word for /word

a journal of new writing

Issue 20: Spring/Summer 2012

Special Feature: New Fiction from Orlando, Florida, edited by KP Giordano

Editor's Notes

Dear Reader, you are a thief.
Bring back the periods from their text.
There is an oval, a ruddy orange,
somewhere in the center of the page.
I see you slipping towards it.

*

Dear Reader, this is not your cellar door.
This is a plume of red, a blush, or a wound.
If I find you in the thickest of the press,
we will read each other's faces and hands.
Our words are for ghosts.

*

Dear Reader, there are flowers
behind your back because the world is sufficient.
This is a map of what I know, not what I see.
The clouds arrive like clockwork.
There are kingdoms between us.

*

Dear Reader, even if you were a river
it would never empty into this sentence,
but we will gather coins for our ancient fountain,
and when I write the next letter
it will say that I love you.

Contributors' Notes

Robyn Art's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Denver Quarterly, Conduit, Slope, The Hat, The New Delta Review, Gulf Coast, LaPetiteZine, Coconut, Shampoo, and canwehaveourballback. She is the author of The Stunt Double In Winter (Dusie Press 2008), which was selected as a Finalist for the 2005 Sawtooth Poetry Prize.

Wes Benson is the poetry editor of Cranky. His work has appeared in Convergence, The Cortland Review, The Cultural Society, and other journals (several of which begin with letters other than "C").

Adam Braffman resides in Syracuse, New York. His work has appeared in >killauthor and elsewhere.

Teege Braune lives in Orlando, FL with his girlfriend and two cats. He is a bartender who struggles with daily road rage. Recently, he has been included in Burrow Press Review's 15 Views of Orlando.

Joel Chace has published work in print and electronic magazines such as 6ix, The Tip of the Knife, Counterexample Poetics, OR, Country Music, Infinity's Kitchen, and Jacket. He has published more than a dozen print and electronic collections, most recently Sharpsburg, from Cy Gist Press, and Blake's Tree, from Blue & Yellow Dog Press.

Robin Clarke's poetry and prose has appeared or is forthcoming in Conduit, Denver Quarterly, Fence, Sentence, Slope and elsewhere. She teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh, where she received an MFA in poetry and MA in Literature.

Jesse DeLong lives in Tuscaloosa where he is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama. This poem is from the manuscript The Amateur Scientist's Notebook. Other work can be found or is forthcoming from Best New Poets 2011, Mid-American Review, American Letters and Commentary, Indiana Review and elsewhere. His chapbook, Tearings, and Other Poems, was released by Curly Head Press. Listen to him reading at http://vimeo.com/20156489.

Dot Devota's book And The Girls Worried Terribly is forthcoming from Noemi Press. She is the author of The Eternal Wall (Cannibal Books) and MW: A Field Guide to the Midwest (Editions 19\).

KP Giordano's fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The Fanzine, Trillium, and About Place Journal.

Victoria Henry's work has appeared in Enormous Rooms, the literary journal of the University of Utah.

Nathan Holic teaches writing courses at the University of Central Florida and serves as the Graphic Narrative Editor at The Florida Review. He is also the editor of the anthology 15 Views of Orlando (Burrow Press), a literary portrait of the city featuring short fiction from fifteen Orlando authors young and old, local and far-removed, established and aspiring. His fiction has appeared in print at Iron Horse and The Apalachee Review, and online at Hobart and Necessary Fiction, and his graphic narratives—which include the serialized adaptation of Alex Kudera’s novel Fight For Your Long Day (available monthly at Atticus Review), and “Clutter,” a story structured as a home décor catalogue (available at the Smalldoggies Magazine)—have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Jane Lewty is currently an assistant professor of English Literature and creative writing at the University of Amsterdam and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her poems and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines. Her first collection, Bravura Cool, was the winner of the 1913 First Book Prize in 2011, and will be published later this year.

Diana Magallon is an experimental artist and the author of Del oiseau et del ogre.

bruno neiva is a Portuguese writer, poet and artist. He has published several chapbooks, such as: "early-natttura", "polar coordinates and N2OC10H12", "sad items" "natttura1-7", "Nuvem Ruim", "o livro das minhas proezas de pesca 1-8", "Samples 17-24.", "Samples 9-16" and "Samples 1-8". His work can also be found in otoliths, BlazeVox, moria, ditch, and The Anemone Sidecar. His work has been exhibited in Portugal and Spain. He has a blog at http://umaestruturaassimsempudor.blogspot.com

Fabio Sassi is a visual artist from Bologna, Italy. His portfolio is available at fabiosassi.foliohd.com.

Adam Strauss has poems appearing or forthcoming in The Offending Adam, Raft, Spiral Orb, Upstairs At Duroc, the Tusculum Review, and the Parthenon West Review.

Lynn Strongin is a native New Yorker who has published over 14 books of poetry, plus the novel Nikko's Child. She is also the editor of the anthologies The Sorrow Psalms: A Book of Twentieth Century Elegy (University of Iowa Press), and its follow-up Crazed by the Sun: Poems of Ecstasy. She lives in British Columbia.

Chris Wiewiora is a MFA candidate at Iowa State University’s Creative Writing and Environment program. His fiction has been published on YouMustBeThisTalltoRide.net, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Planet Formerly Known As Earth, The Quotable, and Saw Palm as well as in the e-anthology “Realist Fiction” by CICADA and 15 Views of Orlando by Burrow Press. He mostly writes nonfiction and regularly contributes to the Good Men Project. Read more at www.chriswiewiora.com

Jane Wong received her MFA from the University of Iowa and is the recipient of fellowships and scholarships from the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Fine Arts Work Center. Her poems have appeared in EOAGH, Octopus, Mid-American Review, ZYZZYVA, CutBank, Dear Sir, and the anthology The Arcadia Project (Ahsahta Press). She has two chapbooks, Dendrochronology and Impossible Map. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Washington and lives in Seattle.

Masthead

Word For/ Word is seeking poetry, prose, poetics, criticism, reviews, and visuals for upcoming issues. We read submissions year-round. Issue #21 is scheduled for January, 2013. Please direct queries and submissions to:

Word For/ Word, c/o Jonathan Minton, 546 Center Avenue, Weston, WV 26452.

Submissions should be a reasonable length (i.e., 3 to 6 poems, or prose between 50 and 2000 words) and include a biographical note and publication history (or at least a friendly introduction), plus an SASE with appropriate postage for a reply. A brief statement regarding the process, praxis or parole of the submitted work is encouraged, but not required. Please allow one to three months for a response. We will consider simultaneous submissions, but please let us know if any portion of it is accepted elsewhere. We do not consider previously published work.

Email queries and submissions may be sent to: editors at wordforword dot info.

Email submissions should be attached as a single .doc, .rtf, .pdf or .txt file. Visuals should be attached individually as .jpg, .png, .gif, or .bmp files. Please include the word "submission" in the subject line of your email.

Word For/ Word acquires exclusive first-time printing rights (online or otherwise) for all published works, which are also archived online and may be featured in special print editions of Word For/Word. All rights revert to the authors after publication in Word For/ Word; however, we ask that we be acknowledged if the work is republished elsewhere.

Word For/ Word is open to all types of poetry, prose and visual art, but prefers innovative and post-avant work with an astute awareness of the materials, rhythms, trajectories and emerging forms of the contemporary. Word For/ Word is published biannually.

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ISSN 2159-8061