Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile

Dear Slushies, we have a confession. The first draft of these show notes included references to Wawa, Jason's sweet tooth, the relative repulsiveness of hot milk shakes, and professional wrestling. But then we realized that approach eclipsed what this episode illuminates: the poetic trend of self-reflexive gestures like the one we just made, confessing that this isn't the first draft! Listen in as we discuss Krysten Hill's poem "Are We Still Good?" The poem challenges us to think about analogy, metaphor, and narrativity. How poets can stage the occasion for a speaker's confessional reflection via the spark of a story plucked from our information dense mediascape -- revealing what it means to feel terror when that terror might otherwise be dismissed. How does she do this? Manatees and memes, silence, and a meta-textual turn. Enjoy!   PS Samantha also references this great essay by John Shoptaw on eco poetry. Dig in!   At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Dagne Forrest, Jason Schneiderman, Samanatha Neugebauer   Krysten Hill is the author of How Her Spirit Got Out (Aforementioned Productions, 2016), which received the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. Her work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming from The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day Series, Poetry Magazine, PANK, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Winter Tangerine Review,Rust + Moth and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the 2020 Mass Cultural Council Poetry Fellowship, 2023 Vermont Studio Center Residency, and 2024 SWWIM Residency. Author website   Are We Still Good?   According to officials, the animal does not appear to be seriously injured. Someone adds in the comments that, Obviously, it was just a joke.  Calm down, Liberals. Highlights the part in the article where  the man’s name was scraped onto algae growing on its skin. From what they could see, nothing was truly threatened.  The sea cow was probably too dumb and fat to feel anything.  I think of all the ways cruelty begins as a joke until  it chooses to finish what it started. The friend I’d known for years didn’t stop when I asked and asked again. I thought maybe he didn’t hear me. Later, he told our mutual friend that, Things just got out of hand. I thought she knew I was just playing. I remember when I was sure he heard me,  I recognized  it was my fear that made him smile so loud. Still, I attempt  to explain the surprise. At least I didn’t die there, I tell myself. Even here,  I wrote that as the first line of this poem and buried it. Anyways, he had work in the morning, offered to drive me home. I didn’t have to walk back to my dorm in the snow. I laughed  at everything he said on the way and tried not to let him see  my hands shake when I took the gum he offered me. He asked,  Are we still good? I chewed my tongue, relieved that I could do something else with my mouth until he parked, unlocked  the door to let me out. I thanked him. I was so scared that I didn’t run.

Episode 123: The Catholic Episode   Dear Slushies, we have a confession. We love being close readers as much as we love being close listeners. And if you are a fan of this podcast, we know the same is true for you. We’re delighted to consider Charlie Peck’s poems “Cowboy Dreams” and “Bully in the Trees” in this episode. We’re talking about unreliable narrators, homeric epithets, dramatic enjambments, and the difference between small “c” catholicism and capital “C” Catholicism. Confession and exultation, Slushies! Floating signifiers and The Sopranos. It’s a doozy! We hope you love listening in as much as we loved considering Charlie Peck’s poems for PBQ.    (Oh, and we excitedly celebrate Jason’s fifth collection launching in April, Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire!)   At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Samanatha Neugebauer   Charlie Peck is from Omaha, Nebraska and received his MFA from Purdue University. His poetry has appeared previously in Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter, Massachusetts Review, and Best New Poets 2019, among others. His first collection, World’s Largest Ball of Paint, is the winner of the 2022 St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press and is forthcoming April 2024.   Twitter: @chip_nutter   Cowboy Dreams   Winedrunk along the river on a Tuesday, boy howdy, my life. I ignore another call from my mother because today  is about the matted grass and the skipping trout. When my brother jumps companies after the Christmas bonus, it’s Ruthless. When I pillage the family silver to slick forty bucks at a pawn shop,  It’s time you start thinking about recovery. Instinct makes me wreck anyone who comes  too close. You ever snapped a dog’s stick just to watch his ears drop? I’m Catholic with how quick I loose my tongue to confess,  my guilt just a frequency my ears quit hearing.  One snowy May in the Colorado mountains, I stripped  to my underwear and raised my pack to wade the glacial river. Dried by a fire with a pot of beans. All night I dreamt of my lasso and revolver, riding the hot-blooded horse alone across the plains, no one in sight to hurt. Bully in the Trees   Indiana cornfields leave so much     to be desired, and lately I’ve desired nothing   but clean sheets and pretzel bread. For a decade    I was ruthless, took whatever I wanted:   last donut in the office breakroom, merged    lanes out of turn. I stole my roommate’s    change jar, sat on the floor of a Wells Fargo    rolling quarters to buy an eighth. In this new year,   I promise I’ll stop being the loudest in the room    like a bear ravaging a campsite just to be the bully   in the trees. For so long I thought my cruelty    was the world’s fault, my stubbed toe blamed   on the coffee table’s leg, not my stumbling in the dark.    Throwing every fish back to the river    doesn’t forgive the hooked hole I caused.    Once, I undressed a woman in the giraffe enclosure,   but maybe that was a Soprano’s episode. Once,    my life was so ordinary I replaced it   with the things I saw on television. I ate fifty    hard-boiled eggs. I robbed the bank and screamed   Attica! I stood in the trees cuffing the Nebraska    suburb and watched my mother set the table   through the window. A porcelain plate at each chair.    My ordinary life stranged by the window frame.   If I fall asleep before the credits, let me dream the rest.    My pockets are empty, but the metal detector still shrieks.

