronic forms, bookmarks to give away, a killer book trailer, more than 1,000 Facebook friends, enthusiastic reviews on Amazon.com. I’ve been posting a new short story each week on my blog. Oh, and I’ve done Internet radio, too.

Will all this catapult my book onto any best-seller lists? It’s too early to tell. But I’ll keep plugging away. Why? Because the project is as adventure-filled as any new locale I explored long ago. And, though times have changed, my life is the same journey it’s always been. I am a writer, true, and like others in the literary tribe, I want my work to have meaning for a wide, appreciative audience. But I’m also on a quest for something deeper than soaring book sales. I hope to be alert enough to grasp the life-lessons the independent publishing path brings me, bitter or sweet, as I pursue my dreams.

Laura McHale Holland's fiction, features and essays have appeared in Every Day Fiction Three, Wisdom Has a Voice, the Vintage Voices anthologies, NorthBay biz magazine, the Noe Valley Voice and the original San Francisco Examiner. Her memoir, Reversible Skirt, won the RockWay Press International Writing Competition and is a finalist in the 2011 Readers Favorite book awards.

Back Story: The Sea of Grass by Jim Wilsky

2011-09-14T03:39:36Z

When I wrote “The Sea of Grass,” it was almost the perfect storm for me. It came boiling up from nowhere, I wrote it and then it just rolled on out of sight. It was also a story that I was able to fuse together several areas of interest I have always had. I love Geography and History. Although I have absolutely no literary or educational credits to speak of in these areas, definitely not the latter, I still can’t resist them when I write. I have enjoyed reading and studying both for many years on my own, and I suppose having a love for something can be a strong thing, an equalizer to more formal training.

I can’t stress enough how the place or setting is so very important to me when I write a story. Many times it is more important than even the plot or the characters. In baking terms, it is the yeast of the bread I’m making. Whether it’s somewhere down a rural road lined with trees and locust buzzing or flat corn fields at dusk that stretch forever, I want to define it further. An urban setting can’t just be any big city. I want it to be somewhere I know, a place I have stood or a place I’ve always wanted to go to. I have a need to have a reader see it, smell it and hear it. If you allow it to, setting can help create the mood, help move the story and I think that’s probably the most important ingredient for me in any story recipe.

Every place has a history, how it started, what it used to be, what it still is. Sometimes a story allows me to blend in a little of that, and this was one that did. It creates a story within my story and I like that. I like that the reader can relate back to what was, with what it is now and what they’re reading now.

From the visually grand movies I watched as a young boy when cinematography was such a key, to a rare movie today that might still focus on it, I feel that setting makes a story complete. As an example, the fairly recent movie No Country for Old Men rang that bell for me, with some stunning panoramic shots that absolutely locked me into the story. I believe strongly in the importance of that in literature as well.

The characters in this story are hybrids, as they almost always are with me, made up of many different pieces and parts. A blend of people I’ve known, people I wish I haven’t ever known, and people that I’ve never met but you just know them, just know they’re out there. So yes, I knew somebody like Tyler and liked him; we were friends for a long time. He was okay if you understood him and I guess I did. He was troubled from the get go and had more issues than you could count, but he always had a certain sadness that touched me. It made me want to help him and I maybe did for awhile. At the same time, you just knew it would end badly someday and that it did.

To close here, I just want to be clear. If there was ever a more unlikely person to be doing this type of article, I want to know who it is. I sincerely doubt that I have unlocked some secret box of useful information for anyone. I feel like I’m discussing long division to a group studying Advanced Calculus. Nevertheless, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate having the opportunity to write about, well… what I write about. First, I consider it an honor to just have my story accepted by such a fine journal, and finally, I also want to thank Angie and Kat for the added invitation to ramble on like this.

Jim Wilsky is a central Illinois native with a lifelong passion for writing and storytelling. His work has appeared in A Twist of Noir, Beat to a Pulp, Yellow Mama, The Medulla Review, Midwest Literary Magazine and others, including several print anthologies. He is supported and strengthened by a wonderful wife and two beautiful daughters. Read “The Sea of Grass” in the summer 2011 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal.

The Case for a Creative Change of Venue by Angie Ledbetter

2011-09-07T15:58:08Z

In the prickly world of legalities and criminal prosecution, the judge of a highly publicized trial will sometimes order a change of venue away from the media circus of high profile events in order to find unbiased, impartial jurors. Once ordered, the proceedings will take place one county over (or parish if you’re in Louisiana), clear across the country, or somewhere in between.

Since the drudging routines and work schedules compromising our lives often put a stranglehold on our creative goals, we might do well to order ourselves a short removal from the overexposure to the same people, scenery, ideas and experiences. Getting out of the deep rut of our necessary parameters opens up new vistas for us to contemplate. I know this is true whether I’m crafting poetry, working on a manuscript or short story, or painting/collaging. The photographer in me loves getting away from home too, even if Facebook gets cranky with the number of photo albums created and shared.

Don’t tell yourself that times are too hard to take a trip. During your lunch break, bring a sandwich to a nearby park so you can sketch, write, doodle or observe others. On a day off, drive country roads or visit nearby cities. Swap babysitting for a few hours with a friend so you can get some alone daylight hours. Speaking of swapping, why not switch homes/apartments with a friend or relative in a different locale for a bit? Take a bus or train to somewhere different for a day or just a few hours. Do whatever it takes to shake up your perspective and blow off the dust of the daily grind. If nothing else, reading a book outside your normal preference range can sometimes inspire fresh thoughts.

Okay, the verdict is in – making time to honor your creativity causes a reciprocal and pleasant return.

Angie Ledbetter is co-Publishing Editor of Rose & Thorn Journal. Visit her in the blogosphere at GumboWriter.com or in Twitterville.

Back Story: Hunger by Digby Beaumont

2011-08-31T01:58:31Z

My partner of 18 years died last December. I was Shirley’s caregiver for the last 2 years of her life and “Hunger” grew from the experience (as I did). It was also the last of my stories I read to her. Shirley’s mother predeceased her father and he struggled in his final two years. Shirley encouraged him to try a holiday and he reluctantly agreed. Her description of him boarding the holiday coach and sitting alone still haunts me. It also led to my writing a story called “Nightcap”, about a bereaved man going on holiday to Capri, which was published by Rose & Thorn in the Spring Issue, 2009. So, you see, when I completed “Hunger”, there really was only one home I wanted it to have.

Digby Beaumont's work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology. His stories appear in journals such as Opium Magazine, 34th Parallel, Slow Trains, Rose & Thorn Journal, Pindeldyboz, Monkeybicycle, Defenestration and Toasted Cheese, as well as in the anthologies Small Voices, Big Confessions; Late-Night River Lights and City Smells. He has worked as a nonfiction author for many years, with numerous publications, and lives near Brighton, England. Read “Hunger” in the summer 2011 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal.

Longing for the Mother Tongue by Joseph Farley

2011-08-23T03:01:07Z

Longing for the Mother Tongue by Joseph Farley
March Street Press, 2010
ISBN: 1596611480
31 Pages; paperback $9

Reviewed by Yu-Han Chao

One of the most interesting things about Joseph Farley’s new chapbook is the unending shifts of positions that Farley makes between cultures. In this book of 18 unusual poems, an all-American poet and his Chinese wife take turns changing spots, from insider to outsider and from the outside back in.

In “Bargain Hunting in Kowloon,” the poet’s wife warns him away from the massage parlor, where “The girls don’t / use their hands. / They use a machine / similar to / a palm sander.” (19) Here, a terrifying metaphor and image based on the knowledge of an insider scares off the unsuspecting outsider. But a few lines later, it is the wife’s turn to blush, when in a back alley an old woman is selling sex toys, a symbol of western influence in an originally conservative culture.

The poet witnesses people wearing bandages and gauze after the Tiananmen incident in “The Eye of the Beholder.” He points them out to his wife, who now suddenly behaves like an outsider, claiming, “I saw nothing. / I don’t know what / you’re talking about.” (21) As “a native to China” staying in her home country, the poet’s wife should know better than anyone what is happening, but it takes an outsider to point out the obvious, while the insider vigorously denies what she might know.

The same terrifying sense of denial from the locals permeates Farley’s descriptions of what he sees in China, filtered through his westerner’s lens. He describes a young, cross-eyed cousin torturing the chickens with a stick, matches, and burning wood, while the adults of the village talk amongst themselves and watch on: “no one said a word. / no one tried to stop him.” (26) Disturbed, the poet whispers something [unknown] to his wife, who tells him to mind his own business. To the wife, the boy is “just a boy / raised in the country, / used to animals / raised for food.” (26) To the foreign poet from the culture that produced Silence of the Lambs, the boy “had the makings / of a psycho killer.” (26) So many times a tourist or visitor seeks to be respectful of a new culture and tries too hard to be polite, but Farley is honest enough to tell us exactly what he sees, the night soils (from chamberpots) he smells, and how he really feels about the little things natives take for granted or no longer notice.

There are also times when those on the inside and outside come together, in the intercultural couple’s sons or in a love poem, “Chang ‘Er,” where the poet lovingly speaks of his wife as his moon goddess, descended to the mortal plain.

A fascinating chapbook that combines exotic scenery interpreted by a familiar voice, Farley’s Longing for the Mother Tongue will surprise and delight readers from any culture in foreign, unexpected ways.

Yu-Han Chao is Poetry Editor at Rose & Thorn Journal. Her poetry book, We Grow Old, was published by the Backwaters Press. Visit her writing and artwork at her website.

Back Story: Why the Yellow Leaves Fall by Nels Hanson

2011-08-17T01:38:51Z

The central image or “character” in my story, “Why the Yellow Leaves Fall,” is a yellow-and-purple-striped tropical fish caught in an Oregon salmon boat’s net. The fish is a real fish, though of a slightly different color and heavier shape, which I saw caught on the Central Coast off the Cayucos, California, pier when I was nine-years-old.

In the early ’60s there were many more fish along the California coast, and in summer the 19th-century, 100-yard-long Portuguese pier was crowded with hundreds of fishermen who lined both railings from just beyond the surf line out to the pier’s end that swayed with the waves. My brothers and cousin and I fished a week each summer and watched with excitement what each fisherman’s bending pole brought to the surface. My family were “flatlanders” from a small farm in the hot and dry San Joaquin Valley, between the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range, and were fascinated by the sea.

The most amazing catch I saw was a rock bass, a fish I’d never seen before. It did look like a dark rainbow, with bright but muted yellow, orange, and blue stripes against an orange-brown background of scales like aged wood that made it appear almost “ancient.” The fish really seemed a visitor from another world and, to my child’s imagination, brought to mind Spanish shipwrecks, treasure, and an undersea kingdom.

I’d recently visited the mountaintop Hearst’s Castle, just up Highway 1 at Cambria, which resembled God’s house—I knew nothing then of Hearst’s unattractive story—and the rock fish and the castle had some connection for me. South of Cayucos in Morro Bay, in sight of the pier, stood ship-shaped Morro Rock, the huge inner core of an extinct volcano known as the “Gibraltar of the Pacific.” It was named by a 16th-century Spanish galleon’s captain and, to my young eyes, rivaled the size of the moon.

There was something “Moorish” and timeless about the rock, castle, and fish that together deepened the fish’s mystery.

The fish remained one of my most vivid memories—what you might call an “eidetic” memory— as the decades passed. When I wrote “Why the Yellow Leaves Fall” it seemed the right image for the beginning of the Sleeping Child’s dream of Bill Ryder, the protagonist, who is fired from the fishing boat for saving the fish and, ultimately, will reach Sleeping Child Lake. The “random” appearance of the tropical fish in the Blue Fin’s net set the story’s “plot,” which has to do with synchronicities, meaningful coincidences which at first appear pure chance but are actually somehow fated occurrences.

The fish far out of its natural range; the bully Roper who wants to spear the fish; Bill’s conversation with Rick Speaks, the adamant and worried ecologist; and Bill’s pink slip all lead Bill to Montana. That’s where he’ll meet the bartender, Hugh, who like Rick is obsessed with the recently extinct Dusky Seaside Sparrow, and Emma Little Bear, who is looking for her lost boy, in reality the Sleeping Child.

Each character, human and animal, is a link in a chain not governed by logic but by some underlying sympathetic correspondence, which Charles Two Hats insists is the Sleeping Child’s dream. It is the Sleeping Child, beset by nightmares of the Earth’s destruction and man’s inhumanity, who waits by the green river that feeds the deep lake, desperate for us to change so he can wake and return to the renewed Earth he longs for.

In “Why the Yellow Leaves Fall,” nature itself—the yellow leaves, the falling snow, the Dusky Sparrow, the flying raven, the moose in the Vermont road, the rabbits who escape the wolf—are sending messages for us to relent, to honor and save a dying Earth, for which we each bear responsibility. The Sleeping Child is the suffering conscience of our world, registering our every action and yearning for us to wake up, to finally become truly human and discover our appropriate place in a nature that is larger than ourselves but for better or worse is in our keeping.

Nels Hanson’s fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award. His stories have appeared in Antioch Review, Texas Review, Black Warrior Review, Southeast Review, Long Story Short, The Montreal Review, and other journals. Read “Why the Yellow Leaves Fall” in the summer 2011 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal.