Alison Luterman, winner of the Pearl Poetry Prize for See How We Fly,  will be leading a workshop in San Pedro on February 17th & 18th, based on a poem she published in The Sun last year called “Even the word obstacle is an obstacle.”

Alison writes regularly for the Sun magazine, teaches workshops at Esalen, and has been published in the New York Times, Boston Phoenix and San Francisco Chronicle. www.alisonluterman.com
For further information, see http://spiritualbathing.com/alison/ or the attached flyer.
Alison Luterman Flyer rev9salon

Barefoot night beach walk, the cold foam,
My jacket caped over your trembling shoulders.
The ocean bubbled our ankles as we digested
Dinner: shrimp, champagne, and strawberry tart.
How dark it was except for that globe of chilled
Lucent gas including us on our stroll:
It phosphoresced the salty froth, effervesced your skin,
And giddied us with the laughter of spirited crustaceans.
When I leaned over and netted your hair
And robbed a kiss, you fished from the sea a lobster
And sprinkled upon it fresh winter berries.
We sat in the sand and watched the decapod return
To water scented with …

Thickly coated I sit in the snow on the side
Of a hill, peering down upon your home.
Wood smoke wafts warmly from your chimney.
I smell cinnamon and apples and baked meat.
Some type of celebration is going on,
I hear the horns, the laughter, the pop
Of champagne bottles. I wait for your door to open,
To see your shimmering image upon the snow.
A group of strangers appear in the front window.
They stare at my friendly face and yellow eyes,
Then lift their small hands to wave me inside.
I turn and pad into the birch wood,
Watching …

a roosting crow complains
then shakes its feathers
of the falling snow
from the chapbook “Still Dandelions” by Stephen Page

Buenos Aires
By Jason Wilson
239 pages, Signal Books, $11.70, or 30 pesos.
Reviewed by Stephen Page
To know the city of Buenos Aires, and to understand the people who live there, this is the book to read. Tourists will have a guidebook, a history book, and a sociological map of the city. Expats will read this book and awaken, as in an epiphany, and say, “This is what I always knew but could not articulate.” Porteños (Buenos Aires city residents) will read this book and see themselves like looking in their mirrors in …

A short story by Donigan Merritt, an expat living and writing in Buenos Aires.
http://doniganmerritt.typepad.com/donigan_merritt/2009/08/bra-female-1-ea.html
Mr. Cafferty, who managed the Patio Iguana apartments, thought that old John Ackers was stealing brassieres off the clothes line.
But it wasn’t John, who hadn’t stolen anything since a couple of shoplifting adventures he had before the age of twelve, and who anyway would have thought that stealing under wear was kinky; unless, of course, the thief happened to be a woman and she planned on using them, which would be just being practical.
That morning John wasn’t …

A Foal Poem is a new full-length poetry book from Rose Hunter. Written in Mexico during the course of 2010, the poems form an outer journey that starts in Puerto Vallarta, moves to Acapulco and San Miguel de Allende, Sayulita, and back to Puerto Vallarta. Overall, the book takes the reader on an inner journey through the themes of addiction and recovery, relationships, and changing/emerging identities.
For a taste of A Foal Poem, try Aposematic / Grey at BluePrintReview, and The Lion / rebar at Connotation Press.
For the full mileage, in advance of the …

By Marisa Estelrich
Translation by Graciela Lucero-Hammer
Book-cover art by Liliana Italiano
Press 53, 91 pages. $14.00
Reviewed by Stephen Page
Marisa Estelrich writes stories that have bizarre characters and plot twists. The reader needs to be open to surrealism and read between the lines in order to understand her intent. Her dream-like narratives are influenced by Borges, Lorca, and Poe.
These stories have no happily-ever-after endings. In fact, some readers may think there are no endings at all. That is not true. Estelrich writes open-window style. A window …

The Sunday Poem: Jules Nyquist… Hypnotizing Chickens

Posted by The DitchRider on August 21, 2011 at 9:00am
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In a poem full of startling images, a quiet line in this poem captures the story of so many of us.  We may wonder about who is really being hypnotized here, but “He missed the war that was meant for him.” just leaps from the page.  Welcome, Jules, to the Land of Enchantment.  She dedicates this poem to her father.
I am a native Minnesotan, born in St. Paul, MN and I moved to Albuquerque …

I once read a short story entitled “Dream Time and a Jellyfish,” by Sanaë Lemoine, a then 18 year-old and budding writer.  She is now in graduate school at Columbia University. “Dream Time” is a story about a boy who loses his mother as a teenager, marries young, then loses his first child to a box jellyfish sting in the sea shallows off Canberra, Australia (a place where she once lived).

Since then, I’ve read a few of Ms. Lemoine’s stories.  And looking back on everything I have read, I judge she …