Mis-Taken, story by Shoshauna Shy (ME, AT 17 Poetry and Prose Series)

Mis-Taken
by Shoshauna Shy

It wasn’t like sleeping with the friend of a friend’s friend (which translated means sleeping with a stranger), because we knew each other, occupied the same circles, half-flirted now and then. But not enough spark on either of our parts to get a flame going, let alone a blaze. Then we found ourselves in sleeping bags away from the others, and in our chill half-sleep, moved closer together. We went skin-on-skin, and soon hit our heads against that cellar ceiling called No Chemistry, No Appetite, No Combustible Lust. I wouldn’t say I was offering myself, but more that I was borrowing from his better future. Borrowing him from the throes of some sweet lady. One day, she would want him very much.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: Me, at 17.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This piece of flash fiction is 122 words. I was 17 during the Sexual Revolution of the late 60s-early 70s when you did not wear a boy’s ID bracelet while going steady, or even go on dates.

ABOUT THE THE AUTHOR: Shoshauna Shy is the author of four collections, the most recent having won an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association. Her poetry has recently been published by RHINO, Main Street Rag, Carbon Culture Review, and First Class Lit. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she was a finalist for the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid poetry prize sponsored by Winning Writers in 2015. Her flash fiction has been published by 100 Word Story, Fiction Southeast, Literary Orphans, A Quiet Courage, Sou’wester, Thrice Fiction, Crack the Spine, Microfiction Monday Magazine, Every Writer, Red Cedar, and Prairie Wolf Press Review. Read more at PoetryJumpsOfftheShelf.com.

NANCY DREW ANTHOLOGY Reading at Porter Square Books (Cambridge, MA) on 2/24/17

We are honored and pleased that Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will host a reading for the Nancy Drew Anthology (Silver Birch Press, October 2016). East Coast authors featured in the 212-page collection of writing & art — Kathleen Aguero, Jessica Purdy, Ellen Cohen, Kristina England, and Sarah Nichols — will read their work included in the anthology. Details below.

WHERE: Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02140, 617-491-2220, portersquarebooks.com.

WHEN: Friday, 2/24/17, at 7 p.m.

WHO:  Kathleen Aguero, Jessica Purdy, Ellen Cohen, Kristina England, and Sarah Nichols will read selections from the Nancy Drew Anthology.

Sun., 7/31/16 Tongue and Groove Literary Event in Hollywood

SPREADING THE WORD for 12 YEARS!
Tongue & Groove

If you’re in the L.A. area on Sunday, July 31, 2016, check out Tongue & Groove — a monthly offering of short fiction, personal essays, poetry, spoken word + music produced by Conrad Romo with an impressive roster of featured performers.

Sunday, July 31, 2016
6-7:30 p.m.
The Hotel Cafe
1623 1/2 No. Cahuenga Blvd.
Hollywood, California 90028
$7.00

Come early!  Seating is limited and the event starts on time!   The club is a two-story black brick building, a third of a block below Hollywood Blvd. There are parking lots on Selma as well as Cahuenga. Meters need to be fed till 8pm. Avoid Cahuenga street parking

This  month’s featured performers include Pam Ward, David Darmstaedter, Elizabeth Marquez, Rios de la Luz, Kristina Wong, and  music by Linda Ravenswood

Pam Ward is an author/artist and L.A. native. An art advocate as well as an instructor and mentor at Art Center College of Design, Pam has designed for politicians, community organizations, and corporate America.  A former board member of Beyond Baroque Literary Foundation, Pam was also an artist-in-resident for the City of Los Angeles, Venice and Manhattan Beach.  After publishing two novels, Want Some Get Some and Bad Girls Burn Slow, and working on merging writing and graphic design, Pam produced the recent installation, My Life, LA: The Los Angeles Legacy Project, a poster project blending graphics with story/facts documenting the impact of Angelenos on the actual land. Her play, I Didn’t Survive Slavery for This has played throughout L.A. Currently she is working on the true story of her aunt, a real Black Dahlia suspect.

