 Arlington Literary Journal an ejournal also known as ArLiJo, is located in Arlington, Virginia and is sponsored by Gival Press. The intent of ArLiJo is to feature a variety of authors/poets/artists from around the globe whose work provokes readers to contemplate issues, etc. The work chosen promotes understanding and sensitivity across borders, even if initially the work may cause one to take a double-take. Staff: Editor-in-Chief, Robert L. Giron Associate Editor, Sarah Fannon ArLiJo has reverted to a publication by invitation only. Any work published shall remain the property of the author/poet/artist and for any previously published work to appear the author/poet/artist must still retain the copyright of the work. Please note that ArLiJo is an ejournal. Payment for publication is a book from a selection of books published by Gival Press. |
Featured on ArLiJo Easter Suits Each Easter I received a Sears suit: The shoulders fit smug; the arms reached the base of my thumb, revealing an half inch of shirt cuff — as a gentlemen’s should, but the jacket waist ballooned. The bow tie clip-on bit into my neck. Excess pant waist was tucked under double-looped belt; and cuffed hems piled around ankles. But if I puffed out my stomach and distributed my weight on both feet, the suit would fit right, causing big-boned church women to wrench my cheeks. Seeing them coming, I’d hide between dad’s legs, peeking out. Copyright © 2010 by James Bland. Porch After a swelling Sunday dinner, relatives would wade out onto the porch. Some sitting on foldout chairs, charitied to us by the Baptist church. Others squatting on porch steps after a brusque hand-sweep. Bossy uncle Edward and big-boned aunt Betty always swayed in the hammocks that draped the porch corners. No one talked much, but watched the neighbor-kids peddle their Big Wheels up and down black tops; or run in and out automatic sprinklers, timed to go off at nightfall. Always plaited girls sprung up and down, playing double-dutch, their sing-song, somehow more clarion during the descent of dark. Copyright © 2010 by James Bland. Clothesline After washing clothes in the Maytag, dad would haul them to the backyard in a green laundry basket, cooked on one side because I once left it too close to the heater. He’d lurch forward like a robot, the knitted sack that contained the wooden clothespins baby-birded in the nook between chin and clavicle. Unable to do it herself, grandma would eyeball him from her bedroom window: “Clothespin them at the seams. If you spread them out, they’ll dry faster …” Glimpses — in his frustration, when she corrected him; in his pride, when she was content — of the boy he once was. Copyright © 2010 by James Bland. Biography: James Bland earned an MFA in Poetry from Cornell University and a PhD in English and American Literature from Harvard University. He has received a collegiate Academy of American Poet 's Prize, a Bread Loaf Writer's Workshop Scholarship, a Saratoga Springs Writer's Fellowship, a Key West Writer's Fellowship, and has been awarded two MacDowell Colony residencies. His work has or will appear in Callaloo, Agni Magazine, Columbia Magazine, Key West Review, Muleteeth, The Windless Orchard, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares Literary Journal, Standing on the Verge, South Carolina Review, Blue Moon Review, Antioch Review, and Potomac Review. |
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