Call for Submissions: LEARNING TO DRIVE Poetry & Prose Series

Most of us have a story (or stories) about how/when/where/why we learned to drive. We want to hear about your experiences as a neophyte driver in a poem or story (fiction or nonfiction), and invite you to submit your work to our LEARNING TO DRIVE Poetry and Prose Series. (Non-drivers can also participate by explaining why they’ve never learned to operate a vehicle.)

PROMPT: Tell us about learning to drive in a poem (any reasonable length) or prose piece (300 words or fewer). If you’ve never learned to drive, tell us why in poetry or prose.

WHAT: Submissions can be original or previously published poems or prose. You retain all rights to your work and give Silver Birch Press permission to publish the piece on social media and in a potential print edition.

WHEN: We’ll feature the poems and prose in the Silver Birch Press LEARNING TO DRIVE Poetry and Prose Series on our blog starting in March 2016 . We’ll also feature the work on Twitter and Facebook.

HOW TO SUBMIT: Email one poem or prose piece to SBPSUBMISSIONS@gmail.com as an MSWord attachment — and in the same file include your name, contact info (including email address), one-paragraph author’s bio (written in third person), and any notes about your creative process or thoughts about your piece. Please put all this information in one MSWord document and title the file with your last name (and only your last name). Write “Drive” in subject line of email. If available, please send a photo of yourself around the time you learned to drive and provide a caption for the photo (when, where). Photos with cars encouraged!

SUBMISSION CHECKLIST

To help everyone understand our submission requirements, we’ve prepared the following checklist.

1. Send ONE MS Word document TITLED WITH YOUR LAST NAME (e.g. Smith.doc or Jones.docx).

2. In the same MS Word document, include your contact information (name, mailing address, email address).

3. In the same MS Word document, include an author’s bio, written in the third person (e.g., Mary Jones lives in Ohio…”).

4. In the same MS Word document, include a note about your poem/prose or creative process (this is optional — but encouraged).

5. In the same MS Word document, include a caption for your photo (including where, when and/or date taken).

6. If available, send a photo of yourself at any age as a SEPARATE jpg attachment (not in the MS Word document). Title the photo with your last name (e.g., Jones.jpg).

7. Email to SBPSUBMISSIONS@gmail.com — and put DRIVE in the subject line.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Tuesday, March 15, 2016.

Past the Finish Line, poem by Torrin A. Greathouse (SAME NAME Poetry and Prose Series)

Past the Finish Line
for Torrin Laurice Lawrence
by Torrin A. Greathouse

I stare at car crash photos and remember the impact.
Remember how the glass split
starting lines into my skin,
imagine how it split wedges in the Leadwood of yours.
How blood poured down our faces like cracks
blooming across breaking glass,
the silent escape of the runaways in our veins.

One day, I will let that blood flow away,
as I tattoo the words
born to run on the inside of my foot,
think of how you tattooed that word onto every track,
every cracked road you filled with thunder,
stamped those three words into the dirt
so that they would never forget you.

I wonder,
for all these years, what were you running from?
People don’t move like that
unless something is chasing them.
What memories tore flesh, unseen from your heels?
What pursued you out in the dark?
I remember how every streetlight was a finish line—until it wasn’t.

I am still running.
Tell me, did you know it was the end
of your race when you saw the semi coming?

Our coaches taught us,
to avoid injury, keep running
after the finish line.
Let your body slow when it chooses.

I stare at car crash photos
and think of how your blood kept running,
even after it left your body.

PHOTO: Sprinter Torrin Laurice Lawrence (1989-2014).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: When I first saw the prompt, I was immediately intrigued, but thought it was unlikely I would find a famous Torrin. When I began to research, however, I struck gold. I found a figure with experiences similar to my own, a similar drive, and who died in a car crash the way I almost did. In a way, the primary separation between us is the air in my lungs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Torrin A. Greathouse is a Literary Journalism student and governing member of the Uncultivated Rabbits spoken word collective at UC Irvine. They were the 2015 winner of the Orange County Poetry Slam. Torrin’s work has been published in several magazines including Rust + Moth, Chiron Review, Crack the Spine, and one chapbook Cosmic Taxi Driver Blues. They are currently employed as the executive assistant of a sustainable lighting firm. Their previous jobs include security guard, farm hand, antique store clerk, and tattoo artist.

