Luanne Castle
Fiction
With her cape billowed against the clouds,
courtesy of the breeze's cartoon cheeks,
Little Red flew over the neighborhood,
the small houses and narrow asphalt streets,
over the empty lots behind and the woods
beyond the weedy flat land and just when
she'd been out of sight for the longest time
she circled back on her community
in the direction of the school and church
and the store that sold golden books telling
fantastic stories about the events of her life.
She never listened to the tales about her,
choosing to remain buoyant and open.
Bio
Luanne Castle's Kin Types (Finishing Line Press), a chapbook of poetry and flash nonfiction, was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award. Her first collection of poetry, Doll God, winner of the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, was published by Aldrich Press. Luanne has been a Fellow at the Center for Ideas and Society at the University of California, Riverside. She studied English and Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside (PhD); Western Michigan University (MFA); and Stanford University. Her Pushcart and Best of the Net-nominated poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, TAB, American Journal of Poetry, Verse Daily, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Lunch Ticket, River Teeth, The Review Review, Broad Street, and other journals. An avid blogger, she can be found at luannecastle.com. She divides her time between California and Arizona, where she shares land with a herd of javelina.