Showcase June 2023 (Late Edition)
Object & Idea
Thank you to our Patrons
George Choundas, award-winning author, new book, Until All You See Is Sky
Joan Frank, author of the just released novel, Juniper Street.
Robert Kirvel, author of a fine book of essays, iWater and other Convictions.
Welcome to Showcase!
Because of our late May issue, we’re only now presenting our June selections. We appreciate your patience and thank you for your continued literary attention. The July issue will appear the last week of this month.
We bid you look into our generous Patrons whose books we’ve linked to, and our yearly level subscribers who we announce below. Also we’d like to acknowledge our monthly supporters. Thanks to all for your support of new literary endeavors. With so many in-prints closing, w/ universities cutting budgets, it’s important to test and prove the viability of new platforms. So, if you see fit, dear reader, please consider supporting this little lit newsie. We’ll increase writer payouts in balance with the sign-ups we garner. Cheers!
Onward, we face down the heat of the summer with cool, cool poetry and prose. Reading is heat release. Reading outside of the gated canon is to be edgy, participate closer to the origin point of creativity. The gated and the peripheral are both important, we acknowledge. Read both. Read all and as widely as possible. Support art and writing from real, breathing writers—A.I. might be coming.
Without further ado, this week’s selections are... Ian Powell-Palm for Poetry and Claire Polders for Prose (Short Fiction)! Ian was selected from the June cohort of poet submissions and Sharon was from the prose. Send us good work and even if it’s not the exact fit, we’ll ask to see more. Remember, you can submit previously published work so long as it’s older than a year and has not won a major award or distinction.
As with many reading periods, we’ve kept some work for future consideration and notified those folks—thank you submitters, all! If your work is still in process, that means we’re continuing to consider it. We thank you for the opportunity to have read or to read again.
As a reminder, we feature writers of all origins and all levels. If you missed it, here’s May’s issue!
We bid you read widely. Enhance your ear by diversity of skill and perspective, genre and prestige. Listen as well, or read out loud. Listening is a type of skill. (Remember to include Showcase in your meanderings!). As always, pay success forward, reward opportunity with opportunity. Offer to be a reader. Maybe provide some gratis edits or feedback. Strive with us to make the writing world mutualistic and thoroughly uplifted.
Let’s build a positive and positively enticing writing community such that readers, casual and devoted, continue to find us and make a type of home in our midst.
In this month’s issue,
Claire Polders delivers a magical realist piece that is striking and affecting—amazing in such a tight space. Notice how it starts. Notice how it ends. Take stock of that feeling. And Ian Powell-Palm delivers a rhythmed and poignant poem that is clear and crisp, containing color and meditation and rumination on tragedy that’s both accessible and, in the way of emotions, impenetrable. Both pieces are thinking pieces as well as feeling pieces—we like this!
We found the work compelling on many levels and hope you’ll do several reads. Close inspection is as important as the experience with all of our Showcase pieces. Read, ponder, and enjoy!
Join Our Patrons
George Choundas, award-winning author, new book, Until All You See Is Sky
Joan Frank, author of the just released novel, Juniper Street.
Robert Kirvel, author of a fine book of essays, iWater and other Convictions.
Become a Patron of Showcase to appear at the front of every issue.
Follow this link for our full list of supporters: HERE!
PROSE
Short Fiction by Claire Polders
—Originally published by Showcase: Object & Idea.
OBJECT 1:
Lost Animal Identities
The first time I turned, I was seven years old. I sat on a hard mattress in my grandmother’s guest bedroom on the second floor with a man I truly liked, the clean-faced husband of my grandmother’s sister. The man and I were in the habit of making excursions together on his bicycle. Together, we dove into the village swimming pool or watched swans flap their threatening wings when we came too close. That afternoon, however, while my grandmother and his wife were downstairs, chatting in the quarreling manner that was their style, the man and I were alone in the bedroom for a reason I cannot recall. He touched me or held me or handled me for another reason I cannot recall, but what I do remember is that I turned, from an obedient child into a sly fox. My fur was a gorgeous bristly red and made him gasp. In his confusion, I squirmed from his hands with one smooth lie—I’m hungry—and fled the room. The metamorphosis didn’t last long, my fur gone before I reached my grandmother, but the fox’s trace in me forbade me for evermore to sit on the rear end of the man’s bicycle.
