Poetry and Prose from the Center for Writers
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In these pages, thanks to Marcus G. Brown, we breathe rib smoke in the streets, are rubbed in the scent of “Where I’m From.” We walk under Christopher Brunt ‘s “banner for a regiment of ghosts.” From Justin Quincy Lenton, we hear “libretti like pearls.” Thanks to Jeffrey MacLachlan, “out of the gin-clear lakes / come the lake flies.” Sarah E. Cole “is holding a comma for ransom.” “Right at this moment,” Ollie Smith’s “Harvey” is “thinking about the time his father came home from the hospital.” From Annette C. Boehm, we know that “the birds are skittish / their flight might be contagious”; from Brittanny Passons, that “the guard behind the gate / has been slieeping for /centuries.”
Jolene Creighton’s “Mother’s Day Poem” urges us “to live so far away, / Perhaps beneath the sea / Or maybe under a great big rock / Or high up in a tree.” Thanks to Corey Latta, “the puzzle lay half pieced / on our dining room table.” Thanks to Stephanie Rambo, “the mouth of feathers” is “ajar.” With Claudia Smith, we watch with the coolness of stone “through the opened door.” These are the poems.
The stories surround us. In Fae Dremock’s “Polyester Silk” we travel “paths overgrown with outlaw honeysuckle.” Eddie Malone teaches us that if you find yourself in London, “you have to fall in love.” From Jennifer Brewington, in “Even Caves Grow,” we learn “how everything matters so much that nothing does”; from Claudia Smith’s “Propriety,”
“how to polish the apple”; from Lauen Oetinger’s “Density and Space” that “technicians cannot give results.”
I can give results. These undergraduate and graduate writers are careful and brilliant; their work quick, firm, limpid, and full of pith.
- Angela Ball