Episode 06: "Wait, Wait, You Said 'No'?!"

Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile

Apr 20, 2016•56 min•Ep. 8

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Episode description

As we prepared for Episode 6, something new happened: a poet whose work we wanted to read and discuss on our podcast said, “No.” It was bound to happen some time and it did---a month and a half in. We talked about it and acknowledged that some people are simply not going to be ready, some people are going to let fear win over curiosity, and some people are simply not going to ever want their work discussed in such a public manner---a recorded manner that will always exist.

We were disappointed to receive our first “No,” but it caused us to revisit the vulnerability of what we are doing here: taking a writer’s work and picking it apart, separating the juicy poetic goodness from the bone. For most writers, they never get to hear what editors think of their poems, regardless of whether they were accepted or denied. The feedback we are getting uses the word transparency a lot, with that term directed at the transparency of our editorial conversation, but whoa—the writers who are brave for sharing--for writing in the first place—have to peel another layer back to submit to a podcast.

We are grateful that the people we asked so far said, Yes, even though they were scared. Their bravery makes us feel brave, too, and like we’re doing the right thing with this project. Tell us what you think on our FB Episode 6 event page.

We will be looking at two poets today, and the first poet up is Carlos Gomez.

We discussed, Morning, Rikers Island, Black Hair, and Interracial in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Gomez is a renaissance man with too many skills and too many awards for us to reiterate here! Poet, actor, essayist—it seems wherever he directs his attention, great things happen. After you read these poems we know you’ll want more, so we suggest you start here.

Let us tell you his last three accomplishments, just so you get the idea: the cover story on of Brass Magazine. He was ONLY voted Best Diversity Artist in Campus Activities Magazine’s 2016 Reader’s Choice Awards. And oh, year, he is featured in The New York Times documentary short film A Conversation with Latinos on Race! So that’s what he’s been up to in just the last few months! Check out his performance schedule—practically no matter where you are he’ll be there this spring and summer.

None of Gomez’s poems were unanimous acceptances, but all three were accepted. From the first line, the light in Morning, Rikers Island resonated with us, and we applauded the craft and elegance of this poem. Interracial in Flatbush, Brooklyn has such specific narrative imagery that we all felt immersed in this scene, and a final moment that resonates. Black Hair had a very different tone, voice, and format from the other two, and our editors were simply engaged in the story just under the surface.

We discussed Adam Day a bit in Episode 5—take a look and listen back to see how these poems ended up in our podcast at all! We discussed The Quiet Life, My Telemachus, and Openango.

Anyone who has been reading literary magazines for a while has seen work by Adam Day. His latest book is Model of a City in Civil War (Sarabande Books), and his latest awards are a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship for Badger, Apocrypha, a PEN Emerging Writers Award, and an Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. It’s hard to keep up with this author. If you need to catch up, visit. If you miss him, watch this video.

You’ll have to listen to find out which of the three poems we accepted, but know this: we had a great time discussing them! Tell us what you think at our FB event page. We enjoyed the passion behind The Quiet Life, and the humor of both My Telemachus and Openango; we’re betting you will, too.

Thank you for your patience as we’re learning as we go here in the podcast world, we’d love to know what you think – let us know on our Facebook page!

Read on!

-KVM

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Jason Schneiderman

Miriam Haier

Tim Fitts

Melody Nielson

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

PBQ Box Score: 4=2

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Carlos Gomez

Morning, Rikers Island

Physics and light pierce the hollow stench of the forgotten gymnasium stripped naked of clocks.

All the boys stopped. Offered their grief to each other like water, glancing out the only window they all shared. A single ray unfolds its warmth across the dusty belly of the thudded parquet; and here’s the miracle— another day had come.

Interracial in Flatbush, Brooklyn

We watch them do this, expand from all directions like lungs abruptly filling with water, as we hold hands and walk through the eye of another storm. A man grabs his crotch, offering it to my wife, flings a mouthful of spit and epithets towards us.

Each pupil is a dim swamp flooding, silence blanketing a shallow body in Neshoba County, dusk shedding its absence across the congealed oven grease beneath a rusted burner.

A woman’s neck swivels when we pass, wraps a hard vowel around her tongue like lighter fluid choking a glass bottle holding a fuse.

On this corner, scored by dancehall and soca, there is nothing more novel than me and my love’s contrasting hues—it ignites a rush of color from these strangers’ faces. They ring us a violence familiar as February weather, mine our skin for metaphors, demand we offer answers to questions they are still forming like infants from their throats.

I have watched my body’s primal wisdom flicker dark as a fist-concealed palm, ache so volatile it screams for release. Rage is a language I unlearn on the corner of Ocean Avenue and Church, no shoreline or cathedrals in sight, only fractured things decorating a broken sidewalk like littered snow.

A new voice pierces the air, a flood of sound that hits me like a wall of ice, louder and higher pitched than those before, this time a small child with brown skin and green eyes, writhing in her flimsy stroller, pointing towards the dimpled oval bootprints I leave behind in the hazel-colored slush, squealing: Papi! Papi! Papi!

Black Hair

I made her a vow that I always would, so I join two fresh clusters in my clumsy and careful hands as I cradle her slumbering nape. I am submerged in the calculus of it all, as though concentration is where I took my misstep. As though I am not three decades behind in my practice. As though it is just about finding the pattern (too late). I’m too late, I think, or maybe it’s something else: his hands never knew how to fix my sister’s hair. I tend each thick, onyx strand like I’m mending her favorite blanket, as though my calloused digits might coax and shape anything into an ordered grace. I layer another braid into the tidy maze crowning her scalp. I can feel, with each pull and twist, the newly assembled crib watching.

Adam Day

The Quiet Life

You is a pricy practical joke, a missed appointment, termination that didn't take, doctor without depth, military march,

intolerant of mystery; a dinner party grope and stock exchange, growing aroused in the shadow of compromise, in the pantry's

smell of lessening, of whatever comes along. You'll have him- you can't have anything dripping

and no one to see, and should you be feared to share him your shrunk breasted enthusiasm, and shaven

gape, like a mouth ajar, an over worn loafer, you'll liptongue and hand him, poor spunk, half-screwed, like moth larva

rolling in a rice jar. To make nothing out of nothing but a backbend and take three quarters of an hour over it.

No one ever captured the insanity of monologue like you did, vulgarizing anger into irritation and a plaster

of panic, grinding fists into your eyes, like our child. So quiet now it scrapes the calm from bones,

punctuated with involuntary exonerations, the house in weed, shingles steaming, all fog

and submission, a celibate brothel (if nuns carried their duties as you sexed all saints they'd be.)

No, no solicitation in a street urinal, no sodomizing the duck on account of its down, no slush

of thrushes in the rain gutter, no train of dangers, or snoring next door, eyes unlit, half the sun and twice the rent.

My Telemachus

"The dog drinking water sounds like a horse trotting," my five-year-old says. Well, look at you, brilliant little oedipal bastard, trying to steal my crown (and he is illegitimate; ask his mother if you can find her) but Patton was too and look what he achieved.

"Openango"

Openango After Sherman Alexie

I had just begun ice-fishing. A walleye

taught me how. A fish

with a headdress. He called me

white man. Man, I'm tired

of that racist shit. It's like

if I didn't vacation at your ice hole

you wouldn't have that casino. And

don't look at me like that, lying

on your side, a vein of blood

skating the black plate of your eye.