It’s still July mon amour hot sands and old lovers torment my dreams the waters are frantic the flowers are dying smell of fresh tombs and heavy perfumes.
Whispering tongues of burned summers wrap around a verse from Rimbaud A Season in Hell and another in heaven tell me my bones and my blood breathe only for you.
A Chinoise cup falls on the floor the cats too lazy to move or to purr my bras are too tight the kisses too cool your decadence runs my past tense in gerund.
Featured Image: Edmond Aman-Jean, Woman with the Blue Vase, Public Domain.
Updates on Literary Revelations
Literary Revelations will release Building Sandcastles: A Book of Short Poems by C.X. Turner and James Welsh end of July/beginning of August. Please stay tuned for more news.
You can read the advanced praise for this wonderful collection HERE.
Gabriela Marie Milton 2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author Books:
In the mood for you – poem by Gabriela Marie Milton
The richness of the butterscotch sunsets, heated bodies, eyes pregnant with desires, incandescent spaces between the skin & white shirts stiffed with starch, heads turned toward the sea, a rose between your teeth, doors undone, amor, the judgement day is not here, let’s die on the petals of the wind.
featured painting: In the mood for love – MM Ciciovan
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women is out!
To the readers: A stunning poetry anthology. From its gorgeous pages, pain driven away by healing. Souls who endured, fought, and won. Some of them still waiting to win. Empowerment. We all need it. The life of women. We all need to read it.
To the authors: It was an honor and a pleasure to edit and curate this anthology. Your poetry showed me the way to your souls. For that I will be forever grateful. In my darkest moments, I will think about how each and one of you fought. Your fight became my candle to a better tomorrow. I’ll take my broken heart and mend it because you showed me how.
To the entire team who worked on this anthology: Ingrid Wilson of Experiments in Fiction, thank you for working on this book and for publishing it. Nick Reeves, gratitude for the gorgeous cover art, and editing expertise. It was an honor and a pleasure to work with both of you.
Yesterday, Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women was running #4 in Amazon Hot New Releases [category: anthology].
Please spread the word. Help us to get these talented and brave authors to #1. They deserve it. You will not regret reading their words.
Amazon description:
Award-winning authors, Pushcart nominees, emerging poets, voices of women and men, come to the fore in this stunning, powerful, and unique anthology. These poems testify both to the challenges that women face in our society, and to their power to overcome them. A memorable collection of over 200 poems by more than 100 authors, this anthology is a must-have for anyone. We all can benefit from the poetry of survival, and of healing. We all can benefit from the experiences so beautifully evoked in this book. We can all come together to emerge triumphant from pain.
Do not forget the launching party is June 18, 3pm London time and it will be live-steamed on YouTube.
Cover Design/ArtWork @2022 Experiments in Fiction/ Nick Reeves
Dear All,
Thank you for your submissions to the anthology Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women. I am privileged and honored to be your editor. Your poems and your talent brought me to tears.
Thank you to our publisher Ingrid Wilson, and toNick Reeves for the beautiful cover book. I am thrilled to work with Ingrid on this anthology.
Submissions are open until April 15. You can read the submissions guidelines here and find more info here.
You will receive a notification of acceptance or rejection in the beginning of May.
I searched for love in the thrilling nights of the February carnival. Around me scavengers of night. I managed to look like Ophelia dressed in negligees & incapable of understanding my own distress.
An Update on the Anthology Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women
To those of you who already submitted a big thank you.
However, several submissions do not follow the guidelines for submissions. Poetry not submitted according to the guidelines will not be taken in consideration. So please follow the guidelines if you wish to submit or if you already submitted and you did not follow the guidelines please consider to revise and resubmit.
Submit your poems in a Word Document, together with a short bio. You should use Times New Roman 12, double space. No poem should be longer than one page. No bio should be longer than 400 characters.
Please title you submission Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women.
Example of email submission:
Dear Editor,
Attached please find my submission for Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women.
Best,
…..
The deadline for submission is April 15.
The plan is to have the anthology published at the end of May 2022.
Looking forward to your submissions.
Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.
Everyday I work to feature wonderful poetry written by my fellow poets. I will be most grateful if you can read and support these poets. Kindness, generosity, and supporting our community are things that I highly appreciate.
Thank you everyone.
Wishing you a great weekend and a fabulous Valentine’s Day.
To Hestia: who was forgotten – by Gabriela Marie Milton
it’s quiet now inside the shapes of our burning hearts tortured the endurance of surreal trees a headkerchief full of blood dries on a bench unknown the mark upon the sky to which you point the windows of bookshops read “kill” and “f..k”
Hestia, strangled, your virginity hangs on a rusty wire inside the chimney a creaking creature with bat-eyes streets filled with guns mundane caricaturesque phalloi, demonic blisters rub the hearts there is no home for millions of us
come back you, virgin goddess of the heart, the murder and the sex will stone you in the boulevards premonitions there are back streets where you can walk songs of nightingales and roses will hide you in their arms
you sacred fire, give a home to hungry children with no clothes to those who sleep under the bridges of cursed stars in nights when linden trees in cemeteries bloom flame the ebb and flow of skies that know no tides you, goddess, the very subject matter of which I write.
I am thrilled to be part of Issue III of Free Verse Revolution. You can download the publication for free here.
Update on the poetry contest Woman: Splendor and Sorrow
Thank you to everyone who enter the poetry contest Woman: Splendor and Sorrow. I am honored and touched by your submissions. Your entries are magnificent. Everyone’s writing is so dear to my heart that I will never be able to choose a winner. As a gentle reminder here is how the winners will be selected:
The selection method is similar to that of a double-blind peer review: the reviewer doesn’t know the identity of the author, and vice-versa.
