Read some of Lana's Words Online

Poems

"Self Portrait with Sieve and Colander" (The Dolomite Review)
"chocolate truffles–..." (Haikuniverse)
"We Know Most When We Feel Everything" (Gnashing Teeth Publishing)
"Save the Stars for Later", "Naming My Daughter", and "A Van Gogh Synesthesia" (Anti-Heroine Chic)
"If the Mind Is Not the Brain" (Quill & Parchment)
"A Hole in the Night" (Exterminating Angel Press)
"The Baying" (Borderless Journal)
"What My Heart Wants" (Journal of Expressive Writing)
"As I Keep These Long Hours Alone" (Braided Way)
"Starlight Sonata" (Amethyst Review)
"Two Little Jews on Christmas Morning 1971 with" from the forthcoming chapbook Sky Over (The Bluebird Word)
"Free from Want" (One Art)
"Last Day in Blue December" (Qulll & Parchment)
"Songs of Christmans Lights and Night Sky" (Qulll & Parchment)
"Prayer Is a Painted Lavender Field" (American Literary Review)
"The Crow Asks" (bramble, poem is on page 7)
"Keepsakes" (Stone Circle Review)
"Prayer for the Future Now" (Telefphone Arts Game)
"I Try to Imagine What Deborah DeWit Might Paint Next" (Qulll & Parchment)
"A Hero's Funeral, the Sun'" (Qulll & Parchment)
"Aphorisms" and "Hope Will Arrive as Rain" (The Inflectionist Review)
"As Easily as Water" (Humana obscura, page 84)
"Wildly Alive" (Journal of Expressive Writing)
"Gaze" (Painted Pebble Lit)
"Still Life with Yesterday" (The Big Windows Review)
"Nineteen Things No One Knows About Me (and One They Do)", "Wonder", "became sand   became ocean   became sky", "Of the Many Things I Was Taught Not to Do", "Things You Will Only Learn About Me When It’s Too Late" (The Sundress Blog)
"Nocturne for the Dead", "Heaven on Earth, Kinda", and "Leave a Message" (The Raven's Perch)
"On the Bench by The River" (Exterminating Angel Press)
"Yaquina River" and "My Brother’s Final Seasons" (Bracken)
"No Small Thing" (The Bluebird Word)
"Need to Know", "For Rainy Day, My Greyhound", and "To the Art Teacher" (Sher Poetry; audio)
"Hunger's End" (Maya C. Popa’s Poems for Your Weekend)
"Still Life with Sorrow" (Eclectica Magazine)
"Gaze" (Little Free Lit Mag)
"Rainbow Sky Over Your Headstone", "Eagle Has Landed & Risen &", and "Lucky in Love?" (MacQueen’s Quinterly)
"Let Ruin End Here" (Pensive)
"Go With the Flow" (The Thimble Literary Magazine)
"Believe You Me" (Wildscape. Literary Journal)
"My Last Word" (Exterminating Angel Press)
"Howe Farm Dog Park, December" (Verse Daily)
"Memory Is the Rain that Soothes the Scorched Earth," "Anyway," and "Ionic, Soluble, Vital to Life" (Anti-Heroin Chic)
"What I Left Behind" (Exterminating Angel Press)
"To the Art Teacher" (Autumn Sky Poetry Daily)
"Finale" (Panoply)
"Dear Dead Silvia in Cat Heaven" and "To My Seven Sisters in the Night Sky" (The Raven's Perch)
"The Big Dipper" (The Bluebird Word)
"Dear Man Who Mugged My Grandmother" and "Forgetting Needs No Forgiveness" (Sparks of Calliope)
"What Are You Anyway?" (Gyroscope Review; originaly in SWING)
"Tonight" (Poetry Super Highway, Holocaust Rememberance Day)
"Imagine" (Quill & Parchment)
"When Baking Angel Food Cake" (Poetry Breakfast)
"dead butterfly ..." (One Art 2024 Haiku Anthology, edited by Katie Dozier)
"Caught as I Am in Time" (Poetry Breakfast)
"Artist Studio, Condemned" (Autumn Sky Poetry Daily)
"A Few Things I Learned This Week" (Verse Daily)
"I Trade in My 23-Year-Old Car for Another 23-Year-Old Car" (3rd Wednesday)
"This Is Hard for Me" (Autumn Sky Poetry Daily)
also featured on Turning Towards Life (Ep 328)
"On the Nature of Grief" (Quartet)
"A Dream of Matzoh Ball Soup" (ONE ART)
"Priorities" (Verse Daily)
"Flood" (Verse Daily)
"When You Say You're from New York City" (Rattle)
"What a New Refridgerator Once Meant" (Exterminating Angel Press)
"Things You Will Learn About Me After It's Too Late" (GAS: Poetry, Art and Music)
"House Hunting" (The Bluebird Word)
"Psalm" (RockPaperPoem)
"Abyss After Tea" and "Reunion" (Sheila-Na-Gig online)
"Kamala" (The New Verse News)
"Another Coronavirus Spring" and "Chlorophylled" (Global Poemic)
"Window in Late January" (Dodging the Rain)
"My River Runs" (River Mouth Review)
"What the Sheltering Do" (Journal of Expressive Writing)
"Wonder", "Caught as I Am in Time", "How Not to Apologize", "Love is the Key to a Luscious Apple Pie", and "In the Distance People Are Making Even More Distance" (Snake Nation Review)
"Thunder" (Mindful Poetry Moments, Vol. 2)
"I Knew" (North Coast Squid)
"Pyramids" (Kerning)
"How This Poet Thinks" and "broken umbrella" (Fireweed: Poetry of Oregon)
"Twenty Twenty" (Rattle; with audio)
"Physics is Silent" (Verse-Virtual)
"Light Always Remembers" (Ligeia Magazine)
"Dusk", "Every Hour", and "The Joy of Words" (Buddhist Poetry Review)
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at the White Moth at My Window" (Split Rock Review)
"Grief Rhymes with Yellow" (The Disappointed Housewife)
Lana reading "To all the Website Developers..." (The Poeming Pigeon, Pop Culture Issue)
Release (River Mouth Review)
"The Dead Boy Is Diagnosed," "The Dead Boy Teaches Me About Godzilla," "The Dead Boy Babysits," "The Dead Boy Shrinks," The Dead Boy Saves Lives, and "A Mitzvah for the Dead Boy" (Escape Into Life)
A Mother’s Day Gift for the Dead Boy (Escape Into Life)
2017 Best of the Net nomination from Escape Into Life
The Dead Boy as Artist (Escape Into Life, Dog Days Feature)
Excerpt from "Manhattan Island" (Verse Daily)
In My Dreams I Draw Circles But None of Their Edges Touch (Artsmith)
Red Riding Hood’s Real First Encounter With the Wolf, What the Wolf Whispered to Red During Their First Encounter, and Red Riding Hood and the Wolf Discuss Rothko (Moonday Poetry)
Someone Said We Always Want What We Can’t Have (wookzickwrites)
The Dead Boy Visits the Hayden Planetarium (The Poet's Cafe)
Alice’s Blind Date With Frankenstein’s Monster (Eye to the Telescope)
Burnt Norton, parts I-V Pages 16-22. (The Centrifugal Eye)
The Toe (The Far Field / Washington State Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken's Blog)
Baba Yaga Gives Red Riding Hood an Earful (Pomeleon)
Whisper, He's Driving (Town Creek Poetry)
Volume (Qarrtsiluni)
Of This Yellow (DMQ Review)
While the Bathtub is Filling (In Posse Review)
Cast (Boxcar Review)
At Five in My Bedroom (Red River Review)
Let Morning Come (Your Daily Poem)

