Tag: Moira J. Saucer

Book Review “Wiregrass and Other Poems” from Moira J. Saucer review from David L O’Nan

Pre-Order here from Ethel Zine https://www.ethelzine.com/shop/wiregrass-and-other-poems-by-moira-j-saucer

Moira J Saucer is a disabled poet living in the Alabama Wiregrass. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Her worked has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada including Black Bough Poetry Freedom- Rapture anthology, Visual Verse, Fly on the Wall Press, Ice Floe Press, Mooky Chick, Floodlight Editions, and Fevers of the Mind Poets of 2020.

Wiregrass and Other Poems review by David L O’Nan

I have been lucky enough to read Wiregrass and Other Poems and just the wonderful, melancholy collective works of Moira J. Saucer.  I admire Moira's writing and have been inspired to keep writing short story style poetry & prose due to Moira encouraging me with a story I submitted a few years ago to IceFloe Press.  I actually knew someone was actually reading my work again.  I received a "Best of the Net Nomination" for this piece and thank Moira, and IceFloe Press very much for keeping my confidence and expanding my style of writings now into my 40's.

This collection from Moira, is the gut of her soul.  It is the heartbreak, the sadness, the wanting to escape, the bewitching hour of living in the darkness and wondering if the moon will shine down on some Alabama Wiregrass tonight.   It is a recovery, back into your own cynicism, to lost, to feeling Godless to feeling God is in everything.  Wiregrass and Other Poems pours the aching hours of years into one  quick ride that you learn the heart of Moira.  The kindness of Moira, and where our mind goes when ends are coming. The Darkness of Moira.   I sit in this same kind of wanting solace, but never seeing the real Sun.  Almost like a ghost, the sun fades quickly just are you are discovering it is there.

"When You Fall"  :   "There you are conveniently sick and poor. You are trouble wrapped in thrift store clothes, a motley creature with little possibility for redemption"     a sad poem about remembering a more youthful time as a woman and feeling trapped by the never-ending days that stretch our mind more and more into the unknown.

"I survived the dark descent, the five years of shame, poverty and-
and yes hell."

"Homeless and Broke" :  A tale that feels like you're forever traveling long dark Alabama roads.  As i've done many times traveling from Kentucky/Indiana to New Orleans by car.  Forever on dark Alabama roads.  You get that sneak of Mobile, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Montgomery.   But then you just see shadowy trees that jump-stare at you like Frankenstein's Monster at 3 A.M.  looking for the Waffle House sign that doesn't sound good.       "I lay awake at night the pain from Fibro like sharp invisible knives thrusting and turning into muscle and tendon. The portent of my death"    Long lasting pain just like a long night of dark roads....doesn't ever feel to end.

"Woman A/The" :   A remembrance of glory days now feel like descent.   "She lies in a cot. The roaches crawl on her white skin. Flies hover over her bloody chest"

"When She was dying" for Quinn : A poem about memories, where you'd like to stay in those memories.  But family, a mother has to fade and you're never ready.     "She wore an otherworldly glow flushed from love and cancer"

"Wiregrass" : A poem of the wildness that once was.  Alabama nights  lead to the mischief, the rebellion, the fun, the regrets, the sadness in old lightbulbs.   "My days are spent cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, praying. Praying to stave off sorrow and madness, but sometimes these twin demons...wait outside the doors for blindness to set in, for gladness to fade"

"Wounds"  A poem about caring for someone who no longer can care fully for themselves.  The sadness they have seeps into yourself. And it just becomes too much to handle.     "Our bodies knit together flesh so we can go on living...but the wound memory is always there"

"Flower Thief"  A wonderfully put together poem that must be read. Very metaphorically, yet visibly strong. Imagery shines.   "the pallid woman told him she saw me stealing flowers... they call me a flower thief my crimes  stealing stars hope from the gods brilliant light"

"Kindness"  Heartbreak poem....love, lost, love, deception, love, forgiveness, or a void.       "She didn't fight the judgments. It was important to avoid ruffling waters, telling the truth. He had claimed to be an honest man, yet blamed her for his lust"

"Marbles"  wonderful imagery.   "I love marbles...bought beautiful ones in Chicago just to gaze at them lost now"    comparisons of just watching something in amazement for what it is and not what it should be. 

