lamentation

The written word can be cathartic. Hopefully for both reader and author. Even though most of the time I feel I can't find appropriate words to relieve life's grieving or suffering, it doesn't stop me from trying. (Much.) We all have reasons to grieve, and now we've all been through a pandemic, too. Maybe you can relate to some of these thoughts; maybe they can help you process. At any rate, they helped me. (Helped me stay out of trouble, at least.)

Thanks again to Maureen ("Micki") Carroll and Anamcara Press, LLC for including me in another issue of The Write Bridge!

DRESS FOR SUCCESSION (excerpt)

... Fabrics can last longer than our own tissues

if we take good care of them—isn’t that odd?

... (continued ...  see links below) ...


—Julie Ann Baker Brin, as published by Anamcara Press, LLC,  in The Write Bridge: Mind the Gap, Winter 2023/24 edition, theme: "Solitude & Solidarity." ISBN 978-1-960462-44-2. To purchase directly from the source:

https://anamcara-press.com/product/the-write-bridge-journal-winter-2023-2024-solitude-solidarity/ 

Or ask for it at an independent bookstore near you! (Or not near you. The internet makes everything nearby.) Might I suggest the Raven Book Store in Lawrence, KS (go Jayhawks!) as one example?

https://www.ravenbookstore.com/book/9781960462442

AUGMENTED
(excerpt) 

... Are we fully resolved?
Perhaps no; yet here we are still
an accidental beauty for the trained ear ...

SPARK
(excerpt) 

... Your pulse frightens me, my own
private stress test, charting both
power and powerlessness ...

OROGENESIS
(excerpt) 

... I am remembering your torn
cartilage, now halfway around the globe,
but still drifting between the bones  ...

—Julie Ann Baker Brin, excerpts of 3 poems included in Night Forest: Folk Poetry & Story, an anthology. Editors Beth Gulley and Polly Alice McCann. 

REQUEST AT A BOOKSTORE NEAR YOU:
ISBN-10‏: ‎1970151269
ISBN-13: ‎978-1970151268

Publication date: Dec, 2022
Imprint/Publisher: Flying Ketchup Press ® Salt & Fig Books
Contact: roundtable@flyingketchuppress.com
Publisher Location: Kansas City, Missouri

(Or, if you must, purchase via Amazon, in paperback or Kindle.)

PRESTIDIGITATION

There is a clinical, veterinary term
for removing a dog’s toe
but I can never quite think

of it; only the medical magic
that it can be done,
and the canine can fully recover,

never hinting they can tell
the difference, never cognizant of the slight
adjustment, never acting as if tricked.

—Julie Ann Baker Brin,
Honorable Mention
2022 Kansas Authors Club
Free Verse category

Thanks to judge Bart Edelman as well as all of the Kansas Authors Club folks who work behind the scenes (and in the front, too, including but not limited to Poetry Contest Manager Linzi Garcia).

ENDLESSNESS
(excerpt) 

Today I told the nun about my Dad growing in my office. I figured, even if she didn’t believe me, at least she wouldn’t laugh. (That was part of her job, right? She couldn’t laugh.)

“I believe you,” Sr. Sophia said. And I believed that she believed me.

But I can’t quite believe the fact. Shortly after Dad died I came to work to find him growing in my office. My eternity plant (common name for Zamioculcas Zamiifolia), after being the only being I had managed to keep alive for eight years, and never having done so before, had sprouted a shiny new branch. It was bright as spring disavowing the winter. Its thick, waxy leaves greeted me: unmistakably, undeniably.

“Dad?!” I whispered, dropping from my hand whatever I was holding, whatever dutiful chore I was attending to. Of course it was him. The terra cotta pot was surrounded by mementos of my grieving: the well-intentioned cards, the candles, the angel figurines gifted to me. As if I really needed physical objects as reminders. But this one physical object—this growing, living, verdant, fertile, tiny abundance of life—would be the quintessential reminder. It is, truly, a part of Dad, just as surely as if I had put his ashes in that planter.

... (continued in publication; see below for purchasing details) ...

—Julie Ann Baker Brin, short story excerpt from The Death Project: An Anthology for These Times, Editors Gretchen Eick and Cora Poage. The book also features three poems by Julie, in which she is honored to be included amongst other Kansas (and global) authors, including (but not limited to) Donald Betts, Jr., Sharon Hill Cranford, PhD, Robert L. Dean, Jr., Cammie Jo Funston, Linda Gebert, Michael D. Graves, Judy Keller Hatteberg, Miriam (Miller) Iwashige, Janet Jenkins-Stotts, Bill Dee Johnston, Mohan Kambampati, Ruth Maus, Mark E. McCormick, Ronda Miller, Michael Poage, Jim Potter, Mark Scheel, Julie Stielstra, and Diane Wahto.

