great weather for MEDIA is delighted to announce our nominations for the next Pushcart Prize – Best of the Small Presses Series.
These nominations are for work published in 2020 and were chosen from our anthology Escape Wheel and the poetry collection Tricks of Light by Thaddeus Rutkowski.
Congratulations to all our nominees and good luck! It was so hard choosing just six out of the immensely talented writers we have published this year.
Meghan Grupposo - Sylvia Plath has exquisite feet...
Ciarán Hodgers - Cicatrix
Merle Kinney - total_bilateral_mastectomy_exe
Peggy Robles-Alvarado - What They Mean by Papers
Thaddeus Rutkowski - Farmers and Dove
Mercy Tullis-Bukhari - Dear Brother
Want a taster? Here are the first few lines...
“Sylvia Plath has exquisite feet
& they aren’t even hers
she has a foot that will bend with my hand
I want to take her foot in both hands
fingers pressed into the sole
thumbs across the top
what an arch ”
“Cut me and I’ll make language.
See the etchings stride with a soldier’s conviction,
and bandaged just the same.
Once more unto meaning, dear friends,
once more an urged narration
of the knife deepening after it was removed,
how the poem sits like a faulty bomb waiting to blow.”
“The group chat knows I have tits. They’ve seen my face and can draw the conclusion that my genotype hosts two little Xs stooped like gargoyles next to the familial predisposition for colon cancer and freckles.
We’re an anime group, but a classy one—less into the yelling teenagers stuff and more into the deep character development stuff, the complex sense of place stuff.
“new TS episode toniiiiite :P” says Mixmax, whose profile picture is a watermelon with Keanu Reeves’ face photoshopped onto it.
“I’m so nervous for my poor husb Mitsu X_X”
“well he needs 2 learn that stabbing has consequences”
“ >^< nooooooo””
“Papeles:
Not the Daily News or El Diario, la prensa,
or the kind my mother read to me on Sunday
mornings. Her voice, raspy, a throat full of
pelitos de mango making sure to read each
article twice so that maybe I wouldn’t reject
Spanish as fiercely as she had rejected English.”
“When sunlight hits the higher points
and the lower places remain in shadow,
two farmers harvest corn together.”
“I understand
the need to look for a space away from
reality. I, also, have found myself sleeping in
anonymous spaces to ward off inebriation and
welcome the shadows of my fears. I have sat
on the edge of the Grand Canyon and have
wondered how long my body would stay in air
before it hits ground.”
Remember, we are accepting poetry and prose submissions for our next anthology from October 15, 2020. Deadline January 15, 2021. Be sure to check out all our books. We look forward to reading your work.