Words on Play
Spring/Summer 2020, Vol. 63. No. 2
Virtual Readings
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our release event for Words on Play was postponed. In an attempt to celebrate this exciting issue in a timely manner, we’ve gathered virtual readings from several of our contributors. Check them out below!
Joanna Currey
“Easter Even”: https://vimeo.com/403111689
“Somerset Olde Creek Pool & Rec. Center”: https://vimeo.com/405072407
Michelle Penn
“The surfers”: https://vimeo.com/user112183595/review/405390164/c452951e6d
“Self-Portrait in Multiple Universes”: https://vimeo.com/user112183595/review/405389590/7c60c90f20
“A history of paper clips in Paris”: https://vimeo.com/user112183595/review/405389153/cf81188d48
Amelia Williams
“The Catch”: https://vimeo.com/401925497
Marjorie Maddox
“Play Therapy,” “Taboo”: https://vimeo.com/user110812570/review/400988372/68b60feed4
Dorsey Olbrich
“The Pirate Anne Bonny and I Play Video Games”: https://vimeo.com/user110836210/review/401099099/31e7847026.
Max Heinegg
“Blueberrying”: https://vimeo.com/400668403
Gauraa Shekhar
“Other Significant Others: A Glossary” (excerpt):
Amy Miller
“After the Concert,” “What We Laugh At”: https://vimeo.com/401961408?fbclid=IwAR1MtQ7ejR93Jt7lxPfE-SK8lwOW4xA_xB1fONsp0pwd7QRhrdhxSz5ZgqI
Brooke Sahni
“What My Mother Knows,” “The Golden Reserve”: https://vimeo.com/401800518?fbclid=IwAR1bYcelJ5_E9kitGsZSqAmbv1poH_9pklgXebx5JLHZ12dTjb4-3kDuoRs
Patrick Kindig
“what they don’t tell you about dido & aeneas”: https://vimeo.com/401487078?fbclid=IwAR2wN_pz5R3Z0u1W3Ry1K1SKTs-NPECHWnL3Wb2iD_rn5mrO9Ie4vFqWiWI
Liz Ahl
“Home Game”: https://vimeo.com/401146170?fbclid=IwAR0jviMUznBfPQbUYLN2fCpSNeA1Yw6RV-7jzsiGsSFOV__KHfLCkNCoVqM
Markham Johnson
“At the Track, Waiting for Jesus”: https://vimeo.com/user110886525?fbclid=IwAR12bqcNP3fhIqA1cMhRqkRIAjKG78FbVpyysTuxqjBrJ-92HxGDzWVZDq8
Myra Shapiro
“Dearth,” “The letter d”: https://vimeo.com/401090835/2b436a24a3?fbclid=IwAR1hS-COZn7Ijq2Hr7frONzGR27v_xdKK96onzwQi0B9aAW72O0S8D3-Bs8
Ellen Kombiyil
“The Last Joyride”: https://vimeo.com/409837850?fbclid=IwAR25pPVQI3JS0FFwnQD-61GN26-_n50IJt-0LBVbWANPrBUCg3u68LsSt-A
Fiction
Gauraa Shekhar: “Other Significant Others: A Glossary”
Sean Bernard: “I Want My M.F.A.”
