Tahoma Literary Review, Issue 15

Davon Loeb reads "Like Gladiators," first published in Tahoma Literary Review, Volume 3, Issue 1.

Davon Loeb, "Like Gladiators"

Janet Bowdan lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with her husband, son, and sometimes a lovely stepdaughter or two.

Tahoma Literary Review actually started me thinking about the challenge of the long poem: what could sustain a poem, a poet, a reader for that amount of time? I thought a letter could be both friendly and expansive. Obviously this poem has its soundtrack. The Broadway musical has conventions, like the “I want” song, but it also follows a story form (exciting beginning, neat wrap-up) that comes full circle.  But the poem is now, where we have no clear path or outcome, so it must go forward.

Janet Bowdan, An Open Letter to Lin-Manuel Miranda in the Key of Trump

This poem began as an admission of failure: a failed erasure project turning news reports about war into love poems, something beautiful. Trying to move on, the idea was stuck in my head—I needed somehow to still create something tender and full of love from them. As I was living in Brooklyn and preparing to visit family in California, I began to see how the Pacific had embedded itself in me. A dear friend was then deployed for a second tour in Iraq. As all of these pieces coincided, I found a different kind of love poem, a bittersweet ode to my childhood home, my childhood friend, my childhood self.

Victoria Lynne McCoy is a poet based in Los Angeles, and you can find more of her work at www.victorialynnemccoy.com.
Photo credit: Alexis Rhone Fancher

Victoria Lynne McCoy, Dispatches from Home, poetry

I was intrigued by the way both cold and heat erase different things. I started thinking about the way we think of cold as death when winter is essentially an incubator in which the days keep getting longer. Summer is a constant cycle of eating and rotting and growth and death and shortening days. I wanted to catch these ideas on a personal level in a kind of meditation where the forced caesuras reinforced what was disappearing. I hoped to capture the emotional poignancy of two simple, echoed moments.

Learn more about John at johnanieves.com.

John A. Nieves, On Contrast, poetry

Trump has given a new voice to tensions deeply ingrained in our nation, but the racism inherent in his presidency is also inherent to America, itself, hence his nostalgic cam- paign slogan. This piece started as investigation into a par- ticular manifestation of racism and nostalgia—Song of the South, a movie locked in Disney’s Vault. My grandmother screened it for me when I was a boy, and the more I researched and wrote about the movie, the more I began see how my family, interracial as it is, also fit into a legacy of racism and its supportive silences. 

Sean Enfield is an MFA student at the University of Alaska- Fairbanks; his work can be found at seanenfield.com. Instagram/twitter: @seanseanclan 

This recording was produced by Scott Joyce.

Sean Enfield, Song of the South, Reprise, nonfiction

When I returned home that night to a dark house, I didn’t care that it was 11:00 p.m. or that my children were sleep- ing or that I’d be tired the next morning when they woke at 6:00 a.m. I wanted to turn on all the lights. I barged into the bedroom where my husband was reading and kissed him, laughed, told him everything, held out my hands to demonstrate the width of the ladder. I stared at my hands, awed anew at what they’d done—their grip. “Are you drunk?” my husband asked, smiling. For a long time, after finally lying beside him, I felt my body remembering that drop into empty, electric space. I wrote this as a way to keep remembering. 

Emily, a writer and high school English teacher, lives just outside Minneapolis with her family. Connect with her on Instagram at @emilybrisse.

Emily Brisse, Hup, flash nonfiction

“Crepuscular Behavior” began when I saw a picture of a cassowary. It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten where I saw it, but I couldn’t forget the cassowary’s electric blue feathers, its talons, its casque. I read about their diet, their habitat, their fearsome reputation, and listened to recordings of their booming calls. As I pried at the edges of a story about a woman with secrets and mistakes she doesn’t share with anyone (anyone human, that is), the cassowary pecked at my attention, until I realized the isolated woman and the huge bird belonged in the same story. 

Carolyn Oliver lives in Massachusetts with her family; links to her work live at carolynoliver.net. Twitter/Instagram: @carolynroliver

Sean Enfield, Song of the South, Reprise, nonfiction

TahomaLiterary

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