Hard to believe it’s already the end of summer, but fall is ushering in some exciting new beginnings, including the new issue of Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine, featuring *two* new poems by me! The issue is live and you can purchase a copy directly from the Door = Jar website.
I am so grateful to the editors of Door Is A Jar for including my work in their (sadly) final issue, and truly honored to have my poems featured alongside so many talented and passionate writers and artists. Supporting independent publishers and creators has never been more important. Order your copy today and be sure to check out my poems “Percy Shelley’s Unburnable Heart” and “When You Know It’s Time to Leave”.
Some secret background trivia for the new poems, as a special treat for reading this far…
“Percy Shelley’s Unburnable Heart” is largely based on true events – with a bit of fantasy thrown in at the end. After Percy Shelley drowned while sailing in Italy, his body was indeed burned in a lakeside funeral pyre. However, due to a previous tubercular infection, Shelley’s heart calcified in the fire and did not burn. The heart (now basically a stone) was eventually given to his widow – the inventor of sci-fi and patron saint of goths, Mary Shelley – who wrapped it in a parchment copy of Shelley’s poem Adonis, and locked it up in her writing desk. Her family only found it after her death.
I started writing “When You Know It’s Time to Leave” as part of a series of travel-related poems I’m currently working on. I love traveling, but there are times when a journey should end before it physically does. There’s also this wonderful melancholy of losing yourself somewhere new and then finding yourself again with mixed results, which is a sentiment I tried to capture a bit of in this piece. Being a stranger in a strange place is something everyone should experience once in a while, but it’s equally important to recognize when it’s time to cut and run.
Happy reading.
Allison Goldstein 