Author Archives: Claire Bateman

“Then—/when the once sturdy barrier/is too old; beyond repair—/down to some skeleton/of former fence glory,/the meadowlarks seek new perches/to sing prairie songs/on last autumn’s stakes/of mullein stalks,/yellow breasts glowing like rising suns,/as the shrikes find thorns/to hang limp treasures/of butchered mouse dead.”—By J. Drew Lanham Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—January 2020—Dr. J. Drew Lanham […]

“The world will wrestle you into place and pin you/down while the weeks slip past./Don’t be/so easily corralled. Buck it./Go visit your fucking folk.”— Jacob Boyd Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—December 2019—Jacob Boyd lives in Chicago with his girlfriend, Katie, and their two dogs, Sappho and Sir Isaac Newton. He recently graduated […]

“They play at being retired or married, spend the night in a featherbed four feet off the floor, where/they make love, where she crawls beneath the covers and the bed creaks with no one to hear it./That afternoon, she floated in circles in the pool, music drifting out over the deck./At dusk, the couples arrive. […]

“In a civilization or a family no one knows what comes next./Not the protozoa. Not the whelk./ When we rise, washed smooth, we pat each other/because we are surprised to find each other/more or less unchanged when the whole great night/has been battled through, when flames have consumed/the alphabet up to but not including the […]

“The excerpt of the poetry project featured here uses science fiction and fantasy to weave narratives that stem from the historic moments of Igbo Landing. In May 1803, 75 Africans from the Igbo ethnicity were brought from Africa, took over and grounded a slave ship, and then walked into Georgia sea island waters singing, ‘The […]

“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 […]