Wrapping It Up
Friday! It was (almost) my favorite day of the week when I was still a part of the working world. Now, everyday is Friday. I love retirement. I love having control of my days and doing as I like. One of the things I like to do is read. For the last several years my reading has really changed because I read online literary journals more than I read books. I like reading flash fiction, flash CNF, essays, poetry. I like that I can pause throughout the day to read a piece or two in just a few minutes, enter a completely new world without having to invest hours to do so. Often, after I read a particularly great story or essay, it will stay on my mind throughout the day and night. Today I’m going to share a few pieces that I read this week that stayed on my mind. Actually, I’m still thinking about them. Here ya go:
Francine Witte’s “How to Answer a Door” blew me away. Francine is a wizard at writing flash fiction and one of my favorites. Every single time I read her work I learn something. How great is that? She writes with a unique pov and every story is like opening a gift for readers and writers. The opening to this story pulls the reader in and is there ever lots in there to see:
“Slowly—As if the other side of your life is on the other side of the door. Like the door is an “and” or a “but.” You were living a quiet life, AND you opened the door, and your ex was standing there, flowers in hand. This was miles before he was your ex. This was your first date and you saw his ocean eyes and you knew you could drown in them BUT you couldn’t help it.”
Do not miss this story!
Jamie Etheridge is another writer I love and I’m always watching for new work by her. She has a new piece in Mom Egg Review, “We are (not) fish tales” that is lovely and nuanced, written in a surrealist vein. What surprised me about this piece is really how much I love it considering surrealism generally isn’t my jam plus it’s a Mom piece. Not being a mom myself, sometimes I can’t relate to parenting pieces. This piece is filled with lyrical language (love!) and gorgeous visuals. It’s wistful and hopeful. It’s pure love for this child.
“I hear a garbled siren song, voices directing a warm current straight toward us. My child spears through the thermocline, frolicking like a porpoise between the layers of cool and warmth, echoing back the music with her own polarized wheezing.”
You’ll not soon forget this piece.
Casie Dodd is a writer/publisher I “met” on Twitter. She is owner of Belle Point Press and I recently interviewed her for Reckon Review. Casie has an essay in The Oxford American right now that is dynamite, “Johnny Cash, Pray for Me”. She ruminates on motherhood, faith, place, and Johnny - tells us how they all intermingled with her life as a first-time mother. It’s fascinating and very interesting reading and I highly recommend it.
“My son has always been spirited, but from the beginning, he seemed to find a sort of intuitive comfort in music linked to his roots. Our family is from Oklahoma, Arkansas, and the mid-South region; I grew up there but relocated to Chicago with my husband to start what we thought could become a new life. As our family grew, that option became more and more untenable. Despite our Midwestern exile—and a lack of particular interest in country music—even in pregnancy, I was drawn to Johnny’s oeuvre as a primal link to the place I came from.”
Writing about faith is tricky when some of your readers are skeptics but Casie does a great job of communicating her personal story in a way that’s inclusive and relatable.
I enjoy discovering new-to-me writers and I discovered Hallie Johnston this week. She’s a Southerner who writes CNF and poetry. I fell in love with her poem, “Sonnet for Susan Gately”. The beginning is memorable as is the entire poem. First lines are so important in writing poetry or any genre, really. These sparked my interest immediately:
“Good Alabama thirty-somethings roll
eyes at husbands, give birth. I sit at my
grandmother’s bedside, unmarried, single,
unlovable or lesbian or both.”
You want to know this story, this poem. It’s just wonderful and brief. I love a great short poem and this is it.
Another fantastic poem I listened to on Youtube this week is this poem by Jericho Brown and his friend Veronica Cunningham. It was read at the wedding of Jericho’s cousin recently and I found it via his Twitter. It’s so uplifting! You can see and hear the love these two poets have for this newly married couple. You MUST listen to it. It will make your day. After, click over to my interview with Jericho from 2019, just before the release of his Pulitzer Prize winning book The Tradition.
What better way to end this post? Have a great weekend, friends.
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Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash