~ highlights and recommendations from recent issues of literary journals ~
by Mark Danowsky (Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal)
burntdistrict (Spring 2017)
*For the first volume of Lit Picks I’d like to call attention to burntdistrict, a journal that I believe has not received the attention it deserves. I encourage readers to follow the progress of this journal.
Cathryn Shea – The Postponed Grief
“Hope penciled in the margins / of her cookbook.”
Cathryn Shea – Early Advice to Kindergartners
“Be suspect if you’re blindfolded a lot.”
Connotation Press (July 2017)
“I will write about murders / and houses. There are more civilized / ways to do this: the plan to dig for // three days, to recover bones. / They turn out to be deer.”
Waxwing (Summer 2017)
This is another journal I can’t recommend enough. This is where Maggie Smith’s poem “Good Bones” was first published. The Spring 2017 issue features poetry by Ada Límon and David Kirby.
Eugenia Leigh – What I Miss Most About Hell
“I prayed / like everyone I loved was on fire.”
Hermeneutic Chaos Journal (May 2017)
Madeleine Wattenberg – Poem in which the Sphinx Moth is again Mistaken for a Hummingbird
“Because the body / conforms to need—one foot, two footed, three.”
Ecotone (Spring/Summer 2017)
Sandra Marchetti – I am convinced now that more than anything we want to live forever.
“The lake glints green / at the edge of nightmare.”
Thanks to poet Elizabeth Leo for recommending Marchetti’s poem.
For a taste of more work from Ecotone check out their website. Ecotone’s recent “Country and City” issue includes poetry by Amit Mujmudar, Miriam Bird Greenberg, Jane Satterfield, Erin Elizabeth Smith, and Martha Silano.
Hanging Loose (108)
(Cover Art by Ann Mikolowski)
Jill McDonough – Sealing Woodrow
“The missionaries are adorable, girls from Argentina, / Brazil. I say they’re welcome to baptize our dead / once we figure out who they are.”
You can read Sealing Woodrow in its entirety thanks to Poetry Daily:
FIELD (#96, Spring 2017)
Sandra McPherson – Hermatological
“But we knew when they’d find him / he’d earn a little bruise, hyacinth / and chartreuse, in the elbow’s fold.”