AWP and Champagne.
Also, Stevie Edwards!

Thoughtcrime Press is busy collecting and editing this year’s manuscripts. A possible perfect bound Little Bones is in the works, and we already have the first chunk of poems by Chicago poets, Emilio Maldonado and Rob Hendler.

Somehow we all survived AWP, and in fact, a few of us survived it with some atypical (for a) poet style from near the top of the Seattle Wyndham, overlooking Elliot Bay, and the Space Needle. Champagne breakfasts in bed, surrounded by business cards, new books, and half-empty/full bottles of Motrin. Bottled water always went fast. While we suffered, we discussed some great, new ideas regarding the possibilities of small press publishing. And, we now have a line on a writing residency program within the next couple years that would make (your favorite serious-role celebrity, say Christian Bale) giggle in glee. More to follow…

Here’s a piece by Write Bloody, and Thoughtcrime Press author, Stevie Edwards. One of three Little Bones poets, Stevie is currently teaching at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and is as fine a poet and tour buddy as you’d ever hope to meet. Her first book, Good Grief, was released in 2012 and went on to win the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award for Poetry in 2013.

What I Mean By Ruin Is…

When there’s only condiments left in the fridge

and you join a free online dating service

so men will buy you dinner.

When you’ve shucked the night with the dull blade

of indecision and gulped down everything,

even the pearls.

When some old, left-handed love has left

your guitar strung backwards

and you can’t find any songs for rain

in its frets.

When you wake up next to the body

of your past and it looks ready

to wrinkle and bald.

When the last burn of summer is peeling

from your breasts and there’s nothing to husk

the pale raw of new flesh.

When the woman who wears her hair in the old way

quits mumbling about Jesus on street corners

and takes her salvation pamphlets

to a pauper’s grave.

When you’re too ugly to pray,

but pray

                     and the only voice

       on the drunk subway wails

                                 good grief.

originally published in Good Grief, 2012, Write Bloody Publishing