David Darmstaedter lives in Topanga, California, and travels the hills dressed in tinfoil underwear to summon ideas from the wild. He has written plays, screenplays, short stories and novels. His memoir My Monster is in eternal development with Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke. He will be reading from his current book in the works, Solly’s Shangri-La.

Beth Marquez stumbled into a spoken word tent at Lollapalooza when she was 13, and it changed her life. She co-hosted Java Gardens reading in Huntington Beach and attended the National Poetry Slam as an alternate for the Laguna Beach team. She’d been  published in the Moontide Press, Valley of Contemporary Poets, and Ugly Mug anthologies and elsewhere. She will be debuting a show based on her poetry at The Victory Theater in Burbank in September.

Rios de la Luz is a queer xicana/chapina living in Portland, Oregon. She is brown and proud. She is the author of The Pulse Between Dimensions and the Desert (Ladybox Books, 2015). Her work has been featured in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Entropy, The Fem Lit Magazine, World Literature Today, and St. Sucia.

Kristina Wong  is a performance artist, comedian, and writer who has created five solo shows and one ensemble play that have toured throughout the US and UK. She was recently featured in the New York Times‘s Off Color series highlighting artists of color who use humor to make smart social statements about the sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious ways that race plays out in America today.  She’s been a frequent ommentator/guest with, xoJane, Playgirl Magazine, Huffington Post,  and The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore to mention but a few places. She has been the recipient of numerous prestigious grants and residencies and not to brag, but Kristina has twice given the commencement speech at UCLA, her alma mater.  Her most recent solo show “The Wong Street Journal,” which navigates privilege and economic disparity, premieree in June 2015.  Kristina’s mail order bride website is www.bigbadchinesemama.com. This Fall, she is a guest professor at Cal Arts in the MFA Creative Writing Program.

Linda Ravenswood, with an aim towards inquiry, tantalization,  and uncovering, speaks, stands, beckons, and reminds  viewers to hold memory, history, place, and lineage as holy, yet available markers.  In these ways, Linda has evolved  an arts practice holding a strong and defining spatial, and theatrical course. Recent work (2014¬2016) has appeared,  or been commissioned at The Broad Theatre, AWP/Pen Centre USA, Cornell University, The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, The Angel’s Gate Cultural  Centre, The Artery, The Bootleg Theatre, Gallery 16 (San Francisco), The Lancaster  Museum, The Hollywood Fringe Festival, and Craftswoman House.  She has been published in 30 literary journals, her music has appeared in three  documentary films (PBS), she has four books in print (Sybaritic Press, Mouthfeel Press, Gallery 16 Press, LACMA Press – forthcoming), and she is a 2016 Vermont Studio Centre fellow in Poetry.  Twice nominated for The Pushcart  Prize for Poetry, Linda is a lecturer, dramaturg, and workshop presenter, most recently teaching at Occidental  College.  Linda Ravenswood is NDN, First Nation, (Pokanoket Nation), a Mayflower descendant on her mother’s  side, and an Indigenous Mestiza from Baja California Sur on her father’s side.  She was raised by Holocaust  survivors from WWII.  No kiddin’.

The Archer, story by Leara Morris-Clark (MY IMAGINARY SKILL Poetry and Prose Series)

The Archer
by Leara Morris-Clark

I saw the path my arrow would take. Ricocheting off the large pan hanging in front of me, it would curve to the left, slide over the large boulder and angle upward into the tree. The shaft hitting a small branch would slant the arrow’s trajectory back toward where he stood. It would finish its journey by slicing through the apple atop his head and embedding itself into the tree behind him, a split second before my second arrow cut it in half.

Like Robin Hood, I tore my first arrow from the quiver, pulled back the string of my longbow, released, and just as quickly fired my second arrow.

The birds became silent.

