Three Poems in Futures Trading

I’m very happy to announce that three of my poems have been published in the new literary journal, Futures Trading! The poems are DU, The Labor of Our Futures, and You Shall Not Kill Yourself, Suicide Bomber. DU is about depleted uranium and the Iraq war. If you don’t know about depleted uranium, then please look it up as it is changing our future. The Labor of Our Futures comes from a personal experience. The first line of the poem “War will be good for our economy” is something that was said to me by an old man who I use to talk with when I worked in a flea market many years back. He was a nice person overall, and I don’t think he realized what an impact that statement would have on me. You Shall Not Kill Yourself, Suicide Bomber explains itself.

This is the best journal I’ve been published in because the editor of it happens to be one of my favorite poets, Caleb Puckett! If you have been following my blog for a while, you will have read some of his poetry which I have featured twice already. In case you haven’t, I’ll be reblogging a collection of his poems in the coming week or two. The Labor of Our Futures is my best effort so far at imitating his writing style.

Puckett is an amazing poet that is well worth reading. His work is very rhythmic in quality and beautiful and distinctive in the images that his words evoke. There is something very unique about his poetry too that I can’t describe exactly. His newer work differs slightly in style from his earlier work, but I find his newer work to be even more profound and deeper in meaning like one of my favorites Girl from Earlsboro. His work is intense, relevant and essential; this is a poet who really has something important to say. It is not just about the construction of words but how the words are a construction of our human experience, and even perhaps a construction on the level of the soul. His work makes me say “Wow! That spoke to me.” Later, “I wish I could write like that!”

Here is a very short sampling of some of my favorite of his poems.

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TERMINUS

By Caleb Puckett

Elegies entangle the arc of a hard whistle

echoing along the dirty halls of this dimly lit terminal,

and our eyes are annihilated by blood,

teeth crushed by the vinyl lining the length of the hall,

as we waver in and out of chaotic queue,

filing past grubby double doors and smudged windows,

uncertain if this is our departure or arrival,

worried if this is the life we are finally due to revise,

unsure of personal silence within the group,

troubled by the sharp plastic lettering that lies and refuses.

So we congest the exits, crowd the benches, waiting for connections,

estranged within as night translates the scrape

of every splintered shoe and the exhaust fumes of every idling engine

into hands on a claustrophobic clock face

that gnaws apart each aching nerve during the long journey forward

into a pale helter-skelter horizon full of alleys

and avenues where dreams are brought to bare—how we huddle here

in the fugue of some broken city square

where salvation’s vagabond army stammers between penury and prayer.
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Bunker

We dwell on the roasted meat of snakes. We dwell on cyanide like oxygen. We are desperate for Passover, dear Lord. These are the earliest days of the end of the world. The crucial steps from building financial weaponry to the total collapse of the Gulf Coast are impending. As the Mayan calendar predicted, the bomb shelter business is now booming in Texas. Consider the cold, hard details of this fool’s errand to block the exits when the Tectonic plates go awry and shift into darkest space. The surface of earth is a conduit of energy.

For whatever reason, the erratic cult of paranoia can construct a system of preparedness. Surviving a nuclear attack would be incredible, but the actors and news architects have their perverted plans. They are lobbing bad news to brainwashed dummies and contracts to intransient Iranian mechanics from New York to Utah. They are hell-bent on engineering high-end space stations for the elite. Demonic sun bursts spew from their alien mouths, bringing tribulation to all the dummies who will bury themselves like moles in their septic underground sanctuaries. Hell is a lower elevation. Luck is dead. We are hiring, says the savvy killer to the cleric, thriving on the popular American mindset. The wisdom is reptilian: their business will outlast your activity. Dig, dummies, dig.
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LOW FREQUENCY

By Caleb Puckett

No rest with the precarious nerve of night

through which the fine vibrations of loss pulse

in low frequency, diffuse electric directives culled

among broken manzanita branches, the refusals and refuse

of slight lifetimes spent amidst insensible constellations

in cinder block neighborhoods full of twisted white blankets,

vanishing points, vacancies, spaces where hands drop off of brows

and rise again to dimly comb through the indolent black currents

where humid night hides itself in the narcosis of the heart’s host

in a scarred old town near a river that still whittles away

the sandstone mantle of a salvation that some claim

crystallized under great pressure before we came
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IMPERIAL RULE

By Caleb Puckett

Flag rant war rant.

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WEIGHT OF EXPERIENCE

By Caleb Puckett

Met age met a fiction.

Blogger Awards II – Thank You!

A while back I was nominated for some blogger awards by these four great bloggers and writers: Mike (The Eye-Dancers), Aslihan (The (notso) Secret Life of a PhD Student) Paul (Freaky Folk Tales), and Cambria (Cambria’s Corner). Although I’ve never participated in blogger awards, I truly appreciate being nominated for them. It let’s me know that I’ve connected with other people out there through our exchanges in the blogosphere. A very big thank you to you all! The blue frog says thank you, too : )

Source: 500px.com via Maryam on Pinterest

Twinkle Little Star

Source: all-things-bright-and-beyootiful.tumblr.com via Maryam on Pinterest

Where do we go from here?

Source: 500px.com via Maryam on Pinterest

Rania’s Ambulance by Bernstein

created by me using stock wallpaper and Gimp photo program

Dreamy Songs in the Temple of Silence by by Fawzi al-Dahhan

DREAMY SONGS IN THE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

 

by Fawzi al-Dahhan

Translated by Laith al-Husain with Alan Brownjohn

 

 

Here I am, playing dreamy songs

 

In the temple of silence

 

the silence of a stone.

 

In my temple I remembered the eyes

 

of those maidens who had chased me

 

then fled, taking refuge in the night,

 

and left me alone to hold communion with the moon.

 

On the face of night I learned

 

the love of exiles

 

And how I cherish my estrangement

 

during the nights of travel;

 

when the nights sleep in my temple

 

and block out all vision in the eyes

 

of those sleeping

 

in time of repression.

 

I’ve learned

 

How to cherish sorrow

 

During the nights of madness

 

How to play the melody of silence

 

On the strings of the lute.

Mourn the Apathetic Throng

created by me using stock wallpaper and Gimp photo program

10 Tips to The Poetry Submissions Process

I decided to collect the 10 tips that I wrote over the course of two months or so here in one blog post. It comes from my experience, and I hope it will be of benefit to others.

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Recently, a good friend of mine asked me for some advice on poetry. Being what I am, an apprentice of Poetry, I wasn’t really able to offer her much help except some poetry book recommendations. However, having submitted my work to poetry journals for five years now, I can offer some tips about the submission process.

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1. Follow the rules. It’s that plain and simple. Poetry journals and magazines provide guidelines to submissions. Read the guidelines carefully. Some journals are quite lax – poems pasted into the body of an email and sent to a particular address. Those are always quite nice to come across, especially if you are submitting to many journals. Others require a particular font size, contact info, and a funny and lively bio. Poetry journals come in all shapes and sizes, so if you want your work read, follow the rules. Why go through the effort of submitting your poems to a journal without having read the rules, or not carefully enough, only to have your work discarded. I’m sure you spent a lot of time and effort on your poems, so give your work a chance!

2. Get to know the journal. Before submitting, it’s important to know what kind of work the poetry journal publishes. Obviously, it’s not always easy to define. Sometimes they will let you know exactly what they are looking for, but most of the time they won’t. Reading through a current issue or through the archives can give you a rough of idea of where your poems stand with the journal. Are they suitable or not for the journal? It doesn’t hurt to submit anyway, even if you are not sure if your poems are a right fit. I’ve been published in a journal where my poem seemed out of place with the rest, so you can’t always tell until you submit. Submit and they will let you know. On another note, reading through journals is a good way to discover new poets and poems. I’ve discovered so many great writers through this process. Also, there is an assumption that if you want your work to appear in a particular journal, that you like the journal in some way. If you like a journal, you will read what they have to offer.

