Bloom Creative Writing: Poetry by AG Compaine
Bobbi’s petticoat on a hanger
on her doorknob
bodice smooth as silk. Nobody’s looking
I strip off my shirt and pants slip it on
Bobbi’s petticoat on a hanger
on her doorknob
bodice smooth as silk. Nobody’s looking
I strip off my shirt and pants slip it on
By Sari Botton
“The blonde stripes also felt like a cosmetic lie I was no longer willing to live with; in the weeks after each application, I had the feeling I was wearing a hat, or a wig, that slid slowly off my head.”
I felt compelled to start the conversation about what had happened, addressing the crippling legacy of shame and guilt from leaving our babies decades ago.
O children I forgot to have you
Didn’t want to be a bad parent
Like they who always said they’d
by Lisa Peet
“There’s an essay in my book from one of the most unglamorous places in the world, Waterbury, Connecticut, but I love it. I think you can find wonder and mystery everywhere. I think you can experience newness anywhere.”
At Bloom, we believe it is never too late to take a risk and try something new. In that spirit, we are excited to announce that we are now accepting poetry and fiction submissions from blooming authors who first publish or publish in a new genre (for example, a novelist who publishes a poem, an academic …
In solidarity with antiracism protests around the country and internationally, Bloom strives to be antiracist in what we publish, whom we interview, and the books we choose to excerpt. Bloom understands that many who fit that profile come from marginalized communities of all varieties, and that paths to publication are too often challenged by systemic racism. Our goal is to amplify the underheard and to celebrate the undersung—the authors who are not reviewed in mainstream publishing. Our all-volunteer editorial team is fiercely dedicated to realizing a just society through the dissemination of diverse voices that speak to equality for all.
In August, She Writes Press will release Adele Holmes’s debut novel, Winter’s Reckoning, which won an Honorable Mention in the 2021 William Faulkner Literary Competition. Continue reading
“And I’ll greet them, marveling at their reawakening…” Continue reading
So what if sobriety made him coherent. His mind was a refuse bin for advertising concepts. Blasphemy, plain and simple. Although she wanted to talk about it, she wouldn’t for fear a confrontation would send him back to the gin with a virulence. Continue reading
by Lisa Peet
“It was a tricky balance for me to go into this in a receptive spirit, and to find what might work for me in this way of looking at the relationship between the living family and the dead family.” Continue reading
A few feet away, a first-gen Lincoln Town Car had taken up residence at the curb. It wore vanity Idaho plates celebrating someone named JELLI. Continue reading
“Let the stone tell you what it wants to be and allow it to become that thing,” the old man whispered. Isabel peered through the loupe and bent over her grandfather’s work table. Continue reading
I wanted to write the book that I’d been looking for my entire life and never found. Continue reading