I stayed my position with eyes closed and listened to the sounds as the arrow followed its predetermined route, pierced the apple, and lodged into the tree before it was also split in half.

I smiled at the scent of fresh apple as it fell in two pieces.

PHOTO: Robin Hood statue outside Nottingham Castle (England).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I have loved archery since I was a child but never had the time to get good at it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Leara Morris-Clark came to live in Massachusetts from Florida by way of Tennessee. She enjoys photography, voice acting, writing, drawing, and trying to sing. The ocean and animals inspire her and she plans to return to the southern shores when the time is right. She has two books in the works, Pieces: A Collection of Poetry and Do You Have a Minute: A Collection of Micro Fiction. She spends a lot of time on social media and would love for you to drop by: Twitter, Facebook, and learawrites.wordpress.com.

AUTHOR PHOTO: The author in Savannah, Georgia.

Joy Ride, story by Steven Deutsch (STARTING TO RIDE Poetry and Prose Series)

Joy Ride
by Steven Deutsch

I was eleven when my older brother taught me to ride. My father had children late and hadn’t the stamina to chase me up and down Hopkinson Avenue while I learned to balance on two wheels. Besides, my parents couldn’t afford to buy me a bike. The kids my age had been zipping along on their bikes for five or six years and I could imagine their catcalls and insults as I tumbled from the seat or did something on the bike that was unimaginably stupid. I was frightened as I came down the tenement steps. At eleven, I was frightened of nearly everything.

“The exact opposite of his brother,” my family would say, as if in chorus. My brother was a tough guy in the run-down neighborhood in Brooklyn which we called home. In the fifties, Brooklyn was home to dozens of street gangs. Decked out in motorcycle boots and jackets and armed with zip-guns and switchblade knives, they fought each other for girls, for territory and for the sheer joy of it. My brother, Barry, was a Brownsville Bouncer. I didn’t want to disappoint him.

He was patient that day. Running me up and down the street on a newish Schwinn as I slowly got the hang of it. By the afternoon, I had it and set off not too shakily on my own. But as I turned the corner to Chester Street, an older boy I didn’t know screamed, “That’s my bike,” and took off after me.

I rode like the wind. I rode triumphant. Sure, my parents would make me give the bike back, but for now I pedaled like my life depended on it, a grin growing and growing on my satisfied face.

PHOTO: The author (left) and his brother Barry, mid-late 1950s, Brooklyn, New York.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The story is fiction with a smattering of the truth. The neighborhood, Brooklyn, and my brother as a tough guy are real enough. He would have been perfectly capable of stealing a bike to teach me to ride. And, as he was seven years older than I was, the idea of making him proud—whatever that might mean—was always with me as I grew up.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Steven Deutsch, a semi-retired practitioner of fluid mechanics as applied to mechanical hearts and valves, lives a quiet life in State College, Pennsylvania, with his artist wife, Karen. He has published poetry and short fiction.

Deadline Extended to 5/15/16: STARTING TO RIDE Poetry and Prose Series

NOTE: By popular request, we are extending the deadline for our STARTING TO RIDE Poetry & Prose Series to Sunday, May 15, 2016.

OVERVIEW: Most of us have a story (or stories) about how/when/where/why we learned to ride a bike — or taught someone else how to ride, or have vivid memories about when we first started to ride a bike. We want to hear about your bike-related experiences and invite you to submit your work to our STARTING TO RIDE Poetry and Prose Series. (Non-riders can also participate by explaining why they’ve never learned how to ride a bicycle.)

