Call for Submissions

Our online submission procedure is back up and running, and we want to see your poetry, fiction, and memoirs! We are also actively seeking submissions to our 2006 Poetry Contest—with Finalist Judge Marvin Bell.

Perigee's new server promises great things for the future. Our designer is already poking around with Ruby on Rails (a relatively new scripting language gaining popularity), and some other neat features. Not to mention gobs of space and bandwidth from here to the moon and back.

So help us fill up our new server with great verse and prose. Submit today through our web site.

Server Complications

Some of you may have noticed that a few of the regular services on the Perigee web site (such as uploading submissions) have been suspended. We are dealing with a frustrating but somewhat expected situation with our server.

Undergoing an upgrade which will greatly enhance the technical savvy of our server, and therefore the services we can implement in the future, has caused a landslide of problems. We are working diligently to correct them. Monday will be an important day, as the Managing Editor (the frustrated fellow now typing these words) can talk in person with Perigee's server company.

We expect the problem to be resolved by early this week. We hope those of you wishing to submit work or participate in our 2006 Poetry Contest will check back then to do so.

We apologize for any inconvenience, and we appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to make Perigee the best it can be.

Pict Grooving: A New Literary Blog

Perigee's Managing Editor has launched a new literary blog, and you are invited to submit!

Pict Grooving: Poetry, Flash Fiction, Rants, is described as a quiet place for reading and writing—though the writing may be anything but quiet. The blog is updated daily, and visitors are asked to comment or submit work of their own.

All work published on Pict is also, automatically, considered for publication in Perigee. And there's no lengthy waiting either: work is published within 48 hours or not at all. Groovy.

Stop by Pict Grooving today or as soon as you have a few quiet moments.

Welcome Poets & Writers

We welcome those of you coming to Perigee from the November/December issue of Poets & Writers magazine. We are glad you could stop by, and we hope you are excited about our 2006 Poetry Contest.

Marvin Bell joins us as Finalist Judge. We're giving away $650 in cash to the top four entries, along with publication in our 2007 anniversary issue. The winning poem will also be nominated by Perigee for the Puschart Prize.

To read our guidelines and submit, click here, or visit our main web site and navigate into our current issue. We hope you will submit soon, as we are eager to find our winning poems.

Newest Issue Released!

Perigee's 14th issue hit the Internet last night, at about 10:00 pm PST, 1:00 am EST. So far, the response has been excellent for this issue—one we are exceptionally proud of. Really, more accurately, we're appreciative: without good work from dedicated and creative folks, Perigee couldn't be here.

Our 14th issue includes 12 new works of poetry, 6 stories including the 2006 Fiction Contest winners, a feature on artist and writer Kitty Evers, a new Sue's Column, and a photographic Editor's Corner. Lots of great material we hope you will consume and enjoy.

We are also calling for submissions in poetry, fiction, memoir, and visual art. Those wishing to submit work should read our current issue and navigate to the "Submit Your Work Today" section.

Our 2006 Poetry Contest continues to receive submissions and we invite all to submit. Marvin Bell serves as this year's Finalist Judge. $650 in cash prizes, publication in our 2007 anniversary issue, plus a 2007 Pushcart Nomination are at stake.

Pushcart Nominee Lisa Galloway

Lisa's poem orginally appeared in our 13th issue. It is the final installment of the six pieces we've nominated for the 2006 Pushcart Prize. We hope you have enjoyed the encore presentation of these excellent works. Our thanks, again, to the writers.


     She Was a Chagall

     I was the Hulk, not green
     but ugly and muscles, a transformation.
     That night, I drank something nasty,
     Jagermeister and Coke,
     she called it sassafras, it was brown yuck
     in a squat rocks glass. My face contorted,
     and it slid to a clinking crash while
     pretzel-like she showed me a yoga pose
     called something I can't remember
     but it looked to me like kama-sutra.
     We brushed hands and torsos, trading turns
     to the kitchen for more drinks.
     I mocked her multi-vitamins, one-a-day,
     her freezer filled with ginger root
     and bagged kumquats.
     When she laughed, she squinted and clapped.
     I was a slave to her smile, tried to impress, I preyed on her
     entertainment, my life a calendar marking days,
     waiting for her legs, dancer-like to scissor open ooh—
     and then after that night
     for her paintings to include flying cows or chickens,
     for her watercolor to bleed
     goldenrod to raspberry. She always wore
     black socks and sandals, but it was somehow okay
     because she could peel an orange
     into the trash can and make it sexy.


(This poem is copyright protected, all rights reserved, and may not be reproduced without the express written consent of the author.)

3by3by3 Sets New(s) Standard

Poet Lance Newman has launched what might be the coolest new poetry blog out there. We sure think it is. The recipe for a 3by3by3 poem is almost as neat as the resulting verse—a glorious adulteration of the pseudo-news cycle. We're pretty sure that before long the New York Times will have forgotten all about those Fibonacci poems.

