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Lisa Ortiz
The Drawer Marked Meats
A bedtime story about Bluebeard
all the wives on meat hooks
then wake up
and the house is dark.
Fear
is a gift from mother-
the way she grabbed
our collar bones, said:
get inside. We had the house
to ourselves, kept our eyes
glued to the television set.
Our hearts
we put in the ice box
not like psychopaths but like poets
to preserve the crimson imagery
the slender metaphor
of love and its chambers.
In the middle of the night
we open the door, and the light goes on
when we're so hungry
and the cold red beating
is all there is to eat.
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Poems and translations by Lisa Allen Ortiz have appeared in Best New Poets 2013, Beloit Poetry Journal and Duende. She's the author of two chapbooks: Turns Out and Self Portrait as a Clock. Honestly, in her refrigerator she mostly just has vegetables, almond milk and some leftover quinoa salad.
"The Drawer Marked Meats" was originally published in Refrigerator Mothers (TLR Fall 2010). Look for new work from Ortiz in the next issue of TLR!
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NEW ISSUE
Featuring Michael Homolka, Scott Marengo, Rowan Riccardo Phillips, Kimberly Ann Southwick, Anjali Sachdeva, endangered birds, & others.
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With our best wishes,
Minna Proctor
Editor, The Literary Review
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The MFA in Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University
The low-residency MFA at FDU offers internship opportunities at TLR, as well as Graduate Assistantships and awards. Residencies in New Jersey and Oxfordshire, England. Offering concentrations in Poetry, Fiction, Creative NonFiction, Literary Translation, and Literature for Young Adults. Now also offering and three-year dual concentration MFA.
Still accepting applications for 2015. Learn more here
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About The Literary Review
The Literary Review is an international journal of contemporary writing that has been published quarterly since 1957 by Fairleigh Dickinson University.
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