Jackson Ingram: “The Marmee Dress”
Alison Ho: “Ars Poetica”
Creative Nonfiction
JJ Peña: “the truth behind killing monsters”
Poetry
James Toupin: “The Discovery of Play”
Mary Kovaleski Byrnes: “My Kids in Church,” “Diptych with Daughter/Mermaid”
Joanna Gordon: “Fish-Girl Fragments,” “If Fish-Girls Could Dance,” “Halve the Fish—Save the Woman”
Edwina Trentham: “My mother rebukes me from the turquoise depths”
Michelle Penn: “The surfers,” “a history of paper clips in Paris,” “Self-Portrait in Multiple Universes”
Wendy Drexler: “The Bay, Shimmering the Whole Way Out”
Amelia L. Williams: “The Catch”
Holly Painter: “Cryptic Crossword L,” “Cryptic Crossword LVI”
Gabriel Spera: “WORD SEARCH: Chemotherapy”
James Davis: “As,” “Ex”
Amy Miller: “After the Concert,” “What We Laugh At”
Markham Johnson: “At the Track, Waiting for Jesus,” “Longhorns”
Matthew J. Spireng: “The Perfect Game”
George Looney: “Music Retrieved,” “On the Eaves of the House Next Door”
Patrick Kindig: “what they don’t tell you about dido & aeneas,” “enchant, v.,” “title poem”
Ann Keniston: “Self-Portrait as Off Rhyme”
John Harris: “On Nick Cave’s ‘Soundsuits’”
Ellen Kombiyil: “The Last Joyride”
Alice Duggan: “The Trouble with Cars,” “I Visit Lois at the Nursing Home”
Ioanna Carlsen: “On the Miniature Pumpkins You Hid Through the House”
Margot Kahn: “Skiing up Cold Creek”
Geri Radacsi: “In Times of Abandonment”
Myra Shapiro: “Dearth,” “The Letter d”
Judith Pacht: “Babel”
Cindy Veach: “At the Austerlitz, New York, Blueberry Festival I Buy a Trifold Mirror”
Lynn Domina: “Water Music, 7-17-1717”
Katy Day: “The Death of a Star,” “Snow Angels,” “Variations on Independence”
Marjorie Maddox: “Play Therapy,” “Taboo”
Dorsey Craft: “The Pirate Anne Bonny and I Play Video Games,” “The Pirate Anne Bonny and I Plunder the Cruise Ship,” “Heaven”
Joanna Currey: “Easter Even,” “Somerset Olde Creek Pool & Rec. Center”
Tara Mesalik MacMahon: “In the Old Neighborhood”
Janet Jennings: “Riding with Ken,” “Calling the Colors,” “Names Are a Difficult Matter”
Brooke Sahni: “What My Mother Knows,” “The Golden Reserve”
Heidi Seaborn: “On the Occasion of an Outfielder’s Wedding”
Daniel Becker: “The Incomplete Sentence of Baseball”
Clemonce Heard: “The Gospel of Wheelie,” “Washington Parish Free Fair”
Madeline Grigg: “Burned House Horizon,” “Shape Shifter,” “The Goddess Hel Sits on Her Front Porch,” “Ephemeris”
Ella Flores: “Pyrocumulus,” “Indo-Australian Tectonic Plate Decides It’s Not Working Out, Breaks Up,” “South American Plate Plays on Words,” “Nubian Tectonic Plate Finds Animatronic Fortuneteller, Inserts Coin,” “Invented Language / Sextina”
Alice Templeton: “Nostalgia,” “Trellis”
Laura Glenn: “Holiday Parties”
Jean-Mark Sens: “Croquet”
Anita Sullivan: “Preposition”
Barbara Schwartz: “The Empress,” “Counting Blessings”
Devon Miller-Duggan: “For Mercy”
Cindy Juyoung Ok: “Pale Music”
Marisa P. Clark: “Yet Another Love Poem in Which I Anthromorphize”
Liz Ahl: “Home Game,” “Amnesia at the Cash Tables”
Sarah Ebba Hansen: “A Year After the Breakup,” “The Part I’ll Never Do Again,” “An Elegy in April,” “Moss Hollow”
Nicholas Yingling: “The Limits of Magic”
Max Heinegg: “Blueberrying”
Awards 41
Fall/Winter 2019, Vol. 63. No. 1
Eilis O’Neal: Editor’s Note
Fiction
Jonathan Wei, “Capybara”
John Tait, “This Might Hurt Some”
Kathleen McNamara, “Pyrosome”
Andrew Mangan, “The Pioneer Spirit”
Elsa Nekola, “Meat Raffle”
Elinam Agbo, “Schools of Longing”
Poetry
Robert Thomas: “Negligee and Hatchet: A Sonnet Crown”
Matt Miller: “The Adorned Fathomless Dark Creation,” “Getting Out,” “Boys Beyond June,” “Legend”
