Our Pushcart Prize Nominees

Our editors for issues #41 and #42 are very pleased to announce the follow nominations for The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses this year.

Fiction: "Miracle Making" by Tara Warman; "When You Watch Me" by Elizabeth Searle

Poetry: "Pageantry" by John Lundberg; "To Make a Woman Come" by Jen McClung (featured below)

Translations: "The Glass Dead in Old Polska" by Sylva Fischerova, translated by Stuart Friebert; "Motherhood and Childhood" by Polina Barskova, translated by Ilya Kaminsky

One of our nominated poems...

To Make a Woman Come

Dislocate the legs from the hips
and push back gently but firmly.

Delicately remove the fingers, the arms,
one sad joint at a time.
This is the unraveling
of the stomach’s sinewy strands.

Peel away the right breast,
then the left, being careful to
sing or hum as you go.
The smell of discovery
should come fresh and sudden,
like the first cut of an onion.
The stinging that follows
is inevitable, is the
possible side effect of desire.

Press back the head,
the flushed face,
the blue eyes.
Press decisively, with determination,
until the skin glows golden
and the flesh comes softly
off the core of its own accord.

Congratulations to Tara, Elizabeth, Jen, John, Polina, Ilya, Sylva and Stuart!