The Orange Room Review

Thank you to Justin Hyde for sending me an email and turning me on to the online poetry journal, The Orange Room Review.  (Yes, I am getting some emails, but I’m not sure if I’m getting all emails, so if you’ve sent me one and think I’m ignoring you, I probably didn’t receive it.  Or possibly I actually am ignoring you and using this as an excuse. 😉 )  Anyhoo…

Justin has another exceptional poem (I don’t think he writes any other kind) published in the current edition called she told me her mother slept with a revolver.  This is one of those poems where an excerpt wouldn’t do it justice — you have to read it as a whole to get the full impact, so go click on the link above.

Interestingly and coincidentally, the current issue also features a poem by Zachary Bush who was just featured in a recent post here at A Bunch of Wordz.  The poem is called My First Week at the Boys Boarding School.

Also, check out Before Dawn by Elliot Richard Dorfman.  I like the rhythmic flow he achieved in this short poem and the way he put his words together to convey a certain kind of feeling to go along with what he had to say.  Here are a few lines:

“In the dark, the mellow chimes
of my clock strike the hours.
I feel serene and transfixed in a world that
seems to be mine, alone.”

I know I have a few regular readers who are writers themselves, so I thought it worth mentioning that the turnaround for submissions at this magazine is unusually fast at between 1 and 14 days — good news if you’re looking for a quick response to your poetry submittal.

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We Swallow(ed) Spiders in our Sleep

The latest edition of Word Riot is out, and a review caught my eye because of the title of the book:  We Swallow(ed) Spiders In Our Sleep.  The book is a collection of poems by Zachary C. Bush, and you can read the review here, which includes a few excerpts.  I gather that the reviewer, Christopher Cunningham, is a bit of a poet himself, judging from the opening sentence of his article:

“Zachary C. Bush’s hallucinatory poems, riddled with unexpected word choices, strong images, the occasional foray into surrealism and the razor edges of a hard young life being lived are the songs of an adventurous poet determined to squeeze each drop of lyrical imagination from the sun-burned, needle-pricked, aching skin of existence.”

Wow.  If I ever manage to get a collection of my own poetry together, I’ll have to remember to send a copy to him for review.

Unfortunately, like most poetry chapbooks, it’s not available on mass market sites like amazon.com.  The book is published by Pudding House Publications, but is not listed on their early 90’s-style webpage either (frames? really??) for some reason.  The author advises in his blog to contact Jen@puddinghouse.com to order a copy.

Following are pieces of poems I found by Bush in online magazines.  I’m not sure if these poems are published in his book or not, but these should give you a feel for his writing style.  The first excerpt is from Expelling Angels(s) as published in The CommonLine Project:

Love was spending Sunday
Mornings in bed wrapped in you,
Laughing at the weeping angels
Blanket curled, leaned against
The grey brick corner of my mind, holding
Soggy cardboard signs that read:

[Will Work for Some Pity]

And this one is from a poem called 18. as published on the  cleverly named site, Unlikely 2.0.

Blindfold her        tight, not to allow light.
Strip her               slowly.
Lay her                on granite couches clothed in velvet.
Tie her                  limbs with maroon sash.
Offer her              drinks flavored with peppermint and sweat.

I will be keeping my eye on this talented writer and also keeping my fingers crossed that his next book is a little easier to get my hands on.