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Past EditorsIssue # 41 Fall 2019
Editors for this Issue:
Dorian Gossy
Roger Mitchell
Table of Contents
(Click on title of the piece to go directly to it.)
Poetry
Lisa Bellamy
Who’s to Say?
Where Were You Born?
Tony Beyer
Contact Proof
Sehnsucht
Hamilton Gardens
Tegan Blackwood
Vocational Rehabilitation
Buoyancy
Something You Should Know
R.T. Castleberry
I Tell You There is a Fire
Talking to an Empty Room
Clarifying Salvation
Tropics
Joan Colby
That Summer in Oz
Barbara Daniels
Monkey Ball
Did I Kiss You?
Mary Lucille DeBerry
His Declaration of Intent: I Try to Stay Away
William Doreski
Glacial Erratics in Belmont
The Grace of the Garden Cemetery
Susan Firer
A Misbelief of Painters
On Kinnickkinnic Avenue
The Rusk Epiphany
Philip Fried
A Favorite Indoor Sport
A Graveyard of Past Futures
A Singular Sect
An Issue For Further Research
An Age of Diplomacy
David Galloway
Small Talk
electro-magnetic pulse
Christien Gholson
two sections from “The Place of Stones”
Nels Hanson
San Joaquin
Telstar
Richard Jones
Scotland, 1974
I Would Sleep on the Roof
Oil For My Lamp
Dan Kelty
Killdeer
Muse
Claire Keyes
Sniffing His Hat
Susanna Lang
Afternoon at Humboldt Park
Charlene Langfur
The Sun is Up Over the Mountain
A Time of Wild Beauty
Michael Lauchlan
Say Something
Route
Peter Leight
The Return Trip Lasts Longer Than Anything Else
Paul Many
City Windows
Moon Shoes
Toti O’Brien
Dancers
Agony
Claire Scott
The Sound of Life
Hilary Sideris
Reflections on Smooth Metal
Screwworms
My Machine
Annette Sisson
In Pursuit of Starlight
A Honeyed Sorrow
The Color of Light
Young Smith
My Neighbor in a Storm
Tell Him It’s Lorraine
Three Nights after Stopping the Zoloft
J.R. Solonche
The Lady of the News
Michael Spring
I leave behind the fool I’ve become
drift line
D.E. Steward
Big Cabin Testament
Tim Suermondt
Third Street and Middlesex
Kowloon, Hong Kong
Van Gogh Wakes Up
Rodney Torreson
The Man Who Delivered Flowers Along Leonard Street
Reagan Upshaw
Mottes
Carnivore
Erin Wilson
Thinking While Driving, Northern Ontario, November
From Teshigahara’s Desert the Ocean Flows to Fill a Bucket
Ingress
Mediation Beside an Unkempt Lot
Four White Calves Trot Out Onto the Field
Mike Wilson
Ancestor Worship
Howard Winn
April Fool
Wheels
Mark Young
how / much can / a grizzly bear
turpentine
since violence is learned
Prose
Rebecca Moody
Lightening
William Orem
Cemetery Dancing
Kevin Baggett
When the Dead Came Back
Ryan Kelley
Water Flower
Esther Yin-Ling Spodek
Courting Holy Water in a Dry House
Peter J. Stavros
Tattoo
Contributors' Notes
Kevin Baggett has published or forthcoming fiction in the Running Wild Press Novella Anthology Volume II and in Valley Voices: A Literary Review. He has attended Breadloaf and Squaw Valley Writers’ conferences. A native of the Mississippi Coast, he now works and teaches at Concordia College in Minnesota.
Lisa Bellamy is a poet, short-prose writer and Writers Studio teacher. Her poetry collection, The Northway, was published in 2018 by Terrapin Books. She is author of the chapbook Nectar, which won The Aurorean 2011 chapbook contest, and she has received a Pushcart Prize, a Pushcart Special Mention, a Fugue Poetry Prize and honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Lisa grew up in Wisconsin. She is married to the photographer Peter Bellamy and lives in Brooklyn and the Adirondacks.
Tony Beyer’s recent work has appeared in Geometry, Meniscus, Otoliths and Social Alternatives. His long poem "Sand fire" appears online at Mudlark. Two new chapbooks are forthcoming, in print from Cold Hub Press, and online at Mudlark. He operates out of Taranaki, New Zealand.
