This year I’m behind in submissions. A writer-friend shared his ambitious goal of 100 submissions a year. I’ve submitted less than five, so far, but the year has three months left in it, so there’s hope.
Last week I received some good news:
“Dear Shannon,
Thank-you so much for your poetry submission to Clover.
We are pleased(!) to accept “Ink Stained Hands” and “Rest”
for the December edition of Clover, A Literary Rag.
~Mary Elizabeth Gillian, editor”
Thank you Mary!
From their web page, “Clover, A Literary Rag originates from the Independent Writers’ Studio in Bellingham, Washington (2010). The print journal publishes poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction.
Its beautiful cover tells the tale: Clover is all about content. Award winning poets and writers like David Lee and Paul Hunter join new voices. About half of our content comes from the Northwest and the rest from the imaginations of writers in Canada and throughout the States–Ireland, too!
Clover is a biannual publication with open submissions”*
Please visit their web site to submit a poem or story, subscribe to the magazine, or just check out what’s happening at IWS:
* www.independentwritersstudio.com
Ink-Stained Hands
Read me the paper Uncle
Loud enough to hear in the kitchen
Touch it for me, turn those pages.
Aunties and I are cooking the dinner
hands must be kept clean.
But in your place by the fire
the beige recliner squeaks
on the back-beat of your rocking,
toes slide in and out of slippers
leather stretched out and soft
as a first basemen’s glove
Calloused hands turn each inky page
of the Sunday review
headlines shout at us
while we chop onions
REST
Deer fold in fields of grass
Bird tucks a beak under wing
Cat sleeps on the porch
while in the yard, Dog dreams
of hunting them all.
For a moment
for a few hours, eyes close
enjoying slumber of the mind
shannon p. laws 