Poetry | Fiction | Visual Art
In this new poem, Lesley Burt explores the work of Van Gogh, discovering in it the possibility of a world ‘unclaimed by names’.
Long Exposure Magazine is now offering feedback and guidance on a selection of your poetry. For an introductory fee of £10 you will receive rigorous feedback and editorial advice on a set of up to 5 poems through e-mail correspondence.
Editor Daniel Williams holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in literature and creative writing and has published poetry widely on-line and in print, including at Cadaverine, Ink, Sweat, And Tears, and Envoi. Alongside his work in editing and publishing, he has experience of teaching creative writing in a variety of contexts, from local community to university level.
Make your payment below and the editor will contact you to receive your work and begin your tutoring session. Any enquiries can be sent to editor@longexposuremagazine.com.
Further opportunities at Long Exposure Magazine.
Long Exposure is looking to put together a list of artists to work with frequently who can respond to the writing published in the magazine, through painting/illustration, photography and other visual art forms, to be featured alongside the creative writing pieces in each issue. This is an opportunity for regular publication and promotion. If you are interested in this project please contact editor@longexposuremagazine.com with a brief introduction and a sample of your work or links to some examples. You can see the type of work the magazine has published so far here.
For the next issue, Long Exposure is opening up submissions to fiction, specifically very short fiction of 700 words or less. In previous issues we explored traditional short forms such as the haiku (Issue 2), and how an economy of language and sharpness of observation can heighten the impact on the reader by using a minimum of words.
Definitions for this type of fiction are various, and as such our criteria are broad. Whether your pieces lean towards a fluid and poetic style or want to focus on delivering an engaging narrative in a tight space, we would love to read your work.
As usual we are open to poetry submissions on any style or theme, but with a particular interest in the Ekphrastic genre or work which combines text and image, as well as to photography and art work and collaborative projects between writers and artists.
See previous issues for the type of work we have published to date.
If you have an idea for an essay or article, particularly on the relationship between creative writing and the visual arts, contemporary poetry and poetics, or the arts in education and society, contact the author to discuss.
All submissions and enquiries to: editor@longexposuremagazine.com
We look forward to hearing from you!
The new edition of Long Exposure Magazine is now available!
Featuring an international selection of new creative writing, photography and visual art.
Access it here:
Long Exposure Magazine, Issue 3, July, 2016.
Window on the Garden
Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.
– Oscar Wilde
The coal tit is being purposefully
epigrammatic,
its terse flight from hedge
to bike handlebar,
and seemingly off
only to be back on the bike briefly.
So many false promises
of departure, playing
with finality like a conifer seed
in its nippy beak, it revels
in its mastery of reprieve
with flippant swerves,
in a black bow tie and wing collar,
it deflects
each drawn-out ending,
a sunflower seed
raided from a forgotten hoard.
Passerine bird
with three toes facing forward,
and one backward –
able to cling to the vertical
without falling out
of the picture,
you are impossible to frame. This urge
to cup you like a soft bollock and squeeze,
is wrong, in a nutshell
but your pithy nature;
the impossibility of boiling down
spirit into sweetmeat
makes a play of thwarted possession:
agog to count
the freckles on your eggs
in their nest in a mouse hole,
to pop one in my mouth
and keep it forever, far from teeth.
Mammogram
This sky ceiling has been kindly donated
by Patricia Madden Cancer Trust
Look up sister! Six blue squares,
but only one is clear, as cirrus clouds
permanently gather in the other five.
Look at the poster sister! A man
manages colour-coded strings,
so his gown doesn’t gape.
Look down sister! Flip
through a torn magazine.
See the ads: Breast Feeding is Best;
How to Enhance a Small Cleavage.
Look this nurse straight in the eye sister!
Smile. What are the odds you’re next?
Attention sister! All mammography patients
please remove deodorant or talcum powder
from the upper half of your body.
Look sister! If you have sensitive
breasts, this may hurt. Look up sister!
Outside, a black sky hangs open,
the moon impersonates a breast.
Parental Love
My mother has two
monikers for her firstborn.
Some days, she will call out:
“Oh, my dots?” My Daughts.
Most days, it’s “my somping!”
My something.
Please don’t ask where
these names came.
We fall, or should I say I fall
into laughter every time
I hear the second one.
