Bone BouquetVolume 4 Issue 1

sprIng 2013

Copyright © 2013 Bone Bouquet

ISSN 2157-9199ISSN online 1948-1896

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Bone Bouquet is: Krystal Languell, Elizabeth Brasher, Allison Layfield

cover art & cover design by Jana Vukovicwww.janavukovic.com

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The staff gratefully acknowledges the continued support of Carmen Giménez Smith and Evan Lavender-Smith, as well as our subscribers.

Contents

Stella Corso Your Heart Is Empty, Pal, 5

Olivia Cronk “and it opens the room like this”, 7

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs damn right it’s betta than yours, 8

Jill Khoury The Sentence, 10

Brenda Sieczkowski Cytotopography & Probabilistic Map of Insular Cortex, 12

Gina Abelkop Baby Come Home, 17

Michelle Detorie from Havens, 18

Sandy Florian from The Welt of the Wrangle, 19

Elizabeth Deanna Morris I want to cut your hair, 22

Liz Robbins Gaffe Aftermath, 23

Khadijah Queen _____ with photo shoot, 24

5

Rebecca Farivar Two Poems, 26

Lucy Biederman Whether I Can Prove It or Not, 29

Amaranth Borsuk & Kate Durbin with Zach Kleyn from Abra, 30

Rusty Morrison from Meant Measures, 32

Alexis Pope (Rock) Star, 34

Bethany Carlson In the senile desert, the wolves eat scarves while wolfs eat scarfs, 36

Mia Bruner Review of The Practice of Residue by Kimberly Lyons, 37

Contributor biographies, 40

5CORSO CORSO

Stella CorsoYour Heart Is Empty, Pal

Your essence, irregular

and rather hard

to expel. Still, I call you

my plum fl ower,

Free and Easy Wanderer!

Serum for my casserole.

A few needles here

and a scar smiles there.

Live elixir, spirit nixer,

the poet knows growth

begins with corruption

and decay

6 7CORSO CORSO

and it is no less logical

for a fl utt er in the liver

to awaken another member.

Believer, you wouldn’t see it

if I showed you.

I have my fi nger on the pulse.

I’m on the fl oor

I’m feeling for my pills.

6 7CRONK CRONK

Olivia Cronk

and it opens the room like this:

Th e lighting in a room like this makes us afraid.

I wonder what happens to the great stretching hither nylon leg. smearing fans parlor sparkling watchband gawking head and leafy perch and

out the room’s window:the wonderful car lot red lett ers broken from the ridge and off to the evening’s heat

we give the room a sure dirty mutt er.

8 9DIGGS DIGGS

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggsdamn right it’s bett a than yours

she gett ing taught – him gett ing schooled

– frosty dips – foamy zouk

drown dem clods in kikongo dollop

bradda tell a rida – holla at yuh fadda

– yu in yuh caddy –

ricochet feed yu – barrington

di seagulls crack clam shells –

sailors – da kine stuffi n’ swelled snails

dey navy yard smiles chinky – cause dey drown dem clods in kikongo dollop

shantay yuh stay – dem – yard fowl – serve

swim in kaiso – hotel drive – milk dem lick mouth – holiday den

assifi ed – technique drop – kikongo dollop – blocka-blocka

8 9DIGGS DIGGS

erode di pentameter – blocka-blocka

shadows sashay – freak-a-leek

milk dem – hotel drive – bum by – don a dime

– true dat fadda – charge dem clods

shantay yuh thesis – walk tick short tongue

– squint when ya milk shake –

drown dem clods – charge dem clods seagulls on crack – blocka-blocka

10 11KHOURY KHOURY

Jill KhouryTh e Sentence

Th en, with my hand on the knob,the phone call. Th e sentencelike a cartoon anvil fallingfrom the sky. Or

the sentence a red raven glimpsedfrom the periphery. Was that real?

Th e sentence full of self-saucing syllables. I can’t believeshe just—

Post-sentence, I was not the meI had assembled.

I’d intended to go outside and tryto be kind as I did my errands.

Th e speaker’s mother stirsher crazy.

Th e speaker’s mother declaresher intention with a sober laugh.

Th e speaker’s mother makesa declarative statement about her mother.

I can’t wait for my mother to die.

10 11KHOURY KHOURY

Physiotherapy. A poundof apples. Th ree envelopesto the post offi ce.

