Life Collage – Poem by Gabriela Marie Milton – Updates on Literary Revelations

Life Collage by Gabriela Marie Milton

I experienced mama’s death before she died.

I hate the order of things with its self-indulgent predictability.

The airport – the point of departures and returns – smell of food and disinfectant. Gray overtones.

This world would be a better place if we were more interested in others’ creations than in their personal lives.

I used to run away from home when I was a child. Every rose tore my soul. I picked up the pieces and wrapped the sick and the hungry with them. What’s left of my soul?

When my second novel came out, you said, “What a splendid tribute to your master.” I asked, “Who’s my master?” “Patrick Modiano.” I thought, “Who on earth is Patrick Modiano?” Yet I understood. The past. My obsession with the past. I went out and ordered every book Modiano has written.

I have nothing to say anymore.

featured image: Rising Moon, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

Updates on Literary Revelations

Literary Revelations Journal posted. Please read:

From Science to Poetry: Swarn Gill

Feature of the Week: The Tides of Change by Dr. Linda Best

I am deeply grateful to everyone who submitted to the Literary Revelations’ Hidden in Childhood anthology. You will hear from me soon. For those who still want to submit please remember that our deadline is January 3, 2023. We plan to release the anthology at the end of January.

Please read the Guidelines for Submission HERE. Do not submit before reading.

Visit Literary Revelations Publishing House HERE follow and subscribe.

Thank you.

Gabriela Marie Milton
Pushcart Prize Nominee
Award Winning Author
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

Amour by Gabriela Marie Milton

amour
your secret hides inside my name
inside the splendor of the night in which you didn’t say a word
feathers of macaw birds trace music sheets
the rays of sun stretch on the pebble beach
a fragrant song delights itself on my red lips
I rest my head on your left shoulder
into the lands of spices waiting to be born
we fall
some carnal dreams howl on the corridor
who cares?
I locked the door!
this morning we can die
we won’t tell a soul
and never ask for more
amour

From my book Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings

Featured art: S. Splajn

Literary Revelations Announcements

Literary Revelations Journal posted – An American Poet: M. Taggart. Please read HERE.

I am deeply grateful to everyone who submitted to the Literary Revelations’ Hidden in Childhood anthology. We are looking forward to more submissions. Please remember that our deadline is January 3, 2023. We plan to release the anthology at the end of January.

Please read the Guidelines for Submission HERE. Do not submit before reading.

An interview with the Nobel Prize Nominee Gaetano Camillo is up at Literary Revelations Journal. You can read it HERE.

Our Journal will open soon for art submissions.

Please visit Literary Revelations Publishing House HERE and subscribe.

Thank you.

Poem by Gabriela Marie Milton

I call into being the taste of that which is hidden below the existence.

The breath of a salty ocean on my skin.

Everything is here between primal and the infinity of possibilities: the epistemes of love; the essence of beauty; the whispers of a language you cannot understand.

You need me in your bones.

The moon needs me in her naked light.

[from my book Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: Love Poems and Poetic Prose]

Hidden in Childhood – Call for Submissions & Other Announcements

Please read the Guidelines for Submission HERE. Do not submit before reading.

An interview with the Nobel Prize Nominee Gaetano Camillo was published in the Literary Revelations Journal. You can read it HERE.

Thank you for your submissions to the Literary Revelations Journal. We will reply to your submissions as soon as we can.

Please visit Literary Revelations HERE and subscribe.

Thank you.

Literary Revelations Publishing House- Updates

Dear Readers,

I am thrilled to remind you that Literary Revelations will open its website in early November. Please read more about us and our mission Here.

Our Motto:

“Audentis Fortuna iuvat.” Fortune Favors the Bold.
Literary Revelations favors the bold and the talented.

We will open with a call for submissions to a poetry anthology, and a very exciting interview.

Are you ready to explore your childhood and tell us what you see there? Are you ready to bring us the magic, the joy, and perhaps the pain of your childhood? Our anthology will be entitled Hidden in Childhood.

This is not a book for children. This is a book for adults. We expect you to tell us how the experiences of your childhood formed you. We will be ready to listen to you. We will be more than proud to publish your poetry. To inspire you we have chosen three quotes:

As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.
― Charles Baudelaire

For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

The child, in love with prints and maps,
Holds the whole world in his vast appetite.
How large the earth is under the lamplight!
But in the eyes of memory, how the world is cramped!
― Charles Baudelaire

More information about the anthology and how to submit will be available on the website of Literary Revelations in the beginning of November.