Dearest Slushies, we’re so happy to be back in the saddle! We took a mini-hiatus and return with this episode devoted to the poems of Jodi Balas. You’ll hear us mull over her artful use of concrete poetry and dive deep into her thinking about poetry, the body, and NFTs. How does a poem’s form entwine with its image system in order to serve its sense? How is taste also (always) about power? All of these questions are wrapped in a glittering cascade of editorial acumen and quirky dishing: Listen as Dagne explains the difference between NFTs and Cryptocurrency, reminding us of Rattle’s prescient issue dedicated to NFT poets. Or let us know what you think: should “mini cocktails” ever be a thing for happy hours? Is “drinkable” ever a compliment? Can we make a meme of Jason’s seductive eyebrow skills? In addition to the following links you might dig–  NFTs explained in 5 Minutes & Brit Bennett’s “Ain't That Good News”-- we invite you to contemplate the ritual of champagne sabering (if you try this in your backyard, shout “Poetry!”) With best wishes for a happy new year from the Slush Pile Crew.   At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Dagne Forrest, Samanatha Neugebauer   Jodi Balas is a neurodivergent poet from Northeast Pennsylvania. A lover of words (salacious, being a favorite – it just rolls off the tongue), her poetry has been accepted in Hole in the Head Review, Wild Roof Journal, Humana Obscura, Pinch Journal, and elsewhere. Jodi’s poem, “His mouth, mine” was selected as a finalist for the 2023 River Heron Review poetry prize and her poem, “Bone Density” won the 2023 Comstock Review Muriel Craft Bailey Award judged by Danusha Lameris. Jodi is in the process of developing her first chapbook to market to the poetry world. You could follow her musings on Instagram @jodibalas_ WALKING TO SURRENDER   The ghost at my side,   the knife in my coat pocket      hanging on the coat rack. I         yield to morning in apprehension            almost every morning. I’m               hardening, becoming the                   weight of two dead trees. A                     spool of thread wound so tight,                         it’s hard to find the starting                           point - the dull tip of a needle is                        useless. I try and unknot the                     shoelace from yesterday, the                   muscle of memory below the ribs               and figure out which direction I’m             headed or which route is correct for         my mental state I’ve been trying       to correct but cannot correct   until I surrender entirely to the blinding wave of fear. MY BODY AS AN NFT Allow me to unshackle your wrists, bring you up off your knees & up to speed. Call me a good investment, the originalcopy. Non-refundable, metallic over bone, wire over skin – untethered,the virtual sin. You cannot use me in some side hustle, sleight of hand deal. I am my own creator. Watch how I catapult through your veins and rush you faster than a thief with a shank. Electric/cryptic#mytongueisdigitalweightBegging for a bit of action you’re not sure how to obtain. Tell me, is there mutual interest? I cantell you that I’m priceless. Watch closely before I become a liability, before your pockets explode, before the scales begin to re-balance themselves.

