Author Archives: jackbedell1

New Release Announcement E. Oliver

Louisiana Literature Press is proud to announce the publication of E. Oliver’s poetry chapbook, Homing Pigeon.

The chapbook is currently available for purchase through our press store (Please remember to specify title and author when submitting payment via PayPal.). The book will also be listed on Amazon.com in the near future.

From Homing Pigeon

She gets these things
straight from God:
I’m not sure
from which God
(she’s had a few)
but I know that her God
always speaks back,
whispering blessings from the garden,
tapping her on the shoulder—
on the top of the head—
like a brownie in the kitchen
or an elf in a shoe,
like the ones she used to draw
when I was a child, trapped in bed
with nightmares of a God
who didn’t speak
(and who still doesn’t).

About Our Author

E. Oliver (she/her) is a queer poet and short fiction author
based in Southern California. Her most recent work can be
found in publications by Columbia Journal, The Stonecoast
Review, and Capsule Stories. Her debut collection is slated
for release with Nightingale & Sparrow Press in 2022.

New Release Announcement Cindy King

Louisiana Literature Press is proud to announce the publication of Cindy King’s poetry chapbook, Lesser Birds of Paradise.

The chapbook is currently available for purchase through our press store (Please remember to specify title and author when submitting payment via PayPal.). The book will also be listed on Amazon.com in the near future.

From Lesser Birds of Paradise

Corpus

When you finish burning, what’s left
sends a black thread of smoke
through fresh ash like a hand
waving the last of us away.
You didn’t ask to return;
if you did, God never answered,
passing your request to some minor deity,
some lesser bird of paradise.
Nonetheless, you’re here,
your body the shape of a milk snake,
whale shark, dust devil—
something that only looks dangerous.
Alive, we knew you as a closed door,
the sound of crushed gravel, a truck
backing down the drive. For how long
did I mistake you for night,
a dog’s bark, an owl?
Now, we’ve packed up cold cuts,
hung dress clothes, and didn’t sing.
We drink whisky in the backyard,
though we’d rather sleep.
But still, here you are, failed storm,
waterspout, empty threat that’s not quite done with us.

About Our Author

Cindy King’s most recent publications include poems in The Sun ,
Callaloo , North American Review , Prairie Schooner , Gettysburg Review ,
Cincinnati Review , and elsewhere. You can hear her online on
American Weekend  and The Slowdown , productions of National Public
Radio. She is the author of a chapbook, Easy Street  (Dancing Girl
Press, 2021) and Zoonotic  (forthcoming from Tinderbox Editions).
She currently lives in Utah, where she is an assistant professor of
creative writing at Dixie State University and editor of The Southern Quill.

New Release Announcement

Louisiana Literature Press is proud to announce the publication of Sneha Subramanian Kanta’s poetry chapbook, Ghost Tracks.

The chapbook is currently available for purchase through our press store (Please remember to specify title and author when submitting payment via PayPal.). The book will also be listed on Amazon.com in the near future.

From Ghost Tracks

Fifteen Ways of Saying Hunger

The birds have flown south. Gardenias blooming in the sky.
The city roars in my palm with its leafless branches.

Wounds stitched into the synapses of our mouth
the camouflage of hunger as an outsourced emptiness

water quenching our ruined kingdom of wilderness,
air suspended into nooses. A brackish aftertaste.

Somewhere a murmur, an adhesive of joint fingerprints
a collation of dead fish salting under the winter sun.

The husk of earth shears flesh in an unbound static.
A measure for rain that hems into exsiccate corners.

Trees are taxidermists for the way they store sap.
A flinch of blood. Sky turning into more sky.

Our foreheads turn into nautiluses in the blue hour.
Grief fasting into thickening blood. A sabbath for rain.

About Our Author

Sneha Subramanian Kanta is a writer from Canada. She has been awarded the inaugural Vijay Nambisan Fellowship 2019. She was the Charles Wallace Fellow writer-in-residence (2018- 19) at The University of Stirling. An awardee of the GREAT scholarship, she has earned a second postgraduate degree in literature from The University of Plymouth. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Muzzle Magazine, Waxwing, The Normal School, The Puritan, and elsewhere. She is the founding editor of Parentheses Journal and reads for Tinderbox Poetry Journal.