PHOTO: The author eating lunch, January 8th

Charles, prose by Charles Pennington (SAME NAME Poetry and Prose Series)

Charles
by Charles Pennington

Born in Georgia in 1904, Charles Pretty Boy Floyd was known for problems with police and violent bank robberies unlike myself. Charles Floyd was arrested for a payroll robbery in the 1920s and went on to rob numerous banks after his release. I have never stolen anything. After being accused of taking part in the Kansas City Massacre, Floyd was gunned down and killed by FBI agents in 1934. I want to go out with a bang too when I die. He was born in Georgia just like I was. He turned to a life of crime after moving to Oklahoma. There was a 23,000-dollar bounty on this head to kill him dead or alive. I think he just like me was a likeable person who tried to make an honest living. The name Charles is seen as an older name that was popular in the early 1990s. I will not turn out like Charles Pretty Boy Floyd, but I am a pretty good looking guy like his name describes him as. Charles Floyd may have been a killer but he shared a name with me and he was from Georgia just like me. His name was good sounding. I only did this for 5 points on a test.

PHOTOS: Mugshots of bank robber Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd (1904-1934).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: It came to me while I was weaving a blanket for a cat I found. I found out about this comparison in a dictionary.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Charles loves to walk. He’s 16 and loves dogs. His favorite type of jacket is a sweater. He loves to visit old people and play puzzles. He likes to sing. He is on the AP underwater basket weaving team. He is not the smartest guy. He likes cheese.

IMAGE: Author self-portrait.

Translation (for Montserrat Roig), poem by Kerfe Roig (SAME NAME Poetry and Prose Series)

Translation (for Montserrat Roig)
by Kerfe Roig

Translations are necessary.
The blood begins in Catalan.
Roig becomes rojo becomes red.
You knew these three songs of the tongue.
You knew about women. You knew
translations are necessary
between silenced lives of women
and loud words from the lives of men.
You knew relationships always
contain questions. Never simple:
translations are necessary.
The same meaning? Not exactly.
What language do I really speak?
Is it contained in the center
of the journey from roig to red?
Translations are necessary.

AUTHOR’S NOTE ON THE IMAGE: Me (left), Montserrat Roig (right), and the transition from roig to red, Catalonia to America.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Montserrat Roig (1946-1991) was a fiction writer, essayist, TV journalist, and political activist committed to Catalan culture and feminism. She was especially interested in the generational relationships between women and the marginal nature of women’s writing. I did not become aware of the origin of my surname until adulthood. First I learned it was Spanish; later, I discovered the name was actually Catalan, filtered through Spain. Montserrat Roig lived the layers and tensions of Catalan/Spanish identity. Her novels about the lives of women intrigue me, but though she both spoke and taught in English, her work is available in the United States only in Spanish. I own a copy of L’hora Violeta. Sadly, despite my ancestry, I speak and experience life only in American English. “Translations are necessary.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. You can follow her explorations on the blog she does with her friend Nina: methodtwomadness.wordpress.com.

Poets Intersecting at Red, poem by Sylvia Riojas Vaughn (SAME NAME Poetry and Prose Series)

Poets Intersecting at Red
by Sylvia Riojas Vaughn

Sylvia Plath mentioned
the hue twenty-two times
in her last writings,
scholars note.
I’m awestruck, for I,
also Sylvia,
also a poet,
like the brightness
of a cardinal
against snow.
My nails,
like cinnamon drops.
My sweaters,
reminiscent
of Santa’s coat.
My lingerie,
lipstick
torrid as flames.
But her heart
exploded in her lines.
She wrote of her
own attempts to die;
I, who’ve never tasted
that dark fruit,
write of those
who have.
What color
goodbye?

PHOTO: Poet Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) in Paris, 1956, ©The Lily Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: For the SAME NAME series, I immediately thought of Sylvia Plath. I found the article What Sylvia Plath Loved on the Academy of American Poets website as I pondered what we had in common. Number 10 on the list was the color red, which I love, too. I was glad to find some things we both liked, including The Joy of Cooking cookbook. But I couldn’t escape the fact that she lived with depression, and felt compelled to include her sadness in my poem.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sylvia Riojas Vaughn lives in Plano, Texas. She has work pending in Red River Review, and in an anthology of poets living in the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area. Her poems have appeared in The Great Gatsby Anthology, Silver Birch Press; Triadæ, Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga, Texas Poetry Calendar, HOUSEBOAT, Beechwood Review, The Applicant, Diálogo, Label Me Latina/o, Somos en escrito: The Latino literary online magazine, Desde Hong Kong: Poets in conversation with Octavio Paz, and numerous other anthologies and journals. She has been selected as a Houston Poetry Fest Juried Poet three times. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she belongs to the Dallas Poets Community.

PHOTO: Sylvia Riojas Vaughn approximately two years ago, Plano, Texas. The roses, not quite red, were a gift from dear friends.

Dear Katharine Hepburn…story by Cath Bore (SAME NAME Poetry and Prose Series)

Dear Katharine Hepburn…
by Cath Bore

There was a girl called Joan in my class at school. It seemed to me that someone with a name like Joan belonged in a black and white movie on a rainy midweek afternoon, not 1980s Britain with its manmade fabrics, bright pop music, and copies of Jackie magazine. Apparently Joan’s mum and dad wanted her to be called Joanne but her gran didn’t approve, and pushed for the short old fashioned name instead.

