Poets Wear Prada: "I Am Not Your Insect" by Larissa Shmailo

Submission Policy

Submissions to THE BUG BOOK are now closed. However, we will continue to post a sampling of poems accepted for the anthology as we continue to work our way through the flood of last minute submissions.

Poetry (any form or style) and Micro or Flash Fictions wanted for an anthology on SMOKE. Not just the black clouds rising from the five-alarm fire next door, or the billowing plumes of smoke warning us of a forest fire, or the emissions from factory smoke stacks, apartment house incinerators, and crematoriums, smoke rings rise from cigarettes, smoke pours out of headshops, pipe shops & cigar stores--see that purple haze rising over the fields of poppies and marijuana we just planted--we've used it to communicate via smoke signals and skywriting, to cover our tracks and disappear with and without mirrors, combat the enemy on and off the battlefield, kill bugs, flavor food, cure illness, declare peace treaties, and fragrance our homes. Got the idea? Release it onto the page.

Guidelines: Submit up to three poems/micro fictions or two flash fictions at a time with a fascinating bio of 35 words or less, not just limited to publication credits, copy/pasted in the body of an e-mail (no attachments, please) to roxy533 at yahoo dot com & violetwrites at nyc dot rr dot com. We will also entertain up to six one-liners or 2 short stand up routines at time. Previously published work is OK as long as authors have retained the copyright, which will be returned to them after publication. Simultaneous submissions are encouraged. If your work is accepted elsewhere, and you still have obtained rights to republish, just let us know where and we'll be happy to acknowledge the other publication.

If you do not receive a response from us within a month of your submission considered it rejected and feel free to submit again. Due to the volume of submissions we cannot respond to each and every individual submission. Selection for the on-line edition are made on a ongoing basis as we receive your submissions. However, final selections for the print edition will made after the October 31st deadline. (In otherwords not everything that made the cut for the online edition will appear in print.) Please do not query. When in doubt, send the submission to roxy533 at yahoo dot com & violetwrites at nyc dot rr dot com.

Visit the online edition of SMOKE at:
http://thesmokingbook.blogspot.com/.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

"I Am Not Your Insect" by Larissa Shmailo

I Am Not Your Insect

Your underfoot, your exterminated, your bug...

My unabashedly hairy legs, whose gymnopedes twitching like a chorus for a fatal Sharon Stone, delight in ces movements qui désplace les lines, in the motion, the quiver, the mort, the catch. Your sterile world where no one eats anything but grass is dust to me. Mother Kali, you have made me what I am; feminine, brilliant, a blood without fear. Like my mother, I wait and pray for the prey—that it be there, that it give gore, that I feel it die, that there be more.

By Larissa Shmailo

Larissa Shmailo has been published in Fulcrum, Rattapallax, Drunken Boat, Big Bridge, Naropa’s We among other publications. Her CD, The No-Net World, has been heard on radio stations and the Internet around the world. Larissa translated the Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun by A. Kruchenych; a DVD of the original English-language production is part of the collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. She recently contributed translations to the anthology Contemporary Russian Poetry to be published by Dalkey Archive Press. She is a director of TWiN Poetry, an informal collective of 7,000 audio poets, and public coordinator for Fulcrum Annual. Her chapbook, A Cure for Suicide will be available from Cervena Barva Press in 2008.

Visit her online at:
http://www.myspace.com/larissaworld
http://www.myspace.com/thenonetworld
http://larissashmailo.blogspot.com/