Th e day had started out like:I was feeling prett y.

12 13SIECZKOWSKI SIECZKOWSKI

Brenda SieczkowskiCytotopography & Probabilistic Map of Insular Cortex

[T]he insula is a large broad eminence, the surface of which is richly convoluted. It generally possesses � om four to six gyres... producing an appearance not unlike that of a fan. —T. E. Clark, “Th e Comparative Anatomy of the Insula,” 1896.

Litt le island, fl att ened prune, grainy in texture and tinyenough to fi t in a clenched palm. Island of Empathy, Island of Long & Complex Sentences, Island of Visceral Maps.

Or vast. Overgrown. You’re entering territory of unknown latitude,impossible to scale. Island of Interoception. And here topographyreplicates, ampli­ es, your body and its outcroppings—salients,

like peninsulas, fi nger white-armed currents of pain. Your hands,in this view, are as exaggerated as pale hands devoted too much light in old daguerreotypes, but who could stand to look at themselves

with such haunting clarity? Your mind’s eye is not so precisely fi xed. Less predictable, it unpleats this brain slice like a fold-outwoodcut, grainy in texture. Stark in manufactured relief.

In this illustration, the forest is thorny, the dendritic arbors unpruned and overgrown. Inky birds croak out from the brambles—huh—muhng—kyuh—lus. huh—muhng—kyuh—lus—

chorus of goat-skin drums, headache stamping its four tiny hooves. Island of Calibrated Heart Beats. Island of Sylvian Fissure. Enoughtreachery in these black creases to swallow up someone you know,

12 13SIECZKOWSKI SIECZKOWSKISIECZKOWSKI SIECZKOWSKI

or knew. All he wanted was to look down into the heart of the volcano’s vanished plume—inky birds were croaking out from the clenched pleats—litt le, fl att ened, primitive, god. Everything

you imagine is still current here. I give you back pale breath, the memory of gills. Over woodcut waves, the full moon is haunting in its clarity, folding in on relief, producing an appearance not unlike that of a fan.

14 15SIECZKOWSKI SIECZKOWSKISIECZKOWSKI SIECZKOWSKI

APPENDIX A

Figure 1: Th e Insula (from Grey’s Anatomy, 20th U.S. Edition)

14 15SIECZKOWSKI SIECZKOWSKISIECZKOWSKI SIECZKOWSKI

APPENDIX B: SYNONYMY-INSULA, CONDENSED LIST1

Circonvolutions supplementaires (Leuret and Gratiolet).Fift h lobe of the brain.Gyri breves (Gall, Arnold).

Gyri operti.Gyri unciformes (Eberstaller).Insellappen.

Insula. Th is name takes precedence over all others, being the Latin form of “Insel,” the name given by its fi rst describer, Keil. Th e regular paronyms of insula as given by Wilder (22, 530-31) are English, insula; German, Insel; French, insulé; Italian, isola.

Insula de Reil.Intralobular gyri (Quain).Island of Reil (English Authors).

Isola.Limen insule.Lobe moyen.

Lohett ino centrale nel tipo pecorino (Tenchini and Negrini).Lobo fondamentale (Lussana).Lobule de l’insula.

1 fr om T. E. Clark, “Th e Comparative Anatomy of the Insula.”

16 17SIECZKOWSKI SIECZKOWSKISIECZKOWSKI SIECZKOWSKI

Lobule du corps strib.Lobule sous-sylvien (Broca).Lobulo sott o-silvico (Tenchini and Negrini).

Lobulus corporis striati.Lobus opertus (Arnold).Lobus retractus.

Quinto lobo delle cervello.Subsylvian fold (Owen).Subsylvian lobe.

Versteckenlappen (Arnold)Zwischenlappen (Arnold)

16 17ABELKOP ABELKOP

Gina AbelkopBaby Come Home

Baby in meat fi sts nextto gothic mourning. She intones,Give me a dog. I miss my dog. Her blunt cut litt le bangs a faulty persuasion, and the meat fi sts, fastworking on what we can’t see.Mommy’s silver and blackedball gown not for a ball: for baby, lampooning poor meat-fi sty baby of the blunt cut bangs. I want my dog,she persists. Her eyes setapart, like a horse, focusedon the aft erlife.

