Prairie Schooner

September 29, 2009, is a date that rocked the world. In Samoa, an 8.1 magnitude earthquake sparked a tsunami that produced waves as high as forty-six feet. In Lincoln, Nebraska, meanwhile, it was a calm and sunny seventy degrees. One year later, a poem called Well, Millstone, Cistern, Cliff by Steve Lautermilch appeared in Prairie Schooner, depicting a storm after a drought, another time of disaster. –Kara Cosentino

for Paul Cezanne

The cistern has run dry. Now the stone well,
shaped rock and unshaped, collects sound, and what
is beyond sound, the crackle of wrinkled stems
curling to flame. Watercolor scratched,
scraped to bare stock—trees, saplings, twigs.
Roots and brush, windfall limbs and fallen trunks.

Prairie Schooner will not publish work by Yi-Fen Chou, or any other known pseudonym used by the poet Michael Derrick Hudson. The editors at Prairie Schooner were not aware that "Yi-Fen Chou" was a pseudonym for Michael Derrick Hudson when we published his work under the name Yi-Fen Chou, but once Prairie Schooner became aware of the actual identity of the poet a few months ago, Prairie Schooner confirmed the facts with Michael Derrick Hudson and has taken the position that the circumstances and rationale guiding Hudson's use of a pseudonym would not warrant our publication of his future work under such a pseudonym. In principle, Prairie Schooner has no objections to the use of pseudonyms, but we require disclosure of their use to the editor before publication. For the record, Prairie Schooner first published work by "Yi-Fen Chou” in 2009.

Reviews in brief from the staff of Prairie Schooner and associates.

Vol. 4 Issue 3. August 26, 2015. Ed. Paul Clark.

August 18, 1955, Hurricane Diane (not to be confused with Diana) ravaged Wilmington, North Carolina, killing 184 people, destroying 813 homes and damaging over 4,000 others, and leaving $754 million worth of damage in its wake. The effects of this terrible weather battering the east coast didn’t reach as far as Lincoln, Nebraska, where August 18^th was a scorching hot day, at 97 degrees. Fifty-five years later, The Telephone of the Dead by Goldie Goldbloom appeared in Prairie Schooner. The story follows a woman who loses her husband in a horrible lightening storm and the husband who refuses to let his memory be forgotten. –Kara Cosentino