BY JOANNA C. VALENTE
This woman went to see a witch while she was pregnant:
"I finished my interview and prepared to leave. "Would you like to cast a spell?" the witch asked me."
-Kelly Burch at Cosmopolitan
Two poems by Natalie Eilbert at The Offing:
"There was another patient
she quit eating, convinced she lacked intestines,
the obedient breaking down of memoir
had died for her. She died of starvation.
How is it still my blankness has evolved, whirling
inchoate in alien matter. I pronounce my hands
by scraping them through dirt. I will never forgive."
These Lisa Frank Tarot cards are about to make your inner 12-year-old happy:
Remember when PJ Harvey was on the Jay Leno show in 1993 performing her monumental hit "Rid of Me?" I can't stop listening to this. And thinking how badass she is.
Musician based in Jersey City, Shayfer James, did a collaborative album with artists and writers. It's pretty awesome:
A phenomenal interview with poet Nikki Wallschlaeger on Entropy:
"I was feeling the effects of race, class, and identifying as a woman. In these moments I turn to poetry for strength, but sometimes it’s not as immediate as a form I need. Memes, on the other hand, need very little editing and are capable of distilling all that needs to be said in a few pithy sentences. I find this form very satisfying and most importantly of all, hilarious. I need to keep laughing. I wonder sometimes if my own poetry is just a self-care strategy of keeping myself entertained in a country I find profoundly disgusting. When I can make myself laugh I’m practicing the lost art of being my own best friend. It’s great.”
Two poems by Ginger Ko on Poetry Society of America:
"This poem was written with some anger, during a time when all my poems were rebuttals to anticipated put-downs and critiques, especially the ones scaffolded by racism and misogyny. I was getting frustrated with my writing and my voice, feeling suffocated by an ingested, self-reproducing colonization in my bloodstream. At a certain point in my writing I wasn't even fighting with things that had happened, but with things that would happen if I acted certain ways. That I did so much arguing with things that came from inside me was speaking to the internalization of everything I had been taught: beauty is this way, knowledge is that way, power is any way but your way."
Interview with poet and editor Allie Marini on Dirty Chai Mag:
"I think the conception of a 'writer’s routine' is something born out of privilege, pretension, academia, or a bizarro combination of all of them—the concept of 'writer’s routine' usually means a person with leisure time to devote to writing. Let’s be real, that’s not always a reality if you’re working, have a family, etc. and let’s also be honest here: How many people do you know that really really for real really sit down and pound out 1,000 words every day? But yet, writing magazines keep telling us that these are the hallmarks of a 'real' writer, and if you’re not doing it like that, you’re not serious."
MoMA put 65,000 pieces of art online for free. Get it.
Wheelchair Fetishists and Disability Devotees:
"When I said on my dating profile that I use a wheelchair, I discovered the world of devotees—men and women who are turned on by disability, paralysis, and Jimmy 'Lobster Boy' Darling from 'American Horror Story.'"
-Venessa Parekh at Broadly
And just in case, read your March horoscopes here, in case you need some wisdom and guidance from the stars, by yours truly.
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (forthcoming 2016, ELJ Publications) & Xenos (forthcoming 2017, Agape Editions). She received her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the chief editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of her writing has appeared in Prelude, The Atlas Review, The Huffington Post, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. She has lead workshops at Brooklyn Poets.