Sarah Sousa | Cider Press Review

After 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.

1. Unearthing

Small as a tablespoon, her medicine
pouch holds the fragment of a psalm sing
unto the lord a new song and strands
of black European cloth, pseudomorphs
of paper and cloth: transformed to iron
salts where they touched an iron ladle.
We study the brittle bible for clues,
finger the brittle cloth. The left forepaw of a bear
nestled into the cave of her belly
still sleeps there.

2. Interring

he hath done marvelous things. The English
carry the little bound book at their hips,
the ant-letters’ magic keeps them well
while whole tribes fall like grass
at hard frost, like shed antlers.
His right hand and his holy arm
(imagine the great arc of his holy arm)
hath gotten him the victory.
We give her our strongest medicine.
We give her their strongest medicine.

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

Sarah Sousa’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Apalachee Review, Barn Owl Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Best of Kore Press 2012 Poetry and Water-Stone Review, among others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the Kinereth Gensler Award at Alice James Books, the Kathryn A Morton Prize at Sarabande Books and the Tupelo First/Second Book Award among others. Her first book will be published by Red Mountain Press in 2014.

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CPR Best of Volume 16 Now Available

Grave of the Twelve-Year-Old Pequot Girl
by Sarah Sousa

A Journal of Contemporary Poetry