Monday, January 26, 2009

Secret Press USA Anthology

I get a lot of raised eyebrows when I tell people I'm a poet and I live in Arkansas.  I mean, aren't poets supposed to live in New York or, at the very least, somewhere within driving distance of the Atlantic? I've toyed with the thought of maintaining a PO box outside the state just to avoid the issue. 

So, you can imagine how thrilled I was when I received a call for submissions specifically for poets living in Arkansas. Usually on Submission Sundays (we all pay our cosmic dues in different ways), I go through my stack of poems trying to find ones that won't rat me out as an Arkansan. This time, I chose ones that reeked of the mountain roads, run down barns, and colorful characters that, however hidden, are at the core of my work.  

I guess it paid off.  This spring, look for Secret Press USA's anthology featuring poetry from all 50 states.  Turn to the Arkansas section and you'll find two of my poems: "Overheard at a Country Gas Station" and "Wearing Papaw's Peacoat."  They are filled with the flavors of Arkansas.  How freeing.
 
Posted by at 8:57 AM
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1 comments:

L.L. Barkat said...

Indeed.

Frankly, though I live near NYC, I prefer woods, back roads and creek beds.

February 4, 2009 3:13 PM

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Sample Poems

 

Crevices

When the Texas summer
had stretched our yards
until they brittled and cracked,
the boy next door
would place his ear
over the narrow crevice
that ran beneath the fence
from his dirt to mine
and listen for my voice
teasing through the broken clay.
We sank into conversations,
each of us mistaking
the crumbling of the soil
and the shifting
of our own bodies
for the words we needed to hear.

-Alice Pettway
The Mid-America Poetry Review Summmer 2008

A Young Seal

Pale child's body
rift between dark eyes
and white skin,

blurring beneath
the surface
marred by rain,

arching
and unarching
as it slides under

the algae and appears
unblinking
too far away

for me to guess
the distance
between us.

Then its final,
seamless exit,
slick and clean,

and I who have feared
the turning, the close,
sit anchored,

scanning the shore
and the water
and the shore

and the water,
unable to stand,
unable to walk away.


Alice Pettway
Crab Creek Review, 2005

Elegy

I wanted to find you, smashed
and perfect like a penny
on the railroad tracks
after the wheels have stretched
the engravings into elegance,
not your old, round self:
raised face and scratches
to worry at in my pocket.

Alice Pettway
Di.verse.city 2005

She Practices Her Death

She fills the bathtub with cranberries
They pile up on her belly
then pour over her edges
and slip beneath her,
crushed against the porcelain.
Their rough-tongued juice colors her back
and trickles into her navel.
It rises until she can dip her chin
down into it
and let it into the corners of her mouth.
Her stained hands flit over her face,
leaving little kiss-prints on her skin.

Alice Pettway
The Bitter Oleander Fall 2004

Snake Charmer

Your eyes were full of sand dunes.
I burrowed through them
searching for your sarcophagus
and found it full of peach pits
and old photographs.
My toothbrush has stared
at your bottle of cologne
for an insufferable amount of time;
I keep intending to throw it
off the balcony. I was studying
to be a snake charmer.
You were my first subject
but refused to come out of the basket;
I can only play three notes on my pungi.
At night, I poke my legs up under the sheet
so you can fan me with palm leaves
in my silk-tent mirage. I lie crossways:
buckle together the two sides of my bed.
They have a disturbing tendency
to separate into his and hers.

Alice Pettway
Lullwater Review. Winter 2002. Vol. XIII, No. 1.