From deep inside the Polar Vortex – the Dark Ice of the Moon, Winter 2018-2019 issue.
Empty Like a Pocket
Molly McDonald
Debut collection from Iowa Poet
“Sometimes, when I’m not thinking, I think it’s the future or 5th grade when I was the last kid to stop wearing sweatpants and I got a standing ovation when I finally wore jeans or the other morning when I was wandering around my yard without glasses, waiting for the neighbors to pull out of their driveway so I could pee beside the house or an alternate universe where I died in a train wreck or I’m inside the head of everyone throughout history who’s ever chopped mushrooms while looking out the window or I’m one of the rats that’s always chittering around in my walls. But then I’m like naaahhh, it’s Now! And now. And now. And I must be me.”—Molly McDonald
What critics are saying about Empty like a Pocket.
“Molly McDonald has emptied her pockets for us, and inverted and convoluted in the fabric of her poems – they’ve become little black holes, revealing truths that previously hid as lies. Her deceptively clean language will shake you up with philosophical blindsiding, then explode kaleidoscopic like a Jackson Pollock painting made of your bone marrow. ‘I’m burrowed so/ far inside my head I found a China no one knows/ about,’ she writes, but it feels like somehow she burrowed inside my head. McDonald’s emotional archaeology feels necessary, though, not invasive; amid ice cream and dissections of car crashes, the ‘microscopic looming everything,’ holds taut dichotomies together under her watchful eye” – Claire Kruesel, MFA lecturer, Iowa State University
“McDonald’s poetry first left me speechless, then all the places in me that used to be cracks started shining, as I’d always secretly wanted them to.” – Brett Brinkmeyer, host of radio show Firsthand Poetry
Ondine & the Blue Troll – Ten Parables
Tom Driscoll
Selected Short Works
Ø Mud Ball Dolls Ø Ondine & the Blue Troll Ø Saint Martin Ø Nzombi Ø the Flying Horse Ø George’s Dream Ø Old Mamadou Ø Sirènes Ø Regime of Bananas Ø Crazy Joseph Ø Snakes & Violets Ø
Characters plucked from war, folklore and modern literature, from the Belgian Congo and the Dust Bowl, from the Battle of the Bulge, Congo Zaire, Gabon and the cold Pisgah Mountains of North Carolina; ink from the pen of Steinbeck and blood from the bitter heart of a wicked sorcerer, these characters come alive in ten lyric parables.
Lost Lake Folk Opera Magazine V1N1
Special Destination Lanesboro issue
Lanesboro. Shipwreckt Books Publishing Company is proud to introduce readers to the first issue of Lost Lake Folk Opera magazine. The arts heartbeat and journalistic pulse of rural Mid-America is available in stores and online now!
LLFO V1-N1 features a close look at LAC’s John Davis through our special Folk Opera Glasses. John talks about the Arts Campus vision being realized right now in Lanesboro.
A post-Romantic lyric clipped from Commonweal resident artist Scott Dixon‘s play, A Midnight Dreary.
Stunning photography by David Tacke.
Enjoy poems – wild geese on iron wings – by Robert Morris, Haley Thompson, Jon Welsh, Anne Barngrover & Eddy J.Rathke.
Mind-bending fiction from Mary Lewis, Solveig Blegen & Lisa Lundquist.
A bramble of essays knitted by Shipwreckt authors Pixie Youngdahl & Nancy Overcott, PLUS an operatic duet, The Nuterator, by Peggy Hanson & Frank Wright.
And Folk Opera editor, Tom Driscoll, digs behind the Dam Mystery of Lost Lake, and offers as well his humble opinion about Opinion.
Guilty literary, graphic and journalistic pleasures from folks you probably thought you knew.
Home is a Place Worth Burying
Haley Thompson
$10.50 – Buy a print copy online
Here is what acclaimed poet Dora Malech, author of Shore Ordered Ocean and Say So, has to say about Haley Thompson‘s poetry: Haley’s poems shimmer with the intimacies of memory and place. They weave the consolation of sparkling specificities through the inevitable truths of loss and time. These are poems that enable us to see our yesterdays and our today anew.
Amazon Reviews—
G. Greene says: Fabulous! Ms Thompson speaks with an authentic voice. This book of poetry is a must read for anyone who enjoys poetry.
Nicole Lockman: Great!! Great book!!! Fun, thoughtful! The title threw me off, but this collection of poems and short stories is pleasantly intriguing!