PROMPT: Tell us about learning to ride a bike, teaching someone else how to ride, or something that happened when you were a novice bicycle rider in a poem (any reasonable length) or prose piece (300 words or fewer). If you’ve never learned to ride, 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 STARTING TO RIDE Poetry and Prose Series on our blog starting in May 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 “Ride” in subject line of email. If available, please send a photo of yourself around the time you learned to ride a bicycle — or a photo of the person you taught to ride, with that person’s permission (if it’s your child, submitting the photo implies permission)  — and provide a caption for the photo (when, where). Photos with bikes 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., Bobby Schwinn 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 the age you learned to ride a bicycle — or a photo of the person you taught to ride a bike, with that person’s permission (if it’s your child, submitting the photo implies permission) — as a SEPARATE jpg attachment (not in the MS Word document). Title the photo with your last name (e.g., Jones.jpg). Also send a current photo to accompany your bio.

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

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Sunday, May 15, 2016

PHOTO: Bike rider in training (wheels), photo from 1950s purchased on etsy.com.

Call for submissions: MY IMAGINARY SKILL Poetry and Prose Series

OVERVIEW: Most of us wish we had a  special skill  — say, we could dance like Fred Astaire, play tennis like Serena Williams, cook like Julia Child, paint like Pablo Picasso, and on and on — that usually revolves around a particular interest or passion for music, art, sports, or whatever else gives our lives joy. Well, even if you don’t possess such a skill in real life, you can imagine you’re an ace in some category — and tell us about it in our MY IMAGINARY SKILL Poetry and Prose Series.

PROMPT: Tell us about your imaginary skill in a poem (any reasonable length) or prose piece (300 words or fewer– this word limit also applies to prose poems).

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 MY IMAGINARY SKILL Poetry and Prose Series on our blog starting in June 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 “Skill” in subject line of email. If available, please send a photo of yourself at any age enacting your skill (for example, dancing, diving, cooking, singing) and provide a caption for the photo (when, where).

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., Ginger Rogers lives in Missouri…”).

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 enacting the skill — as a SEPARATE jpg attachment (not in the MS Word document). Title the photo with your last name (e.g., Jones.jpg). Also send a current photo to accompany your bio.

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

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Wednesday, June, 15, 2016.

IMAGE: Dancer supreme Fred Astaire (left) and tennis ace Serena Williams (right).

Submission deadline extended to 5/22/16 for NANCY DREW ANTHOLOGY

By popular request — including from members of the Nancy Drew Sleuths fan club — we have extended the submissions deadline to Sunday, 5/22/16 for our NANCY DREW ANTHOLOGY.

Since her 1930 appearance in The Secret of the Old Clock, amateur sleuth Nancy Drew has inspired generations of girls — including this one — with her moxie, intelligence, determination, but most of all independence. After 86 years, Nancy Drew is as popular as ever — with avid fans around the world.

Let’s celebrate this female icon and role model with the NANCY DREW ANTHOLOGY: A Collection of Poetry, Prose, Art & Photography Featuring Everyone’s Favorite Female Sleuth. 

WHAT: Poetry, prose, paintings, drawings, photographs, and other work inspired by Nancy Drew.

TYPES OF WRITTEN MATERIAL: 

• Poems (up to three — either original work or found/erasure poetry based on a Nancy Drew book)
• Short stories (up to 2,000 words)
• Essays (up to 1,500 words)
• Creative nonfiction (up to 2,000 words)
• Short plays or screenplays (approximately five typed pages)
• Other literary forms (up to 2,000 words)

TYPES OF VISUAL MATERIAL (send jpg files of at least 1MB):

• Photographs
• Collage
• Paintings
• 
Drawings

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Sunday, May 22, 2016

ESTIMATED RELEASE DATE: Summer 2016

HOW TO SUBMIT: Please email written entries as MSWord attachments (title the file with your last name, e.g., Smith.docx or Jones.doc) and visual entries as jpg attachments to SBPSUBMISSIONS@gmail.com, along with your name, mailing address, email address, and one-paragraph bio written in the third person. (If submitting a found poem or erasure poem, provide the title, edition, and publication date of the Nancy Drew book. If the erasure is taken from one page, please also provide scan of original erasure.) For all submissions, write NANCY in email subject line. (Note: If you don’t have MSWord, send the submission in the body of your email.)

