Tragedy in the Arugula Aisle

Biography
Charlie Brice is a retired psychoanalyst living with his wife, the poet Judy Brice, in Pittsburgh, PA. Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His sixth full-length poetry collection is Miracles That Keep Me Going (WordTech Editions, 2023). His poetry has been nominated three times for the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, Salamander Ink Magazine, The MacGuffin (forthcoming), and elsewhere.

Charles Brice is a poet of wit and weight, love and defiance. Beneath the jokes and banter is the shadow of family tragedy. His father's alcoholism and his mother's anger wounded him as a child, and humor is a way of lightening the burden of guilt while healing occurs through awareness of the random beauty of the world. In one poem "Love", the poet evokes both the steamy aroma of a street pretzel in New York City in the '80s as well as a little boy's cleats on a soccer field. Through the power of noticing, Brice finds both his subject and his voice. Kayaking in the far north, he writes Kindness floats in this desolate place of white/and blue ice.
-Michael Simms, author of Strange Meadowlark