18 19DETORIE DETORIE

Michelle Detorie� om Havens

daggers conjured outof cigarett es words inback seat cushions rippedso a litt le yellow foamshows throughthe lights abovethe stadium makea disgusting haloin the yellow dustthat crawls all overthe valleyyour hands arealways dirtyand I’ve seenthe towels at yourhouse your mothernever washed the sheets

18 19FLORIAN FLORIAN

Sandy Florianfr om “Th e Welt of the Wrangle”Big Plastics

You are inclined to make big plastics and long-range gods as well as to examine the goslings you already have. Th e adverb you have is the ability to see the whole piggery and to think in large testicles. Th is allows you to overthrow elephants that don’t fl agellate nicely into your grapefruit vodka.

20 21FLORIAN FLORIANFLORIAN FLORIAN

Th e Helpful Herd

You are likely to produce a playbill in which you can stagecoach a new tragicomedy that confl ates truckers and palindromes in the wreckage. Th e audience will lump up around you, and this gives you a sentence of belonging. For once, you’re in concordance with the posse because you feel the herd helps you.

20 21FLORIAN FLORIANFLORIAN FLORIAN

Spacesuit for Confusion

Let the skeleton be your optician and see that your parvenu is resentful about your mouthpiece. Her erection is easily upset now, so clarify your articles because whatever lemon is left unsaid may become a spacesuit for confusion.

22 23MORRIS MORRIS

Elizabeth Deanna MorrisI want to cut your hair

to hide what has been singednear the edges. Everythingexactly the same just shorter.I want to slit your fi nger padsand spiral off the skin the wayyou said it worked when youhad scarlet fever. It hurtaft er that, you said. I seeyou snuggled up with your bear,Craffi eld, peeling off your fi ngers, snake skin/rind, until each onewas new, until you wondered what else could be removed.

22 23ROBBINS ROBBINS

Liz RobbinsGaff e Aft ermath

Rain dispels the pollengossip. Tension tendrils.I am really so monstrous.Not newborn, but invisiblespinster vindictive. Horrifyingin her att ention bonfi re. Benders can’t free the alreadyterror drunk! Sepia stain befalls the white cloth, andescape in sleeping doesn’t come. Space unwide enough. Noplace is crouch, soothe. Th e overturned stew tureen! Half-circle friends erode. Flip a penny, give or cry. Th e problem’s always been. What needle more potent? Too much give. Bad att ention turns weeping.

24 25QUEEN QUEEN

Khadijah Queen_______________________ with photo shoot

The real model looks at me with her nails out.

Overdue living the dream. I had a city before

I knew what a city identified as. Boats crossed

to & from Jersey, upstream, downstream. Slick

men, slick hair dressers. Sergio’s sexy gap.

Oh New York.

You have so many turning into something long

lenses immobilize. So many washed out accustomed.

The real model talks up her lake house friends.

Tech guys set up and the women, us, robed, volunteer.

Blocking occurs. The light moves

there, the screen, the sunset view. You have so much hair,

they say. I imagine Funky Dineva: Laid

to the gods. I pull it away

from my face. Someone kneels

24 25QUEEN QUEEN

with duct tape. A bulb shorts. A food cart pushes in.

The loft wall has three radiators. I sneak

a homemade-tasting ginger cookie & learn to curl

my eyelashes. Then Wella.

26 27FARIVAR FARIVAR

Rebecca FarivarUnprovable

See what you look like

saying your name.You are less

than a seconda real person

and two confederates.

26 27FARIVAR FARIVAR

Connected

I can cleansemy thoughts

in your absence.I deserve this

the repetitionof throwing

out wateruntil I see a face

I like. I needyou more absent.

28 29HYLAND HYLAND

MC Hyland

a hand &also diddoes reach

back into it dark unlovable uponthe shored

intent waterwayinside himbreathes at night

[tide downthis beatinside inside]

sugar in the trees Ifall against

zero insideo unloveabledark this

is no futureto wish

28 29BIEDERMAN BIEDERMAN

Lucy BiedermanWhether I Can Prove It or Not

Sweaty Monday or another day, everything yellow, who knew I’d be a litt le girl. Th e sunlight divvied itself up, window to window, like words on the pages of a book. Most of the people around then are now dead. (Came to the kitchen doorway holding Bunny & Bunny’s eye popped off . I watched it bounce across the fl oor, one hard ping for each year of my life so far. It bounces again when another year goes by.) Falling all over the ’80s like left over glitt er, cremains of that old sun can still be seen in certain squares of sidewalk. Daddy cruised solo through McCormick Place, didn’t know what to do. A reporter stopped him for a man-on-the-street feature. In the newspaper the next morning he was quoted as saying, I don’t know the answer, but my daughter just was born.

