#brendashaughnessy

[greeniezona]

I know most of you will have to zoom in to read this poem, “Our Beloved Infinite Crapulence,” but I think it is worth it! Gently mocking our vulnerability to ad copy, especially when it promises to be natural, to renew us, to protect out bodies and the earth. . . #poetry #apoemaday #nationalpoetrymonth #theoctopusmuseum #brendashaughnessy https://www.instagram.com/p/B-2IOF0AtDW/?igshid=7ezcqvin65hn

[greeniezona]

Book mail day! I had a gift card rolling around for a while that I couldn’t decide what to do with. Finally I decided to pick up We Were Witches, which I fell so hard in love with when I checked it out from the library and had been wanting to get a copy of (but it was never on the shelves at any bookstore I was in.) Plus I scanned through my want-to-read shelf looking for something I would be unlikely to just bump into randomly at a bookstore and I decided on The Octopus Museum, because I still am on my BUY MORE POETRY kick and also this cover! . . Of course today is also a very big publication day. I have one book on pre-order waiting for me at the bookstore, and I don’t know how I will get out of there without picking up any of the other amazing titles out today. My budget is really ridiculous right now, so wish me luck! . . #bookhaul #bookmail #newbooks #theoctopusmuseum #brendashaughnessy #wewerewitches #arielgore https://www.instagram.com/p/B3pa__HgO_b/?igshid=hdzcifyu9ann

[myhungryworld2]

✨ hey @ms_amanda_dbody "...The obvious sun, no bullshit, the enemy of poets and lovers, sleepers and creatures." #BrendaShaughnessy #ImOverTheMoon #FunTimes @nello_champagne #Bday (at Club Dubai)

[dreamhoneybee]

"You had me chasing you, the worlds worst lover, over and over. Hoping for a mirror, a whisper, insight. But you disappear for nights on end. With all my erotic mysteries and my entire unconscious mind. How long do I try to get water from a stone? It's like having a bad boyfriend in a good band. Better off alone." #brendashaughnessy #imoverthemoon #poem #poetry #writing

[alabasterbust-blog]

Postfeminism

There are two kinds of people, soldiers and women, as Virginia Woolf said. Both for decoration only. Now that is too kind. It’s technical: virgins and wolves. We have choices now. Two little girls walk into a bar, one orders a shirley temple. Shirley Temple’s pimp comes over and says you won’t be sorry. She’s a fine piece of work but she don’t come cheap. Myself, I’m in less fear of predators than of walking around in my mother’s body. That’s sneaky, that’s more than naked. Let’s even it up: you go on fuming in your gray room. I am voracious alone. Blank and loose, metallic lingerie. And rare black-tipped cigarettes in a handmade basket case. Which of us weaves the world together with a quicker blur of armed seduction: your war-on-thugs, my body stockings. Ascetic or carnivore. Men will crack your glaze even if you leave them before morning. Pigs ride the sirens in packs. Ah, flesh, technoflesh, there are two kinds of people. Hot with mixed light, drunk on insult. You and me. ***Brenda Shaughnessy, “Postfeminism," Interior with Sudden Joy, 1999.

[fourwaybooks]

2014 Four Way Books Intro Prize Winner

We have just heard from our Intro Prize judge, Brenda Shaughnessy,  that she has selected the manuscript The Taxidermist's Cut by Rajiv Mohabir of Hawaii as the winner. The collection will be published in 2016. Congratulations, Rajiv!

For information on how to submit to Four Way Books, click here. 

[fourwaybooks]

Submit to The Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry BEFORE March 31

Be sure to read the complete guidelines before you submit! 

For a book-length collection of poetry written in English by a poet who has not previously published a book of poems. Previous publication of a chapbook is fine and those poems may be in the collection submitted. $1000.00 honorarium and participation in a Four Way Books reading in NYC. Brenda Shaughnessy is the judge. 

$28.00 processing fee. Online or paper submissions accepted. The deadline to submit is March 31. 

[appy]

"Me In Paradise", by Brenda Shaughnessy

Oh, to be ready for it, unfucked, ever-fucked. To have only one critical eye that never divides a flaw from its lesson. To play without shame. To be a woman who feels only the pleasure of being used and who reanimates the user's anguished release in a land for the future to relish, to buy new tights for, to parade in fishboats. To scare up hope without fear of hope, not holding the hole, I will catch the superbullet in my throat and feel its astounding force with admiration. Absorbing its kind of glory. I must be someone with very short arms to have lost you, to be checking the windows of the pawnshop renting space in my head, which pounds with all the clarity of a policeman on my southernmost door. To wish and not jinx it: to wish and not fish for it: to wish and forget it. To ratchet myself up with hot liquid and find a true surprise. Prowling the living room for the lightning, just one more shock, to bring my slow purity back. To miss you without being so damn cold all the time. To hold you without dying otherwise. To die without losing death as an alternative. To explode with flesh, without collapse. To feel sick in my skeleton, in all the serious confetti of my cells, and know why. Loving you has made me so scandalously beautiful. To give myself to everyone but you. To luck out of you. To make any other mistake