Tegan Blackwood lives in Columbia, Missouri, where she is a student of English and linguistics, with a focus on medieval languages and literature. She possesses a working knowledge of Old and Middle English, and has studied Latin and Old Icelandic. In 2014, she was awarded the University of Missouri's Peggy Ewing Prize for writing about English literature before 1900 and selected for an Undergraduate Research Mentorship. Her first poem, "The Cat and the Gnat," was published when she was five years old, and she has been writing ever since. Her work draws on her experience as a proudly Autistic single mother and survivor of violence, as well as her lifelong enthusiasm for astronomy and space exploration.
R.T. Castleberry is an internationally published poet and critic. He was a co-founder of the Flying Dutchman Writers Troupe, co-editor/publisher of the poetry magazine Curbside Review, an assistant editor for Lily Poetry Review and Ardent. His work has appeared in The Alembic, Blue Collar Review, Misfit, Roanoke Review, Pacific Review, White Wall Review, Silk Road and Trajectory. His chapbook, Arriving At The Riverside, was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2010. An e-book, Dialogue and Appetite, was published by Right Hand Pointing in May, 2011.
Joan Colby has published in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, Gargoyle, Pinyon, Little Patuxent Review, Spillway, Midwestern Gothic and others. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She has published 22 books including Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press which received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize and Ribcage from Glass Lyre Press which has been awarded the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. Three of her poems have been featured on Verse Daily and another is among the winners of the 2016 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. Her newest books are Her Heartsongs from Presa Press and Joyriding to Nightfall from FutureCycle Press. A new chapbook Elements has just come out from Presa Press.
Colby is a senior editor of FutureCycle Press and an associate editor of Good Works Review. Website: www.joancolby.com. Facebook: Joan Colby. Twitter: poetjm.
Barbara Daniels’ book of poetry, Talk to the Lioness, will be published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Barbara’s poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, and other journals. She received three fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Mary Lucille DeBerry is a “Mountain State” native who worked many years as a producer/director for West Virginia Public Television. She has published two poetry collections: Bertha Butcher's Coat and Alice Saw the Beauty along with a chapbook: Frogs, Fog and Flourishes. Her work is found in the anthologies Wild Sweet Notes: Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry and Coal: A Poetry Anthology as well as journals including Appalachian Heritage, Appalachian Journal, Voices from the Attic, and The West Virginia Issue (No. 16, fall 2008) of The Hamilton Stone Review.
William Doreski has published three critical studies and several collections of poetry. His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in many print and online journals. He has taught writing and literature at Emerson, Goddard, Boston University, and Keene State College. His most recent book is A Black River, A Dark Fall.
Susan Firer’s sixth and most recent book, The Transit of Venus, was named as an “Outstanding Work of Poetry” by the Wisconsin Library Association's 2017 Literary Awards Committee. Her previous books have been awarded the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Prize, the Posner Award, and the Backwaters Prize. She has poems in numerous anthologies including Best American Poetry; The Cento: A collection of Collage Poems (Red Hen Press); and The Book of Irish American Poetry: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present (University of Notre Dame Press). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Chicago Review, Ms. (Magazine), Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, and others. From 2008–2010 she was Poet Laureate of the City of Milwaukee. In 2015, Firer was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry.
Philip Fried has published eight books of poetry, including Interrogating Water (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2014), Squaring the Circle (Salmon, 2017), and the forthcoming Among the Gliesians (Salmon, 2020). His poem "Yoga for Leaders and Others" was recently chosen by Carol Rumens for her anthology Smart Devices: 52 Poems from the Guardian "Poem of the Week,"due out from Carcanet in November.
David Galloway is a writer and college professor of Russian. Born and raised in Maryland, for the past twenty-five years he has lived in upstate New York. His poetry and essays have most recently appeared in Watershed Review, Comstock Review, Atlanta Review, the American Journal of Poetry, Typehouse, and The Remembered Arts Journal.
Christien Gholson is the author of two books of poetry, On the Side of the Crow (Hanging Loose Press) and All the Beautiful Dead (Bitter Oleander Press); along with a novel, A Fish Trapped Inside the Wind (Parthian Books). A long eco-catastrophe poem, Tidal Flats, was published as a chapbook from Mudlark. He lives in New Mexico. He can be found online at: http://christiengholson.blogspot.com/.
Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.
Richard Jones’s most recent book of poems is Stranger on Earth (Copper Canyon Press, 2018). Editor since 1980 of the literary journal Poetry East, he curates its many anthologies, such as Paris, The Last Believer in Words, and Bliss. In 2020 he will celebrate forty years of editing Poetry East and publish his 100th issue.