Short Fiction

Barista Bob (Adelaide Magazine)

Short Non-Fiction

I Don't Remember His Name (Brightflash1000)
Busy Breasts (Linden Avenue Literary Journal)

Awards

2023 Pushcart Nomination for "The Rule of Dew & Tiny Parachutes" from When All Else Fails (Poetry Box)
2020 Pushcart Nomination for "Not The End Of Poetry" in Alternative Field's In Isolation: an anthology.

Videos

A Max Bennett Hechtman (Lana's nephew) production incorporating the poem "To the Art Teacher" with music and images.
Lana reading "Progressive Lenses" from Passager (at 21m 30s)

Podcasts

"New Progressive Lenses" (Passager, Shakespeare’s Birthday Celebration)
Lana Hechtman Ayers Chats with Julie Murphy (Hive Poetry Collective)

Interviews

A Conversation with Lana Ayers (part 1) on C. W. Emerson's The Older American Poet.
Article on Lana and When All Else Fails in the Newport News Times.
Lois P. Jones' Radio Interview with Lana on KPFK's Poets Cafe
Interview by Michael Dylan Welch
Jack Straw interview and reading (audio only)

Reviews

Read a review of Overtures by The Bookmonger, Barbara Lloyd McMichael, in Coast Weekend.
Genevieve Jenner's review of When All Else Fails.
A review of Overtures by Risa Denenberg in River Mouth Review.
Michael Magee's review of Overtures in Raven Chronicles Press.
Sherry Chandler's review of A New Red.
Sima Rabinowitz's review of A New Red.
Red Riding Hood's Real Life was featured in an article about contemporary novels in verse on The Mary Sue.

Reviews by Lana

Review of I Remember Not Sleeping by Sherri Levine (Raven Chronicles)

Inspired by Lana

Judy Kronenfeld wrote Ten Minutes (The Foundling Review) after hearing Lana read The Toe