One of our six Pushcart nominations, Ocean Vuong’s “Self-Portrait with Exit Wounds,” has won a Pushcart Prize and will be featured in the next Pushcart anthology. The poem first appeared in ASSARACUS ISSUE 08. Congratulations, Ocean!
For the Comfort of Automated Phrases
“To live with an open heart is dangerous
and Jane wants us to know the risks…”
- Brendan Constantine, author of Birthday Girl with Possum
Now Available from the SRP Store
For the Comfort of Automated Phrases
ISBN: 978-1-937420-17-8
Publication Date: 07/17/2012
6×9 Perfect-Bound
$14.95; 76 Pages
Featuring Cover Art by Amy Lawson
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Making Soup for a Work Friend
while Lost Is On
Five nights ago, reaching like kids do,
your daughter stood up in her shopping cart seat,
reached a little too much, and slipped.
She fell
like a jar.
The boundaries of her skull and brain
lost their fidelity.
Now,
the surgery successful,
you worry over her cute hair
interrupted by a scar.
Now you can’t not go back to the grocery store,
and boiling water is my affectation,
so that I would know what to do
when there’s nothing to be done.
When my mom was crashed into
by an ambulance
and called me about pools of blood
on the car roof,
when my wife’s shin opened
like tissue paper
and made me hate the word suture
forever.
And tonight, while Lily comes home to her own bed,
your family relearns how to sleep,
and you watch that show we talk about at work
I cut up carrots and meat into small cubes.
It is absolutely stupid of me
to write about something so much yours,
but we are halved
by the same blade,
all of us, soup and blood.
- Jane Cassady; From the Comfort of Automated Phrases
The Book. For the Comfort of Automated Phrases is a bottle of wine on a blanket in the park. It’s a night on the couch with your girlfriend, your boyfriend… or both of them. It’s making soup for a friend with a sick child. It’s the beautiful unpretentious. At its heart, this is a book of love poems written starry-eyed to board games and geography, to pop culture and pop music, to nephews and cats and cities and singers. Cassady’s full-length debut is the poetic equivalent of a mix tape – one you’ll keep rewinding and replaying – one that could easily be the soundtrack to your life.
The Poet. Jane Cassady probably wants to hug you. She writes “Poetic License Horoscopes” for Sibling Rivalry Press, The Legendary, and Critical Mass, the Philadelphia City Paper’s arts and culture blog. Her poems “In 1992, Almost Immediately, It Got Better” and “For the Comfort of Automated Phrases” can be heard on Indiefeed: Performance Poetry. She has been featured in decomP, The Ballard Street Poetry Journal, Lavender Review, and other journals. She has performed at such venues as LouderArts in New York City, Valley Contemporary Poets in Los Angeles, and The Encyclopedia Show in Chicago. She also writes a blog about happiness, love, and pop-culture called The Serotonin Factory.
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- Poetic License Horoscopes for May 11 – 17 « Sibling Rivalry Press
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- Poetic License Horoscopes for June 1 – 7 « Sibling Rivalry Press
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- Poetic License Horoscopes for July 6 – 12 « Sibling Rivalry Press
- Poetic License Horoscopes for July 13 – 19 « Sibling Rivalry Press
Good Luck ! It is all so exciting ! I’m buying one.
Congratulations Jane
I know you are tickled pink.
Congratulations jane I’m really proud of you and I like to piece that you shared. I would like to try to get a book at some point but I’ll stay in touch take care now bye bye.
Victoria The Axiom Peurifoy