Author Archives: Claire Bateman

“My granddad gathered up all the small farms in his hand, shook them like a fistful of change, their histories reduced to names: Brownlee, Stitt, Coon Island, Grady. I grew up near Oil Trough, named for the vats of bear grease rendered there. The men bush-hogged the cemetery grass, the markers mowed over so often […]

“My foremothers/stand behind me/dressed in the indigo of the cosmos/stars for eyes with no recipe/ or cookbook in hand/just thousands of hearts resonating,/It’s time for you to know too./They pour into me.”—Glenis Redmond Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—March 2019—Glenis Redmond travels nationally and internationally and has earned the title, “Road Warrior Poet.” […]

“Boleman-Herring took up poetry before she could write, and gave it up, for all intents and purposes (jazz lyrics excepted), after reading Auden. How does one, why should one (she says) follow an act like Auden’s? For the most part, these days, she writes prose, but admits to being an ardent follower of The New […]

“Donne’s flea, Keats’s cricket, Dickinson’s buzzing fly,/and Neruda’s lust-filled generic crawler/ making its way across a lover’s hip, to name a few.”—By Rick Mulkey Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—January 2019—Rick Mulkey is the author of five poetry collections including, Ravenous: New & Selected Poems, Toward Any Darkness, Bluefield Breakdown, and Before […]

“The tongue is in the eye./It speaks through glints and blinks,/Mama after the stroke,/speechless./One blink meant ‘yes,’/two a ‘no.’/I wanted to read her mind/when that gaze overtook her./In the whites of those fixed orbs,/I swore I saw her drown.”—By Vera Gómez Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—December 2018—As a first-generation child of […]

“I gather stillness in a cold/that hushes all but little sounds—/a woodpecker’s echoless tappings,/leaf-crackle of a jostling squirrel.”—William Thompson Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman   GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—November 2018— William Thompson’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including the “Atlanta Review,” the “Saint Katherine Review,” and “Able Muse.” He teaches at Troy University, where […]

“My heart did not break for three decades and then it did and I began to see things from inside out / and the outside lost sheen and dust / Interior worlds, my own hands, tight skin stretched over other tissues, cellular hooks, latticework / hollow wires pulsing cells through carrying pieces of sun to […]

“Here is the dog planet at last where all is running/and sinking, rising and running again—/lessons in flight./To those mad glad beasts/all is cold and holy clouds/and certain sacred sky.”—Ashley Crout Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—September 2018—Poet Ashley Crout was born in Charleston SC, and graduated from Bard College and the […]

“Any one of these days can be the new first day, Day One, where things seem to be going well. No problem. Any missed understanding can be beginner’s luck, it can be even better than you intended, a kind of innocent perfection. I’ve read a climbing perch can live on land for up to six […]

“The novel I finished reading/last night/in my system like a drug,/a hangover, numbing, dulling,/but for something dark, unseen,/some residue, some fated turn./I have outlived myself,/what now?”—Patricia Waters Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—June 2018—Patricia Waters was born and reared in Nashville, Tennessee, took her undergraduate degree at what was then Memphis State, […]