But enough foreplay. Check out 3by3by3 before it makes the news cycle itself and you have to compete with all those New York Times subscribers.

Got a Web Site?

Have you contributed to Perigee at any point in the past? Do you have a web site or weblog you want us to notice? We're building our "Contributor Links" on the right hand column of our blog—and we'd be happy to include yours.

Let us know about your snazzy site by commenting here; tell us your name and URL and you'll get permanent inclusion on our blog. But do it now, this is a limited time offer.

Pushcart Nominee Gwendolyn Cash

Gwendolyn's poem first appeared in our 13th issue. It joins our other nominees for this year's Pushcart Prize.


     Choosing Berries and Onions

     Someday, I will be old, wrinkled,
     always tired, a little bent, graveled
     in voice, deaf to the small sounds,
     more in tune to the big notes, the harp's
     vibrations, the trembling of the galaxy.
     I will forget to worry about my
     sagging arms and ass. I will smell
     like soap from the grocery store and cherry
     cough drops. Maybe someone else
     will tie my shoes. I will still wear earrings,
     though, turquoise drops with French hooks
     to emphasize the only color left, my same
     two eyes. I want to see myself
     in the market then, my white hair
     in a wispy knot, bony fingers poking
     out the sleeve of a moth-eaten sweater,
     olive green, picking through the cabbages
     and pears, choosing potatoes and limes,
     all my life's fretting just more grist
     for the dust this body daily grinds.
     So what if love was a missed shot, a failed
     approach, an off stroke of the brush
     on the unforgiving canvas? And so it was.
     Always in its rhythm, the heart listens,
     and the heart resists itself. Among
     the mangoes out of season, I will say
     to myself out loud, staring the young box boy
     in the eye, All this here? Ha!
     Give me back all I have lost.
     He won't have any answers, either.
     In the apples he carefully polishes, though,
     I will see a light glowing, expanding,
     two blue eyes glaring back. This is
     how I will, I think, know god.


(This poem is copyright protected, all rights reserved, and may not be reproduced without the express written consent of the author.)

Lawson Launches Prose Blog

Long time contributor, Perigee enthusiast, and Pushcart Nominee Lawrence Lawson has established a new blog which will include weekly installments of fresh prose. As fans of Lawson's work, we're pretty sure we will be making regular visits to his blog. If you're interested, check out L Lawson Writes.

We've also added a permanent link on the right column of this blog. Keep up the great work, Lawrence!

Pushcart Nominee Eileen Malone

Eileen's poem originally appeared in our 12th issue. The poem was also selected as the first-place winner of Perigee's 2005 Poetry Contest.


     Her Ride

     Pierced, tattooed and tight
     in handkerchief top and low
     and I mean low, slung jeans
     slipping down her angst
     she gets her young body up
     from its squat before the stage
     to perform her puce streaked rage
     in patchouli, cedar poetry that
     has barely been skirted before
     paperless poetry, memorized
     or ad libbed as it goes

     her friends in the back of the room
     whoop and call back in chorus
     yeah, right on, fucking A
     she yells, screams scarlet, rocks
     back and forth, won't take it
     anymore, ever again
     fuck you, fuck all of you
     foot stomping, bellowing
     cheering, she bells, gyrates
     bumps and grinds, hollers
     about migrant farmworkers
     war mongers, pink, bald corporate
     see-eee-ohs, oh see the ee-ohs,
     the ass holes, for what they are

     she wants a rough sex affair
     with Ferlinghetti or McClure
     or someone equally old, beat
     doesn't care who knows it
     wants to be lustily mentored
     into famous poet status
     now, at the height of her beauty
     so she can then leave her old, old poet
     and run off with a younger
     upcoming, chapbook publisher
     to live in Greece or Sicily
     for a summer, drink cheap wine
     and write Pulitzer prize winning
     cryptic bilingual cantos

     the poem finished, spent
     she dismounts, heads for the door
     enters the scream of a siren
     as it passes, someone follows
     wait up, hey, slow down

     but there's a term paper to write
     and her ride has to be home
     before midnight.


(This poem is copyright protected, all rights reserved, and may not be reproduced without the express written consent of the author.)

Pushcart Nominee Lawrence Lawson

This is the opening to a prose piece. Lawrence's work originally appeared in our 12th issue, and is available in its entirety by clicking here.