PAYMENT: Each contributor will receive a copy of the Silver Birch Press NANCY DREW ANTHOLOGY.

NOTE: The submissions will appear exclusively in a printed edition and will not appear on our blog.

SHOUT OUT: A heartfelt thank you to Jennifer Finstrom, whose poem “Nancy Drew’s Guide to Life” in our ME, IN FICTION Series and the subsequent enthusiastic feedback we received about it from readers, inspired this collection.

Cover image by Elizabeth Stark, used by permission. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: NANCY DREW is a registered mark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. This book and the contents thereof are not endorsed by, sponsored by or affiliated with Carolyn Keene, the author of the NANCY DREW series or its publisher Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Steel, poem by Danielle Matthews (SAME NAME Poetry and Prose Series)

Steel
by Danielle Matthews

Your name is misspelt
when I check online
an error to reflect
how little I know you.

I love words as works
of art in themselves
each one a masterpiece
do you, too?

Your works remain
a mystery to me
despite my ardour
for your livelihood.

I know you in
passing glances
on market stalls,
you live in stacks.

Your name is misspelt
when I check online
and God is thy judge
as he is mine.

PHOTO: Novelist Danielle Steel.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: For this poem I literally started with an online search for the most famous Danielle I knew: Danielle Steel. Only I typed “Steele.” Oops. This sparked off the poem as I realised how little I knew about such a famous author, especially as I would like to think I’m well read. The Hebrew meaning of Danielle is “God is thy judge.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Danielle Matthews is a published writer of poetry and flash fiction from Manchester, U.K. She has been featured by Pankhearst, three drops from a cauldron, and various others. Danielle is a lover of the written word, a self-proclaimed Word Nerd, and her favourite author is Fydor Dostoevsky. She lives near Manchester with her books, and they’re all very happy together.

PHOTO: The author, November 2015.

Chris, poem by Tricia Marcella Cimera (ME, IN FICTION Poetry and Prose Series)

Chris
by Tricia Marcella Cimera

Lewis Grassic Gibbon,
you gave me Scotland,
you gave me Chris Guthrie.

In your books Sunset Song,
Cloud Howe and Gray Granite,
Chris moved through
her world
of wild heather, hard farming,
of Highlands, of men,
of female desire and pain.
She fought for her Self —
first as girl, then a woman —
holding fast to the
disappearing ways of
crofters and land.

I loved her so much,
I went to Scotland
again and again.
I rolled Scots words
in my mouth —
wee bairn      aye lass
the kye and the queans —
as I hiked by the loch
in mist, heedless of rain,
hearing the quiet voice of
your Chris, speaking
                    my name. . .

PHOTO: Agyness Deyn as Chris Guthrie in the film version Sunset Song (2015).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I have visited luminous Scotland five times so far; it’s been too long since the last time I was there. The trilogy of books by Lewis Grassic Gibbon that I reference in my poem make up A Scots Quair, a classic in Scottish literature and language. I first read this novel as a teenager and love it deeply. Chris Guthrie is an intense and complex woman — I consider her my friend. The above photograph is of me in Haddington, Scotland, 2000. The sun was shining as a storm was approaching; typical Scottish weather.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tricia Marcella Cimera is an obsessed reader and lover of words. Her work is, or will be, in these diverse journals: the Buddhist Poetry Review, Foliate Oak, Hedgerow: A Journal of Small Poems, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Mad Swirl, Prairie Light Review, Reverie Fair, Silver Birch Press, Stepping Stones, and Yellow Chair Review. Tricia volunteers locally, believes there’s no place like her own backyard, and has traveled the world. Her love for Scotland was also strongly influenced by the magical and quirky movie Local Hero (1983, directed by Bill Forsyth). She lives with her husband and family of animals in Illinois/in a town called St. Charles/by a river named Fox.

PHOTO: The author with her father; Edinburgh, Scotland, 1989.