Mud Season ReviewAT THE POETRY READING I read the poem about my mother to my mother’s face. In the car, on the interstate, in her 2006 Black Honda Pilot, she says you made me look horrible. She says what an undeserving child. She tells me to feel ashamed. We eat burgers and sea salt fries and drink […]
An Interview with Featured Poet Mandy Shunnarah By Poetry Editor Jonah Meyer The poems are everywhere. I just try to be observant so I’ll notice them when they come knocking and can write them down before they go off to somewhere else. –Mandy Shunnarah What was it like growing up in Alabama as you did, […]
my lover is left-handed I read poems about death & think of my lover. Susan Browne wrote, “2500 left-handed people are killed annually from using right-handed products.”(1) My lover is left-handed. He could be one of them. The man already wears a CPAP, chokes nuggets of pills for diabetes at 38. Where’s the fairness in […]
An Interview with Laura Perkins by Madeline DeLuca The impending apocalypse gave me room to explore a more sentimental, tender story of what it means to love someone, how difficult it can be to give and receive love. I was especially interested in the love we think we’re not supposed to feel, a love that […]
An Interview with Featured Poet Gospel Chinedu By Poetry Editor Jonah Meyer “When a story is told, there’s this weightlessness and freedom from within. Poetry is the medium by which I unweight myself from a whole lot happening in and around me.” –Gospel Chinedu Why do you write poetry? Writing, beyond the scope of being just […]
Rhapsody of Icarus where Daedalus is an Orchardman He believed in miracles. He buried a mustard seed in the earth,& watered it every morning & night. For days. & months. &years. & from every seed, there wasa tree. Then, a grove. Then, gravity pulled fruits off their branches. Then, his son, off the branch of a healthy oak tree. The […]
last payphone in times square she came up to my eye. i asked to borrow a pen. people attend the removal of the last payphone in times square. i wrote her number in a note- book stained into lines. a power saw is used for the phone. eulogies are said. first time i called set […]
Sonia This is a poem about enlightenment. No, I lied. It’s probably just a poem about Sonia the concierge, but I’ll let you be the judge of that. Sonia is a mystery to me. One day I noticed she was wearing a silver necklace with a Sanskrit symbol on it. There were two swirled, rolling letters. Maybe OM. So Sonia does yoga, I thought, […]
Artwork by Britnie Walston
Few Exceptions Unaccustomed to my vacant life, I come slowlyuntetheredas if treading on birds. We are imperfectinstruments—I make up my mindto read Ulysses out of spite, again,and pay to spend time in a greenhouse,ironically.Under its ribs, which pushinto the sky,the mist falls across my face, hissing.The fronds of an overgrown cabbagecup my head from above,as […]
March Spring wets us with longing.Pale bloom, green fuzz. Mossgrowing in the cracks betweeneverything. Wearing the rainon our faces. This, right now,is the best part: the opening.Thin spray of pink light,I’m opening with you.I’m dew and I’m honey on breadand I’m singing along to the wordsI remember and humming thoseI long ago forgot. Nobody grievesthe […]
Breathing America Brown Dad flooded the house with English; it swept through the open front and back doors and trickled in through drafty windowsills. He stored it in the cabinets and refrigerator to pour out in the face of want. Sentences were broken: no English, no eat. Brown Dad understood a human body, like […]
Regarding Cairns In the beak year of bird, we observe bird— though some, fashioned by man, stone-birds not flying. So instead, I pray and gift such a peach-blossom morning to my brother, together with this […]
The Best in the Midwest There’s a town in Indiana called Liminality. I’ve never been. Liminality is the name above the bank, the name crowning the post office. The school, the police station, the church. The diner, famous for its hash browns, The Best in the Midwest! Letters arrive in Liminality from elsewhere and disappear. They […]
The Penitent Kneels in Rubble What he couldn’t say: That he’d been swallowed whole and couldn’t see a way out. That faith is a useless weapon against falling sky. The weight of heaven, too great. That he could see himself fading, was almost invisible in the mirror of Room 214 of the Grantmoor Motor Lodge. […]
Poetry Comics—How Form Complements Material An interview with collaborators Aakriti Karun and Anukriti Srivastava by Kristin LaFollette, Art Editor of Mud Season Review Find their art in the issue here. “It was a crazy game of guessing what she could’ve been thinking when she wrote the poem.” —Anukriti Srivastava In my time as Art Editor at […]
Road Trip to Duke by Bill Glose Not once on the long trip down do we mention our motive, the manila-enveloped passenger in back, the magnetically-resonanced images and sheaf of medical assessments. We play games instead, racing through alphabets, cataloguing state slogans, slug-bugging a shoulder now and then. A Virginia sign proclaims This county invented […]
It Was Not Midnight, It Was Not Raining Let’s call this our sixth anniversary. Yes, we married last January but six years ago drank our first pints together—the two of us at Kelly’s swiveling on corner stools, talking Beckett and Bashō like we knew something. It was Halloween. We met a man named Elvis though […]
To Drink
By Tomas Nieto
The raft of my two hands/
slide together, knuckle to knuckle,/
buckling. The cool water collects/
in the center. I lift this small sea…
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Ennui for Scenes Garnered While In Bed
By Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto
Are all of us birds enough?/
There is a glowing kindness in my eyes if you look well./
I don’t want to be that boy imprisoned by conscience…
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Grier Martin interviews
Karthik Sethuraman
Poetry associate editor Grier Martin recently had this exchange with Issue #48 featured poet Karthik Sethuraman. Here’s what Karthik had to say about translating literature, the creation of his chapbook, his approach to editing, and more…
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After Waking
By Karthik Sethuraman
Flame, hushed to embers, exhaled into a final/syllable of smoke. Can I call this a prayer? A wet/wick, sesame oil, matches under straw, and/when I lock the door to the house, I remind myself…
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Language
By Nadia Alexis
The ocean swallowed a father./My father’s father whole. His father ate/ too many hearts of chicken & women. He ate/his children. My father, one of them./By the time my mother & father walked…
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Erin Post interviews
Lisa Beech Hartz
Managing editor Erin Post recently had this exchange with Issue #46 featured poet Lisa Beech Hartz. Here’s what Lisa had to say about editing a manuscript, her dual focus on art and writing, her mission to bring poetry to underserved communities, and more…
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Nude Study from Life, Lee Krasner, 1938
By Lisa Beech Hartz
Crossing 8th Street in the rain Igor laughed, /
dropped your hand. I like being with an ugly woman. / Angle of the streetlight, silvering everything, even / his careless mouth. It makes me feel more handsome.…
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Aurora Nowak interviews
Kelly Weber
Poetry co-editor Aurora Nowak recently had this exchange with Issue #45 featured poet Kelly Weber. Here’s what Kelly had to say about finding inspiration in the natural world, how substructure informs subject, the important of mentors, and more…
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