Welcome to National Poetry Month and Gyroscope Review’s month-long celebration of poets – and their diverse Writing Assistants. Enjoy the audio/video works by previous Gyroscope Review poets and be sure to check out the Author and fun Writing Assistant Bio at the end of each NPM poet post. Don’t forget to tag the poet on Social Media and let them know you enjoyed their work!
The Submerged City
The Submerged City by Wendy McVicker In the submerged city, a woman in red floats, suspended, her hair coiling above her like living tentacles. Pillars with ornate capitals hold up a ceiling we cannot see. What brings her, and us, here to the ruined city? What flood, loosed by river or sea, took over this land, remade it in water’s own image? Water, the god that lives within us all, made the world we came from, the world that reclaims us with every rainfall, every rising tide. I know there are places that suffer drought today, the earth cracking, the unblinking sun bleaching color from the world, burning all it touches. Perhaps that’s why this image soothes, its abundance of water, the way the woman seems to float, at ease, in her red dress, her eyes closed in apparent peace, and the way that water clouds the walls, a promise of resurrection, and life, a promise to cool every thirsting throat This poem appeared in the Fall Crone Power Issue (2023) of Gyroscope Review
WRITING ASSISTANT BIO
Dora (see photo) started life wandering the back streets by the Hocking River, gathering material for a sizzling memoir. Once having chosen her family, she settled into pondering the meaning of life and considering whether her writing should be prose, poetry, or some magnificent mutation — like herself, a proud polydactyl — of her own creation. She values privacy in which to think her own thoughts without disruption.
AUTHOR BIO
Wendy McVicker served as poet laureate of Athens, Ohio, from 2020 through 2022. She is a longtime Ohio Arts Council teaching artist. Her books include Zero, a Door https://orchpress.com/index.php/en/new-publications2-2/174-zero-a-door and Stronger When We Touch, co-authored with Cathy Cultice Lentes. She has a chapbook, Alone in the Burning, forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in Fall 2024.
Don’t forget to read the Spring 2024 Issue of Gyroscope Review.
NPM 2024 Poets
April 1 – Cal Freeman
April 2 – Susanna Lang
April 3 – Marion Brown
April 4 – Melissa Huff
April 5 – Elaine Sorrentino
April 6 – Alison Stone
April 7 – Alexandra Fössinger
April 8 – Laurie Kuntz
April 9 – Dick Westheimer
April 10 – Wendy McVicker