Hannah Dow: “Realizations While Staying in Other People’s Apartments,” “My Mother Tries to Teach Me How to Pray,” “Bildungsroman,” “The Seafloor of Your Heart Sings Against It”
Tori Sharpe: “The Move,” “The Stray”
Kathryn Haemmerle: “Aubade Ending with a View of a River,” “Extraction”
Olivia Yang: “the backyard is where all the grief resides beneath the sun”
Anne McDonnell: “Ash and Metal”
Amanda Gomez: “Autopsy of My Mother”
Michele Randall: “Tea Hot Tea Iced,” “Exigent”
George Looney: “A Falling Piano is a Classic”
Pam Bernard: “Turtle,” “Iphigenia”
Mary Rummel: “Illuminator Dreams”
Stephen Gibson: “On Georgia O’Keefe’s Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses”
Lisa Compo: “Elegy Prelude”
W.J Herbert: “Northern Cardinal,” “The Double Drowning”
Roy Bentley: “The Fighting Lady,” “Bathtub Beach Reef”
Lauren Coggins: “Precedent,” “Speaking with a Friend”
Janine Certo: “Diagram of the Four Chambers of the Heart”
Adam Penna: “The Love Poems That Are Now”
Peter H. Michaels: “Our First Love”
Jeremy Voigt: “Lunar Eclipse”
Christina Hutchins: “Sleeping with the Melvini Sisters,” “The Lover & The Whale”
Pianta: “Uchinanchu,” “Mother,” “Father Figure”
Catherine Hodges: “Late Afternoon Meditation on an Open Egg Carton”
Laura Apol: “But Winter,” “The Cruelest Month,” “Sowing with Salt,” “Memoir”
Faith Shearin: “Mittens,” “Math,” “Extinct Language”
Joel Peckham: “The Locomotive of the Lord”
James Toupin: “Bird Lives”
Eleanor Berry: “Not Burning the Christmas Greens,” “Like Breathing”
Ösel Jessica Plante: “When the Mississippi Speaks with Its Wet, Pretty Mouth” “The Navy Wife Tries on Her Body,” “Pistol of Bones,” “She & Wolf”
Alysse McCanna: “The Salesman,” “Land Run Haibun”
C.C. Reid: “Indelible”
Sara Wagner: “Captivity Narrative”
A.D. Lauren Abunassar: “Cryptid Poem: “Medium,” “Eavesdropping,” “Autobiography as a Headless Girl”
Gail Newman: “Blood Memory”
Catherine Freeling: “The Glove”
Matthew Gellman: “Not Music,” “Cloudburst,” “Pear Tree, with Thunder”
Ae Hee Lee: “Inside a Mogyoktang in Chicago,” “Fable”
Jo Pitkin: “Village: Bag of Babkas”
Karen Harryman: “Southern Funeral with Hairbrush”
Kristene Kaye Brown: “Taking the Metro Home After the Wake”
Voices of the Middle East and North Africa
Spring/Summer 2019, Vol. 62. No. 2
Eilis O’Neal and Somayeh Shams: Editors’ Note
Fiction: Voices of the Middle East and North Africa
Uzma Aslam Khan: “My Mother is a Lunar Crater”
Peyman Esmaeili: “Waterworld”
Lauren Alwan: “The Levantines”
Nahid Rachlin: “Teheran Beggar”
Poetry: Voices of the Middle East and North Africa
Myronn Hardy: “Performance Day in the Vaulted Theater,” Blue over Bicycles”
Nashwa Gowanlock: “The Story of Ka”
Aiya Sakr: “In Which Huginn Has Fathered Children,” “Broken Ghazal: Seven Hijabis,” “Questions for my Jinn Counterpart”
Sara Elkamel: “Ways of Entering,” “Welcome to the Night, in Which We Are Hidden”
Dujie Tahat: “salat in a dream with Jida’s ghost on the night of Korryn Gaines’ killing,” “salat in the name of the father”
Makram Ayache: “These Old Jackets and Crowns”
Israel Eliraz: “Untitled”
Lori Levy: “Check-Up in Beer Sheva,” “Nursing Home Lies”
Nicholas Samaras: “Alatsata, I Bring You My Mother,” “Immigrant by Repetition”
Threa Almontaser: “When I Was Nine I Lived,” “Mining Cave in Dhamar,” “Yemen Storm,” “Yemen Plated with Divine Origami”
Eli Eliahu: “Ballistics,” “Genesis”
Jameel al-Jameel: “Paleness of Time”
Nineb Lamassu: “28/04/6767”
Bijan Najdi: “Happiness”
Adele Ne Jame: “The SS France and the Ruthless Furnace of This World”
Mariam Gomaa: “Qahwa”
Jessica Abughattas: “She Cannot Bear to Hear His Name”
Nada Faris: “All Knowledge is Permissible,” “Parachutes”
