B O D Y is delighted to announce our 2012 Pushcart Prize Nominations. Although making our final selection required some hard choices, it was indeed a pleasure for us to revisit all of the incredible writing we’ve published over the past year. Heartfelt thanks and appreciation to all of our amazing contributors – and hearty congratulations to each of our unbelievably badass nominees.
Joshua Weiner
“TO DISTURB PROFOUNDLY THE SENSES”
‘an unclassified narrative’ from the Office of Legal Counsel, for the President
POETRY
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Matthew Olzmann
A RIVER, BRIEFLY PARALLEL TO AN EIGHT-LANE SUPER HIGHWAY
POETRY
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Keith Driver
THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES
POETRY
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Nick Demske
LOCKHEED MARTIN AUBADE
POETRY
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Natashia Deon
from THE SPINNING WHEEL
FICTION
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Damien Ober
GHOST RIDERS
FICTION
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What are you reading? Here at B O D Y we’ve always got a tome or two open, and we're happy to recommend these recent books.
Me, I’m the opposite, of course – my soul is in full view, as if it weren’t just my shirt that was ripped but my flesh too, and it’s right here, my clownish soul, winking at you with a tear in its eye, because like a steam engine it’s powerful and full of emotion at the same time.
These captivating poems dedicated to Keats and Lucie Brock-Boido pay equal attention to the visible and the invisible worlds—and seem hauntingly comfortable in both.
After the Interior Ministry basement, the second place Rita bombed was a plastic surgery clinic, without hesitation, and I say without hesitation because she blew it up just three days after the ministry.
These letters make Berryman less mysterious, more human. Less a sozzled immortal and more a person struggling like all of us.
She knew, from her own observation of men, that to pretend to be macho was very difficult. She was so glad that she was not a man that she even called her daughter "Glad-I-am-not-a-man"
There was a loving relaxation in their postures and she had to remind herself the widow was eighty, ten years older than she was or she’d think they were having an affair.
But while we glorified our dead poets, the living ones mostly got on our nerves, with all their boozing and grumbling. So when the country of Slovenia was born, we were finally able to openly despise our poets, poetry, and art in general, that entire freak show of inebriated lunatics who think they’re superior to everyone else.
At the start of the war, two pilots and one poet were seeking Galina’s hand. Such were those times: pilots surpassed poets in both number and capability.
At the heart of this otherwise light-hearted collection are a set of relationships with archetypal men – the lover, the father, the rapist – which are explored with great care and seriousness.