Meantime if you have any questions please let me know in the comments below.

More Updates:

I am very pound I have several poems included in two anthologies.

On October 10, 2022 Vita Brevis Press lunched its forth anthology entitled: What is All This Sweet Work?: A Poetry Anthology About Love and Loss. The book is a stunning collection of poetry edited and curated by Brian Geiger. I am deeply grateful to Brian for including my work in this anthology.

On June 25, 2022 Meghan Dargue launched FromOneLine Volume 3, a superb book of poetry and flash fiction. My thanks to Meg for including me.

Best Wishes

Gabriela Marie Milton
Pushcart Prize Nominee
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

Coming soon: Literary Revelations Publishing House

Dear Readers,

It is with utmost pleasure I announce that the Literary Revelations Publishing House will open soon. It will be up and running in early November of this year.

Literary Revelations honors the memory of my mother whose passion for literature knew no limits.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to both my parents. However, it was my mother’s love for languages, literature, and arts that permeated every fiber of my being starting very early in my childhood. That love has never left me.

I am happy to tell you that Literary Revelations has already manuscripts under consideration, and it will open with a call for an anthology. Literary Revelations will feature a poetry journal and provide services for authors such as marketing, reviews, and Spanish translations staring January 2023.

Please watch this space for more updates and the launching of the press’ website. Follow me on Twitter @shortprose1.

Have a glorious weekend everyone and let me know if you have any questions.

Below please find a paragraph describing Literary Revelations’ mission.

Literary Revelations Mission Statement [excerpt]

Our mission is to feature emerging and established authors of poetry and fiction.

We publish most poetry genres: epic, lyric, narrative, or prose poetry. We expect work that dazzles the intellect, and delights the soul; work that makes feelings blossom into symphonies of love, beauty, and sorrow. Interpret the silence. Find the place where love was born, and tears are entombed. Be the voice of prophets. Be the soft whisper of Sakura.

Dream, create, suggest. Avoid cliches. Avoid the banal and the explicit, even if both have become trendy. Remember “To define is to kill. To suggest is to create.” (Stéphane Mallarmé).

We also publish fiction such as mystery, romance, fantasy, and other types. We do not publish erotica.

Remember a novel is not the mere act of outlining one thing after another. We do not look for tables of contents. We want you to love, and to suffer, with your characters. To remember the importance of the landscape, and to look over your shoulder where the unknown lies. Embrace it. Remember what Jorge Luis Borges said: “When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.”

Make sure you get everything right.

Love Poem

That night, the child – flowery eyes wide open, sweet skin like candy – stole the moon. He squeezed it in his palm and a thousand St. John’s Lanterns fell on the earth. He giggled. A lily of light bloomed on his shoulder. He touched it with his fingers, purred like a cat, and hid in its shadow.

Hushing sea. Latent waves on my body; tears on the cheek of the child. Our first night in Alicante. It was St. John’s Night. Fate was playing dice. Buried in the sand between our naked souls, between our fermenting lips, breasts of broken statues and Miguel Hernández’s Cancionero Y Romancero De Ausencias. We were two ghosts finding each other from afar. He wrote that, didn’t he?

The sky opens. The child continues to sleep, the moon tightly squeezed between his little fingers. In the bathtub my hyacinths, and the aroma of sandalwood invert their positions. I took too many sleeping pills. I fell into the exaltation of my own double. Grabbed by the claws of a bird the loneliness spams. A conch shell releases your voice. Stars and sea salt. My last I love you.

Announcement

Literary Revelations Publishing House will open soon. It will be up and running in early November of this year. Excerpt from its mission:

September Love – poetic

September again, my steps heavier, my hips moving with the same uncertainty they did during the time when the child was conceived. Barefoot I trampled grapes in a red vat, my dress rolled above the knees, my hair in a bun. The crisp smell of broken Gamay Noir penetrates my nostrils. The first release of the fall juices. Echoes muffled by the cracking of corn roasting on the fire.

I hurt. I miss you desperately. Perhaps you’ve never returned from that September when we first met. Sighing leaves, sobbing skies, cold hands looking to ignite fires. A tango coming from nowhere coiling like a snake around our bodies. Sweet forehead kisses. On my neck, somnolent bruises covered by makeup.