3. Titling your submission. It’s a good idea to put your name on any poetry submission, i.e. Poetry Submission: Maryam Chahine. Unless the journal has specific requirements about titling the submission, I always title my submissions like the above in one form or another. Poetry journals receive a deluge of submissions generally, so help out the editors by helping them to find your submission easily.

4. Prepare the letters. If you submit to a lot of journals as I do, it saves a lot of time, if you prepare a standard cover letter, acceptance letter, and withdrawal letter. Many journals will ask for a cover letter with your submission that includes a bio and contact information. Having a standard cover letter with the relevant information, means you save yourself a step and just attach or copy and paste. The same goes for an acceptance and withdrawal letter, which you will use much less of if you are a writer like me who mostly receives rejections.

5. Keep a poetry submissions log. It helps you to keep track of the journals you’ve submitted your work to.

I keep mine in a word document and format it as follows: journal name, web address, the titles of the poems I’ve submitted to a particular journal, and status of my submission (like “sent” or “rejected” or “rejected but submit again” if the rejection letter is positive or encouraging).

The submissions log can save a ton of work later on, in the case that a poem(s) gets accepted to a journal and you need to withdraw the poem(s) from the other journals.

While many journals accept simultaneous submissions, they ask to be notified if a poem is accepted elsewhere. They get angry if you don’t. Letting them know is common courtesy. The handy submissions log helps you track the journals that you need to contact to withdraw your submission from.

Also, you might decide to submit another batch of poems to the same journal that you received a previous rejection from, (the editors might have told you that they’d like to read more of your work in the future) and here is where the submissions logs gives you a hand in knowing which poems you have already submitted, so you don’t submit the sames poem again.

The submissions log keeps you organized and a good friend of poetry journals.

6. One or two journals is not enough. So you are ready to submit your poems. You’ve worked long and hard. You are ready to show your blood and sweat to the world. You decide on some poetry journals, follow the rules, prepare the letters, track your submissions in a poetry log…and now you’ve sent your poems off to……two poetry journals! Wow! So little. You don’t have much faith in your poems, do you?

Grab a tissue quick because I have some bad news for you. Your poems aren’t likely going anywhere. Those two poetry journals that you have your eyes on, your whole heart invested in, are probably not going to like your poems as much as you do.

Which is why you need to submit to more than two journals. How many you ask? I’m talking twenty in the least. One writer advises submitting to no less than 60 poetry journals in a year.

You need to get your work out there. Out of the twenty journals you submit your poems to, you will likely get two to three acceptances on average. Yes, it takes that many to get that little in return. You don’t know which editors will appreciate your work or understand what you are trying to say. Sharing your work with two to three editors is the sure making of unpublished poems. Unless of course those two editors just happen to appreciate your work, but that is not likely. Do that and you probably won’t be submitting to poetry journals for years. Especially if it is your first time submitting your beloved poems to the world.

Don’t believe me. I’ll share an experience with you: In college, my writing professor gave me some kind feedback on my writing. It was the first positive encouragement I had received about my writing from other than family. She read a creative non-fiction piece in front of the class and later encouraged me to submit a poem. I did submit my poem. To one journal as if it was the only journal that existed. After receiving the rejection letter, I didn’t submit my work again for several years. Now I know better. So, don’t do as I did. Submit, submit, submit!

