An Anthology of Contemporary Prose Poems edited by Gerry LaFemina
2023 Acceptances Announced
Anthology publication planned for Spring 2024.
This is the call Gerry LaFemina put out for this anthology:
The prose poem is the literary sphinx, the literary chimera, minotaur, gryphon–part one thing, part another and at their best, they’re magical, mythical. Fantastic Imaginary Creatures seeks to collect the best contemporary prose poems that demonstrate the potentiality and plasticity the form allows, previously published or brand spanking new. We’re not looking for short short stories, but rather work that explores the liminal space between story and lyric, the luminous spark of possibility in the form.
And of the many fine poets who answered Gerry’s call, these are the poets and the poems Gerry selected:
| Valerie Bacharach | “Momento Mori” |
Ujjvala Bagal-Rahn | “Just Enough House” |
| Ned Balbo | “O Christmas Tree,” and “That Which We Discard We Also Cherish” |
| Madeleine Barnes | “Key Rock,” and “Self Portrait in My Mother’s Closing Lines” |
| Michelle Boczek Evory | “Absolution,” and “Dislocation” |
| Rick Campbell | “Parable of the Forest Pygmy,” and “Forgetting the Nicene Creed” |
| Joseph Capista | “Room for Error,” “Myth,” and “Song” |
| Gary Ciocco | “Being and Becoming” |
| TS Coody | “Mimesis” |
| Jim Daniels | “With Apologies to the Tom Tom Club,” and “At Last” |
| Anthony DiMatteo | “Every Time” |
| gary fincke | “The Hands” |
| Jeff Friedman | “Giver of Gifts,” “Terrorists,” and “Lost Memory” |
| Molly Fuller | “Home Again, Home Again,” and “Tale of the Flopsy Bunny” |
| Joy Gaines-Friedler | “Daffodils,” “Act 20:14,” “Traveling with the Band,” and “The Children’s Ward” |
| George Guida | “Trip Wire,” and “The story of a Life” |
| Luke Hankins | “A Voice out of the Ruins” |
| Gretchen Heyer | “Pasiphae Answers Questions,” “Missionaries Breakfasted on the Word of God,” and “Jute, Two Inches in Diameter” |
| Tom Hunley | “My Chili Recipe (An Ars Poetica)” and “Questions for Further Study” |
| Anna Jacobson | “This is to That” |
| Peter Johnson | “Vaccination, in the Broadest Sense of the Term,” “Crickets,” and “Nice Socks” |
| Richard Jordan | “Jesus in the Café,” “With Feathers,” and “Mackerel Day” |
| Elizabeth Kerlikowske | “At 45th Parallel, Halfway Between the Equator and the North Pole,” and “Tabula Rasa” |
| Nina Kossman | “Kharkiv” |
| Gerry LaFemina | “Fantastic Imaginary Creatures,” “Happy Pigs,” and “Bad Medicine” |
| Joseph Lerner | “The Black Egret” |
| Geri Lipschultz | “Aphrodite in Manhattan” |
| Lorette C. Luzajic | “Feathers,” and “January River” |
| Gary McDowell | “Prose Poem on the Nature of Things; or, Armchair Philosophy,” and “Another Apocalypse” |
| Kathleen McGookey | “Night Sky with Calculus Worksheet” |
| Jennifer Militello | “Identifying the Pathogen,” “Dear B,” and “Antidote with Attempts at Diagnosis” |
| Robert Miltner | “Wolf Dancing,” and “Hopeless” |
| Erin Murphy | “Ekphrasis,” “Gerunding,” and “Hula Dancer” |
| kerry neville | “Decade” |
| Robert Perchan | “The Unselfish Elfins with their Trusty Hammers,” “At Home with Marlboro Jones,” and “The Orgun Box Junkies” |
| Christine Rhein | “Drone Pilot,” and “Sunday Night Retail” |
| Jane Satterfield | “Latin 121,” and “Abbreviated Inventory” |
| Katherine Smith | “Crossword,” and “Quilt” |
| Joshua Michael Stewart | “Yellow,” and “Book of Love” |
| Virgil Suárez | “Chinese Weather Balloon” |
| Matthew Thorburn | “A Hundred Birds,” and “How it Starts” |
| Eric Torgersen | “My Blindness” |
| Patricia Valdata | “Mayfly” |
| Doug Van Gundy | “Sideshow, Barbour County Fairgrounds, 1975,” and “To Join the Circus” |
| Elinor Ann Walker | “Object Impermanence,” and “Fugue State” |
| Greg Watson | “Why I Live in a Cold Climate” |
| Cathy Wittmeyer | “Max Beckmann, Still Life with Fallen Candles, oil on canvas, 1929,” and “Otto Dix, Horse Cadaver, etching & drypoint, 1924” |
| George Yatchisin | “Leap Year” |
| Michael T. Young | “Quoting Blake to Mother,” and “Sweaty Palms” |
About the editor, Gerry LaFemina
Gerry LaFemina’s flash creative nonfiction essay collection, The Pursuit: A Meditation on Happiness, came out in 2022. His poetry collections include Baby Steps in Doomsday Prepping, The Story of Ash and Little Heretic. His essays on prosody, Palpable Magic, came out in 2015 and Kendall Hunt recently released his textbook, Composing Poetry: A Guide to Writing Poems and Thinking Lyrically.