30 31

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32 33MORRISON MORRISON

Rusty Morrison� om Meant Measures

MEANS Power outage tonight. You wait for light’s clarity to return. Did you think it yours?Or these now-featureless objects you stumble against. How easily you might drown in this dark, a well that draws in all the air of your house.

Heedless litt le girl climbs to the rim and trips, a pregnant husband-less woman throws herself into it—no more story than the smoothness of stones, an old woman holds on with swollen arthritic knuckles longer than would seem possible.Making up your meanings for what happened and why it could never happen to youis just another kind of gravity.

ITS MEASURESylvia lives in her car. You see her in the documentary

made by young womenwho, unlike Sylvia, have refrigerators, televisions and coff ee machines.

Lost her job. Not surprising, given the reductions in her fi eld, her age—

consoles the voice-over

32 33MORRISON MORRISON

Sylvia can’t hear.Consolation is for the rest of us.

Don’t feel a need to peer anxiously into the boxes stacked in Sylvia’s backseat.

Still, she has a backseat, owns her car. No insurance now. But she hasn’t

parked anywhere too long and been towed. Still, all her suits, folded intelligently in her trunk. It is

her trunk, a “hers”that lends the force of assurance to her conversation

with the camera.Not one blouse or skirt is moth-eaten or soiled. She still

expects. She still makes calls to potential employers. Very still now

before the camera,until the young women turn it off .

34 35POPE POPE

Alexis Pope(Rock) Star

Dinner bear, I left you all the whole grains. I left behind at least one million of my hearts. Wrapped

the scarf tight and planted my legs into the cement. I did not grow the way you expected. Th ere were lilies

where my ears should have been. A pretend smile shaped like ten thousand geese. Nowhere I hid was dark enough.

Th ere were tiny holes along my rib cage. We went fi shingin motel bathtubs. Tried to fi nd the places we’d seen on TV.

Now: my gums bleed into the faucet, but there is no reasonI should feel this midnight. You refresh your inbox

while I sun my arms by the windowsill. If the car burnsthis highway like I burn myself with this hand, I will

not give up. Inside the sheets you made me a dollpart. I hiccupped with regret. It didn’t taste

like styrofoam. When we fi nd the station it’s not how we remembered, the rust is thick and I suction

my mouth to your frame. Th e worst day returnstomorrow when you press my face to your lap. Forget

what I said about feeling the sun. I’d collapse out-side the car, pick up twelve stones, gravel

34 35POPE POPE

of my belly. I’ll pretend to eat all of it. Eventhis naked, I’d rather fi ll up then remain

in your car with my feet sweat-stuck to the dash. I remember most days

like this: broken bott le of rum, you left part of you in me. I can’t feel the heat

anymore. Without the sugar rim I fainta new form toward your side. I’ll ask

you to eat the whole pie. Radio static, I believe almost anything you sing to me.

36 37CARLSON CARLSON

Bethany CarlsonIn the senile desert, the wolveseat scarves while wolfs eat scarfs

I too am a wolf & eata scarf * forget about my altitudesickness my propensity to drown in starlit corridors hands abovemy head forget this is not a thoroughfareforget the underfoot forest forgetthe diminished the hungry the blueforget forget forget the angrybouquets of wildfl owers your sickle

*it tastes like cantaloupe& honey it tastes like champagnesomeone forgot to shake upit tastes like Guadalajara it tastes like the alpine treeline it tastes like fi recrackers might taste as they exitthe sky it tastes like the two cups of sugar

I dumped into the empty windowbox last July I meant only to make things sweeter not bett er

36 37BRUNER BRUNER

Mia Brunerreview of The Practice of Residue, Kimberly Lyons (Subpress, 2012)

I’m currently taking a poetry workshop at the New School focused on epistle poems; in this class we write letters to each other discussing our poetics; our anxieties and desires; our failed poems and our dream poems. In many of my letter exchanges, my friend and I have written about our struggle with the poetic “I”. That is, our excited discomfort in committing an “I” to poetic moments—what does “I” means in our cosmologies of poetic representation?; how we can stay attached to our lived realities while using our poems to open them up?

