August 2012 American Literary Review Reading

We had a packed house for the first ALR event of the year with readings from incoming PhD students Karl Zuehlke, Tina Cabrera, Trista Edwards, and Matt Haines. Special thanks to the Graduate Students in English Association, Amanda Kellog, and Caitlin Cowan for the reception.

Karl Zuehlke earned his MFA in 2009 from the University of Maryland, College Park. For the past three years he taught English at UMD, while trying to catch up on contemporary America. Besides continuing to write, he has been translating the selected works of the East German poet, Heinz Czechowski, Time Stands Still, and autobiography, Polar Memory.

Dahlias for James Schuyler 

Karl Zuehlke

At times my mind snaps

            open into a parachute,

but nuance is a wake,

            fingers creasing paper,

the disarray of diaries,

            of laying things out

around you on the floor.

            In the evening I sit

in the park scanning contours

            hills lift westward,

and then I read awhile. 

            I’m looking for one

passage about all the gray

            the Hudson divides

as the grass coats in a film.

            When I looked back down

I can’t make out the words.

            A blue streets leech out of,

the blue a pine turns to static,

            paper to blueprint.

Trista Edwards is a graduate of the University of West Georgia. She received her B.A. in English in 2008 and her M.A. in 2011. Her poems and reviews have been published in The Journal, Mid-American Review, 32 Poems, The Citron Review, and others. She was recently nominated for Best New Poets 2012 by 32 Poems magazine for her poem, "Masque."

Mouth to Mouth

Trista Edwards

It should not alarm you that I despise
something other than myself. I’m not

a feminist for nothing, or else those songs
taught me zilch about owning a vagina.

Sometimes I peruse through the make-up aisle
and think about how nice it would be

to dab that glistening guarantee
of sex on my dry mouth. But then

I remember, when I turn my head too fast,
my hair sometimes sticks to the new

chemical radiance, and I want to return
to skin, to the essentialism of matte lips.

I always loved experimenting with you,

lip gloss—your delicate shine, that love

for contact, the tease. You’re first

after a bath, the initial layer of distraction,

but then I wipe you away, forget I don’t care.
Truth is, I look forward to liking the thought

of liking myself, becoming a kind of first
woman before the others came along.

Tina V. Cabrera earned her MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University in 2009. Excerpts from her novel, short fiction, and poetry have appeared in journals such as Big Bridge Magazine, Vagabondage Press, Outrider Press, Fiction International, City Works and The San Diego Poetry Annual. Most recently, her poetry collection, Beauty Other Than, won Midwest Literary Magazine’s Chapbook Contest of 2011 and is scheduled for publication later this year. An excerpt from Tina's American Literary Review reading:

When Mother finally opened her eyes, they were full of longing. She glanced over her shoulder one more time. That’s when God punished her.  The stainless steel knife began making cuts into her wrist.  I watched with awe as she scooped salt into the wounds. When she stopped, her eyes froze like the cold, still swirls of beautiful marbles.   

Matt Haines was born and raised in Sabina, a small town in southwestern Ohio. He graduated from Kenyon College in 2002 and later received an MFA in poetry from UC Irvine. He was given a Glenn Schaeffer Award in 2007, which allowed him to move to Austin, TX, where he worked as an adjunct instructor at Austin Community College and Huston-Tillotson University.