I played on a sunny field of grass when I turned a second time. I loved wrestling with my older brother, my youngish stepmother, with anyone who tossed me around without hurting me on purpose. Wrestling was a way for me to connect and simultaneously release anger. That day, I was wrestling with my scout leader while a semi-circle of eager girls surrounded us: They waited to take my place. He was an unattractive guy, we all agreed, and I doubt any of us were sweet on him, and his age, twice our own, put him off-limits even for our fantasies, but male attention is male attention. I wrestled with him until one of my emerging breasts got in the way. Instantly, I turned into a snake who showed her fangs. He released me just as quickly and backed away, lest I bite. I hissed so loudly that other scout leaders rushed toward us and put a stop to the weekly wrestling for good.
I turned many times in the years to come. The neighbor who peeked at my naked mother suntanning in our fenced garden made me grow a turtle shell. The boyfriend pushing my boundaries pushed the buzzing bee out of me. The cook at the retirement home where I delivered meals birthed my inner porcupine when his hands bumped into my butt cheeks more than accidentally possible. The flasher on the Paris metro met my toxic frog and flirtatious professors of all stripes gave me wings. Whenever men were heading to places where I didn’t want to go, I turned.
At twenty-one, I turned for the last time. Men didn’t stop bothering me, but… you’ll see. I lived with a guy who wanted me to have his babies, and because I was very selfish for wanting me to have my university degrees first, we fought a lot. One day in the kitchen, he tried to shove me out the back door onto the closed-in patio, where it was snowing. I had been there before, cooped up without a coat, and wasn’t looking forward to waiting for his forgiveness again in the winter cold. So the bear in me broke out. My partner was a big guy, yet surprise won me the advantage. He stumbled backward against the cupboard. The sound of clattering things. I raised my paw to slash him open, but just before I struck, I caught my reflection in the dark oven glass: A woman was standing there with her thin arm raised. No bear in sight. She roared.
IDEA 1:
As the Me Too Movement took off in 2017, I talked to my husband about my own experiences with men in my youth and was surprised by two things: How numerous the unpleasant encounters were and how I had never mentioned them to him before. Did my memories embarrass me? Had I considered them unimportant, irrelevant in the greater scheme of things, or minor compared to what other women had suffered? I read essays and memoirs on the subject, and most vividly remember Roxane Gay’s Hunger. I, too, considered myself a bad feminist, and admired how she gave voice to her trauma and her changing opinions. My own experiences lay mostly unexplored in my memory, waiting for a story that would do them justice. Is “Lost Animal Identities” that story? Only if it’s not the last one I’ll write. Sometimes, when I write about something I have postponed dealing with for so long, it helps to promise myself that whatever I manage to get on paper doesn’t need to be the final word. I never intended to use my experiences with sexual harassment in a piece that could be called magical realism, yet I’m relieved I did.
INTERVIEW 1
Showcase: We’d love to hear how you conceived of the piece. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind it? How did you come to write your 2 favorite lines? What do you like most about this piece? What does it mean to you for your character to become an animal in self defense?
Polders: “Lost Animal Identities,” was born from its title. This is not how most of my stories are conceived, but in this case, the bare title sat in a document of undeveloped ideas and jumped at me when I was looking for inspiration. I began writing the piece as fiction, inventing reasons why a human would transform themselves into another type of animal. The more details I borrowed from my own life, the more I trimmed the fiction. In the end, only the transformations were left as non-truths, and these could be read as metaphoric. Without intent, I had written something very close to the bone.
My favorite line is: “Whenever men were heading to places where I didn’t want to go, I turned.” The sentence seems so simple, yet it contains three or more different meanings of “turn.” It made me understand that I was also writing about the darkness my character, or I, had averted by magic or instinct or luck.
