Perugia Prize, Now Accepting Submissions

SUBMISSION PERIOD NOW OPEN:

Perugia Press Prize

for a First or Second Book by a Woman

Prize: $1000 and publication

Entry must be submitted electronically

or postmarked no later than November 15, 2013.

Click here for complete submission guidelines.

B E G I N E M P T Y - H A N D E D

by Gail Martin

Winner of the 2013 Perugia Press Prize

In her poetry, Gail Martin rides the hinge between the life expected and the reality of life in process. While she surrenders to hard truths—loss of parent, enduring marriage, daughters in trouble, for example—she changes the subject, she digresses, then she looks straight at the pain.

Sometimes Night Is a Creek Too Wide to Leap

The sky wears black serge pants while
hemming up another pair for tomorrow
night. A bit shorter, but you won’t notice.
Some nights the blue pill brings a dream
where a young girl is trying not to cry
in the sheep pasture, stuck where her brothers
eyed the watery gap and mossy stones and sailed
to the other side. We didn’t know about E. coli
then, how our waders must have buzzed with it.
By the time I was ten, I’d pared my list of things
I was scared of down to four: the high board,
hoods and kidnappers, blue racers, and shaking
hands with Uncle John who’d lost four fingers
in the cornpicker. I pushed the scared parts of me
away, like the two finches my mother watched
nudge a dead fledgling off the edge of her deck.

Read another sample poem and buy the book. Click here.

Gail Martin has many readings scheduled—from Michigan to Massachusetts. Check out when she'll be near you.

NEWS about The Wishing Tomb,

by Amanda Auchter

“Auchter reminds us ... that paradise isn’t a hidden place we will eventually discover. It’s a shelter we have to build against the violence of the world.” —Zone 3