7. Submitting to journals takes a lot of work. After working on a batch of poems that you feel are polished and ready, prepare for the long haul of submitting to poetry journals. I kid you not that it might take more effort and time to submit to poetry journals than it took to write your poems. Don’t go through this process quickly. If you do you will likely break rules and get on the bad side of editors in the future. Or your work will just be discarded or deleted, which would be a very sad thing. Do you really want to consign your poems to such a fate? Give your poems a chance to be read and understood. The submissions process is a long drawn out affair to do it right. It takes time to read through published poems, through the journal’s rules and guidelines, to gather your poems in the correct format, to decide which poems would be appropriate for a particular journal, etc. Twenty poetry journals will likely mean three hours of work each day, for two weeks. You can do it though. Set aside the time you need and keep focused. Look at it as an investment for your poems’ future.

8. Ride rejections like a professional surfer. Bang! Your open your mailbox or more likely your email inbox to find a rejection letter. A huge wave of defeat flows over you, but don’t let it drown you. Let me put this straight: you are likely to get a lot of rejections if you are a serious writer. As Aaron Hamburger put it so well: “This is what writers do. We invite rejection into our lives. Constantly. If you’re not getting rejected, you’re not a writer. You’re a hobbyist.” Rejections are part and parcel of being a writer. It is all very normal and comes with the territory. And being a writer is all about persistence, which I keep saying over and over again like a broken tape recorder. I know. You get the point. So every time that rejection letter comes towards you just ride it with all you’ve got till it takes you over and beyond. After a while, you will get use to it in a strange sort of way. As hard as that sounds, it’s true.

9. Yes, rejections are discouraging. Instead of letting it define you though, let it serve as a momentum in your writing. Every time a rejection letter lands on you and all your dreams of your beautiful poetic future, just remember that all writers can improve their craft. Look at your poem in a new way. Is there a better way to say that line? Can you change the poem to make it even better? Most likely you can. Some editors will be kind enough to offer you their suggestions.

Every writer can improve their writing – yes! even the famous ones. No one has learned everything there is to know. We are all learning in every aspect of our lives. Some have learned more than others, but there is no limit to what you can learn. While you wait to get your poems published use your time wisely in polishing your poems, improving your craft, and reading books on writing and poetry.

10. What does a rejection letter mean about my work? Not much really. Rejections are normal and come with being a writer. One rejection letter or 100 rejection letters doesn’t give you much. It just tells you that you are trying your best. Good job! Here is what I’ve learned from editors over the years for the reasons of rejections.

⇴ Poetry publications and literary journals receive thousands of submissions. Many can only publish 10% of what they receive. That means they only publish a small and limited number of writers. Many writers besides yourself will be rejected because of the math of it all.

⇴ Your poems are similar in subject, style or tone to other poems. Poetry journals like diversity as much as possible. They might be getting many poems about birds and you just happened to submit another poem about them. The poetry journal will get labeled “boring” if they publish every single poem about birds.

⇴ Your poems are fantastic, but poetry journals can’t publish every fantastic poem out there. Sometimes they have to reject very good writers and great poems. Likely, they will tell you that they can’t publish your work at this time, but submit again as they’d like to read more from you in the future.

⇴ Your poems don’t fit into a particular issue of a poetry journal. It doesn’t mean it is not right for the journal, just not right for that issue.

⇴ You submitted your poems to the wrong journal. For example, you submitted sonnets to an experimental journal. You misfired; it happens sometimes.

At the end, rejection letters don’t define your work. It tells you more about poetry journals than it does about your writing. So keep at it despite all the rejections. Rejections simply mean you are doing the work of a writer.

Some Quotations for the Day

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find until after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same. ~ C. S. Lewis

Our problem is one of spirituality. If a man comes to speak to me about the reforms to be undertaken in the Muslim world, about political strategies and of great geo-strategic plans, my first question to him would be whether he performed the dawn prayer in its time. ~ Said Ramadan

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. ~ Booker T. Washington

Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught. ~ Honore de Balzac

The marriage of reason and nightmare which has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the specters of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. ~ J. G. Ballard

The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity. ~ Francis Maitland Balfour

Forgiveness is a Crushed Flower

Thanks to Spiritual Bliss for this wonderful quote.