Augury Books

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SIXTEEN DAYS IN A LINCOLN ROADSTER by Finalist Kathleen Rooney

& here they are: the left-most coast.

The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels, on the Porciúncula River.

Easier, he admits, just to say L.A.

Plainly not alluvial, no longer a floodplain, the climate seems wild, spooky in its mildness.

Annexations & consolidations, grandiloquence & excess.

Ann lived here after they graduated—Nebraska has given you all she has to offer, said the commencement speaker.

Oil, orange juice, the sperm of movie stars.

Craning his neck at a variety of angles, Robinson sees no angels.

Less couple-in-a-car, more leaf-blown-about-on-the-earth-by-the-winds, they decide to crash at the Portal Motor Hotel—

a Motel, got it, but a portal to what?

They will go out at night: clarinets & trumpets—a maze of jazz.

Bred to earn his daily bread, Robinson once dropped out of vocational psych.

The motto of the city: augment augment augment.

Bored by pioneers, Robinson tries to be pioneering.

Prospector without prospects, or potentially too many?

Cement cement cement buries all trace of the old enterprise of gold.

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Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press. Her most recent books include the essay collection For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs (Counterpoint, 2010) and the poetry chapbook, After Robinson Has Gone (Greying Ghost Press,2011).With Elisa Gabbert, she is the author of That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths, 2008). Her second full-length collection, Robinson Alone Provides the Image, is forthcoming from Gold Wake Press in November 2012.

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Big News: Chapbooks by B.C. Edwards & Paige Lipari

We have fantastic news! Following hot on the heels of our announcement that Patrick Moran won the Editors Prize for the Book of Lost Things, we are pleased to announce that Augury Books will be publishing two chapbooks this Winter/Spring. Take a moment to meet our attractive new authors B.C. Edwards and Paige Lipari.

B.C. Edwards lives in Brooklyn. He is the recipient of the 2011 Hudson Prize put out by Black Lawrence Press which will be publishing his collection of short fiction, “The Aversive Clause” in 2012 and his collection of poetry “From the Standard Cyclopedia of Recipes” in 2013. He is a regular contributor to BOMBlog and his work can be found in Red Line Blues, The Sink Review, Mathematics Magazine, Hobart and others. His short story “Illfit” is being adapted into a piece by the Royal Ballet of Flanders. He is also a Literary Death Match Champion and has the medal to prove it.

Paige Lipari is a poet, music maker, cartoonist, and cook. She lives and works in Brooklyn, and was previously an editor at A Public Space.

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A Poem by Finalist Carrie Meadows

We might welcome these storms

 

were they not so like glass
broken, lingering in slivers
lodged in laundry, in the dishes, bits
tacked like proclamations
to the soles of shoes. Wads of insulation
dry in grass, and the elderly
brace their necks to look up, just
to not look down on this day-after
when shingles glide in
on blue skies, when children
drag their bicycles and rollerblades
into the streets and take deep
breaths between screams: Come
out and play. The light won’t last
beyond the sun’s setting. This day
won’t last beyond the sirens
and warning beeps of trucks
moving in reverse, only reverse
as they zigzag routes of fallen trees
to some destination out of the reaches
of their lifts, their ladders, some place
familiar and stinging like a splinter
felt but never seen.

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Carrie Meadows’ poetry has appeared in North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, and other publications. She lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee with her husband and two children.

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A Poem by Finalist Rachel Moritz

Pilot

Someone who tunnels down and away was other

My mother said, you’re going where I can’t be with you

As a glass idol fills its own presence with lack

The stairs down into each self—how one door

opened where the man was let in

Public as flame, the self with no interior

One hadn’t hearing for doubt in that place seen as clear

With him on the street, my spine was agent a world

extended into, sweeping a path

Sometimes coming back in dreams, that other kind of transparency

How our safety felt unreasonable, like I was doing something wrong

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Rachel Moritz is the author of two chapbooks, The Winchester Monologues (2005) and Night-Sea (2008), both from New Michigan Press. Her poetry has been published in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Free Verse, HOW2, typo, 26, and other journals. She co-edits poetry for Konundrum Engine Literary Review, and also publishes a poetry chaplet and broadside series, WinteRed Press. Moritz lives and works in Minneapolis.

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Patrick Moran is the Winner of the 2011 Editors' Prize in Poetry

Thank you so much to everyone who submitted. We were completely overwhelmed by fantastic manuscripts.

Congratulations to Patrick Moran for winning the prize for The Book of Lost Things!

