Cross-Genre

  • Cross-Genre,  Fiction,  Hybrid,  LIT at Large,  Poetry,  Prose,  Translation

    New! LIT Monthly Writing Prompt: April Edition

    March 31, 2024 /

    Happy poetry month everyone!

    Here at LIT we are starting a new series of monthly writing prompts. This month’s prompt is from our nonfiction editor Vicky Oliver:

    Write about a time when you were lost and how you found your way home.

    The hero’s journey is sometimes a parable on the transformation of being: old habits and emotional reactions that are shed out of necessity as they become stumbling blocks to the journey. The old ways are replaced by new strengths or new ideas that have been germinating out of sight, waiting to come into play as fresh discoveries in a moment of crisis,

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  • Cross-Genre,  Poetry

    Two Poems by Phoebe Reeves

    May 4, 2020 /

    Part One, Question the Sixteenth: Works of Truth**

     

    There are fourteen species of silent star,

    and the species vary according to generative power.

    A woman cannot perform divination, knowing

    that blood and the dead answer. But think—

    the soul appeared through a woman who was

    a witch, just as the images of things

    are called by the names they represent.
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  • Corona Chronicle,  Cross-Genre,  Poetry

    “ode to summer” by Cheyanne Anderson

    May 2, 2020 /
    every time I go onto my balcony
    bare feet on dusty cement
    and look down the street
    towards the subway
    towards the market
    towards the road straight to the beach
    the air gets a little warmer
    and I can feel the spring preparing,
    about to pass me by
    _
    and I hope I’ll make it out in time to buy a new sundress
    and a pair of sandals
    because summer somehow always catches me by surprise
    and by the time I’ve thought to embrace the way humidity sits on skin

    there’s a bite in the air and it’s gone again
    _
    I keep dreaming of ways to catch it
    like a firefly in a jar
    (only temporary)
    so I can see it up close
    so I can remember to notice the sweat on the back of my neck
    and the proof it serves
    that     I was alive that day
    so     I can skip down sidewalks
    so     I can lie in the park
    so     I can chill another bottle of wine
    s    o I can kiss and kiss and kiss
    s    o I can forget to put on sunscreen
    s    o I can walk until my feet ache
    s    o I can embrace the way my hair frizzes from my scalp like a crown
    s    o I can fall in love in ways I’m not sure I deserve
    s    o I can remember to admire the way the fire hydrant down the street
    (    somehow always breaking open)
    w    ashes away cigarette butts and receipts and regrets
    a    nd makes a babbling brook on Bushwick streets
    j    ust until the repairman comes on Monday
    j    ust until I can bring myself to open the jar and let it go
    a    nd whisper well wishes into the first breeze of autumn

    my heart is too big for this bedroom,

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  • Corona Chronicle,  Cross-Genre,  Poetry

    “Social Distances” by L.B. Browne

    April 24, 2020 /
    There is a man
    wearing dark glasses
    and a blue paper surgical mask
    in the fluorescent sun of the grocery store.
    Hey buddy, 6 feet!
    a young woman shouts
    as he backs up, nearly touches her,
    outrageous,
    she does not see
    the white cane he slides in small arcs at his feet,
    tip tapping the way

    down ravaged empty aisles.

    There is a woman
    with a 3-day-old cough
    and a nasal drip that runs down the back of her throat,
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  • Corona Chronicle,  Cross-Genre

    “The Optimist” by Raquel Melody Guarino

    April 7, 2020 /
    I packed my bag up
    stuffed it full
    Seams bursting
    as I
    try
    to pull
    zip
    and push
    down the pile
    to make it easier to

    carry

    it doesn’t matter what you put
    as long as you can bear it

    without their help

    you may limp or even trip
    but you brought those bags

    you brought them for a reason

    you will pull those bags up the stairs

    one by one.

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