We are the publisher, so all of our titles get five stars from us. Excerpt:
FOREWORD
These writings have not been gathered under the illusion that literWe are the publisher, so all of our titles get five stars from us. Excerpt:
FOREWORD
These writings have not been gathered under the illusion that literature can do anything to house those who sleep on the streets, turn around the trend towards a dramatically changing climate, or grant comfort and reassurance to the elderly. These themes have been chosen, however, in part because they rarely receive due attention in the political language of our time. There are elected representatives who would love to take away Social Security and think about how to do it between speeches that go against what the majority of scientists see as being beyond argument with regard to rising temperatures and what that implies for life on this planet for all species. To them, the homeless are an eyesore without a history. The most attention they receive is when a city is to host a major sporting event and concerns itself with sanitizing the streets so as not to be embarrassed when the visitors pour in.
As editors, we wanted to make the point that one can address problems with imagination and good writing. Poetry, especially, has become isolated from society as a whole and has a following primarily among other poets. This need not be the case, as we think that these pages contain work that can be appreciated by the public at large as much as by fellow writers. Weatherings may set an example both in establishing priorities and in using language to better observe and understand them. Being sensitive to the natural world is the first step toward preserving it. Applying the same standards of observation to the city, in my case Phoenix, I encounter too many people carrying bedrolls or with nothing at all to carry, often talking loudly to nobody in particular, and with nowhere to cool off in the summer but the public library. As for old age, it may not be glamorous yet, but seeing Bob Dylan interviewed in the AARP magazine creates hope that our later decades will remain productive ones.
This is a book conceived as having a use beyond giving its contributors another line in their resumes. While its themes are familiar to everyone, the viewpoints here should open new ways to think about them.
We are the publisher, so of course we give this anthology five stars. We could not possibly do justice to this remarkable anthology by excerpting any We are the publisher, so of course we give this anthology five stars. We could not possibly do justice to this remarkable anthology by excerpting any of it. Instead, we'll post the names of those who contributed to the effort. All proceeds from the sale of this anthology will be donated to the Malala Fund (www.malalafund.org).
"ALL FOR MALALA":
Rukhsana Ahmad, Diana Anhalt, Carol Alena Aronoff, Ed Baker, Ellen Bass, Sherry Stuart-Berman, John Brandi, April Bulmer, Kathleen Cain, Kathleen Cerveny, Joan Colby, Kathleen Dale, Conrad DiDiodato, Laura Eklund, Susan J. Erickson, Forugh Farrokhzad, Ilmana Fasih, CB Follett, Madelyn Garner, Katherine L. Gordon, Pat Hanahoe-Dosch, Jane Hilberry, Jane Hirshfield, Linda Hogan, Paul Hostovsky, Joseph Hutchison, Ana Istarú, Anita Jepson-Gilbert, Penn Kemp, Rita Brady Kiefer, Diane Kistner, Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, Paula J. Lambert, Wayne Lee, Lyn Lifshin, Bobbi Lurie, Ken Meisel, Karla Linn Merrifield, Basia Miller, Kishwar Naheed, Ruth Obee, Colleen Powderly, Peg Quinn, Chris Ransick, Barbara Rockman, Joan Roberta Ryan, Marjorie Saiser, Aftab Yusuf Shaikh, Michael G. Smith, Mark Smith-Soto, Meryl Stratford, Judith Terzi, Andrea L. Watson, Sarah White, John Sibley Williams, Kathryn Winograd, Sholeh Wolpé, Diana Woodcock, Abigail Wyatt, Vassilis Zambaras
We are the publisher, so all of our books get five stars from us. Proceeds from the sale of this anthology help support FutureCycle Press's Good WorksWe are the publisher, so all of our books get five stars from us. Proceeds from the sale of this anthology help support FutureCycle Press's Good Works projects. Excerpts:
David Chorlton CHEAP MANGOS
There’s an easy flow of music through the speakers at the supermercado where papayas ripen while you watch their skins disintegrate the way a man’s skin does when he’s found on his back in the desert facing the sun with his mouth locked between a scream and a prayer. His trouser leg is torn where a coyote came to gnaw at his thigh and of his right forearm only the bones remain, while on his left wrist a watch still measures time. The music has a teardrop in its beat and nostalgia in the singer’s voice but the juice aisle is a happy place with any flavor you’d remember from a trip across the border going south to a colorful village with peppers stacked in the market just like these red, green, yellow ones displayed in the order of their bite, a village likely similar to one the woman left whose sweater clings to what remains of her where she collapsed in a pair of sports shoes good for many more miles with the tread on their soles and Just Do It style. Something pulled at her hair where her scalp peeled away but the strap on her brassiere is indestructible as the belt that falls slack where the flesh has wasted from her hips. Had she made it to a road she might have found her way to Phoenix, to the store where the cakes in the cold case are churrigueresque, and mangos are two for ninety-nine cents.
H. Edgar Hix THE NEW POOR
You can tell the nuevo pobre by their inability to stand in lines. To sit on hold. To fill out the wrong forms three times. To read old magazines in crowded waiting rooms or just sit there because no entertainment is provided. The nuevo pobre expect to have names that professionals will remember. They expect to see professionals instead of paras. They think writing a letter from their address does some good.
Their tastes are still for the brand new, brand name, baked fresh today. They still think paycheck, not knowing that dignity is behind them. Not knowing sleeping with the roaches is the new norm and the police can tell your accounts are overdrawn.
Paul Hostovsky FORECLOSURE
We took it out back and we beat the stuffing out of it, then we stuffed it, broken, into the back of the car, and dumped its mutilated body at the dump. It felt good to do this. After all, the cat had peed on it twice, and the mortgage company had sent another threatening letter, and we felt like kicking the shit out of some bankers— but all we could do was sit back down on the couch, and drink another beer, and our helplessness smacked of cat piss.
So we dragged it outside and bludgeoned it with the sledgehammer. Then we took the axe to its back, its arms and legs and middle, the springs coiled up inside like large and small intestines spilling out in the yard as we chopped and hacked, breathing hard from the hard work of beating the crap out of something you might have caressed in another life, or another house, one without a cat with a urinary tract infection, or one without
an adjustable rate mortgage, an ARM you want to break but can’t— so you look around for something else to break, and it could be your banker or it could be your cat or it could be someone you loved in another life, or maybe even in this life. And it feels good to do this. But then it begins to feel like an indiscretion. And then like a desecration. And then it begins, like a death— a death with its own life.
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