Here is where I’m putting my Medium.com posts that are relatively new. And still figuring out WordPress sites and customization, and embedding.
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Manifesto, and a Welcome
If you’re reading this right now, it’s not too late, and it’s definitely not an old Drake album. Just me, Ismael Santos. Who am I? Beyond a poet and a writer and a tutor at Miami-Dade College, I guess I’m a dude who lives in words.
Sounds silly, I suppose, but words mean something to me. They can create a whole world of possibilities and ideas, and can save you from the worst parts of yourself. They can put things into perspective, and can help you exorcise the worst parts of yourself(although they do run the risk of repetition.)
They meant something to me when I first read America by Allen Ginsberg, and have meant so much to me since I read Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.”
But, it is one thing to love words and to love art. It is another thing to try and create things, altogether. I have been writing, and submitting poems and stories, for over nine years now. Been accepted by some, and mostly rejected. I don’t think one can write and create for so long if not for the love of it, and less about the monetary value or deals you can make.
That’s why, on the SPF chapbooks tab, I only added a “Buy Ismael Santos a Coffee” hyperlink. Poetry chapbooks are never easy to really make, they come with so many decisions, in terms of formatting, words, visuals, and beginning and ending them. But I believe that art that you can see, and words you can read, should not be hidden behind a paywall. I don’t dig that sort of thing. So, if you dig the work, and want to donate a dollar or more, please feel free. If not, that’s fine, too.
I know when the word “Manifesto” shows up in any given page, it’s supposed to be this grand statement on art and poetry. I think I wanted to do something like that, but it veered off more into a stream-of-consciousness on art and poetry.
Poetry and Art are essential, and have saved me more than I can say during this crazed, pandemic time we find ourselves in. If these poems can entertain you or even annoy you, then I think I’ve done my job decently enough. I don’t want Poetry to be seen as some high-born, elitist concept: we all have poetry to share, to write and read, and we shouldn’t be limited because of systems of access and class.
Poetry is for you, just as it is for me.
This almost sounds like a Sesame Street slogan, at this rate.
I guess, to boil down whatever artistic influences have made me create this website, and start up these chapbooks to share for Small Press Fair, is just a wanton love of words, of images and feelings, that I want to try and give out to you, the Reader. Without you, then quite literally, none of this really works out.
We all find ourselves in a strange and terrifying time, so how can we move forward if we’re still stuck on the old ways of disseminating and distributing art?
I don’t think the old ways work, anymore.
Maybe that’s existential, or a bit too postmodern.
Irregardless, here is some poetry that I’ve been working on for a bit. And a website that needed a desperate overhaul.
If you want some non-fiction writing, my irregularly updated movie review website, The Wolves of Little Havana, and let me know what you think.
There’s always way too much to do and get done, and too little time to do it. But, I just wanted to say that SPF helps make these kinds of important events possible, and wanted to thank them. And to also thank you for taking the time to read this, and hopefully check out the poetry.
So, here’s to Poetry, to this “Barbaric Yawp,” as Walt Whitman said so many years ago.
Thank you very much.
Salud,
Ismael Santos
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Claude McKay and the Sonnet Form
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A Quick Thing and a Poem
It has been quite a while since I wrote anything on here, but Grad School takes up a whole chunk of time. In between that, other writings, personal losses, anxieties, money issues, and running a movie review website, a lot of time gets eaten up.
I will be on here more often and more regularly, and I plan on redesigning this website.
To tell you the truth, I’ve been struggling: two years since my dad died and no money, and a shit ton of grad classes, and more books to read and get through, and an unhelpful system that prides grabbing people into the program, but the money is not there.
This is all to say that Life Happens, and yet I’m still here, through it all.