As a kid I could never work out why your name was Katharine, and not Catherine like mine. You had a mighty kicking K, my curvy C seemed dull and bland in comparison. I wanted our names to be the same. It bothered me no end that they weren’t, but in the end I decided my name was like that because my parents probably didn’t know how to spell it properly like yours did. Or perhaps my grandmother was a bit like Joan’s.

Joan got a lot of stick in school for having the same name as an old lady, but then again so did I, having glasses as thick as Murray Mints, and the rest. We notice our differences so much when we’re growing up. It’s all so intense.

Joan grew up to be a happy woman and I managed the same, eventually. When I got older I realised there were lots of ways of spelling the same name, and got okay about you and I and our mismatched letters. Now, I think your name is more beautiful than ever and mine is exactly like it, but in its very own way.

Love,
Cath

PHOTO: Actress Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cath Bore is a writer based in Liverpool U.K., currently writing a novel and lots of flash fiction. Her website is cathbore.wordpress.com.

How Charming, poem by Donna JT Smith (SAME NAME Poetry and Prose Series)

How Charming
by Donna JT Smith

Life was all just black and white
When we watched our set at night.
Donna Reed, or was it Stone,
Who picked up that corded phone?
Does it matter her last name?
Our first names were just the same.
I would watch this family
And Donna Stone I’d strive to be —
I never saw her come unglued,
Nor lose her joyful attitude —

This woman seeming all omniscient
Strong and ever so efficient,
Tender with a warm embrace
And the fairest, kindest face;
Shown as healer of the strife;
Ever present loving wife,
Dishing out spoonsful of honey
With a dollop of sweet funny;
Wearing demure mom couture
And perfected smooth coiffure.

Looking back on younger views
Black and whites don other hues;
Thirty minutes isn’t quite
Enough to make all wrongs to right;
With life complex, solutions long,
It’s difficult to “play along.”
Because I strove to be like she,
I turned out a better me.
How charming thoughts that I could be
As swell as Donna on TV.

PHOTO: Actress Donna Reed (1921-1986) in a still from The Donna Reed Show (1958-1966). She was best known for her role as Mary in the classic Frank Capra comedy It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I was actually named after my father, Donald (Don), and mother, Jean; hence, the name Donna Jean. It sounded like Don and Jean to them, so as the firstborn I was the namesake of both my parents. But in childhood, I was always fascinated when I heard that someone else had my first name. There weren’t too many. Donna Reed/Stone was one, though. And I thought she was wonderful. So pretty, funny, happy, and easygoing. I still strive to be like her today. Who wouldn’t want to spend life on an even keel?

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: My Donna Reed high school senior yearbook serene pose in 1969.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Donna JT Smith lives, writes, and paints on the coast of Maine, where she has spent a good portion of her life both as an adult and child. Her husband could be Alex Stone, not in name, but in temperament. She has two grown children, Mary and Jeff — no, wait — she does have two grown children, just different names and different order: boy first, girl second. She has always attempted to be a “healer of strife” and to dish out a “spoonful of funny” or two.

Thomas Jefferson, poem by Thomas R. Thomas (SAME NAME Poetry and Prose Series)

Thomas Jefferson
by Thomas R. Thomas

gave up his library
on July 4 he
was done with it

his mind was
not done with
the books

but his
body had
given them up

I started my
library when
I was four

discovering the
treasury of
the world

was not in
the banks but
banked in

the treasure house
of books — an
eternal library

NOTE FROM EDITOR ON THE IMAGE: Portrait of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), third president of the United States with one of his beloved books. Jefferson’s library included thousands of volumes on all subjects. By 1814, Jefferson had acquired the largest personal collection of books in the United States, and allowed the Library of Congress to acquire his collection as a replacement for books destroyed during the War of 1812.

PHOTO: The author at 19 in La Verne, California, with his St. Bernard pup Eve (and Dad in the background)​ about the time when he was rediscovering reading and a year after he started writing poems.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Thomas R. Thomas publishes the small press Arroyo Seco Press. Publications include Carnival, Pipe Dream, Bank Heavy Press, Chiron Review, Electric Windmill, Marco Polo, and Silver Birch Press. His books are Scorpio (Carnival) and Five Lines (World Parade Books). The art of invisibility is forthcoming in 2016 from Dark Heart Press. His website is thomasrthomas.org.

Mary, Mary…poem by Mary Kendall (SAME NAME Poetry and Prose Series)

Mary, Mary…
by Mary Kendall

Unwanted.
Unloved.
Shunned.
Spoiled.
Rude.
Aggressive.
Obstinate.
Outspoken.
Contrary.
Sour.
Gloomy.
Dismissive.
Shut away.
Alone.
Alone.
Alone.