Ryan Kelleyis a writer and filmmaker from New York. His documentary Dixie premiered nationally on PBS in 2017. He is currently writing a history of blackface minstrelsy in the United States and working on a collection of short stories.
Dan Kelty is a high school Spanish teacher in St. Louis, MO where he lives with his two children. He has previously been published in Natural Bridge, Nimrod, Margie, Ravensperch among other publications.
Claire Keyes is the author of two collections of poetry: The Question of Rapture (Mayapple Press) and What Diamonds Can Do (WordTech). Professor emerita at Salem State University, she teaches in the SSU life-long learning program and lives in Marblehead, MA. where she conducts a monthly poetry salon.
Susanna Lang’s third collection of poems, Travel Notes from the River Styx, was released in 2017 from Terrapin Books. Her chapbook, Self-Portraits, is forthcoming from Blue Lyra Press in June 2020. A two-time Hambidge fellow, her poems have appeared in such publications as Little Star, Prairie Schooner, december, American Life in Poetry and Verse Daily in addition to Hamilton Stone. Her translations of poetry by Yves Bonnefoy include Words in Stone and The Origin of Language. She lives and teaches in Chicago. More information available at www.susannalang.com.
Charlene Langfur is an organic gardener, a Syracuse University Graduate Writing Fellow and her most recent publications include poems in The Potomac Review, Turtle Island-Room Magazine, Hawk & Handsaw and an essay in The Wilderness Review.
Michael Lauchlan has contributed to many publications, including New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Sugar House Review, Louisville Review, and Poet Lore and Poetry Ireland. His most recent collection is Trumbull Ave., from WSU Press (2015).
Peter Leight lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. He has previously published poems in Paris Review, AGNI, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, FIELD, and other magazines.
Paul Many's stories and poems have been published in Exquisite Corpse, Rockvale Review, and Carbon Culture Review among others. His chapbook Thick Times is published by Finishing Line Press. He has an MFA in creative writing from Bowling Green State University.
Rebecca Rose Moody lives in a woodland garden in the heart of Nashville. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Sewanee, she lived in France before returning to her hometown. She and her husband built a tiny backyard house, which is now one of the most popular Airbnbs in the country. When she's not inn-keeping, chasing her babies, or gardening, she's writing words and music about how much she loves the world. Her works of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry have appeared in Sing Out! online, New Millennium Writings, and EcoTheo Review, among others.
Toti O'Brien is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish Last Name. She was born in Rome then moved to Los Angeles, where she makes a living as a self-employed artist, performing musician and professional dancer. Her work has most recently appeared in The Moth, Colorado Boulevard, Abstract Contemporary and Mortar Magazine.
William Orem first collection of stories, Zombi, You My Love, won the GLCA New Writers Award, formerly given to Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, Richard Ford, and Alice Munro. His second collection, Across the River, won the Texas Review Novella Prize. His first novel, Killer of Crying Deer, won the Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in the Small Presses, and has been optioned for film. His second novel, Miss Lucy, won the Gival Press Novel Award. His first collection of poems, Our Purpose in Speaking, won the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and he has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. His short plays have been performed around the country, winning both the Critics’ Prize and Audience Favorite Award at Durango Theatre Fest, and thrice being nominated for the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville.
Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She isthe co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.
Hilary Sideris has recently published poems in The American Journal of Poetry, Bellevue Literary Review, Free State Review, Gravel, The Lake, Main Street Rag, Rhino, Salamander, and Southern Poetry Review. She is the author of Most Likely to Die (Poets Wear Prada 2014), The Inclination to Make Waves (Big Wonderful 2016), Un Amore Veloce (Kelsay 2019) and The Silent B (Dos Madres 2019). Sideris has a B.A. in English literature from Indiana University and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Brooklyn.
Annette Sisson lives in Nashville, TN with her husband, dog, and a small flock of hens. She is Professor of English at Belmont University, where she teaches and mentors students. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, baking, hiking, supporting local theater, watching the birds at her feeders, reading, writing, and playing the piano. Her publications include Zone 3, Rockvale Review, and The Nashville Review. She has poems forthcoming in Passager Magazine, The Blue Mountain Review, and SPANK the CARP. Her chapbook, A Casting Off, was published by Finishing Line Press in May 2019. She recently won The Porch Writers’ Collective’s spring 2019 poetry contest and was awarded honorable mention in Passager Magazine’s 2019 national poetry contest.