What motivates you on a craft and aesthetic level? At what point do you consider the nuts and bolts of technique, style, word choice, and other items?
For book-length work, I think of structure, character arcs, and themes in advance. I’ve wasted a lot of time on novels that didn’t seem to have an acceptable ending. I do better when I know what I’m writing toward, even if I cannot yet figure out what exactly I want to say. For my short prose, I give myself the freedom to experiment. I write whatever comes to mind and let voice take center stage.
Once I have a rough draft, I revise many times. Often, to first enrich with language and similes, and then to cut it all down again, to simplify, focus, and fine-tune.
When judging the aesthetic, I trust what sounds right to me. I don’t know how else to do it. The sentence or story is done when it most clearly expresses a truth I didn’t have access to before.
Here we’d like to understand the limitations of the piece as you see it, which can include genre or submission requirement limitations. Were you able to express your internal ideal exactly in what you meant or wanted to say?
My main restraint was time. I wrote this piece during last year’s SmokeLong Summer Workshop in which participants received five prompts a week. (I highly recommend taking this workshop!) On that schedule, it was impossible to reflect for days and edit my writing extensively. I wrote a first draft quickly and shared it the same day in my critique group. I believe the time limit helped rather than hindered me to express myself.
Are there any pieces, books, or authors to whom you’d compare your work, or that inspire you? Which of the above have influenced you and this piece in particular?
I never know how exactly my reading inspires my writing, but I remember I was rediscovering Clarice Lispector’s stories at the time and am sure her powerful voice fueled mine.
POETRY
A Poem by Ian Powell-Palm
—Originally published by Showcase: Object & Idea.
2 OBJECT 2:
David
I knew even then that the way
You stroked your violin
Would not bring our sister back.
Even when played like prayer.
Even when it was another instrument
Shattered against the windshield
Of our dying
Like our father’s baseball bat
Singed white and crying.
David, how can we complain
Of our hands
When we can no longer remember
Our father reaching back through the dark
To remind us we were still here?
The way the body swallows its echoes
Just to remember sleep.
How I quaked at the mention of future
And none of it was your fault, how I hung to childhood
By the naked skein of my teeth
And your name was just another anonymous grunt
Steeped in the green slaughter of every boy
You entered to be here.
Close your eyes and the dark sounds like weeping.
Listen close enough to the light
And every tree sounds like your brother’s knees shattering
Against the rental car dashboard.
I won’t tell them that you saw her standing there
But you did, gold hand extended like a scythe.
Sterile Pennsylvania hospital, orderlies caged in the bloom
Of a drained August. O David. Why does it have to hurt like this?
Having a brother you cannot save
Even when you force him into you
But your arms are a field of snow too soft to save anything
The night blue and bruised, too much to rely on, too much to love
So we wait for the men we will never become
Our brothers lost in endless fields of teeth
So we scoop the moonlight pooled in our eyes
And toss its matted blood against the burning car of the past
Fingers nothing more than white moths doused
in lighter fluid, waiting for the flame two men make
when they embrace and no one has to die.
She tells me it doesn’t hurt for long. Falling back into the living.
David, just suck the marrow from my cheek.
My brother,
Just spit out any name.
2 IDEA 2:
This poem is based primarily on the emotional fallout of my sister’s death when I was entering my teenage years and the ties shared by my brother and me in the ensuing aftermath of that dying. The “David” of this poem is a pseudonym for my brother, who shall remain anonymous, and this name is used primarily to enable a poetic space of utter interrogation concerning his evolution in my eyes and the power I have seen him hold in both his body and mind. My family has had a long history of near fatal car crashes, almost as if we were marked by an unseen hand of death, but somehow those of us who have survived have kept surviving and perhaps this is what the piece truly seeks to emphasize. The burden of having a brother is also a large part of this poem, and how my intimacy with “David,” especially as we have navigated death side by side, has transcended almost every human relationship I have ever personally encountered. It is an intimacy that is filled as equally with terror and anxiety as it is with true, unburdened, and joyous, love. That anxiety in particular is what moves this poem, the narrator of the poem watching his brother move through the world and wanting to keep him safe no matter the cost mirrors my own relationship with the true David of my life. I am also somewhat obsessed with the lyrical use of color and the use of animals to depict human interaction and emotion, and these are some of the main aesthetic driving forces of the poem. Through these translations of color and animality, I find additional avenues for the depiction of emotions caught in the binding of life and death and the navigation between these two.
