If you're in or around Hamilton, New Jersey

Grounds for Sculpture is an enchantment. Go through an arbor and find yet another startling contemporary sculture. The garden itself is lush and don't forget to eat at Rats. Yes, Rats, one of the most romantic restaurant I've ever been to.

http://www.groundsforsculpture.org/

Motivation to Send Out Your Work!!!

So, you send out your work, get it back published in a magazine, an anthology, possibly without pay. Is that the end of that? Never!!! Once your work is published, any good thing can happen with it at any time. I just got a Facebook request from an editor for permission to use my poem, Friends for Life, that had been published in an anthology at least five years ago, in a dramatic reading. The editor's last dramatic reading (the subject is a friend's bout with cancer) raised $1500 for cancer research. Who knows what this reading will raise? For all kinds of reasons, get your work out there.
Here's my poem that an actor will read for the fundraiser:

Friends for Life


You’re 34, a year younger than the age your doctor believed
a woman should be tested.
Like malicious gossip, the cancer spread
from your breast to your lymph nodes.
Instead of 2 pert breasts, your chest now sports a mediport
to pump chemo in. Every 4 weeks for 6 more months,
you’ll be filled like your SUV at Amoco.

Listless, cake-lipped, nauseated, you lie in bed,
resting for hours to have the strength to read
a few pages of Harry Potter to your daughters—5 and 7.
The oldest hears the scream beneath your soft voice,
pulls herself back as if she’s happened upon a wicked sorcerer.
Her friend’s mother died last year even though the “C” word
was never said in her house either.

The doorbell. A flood of friends and neighbors
bringing self-help tapes, macrobiotic cookbooks,
the names of shamans and Rolphers, a brochure from a healing spa
in Romania, a gift certificate for you to fax your prayers
to the Wailing Wall, a subscription to Prevention.
I see your eyes blaze.

After you make your excuses,
we go back to your room.
“It’s always the healthy,” you say,
“who are expert at getting well.”

The phone rings. It’s your husband.
“He’s staying late at the office again,” you tell me
as you have each night since you’ve been home.

I lie in your bed beside you, running my hand over your scalp.
You look naked without your long blonde hair.
What can I do? What can I do?
I get up and make you soup.
I run the water for your children’s’ bath.

(P.S. Lisa survived and her fifth year checkup turned out fine!)

Call for Submissions

Deadline:
8/1/2010
Submit to:
Ohio Childhood Poems. Send via DOC attachment AND pasted-in text. Email Address
Theme:
Ohio Childhood Poems. MUST HAVE spent at least five years of your childhood in Ohio.
Type:
Poetry (4 poems MAX)
URL:
Ohio Childhood Poems

Deadline:
8/1/2010
Submit to:
Pockets. Lynn W. Gilliam, Editor. PO Box 340004, Nashville, TN 37203-0004
Theme:
Jealousy. MUST BE appropriate for 8- to 12-year-old Christians.
Type:
Poetry (20 lines MAX), short stories (1,000 words MAX), and essays (1,000 words MAX)
URL:
Pockets

Deadline:
8/1/2010
Submit to:
Rattle. Send via email attachment (1 file) or pasted-in text. Email Address
Theme:
Mental Health Professionals
Type:
Poetry and essays (5,000 words MAX)
URL:
Rattle

Deadline:
8/1/2010
Submit to:
The First Line. Send via MS Word or WordPerfect attachment. Email Address
Theme:
Every story starts out the same: Three thousand habitable planets in the known universe, and I'm stuck on the only one without ______________. [Fill in the blank.]
Type:
Short stories (3,000 words MAX)
URL:
The First Line

Deadline:
8/6/2010
Submit to:
Creative Nonfiction, Attn: Immortality, 5501 Walnut Street, Suite 202, Pittsburgh, PA 15232
Theme:
Immortality
Type:
Essay (5,000 words MAX)
URL:
Immortality


Deadline:
1/31/2011
Submit to:
Dream of Things. Submission Link
Theme:
Various topics based on one of 15 themes. See http://dreamofthings.com/workshop-2 for more details.
Type:
Personal essays (500-5,000 words MAX)
URL:
Dream of Things

Deadline:
1/31/2011
Submit to:
Hunger Mountain, Vermont College of Fine Arts, 36 College Street, Montpelier, VT 05602
Theme:
Responses to stage and screen
Type:
Manuscripts (10,000 words MAX) or a video submission
URL:
Hunger Mountain

Deadline:
3/1/2011
Submit to:
Slipstream, Dept. W-1, Box 2071, Niagara Falls, NY 14301.
Theme:
Sex-Food-Death
Type:
Poetry
URL:
Slipstream