Bücher veröffentlicht von Unsolicited Press

At the center of The Ballad of Two Sisters are Stella and Helen, two sisters who die on the same day. One fragile and one strong, the sisters confront the troubles of the past and the uncertainty of the future as they seek connection, joy, and completion. Though at times circuitous, the paths the sisters travel ultimately lead them back to each other, until finally, they can never be parted.

Fearing the future laid out for him by his father, recent college grad Jacob Constantine accepts an offer to work in Germany for a year. When his ex-girlfriend Diedre suddenly attempts to rekindle their relationship, the unexpected presence of the past castsa shadow over everything. With the help of a new environment and some new friends, Jake tries to navigate his emotions in Germany. But as he speeds toward his predetermined future, it seems that nothing can keep the dark secrets from the past from being stirred up in Diedre's wake.

What is the love poem's function? Does it eternally preserve the beloved as they actually are, or does it warp and suffocate them, locking them inside stanzas and lines from which they will never escape? In Ventric(L)e, Jerrod E. Bohn dissects the heart's labyrinthine structure. The organ is an intricate house, full of delight, surprise, and possibility; however, its chambers are also walled, barred. The heart is equally a cage. What began as a series of love poems took a turn with the relationship's erosion. Are the poems themselves at fault? Did the page become the prison from which the beloved struggled to break free, and when they couldn't, did it hasten the physical act of leaving? And what remains behind when the beloved is gone? Are they still entrapped even when another comes along? Through meditations dense with sorrow and hope, the sacred and the profane, Bohn explores the love poem's power to both create and destroy.

In this stunning abecedarian poetry collection by Susanna Lang, the words come to comfort, to exhilirate, and to ignite. Lang's e-chapbook, Among Other Stones: Conversations with Yves Bonnefoy, was released by Mudlark: An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics in June 2021, and her translation of Baalbek by Nohad Salameh was published in October 2021 by Atelier du Grand Tétras. Her third full-length collection of poems, Travel Notes from the River Styx, was published in 2017 by Terrapin Books. Her poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming from Prairie Schooner, december magazine, Delos, New Poetry in Translation, American Life in Poetry and The Slowdown. Her translations of poetry include Words in Stone and The Origin of Language by Yves Bonnefoy, and she is now working with Souad Labbize and Hélène Dorion on new translations.

Queen Anne Cowboy is like rain on a windshield, breaking up the dust. The rain is a singer-songwriter named Terrell Jamestone, telling the story of his kid brother, Ethan, a seventh grader who scored high enough on the SATs to skip ahead to college, but cuts himself with a razor blade late at night. The dust is the kind of trouble that hides in good neighborhoods. Maybe you know something about that. Guiding Ethan from self-harm towards compassion, Terrell still succumbs to his own inner demons, abandoning his dreams to alcohol. The daughter he leaves behind, Belinda, grows up to be wild and strong, an aspiring teenage poet hurting from his absence. Crossing into adulthood, Ethan tries to repay his brother's kindness by looking after her. Ten years pass-ten years of rainforests and meditation, bad romances and road trips, public schools and gentrification, alternative colleges and mass incarceration, polyamory and drug addiction, house shows and red wine-before Terrell comes home again.

The fictional Sunset Inn is a seedy motel with a storied past on a neglected block of Hollywood Boulevard. In twenty linked tales, Motel Stories takes an empathetic deep dive into the eccentricities and troubled lives of the diverse guests who check in to this refuge of last resort-for either pleasure or escape, and always an interrupted night's sleep. Edward, the motel's cynical but occasionally accommodating manager, confronts a daily cast of ever-changing characters. A man who dances with dolls. Central American immigrants from civil war celebrating their honeymoon. The addict mother of a newborn infant facing a fateful reunion with her long-lost brother. A disgraced politician forced into hiding. A Vietnamese mama's boy waiting to meet his foreign bride. An elderly couple checking in to the same room where they first met sixty years earlier.¿Four interrelated stories complete the collection. A Filipina internet bride struggles to maintain her autonomy in suburban America. A teenage boy flees his hometown to escape persecution. A female impersonator replaces her glamorous mentor on stage. A gay, middle-aged gallery owner confronts his own errant past when his troubled teenage nephew visits. William Torphy portrays these characters with both empathy and wry humor, revealing their universal desire for love and connection, recognition and security. Sometimes raw, and often humorous, this timely debut collection pierces through both the loneliness and the humanity of distressed outliers temporarily set adrift by circumstance in the American underbelly.