IN A BOOKSTORE NEAR YOU: ISBN: 978-1-7342272-6-0 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-7342272-7-7 (ebook). To purchase in support of Crow & Co. in Hutchinson: https://bookshop.org/books/the-death-project-an-anthology-for-these-times/9781734227260 or to purchase from Watermark Books in Wichita: https://www.watermarkbooks.com/book/9781734227260 

Thanks to Gretchen Eick and Cora Poage, co-editors of The Death Project: An Anthology for These Times. Net proceeds to benefit Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

River City Poetry special edition (published July, 2020 about events in June). Download and print booklet. Special thanks to Managing Editor April Pameticky.

NOT-THE-FLU HAIKU (excerpt)

[scale]

It stuns us to learn
Goliath can be quite small;
our roles are reversed.

[term]

Asymptomatic:
Some still don’t know what it means;
this is important.

[curve]

Some learn the hard way,
some try to learn from others,
some don’t ever learn.

... (continued in RCP online; see links below) ...

—Julie Ann Baker Brin, excerpt of series of haiku published in RCP "June 2020 Special Edition"

Read Julie's series here: https://rivercitypoetry.org/julie-ann-baker-brin/
Read the whole issue here: https://rivercitypoetry.org/rcp-june-2020/ 

EARLY DECEMBER

How on earth we did
the things we needed
to do I’ll never know. Mom sewed
the missing sequins on
my funeral blouse. I went
through the photo drawers;
Brother picked through
Dad’s clothes
and we all had lunch
with the grave digger.

Looking back it seems so cold
to have completed
our expected tasks.
Better that we should have all
fallen to the ground
in mourning and never have
gotten the deed done.

—Julie Ann Baker Brin,
as published in NU's Sheridan Edwards Review, Vol. 19 

NU's Sheridan Edwards Review, Vol. 19
(Cover artwork by Undral Khurelbaatar)

Kansas's Best Emerging Poets: An Anthology (back cover)

HUSBAND, ONCE REMOVED
(excerpt)

Dad knew all the genealogy.
After all, he wrote the book,
literally; the family tree
had rings an inch wide. All

the years and connections:
the calls, letters and emails,
newspapers, the graveyards,
the excitement he dug up.

... (continued in publication; see below for purchasing details) ...

—Julie Ann Baker Brin, excerpt, as published by Z Publishing' s Kansas's Best Emerging Poets: An Anthology (Paperback – April 4, 2018), which includes 3 poems by Julie.

To purchase through
Crow & Co. Books:
https://bookshop.org/books/kansas-s-best-emerging-poets-an-anthology/9781986930161 

spy 

If you peeked in my keyhole
 you might see the cord of the
umbrella that’s hanging on my
doorknob—it’s always there—
I never use it on rainy days.
And if you worked your head
around sideways at just the
right angle and looked past my
umbrella, you might see me.
You might see me rocking in
my granny chair though I’ll
never be a grandma—not if
I can help it—you might see
me sipping my tea and lost in
thought—though you’ll never
know what I’m thinking—not
unless I write it down but
maybe not even then—you
might see me crying though
you’ll never hear me—not
unless you knock gently and
ask if I’m going to be ok
and if you do that, I will.
—Julie Ann Baker, from KU's Kiosk, Vol. 12

KU's Kiosk, Vol. 12 (front cover)

KU's Kiosk, Vol. 12 (p. 4)

NU's Sheridan Edwards Review, Vol. 18

STROKE MIDNIGHT
(excerpt)

You could take an auger to your head
and it would barely leave a scar.
One farm accident after another.
Dozens of years of near-misses
and there you were. Just always
powerful, ox-strong, alive. 

... (continued in publication; see below for purchasing details) ...

—Julie Ann Baker Brin

First published in Newman University’s Sheridan Edwards Review, Vol. 18. Included as one of four pieces in The Death Project: An Anthology for These Times, Editors Gretchen Eick and Cora Poage. Net proceeds to benefit Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

IN A BOOKSTORE NEAR YOU: ISBN: 978-1-7342272-6-0 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-7342272-7-7 (ebook). To purchase in support of Crow & Co. in Hutchinson: https://bookshop.org/books/the-death-project-an-anthology-for-these-times/9781734227260 or to purchase from Watermark Books in Wichita: https://www.watermarkbooks.com/book/9781734227260 

The Death Project: An Anthology for These Times, Editors Gretchen Eick and Cora Poage
A unique source of sympathy for a grieving reader

When we lose a loved one, life pours a little more salt in our wounds by not pausing, not slowing down. We must take the reins and create our own pauses, as often as necessary. The many diverse writers in this anthology can help create those moments, that space. They understand. Some do so intuitively, some academically, some poetically, and some tell it straight. They have each survived a significant loss (or more than one). Filled with both reality and dream-like experiences, this anthology is both heartbreaking and heart healing, something to keep at hand to read whether you have only a minute or a whole evening. As you sit with this book, you will feel as though someone sympathetic is sitting with you. —Julie's review on Amazon

See the page menu at the top for more. And thanks for visiting my portfolio site! —Julie Ann Baker Brin