Your attributes, little Mary.
A long list.
No one liked you.
Except for me.

Not true. There were others.
Your sweet Indian Ayah, who fed you,
washed you, dressed you, taught you,
tolerated your contrary ways, angry words,
miserable frown. She held you close,
rocked you after nightmares and dark dreams,
fanned you in the hot Indian summers.
She sang to you—mellifluous, soothing songs.

Your mother denied your existence, hid you away from view,
just as later, you’d find your cousin Colin, hidden away, too.

Denial.
What damage it did.
What pain it caused.
Like a plant held too long in a small pot,
its roots pot-bound and crippled,
Colin, unwanted and denied like you.

Unwanted.
Unloved.
Denied.

My family separated when I was just five,
I felt adrift, alone, unnoticed, confused.
A new school, new neighborhood, no friends,
and six months later another move,
another home, another school. No friends.
We went about life as if nothing changed.

Denial.

I was ten (like you) when I read your story,
when I fell in love with a book for the first time.
I knew that I knew you!
Contrary Mary. Outspoken. Angry. Fearful. Sour.

How could I not love you, Mary?

Chapter after chapter,
I quietly snuck into your story.
I became you.
I made friends with young Dickon,
and his small clutch of animal friends.
I pet a fox. I held a crow.

You ranted and raved.
You hollered and fussed,
but young Martha just smiled
and taught you how to dress
and feed yourself. Her mother’s
kindness—a jumping rope for you.

The little robin showed you the key.
The sleeping garden was hidden, too.
Dickon spoke the lovely names of flowers
and taught you by example
to nurture what was fragile and small.

Your fate was cast, Mary, and so was mine.

Together we lived your story. You found
young Colin, argued, told him stories,
listened to his and learned you weren’t
alone in being unwanted in this world.

The garden grew. Kindness flourished.
Ben Weatherstaff’s heart softened, and
now a determined Colin learned to walk.
His newest secret was revealed to all,
even his father who had turned away.

A happy ending. One we all needed.
Through your story, I knew my garden
would grow someplace one day.

You showed me the heart is resilient,
even when pushed far away from view.
Each of us holds a glimmer of possibility,
sometimes only a slender strand of hope.

How could I not love you, Mary, my own?

PHOTO: Kate Maberly as Mary Lennox in the 1993 film version of Frances Hodgson Burnett‘s 1911 novel The Secret Garden.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: For me, there was only one Mary I would write about. She was not even a woman but a girl. She never existed, and yet she was so real that she made me fall in love with books. Mary Lennox, the main character of The Secret Garden, was a difficult child, an unloved child, a contrary girl. Her story is one that had a strong, personal pull for me as a ten-year-old girl reading this book for the first time. She is my special Mary.

PHOTO: The author at age four in Buffalo, New York.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mary Kendall lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband and Labrador retriever. She is a retired reading teacher, so her love of children’s books goes back a long way. As a child, her favorite children’s book was A Secret Garden. Mary’s poetry has been published in Rattle, Ribbons, Moonbathing, Daily Haiga, Ekphrastic: writing and art on art and writing, Gnarled Oak, hedgerow, cattails, Prune Juice, The Whirlwind Review, Wild Plum Journal, and Silver Birch Press. She is the author of a chapbook, Erasing the Doubt. Please visit her website, A Poet in Time: http://www.apoetintime.com.

Mirror, Mirror, poem by Lynn White (SAME NAME Poetry and Prose Series)

Mirror, Mirror
by Lynn White

Mirror, mirror, tell me,
who do you see?
Is she white,
snow white,
whiter than white,
fairer than fair.
White as virgin snow
unbroken by footprints,
unblemished,
unsullied.
Or is her snowy white
greying
as time passes,
picking up some of the dirt
in passing.
Maybe darker still in places
as its whiteness decays
and melts
away.
Tell me, mirror,
who do you see?

IMAGE: From “Snow White,” illustrated by John Dickson Batten in Europa’s Fairy Book (1916).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The poem is inspired by “Snow White,” specifically “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” The idea was to compare Snow White with myself as seen by the mirror.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places, and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy, and reality. Her poem “A Rose For Gaza” was shortlisted for the Theatre Cloud “War Poetry for Today” competition 2014 and has since been published in several journals and anthologies. Poems have also recently been included in Harbinger Asylum’s Literary Journal and A Moment To Live By anthology, Stacey Savage’s We Are Poetry: An Anthology of Love Poems, ITWOW, She Did It Anyway, Community Arts Ink’s Reclaiming Our Voices, The Border Crossed Us,and a number of online and print journals. Visit her on facebook.

PHOTO: The author consulting her mirror.