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The boy fell out of the plane and he was still alive

The boy fell out of the plane and he was still alive
I am not the boy who fell out of the plane
I’m not the man flying in to London in the long dark of the wheel bay
    Falling out of the plane as it descends
    Shattered on the farmer’s barley field
 
But the world seems to constantly fall away beneath me when I am not watching
With gravity
The boys who fall out of planes 
    Just want love
    Must die before falling
I can’t imagine it though it feels like every day the earth
 
Trips and leaves me 
 
Hanging 
 
 

This poem is a draft. It’s after an accidental photograph of a young boy falling out of the wheel well of a plane taking off in Australia. I’ll have to find the link, and update the page here when I find it.

Update: Link to an article in New Zealand Herald: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12247441. The boy’s name was Keith Sapsford, and he was trying to travel to Tokyo. He just really wanted to see it.

The article also talks about the tragic deaths of immigrants from Africa to the UK.

There is also a pretty regular occurrence of people (mostly young men) trying to immigrate to the UK in the same manner. They often die in flight, and fall out of the wheel well when the plane drops the gear to land.

Desperation.

I think we’re all feeling it these days, but probably not to the extent these people feel it, to climb into the wheel bay of an airplane to get themselves to a better situation. How terrifying once you realize there is no turning back. That you will probably die.

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It’s a Night Off Writing, I’m doing Laundry and Work

So I think I will spend a bit of time catching up on some old Poetry issues. Never got to them because I got a job, bought a house, had a baby with my wife. Which is all boring life stuff.

I started this on Twitter a couple of months ago, and then life happened again, so I’ll continue now. Maybe I’ll post some thoughts after I read a bit and think on some of the poems.

Anyways, here’s to you and your life stuff.

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Review: Let the Body Beg by Tara Shea Burke

Disclaimer: I know the poet.

On to the important bit:

I’m always hungry. My dreams show blood

– from “Imagined Farms”

These poems, as the title of the collection telegraphs, are about hunger. Real, raw, human hunger felt deep in the chest and body. This is not the hunger of “oh, I’m a little late for lunch,” or “where’s the waiter with that food.” This is the hunger of first heartbreak, of a fist nailing the solar plexus sweet like a perfect tennis swing. This is the hunger of loneliness and desire, hunger that is hard to hear and beautiful to hold.

In the same poem quoted above, Burke writes, “The dreams are open wounds, talking / heads.” This is a protest poem, and though it protests about the self, it protests against ourselves as a nation as well. The factory farms and the endless wars in counterpoint to each other: in profit through blood. And, still, the love and the hunger. This is also, at it’s heart, a love poem. It’s about a lover who is

…a cool

clean cucumber vine…

and I have let her wrap vines around my hungry

heart

and a yearning to both grow and keep safe the lover. You’ll have to read the poem to get more, though.

This is a short volume, 25 pages and 16 poems, but each and every entry pulls it’s weighty hunger into the forefront. It is difficult to select just a few examples.

“The Hungry Girls of America” is dense with metaphor and “starving, then eating, then starving, then eating,” and succeeds by being about more than an individual, more than complaint, by being plain-spoken and forceful and honest. This might be the anthem for every one of us who feels like they can’t get ahead.

“The Harness” has long been one of my favorite poems by Burke. It has evolved in my acquaintance, and here it presents a tenderness and wholeness in a relationship. That ever-present hunger is softened here, attenuated. 

I don’t want to give away too many of these poems. As a whole, you should know that this is a forceful collection that is very clearly feminist and queer in its sensibilities. It connects though. As a reader, you will be satisfied with this collection, but it will leave you feeling a hunger. For more of Burke’s poetry, for human connection, and for awareness to the world around you. Be open to that hunger.

You can get a copy at ELJ Publications: http://eljpublications.com/available-titles/let-the-body-beg/

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Back Again, Like Old School

Lots of news to write about!

Two biggest things:

1 – No Bullshit Review is live with its first issue! It’s only in print, but you can find out more by going to the site: http://nobullshitreview.tumblr.com. I’m really proud of the first issue and all the great writing I was able to accept for it. There are instructions for getting a copy on the blog. Really easy: send an email to thenobsreview+subscribe@gmail.com with your mailing address (like I said, in print only).

2 – I got a manuscript accepted! It is titled How to Lose Faith, here’s the announcement link: Blast Furnace Press. Take a look at the most recent issue of the magazine! This will be my first chapbook publication, and includes a couple of poems from my thesis, a couple published elsewhere, and some new stuff. I am really excited about it, it means I get to call myself a full-fledged Published Poet!

There’s been a lot of radio silence lately, I went and got myself an adult job, so there’s not as much room for activities. But I have done a lot in the last few months, including getting a magazine up and running, reading submissions and putting together enough content for a whole issue. Not to mention revising that manuscript over and over and submitting it over and over.

It is a strange beast, to finally come into fruition this way. It is a strange beast, to winnow a ~70 page manuscript down to several poems. It is a howling clawing process, in fact. And it is even harder to describe, but I may take a stab at it over on the other WordPress blog.

In the meantime, check out No Bullshit Review, send me a poem or three, or a nonfiction piece. Everyone hurts for good nonfiction submissions, and NoBS Review is not an exception.

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Literary Magazines and Your Ideas – Poll

Hi Beautiful Readers! As writers, literary hangers-on, and readers, we all know that the esteemed literary magazine is the pillar, the bulwark, of the literary scene. We know that there are more literary magazines than there are readers, but not as many as there are writers. We know that literary magazines have problems and solutions in this day and age of digital accessibility.

I want to run a quick poll about your ideas of the current Lit Mag landscape. I have my own opinions, and I will be posting on that when this poll is over in a week.

Thanks for participating!