These are the conversations I think of when I read Kimberly Lyon’s The Practice of Residue (Subpress, 2012). When I read Lyons’ poems, I’m taken to those intimate letters where my friends and I lean on each other to re-imagine our selves, our cultures, and our poetry. The Practice of Residue is a restless struggle with creation committed to dwelling; an interrogation of material of space and of words; a body in persistent movement between human and animal forms.

“Extreme circumstance of trying, trying to remember / The shape of something, expectations finally break down” Lyons writes.  These poems desire to “positively utter in an oblique way” and they follow that uttering through bodies, myths, and histories. They present gorgeous images of desires and enchanted landscapes alongside the poem’s simultaneous rejection of expectations in the language of these concepts:

I want nature to be seen in my poem as a sliceA shard, an element obliquelyEncompassing logic.Instead, the poem sends a mapOf the United States in the NY Times.

38 39BRUNER BRUNERBRUNER BRUNER

Each state is colored a bright coral.The United States looks enraged,Like a lobster taking out of a pan of boiling water.The poem says:You can’t have any lobster, you stupid, hungry poet.

In these lines, and in much of The Practice of Residue, there is a continual confrontation between objects — as manifestations of lived (and political) realities and illustrations of mythical and magical physical language. Lyons presents a tension between the power of a finger to “enchant whatever it pleases” and “the current of a stain / writing / into fire / below sorrow.”

Even the Table of Contents—PRACTICE OF RESIDUE; SECRET INK; BLAISEDELL CELLOPHANE; GLASS OF AN HOUR; THE LAST FLOWER ON EARTH—displays a collision between the materials of an everyday reality (glass, cellophane, flower, ink) and the gestures of creation within these materials, the practice of residue. This conflict seems most potent in THE LAST FLOWER ON EARTH:

I want to have the moon in my poem.I try and see the moon out of the window through the branches.Last night the moon was a creamy antique diskAnd not is absent.Like food, it is obliterated. In a fit of nostalgia,I try to destroy people, food, the room, flowersAnd landscapes.Everything is blackness, a baby has beenBorn and the poem is utterly originalI tell myself. An abstractionOf meshed textures and Asymmetrical utterances the

38 39BRUNER BRUNERBRUNER BRUNER

Each state is colored a bright coral.The United States looks enraged,Like a lobster taking out of a pan of boiling water.The poem says:You can’t have any lobster, you stupid, hungry poet.

In these lines, and in much of The Practice of Residue, there is a continual confrontation between objects — as manifestations of lived (and political) realities and illustrations of mythical and magical physical language. Lyons presents a tension between the power of a finger to “enchant whatever it pleases” and “the current of a stain / writing / into fire / below sorrow.”

Even the Table of Contents—PRACTICE OF RESIDUE; SECRET INK; BLAISEDELL CELLOPHANE; GLASS OF AN HOUR; THE LAST FLOWER ON EARTH—displays a collision between the materials of an everyday reality (glass, cellophane, flower, ink) and the gestures of creation within these materials, the practice of residue. This conflict seems most potent in THE LAST FLOWER ON EARTH:

I want to have the moon in my poem.I try and see the moon out of the window through the branches.Last night the moon was a creamy antique diskAnd not is absent.Like food, it is obliterated. In a fit of nostalgia,I try to destroy people, food, the room, flowersAnd landscapes.Everything is blackness, a baby has beenBorn and the poem is utterly originalI tell myself. An abstractionOf meshed textures and Asymmetrical utterances the

BRUNER BRUNERBRUNER BRUNER

Shape of an air conditioner emission.What does that look like?A grayish dirty cloud of micro particles.That spreads and baths us in warm air.

Lyons displays a masterful vulnerability in her commitment to staying present in poetic space. This poem, in particular, exposes complexities in nostalgic desire that want to obliterate that present. When it refuses, bringing us back to the “air conditioner,” Lyons asks readers to stay present; to resist turning away from the material that structures our lives; to refuse to separate the power in written physical form from the violence of an “alarm clock.”

In this way, Lyons offers a response to a question I asked earlier, one at the center of my forming poetics: how can we stay attached to our lived realities while using our poems to open them up? In The Practice of Residue, language is a mode of continual resistance and return to materials of space, language, and self. The Practice of Residue asks us to continue to attend our lived spaces: to open these spaces up by refusing to obliterate them in our poems.