Darius Atefat-Peckham: “An Explosion of Feathers”
Mohja Kahf: “Spaciousness (al-Inshirah)”
Salim Barakat: “Fog Composed Like a Gentleman”
Alaz Ada: “The Tulip Age,” “The Hunger Thief”
Majda Gama: “Tala (Ode to the Girl Palm),” “Passing Twenty-One Palms”
Rachel Neve-Midbar: “Fourth Eden,” “Fajr”
Joshua Sassoon Orol: “Daughter of Egypt,” “Diaspora Prayer”
Hedy Habra: “Though It Still Appears to Be a Dream”
Maya Wahrman: “My Grandfather Said I Spoke Spanish Like Cervantes”
Ibtisam Barakat: “Rhythm”
Nurit Zarchi: “[UNTITLED]”
Fiction: General Submissions/Francine Ringold Awards
Skye Anicca: “Places I’ve Never Been”
Doug Ramspeck: “Summer”
Desiree Evans: “Whirligig”
Poetry: General Submissions/Francine Ringold Awards
Danielle Gosselin: “protector pulse”
Sarah Elrich: “All Maps Are Moving”
Caleb Nolen: “Yellow Jacket,” “Night Drives on the PA-26”
James Crews: “Telling My Mother”
Christopher Costabile: “Old Smoke”
Erin L. McCoy: “Notice of an Ice-Carried Boulder at Borgholm,” “Memoir of the Late John Wolley by Alfred Newton”
Reyna Clancy: “Miss July ‘85”
Cynthia Amoah: “for my grandmother, when words fail”
Lauren Saxon: “Tomorrow,” “Ghost Boys”
Katherine Stingley: “A Daughter Goes to Work”
Roy Mash: “At the Wedding the DJ Puts on an Oldie”
Neva Herrington: “Dining with Marjorie”
Susan Friberg: “Safe Passage,” “Sleeping Birds,” “Ghosts”
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Fall/Winter 2018: Awards 40
Awards 40
Fall/Winter 2018
Vol. 62. No. 1
Fiction
Ellen Rhudy: “Would You Know Me”
Ellen Furman: “Things”
Amy Shearn: “Some Fun”
Mimi Lok: “Last of Her Name”
Poetry
Megan Merchant: “Marrow,” “A thousand words is worth a picture,” “Eurydice,” “Pulp,” “Unfurling”
Susan Nguyen: “Beast Angel,” “If I Say My Body is Grieving”
Namrata Verghese: “Kathakali”
Adela Najarro: “Chantico Swings”
Darrel Alejandro Holnes: “The land is made a stepmother,” “20 de Diciembre, 1989: When the . . .” “For My Mother, The Black . . .”
Mark Smith-Soto: “Let It Spill”
Cornelia Veenendaal: “Rehearsal”
Susan Landgraf: “What’s Left”
Mel Elberger: “Recipe”
Caroline Berblinger: “Interviewing My Grandfather,” “For Taylor,” “April Again”
Elizabeth Rees : “Elegy for Good Health,” “Our Newborns Down the Hall . . .,” “No Other Name for Mother,” “Complicit”
Michael Warr: “What Not To Do . . . (an unfinished poem after Michael Harriot at The Root)”
Emily Harman : “Cairn”
Kate Gaskin: “Shark Week During the Apocalypse”
Jeanne Wagner: “Dogs That Look Like Wolves,” “Scald,” “Why I’m Often Suspected of Shoplifting”
Christie Towers: “Sugar Water in Winter”
Chrissy Kolaya: “The House Sitters”
Brian Czyzyk: “Baba Yaga’s Antidote for Aimlessness,” “Presque Isle,”
Don Colburn: “Ginkgo on 19th,” “Poem in December”
Don Hogle: “Mother”
Katherine Gaffney: “With Ghost”
John Walser: “Heaven,” “Vincent Street April”
Rebecca Foust: “Spring Is”
W.J. Herbert: “The Smell of Almost Rain”
S. B. Merrow: “Craving”
Benjamin Garcia: “Gay Epithalamium”
Matty Layne Glasgow : “Plumage,” “Ash Mama,” “bitter-berry”
J. Bailey Hutchinson: “Became My Body, Too”
Melanie Figg: “Psyche’s History of Houses”
Freesia McKee: “Peeling an Orange”
Caroline Earleywine: “Lipstick,” “What if our love wasn’t”
Ayokunle Falomo: “The World’s Loudest Sound”
Ryan Meyer: “Estuary,” “from Forgetting Guidelines”
Matthew MacFarland: “Singing Saw,” “Hic abundant lupi”
Roger Camp: “Ascension”
Kelly Michels: “What I mean when I say he went . . .”
Luke J. Johnson: “Song of the Stillborn”
Arne Weingart : “The Painting of the Barn without the . . .”
Lee Sharkey: “To Look Out Is to See; to Look In, to . . .”
Anna Scotti: “When I could still be seen,” “Five Children and It,” “Feathers of Gold”