In this episode we discussed three very different poems by Oregon poet Lorna Rose, all three resulting in juicy conversation and resulting in three tie-breakers (none of them involving the same voting configurations amongst our team!). This was a big first for us. The episode was kicked off by a larger discussion (prompted by the first poem) around aspects of cultural appropriation and touched on facets of trauma and language. This wide-ranging discussion and the split in our voting pointed to the power and ambiguity of various elements in these poems.  In the end, a tie-breaking editor helped deliver two of these poems into PBQ’s pages! Have a listen!  Note: This episode was recorded in December 2021, so there will be a bit of time travel involved.  This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show.     At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Alex Tunney  Absentee voter for the tie-breakers: Samanatha Neugebauer    Links to things we discuss you might like to check out:    "Declaration" by Tracy K. Smith, an erasure poem of the Declaration of Independence  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147468/declaration-5b5a286052461    "Native Son" by Richard Wright  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/07/20/the-hammer-and-the-nail    "Appropriate: A Provocation" by Paisley Rekdal  https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324003588    "How-To" by Anders Carlson Wee and retraction by The Nation  https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/how-to/    "Inside Kate Winlset's Mare of Easttown" Pennsylvania Accent, Vanity Fair  https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/04/kate-winslet-mare-of-easttown-accent      Lorna is a Pacific Northwest writer and speaker. Her narrative nonfiction and poetry have been recognized by Pacific Northwest Writers Association and the Oregon Poetry Association, and have appeared or are forthcoming in Scary Mommy, Jellyfish Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Writers Resist, and elsewhere. She's also a speaker and workshop leader. When not wrangling her two small children, she fantasizes about being interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air.     Author website                  Leaving Libya    I flood my lungs   with the wet stench of fish and bodies and fuel.   Dinghy motor whines against the night.      Salt air grinds my skin ‘til it’s threadbare and   there’s no sitting since leaving Sabratha.   Body clenches tight to its bones      and shrill muscles shriek and weep and lock up.   Damp t-shirt clings to goosebumped flesh under a   tattered orange life jacket. But what life?      Next to me a shaking woman holds her boney baby   and cries. She has shit herself.   Behind me a man mumbles and mumbles for water.      His eyes roll hollow,   mouth slacks open.   From his breath      I smell the thick stink of rot,   the gray smell of   forgotten humanity.      Lights of the Italian coastline appear and   my heart races,   vision blurs.  From somewhere behind there’s a jolt.   Yelling.   Floor tilts.      And the lights of Lampedusa go black.        Surviving the Rush    No music plays in   the general store in Circle, Alaska,   which is full of mukluks and      Wonder Bread.      Villagers fish the Yukon,   memorize river rise,   bet on      breakup.      Long ago miners arrived from Outside  to sift, chip   rip fortunes     from earth.      Stilts were drilled into permafrost and   structures were imposed and   all bustle and      rage.      Then claims fell dry and   no patience and Circle started to     wither.     The locals   picked up pieces of buildings, tried to   heal the      pock-marked ground.      Today a tourist’s crisp dollar might   mean something,   except the locals would have to tolerate      the perfumey tourist.      Villagers fish the Yukon,   memorize river rise,   bet on breakup. The soil smells of      fool’s gold and blood.

Slushies, in this episode we consider two poems by C. Fausto Cabrera, both of which speak, in very different ways, to the imagination in building our sense of self. The notion of being seen, a topic of universal relevance to any writer or artist, is explored in the first poem, which ends with the line “stuck in between the covers wondering when you’ll be back”, simultaneously exploring themes of incarceration or imprisonment. This discussion leads us to consider the many layers of being seen and Jason takes a moment to appreciate the “sexy time” of having a book tucked in your pocket. The second poem takes us on a related yet palpably different journey and reveals one of the paths our editorial discussions can take us to. Take a listen, you won’t be disappointed!   This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show.    At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, and Dagne Forrest.   C. Fausto Cabrera is a multi-genre artist and writer currently incarcerated since 2003. His work has appeared in: The Colorado Review, The Antioch Review, Puerto del Sol, The American Literary Review, The Water~Stone Review, The Woodward Review, among others. "The Parameters of Our Cage" is his prose collaboration with photographer Alec Soth.             To Be Seen at All , "What makes us so deserving of space  in other people' s minds?"    -Daniel Ruiz     My boss in the kitchen asks me how it felt to be famous after looking up my Washington Post Magazine essay & cover art online. The question left me stuck I didn't feel famous. I hadn't received much mail in years. What does celebrity mean separate from saturation, fame to the incarcerated— but infamy?   