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CPR Best of Volume 16 Now Available

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CPR Volume 16 Front CoverAfter more than a week of stuffing envelopes, the hard-copy “Best of Volume 16” Cider Press Review is on its way to contributors, subscribers, and former Book Award contest entrants.

The “Best of” issue features poems by Rebecca Baggett, Carol Berg, Jennifer Jackson Berry, Maggie Blake, Ace Boggess, John Bradley, Christine Butterworth-McDermott, Sharon Chmielarz, Lisa J. Cihlar, Joan Colby, Michael Collins, Gemma Cooper-Novack, Jimmie Cumbie, Carol V. Davis, Paul Dickey, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Carol Ellis, Sarah Estes, David Eye, Evelyn Clark Farbman, Shawn Fawson, Janice Greenwood, David Hathwell, Gary Hawkins, Sara Henning, Brian Patrick Heston, Louisa Howerow, Ann Hudson, Amie Keddy, Heather Lang, Susanna Lang, Mercedes Lawry, Bernadette McBride, Amy Meckler, Colleen Michaels, Nancy Carol Moody, Carolyn Moore, Mary Moore, Susannah Nevison, Amy Newday, Autumn Newman, Sharon Olson, Mary Elizabeth Parker, Lynn Pedersen, Kevin Phan, Katherine Rauk, Geri Rosenzweig, Michael G. Smith, Heather Sommer, Sarah Sousa, Joannie Stangeland, Kelly Terwilliger, Lisken Van Pelt Dus, Ryan Vine, Donna Vorreyer, Chelsea Wagenaar, Mark Wagenaar, Marq Wilson, Laura Madeline Wiseman, Anne Harding Woodworth, Matthew Zingg. Book reviews by Ken Hada and Gary Leising.

To order your own or extra copies, please visit the CPR Bookstore.

CPR Volume 16, Issue 1

Magic 8-Ball,
by Chelsea Wagenaar

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According to a recent study, the twenty-four
hours preceding a woman’s orgasm—or lack
of—are an emotional foreplay, like shaking
a sexual magic 8-ball. Hoping
for outlook good, or the ever-elusive,
ecstatic, yes – it is certain. But by 3:00
this afternoon your new blue satin heels
have made a blistered mess of your baby toe,
the coffee shop is out of those crumb cakes
you like so much, the coffee lukewarm.
Looks like your 4:00 is a no-show. And now
your mother calls, crying again because
your father’s engaged, she found out on Facebook,
never mind that he forgot your birthday
last week. That familiar aura surrounds
your head, presses in, ache, you reach
for the Tylenol. By some miracle
there are two glasses of malbec left
in the bottle when you get home, and when
your husband winks and lifts your shirt over
your head, you let him. He pauses to smile at you,
his hands roaming like you are the uncharted
America, his breath hot, earnest, everywhere,
sweetly oblivious of what he cannot
reverse. You know, but don’t want to tell him.
Don’t count on it. My sources say no.

 

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 16, Issue 1.

Chelsea Wagenaar is a doctoral candidate in poetry at the University of North Texas. She has had poems accepted or published recently in Barrow Street, Salamander, and The Greensboro Review, and she is the 2012 winner of the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize through Nimrod International Journal.

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Visit Chelsea Wagenaar’s contributors page.

CPR Volume 15, Issue 3

Penance III
by Chelsea Wagenaar

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“Life on earth depends on the sun’s table scraps.”
– an article from The Atlantic

A litany of our best efforts to repay this: we toss fistfuls of apple peels and tea leaves skyward. We touch each other gingerly, as though we might rupture. A woman pins sheets to a clothesline, her hair wet and unbrushed. We count your flares and watch our electronics for a sign of devastation. We give our own sadnesses away, like hallucinations, too delirious to hold them closely. Strangers pass each other in the street; our griefs nod hello. One man wants to be catapulted heavenward when he dies, his body cresting the constellations, scalding steadily toward that other aura: is this the debt we owe? We look through bright windows and think champagne, we paint without explanation. We hold our lost languages on our tongues, dissolving grains of sugar. We mimic you to warm our hands. We hang collections of light on our walls and say museum. Forgive us as we crawl around, our hands and knees stained and aching, our mouths open and hungry. But see how we turn our eyes from you? How unblistered we are, how we’ve preserved our retinas? We understand ultraviolet, we know exposure. We cannot look. No, we never, never look.

 

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 15, Issue 3.

Chelsea Wagenaar is a doctoral candidate in poetry at the University of North Texas. She has had poems accepted or published recently in Barrow Street, Salamander, and The Greensboro Review, and she is the 2012 winner of the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize through Nimrod International Journal.

See all items about Chelsea Wagenaar

Visit Chelsea Wagenaar’s contributors page.