"Charolais"  "The Whole property was once pecan trees and cattle...Now there is only a pasture"....

"Midwife for Robert"  about friendship, motivation, refreshed, and appreciative of art, poetry, work, what a non-narcissistic view will help guide you to greatness when it comes to writing, art, your true heart's desire. The creative starvation sometimes has to be purged back out with the hope.    "Poems began to die from lack of oxygen...the poems and I began to die"

"Origins, at Sixty-Five"  I've read this poem many times and always amazed by how well it is structured together to convey to never give up what creates you and what you create.   "I shook the grain out into my hand, ancient yet bright, polished and buffed by the seas"

"Summertime"  Stuck in the muck of another summer down South during the hardest times, wanting to get out, but fate will not let you escape at this time....   "It's time for tornado season with no shelter, no place to hide, and it's god-awful-hot under the canopy of scabbed pecan trees"

"Loss"  The frustrations during the hardest period of time as a grand whole for the country. Especially, when you are living down south and what is fed to you is a machine of mudslinging.      "Pastels, beautiful colors, rolling onto emptiness of white space. I wept blending them-radiant pigments, a gorgeous burning nightmare"

"Night Visitation"  "Roads in Alabama roll away like giant tar pits, the blackness-deafening, dangerous"

"Vampire Story"  A story/poem about after you lose someone and  you just search for anything to keep your mind off it. To infatuate yourself with anything.  A story.  Mundane, love, cheesiness, or just leave me alone everyone and let me transcend away for awhile.

"August, 2019"   Very well put together poem using nature as a symbol in the imagery representing the blooming and the blackness of rolling clouds through the Summer.    "The garden flowers now shriveled, having bloomed into scattered color madness"

"Chrysalis (Queer Butterfly)" "The open road is transformed...I wait for you in a garden dense and fragrant"  a beautiful poem.

"Did I Tell You"   "We create another self...dissociate to absorb trauma." "The Second self watches from a distance being battered and gets exhausted too"      brilliant!  

4 poems from Fevers of the Mind Poets of 2020 by Moira J Saucer 

Pandemic Love & other Affinities from Icefloe press an anthology 

Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog. 

 *Announcements for October including release of Deluxe Edition of Before the Bridges Fell (Fevers of the Mind Press)*  

Paperback & Kindle version of Cursed Houses is now available from David L O’Nan on this link below

Pandemic Love & other Affinities from Icefloe press an anthology

https://icefloepress.net/pandemic-love-and-other-affinities-an-ice-floe-press-anthology/

Please check out this wonderful anthology from Ice Floe Press in Canada. Edited by Moira J. Saucer, Robert Frede Kenter, Anindita Sengupta & Jakky Bankong-Obi. Cover design by Robert Frede Kenter “Pandemic Night” is a mixed media painting of aquarelle pencil & watercolours by Moira J Saucer

This book has over 130 pages of pandemic-era based poetry & art from poets around the world who are at the top of their game.

This book is also dedicated to poets lost during that time including Ice Floe Press contributors Cathy Daley and Kari Ann Flickinger. It is dedicated to everyone who lost loved ones, family members & friends during this ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic.

