new flash in jellyfish review

I have a weird hybrid piece out today about a mysterious Bosch painting: "Prayer to the Bearded Virgin Martyr: On Hieronymus Bosch's St. Wilgefortis Triptych." Not the first female saint I’ve written about. (Check out “My Saints” in Duende and “Mary Magdalene’s Tibia” in Southern Humanities Review if you’re obsessed by saints too.)

​Thrilled to appear in the ever-wonderful Jellyfish Review again. (Scroll down the page to see recent flash by Kathy Fish, Meg Pokrass, Cathy Ulrich, Kim Magowan; Jellyfish got a well-deserved bouquet of awards from Best Small Fictions 2018 this year.) It was nice to see a long twitter thread from editor Chris James this week about why he often turns down submissions from previous contributors (so he must have liked this one). He takes risks, publishes great flash, does a wonderful job of building a community despite living far away from all of us. (Chris is a well-published writer himself, a British expat in Jakarta).

I've been thinking off and on about a longer feminist project centering on female saints. I've always loved Pat Mora's book of poems, Aunt Carmen's Book of Practical Saints, and recently started following Anne Champion's wonderful saints poems. Back when I was doing scholarly essays, I wrote about Mora and other Latina writers and saints. One of my "flood subjects" (Emily Dickinson's term for an overwhelming subject you return to frequently).