ARYA'S WRITING & READING BLOG

My #flash fiction, "The Fire-Starter," is being featured today in The Bookends Review. It's a timely political allegory.  I wrote "The Fire-Starter" during the pandemic, when the former president was making ridiculous claims regarding the reason for wildfires in California, and put this flash away after a few unsuccessful forays into the publishing arena. After coming across it in my archives last year and acknowledging, sadly, my characterization still applied, I did a quick review and re-submitted "The Fire-Starter" to a couple of journals. The Bookends Review was the first to accept it last August. Please vote Blue this coming election unless you want someone leading the country who is likely to take away most of our rights, including the right to vote, and who aims to convert our democracy into a dictatorship.  Vote as if your life depends on it. 🌊🌊🌊                                                                                                 

  So pleased to have five prose poems included in the fourth issue of The Mackinaw, a journal of prose poetry, alongside the fine work of authors Mikki Aronoff, Jacob Lee Bachinger, Miriam Bat-Ami, Suzanna C. DeBaca, Dominique Hecq, Bob Heman, Norbert Hirschhorn, Cindy Hochman, Karen Neuberg, Simon Parker, Mark Simpson and Jonathan Jungkans. The issue went live today, July 15th. The journal, which is beautifully curated, was founded by Lorette C. Luzajic, an artist and writer who is the editor of The Ekphrastic Review, and has featured astonishing works in all the The Mackinaw's issues since its inception. The objective of the The Mackinaw is "to celebrate prose poetry," so if you are a poet/writer working in this genre, I urge you to send your best to this journal. https://www.themackinaw.net/arya-f-jenkins.html                 Artwork by Arya F. Jenkins 

My flash, "A Country Called Boupha," which was inspired by a New Year's day online article, is featured today in Dumbo Press, a new and exciting NY-based zine and press:  https://www.dumbopress.com/flash/20                     Arya F. Jenkins Photo

Thanks to Reverie Magazine for featuring my poem, "Recuerdos de un vuelo," "Memories of a Flight," about my family's exodus from Peru in the 60s. https://www.magazinereverie.com/post/recuerdos-de-un-vuelo

Do you ever feel you can't wait, I mean really not wait for a magazine, a quarterly, that usually gifts you with everything literary you need, especially during the chokehold of winter, only to finally come upon it and find that, like a friend you once truly believed in, that magazine is actually totally devoid of wit, allure and promise, everything you lust for, and is really no more than a banal reminder of the quality of the world in which you are generally steeped. Then, just as you are about to toss away this streak of bad luck you once cherished and normally read from cover to cover, you come upon something fresh and unique, a funny, engaging, warm story that page by page takes you deeper into yourself and further away, until you are lost once more, or rather, found in the paradise of language.               Photos by Arya-Francesca Jenkins

It's not often that kindness is associated with art. More often than not, the artist is historically a fickle being riddled by angst, sometimes mad, quirky at best, cruel at worst. The artist is to be forgiven. She or he is after all toeing the line of super-humanity, stretching her or his limits for the sake of art. In a pivotal scene in Maestro , the stunning recent film by Bradley Cooper in which he plays Leonard Bernstein, and Carey Mulligan, his wife Felicia Montealegre, Bernstein's wife imparts one word to her children, her most important legacy, as she lays dying of cancer. "Kindness, kindness, kindness," she repeats, as if that is all that matters in life and death. It is a deeply touching and telling moment. Maestro is about the complicated relationship between Bernstein, who was bisexual if not homosexual, and the conflicts this generated in his marriage to Montealegre, a Costa Rican actress who performed on Broadway, bore Bernstein three children, and endu