Here’s a poem, hope you dig it:
A dry fridge
I have a dry fridge,
it complains a lot about lack
of things inside it and yet
what can I do/ I’m just one guy
barraged by books that he will
never pick up again, let alone remember/
instead of “in one ear, out the other” it’s
in front of my eyes, but no brain-space for it,
memory refusing to make itself work
as if in a protest performance piece, the brain and the heart and the
gut knowing better than to retain
anything/
There’s a bottle of ketchup
which will not see the light of day
and a packet of soy sauce in a drawer
which will go unnoticed until many ages past
when the muck of Florida rises up
and swarms around us/ There’s an empty egg carton
waiting around to be thrown out but will have to wait longer,
and a bag of broccoli that shrinks everyday. These are the things
that occupy a dry fridge, a fridge on the mend, in a rehab siutation
bereft of enticements and temptations of splendor, wonder, excitement,
danger, promises, a new adventure, a new hangover, a new high, a new
bad trip, a new anything. It’s just as sober as anyone or anything else.
It’s just as sad.
In need of some new reading to spur your mind? Here is a great list of FREE BOOKS in PDF form to educate oneself on race, gender, sexuality, class, and culture! Please feel free to share this with …
Source: …Free Books on race, gender, sexuality, and class that are bound to get you woke!
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Fiction by Monica Lewis
READY
Lauren is standing at her closet, naked, all skinny white legs and arms.
“You have too much shit,” I say.
She laughs, pointing to the floor. “Half is yours.”
A hot-pink tube top we stole last year covers part of an old Rolling Stone. Just the other day we’d walked out of Sawgrass Mills with almost a grand in tanks and panties—all those tiny, stretchy, stringy things she loved—layered over our bras, one in every color. When counting the price tags back here, we laughed at the losers who’d pay for what we took straight out of the dressing rooms. Most everything stayed tagged and rumpled on her floor; she was always losing interest, eyeing some new piece on a fashion blog, and I couldn’t take any of it home ’cause my mom had an eye for things we could no longer afford. Lauren called it the five-finger discount. “Another…
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This list focuses on poetry submissions, but most lit mags accept prose and art as well. The listings are in order of closest deadlines and have no submission fees. The two paying markets are indicated in the title.
Amethyst Arsenic (paying!)
DEADLINE: 8/15/2015
SUBMISSION FEE: NONE
NOTES: “Amethyst Arsenic is a paying online publisher of poetry, art, and music founded in 2011. The journal was mentioned as “One of five awesome new literary magazines” in 2011 by Yahoo Voices.”
FORMS: Poetry
PAYMENT: We pay $5 per accepted poem. Additionally, our featured artist will receive $25. Issue is limited to 10 poets.
DUOTROPE: https://duotrope.com/listing/6056
Flare (print issue)
DEADLINE: 8/15/2015
SUBMISSION FEE: NONE
NOTES: “FLARE is a literary journal published by students of Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida. FLARE seeks to publish both up-and-coming and established writers.”
FORMS: Fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, screenplays, and plays
PAYMENT: None
DUOTROPE: https://duotrope.com/listing/7665
View original post 654 more words
7 years and 10 movies later, the first Iron Man still remains one of the best Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. Also simply one of the best superhero origin movies ever, let’s take a look back at the first Iron Man film, the movie that started it all for the MCU.
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Drunk Moneys is an online lit mag with a unique style, dedicated to “publishing work that’s as eclectic as possible, from some of the most exciting emerging voices in the literary scene. We feature several short stories, flash fiction stories, and poems a week. We also publish essays that humanize current events, focusing on the personal cost of the events that shape our world.”
You can read more on their about page, which is not to be missed!
For more info on how to submit your work to literary magazine and journals, read my Submission Tips here.
If you like this post, please share with your writerly friends and/or follow my blog or like my Facebook page.
Drunk Monkeys submission guidelines
DEADLINE: Rolling
SUBMISSION FEE: None
FORMS: Poetry, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Essays/Creative Non-Fiction, and Art
PAYMENT: None
DUOTROPE: https://duotrope.com/listing/7124 (includes interview with the editors)
Ismael Santos, "The Wolf of Little Havana" 