My father is the same,
except the names repeat
the same word: twink.
The first is Twink. Shine.
Twinkle. Shine bright.
Twinklepants.
This last one
I’ve taken to mean
she shines bright enough
to take the blues out
of her worn jeans.
Or, she makes him smile
without second thought.
Regardless the hilarity,
no one would think
to look for a star
wearing pants,
happening to be the daughts
of somping parents,
burning the night sky
alive.
Bio: Julia Putzke lives in Georgia. Her work has previously appeared in The Refection and The Larcenist.
Webbed garden spider
strung badminton net fashion
your luncheon is served
Bio: Tracey Walsh has been enjoying life since early retirement in 2013. Indulging a lifelong love of crime fiction by starting a book review blog, she has also discovered a new interest in photographing local Lancashire countryside and wildlife. This is Tracey’s first attempt at poetry since school days.
I wept at the cloud-shore when I saw fractures,
fractals of burnt orange and yellow splitting my home,
under a pale blue moon slashed with black scars
far darker than anything but imagination.
She – they – were safe. But home…
that was sheer memory now.
Continue reading “Frontier’s End: A New Poem by George Sandifer-Smith” →
Sink your hand into the loam
slowly. Allow
the rasp and scrape of buried pebbles, bits
of brick, mortar, snail shells, nails
from a lost house of a lost century
to slide by your hand. Allow
the slugs and earthworms.
Allow the dirt.
Sink deeper.
Sink to your wrist.
The earth will grant you this, it is heavy
with last night’s rain, the earth is wet and waiting
and you are not an interloper, you
are standing on the bones of your grandparents.
Close your eyes.
Your eyes are in your fingers, in the dark
tunnels your fingers have made,
flushed and throbbing
with the red light of blood
as you slide by other times
and grasp for the remnant you need,
the hard cold thing in the sandy ground
covering your family’s dead,
the dark hard thing that’s waiting to be found:
the last bulb of the purple crocuses
that you’ll replant next fall in cooler earth.
Bio: Brooke Baker Belk has been writing since age 9, when her poem “Cat” was published in her elementary school’s magazine. She still writes about cats. Brooke is interested in English in all its forms; she studied Anglo-Saxon (Old English) in college, and thinks of poetry as a sort of excavation, one in which the bones of our modern language can show up unexpectedly and beautifully. Further thoughts on poetry live at brookebelk.com. Brooke lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband and her cats.
The field is gone, buried beneath future
Rubble of convenience and commerce.
Stalks that once drew bird and game
Draw gamers and the budget minded.
It wearies a memory to replace
What is here with what once was.
Natural overcome, replaced with synthetic.
Creation’s groaning is nearly audible.
I have no right to chatter,
It was a borrowed field.
The farmer passed on his debts.
Someone must pay. So the land and memory do.
Bio: Mark Hutton lives with his family in the mountains of Tennessee (USA). He is a writer, poet, avid blogger (intheperpetualruins.com) and clergyman. His writing ranges from fiction to theology/spirituality, farms and food to justice and conservation. Most days he can be found writing and consuming too much coffee or out in the woods.
August, unnoticed
in the long lines out
mired in engine oil and mayonnaise
hidden beneath cheap buckets of sand
left to my own devices, I dance
on street corners for heavy metal roses and fat men
I share drinks sin verguenzas de olvidados
I learn the nuances of silence
how words can be left out to form
a more perfect skyline
and everything is in love in the absence of a witness
flies mating midair
squirrels and pigeons furiously chasing each other
force or yearning
too much or not enough
like the winds at the end of summer
on hungrier days, when the cool rains come
I ache and creak and groan like pregnant trees
I sink into the yellow wildflowers that smell of spiced pie crusts
I roll my tongue in yearning like honey
and mingle with the dry fallen leaves
falling, falling
like the winds at the end of summer
Bio: Irene Zimmerman has been writing and wandering in the moonlight for a very long time. She is both a native and continuing resident of Brooklyn, NY, where she works as a Licensed Real Estate Salesperson. Surprising as it may seem, Irene is completely in love with her career.
Other than being alone in the woods for days at a time, she enjoys American Football, Folktales, Potatoes and Tango.
Through the mountain roads,
Cloud leans above the hill’s slope,
Merging blue, white, green.
Haiku and photography by Daniel Williams.
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