A new poem by David Eggleton, whose new book Lifting the Island was published this week by Red Hen Press.

Breathing Space

Before the gerontocracy get to me,
and put me in a baby-stroller –
though, of course, I’m older than I used to be,
and being so old, I simply object –

I’m going to send a prayer to buzz
in the eternal ear of the Almighty,
then give a warm welcome to Christ the Tiger,
Christ the Mushroom, Christ the Heretic.

I’m speckled with speculations,
and I’m heaving with quirks.
I’m adrift over the chasm,
thinking how each abyss leads to avoidance.

We’re all staring at the same ink-blots,
saying what have you got that hits the spot?
What’s ever-green is taken as ever-given,
while we call out one another’s mystical ballocks.

Narrow-minded enough for gates of the Strait,
they got the banter, they got the capers,
the shrunken horizon of condemnation,
straw-man after straw-man, torched on paper.

Put your cats on Insta on behalf of the people;
howl like Ginsberg; growl like Pavlov’s dog.
I’ll be your random commentary,
thrown like raw meat to feed the balcony.

I’m waiting for the past with a handful of dust,
caught by the wind, then blown sky-high.
Stranded in paradise and sought by earthworms,
I’m learning to be myself, a withered tree-branch.

On that mythical isolated motu,
like the last survivor of an overturned waka,
with only my own footprints for company,
I shall not want for anything.

I will break my tokotoko, and drown my book,
then go under and not emerge,
as the wrong god descends the vines
from the stolen canopy of Heaven.

The Wallpaper* USA 400 celebrates Creative America in all its dazzling breadth and diversity. Our snapshot of the people who are shaping the country’s creative landscape in 2025 spans community builders, tastemakers, business leaders and more. It’s all a testament to the abundance of stellar talent that’s defining the discourse here in the United States – and the world more broadly.

CARBONDALE — Local poet and SIU professor Allison Joseph recently released a collection of poems Dwelling, which she said is “about home and how we find home, how home is in other people.”

Among the people in which Joseph depicts home in Dwelling are her mother, her late husband and herself.

“My mother is a figure… Mother — that’s our original home, right? So she’s a figure that kind of haunts the book a little bit,” she said.

Joseph and her late husband Jon Tribble were hired to teach creative writing at SIU in 1994, and together they helped found the literary magazine Crab Orchard Review, a journal that publishes emerging and established writers from around the world.

“It’s also got poems about being a woman and how beautiful, glorious and dangerous that can be,” she said. “It ends pretty much with me talking to my 12 year old self, which is an assignment I give to my students — write a letter to yourself at a pivotal age.”

Eunice Hong’s debut novel, Memento Mori, selected by Aimee Liu as a Red Hen Press Fiction Award Winner, follows an unnamed Korean narrator through mythology, memory loss, and numerous personal tragedies. Traversing past lives in North Korea and imagined existences in Hades, this book probes family histories and the varied ways to process grief with rawness, gentleness, and surprise.

At bedtime, the narrator tells her younger brother the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus, wondering what Eurydice might have felt—after losing her entire family, and then her own life, did she even want Orpheus to bring her back from the dead? Through this lens, Hong leads us to question our mortality, and the many difficult decisions that we face because of it: How can we find peace in spite of our traumas? What mysteries of brain chemistry, stardust, and varied human experiences make us the unique individuals that we are? How do we consider the needs of our ailing loved ones in a way that extends them dignity and grace? How do we move forward when the heaviness of the past threatens to overwhelm us?

When my coworker casually mentioned working as a mermaid at a tiki bar out west, I was flabbergasted and mesmerized. So when I heard about Lara Ehrlich’s Bind Me Tighter Still, I had to read it.

The story focuses on a young siren named Ceto who decides to see what living like a human is like. She gives up her tail, marries the first man she meets, and has a child, Naia. But it’s clear that this life is not what Ceto had hoped. She runs off with baby Naia and starts a mermaid burlesque in a bar on the coast, which grows with other entertainments like a Mermaid Coney Island known as Sirenland. Ceto leads her band of mermaids and attempts to protect them, and especially Naia, from the rest of the world. But when Naia turns 15, she naturally starts to push against the world of Sirenland and nothing will ever be the same.