2 INTERVIEW 2
Showcase: We’d love to hear how you conceived of the piece. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind it? What led you to the subject matter? Can you expound on the use of nature, both plants and animals, their interactions and imagery in the poem? How closely did you track word choice, line breaks, when to switch sentences for this poem?
Powell-Palm: This poem is based primarily on the emotional fallout of my sister’s death when I was entering my teenage years and the ties shared by my brother and me in the ensuing aftermath of that dying. The “David” of this poem is a pseudonym for my brother, who shall remain anonymous, and this name is used primarily to enable a poetic space of utter interrogation concerning his evolution in my eyes and the power I have seen him hold in both his body and mind. My family has had a long history of near fatal car crashes, almost as if we were marked by an unseen hand of death, but somehow those of us who have survived have kept surviving and perhaps this is what the piece truly seeks to emphasize. The burden of having a brother is also a large part of this poem, and how my intimacy with “David”, especially as we have navigated death side by side, has transcended almost every human relationship I have ever personally encountered. It is an intimacy that is filled as equally with terror and anxiety as it is with true, unburdened, and joyous, love. That anxiety in particular is what moves this poem, the narrator of the poem watching his brother move through the world and wanting to keep him safe no matter the cost mirrors my own relationship with the true David of my life. I am also somewhat obsessed with the lyrical use of color and the use of animals to depict human interaction and emotion, and these are some of the main aesthetic driving forces of the poem. Through these translations of color and animality, I find additional avenues for the depiction of emotions caught in the binding of life and death and the navigation between these two.
What motivates you on a craft and aesthetic level? At what point do you consider the nuts and bolts of technique, style, word choice, and other items?
I am intensely motivated by narrative and lyrical poetics, both. My work as of late has been a constant attempt to balance intensely lyrical imagery with a somewhat cohesive story. For this poem, I especially considered the use of color in a narrative setting, and the way in which lyrical depictions of the body, death, and other metaphysical considerations can make a poem breathe further life. I was also concerned with how the narrator addresses “David” throughout this piece, and the way in which this name shares the page with the word “brother.” In the largest way, this poem is a love letter to a brother, a lyrical assertion of anxiety, admiration, and survival. I wanted this poem to burst with color, with pain, with the breakage and reassemble of the body. I wanted my brother’s body to be a lyrical object that I could care for without the consequence of corporeality. I believe this poem does achieve this, to some degree.
Where do you feel this work fits in on a historical level? How about aesthetic or style-wise and can you particularize your answer?
On a historical level, I place myself amongst the recent movements of embodied, lyrical poetics that have swept the poetry world at large over the past decade and some. Some of my largest poetic influences have been Eduardo Corral, Ocean Vuong, Natalie Diaz, and Richard Siken, all of whom are poets who work within the body and its wider lyrical insinuations. This is incredibly vital and exciting work to engage in and I see it as an incredibly vital arena in poetics today. Additionally, I see this poem as pushing the boundaries of how brothers, and men, relate to one another especially through grief and through an anxiety of loss. The role of the brother as caretaker feels like a doomed story from the start, full of biblical insinuations and spiritual fallout. However, I see myself as writing poetry during a time when the body, the limits of masculinity, queerdom in all manners of wonderful facets and modes, and pain itself are all forefronts of expression and experimentation. Thus, in this manner, I wished for “David” as both a character of this poem and the poem itself to operate within this question of manhood and caretaking. How do we care for those we love, knowing that ultimately, we cannot be the ones to save them? How do we live with this knowledge?
Here we’d like to understand the limitations of the piece as you see it, which can include genre or submission requirement limitations. Were you able to express your internal ideal exactly in what you meant or wanted to say?
