Guest Editor for Poetry, Issue 139

Now Accepting Submissions

Richard Garcia.JPG

 

 

Richard Garcia

Guest Poetry Editor, Issue 139, October – December 2018

Bio followed by "Regret" from Porridge, winner of the 2016 Press 53 Award for Poetry

SUBMIT A POEM FOR ISSUE 139

Richard Garcia won the 2016 Press 53 Award for Poetry for Porridge. He is the author of six books of poetry, and his poems have appeared in many journals, such as The Georgia Review, Crazyhorse, The Cortland Review and Ploughshares. His work is also included in many anthologies, among them, The Best of the Prose Poem and Best American Poetry 2005. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, the Mudfish Prize from Mudfish Magazine, the Greensboro Award from the Greensboro Review, the Cohen Award from Ploughshares, and the Georgetown Prize from the Georgetown Review. He was poet-in-residence at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles for twelve years, where he conducted workshops in art and poetry for hospitalized children. He teaches at the Antioch University Los Angeles MFA in Creative Writing program. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife, the poet Katherine Williams, and their dog Max. 


 

Regret

 

God was depressed. Satan was depressed. They each had their regrets. These people they had made were disappointing. They all wanted to be animals—they ate, grew, nested, copulated, reproduced—animals! So God and Satan summoned Lilith, Eve’s older sister. She came in a black Cadillac convertible driven by an enormous serpent, accompanied by angels. One angel wore a leather jacket. One picked his teeth with a switchblade. Another angel, dressed in a zoot suit made of small mirrors, seemed preoccupied with his fingernails. Lilith wore her little black dress. Now we’re getting somewhere, said God. Satan nodded, Yeah, baby.