Tag: Verse

Life, Writing (Published)

Unpublished — “Cuidado”

Posted on by Desmond White

Another example of how COVID-19 is affecting everyone these days. A multitude of magazines have stalled, and a few are folding up due to economic hardships.

This includes an anthology which was about to publish one of my poems. The editors sent me this email:

We are unfortunately now forced to make the decision to not finalize the Impact anthology as we will most likely no longer have the financial means to carry the second URL (Unincorporated.site) for our magazine.

We are honestly barely holding on to our primary literary magazine and may have to fold indefinitely.

The future is unknown as Las Vegas has taken a dramatic hit financially because of the pandemic. Many of our volunteer local readers and editors are no longer employed or only partially employed.

We appreciate all the work that was sent and enjoyed reading many of them. It was a laborious effort and we were already having to make hard decisions regarding which pieces to include.

There were so many wonderful pieces, yours included. This was the hardest decision we had to make but didn’t want to leave our contributors in limbo any longer than we already have.

Helen: A Literary Magazine is (and hopefully will be again) a biannual magazine that celebrates literary works and fine art reflecting ‘the spirit of Southern Nevada.’ (Although I’m not from the area, the editors found my poem reflected an important conflict in their community.) The magazine takes its name from the “First Lady of Las Vegas,” Helen J. Stewart, a pioneer who helped forge the valley in the 1880s.​ They have an internal division called Unincorporated which specializes in anthologies and collections, including Impact. They also run Breedlove, a literary arts blog. As of April 2020, Helen is on indefinite hiatus.

Impact was going to be an anthology focused on Social Justice, ranging from personal experiences to works of fiction. The hope was to expand readers’ perspective on what social justice means and its effects and after effects in our society. Hopefully, those many contributors and their pieces will find other opportunities to publish, to shed a menagerie of lights on our conflicts and corruptions, those things we must repair before we pass the world to our children.

Writing

Poem — “Elephant Statue”

Posted on by Desmond White

The elephant statue, dark colored coal,

a kingly pet bought by a kingly toll,

the remain of days of foreign conquest,

put here to attend to an age of rest.

Now defenseless from a people irate,

who seek to call ruin on the estate.

An axe scrapes a toe to heartless good cheer.

Drunk now, a farmer attacks the veneer.

From a rotten wound in its side outbreaks

the rat-bit scholar who lives in its legs;

shouts at the mob every curse that he knows:

“You anarchists, anti-Christs, and assholes.”

Below callous claws, skin peels away clean

to release beneath a summerset gleam;

a chest, trunk, and tail made of despot’s gold,

dissolved into dust – the marketplace sold.

 

Life, Writing (Published)

Published — “Cuidado”

Posted on by Desmond White

Forgot to mention this when it came out. Life gets busy sometimes. One of my poems published at the end of August.

Rue Scribe is a magazine devoted to “Small Literature”—to “micro fiction, flash fiction, tiny fiction,” and to, eh, what the hell, “short shorts.” This cigarette drag of story is about the “small but powerful,” about the smoke that lingers. That’s why I’m honored RS chose to publish “Cuidado,” a poem condemning global violence on women through a life-changing encounter that lasts no more than five seconds.

Life, Writing (Published)

Published — “Boar Song”

Posted on by Desmond White

My poem, “Boar Song” published in Ink & Voices, an online publication devoted to “unapologetic expression, unedited art.” The magazine seeks to provide a space for “humanness” and has a predilection for the “honest, raw, and original.” Meanwhile, my poem, about my wife who turns goblinesque when I tickle her, was an attempt to express my adoration without praise-filled language.

I couldn’t have found a better venue.

EDIT: Or could I? As of 2019, the website seems to have disappeared. Ah, the fickleness of internet-based publications. The editors sent me a screenshot, however, as some form of compensation. Here it is. Proof that this piece was published once.

Fantasy, Life, Scifi, Writing (Published)

Published — “And We Who Never Died” & “Scarabaeidae”

Posted on by Desmond White

My pieces “And We Who Never Died” and “Scarabaeidae” were published in the Spring Issue of The Tishman Review, a well-respected quarterly magazine devoted to prose, poetry, and people. Behind the paper’s philosophy is the idea that literature’s “value to humanity is beyond measure.” Editors must “remain open to the possibility that an individual work may take us beyond the boundaries known today.”

“And We Who Never Died” began as a metaphysical conflict. What if when we die, our souls don’t abide the afterlife, or face annihilation, but transfer to the objects around us? What horrors would arise? What fears? The story—about a mother sending her children to search the house for their dead father—is one of many scenarios that might result.

“Scarabaeidae” is an ode to my wife, to us. I try to write without goo, mush, doggerel, singsong, cockamamie, and all those wonderful descriptors of poor poetry. But then, “Scarabaeidae” does have a line that begins with “shall I compare thee to.” Maybe it works since it ends in “a dung beetle.” Glimpsed here is the failure and mundanity of the struggle to love another.

You can pick up a copy of The Tishman Review from their website or order it from the source on Amazon.

Life, Writing (Published)

Published — “Snippets”

Posted on by Desmond White

 

Rat Ass Review’s “Love and Madness” section published my poem “Snippets.” The online publication is devoted to poetry about “our varied attractions to one another” and isn’t “intended for children, nor for those adults whose views of individual liberty and freedom of expression would best suit them for life in 1630 Massachusetts or modern-day Syria.” Get reading because it’s an amazing, ever-growing page of stories of love and madness, if there’s even a difference. You can also find my poem (after clicking the link) by hitting CTRL-F and searching for “Desmond White.”

Writing

Poem — “A Cigarette on the Beach”

Posted on by Desmond White

A cigarette on the beach:

Cold,

Light-headed,

Salty,

Composed.

You inhale with the coming of the waves;

You breathe out as they slip away.

The drowsiness you feel is the cooling of the earth

as it spins through a universe of cold, salty thoughts.

The embers in the stub are little suns.

You flick away a shooting star

and know at once how small you are.