I question the value of telling people about accomplishments, about publishing at all— in a place where your spades game gets more respect, & swagger's stuck in the last time you punched a muthafucker in the face, what' s the point? I just felt petty for wanting to be seen at all. Guards are more concerned with how many towels I have than who I become.   I'm being heard— & that should be the focus, right? Is the nobility of a thing in or on purpose? Or the other way around? Cause who ever does anything for nobility— I'm starving to be objectified: stripped  down by the new young blond guard like a Skinamax late nite B-movie, why else do hundreds of burpees if not to play into the bad boy fantasies of anyone watching?   I went away before social media, but had my Lil’ cousin Artesia build me a platform to stand upon, thinkin' it'd present me somehow, someway, maybe keep me present— be on someone's mind or wall, admired even for a moment. The Past says they miss me, but since they never reach past the screen it's not the real me, only their memory. It’s not about me at all—and neither should the work be.   There is a point to this poem, in its lack of trust. & none of it is an answer. How can I count on anything through a 2-way mirror? I am just a writer, the world through my eyes glows different due to the depths of my damage. When you close this book & move on I'll still be stuck in-between the covers,    wondering                                                when you'll be back.         In the Sun that Seeps from the Dungeons/ Window/ Everything is Bright                  Because God is in an algorithm I hear through the toggle of my shuffle button/ from a playlist I                                                            composed/ I tell myself/ that if I listen, while the TV projects a pretty face to see when I look up                 from what I'm reading of poetry, mechanical pencil, click, click, underlining & taking notes in                    the margins— sipping a mug of French vanilla creamer laden coffee w/thoughts swirling in my

When to break a line, Slushies. And why? What’s the shape your poem takes, and how does the poem’s form serve its complexities, subtleties, and heart? Three poems by Karl Meade are up for consideration in this episode of The Slush Pile, and they call the editors into conversation about trauma in literature, narrative (in)coherence as craft, and the pleasurable risks of stair-stepped stanzas. Poet L.J. Sysko joins the conversation on this  episode  of The Slush Pile as we discuss “Beach Fall,” “Christmas Break,” and “Doom Eager.” (If a tree falls in the woods, Slushies. Ammiright?)   At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, L. J. Sysko, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, Alex J. Tunney   Karl Meade’s work been published in many literary magazines, a few of which he didn’t even donate heavily to, or previously serve as editor—including Literary Review of Canada, Tusculum Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Grain Magazine, Chronogram, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, Event Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Open Letter, Under the Sun, and Dandelion. His work has also been mistakenly longlisted for four CBC Literary Prizes, shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Open Season Creative Nonfiction Award, and Arc Poetry Magazine’s Poem of the Year. His novel, Odd Jobs, written as a solemn literary manifesto, was a finalist for the Foreword Reviews Book of the Year for Humor, and an iTunes Top 20 Arts and Literature podcast—“Laugh Out Loud,” one listener said of this grave work.   Karl’s chapbook “Doom Eager” has just been released in September 2023 by Raven Chapbooks, just in time for us to publish this podcast, which has waited longer than it should for release!    Author website: www.karlmeade.com Guest Editor: L.J. Sysko   L.J. Sysko's work has been published in Voicemail Poems, The Pinch, Ploughshares, Rattle, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She is the author of a poetry chapbook, BATTLEDORE (Finishing Line Press, New Women's Voices series). Poetry honors include several Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg awards, two fellowships from Delaware's Division of the Arts, and poetry finalist recognition from The Fourth River, The Pinch, and Soundings East. Sysko holds an MFA in poetry from New England College.   X: @lj_sysko Instagram: @lesliesysko Facebook: @lesliesysko Author website: http://www.ljsysko.com   beach fall for Holli and Terry   Mountain to stone, prairie to sand, redwood to ash, from here I can see the heart of the sea, but not the beach   he fell on. I can see the picture window you sit in—waiting, watching the shore, iPad in lap, short-haired   Flossy at your side, the one who dug your dad’s water bottle from under him. I don’t know why   you brought his suitcase to his wake empty—what it was between you. Only he knew the words   you could not say. The doctors’ words for you—non-verbal, spectral—sent him back to rage. He said they weren’t worth the hair   on a dead chicken, that aut-ism was just too much self for them to take from you. He knew what his raging   love could do: four hours a night on the couch, talking through your iPad. He called himself Manitoban, the prairie farm-boy   who watched his dog run away for three days, the rain-man to lead you out, teach you how to mouth the O, the awe   in Holli. Yes, from here I can see the redwoods fall, the mountains decay, his sea-bed—   they say all the big hearts of the earth love where they fall, that his heart stopped   before he hit the beach. But we both know why his mouth was full of sand.     Christmas break for Doug and Arlene   The earth heaves, the ice cleaves. Erosion cuts the heart from every stone, while every night   I watch you drive your family past a starving glacier, turn from a truck laden with salt. You head off   the head on, take the bumper to the heart, leave your family straining your lungs’ last   words from the floor of the minivan. I’m on the floor beneath my desk, straining   to plug in the phone that I will blame for years:

