A Poet Soars from Stage to Page

The Bones Below
by Sierra DeMulder
Available from Write Bloody Publishing
$12

Today is your birthday.
I wish you would answer my calls
so I could tell you how much
I wish you were never born
miss you.¹

There’s something to be said for conflict, for indecision. There’s a purity in contradiction. What readers look for, in literature, is a general dichotomy between two coexistant states—something that appears unresolvable at first glance and—if the work is particularly powerful—is still unresolved at the book’s conclusion. When National Poetry Slam and Individual World Poetry Slam champion Mike McGee called Sierra DeMulder’s writing “a bastion of youthful wisdom and vigorous, tempestuous confessions,” he hit the mark so squarely that it’s almost startling to read DeMulder’s poems and see this process in action. The Bones Below, published in January of 2010, is exemplary of one of literature’s oldest and most beloved tricks: a complete reconstruction of the two halves of each human heart trying to destroy one another.

MCB would like to make a confession.

The Fruits of Tentacular Talent

Paper Darts, vol. 3:
A Magazine of Lit + Art
Available at Mager’s and Quinn Booksellers or direct from paperdarts.org
$12.00

If any given Minneapolitan were to encounter the startlingly beautiful three headed octopus that edits and produces the literary arts magazine Paper Darts, he or she would feel compelled to ask said octopus how it could possibly put those three heads together to produce a work of art so cohesive in its vision-—so exact-—that it feels made by the hand of one meticulous and brilliant artist. Yet even without waiting for an answer, paging through the magazine again makes this Minneapolitan realize just how refreshing three heads can be. With its differing backgrounds, tastes, and talents-—with a reach so astonishingly tentacular—-the three headed octopus succeeds where an individual artist, however fastidious, cannot. Paper Darts bears no signature, no ego, and no associated neuroses. As a magazine for arts and literature, its primary function is to showcase the work of others, and while a work of art in itself¹, it never fails to step aside and let its contributors speak for themselves.

Mill City Bibliophile would like to take a moment to discuss the zine as a generalized concept.