Poetry from Ewoenam Akahoho: little esinam (she left the world her beautiful crayon sketches) “and now, I have become the man who lights his cigarettes with the sun”

Roseline Mgbodichinma Anya-Okorie: A Function of Spaces “When we laid on green…looking up to the fogginess of blue…between dusk & dawn – When we clasped our fingers together & whispered “It’s two of us against the world…”

poetry from Akesha Baron (Mr. Duarte Mr. Rubin), short story from Ronna Bloom (Fall, Falling) Poetry from Yasmine Bolden (May Your Blessing Be Your People) “The Answers, the ‘unity’. Outside the sky bled sorbet orange” Poetry from V.B. Borjen (The Kites) “…counting bell chimes off the cathedral tower and the uncovered mouths of passers-by sharing booze in plastic bottles and flasks” Poetry from Paul Brookes (Is It Love To Be Glad You’re Dead), photography/art from Barney Ashton-Bullock, story by Matthew Burnside (Ramshackle Heavens), poetry from Sue Chenette (Etienne Brule Park, Sunday October 18, 2020), poetry from Marian Christie (Rapunzel in the time of Covid) “She braids and unbraids her lengthening hair, combs out the knots to feel pin-sharp tugs of pain. To feel” poetry story from Defne Cizakca (I Woke Up One Morning and You Were Not There), poems by Geraldine Clarkson (Raoul, Raoul) “who’d nuzzle the padlock on my tongue try to glean corn thoughts from my blank blue eyes tickle the nape” (Mannequin, with the melancholy gaze -) “Though you never look at me directly, I always wake to your pale blue eyes, raking the air just above my head,“Pandemic Paintings by Cathy Daley, Poetry stories from Nabina Das (How to Undo a Love Story 1 & 2) Poetry from Shome Dasgupta (The Dance of the Wayfarer) “Under a fresh beam of moon, a broken root, severed and twisted – a frozen echo waiting screaming to be released” poetry by Satya Dash (Accrual) “always to be seen smeared like a sun with its back turned, blemish conspicuous even when the page is turned over” poetry from Martins Deep (as i lay forget-me-nots on your side of the bed) “to an orchid growing in a vase filled with the humus of decomposed dreams”

Poetry by Peach Delphine (within this thicket of scar) “Tongue of shovel, bone of splitting, this body a basket of spark and cinder, when you hold me smoke lingers in your hair your hands come away with ash...poetry by Steve Denehan (Someday) poetry by Olga Dermott-Bond (Skin hunger) “Standing down river, I flinch at the hours, days, weeks we have lost to this iced babble; the hush of us grazes my skin-“ poetry by Chelsea Dingman (Valence) “Again, I ran past the lake this morning, trying to figure out why I run the same route, expecting to find myself anywhere else” Poetry by Damien Donnelly (All the Other Things that were also Alone, On the List) Poetry by Birgit Lund Elston (Were There to be a Choice) “and the fox with her playful kits in the woods at the back, how could I ever leave” poetry by K. eltinae (ms.call/) Poetry by M.S. Evans (Months as Worry Beads – A Suite of 3 poems), Poem by Sue Finch (A Peacock Butterfly Dries its Wings) “From the sink I have been watching them cast silhouettes like bats”

Poetry by Kari Flickinger (that’s why I came back to you) “after weeks of fearful quarantining in a hotel on the blazing outskirts of some California desert. You hear that mission bell?”Poem by Suchi Govindarajan (An old quarantine) poetry by Catherine Graham (I Ask, Can We Be Civil?) “Leathery wind pushes the mystery flowers my name; a stem when light opens a dress-carriage for my heart” (Parts of the Song Where the Dead Come From) & (Hold the Dark), poem by Roger Hare (Pandemonium), poem by Matthew E. Henry (split screen), Poems by Elisabeth Horan (Soft Ghost Sonnet) “may it bring more joy than I’ve become -myriad cut & stab of blood, wears it thin; surely becomes woven thread of skin…” and (Twentieth Anniversary) Poem by Rahma O. Jimoh (Pandemic Soulmates), Story by Silas Jones (Heading Out), Poem by Agunbiade Kehinde (Love Poem with Shakespearean end) “Who would have thought colours and cologne could change the images of a lover in your head – like a damning art”

