MiPOesias: The Oldest Profession

The summer 2008 edition of MiPOesias is now available for purchase or you can download the PDF version for free. Guest-edited by the fab Jenni Russell, this edition features poetry about, you guessed it, sex work. The issue features poetry and short stories by Geer Austin, Brian Campbell, Janann Dawkins, Gregory Donovan, Collin Kelley, Cindy Kelly, Alan King, Ellen Kombiyil, Christopher Luna, Montgomery Maxton, Erika Mikkalo, Taye Neese, David Petruzelli, J.D. Smith and Franz Wright.

Sex work, as Jenni notes in her opening letter, are two of the most loaded words in our culture. I have good friends who used to be either strippers or prostitutes -- I even dated a few. One of my best friends worked a phone sex line to make money during college. And since I deal in confessional poetry, you might find out something surprising about me in one of the four poems featured in this issue. 

Jenni also writes...

"...for this issue I chose pieces that went deeper than opinion -- writing that questioned the meaning of the phrase 'sex work' itself. And in the end, that general category 'sex work' is exploded and challenged by the writers refusal to reduce a human life to theories and catchphrases, and instead capture the universal experience shared by all of us: love, growing up, honesty, rejection, curiosity, vulnerability, compassion, doubt, desire, loneliness and beauty."

P.S. Jenni just posted that The Village Voice gave the new MiPO a shout out on its Naked City blog. How appropriate. Here's the link.