March 18, 2020Corona and CancerHow much time do I have? The man asks.With words muffled behind my double mask,I mumble something. He accepts the answer,the non-answer. Sometimes, you ask just to hear the question and not the response.Is death disguised in the cancer cells inside him? Or is it floating in the air around us?I give him chemotherapy to chase away the first.I wear a mask to trap out the second. Equal fight?Unknown. The answer hides behind the mask of uncertainty.What I had mumbled was:How much time does life on Earth have?I am glad he didn't hear it.He is glad too.Talking to people behind masks is tricky.They can only see your eyesand the frown in them can't hide behind a smile.Truth. The truth is more naked behind a mask. I feel each breath I take. How precious life is behind a mask!Unmasked, you're never aware of breathing.I hear my breath behind a mask. How loud life is behind a mask!Masks don't cover your vision. Only your gasp. Google statistics.Roll, roll, numbers roll. County's count. State's count. Nation's count. World's count. In the beginning, I could add and subtractyesterday's cases from today's. How many more?Now I can't. With six digits, you lose track.No. You won't lose your job,I answer my single-mother secretary.Did she smile? Can I see her mouth behind her mask?Did she see the truth in my eyes?Thank God for masks. No one questions the truth in the eyes if it doesn't come out of the mouth.How many masks do I have? I have to make some from scratch this weekend.

The poems in If The Sky Won't Have Me weave a brilliant tapestry of the human condition, focusing on nature, the female experience, family drama, aging, politics, and regret. Images of water feature strongly, as do rebirth and regeneration, both physical and spiritual. A perfect sequel to the author's debut collection, the moon won't be dared, these poems expand and deepen our understanding of what it means to be alive in a complex world.

In the desolate woods of northern Wisconsin, there is a cabin. Inside the cabin is a figure of evil, a witch performing an unknown ritual. There is also a young boy, Ryan Amherst, who is part of this strange ceremony: a pattern of sacrifice and resurrection known only to the residents of the tiny town of Grange.Nearby in the village, a man named Nathan Amherst - Ryan's father - meets with a middleman named John Linden. Nathan asks when his side of the "contract" will be fulfilled. John can only assure Nathan that he will be compensated for his troubles. Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, a police officer named Ben Dmitrovich has a tense confrontation with his superiors. After beating a suspect in a domestic violence case, Ben is placed on a mandatory suspension - another in a long line of heinous police scandals. Ben, who is struggling to overcome his own personal demons, decides to retreat to his family's cabin up north.By coincidence or a morbid twist of fate, he ends up in Grange and meets a woman named Maria Amherst - Nathan's wife, who apparently died seven months ago. As he unlocks the mystery of Maria's reappearance, Ben discovers a shocking pattern of child disappearances and strange resurrections. A young piano prodigy named Amy Dorian may be the town's next victim, but Ben races to rescue her before it's too late. Hurtling towards a cosmic judgment, Ben has a final shot at redemption or damnation.

In this moving, sophisticated, and often humorous novel, Gary M. Almeter artfully crafts a group portrait of several families using the finest of details in seemingly mundane encounters and everyday events. It's 1982 and Gloria Winegar, a Brown University librarian, discovers that there aren't many drawbacks to having an affair with JFK, Jr., a Brown senior. When she learns she's pregnant with his baby, she tells no one but her best friend who shepherds through childbirth. They leave the baby, a son, on the steps of a convent. The novel chronicles the next few decades of both Gloria and her son, who gets adopted by the most normal family in Massachusetts. How he learns who he is; how he discovers his mother; and what they each should or must do with their new knowledge is masterfully and beautifully written in a story that is a little bit espionage novel; a little bit bildungsroman; and a little bit historical fiction; all culminating in a beautiful literary sketch of a family. The book imagines the pre-public life of JFK Jr. and examines how much we know about him, and people in general, is illusory. It is the story of identity, pedigree, blue collar versus Ivy League sensibilities, celebrity, authenticity, family, and self-care. It's about how small things evolve into big things. It is a novel about nature versus nurture. It is a modern telling story of Arthurian legend and the mythic doomed (and triumphant) heroes who populate our world.

Hunting Geese by Sarah Rau Peterson is a short story collection that features characters as multi-layered as Montana herself. The unnamed protagonist in "Hunting Geese" grapples with life choices and his just out-of-reach family while positioned on the banks of the frigid Yellowstone River awaiting the descent of geese. "She Would Have and The Needing Place" addresses the dynamics of a complicated father-daughter relationship told from each perspective while skirting the issues of generational gaps and aging. "Wednesday's Child's" narrator wonders what she, as a mother, did to push her daughter away, and "Chickens" is about, well, it's about chickens.