Category: Featured

Publishing Party 2021

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Join us for our virtual Publishing Party on Thursday, May 6, at 7:00 p.m. to celebrate the release of Volume 6 of The Alcalá Review. The event will feature selections from the journal read by contributors, as well as a special reading from USD professor and fiction writer Dr Halina Duraj. Copies of Volume 6 will be available for sale online here during the event.

All are welcome to attend. The Zoom information is below:

Topic: 2021 Publishing Party
Time: May 6, 2021 07:00 PM Pacific Time

https://sandiego.zoom.us/j/98535858889

Meeting ID: 985 3585 8889

Untitled

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by Olivia Sutton

How soft and silent slush n’ sleet blanket,
How life breathes warmth to thaw all frozen hearts;
How fierce she scorches — redens her ambit,
How yielding are rustlings, how the wind smarts.
She pleaseth our dreams with wondrous white,
Her viridescent ladies heaven bound;
She blesses crashing waves and bright daylight,
Her fragile feuilles as fire scattered around.
Lately, m’lady has been betrayed by man.
Her salty tears flooding her cheeky shores,
As her hair’s a-flare, her dry skin crackan’,
And her children distract themselves with wars.
Act not, stand not, see nought, ignore, and soon,
Thou shall not dare deny destined doom.

Olivia Sutton is a second-year student at USD. She is double-majoring in English and French. She is passionate about both poetry and prose, and she is an aspiring poet, author, and English professor. She is currently the Prose Editor of the Alcalá Review.

Burial

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by Olivia Hunt

A masked nurse prods a six-
inch swab up,
up my nasal cavity. I try to focus
on her elbow, it’s still—
then moves in measured,
tiny circles, tickling
loosening, I’m sure,
some brain matter. 
Then my mind goes
to the summer rental—
I lie back, watching
the endless scroll of clouds and seabirds,
my six-year-old brother
packs sand into my ankles. 
Are you turning me into a mermaid? 
He lets out a long sigh, No.
It’s a sarcophagus. 
As the sun sets, my throat cracks
like clay. My chest sinks
lower
and lower
into the shore. My nurse wears
the mask of Anubis
now, she draws out her hook—
the last thing I tasted
was salt.

Olivia Hunt is an English and French major at the University of San Diego. This piece was submitted for the Alcalá Review’s Fall 2020 Semester Staff-Produced Original Content. She is the Poetry Editor of the Alcalá Review.

Spring 2020 Preview

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Due to the extraordinary circumstances surrounding COVID-19, the Alcalá Review has elected to delay the publication of Volume 5, Issue 2, until the coming fall.

In the meantime, we are pleased to offer the following preview material, which includes a downloadable sample of the forthcoming print edition and a selection of poems read by AR contributors and staff members Davontae Reed and McKenna Christian.

The Alcalá Review, Vol. 5, Iss. 2, PreviewDownload

Montezuma Road: Friday Evening

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by J. Sean Rafferty

For Patrick Kavanagh

The cop cars go by in twos and threes –
There’s a rave in Danny Dyer’s flat tonight 
And there’s the half-emoji texts of delinquency,
the coarse, yank language, the drunken fights.
Half-past ten and there is not a parking spot
Upon a mile of suburb, no party thrown
That would turn out a sorority girl, not
A frat boy toking, blazing or stoned.

I have what every Irishman loves in spite
Of all the bitter talk of objectification.
Oh, god knows I have the right
To be the stereotype of a nation.
A road, a mile of suburb. I am King
Of shots and cheer and every blessed thing.

J. Sean Rafferty is a redhead, a godfather and an eejit. He is an MA English Lit student at Ulster University and was a finalist in the 2018 Ulster Poetry Slam. His work has previously been published in Gravitas and The Paperclip. When not losing games of pool he, sometimes, writes stuff.