A poem by Patrick Moran

We’re happy to continue presenting work from our readers at the upcoming Augury Books & Friends offsite AWP reading/shindig in Seattle. The reading will be at Noble Neon, 3130 Airport Way S on Friday, February 28th from 7:30 until we all feel like going back to our hotels. If you’ll be in Seattle, please join us! Today’s poem is by Patrick Moran and is the title poem for The Book of Lost Things, winner of the first Augury Editors’ Prize.

Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

The Book of Lost Things

In the book of lost things you appear on page twenty-

seven.

The text next to your picture doesn’t dwell on details

as much as it tries to capture a mood.

You also appear on page forty-one as a charm bracelet

and page ninety-nine as a tooled cowboy belt.

Read in quick succession the entries begin to form a

composite of a more expansive definition of loss.

The authors, as you would imagine, are a society of

scrupulously devoted ne’er-do-wells.

Inevitably, a significant portion of the Book of the Lost

is perceived as the Book of the Found.

This inherent duality creates cross-references problems

of nightmarish proportions.

Just think of it, on page three you and everyone you

know is missing a brain cell.

And on pages nine and ten your virginity smiles impishly

for the cameras.

from The Book of Lost Things, Augury Books Editors’ Prize Winner 2012, available for order here

Patrick Moran is a 1995 graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He is the author of four books of poetry, Tell A Pitiful Story, MWPH, (2011), Doppelgangster, Main Street Rag Press, (2012), The Book of Lost Things, Augury Books, (2012), Rumors of Organized Crime, Poems & Plays’ 2013 Tennessee Chapbook Prize winner. He is also the author of “The Ampersand: Casual Vortex or Engraver’s Shortcut,” which appeared in the 2013 September issue of The Writer’s Chronicle. His poems and translations have appeared in many journals including the New Republic, The Antioch Review, The Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review and The Boston Review. He is currently an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.  His lives in Fort Atkinson, WI, with his wife, the painter Bethann Moran, and their three children.

Over 35% Off: End of Year Book Specials

This time of year, everyone is in the giving spirit. More importantly, everyone has various giftees they need to cross off of an ever-expanding list.

For a short time at a 35% discount, you can give the gift of poetry while supporting Augury Books and the literary arts. Expand your own collection or help beef up the bookshelves of your aspiring-writer niece or your poetry-loving boyfriend. Trying to think of an original gift for colleagues in your office that will entertain and impress? Voila.

For only $40, including shipping* — more than 35% off the regular price — get all four books:

Simply send $40 to augurybooks@gmail.com via PayPalinclude your full name and shipping address on the PayPal order to avoid delays, and your books will be shipped within 24 hours.**

Love the idea, but already have our catalogue? Bravo! You can still help spread literary cheer. Share this with friends and (continue to) support the arts.

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*International shipping not included in special. Please contact us for international shipping rates. Sorry, no Amazon orders for this special!
**For receipt before 12/25/13, place order before end of business day 12/19/13.

Jeff Alessandrelli, Editors’ Prize Finalist, Shares ‘The Ample Harvest of the Luminous Never’

Photo by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography

“The ample harvest of the luminous never.”—Tristan Tzara

What have the starfish

—glowing bright—

stolen from so many millions of stars?

If the information age cannot tell us,

if the digital age cannot,

nor the pulsating electronic nodes constantly circling

in and around our heads,

how can we lull ourselves

peacefully to sleep at night,

content in our ignorance?

Mystery is tangible, is constantly converting

the preying jaws of death

into a rocking chair, a La-Z Boy,

something colored-smooth and reclined.

Life resides here,

there. Death.

Luminous harvest of some ample never,

glowing bright, bright.

Even if you never learned how to swim,

even if you are 20,000 leagues under the sea

swarming in starfish,

it is impossible to drown,

to awake and—in wonder—

believe and be whole again.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Jeff Alessandrelli lives in Portland, OR. This Last Time Will Be The First, his first full-length collection of poetry, is forthcoming from Burnside Review Press in early 2014. The name of his dog is Beckett Long Snout.