A wonderful sense of wordplay permeates the poems we were able to discuss from Barbara Diehl. Sadly, one of three poems we’d flagged for the podcast was snapped up before our discussion was recorded, and we talk a bit at the start of this episode about our process and timelines. Barbara’s work gave us space to consider how word choices, sequencing, and combining can lead to new experiences in a poem, as well as a debate over the roles of joy and darkness in poetry, including the balance we seek as readers in the world we find ourselves living in these days.    This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show.     At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer and Dagne Forrest.  Barbara Westwood Diehl is senior editor of The Baltimore Review. Her fiction and poetry appear in a variety of journals, including Quiddity, Potomac Review (Best of the 50), SmokeLong Quarterly, Gargoyle, Superstition Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Atticus Review, The MacGuffin, The Shore, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Raleigh Review, Ponder, Fractured Lit, South Florida Poetry Journal, Five South, Allium, The Inflectionist Review, Switch, Split Rock Review, and Free State Review.    Socials: Twitter @BarbaraWestwood, Facebook @ barbara.w.diehl.3, Poets & Writers listing      December Goodnight    it’s sunfall, and the papersky is grayed  with erasures of bestlaid plans    all the daymistakes   forgiven    the brokenpencil points of planes   thumbsmudged away    their grumblechatter  hushed    the blackening windows  shuttered    *    so sleep in the nightsee   in the skylisten    so dream a planetdance  breathe a metronome     so keep time to a ticktock moon   to evening’s pocketwatch    its face a dozing chaperone   so humfade, so eyes closed    nothing to shudderfret  allsafe

In the midst of excitedly preparing for AWP 2017, we record this episode in which we discuss two poems by Rita Banerjee, “The Suicide Rag” and “Georgia Brown” This week’s discussion both took us back and made sure that none of us would see the world the same way again. With images of breakdancing, gospel choir, and the not-so-innocent Georgia Brown, we were in it. Whether we’re distinguishing jazz from jazz or figuring out what a clapper is, this episode is filled with risky moves. Join us in the campaign to have your local library carry lesser-known authors and small presses. Let us know what books you’ll be requesting with #getsomebooks! Let’s support libraries, small presses, and the authors who write for them. Make sure you follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and let us know what you think of this episode with #longandskinny! Stay tuned to hear about our AWP 2017 experience–we hope to see you there!And of course, most importantly, read on!   At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Tim Fitts, and Sara Aykit Rita Banerjee is the author of Echo in Four Beats, CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps, and Cracklers at Night. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard and her MFA from the University of Washington, and her work appears in Hunger Mountain, PANK, Tupelo Quarterly, Isele Magazine, Nat. Brut., Poets & Writers, Academy of American Poets, Los Angeles Review of Books, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere. She is the co-writer of Burning Down the Louvre, a forthcoming documentary film about race, intimacy, and tribalism in the United States and in France, and serves as Senior Editor of the South Asian Avant-Garde and Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. She received a 2021-2022 Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the opening chapters of this memoir, “Birth of Cool” was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.    The Suicide Rag Billy played ragtime on the church organ but we lunch hour kids, kept time by another name.  Behind St. Augustine’s we learned to hit the pavement, sound like an anvil crack hammers hitting steel, Billy playing skeletons on the fifth, we arpeggioed haloed, froze on the black top.  Learning to cakewalk This was our battle— tar-mat babies doing handsprung suicides for the girls standing ’round with knife-like eyes That’s all we needed— a rolling beat, a firing squad and schoolyard skirts scouring the lot as we fell face forward hands locked & stiff, the only thing that could’ve come between us was a kiss.   Georgia Brown Harlem had yet to be born, the globe had not been spun, but we knew how to whistle, how to call clappers and skirts on cue: That summer, we first met Georgia, she was an echo in four beats, we learned to hum her story. Mike played her with a licked reed but she was all brass, sharp like an abandoned railroad cutting through wild wood, and when she took stage, she made those trombone boys whisper, “Sweet Georgia, Sweet.”