Young Smith has received fellowships from the NEA and the Kentucky Arts Council. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Iowa Review, Pleiades, Crazyhorse, The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, American Literary Review, Arts & Letters, Atlanta Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The New Orleans Review, and other publications. He is author of the collection, In a City You Will Never Visit, published by Greencup Books. He is an associate professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University, where he is a core faculty member with the Bluegrass Writers Studio, a low-residency MFA program.
J.R. Solonche is the author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), Won’t Be Long (Deerbrook Editions), Heart’s Content (Five Oaks Press), Invisible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Five Oaks Press), The Black Birch (Kelsay Books), I, Emily Dickinson & Other Found Poems (Deerbrook Editions), In Short Order (Kelsay Books), Tomorrow, Today and Yesterday (Deerbrook Editions), True Enough (Dos Madres Press), The Jewish Dancing Master (Ravenna Press), If You Should See Me Walking on the Road (Kelsay Books), In a Public Place (Dos Madres Press), The Time of Your Life (forthcoming April 2020 from Adelaide Books), The Porch Poems (forthcoming 2020 from Deerbrook Editions), and coauthor of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in the Hudson Valley.
Esther Yin-ling Spodek was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, raised in Champaign, Illinois, and is a graduate of the University of Virginia. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University. She currently lives in Evanston, Illinois, with her husband and border collie.
Michael Spring is the author of four poetry books and one children’s book. He's won several awards, including the Turtle Island Poetry Award, and an honrable mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. In 2016 he won a Luso-American Fellowship from DISQUIET International. Michael Spring is a poetry editor for the Pedestal Magazine and Flowstone Press. He lives on a mountainside farm in Obrien, Oregon.
To date, D.E. Steward has published 5 volumes of long poems titled CHROMA with Archae Editions, which he describes as “a récit, a narrative, a telling, not necessarily autobiographical but with the constant presence of narration”.
Peter J. Stavros is a writer in Louisville, Kentucky. His work has appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, The Boston Globe Magazine, Cheap Pop, Crack the Spine, Hypertext Magazine, Fiction Southeast and Juked, among others. He has also had plays produced across the country. More at www.peterjstavros.com and follow on Twitter @PeterJStavros.
Tim Suermondt is the author of five full-length collections of poems, the latest Josephine Baker Swimming Pool from MadHat Press, 2019. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Stand Magazine, Galway Review, Bellevue Literary Review and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.
The poet laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan from 2007-2010, Rodney Torreson is the author of five books. His latest, The Jukebox Was the Jury of Their Love, was issued by Finishing Line Press in August of 2019. In addition, Torreson has new work that recently appeared or will soon appear in Artful Dodge, Canary, Miramar, Poet Lore, Seems and Tar River Poetry.
Reagan Upshaw is an art dealer and appraiser in Beacon, NY. His poems, articles, and reviews have appeared in Able Muse, Poets & Writers, Tupelo Quarterly, the Washington Post, and many other publications.
Erin Wilson's poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Poetry Ireland Review, Envoi, Kestrel, A Journal of Literature and Art, On the Seawall, The Honest Ulsterman, The Adirondack Review, Natural Bridge, The Literary Review of Canada, and elsewhere. Her first collection is due out in the spring/summer of 2020 with Circling Rivers. She lives and writes in a small town in northern Ontario, Canada.
Mike Wilson’s work has appeared or will appear in Rathalla Review, The London Review, Eastern Structures, Evening Street, Cagibi Literary Journal, Stoneboat, Frogpond, and The Aurorean. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
Howard Winn’s writing, both fiction and poetry, has been published by such journals as The Southern Humanities Review, The Galway Review (Ireland), Dalhousie Review, Descant (Canada), Break The Spine, New York Quarterly, Borderlands, Beloit Poetry Review, Xavier Review, New Verse News, and Toyon. Two collections of his poetry have been published, the most recent this year. titled “When Marilyn Monroe Met Edith Sitwell.” His novel, “Acropolis,” has been published. His B. A. is from Vassar College. His M. A. is from the Writing Program at Stanford University. His doctoral work was done at N. Y. U. He has been a social worker in California and currently is a faculty member of SUNY as Professor of English.
Mark Young's 2019 poetry books are The Perfume of The Abyss from Moria Books; A Vicarious Life — the backing tracks from otata; taxonomic drift from Luna Bisonte Prods; & Residual sonnets from Ma Press of Finland.
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Virgens de Guadalupe by Lynda Schor