Remembering in Third Person: Poem by 2012 Finalist Stephanie Anderson

Photo by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography

Remembering in Third Person
Look at what we have
             established:
                               It is possible to have
                               a conversation with
                               a stranger.
The cats under the bed
The tiny tick of carbonation
We don’t imagine the
               scene:
                                 We inhabit it.
Closing lids against the sun
That shade of red
What makes
               a journal:
                                 a list.
The multicolored boards
The needy dog
The blue-and-white
               check:
 
We’ve lost the car:
                                 what has been
                                 taken.
The peeling paint
The glitter glue
               in her hair
What makes it better.
                                 The girl launching
                                 the waves
The water falling on
               the water
If you love error
               so love zero.
The dirty sill
The violet door
The pink cake
________________________________________________________________________
Stephanie Anderson is the author of In the Key of Those Who Can No Longer Organize Their Environments (Horse Less Press, August 2013) and four chapbooks, including the forthcoming Sentence, Signal, Stain (Greying Ghost Press).  She lives in Chicago and edits the micropress Projective Industries.

Save the Date: Feb 25th Launch Party for Books by David Joel Friedman and Maureen Alsop

We know how much you love poems, new books, and looking forward to stuff, so we wanted you to be the first to know about our upcoming launch party on Monday, February 25, 2013. We will be celebrating (and selling!) the brand-new, hot-off-the-presses Soldier Quick with Rain by David Joel Friedman, the winner of this year’s Editor Prize, and Mantic by Maureen Alsop.

We promise poetry readings, drink specials, friendly faces, handshakes, hugs and … did we mention NEW BOOKS? … all in the cozy back room of Botanica Bar on Houston Street in Manhattan at 6:30 p.m. You can RSVP to our Facebook invitation.

While you’re at it, Like us on Facebook to continue receiving updates, and, if you’re feeling really ambitious, you can follow this WordPress blog by clicking in the right corner below and stay informed that way.

We would also like to extend another mammoth and monolithic thank you to anyone and everyone who supported these books and other upcoming Augury endeavors during our Indiegogo campaign, be it with donations, word-of-mouth, moral support or good vibes. You are dazzling and darling individuals.

To pre-order Soldier Quick with Rain and Mantic, click here. RSVP to our book launch party on Facebook here.

Book Release Party with Edwards & Lipari!

Finally, something to do Monday, February 20th if you live in the New York Tri-State area! Augury will be around to heartily celebrate the release of its three new titles. B.C. Edwards and Paige Lipari will also be there to read from their startlingly beautiful new chapbooks.

Also, music by Alicia Jo Rabins of Girls in Trouble! Cupcakes! Drink specials! Poetry! Books!

RSVP on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/272806632784695/

And we would be remiss if we didn’t thank everyone who supported Augury during our fundraising process. We made our goal! Thank you to donators, well-wishers, word-spreaders, hand-holders, and everyone else.

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.

___________________________________________________________
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.

A Poem by Finalist Lily Ladewig

More Like a Compass

this hat gives me a direction.
There are occasions for hats
and a hat for every occasion.
But this is just the opposite.
I wake up naked and put this hat on
my head before deciding
what the day will wear.

 

_________________________________________________________________________________
Lily Ladewig’s poems have appeared in Conduit, Denver Quarterly, H_NGM_N, Salt Hill, and SUPERMACHINE. She is the author of the chapbooks You Are My Favorite Person of the Year (Mondo Bummer Press, 2010) and, with Anne Cecelia Holmes, I Am A Natural Wonder (Blue Hour Press, 2011). Her first full-length book, The Silhouettes, was a finalist for Augury Books inaugural Editors’ Prize and will be published by SpringGun Press in 2012.

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.

Poem by Finalist Mark McKain

Chameleon

 

puffs its red throat-fan—
a warning stolen from the burning cane-fields.

 

My love and I pose
beside a wall of wrought iron and hibiscus.

 

I hold a ball of string. A wild dog sniffs the gutter.
Kite made of palm ribs hangs on thorns of a lime tree.

 

A hurricane of scents—sweaty skin,
spitted pig, bleeding fish—bathes the island.

 

We suck on oranges. Juice runs down chin
and stings the corners of mouth, sea-rain

 

and seared flesh streaming through hair.
A maroon centipede undulates.

 

Sugarcane ash falls on skin.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Mark McKain’s poetry has appeared in many literary journals including The New Republic, Agni, Subtropics, The Journal, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of the chapbook Ranging the Moon and teaches screenwriting at Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida.