Melissa Kwasny:: Lost Pictograph

“The light darkened, stained to the thin color of Chinese tea, then lost its muscle and unraveled. Dust covering the shine we lost on surfaces. We lost, too, some will, never our strong suit. Disturbing, the children who, once we have mentioned the word “grenade,” cannot think about anything else…”

Laura Mullen:: Bride of the Bayou

“She is drained—that’s her word. She takes care of other people’s needs all day long, never thinking of herself, but employing the various time saving devices developed to expand each task until it approaches the horizon of the impossible. An entire ecology damaged, possibly irreparable: where there were birds no bird, and so forth, the grim countdown of what should be visible. Sticky mud and silence, a tour boat tilted up against the bank below the reopened bar because there’s no longer a reason to teach anyone anything about this disappearing world…”

Kelli Anne Noftle:: What We’re Making: Replication

“No one believed I could do it. I wasn’t even sure myself. The trick is beginning from the outside and working your way toward the middle. The paint thickens as you approach the center, where the real trouble happens. When I was a kid I hated fireworks. Every July I hid under my bed with our cat and stuffed toilet paper in my ears…”

Craig Santos Perez:: Juan Malo Explains What a “Guam” Is

“Guam is virtually nonexistent, just a little island, a little fly-speck in the Pacific, far, far away from everything. Guam is three and a half hours. Guam is a travel hub to other Micronesian Islands and America’s gateway to the West Pacific and Asia. Guam is one of the few remaining colonies of the world. Guam is a duty-free port. Guam is a United States citizen at birth…”

Chris Shipman:: Death Writes Home

“Dear mother, I have found a home
in the world and won’t be returning
to the darkness save holidays.

Tell Life she can have my room.
She always wanted it anyway…”

William Stobb:: A Natural History

”                                                                                          Canceled by virtue
of its own best qualities, the desert produced its idea. Stretch mark faulting. Salt
dome rising. A pleasured region arches its back. One day the Snake River
Canyon burst and five hundred valleys filled like kiddie pools.
                                                                                                           Or are we
just having a bad weekend here? Everything’s a joke?…”

As winter and holiday season approach, many journals and magazines and newspapers come out with various “best of” lists. We find these a little silly, not because they aren’t fun to peruse, but because of the presumptuous idea that one can, in such a short time span, create some sort of hierarchy. However, the one thing these lists do accomplish that we approve of is helping guide readers to new books, to exciting books, to books that deserve readers. We already, every month, select two books to highlight in our store. For the holiday season, we are expanding our suggestions in two ways: we are listing nine books and we are listing books outside of the realm of poetry, including prose and fiction selections as well.

We hope that you are also excited by some of these books and choose to read them. For those of you who have enjoyed the content that this journal has provided over the course of the year, we encourage you to purchase the below books and all of your holiday shopping by beginning through our own links to Amazon. We receive a small percentage of each sale, which funds the journal and allows us to continue to bring you vibrant literary offerings each week. Any item, be it book, DVD, or silver plated serving dish, that you purchase after clicking on one of our links passes that small percentage on to us. Without further delay, we present a suggested holiday reading list:

Books of the Month:: Special Holiday Edition

Poetry	Fiction	Prose
Julie Carr:: Of Fragments and Lines	Alissa Nutting:: Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls	Sir Thomas Browne:: Urn Burial
Paul Legault:: The Madeleine Poems	Emilio Lascano Tegui:: On Elegance While Sleeping	Abelfattah Kilito:: The Clash of Images
Danielle Pafunda:: Iatrogenic: Their Testimonies	Two Lines:: Some Kind of Beautiful Signal	Marjorie Perloff:: Unoriginal Genius

Check out past books of the month.

Best of the Web 2011 Nominees

Alexander Long:: Photograph: Poet on Dust Jacket, Richmond, Virginia 1996

“All I’m doing is gazing into a gaze. His gaze, the gaze of a dead man. I want my vertigo to be symbiotic, but I never met—and never will meet—Larry Levis.”

Jennifer Sweeney:: Old Town Square

I have never been quite sure what ‘epistemological’ means, and even after a short foray in search of a definition on the internet, now I think I am less sure. But the word comes to mind when reading Jennifer Sweeney’s poems, “Preface” and “Old Town Square.” The poet’s work questions the limits of knowing, yet somehow seems so sure of those limits. Sweeney’s work forces the conditional to become concrete, but only for a moment, until that concrete again dissolves into the sea, undulations, threads, and strings. Imagine holding a cinderblock, if every piece of sand and glass were visible and it weighed almost nothing.

Christopher Schaberg & Mark Yakich:: Real Poetry from The Airplane Reader

It may be apocryphal, but I’ve heard that pilots and surgeons have similar psychological profiles—they are aggressive, self-assured, contain a store of vast technical knowledge, intimidating. And whether or not it is factually true, the comparison does make sense. These are people we give great, blind trust to every day, unflinchingly. Our lives are literally in their hands, and very rarely do we even remember their names after the procedure or flight. It takes a certain amount of ego to name a piece “Real Poetry”, and Christopher Schaberg and Mark Yakich earn that cheekiness as they constantly dazzle us through this piece’s pure expanse and its technical dexterity. The reader is constantly confronted with all of these aforementioned traits—traits that can be extended to the essayist and poet. “Real Poetry” is a collaboration in aviation that doesn’t ask for your trust because it doesn’t need it. It knows exactly what it’s doing. Relax—you’re in good, capable hands.