40 41

ContrIbutors

Gina Abelkop is the author of Darling Beastlettes (Apostrophe Books, 2012) and the editor/founder of Birds of Lace Press. 

Lucy Biederman lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, where she studies English Literature at the University of Louisiana. She is the author of a chapbook, The Other World (Dancing Girl Press, 2012). Her poems are forthcoming in Konundrum Engine, Handsome, The Literary Review, Sugar House Review, RHINO, The Tusculum Review, and other journals.

Amaranth Borsuk is the author of Handiwork (Slope, 2012), and, together with programmer Brad Bouse, of Between Page and Screen (Siglio, 2012), a book of augmented-reality poems. Her poems have recently ap-peared or are forthcoming in The Chicago Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Evening Will Come, and Dusie. She received her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, and recently served as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT. She teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington, Bothell.

Mia Bruner grew up in Los Angeles and moved to New York in 2009 to attend The New School where she co-founded The Akilah Oliver Memo-rial Reading and The Akilah Oliver Award for Experimental Poetry with Jamila Wimberly and Zee Whitesides. Her poems have appeared in 12th Street, RELEASE, Cuntry Living, 11 1/2, The Isis, and Belladonna Chaplet #148, Made of These (Belladonna*, 2013), among other places. Much of her work aims to create sites of non-narrative histories, intimacies, and identities.

Bethany Carlson holds an MFA from Indiana University and writes marketing copy for now. She will be pursuing an MDiv at Yale Divinity School’s Institute of Sacred Music this Fall.

40 41

Stella Corso lives in Western Mass where she writes, teaches, and runs a vintage clothing shop called Pale Circus. Some of her recent work can be found in Sink Review, Action Yes, and Spork. She is currently the Assistant Editor of jubilat magazine.

Olivia Cronk’s first book, Skin Horse (Action Books), came out in 2012. She teaches Composition and Creative Writing at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

Michelle Detorie’s works include The Poetry Booth (a public art project), Fur Birds (Insert Press, 2012), FeralScape (Dusie, 2011), Ode to Industry (Dusie/Playful Rectangle, 2009), Bellum Letters (Dusie 2008), A Coincidence of Wants (Dos Press, 2007), and How Hate Got Hand (eohippus labs, 2009), a prose collection about interspecies relationships and seabird rescue. Her visual and hypertext poetry have been included in the Infuso-ria and Zaoem exhibits. She lives in Santa Barbara, CA where she edits Hex Presse and works in higher education. Visit her online at http://www.daphnomancy.com.

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is a writer, musician and the author of TwERK (Belladonna*, 2013). Her poetry has been published in Plough-shares, Jubilat, Fence, Rattapallax, Nocturnes, and LA Review. She has received awards from Cave Canem, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Cen-ter, VCCA, New York Foundation for the Arts, Harlem Community Arts Fund, Jerome Foundation, Barbara Deming Memorial Grant, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She lives in Harlem.

Kate Durbin is the author of The Ravenous Audience (Akashic Books, 2009), E! Entertainment (Blanc Press Diamond Edition, forthcoming), and five chapbooks. Together with Amaranth Borsuk and Ian Hatcher, she is the recipient of an Expanded Artists’ Book grant from Center for Book and

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Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago for Abra, which will be published in artist’s book and iPad editions in Fall 2013. She is founding editor of Gaga Stigmata, an online arts and criticism journal about Lady Gaga. Her projects have been recently featured in Huffington Post, Spex, Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion, 1913, Salon.com, and elsewhere.

Rebecca Farivar is the author of Correct Animal (Octopus Books, 2011) and chapbooks Am Rhein (Burnside Review, 2013) and American Lit (Dancing Girl Press, 2011). She holds an MFA in poetry from St. Mary’s College of California and hosts the poetry podcast Break The Line.

A Latina writer, Sandy Florian is the author of six full-length books. She teaches free courses at UnderAcademy College.

MC Hyland is the author of Neveragainland (Lowbrow Press) and the chapbooks Every Night In Magic City (H_NGM_N), Residential, As In (Blue Hour Press) and (with Kate Lorenz and Friedrich Kerksieck) the hesitancies (Small Fires Press). She runs DoubleCross Press with Jeff Peter-son, and recently started work toward a PhD at NYU.

Jill Khoury earned her Master’s of Fine Arts from The Ohio State University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including Sentence, MiPOesias, Harpur Palate, and RHINO. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice by Breath and Shadow: A Journal of Disability Culture and Literature, and has a chapbook, Borrowed Bodies, from Pudding House Press. She blogs about poetry, disability, and art at quixotic-a.blogspot.com.

Zach Kleyn is an artist based in Los Angeles.

Elizabeth Deanna Morris is from Harrisburg, PA and has a BA in Creative Writing from Susquehanna University. She is currently pursuing

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her MFA at George Mason University. She has appeared or is forthcoming in Hot Metal Bridge, Emerge, and Sphere.

Rusty Morrison’s After Urgency (Tupelo, 2012) won Tupelo’s Dorset Prize. the true keeps calm biding its story (Ahsahta, 2008) won Ahsahta’s Sawtooth Prize, the Academy of American Poet’s James Laughlin Award, the Northern California Book Award, and the DiCastagnola Award from Poetry Society of America. Whethering (The Center for Literary Publish-ing, 2004) won the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Book of the Given (2011) is available from Noemi Press. She has also received the Bogin, Hemley, and Winner Awards from PSA. Her poems and/or essays appear in A Pubic Space, American Poetry Review, Aufgabe, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, Lana Turner, Pleiades, Spoon River, The Volta’s Evening Will Come, and VOLT. Her poems have been anthologized in the Norton Postmodern American Poetry 2nd Edition, The Arcadia Project: Postmodern Pastoral, Beauty is a Verb, and The Sonnets: Translating and Rewriting Shakespeare. She’s been co-publisher of Omnidawn since 2001.

Alexis Pope is the author of the chapbook Girl Erases Girl (Dancing Girl Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, Columbia Poetry Review, Washington Square, and Sixth Finch, among others. She lives in Ohio and is co-curator of The Big Big Mess Reading Series.

Khadijah Queen is the author of Conduit (Akashic Books/Black Goat 2008) and Black Peculiar, which won the Noemi Press Book Award for poetry and was published in Fall 2011. A Cave Canem fellow, she holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles.

Liz Robbins’ second collection, Play Button, won the 2010 Cider Press Review Book Award, judged by Patricia Smith; her chapbook, Girls Turned Like Dials, won the 2012 YellowJacket Press Prize. Poems are forthcom-ing in diode, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Kenyon Review, New Madrid, New York

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Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, The Pinch, Rattle, and Tar River Poetry. She’s an associate professor of creative writing at Flagler College in St. Augus-tine, FL.

Brenda Sieczkowski’s poems and lyric essays have appeared widely in print and on-line journals. Her chapbook, Wonder Girl in Monster Land, was published in 2012 by dancing girl press, and a full-length collection, Like Oysters Observing the Sun, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. Currently, she lives, works, and writes in Omaha, Nebraska.

44 w w w . B E L L A D O N N A S E R I E S . o r g

New from B E L L A D O N N A *

TwERKLaTasha N. Nevada Diggs

$15 * 2013

ISBN: 978-0-9885399-0-7

proxyR. Erica Doyle $15 * 2013

ISBN: 978-0-9823387-9-7

School’s out for summer, but we want to keep reading! So we’re breaking our own rule — our general submission period closes May 1, but between May 2 and August 31, we’ll accept creative nonfi ction essay submissions via our online submis-sion system at prairieschooner.unl.edu.

Never sent to us before? The contest is open to all types of creative nonfi ction essays. The winner will be announced October 1, 2013.

JUDGE: Lia Purpura is the author of seven collections of essays, poems and translations, most recently, Rough Likeness (essays). Her awards include a 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Final-ist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, nea and Fulbright Fellowships, three Pushcart prizes, work in Best American Essays 2011, the awp Award in Nonfi ction, the Beatrice Hawley Award, and Ohio State University Press awards in poetry. Recent work appears in Agni, Field, The Georgia Review, Orion, The New Republic, The

New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She is Writer in Residence at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshop.

GUIDELINES: All entries should include a cover letter with the submission’s title and author’s contact information. Your name and contact information must not appear any-where else on the manuscript. You may submit multiple entries, but the entry fee must be paid for each submission.

SUMMER CREATIVE NONFICTION CONTEST

DEADLINE: August 31, 2013

ENTRY FEE: $5

PRIZE: $250 and publication in Prairie Schooner’s Spring 2014 issue

SUBMISSION SIZE: 1 piece per submis-sion, up to 5,000 words.