All of poetics is a limitation to me ultimately and I’m sure other poets would agree! One of the truest joys and beautiful failures of poetry is that we never can transcend the semiotics of language. All we have are reference points for the vast rivers we tread and the green lands we pass through. Yet, to me, a refusal to speak due to this limitation is not the answer. Failure is hardly something to shy away from but rather a device that has the potential to teach us as much about ourselves as “success”, whatever that word really means, is able to. I think that I failed in this poem in any number of ways, and yet these failures have marked me in a tangential manner to those arenas where this poem perhaps does “succeed.”
The lyrical use of color and temporal movement in this poem allowed me to express what I perceived as my inner dialogue in a much fuller manner than I have been able to in the past, especially when it comes to conversations concerning this character of “David” and my love for my brother. Was I able to express all the emotions I felt for him and his survival within this piece? Of course not, and to me, this is perhaps where language truly does fail. There are aspects of the dialogue this poem was attempting to express that have not even been verbalized within my mind at this point, my tongue does not know how to grasp their silver shreds. All I have are these fragments that have stored themselves in my chest and it is from this place that I work outwards, towards the page and towards myself.
Are there any pieces, books, or authors to whom you’d compare your work, or that inspire you? Which of the above have influenced you and this piece in particular?
So many to name!!! I will always be in love with Ocean Vuong’s first book of poetry “Night sky with Exit Wounds,” Richard Siken’s incredible book “CRUSH,” Eduardo Coral’s mind-blowing text “Slow Lightning,” Natalie Diaz’s fabulous book “When My Brother Was an Aztec,” Cynthia Cruz’s “Ruin” and CA Conrad’s “While Standing in Line for Death.” Additionally, the lyrical tone of this piece was heavily influenced by the numerous works of Etel Adnan, Antonio Machado, Federico Garcia Lorca, Ai, Rilke, and so many other classic lyrical masters. I think, however, that it really was Richard Siken’s work in “CRUSH” that truly inspired the heart of this piece. Siken’s work with lyricism and narrative are modes that I am always trying to emulate myself as a poet.
or
or
Showcase is generously supported by:
Scott Ward, Author of Rebel: The American Iliad.
Chad Sokolovsky, Author of Prophecy Mechanic (Poems)
Cathy Rose, Writer.
Jane Ciabattari, Author of Stealing the Fire: Stories
Scott Archer Jones, Author of And Throw Away The Skins
Lucy Ferriss, Author of The Misconceiver
Cara Diaconoff, Author of novel, I'll Be a Stranger to You
About Showcase:
We recognize that many great pieces sit in obscurity having been published once and provided brief light, only to then languish. But let the creative waters churn. Let what was once sediment rise again as nutrients. Showcase enthusiastically calls for previously published work alongside unpublished work.
We also pay writers. As we grow and if we hit certain benchmarks which we’ll share along the way, we’ll be able to raise the payout to writers.
Payment Calculator (payments made to writers so far):$1200Please subscribe to our new format, share with friends, colleagues, and classmates, and consider submitting work. Submitting is free through August, which marks our first year in operation.
Update: At our one year anniversary, we’ll be permitting individuals to repeat submit on a quarterly basis. So, submitting will be capped at 1x per 3 months. We want to encourage more and different submitters. We also want to encourage folks who were not selected to put in some time to changing their piece before resubmitting the same one (we get a lot of submission spamming). If you’d like to submit more than 1 piece, we ask for a reading fee. Folks who become monthly subscribers will be able to submit 1x per month for free and up to 5 poems or 2 flash pieces, and will be capped after that. Yearly subscribers, in addition to being named as a supporter, will be able to submit extra pieces for free and 1x to our larger contest in December. If funds are tight, we encourage anyone in need of a fee waiver to write to us! We also encourage submerged and historically underrepresented voices, the whole spectrum of writers, to engage.
We will read very actively and pledge an eight-week turn around for all submitted work. We will publish monthly on the third Tuesday as well, providing as many opportunities as we can for writers. We hope you will read this issue and continue following our journey!