July 2023 Update: Sarah is preparing to appear at the New York City Poetry Festival at the end of July. Sarah will read a poem and be interviewed as part of an appearance with the monthly poetry show "There's a Lot to Unpack Here". Sarah also has a new book of poetry, “The Familiar”, coming out from Texas Review Press in Spring 2024. Welcome to Episode 19 of Slush Pile! For this episode, we have two “creepy” poems submitted for our Monsters Issue by Sarah Kain Gutowski. While these poems, part of a suite, did not get unanimous votes, we all felt they enveloped us into a universe of magical realism. True to the tradition of scary stories, these poems demand to be read slowly, deliberately, and out loud. Additionally, Gutowski’s work is more than simply scary. Like Kathy says, “Sometimes freaky shit happens,” and these poems force our team to consider the ambiguities of life, or pre-death, as Tim puts it. Listen to the outcome, but one thing is for sure: these poems are stronger together. Comment on our Facebook event page or on Twitter with #frogtongue and sign for our email list if you’re in the area, and even if you’re not! Read on!   At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Lauren Patterson, Tim Fitts, Caitlin McLaughlin, Jason Schneiderman, and Marion Wrenn   Sarah Kain Gutowski is the author of two books, The Familiar (forthcoming) and Fabulous Beast: Poems, winner of the 14th annual National Indies Excellence Award for Poetry. With interdisciplinary artist Meredith Starr, she is co-creator of Every Second Feels Like Theft, a conversation in cyanotypes and poetry, and It's All Too Much, a limited edition audio project. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Threepenny Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and The Southern Review, and her criticism has been published by Colorado Review, Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, and the New York Journal of Books.   Chapter VI: The Children Have a Request The season stretched itself thin, weakened by storms and heat. Inside the damp, shadowy space of the children’s fort, the woman with the frog tongue wove baskets and bowls with tight, interlocked laces, while her silk stitches began to fray and lengthen. The gap between her lips widened to where the children could see the white of her teeth. They stared at her, sometimes; she saw them clench their jaws and try to speak to each other without moving their mouths. Before long they’d begin to laugh, and she’d shake with relief at the sound. Then one day, when the trees broke into glittering shards of gold and red and green, and light spun pinwheels above their heads as they walked together between the falling leaves, the girl looked at the woman and asked if she had a name. At this, the woman jerked to a stop. The old surge, the impulse to speak that rose within her belly and chest, overwhelmed. She wanted the girl and boy to know her name. Her tongue, rolled tightly and barred from moving inside its cage, strained against her teeth and cheeks, contorting her face with its rage. The boy stepped back when he saw the change on the woman’s face. The girl moved closer, though, to pat the hand she held like she might a frightened kitten or skittish, fallen bird. Let’s guess your name, she said. The woman’s jaw fell slack, as much as the stitches allowed. Her panic passed away. The boy saw her relax and began to hop around. A game, a game, he chanted. Across her eyes the sun sliced its blade, and though her vision bled with its light, she felt cheered by the girl’s hand and the boy’s excitement. Aurora. Jezebel. Serafina, guessed the girl. Her brother laughed and grabbed a fallen branch, whacking the moss-covered roots of the trees surrounding them. The woman laughed, too, short bursts of air through her nose. Her happiness shocked them all. The boy laughed again, a raucous sound, and she looked the little girl in the eye. A curve tested her mouth’s seams, more grimace than grin, but the girl smiled back and

In this short trailer, we tease the next three poets to be featured on the Slushpile: C. Fausto Cabrera, Barbara Westwood Diehl, and Jodi Balas. We are so excited to be featuring poetry from these three very diverse writers. Have a quick listen for a taste of each poetic voice! (And remember – we pull our featured poets and writers from our submissions slushpile – polish up your work and submit it to Painted Bride Quarterly, knowing we might choose to feature it here!)   This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show.    At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller and Dagne Forrest