community feature: Airlie Press book launch!





This particular community feature post is focused on the upcoming book launch of three of Airlie Press’s new titles: Ordinary Gravity by Gary Lark, Savagery by J.C. Mehta, and, winner of the 2018 Airlie Prize, Wonder Tissue by Hannah Larrabee!


Here’s the info for those of you in the Portland, OR area:


When: Tuesday, October 1st @ 7pm

Where: Annie Bloom’s Books, 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR 97219


I’m presently in my second year of a three-year stint as a co-editor of Airlie Press and can honestly say that it is a joy to be able to play a part in bringing these books out into the world. Below are excerpts from the new books either to give a taste of the upcoming book launch or to hold space for those of us, like myself, who aren’t able to be there.


Excerpt from Ordinary Gravity by Gary Lark


Much Improved 


Hardly anyone dies of typhoid fever

any more. We can send our sons to war

without complaint. Lice are quickly dispatched

and no one freezes to death.

We have piles of antibiotics.

The broadsword wounded aren’t left

in the field to die with others rotting around them.

Of course there are more bombs and bullets

but morphine is readily available.

We can usually save a soldier whose limb

is blown off.

Yes, things are much improved.

We can send more daughters up to the front.

They have the right.

Soldiering is still a good option for the poor.

We’re working on pills for madness,

more medications to calm the nerves

and we’ll get a handle on this suicide business,

yes we will.


*


Excerpt from Savagery by J.C. Mehta


The Heart Consumes Itself 


It’s not true the starved

don’t eat, we die


of broken hips, pelvis

churned to dust—slowly,


the heart consumes

itself. Atrophies and implodes.


(These chambers, remember,

are a muscle.)


Nobody nowhere shoulders

the strength to stop it all, the whole

fat world from slipping

between cracked, wanting lips. We eat


and we hate,


with each bite and gag-

me spoon. Our weakness

displayed like limbs

splayed wide, flushed

shameful folds of pink.

How I wish


I could stop. Let the valves

shut down cold. Listen,

that last organ coda. And you

in dutiful ovation.


*


Excerpt from Wonder Tissue by Hannah Larrabee


Extraterrestrial


Loose-leaf planet I survive

steeping in a pocket of dust

or lakeside listening to loons,

my tongue curling around

their songs of sorrow, fierce

red eyes, fierce as her body,

its way of going about me—oh,

abandoned bed like a reliquary,

her bone fingers a memory

inside me—oh, I have learned

the language of the homesick
 on

this planet of horses, this planet

of her legs tightening around me,

force rising against gravity, magma

loosened as from a spur kicked

into earth, foaming at the bit, I am

tamed, I am tamed, come tame me

extraterrestrial, I, too, have learned

the word beautiful, mapped its quiet

coordinates, the wind through her dress

is the conversation of cells, I am alive

in all my fires.


*


Click on the following to learn more about Airlie’s publishing collective model, our present single poem prize, our national Airlie Prize, and the regional open reading period from which editorships are determined.


And be sure to check out my own new Airlie title, An Empty Pot’s Darkness.

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Published on September 30, 2019 02:00
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