kingsoftrain

Emily Tuttle is a graduate of the University of Maryland College Park, where she was editor of two on campus journals and editorial assistant to ‘Poet Lore’ for two years. She has been awarded the Jimenez-Porter Literary Prize for Poetry. Previously, she has been published in Empty Mirror, Ghost City Review, Yes Poetry, and apt, among others.

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The Heart is a Halfway House

My childhood dog is dying,
and my brother doesn’t know
how to pick him up,

His gray atrophied back legs
give way
to arthritis, and he is stuck,
long toenails grasping
at slick, wood floors.

And my brother is scared
to reach underneath and sink
into the urine soaked underbelly,

rise him back to his feet, pet the
pilling skin atop his head
racked with fleas and dry age, and
whisper simple words
into his ear
to let him know he is loved—

how painful it…

A Brief Way to Identify a Body
poems, by Devon Balwit
Ursus Americanus Press (2018)

~

Devon Balwit is a master of writing poems in conversation with other artists. She has written three other books inspired by writers and artists. In the case of this particular collection, all of the poems have an epigraph from a Sylvia Plath poem (save one), and a couple have epigraphs from Lucia Perillo’s writing. One immediately gets the sense from the gorgeous painting on the cover alone, that the speaker of these poems came to do battle. Whether it’s a battle of female against her responsibilities as a mother, the battle of female vs. her mate, or the female self vs. herself, no dark feeling of female “selfhood” is left unturned in the light of this poet’s words.

The book’s cover art by Cristina Troufa depicts what appears to be a fight between two…

I.

GHOST ARSON

my first full-length, non self-published, work is titled Ghost Arson (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2018)

I have copies, on my person, now.

~

if interested in reviewing, contact me at ghostarson@gmail.com

book is 15.00 / orders can be made via paypal to ghostarson@gmail.com or by using link:
PayPal.Me/ghostarson

*be sure to include your address in the notes field
**all copies will be signed

or one can send a check to:

Barton Smock
5155 Hatfield Drive
Columbus, OH 43232

on amazon:

at barnes & noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ghost-arson-barton-smock/1129931893?ean=9781946642868

facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ghostarson/

review by Dd. Spungin:

{ Dd. Spungin’s review of Ghost Arson }

review by George Salis:

{ review by George Salis of Barton Smock’s -Ghost Arson- }

facebook live reading: https://www.facebook.com/barton.smock/videos/10155837390135423/

II.

HALF LIGHT

in June of 2018, {isacoustic*} released Heather Minette’s collection Half Light

review by George Salis:
https://isacoustic.com/2018/06/20/a-review-of-heather-minettes-half-light-by-george-salis/

review by Sara Moore Wagner:
https://isacoustic.com/2018/06/18/sara-moore-wagners-review-of-heather-minettes-half-light/

review by Crystal Stone:
https://isacoustic.com/2018/07/09/a-review-by-crystal-stone-of-heather-minettes-half-light/

Knock-Off Monarch
poems by Crystal Stone
Dawn Valley Press (2018)

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Knock-Off Monarch is a poetry collection for the visceral and the shifting, those who are lost and those who wish to find themselves. There are themes of nature evoked through the very title itself; images of southern living as someone from the “nawth” with descriptions of Mississippi convenience stores and conversations; religion with modern twists with titles like “My Family as Disciples at the Last Supper” and “Moses and Zipporah Attend a Roller Derby Game,” to name a few. Stone’s experience as a young woman navigating the tumults of becoming her own person, with femininity and queerness awkwardly holding hands as her sexual and self-identity are explored in her first poem, “First Impressions,” which proudly states, “I first admitted I was queer to a black woman.” The otherness in us seeks out the acceptance that which is “other” around…

Trish Hopkinson has authored three chapbooks and has been published in several anthologies and journals, including Tinderbox, Pretty Owl Poetry, and The Penn Review. You can follow Hopkinson on her blog where she shares information on how to write, publish, and participate in the greater poetry community at http://trishhopkinson.com/.

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CARAMBOLA

glowing golden
from my tongue
against verdant orchard
so ready-just
your slight sway
my touch loosens
heavy with nectar
you from the stem
your sweetness
am i greedy
barely held in—warm
as the charmed
as lemon beeswax
raven who filled
in polka-dot sun
its belly with you? or worse,
i imagine your passage
the brother who took
from fruit to seed
more than he could hold,
seed to fruit, the leaf
then fell, dying
& the root
from wing to sea?
pushing you
such myths nod
into lavender bells
at your ancient
the pollen calling
relation to…

monster thanks to Dd. Spungin for this review of my collection Ghost Arson:

Experiencing Barton Smock’s poetry is similar to living in a foreign country long enough to begin to understand the language.

Smock’s language is always intriguing, often foreign, more often brilliant in its ability to put images and concepts in the reader’s unsuspecting mind.

Certain poems/passages all but announce their meanings, as this from Gameshow Fatalities:

“see one of my children worrying less about suicide
and more about where it should happen. see: tub. see: easier
for a mother to clean.”

And some slide an idea into your consciousness such as this from Untitled:

“eternity
is a doll
reading
a menu, memorizing
a license plate

and doll
the first
eating disorder
in space”

Smock can shock, as well. Here, from Gestural Transportation, this standout stanza:

“the bread crumbs were eaten not by birds but…