Mirrors Finding Floors

     When I first put my head to rest in Ukraine, there was advice tromping through it. The piece that stuck with me the longest, in the most troubling ways, was, "Ukraine will seem not very much different from home. Eventually, you'll see the differences. Then you'll understand culture shock."
     Ukraine's got houses. Ukraine's got TVs. Got internet and satellite cable. Ukraine's got houses bigger than I've ever seen in the States with every comfort that makes me uncomfortable. Everyone's got a cell phone. Hell, I've got a cell phone. I'm in Peace Corps, and I have a cell phone. And mine's a clunker compared to most of the phones my students have.
     But there's something else, like Nessie lurking below the water. Something lurking below the crest of the waves. In the shadows. It probably won't do you any harm. It probably won't clench your arm in its thick jaws and haul you down the alley, around the corner, and finish you off. No, it probably won't do that.
     But, then again, it is the shadows, and you can't really see.
     Or can you?


(This work is copyright protected, all rights reserved, and may not be reproduced without the express written consent of the author.)

Wikipedia Notices Perigee

Perigee has finally made it into Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. We are glad to be part of this very democratic community.

Click here to view the entry.

We can't promise the information here will always be accurate--anyone can edit it, after all--but we'll keep our eye on it and nudge any corrections when nudging is needed.

Issue 14 Contributors

Our fourteenth issue will include the following contributors:

Sandy Beach, for "Desperation Fandango"
Benjamin Chambers, for "Been on the Job Too Long"
Todd Christopher Cincala, for "iPod"
G. E. Coburn, for "Linenage"
Kathryn Evers, for assorted visual art work
Jeannine Hall Gailey, for "Persephone, on the Edge"
Kevin P Keating, for "The Deer Park"
Mindi Kirchner, for "Making Snow Angels"
Lawrence Lawson, for "Living Quietly"
Harriet O Leach, for "Front Porch Frolic" and "Friday Night Chores"
Pete Lee, for "War"
Sarah Lou Palma, for "To Eros Transcending" and "To the Fighting Fish"
Arlene Sanders, for "High in a Hot Blue Sky"
Wanda Waterman St. Louis, for "A Study in the Use of the Idealized Image as a Pseudo-Resolution of Neurotic Conflicts"
Davide Trame, for "Recurring" and "Call for It"

The issue is due out on Sunday the 15th. The contributors have been invited to comment here, introduce themselves, or perhaps discuss the work which we've chosen to publish (check COMMENTS, below). This is their opportunity to submit biographical statements as well.

Pushcart Nominee Jason Huskey

Jason's poem originally appeared in our 12th issue.


     Butterface

     She crosses the street with stilettos
     staccato on the wet asphalt, her special
     undergarments digging creases into her thighs
     premature to her genetic endowment. She stands at the
     six-and-nine intersect, adjusting her ta-tas for pa-pas
     and thirty-dollar blowjobs. Some johns pass her up
     as they pull away, tinking she's painted up like
     a cop hunting down cheating husbands and dying
     fools with no time for the formal, legal prostitution
     called romance; but she's no vice snatch. She's painted
     that way because God practiced a first-draft abstract
     on her canvas, and it got published anyway.


(This poem is copyright protected, all rights reserved, and may not be reproduced without the express written consent of the author.)

Pushcart Nominee Brian Spears

This is the first installment of the encore presentations of our 2006 Pushcart Nominees' work. Brian's poem originally appeared in our 11th issue.


     Buffalo River, 2002

     It might have been the way you yelped
     at the paddle-splash of water
     on the back of your neck, snowmelt crisp,
     an April afternoon just warm enough

     for us to steer away from cliff shadows,
     from wind-rustled pines. Or the way
     you shed shoes and hat to clamber
     the sandstone face of Jim's Bluff,

     wet footprints diminishing, step over step,
     maybe even the romantic sweep of dragonfly
     skimming the river surface to light
     on flotsam. But in the end I think it was

     the way you bent into each stroke, pulled
     river behind you, pulled us deeper into it.


(This poem is copyright protected, all rights reserved, and may not be reproduced without the express written consent of the author.)

Perigee's 2006 Pushcart Nominees

The editors are pleased to announce that the following writers are our 2006 Pushcart Nominees. We thank them for contributing to Perigee and putting together work which merits this kind of recognition. Congratulations and good luck!

Perigee's 2006 Pushcart Nominees:
     Brian Spears, "Buffalo River, 2002"
          (verse, issue 11, to be posted here 10/3)
     Jason Lee Huskey, "Butterface"
          (verse, issue 12, to be posted here 10/5)
     Lawrence Lawson, "Mirrors Finding Floors"
          (prose, issue 12, to be posted here 10/7)
     Eileen Malone, "Her Ride"
          (verse, contest winner, issue 12, to be posted here 10/9)
     Gwendolyn Cash, "Choosing Berries and Onions"
          (verse, issue 13, to be posted here 10/11)
     Lisa Galloway, "She Was a Chagall"
          (verse, issue 13, to be posted here 10/13)


The nominated works of poetry and prose will be sent to the Pushcart panel to be considered for the 2006 Pushcart Prize. (This has nothing to do with our ongoing Poetry Contest.)

Check back here over the next few days to read and enjoy what is, arguably, the best work we've published during 2006.