Literary

Peach Picks: Two Poems and an Illustrated Book

by / Nov. 21, 2017 10pm EST

AT PEACH:

Last Friday at Peach we published the poem “Proverbs Erasure” by Mariah Bosch, a poet and undergraduate student currently living in Fresno, California. The poem is a collection of proverbs that are central to the theme of home and which have been manipulated into something else entirely. Unlike the warm and inspiring mood that characterizes most proverbs, Bosch’s poem reads like an eerie cautionary tale, escalating its tension as it touches on gender roles, death, and God in just a single block of text. “dying as just going home,” she writes. “is a time and a feeling.”

Yesterday, we published the poem “cicada” by Anna Chotlos, a writer currently based in Minneapolis. The poem is a stunning and sensitive study of transformation, both of a cicada and of—the reader might assume—a person’s gender identity. Chotlos, inspired by Maggie Nelson’s unforgettable memoir, The Argonauts, writes with love and excitement from the point of view of a close onlooker. Of the transformation, she writes, “a cicada begins / underground sloughing one / likeness for a brighter / form.” The poem ends with the surprising and touching detail of changing someone’s name in her phone.

 

IN PRINT + IN TOWN:

Color Me White by Kevin Thurston; illustrated by Mickey Harmon

BlazeVOX Books / poetry, coloring book

They weren’t making it up: The highly anticipated collaboration between local poet and Peach Season 1 contributor, Kevin Thurston, and local artist and Peach graphic designer, Mickey Harmon, exists in the world at long last. Last week, both Buffalebs and ordinary folks alike gathered at Pine Apple Company to celebrate the book launch of Color Me White, an adult coloring book that is out now with Geoffrey Gatza’s local press, BlazeVOX Books. The book combines Thurston’s dark humor and painfully sweet prose with Harmon’s playful and wonderfully raunchy illustrations into a critique that takes the pulse of toxic straight white masculinity. Unabashedly graphic and enraging without being overdone, it’s a relief that this treasure by everyone’s favorite platonic power couple has hit the shelves just in time to get for the bro in your life during this year’s holiday season.

 

“Peach Picks” is a new column of literary news and recommendations written by the editors of Peach Mag, an online literary magazine based in Buffalo, New York. For inquiries, contact Rachelle at peachmgzn@gmail.com.

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