To achieve that I will do the following:
Create a master document with all submissions. Remove the name of the authors and replace them with numbers.
Create a second document with the name of the authors and their assigned numbers.
I will not participate in the process of determining the winners. Winners will be determined by two of your peers.
However, I will disclose a piece of information and deviate a bit from the fully double-blind process: the editor of Vita Brevis Poetry Magazine, Brian Geiger, will be one of the reviewers.
The winners will be announced in late-October. I will update you periodically.
Prizes: First Place: $300 Second Place: $150 Third Place: $75
Funding for the prizes comes from my royalties.
To the future winners: please remember to spread love in our community and buy some books written by your WP favorite authors.
Update on MasticadoresUSA
Please visit MasticadoresUSA. Support our community. There are several new and wonderful poems up. Do not forget to like, follow, and submit.
My poetry book Woman: Splendor and Sorrow was reviewed in Seattle Book Review.
You can read the review in the link below.
Here are several snippets:
“Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: | Love Poems and Poetic Prose, written by Gabriela Marie Milton, is a brilliant arabesque comprised of authentic artistic stanzas and poetic prose penned the multifaceted emotive lines that highlighted the dichotomous complexities of womanhood in history and modernity…
Milton detailed the stark dualities of feminine divinity hidden within seemingly everyday occurrences via twenty-five pieces of poetic prose at the end of the book. The prose contrasted aching souls, aging, fear of the unknown, mysterious characters, and a genuine penchant for feeling the essence of life in all experiences, whether negative or positive outcomes.
Poetic collages adorned with emotional ephemera captured raw femininity dovetailed within the life cycles of womanhood; enmeshed in struggles, trials, and tribulations were depicted with fortitude and honor that chronicled the beautifully gritty feminine experience…”
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: | Love Poems and Poetic Prose available on Amazon here.
Updates:
Thank you to those of you who entered the poetry contest Woman: Splendor and Sorrow. I am deeply touched and incredibly grateful to everyone. Your poems are magnificent.
Help our literary community strive. Do not forget to read, like, and submit to MasticadoresUSA.
The Fisherman and the Syren (1856–1858), Frederic Leighton.
the miracle of you
the moon’s right-hand pours soul into my flesh pigeons’ wings bring scents of lilac blooms the air gets drunk with poetry statuary women of the water flaunt their hair
within the loneliness of you my heart rotates five equinoxes on a wooden spindle your eyes pour flesh into my soul my body germinates the sounds of growing leaves I wash my hands into the waters of Guadalquivir in the scented night of those who never sleep I say I love you and in one single breath our wedding is transformed in an enraptured death
was it the moon? was it the morning dew? perhaps it was the miracle of you
Poem included in my book Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Amazon available here.
Updates
Please visit MasticadoresUSA. Support our community. There are several new and wonderful poems up. Do not forget to like, follow, and submit.
Thank you to everyone who sent poems for the poetry contest Woman: Splendor and Sorrow| Love Poems and Poetic Prose. The closing date is September 20. You can read more about the contest here and get the book in the link below.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: Love Poems and Poetic Prose by Gabriela Marie Milton #1 in Amazon Hot New Releases
Yesterday, August 9, 2021, my poetry collection Woman: Splendor and Sorrow was #1 in Amazon Hot New Releases, Poetry Subjects and Themes. Yesterday, I became a bestselling author.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have no words to tell you how humbled I am by your support, and by that of my followers from other social media outlets. Special thanks to my WP friends who are going through challenging times, and yet they still find ways to support and encourage me.
Equally, special thanks to my family, and to that wonderful person in my life who is a renowned and accomplished academic and author in his own right, and who he is now the “wind beneath my wings.”
My Dear Readers,
Do not listen to any detractors. There will be people who will envy you. There will be people who will denigrate your work, and you personally. There will be people who will want to drag you down. Do not listen to them. Keep going. Keep shining. Keep writing. If I can do it you can do it too. I will support each one of you as much as I can.
Poetry Contest
To honor the community who have supported my writing journey and my work I plan to have a poetry contest in September. I will ask you to write one poem inspired by a piece from my book Woman: Splendor and Sorrow and to list the name of the piece that inspired your submission. There will be prizes. More info about the contest coming up in September.
MasticadoresUSA update
Thanks to Juan, MasticadoresUSA has now a new beautiful theme. There are several new posts on the site. For me MasticadoresUSA is a labor of love. It is a way of giving back to the WP community. Thank you to everyone who supports this site.
You can read the work of your fellow poets and follow the site here.
Love to everyone.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: Love Poems and Poetic Prose by Gabriela Marie Milton:
Farewell to you Andalucía, to gypsy moons & to the music of your breasts. Frantic nights, wounds that never heal. White shirts, heated bodies, pulsing veins, rhythmic blood. A woman wears her wedding band around her neck. #Farewell to you my matador Te amo para siempre #vss365pic.twitter.com/ZQooDZXons
— Gabriela Marie Milton (@shortprose1) July 28, 2021
Updates on Woman: Splendor and Sorrow
Amazon US – on August 4 my poetry collection Woman: Splendor and Sorrow was in the top 17 new release bestsellers for poetry by women. Number 16 Louise Glück who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. Running right behind her like on August 2. Humbled beyond words.
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Amazon Ca – Today, August 6 my poetry collection Woman: Splendor and Sorrow is in the top #19 new release bestsellers for poetry by women in Canada. Again humbled beyond words.
My dear followers, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kind support.