When my coworker casually mentioned working as a mermaid at a tiki bar out west, I was flabbergasted and mesmerized. So when I heard about Lara Ehrlich’s Bind Me Tighter Still, I had to read it.

The story focuses on a young siren named Ceto who decides to see what living like a human is like. She gives up her tail, marries the first man she meets, and has a child, Naia. But it’s clear that this life is not what Ceto had hoped. She runs off with baby Naia and starts a mermaid burlesque in a bar on the coast, which grows with other entertainments like a Mermaid Coney Island known as Sirenland. Ceto leads her band of mermaids and attempts to protect them, and especially Naia, from the rest of the world. But when Naia turns 15, she naturally starts to push against the world of Sirenland and nothing will ever be the same.

After reading the book, I found that Ehrlich had written an article about her experience in a two-day Sirens of the Deep Mermaid Camp at the Weeki Wachee State Park in Florida, which is known for its sold out mermaid shows. It was astonishing to find out how far back folks in the United States have been performing as mermaids; Weeki Wachee opened in 1947. (There was also the Aquarena Springs, San Marcos, Texas where aquamaids performed going back to the 1950s). I was astonished to learn that the tradition goes back even earlier in the US: Australian swimmer, vaudeville performer, and movie star Annette Kellerman worked as a mermaid on the vaudeville circuit and the silver screen in the beginning of the 20th century.

I sat down to talk with Lara Ehrlich about all things mermaid/siren and her new book.

The Red Hen Press poet, Majid Naficy recently read a few of his works at the Santa Monica Library!

Bind Me Tighter Still follows mother and daughter mermaids who flee back to the ocean after the mother gives up her legs to be with her first love. Arriving at a seaside attraction known as Sireland, the mother makes a living by performing sensual siren performances that become famous across the country. But when the daughter comes of age and a shocking death rocks Sirenland, the two must reckon with the cost of performance on their already tenuous bond. Lara Ehrlich has crafted an inventive and wonderfully rageful look into motherhood, femininity, and sacrifice—a perfect reimagining of The Little Mermaid for the modern age. 

The writer brings stories from across the Armenian diaspora to the page.

The Burning Heart of the World, by New York-based novelist Nancy Kricorian, is a poignant coming-of-age story set largely in an Armenian community in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. In spare language, Kricorian evokes the lasting psychological effects of war and displacement as the novel moves from post-9/11 New York to Lebanon to the Ottoman Empire. In the face of violence and exile, the characters are still deeply human, as Kricorian juxtaposes the quotidian — a school crush, a Halloween costume — with the shocking brutality of war and genocide.

The peaches harvested at Masumoto Family Farm in California’s Central Valley are so delicious, they are sought after by world-famous restaurants.

But this year’s harvest signals trouble: There are 30% fewer peaches to pick due to warmer winters that disrupted the sleep cycles of the trees. Farmers like Mas Masumoto, whose family relies on a 12-week peach harvest for their entire income, are seeing firsthand how climate change threatens their livelihood.

This debut novel by a former BU senior editor-writer focuses on Ceto, a siren who tried mermaid life and married life and found both wanting. Now, she runs the Sirenland roadside attraction, a mermaid burlesque, where her rebellious teenage daughter, Naia, is beginning to make waves.

Huge thanks to Deane Serrano for this wonderful write-up of WITS HQ and the beautiful quotes from Red Hen’s Events Coordinator and WITS HQ organizer Piper Gourley!

Dark Suite for My Country
       

I.

Dark as an overcast night,
licorice, ink, ravens, outer space.
Let me see the beauty
in crows mowing silence
like hundred rusty tractors,
or a crowd calling for murder—
and the peace in sleeping
in my closed eyes’ night,
the safety in waking
in darkness none may penetrate.