Patrick Moran’s poems, essays, and translations have appeared in a variety of publications including Crazyhorse, The New Republic, The Iowa Review and The Writer’s Chronicle. He is the author of two other collections of poetry, Tell a Pitiful Story and Doppelgangster.  Currently, he’s an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He lives in Fort Atkinson, WI, with his wife, the painter Bethann Moran, and their three children.

 

Finalists are listed below. Check back during the next few week for poems from Moran and our finalists.

–Borrowed Wave by Rachel Moritz
–Vitreous Hide by Michael Edgerton
–Doubter Come Home from a Drowning of Vision by Carrie Meadows
–The Silhouettes by Lily Ladewig
–After Hurricane by Mark McKain
–ROBINSON ALONE PROVIDES THE IMAGE by Kathleen Rooney
–Blight, Blight, Blight, Ray of Hope by Frank Montesonti
–Rancho Nostalgia by James Cihlar
–Mirror Inside A Coffin by Maureen Alsop
–Paradise for the Rest of Us by Gary Hawkins
–No Tee Vee by Andrew Terhune

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A new poem by John Deming

 

Half-Size Dishwasher Routine Voice

 

“Like all routines, however mindless, this

is one I backed into. But it’s–

don’t fear: don’t wake up half-drunk,

hating yourself: you’re tremendous,

one of the best–and it’s

you there, only you attempting

hard memory at what muscle memory.

Remember things, not emotions.

There are reasons to stay one place a long time.”

 

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John Deming’s new chapbook 8 Poems was just published by Eye For an Iris Press, and his four-song Tugboat EP, which features members of P-Funk, was released this summer by BozFonk Music. Other poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, FENCE, Verse Daily, Tarpaulin Sky, POOL and elsewhere.  He is Editor-in-Chief of Coldfront Magazine, lives in New York City, and teaches at Baruch College and LIM College.

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From the Archive with Ray DeJesús

From the Archives of the Dancer-cum-Singer-cum-Actress Recreation Project in Progress

as is an undone bow-tie dipped in a well of M.L. Ciccone’s
antiseptic pomade for brunettes
gone blonde genteel.

From the Archives of the Great Potamkin
Blowout

The stretched pleather gloves reach to the Peconic of yr
lap like Cadillac
hubcaps

*

Kindly that she endures
an uproarious Cantiflas
laugh

 

From the Archives of the Case of the State of Florida vs. State of Florida

an argyle
v-neck
of
geese

 

why does the hunter follow with
delta airline
units

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Ray DeJesús was born, raised, and still resides inBrooklyn,NY. A first generation Nuyorican, Ray is a graduate of The New School (MFA, Poetry, May 2010), and he currently teaches writing atSt.FrancisCollege.  He has had the privilege of reading at the following: 169 Bar, Rose Live Music for the Earshot Reading Series, The New School Faculty/Student reading (May 2010), Cornelia Street Café, and Flying Object inHadley,Massachusettswith the fine folk at Maggy Poetry Magazine. His poetry has been published in The Best American Poetry’s Blog, Maggy Poetry Magazine (Issue 2), and Literary Chaos. Poems in G(o)BBet magazine (UK), Gondola Journal, Peaches and Bats Journal, and an essay on Hüsker Dü in Jackie Clark’s Song of the Week are forthcoming. Ray was also guest blogger for Best American Poetry, June 22-28. He can usually be found shielding his ears from the awful, shrill sound of church bells on a daily basis in his neighborhood of Bay Ridge,Brooklyn. Ray is currently working on a collaboration: A chapbook long project with poet Christine Kanownik. In addition, he, along with Jeff T. Johnson and Claire Donato, produce Vampiros Documentos Presents, a video online journal. His current mantra: Sometimes things is just things.

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A Poem by Jim Behrle

I Go Forth Blurbless
America needs more
mosques & less fear
“The post office freaks
her out” / I kissed
a boy and it tasted
like the New York Jets
I eat phonies & crap
out copies of Catcher
in the Rye
Put yourself in debt
forever to write like
the poets you like
Turns out I didn’t need
a therapist, I needed
an exorcist
I want to fail worse
I still don’t have
health insurance
You can get along just
fine on boredom &
despair
“Hold me closer, tiny
gangster” / I’ll never
win a Pulitzer unless I
get cancer Stealing your best lines
—
“The poem / does not lie to us. We lie under / its law”–John Wieners, “A poem for vipers”

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Jim Behrle’s latest chapbook, IT SERVES ME RIGHT TO SUFFER, is due out soon