I cannot stand anymore Victorian self-righteousness, fake politeness – “I apologize for interrupting, I came to slit your throat” – people who speak about gratitude without practicing it, questionable advisers who have proliferated like false parasol mushrooms after the rain. They make me sick. The tragicomedy of this world. Poetica, Aristotle. Remember?

Here we go again: young, books under our arms, love burning our eyes until we could see beyond the limits of September, philosophy burning our souls, trademarks of Friday afternoons on our skin. Roman columns reaching the sky at the exact hour when we interlinked our consciousnesses. Pears ripening in trees, branches burying themselves in the earth. Spread at the base of the columns our heated bodies ready to fly. We were not supposed to ever come back.

Why did we, my love?

I steal words from September’s iconostasis. I sew them in a field of dahlias. I wash my hands and my feet. You take the corn from the fire. The child plays. Blue and white awnings murmur in the wind. The child. The sunrise of the first I love you.

The following is a fragment from my poem Fear of Death published in my collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings (Vita Brevis Press, 2020).

ah, I forgot to tell you when I meet you in my dreams
Arabella still sells bracelets in the silver market
she asks me every time about you
while lizards run their greens into the nearby parkette
I lie and promise her you’ll come next time
to buy another bracelet and some juicy limes

now in the silence of long purple nights
the silver bracelets do not hurt my flesh at all
but every minute you are not with me
cuts yet another wound
into my soul

Dear Readers,

I am developing a new project that will further promote the writings of our literary community. It’s an extremely demanding and complex project, and I am very excited about. New updates in a month or so.

Furthermore I am preparing a new book; an English-Spanish bilingual edition of my poems. The poem below, The Miracle of You, is included. I hope you enjoy the English, as well as, the Spanish version.

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

Fuiste tú el milagro

La mano derecha de la luna
vierte alma dentro de mi carne,
los aleteos de las palomas traen aromas de lilas en flor,
el aire se emborracha de poesía,
imaginarias mujeres del agua, sirenas,
alardean de cabello.

Dentro de tu soledad
mi corazón
gira cinco equinoccios cual uso de madera,
tus ojos vierten carne dentro de mi alma,
mi cuerpo germina los sonidos de hojas que brotan,
lavo mis manos en las aguas del Guadalquivir
en la perfumada noche de aquellos que nunca duermen.
Digo
“te quiero”
y en solo un respiro
nuestra boda se convierte
en un morir de éxtasis
¿Fue la luna?
¿Fue el aroma de mayo?
Quizás fuiste tú el milagro.

Good luck to everyone who starts school or whose children are starting school. The summer is about to end in the Northern hemisphere.

Nature Speaks of Love and Sorrow, by Jeff Flesch, is a superb collection whose pages are saturated with poetic intelligence. The author builds a magnificent correspondence between the natural realm and the spiritual one, without making use of language techniques most symbolists employ(ed), preferring the un-revealed/the unknown to the revealed/the known. In Jeff’s poetry nature does not need any intermediary to speak to the soul and vice versa.

Nature has always provided a feast for senses. In this collection nature provides more than the aromas of daisies and lavender, or the silhouette of the willow tree projected against the sky. It provides a journey of self-discovery which ultimately leads to a better understanding of the self.

The message is clear. The more you understand nature, the more you understand yourself.

I dance to the tune of the moon/learning more about nature/and the aspects/of self/hidden under the trees in bloom/

The identification of the movement of natural elements with love is one remarkable element of Jeff’s poetry.

while I sit and I listen/to the clouds bursting wide open:/a deluge, like the love I feel for you/

Sometimes nature plays a restorative role and other times it becomes part of the author’s sorrows: pebbles always underfoot, while salt/ stings my eyes/always being told boys don’t cry/ pain is deep… or/and part of his love: finding the center/of a love both soft and cherished//as apples bow trees/ know that you always have been true to me:/

In the last piece included in this collection we find one of Jeff’s beliefs which serves not only as a closing argument but also as a direct way a expressing the idea that time heals everything.

At the end, we set sail on the winds of time/and let go the pain we’d held inside.

I find it interesting that despite the restorative capacity of nature, and its intimate link with the human soul, the ultimate healing does not come from nature. It comes from time. A change of perspective that adds new depths to Jeff’s book.

Nature Speaks of Love and Sorrow is an astonishing collection. Jeff’s poetry not only delights the soul. Equally it delights the intellect. It is a must have. No one will regret reading it.

Gabriela Marie Milton
Pushcart Nominee

#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.)
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings