Happy ♥ Day!

The next issue of Blood Orange Review will be coming out at the end of the month. In the meantime, please enjoy this Valentine from poet Sean Patrick Hill, who will appear in the forthcoming issue. (Sign up here to be first in line to get an email when the new issue is available.)

Love Terns
to Erynn

There is no love like theirs.
They couple, I’m told,
for life.

They build no nest
but balance eggs in palms,
on fronds and bare branches.

When trade winds come
roaring off the ocean,
there is no greater exposure,

and terns have no choice,
either they know
or hope

the branch will hold.
I can’t pretend to know
on what such brooding turns.

Theirs is the deepest love.
They must prevail.
The wind will never end.



About the poet: Sean Patrick Hill is a freelance writer in Portland, Oregon. He earned his MA in Writing from Portland State University, where he won the Burnham Graduate Award. He received a grant from Regional Arts and Culture Council and residencies from Montana Artists Refuge, Fishtrap, and the Oregon State University Trillium Project. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Exquisite Corpse, elimae, diode, In Posse Review, Willow Springs, RealPoetik, New York Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Juked, Sawbuck, Redactions, and Quarter After Eight. He also is a blogger for Fringe Magazine. His blog site is theimaginedfield.blogspot.com.

About the poem: "Long story short: I wrote the poem after watching the same PBS special about the Seychelle Islands and the "Love Terns" there over the course of a few years. Spent seven hours or so writing the poem for my wife. A friend told me to enter it in this "Love Letter" contest held by the millionaire Henry Zimand in honor of his wife, Anda, who died fairly young of cancer. I was a finalist, and Henry flew Erynn and I to NYC on Valentine's Day, put us up in a Central Park Hotel, and gave us $500. This was during the nor'easter that dumped 27 inches of snow in one night. We met the actress Jane Seymour who stood next to me and read my poem on television (apparently, national). Then we got a carriage ride through Central Park. Not only that, but we realized we were the grand prize winners, and thus Henry flew my wife and I to Europe and put us up for 5 nights in Monte Carlo, on a hotel on the Mediterranean, plus $1000. We asked if he could fly us into London and out of Madrid, and hence we had our honeymoon. We still have quite a time considering our luck."

Table 728 in Chicago

Come visit the Blood Orange Review table at AWP in Chicago, February 11 - 14. All the editors will be there.

Stop by and say "hi" and pick up our snazzy new postcards to send to a friend. The new issue will be out by the end of the month, so keep your eyes peeled!