Photo by Robert Frede Kenter (Lock Down #24) and poetry (Pandemic Moon: A Love Poem) “Sirens accidents red lights elevators of claustrophobia run through the skin of the city” photo/art (The last of it) Poetry by Rose Knapp (Daemonic Queer Club), Poetry by Laurie Koensgen (The Conjunction: December 21, 2020) “Let’s say they’re us, those silver pinholes in the sky becoming one blurred puncture” story by Henneh Kyereh Kwaku (There Was a pandemic & I wanted to be touched & you were about to be married-), Story from Emma Lee (Failing to learn life lessons from penguins) Photography by Robynne Limoges (Surrender), (Hospital Corridor #2 & #3), poetry by V.C. McCabe (Frostbitten & Faunal) “I miss you every breath. Aromatic snow, your skin & winter catapulting us under blankets, the choice to roast in your eyes…” story/poetry by Spangle McQueen (Perhaps Love: How to have your mother’s funeral in a pandemic), poetry by Jenny Mitchell (Mother of Pearl) “She is still in the coffin. I thought she would rise like a hymn, voice soaring up to the vaulted ceiling”

Poetry by Hasan Namir (2020 Was Before) (Growing up in 2020) (Wake: The: Fuck: UP) Poetry by Marcelle Newbold (Transient Comfort) “signifier of a storm, a gentle stroke to my skin each drop a universe, a meal to a whale” and (Dwelling), Poetry by Twila Newey (Common Light) and (Natural Selection), Story by Lizzie Olesker (Block), poetry by Charlotte Oliver (Pandemic Packing) “each colour sharpening the other, first Spring petals cried from blossom trees now shrivelled grey reminding me that all will pass and memories hold beauty safe...) poetry by Niall M. Oliver (Heart) Poetry by Bola Opaleke (Rind of a Pandemic) ” A mother feels the hurt of her baby’s flowering teeth on her breasts, but welcomes the pain as a penultimate symbol of motherhood” & (Before & After the Flood), poetry from Kunjana Parashar (To My Sister, Stuck in Another City), poem from Serena Piccoli (Foam) Poem by Maria S. Picone (We Should Not Forget) “should not discount the taste of slow times fabulized in romantic paintings-should not untie silence & sorrow“

Poetry by Kushal Poddar (Ring,Ring, Round and Round) “It is not really a beast-a shapeshifting leaf bearing the unbearable isolation of the early spring and falling into the deserted lanes of pandemic…It is not a real leaf” (Comorbidity) “The Winter thaws. Streets squiggle in the mud”poem by Lee Potts (A Concise History of the Wind) “Countless threads crossed above and beneath us The same blue as oceans You’d find on antique atlas showing the ends of the earth” art by Whiskey Radish (A Sortie), Poetry by Khalisa Rae (This Sounds Like Leaving) “Searching for replicas of our past with subtle differences thinking the subtle will wake us up from this looping nightmare” poetry by Vismai Rao (After my death by staring too long at the sea, I rebirth as mango seed) “with the barest of things: sunshine, water, unlimited oxygen. A hit of warmth and my body cracks open to shatter & dissolve” poem by Larissa Reid (The Mythologies of home) “That day, hear heart felt like paper. It had lost its shape, its weight, its very structure. It drifted lightly against the inside of her ribs” poetry from Monty Reid (from The Lockdown Elegies) Poetry by Andres Rojas (Time) (One)

Art/poetry by Moira J. Saucer (Myra: The Bitterroot Suite), Poetry from Anna Saunders (All the Fallen Gold) “I will keep this precious leaf until the underworld gods call for alms” poem from Preston Smith (Quarantine Love Poem) “I’ve found that growing flowers is hard in the Anthropocene. There is Tinder and there is tyranny, and they are both tired-“poetry/story from Ankh Spice (Here is the toll) “Yes, the bail, yes the scoop, I was and am still, now scooping the soft from myself to caulk the blistered wood.” poem from Alina Stefanescu (Imbibet) “The constraint lies on the bed with one head hanging off the edge” Poem from Samuel Stathman (For Archie) poetry by Claire Trevien (Or another exit door), poetry by Bunkong Tuon (No One Asked but They Did it Anyway, Visual poetry from Margaret Viboolsittiseri (a love letter to me (b&white version), (intent)