The Journal and encounters with "shark"

  Ny studenttidskrift i måndagsinlägget. Den här gången har jag kikat i magasinet med den något anonyma titeln, "The Journal". Den ges ut av Ohio University.

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  De presenterar ingen deklaration på sin hemsida utan uppger i stort sett bara följande:

"The Journal is a magazine of literature published four times yearly and supported by the Department of English, private contributions, advertisements, and sales. The magazine is endorsed by The Ohio State University."

Poesiredaktörer är: Jessica Lieberman och Ally Talbot. De tycks vara studenter på universitetet och inte undervisande personal.

Trots en blygsam presentation och en orutinerad redaktion innehåller magasinet intressanta uppkomlingar inom poet-skrået. I vårnumret för 2017 hittade jag ...

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  "Xandria Phillips is the author of Reasons For Smoking, which won the 2016 The Seattle Review chapbook contest judged by Claudia Rankine. She hails from rural Ohio where she was raised on corn, and inherited her grandmother’s fear of open water. Xandria received her BA from Oberlin College, and her MFA from Virginia Tech. Xandria is Winter Tangerine's associate poetry editor, and the curator of Love Letters to Spooks, a literary space for Black people." Citat från The Journal, 41.2 Spring, 2017.

  Det finns något lockande i hennes bidrag som jag inte kan sätta fingret på. Hon kan nog ha en intressant karriär framför sig.

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Beached Shark as a Blues Poem, by Xandria Phillips
(Published in The Journal, 41.2 Spring, 2017.)

Photoshop manipulation from Pixabay

before / I said / if touch didn’t mean ownership I’d swim with
more women / I’d bare down into the surf if pressing my belly to land
didn’t express sovereignty / I’d flop down with my jugular exposed to
love if it didn’t insist on mapping my tender points with a blade /
since I learned no one’s ever gonna love me enough to fill this hull /
I swim bare / sinuous as a cup brimming with fangs / a chalice
overfilled / an impact like knees buckling / my last words /
fuck me up / ocean / fuck me / up / you’ve got the kind of lips that
could swallow a slave ship whole / drag me to death’s waistline and
yank me back / bring me bodies / to entourage / give me a page to cursive
with blood / I’ll be your prolific body catcher till I run aground

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  Det andra bidraget är författat av en talang som kommit längre i sitt författarskap. Följande biografiska noteringar är hämtade från hennes webbplats: 
http://www.kathleenossip.com

  "Kathleen Ossip is the author of The Do-Over, a New York Times Editors' Choice; The Cold War, which was one of Publishers Weekly's best books of 2011; The Search Engine, which was selected by Derek Walcott for the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize; and Cinephrastics, a chapbook of movie poems. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Best American Magazine Writing, the Washington Post, Paris Review, Poetry, The Believer, A Public Space, and Poetry Review (London). She teaches at The New School in New York, and she is the editor of the poetry review website SCOUT. She has received a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

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From the sixth floor, by Kathleen Ossip
(Published in The Journal, 41.2 Spring, 2017.)

The church spire’s a grandmother, crafted, hoping.
The chimney’s a grandfather, tense and solid.
The slate roof’s a mother, spread out and open.
The mansard a father, blind, helmeted.
The gray trees are children, their fingers velveted.
The leaves their ideas, broken and broken.