Jasper's Folly Poetry Journal (Issue #2)

Jasper’s Folly Poetry Journal

Edited by Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

Jasper’s Folly Poetry Journal

Issue #2, June 2023

(Poetry/Photography)

ISBN # 978-1-312-46707-1

Cherry

Boulder

All rights reserved

Cover Photography Copyright, Pat Ryan & Jeffrey Spahr-Summers, 2023

Art/Photography Copyright, Amy Kohut & Jeffrey Spahr-Summers, 2023

Photography Copyright, Jeffrey Spahr-Summers, 2023

Copyright Cherry Publications, 2023

All poetry rights revert to the original authors upon publication

www.jaspersfollypoetryjournal.com

Editor’s Note

Welcome to Issue #2 of Jasper’s Folly Poetry Journal.

In this issue, we include 34 poets, and see the return of … Brian Barnett, Dennis J. Bernstein, Michael Brockley, Michael Brownstein, and Eric Fischman.

We also introduce Jennifer Watson, new collaborative art/photography with Amy Kohut, and cover collaborative art/photography with Pat Ryan.

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers, Editor.

Please visit our website, www.jaspersfollypoetryjournal.com for Submission Guidelines.

Put Down for Later

19 - JEFFREY SPAHR-SUMMERS - paint it black

post smoke haiku w/ Gerard Sarnat - 24

k.y.s.o kaiku w/ Gerard Sarnat - 25

chairs - 32

blue leaf - 35

hint w/ Eric Fischman - 49

paradise found - 51

dry furrowed fields w/ Brian Barnett - 58

clouds begin to part w/ Brian Barnett - 59

unmarked graveyard w/ Brian Barnett - 60

green - 63

rain - 72

Writer’s Block w/ Dennis J. Bernstein - 73

Tricky Math w/ Dennis J. Bernstein - 74

flamingo crossing - 77

those who wish to sing always find a song - 81

shuffle - 84

summer creep - 92

Willow Tree Poem w/ Michael Lee Johnson - 93

storming - 95

blue - 98

unplucked - 104

sliced - 107

At the End, Let me Say w/ Joseph Kenyon - 109

time - 113

tie-o-rama - 115

flower salad - 123

20 - LARA DOLPHIN - Edward Hopper’s Google Autocomplete Predicts Cape Cod

21 - YUAN CHANGMING - Towards Epiphany

24 - GERARD SARNAT - post smoke haiku w/ Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

k.y.s.o haiku w/ Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

26 - COREY MESLER - Sally’s School of Thought A Fair

30 - GLEN ARMSTRONG - Anthem

33 - MICHAEL BROCKLEY - St. Guignol

The Origin of the Disappointing Son

36 - GARRETT OKENKA - May 25

43 - WENDY FREBORG - After Thoughts

45 - ERIC FISCHMAN - Crit

This is the Mission

Hint w/ Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

Teahouse Pastoral

52 - DAVID DEPHY - The Manifesto of Secrets

54 - JOHN ZEDOLIK - Strike

58 - BRIAN BARNETT - dry furrowed fields w/ Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

clouds begin to part w/ Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

unmarked graveyard w/ Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

61 - CHRISTIAN WARD - The Redshift of Birds Safety, Numbers

64 - MARK DUCHARME - Notes on Turbulence

73 - DENNIS J. BERNSTEIN - Writer’s Block w/ Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

Tricky Math w/ Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

75 - GRZEGORZ WROBLEWSKI & AGNIESZKA POKOJSKA - At a Dog’s Shelter with Larsen

77 - ZACHARY ZOLTY - Grief

78 - JOHN GREY - From Your Friend on the Road

80 - SARAH VENDETTI - Canyon

82 - TERRY MILLER - reunion of old lovers

Edward Hirsch and I Write Eulogies

85 - MIKE WILLIAMS - Feathers Falling

88 - JENNIFER WATKINS - The Death of a Heart

91 - MICHAEL LEE JOHNSON - I Age

Willow Tree Poem w/ Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

Crypt in the Sky

96 - WILLIAM DORESKI - How do Water and Stone Converse?

A World Too Wide

On learning how the world was made in fear of human love revealed, foul water flows through vacant houses, and children’s dreams fall to earth.

On high vantage the lover sees all that he adores withdraw as the sea returns to the shore like lightning in the summer heat. Wild horses ride across the bay. What part can the heart play to the sound of a single note in an empty auditorium?

Everything alert seeks shelter. Our hopes anticipate change. Heptonstall

Time Song

The music of living: the ethereal sensation is the song of happenstance to sing something of itself now in the incidental moment, In time a caged bird will be free. The syncopation is natural, dancing down the winding stair, a rhythm that alerts the heart with every measured beat. In search of elusive harmony songs rise with the sun, remembered through the dark hours summoning the will to be heard sometimes here, at other times there.

Heptonstall - 12

The sound surrounds us.

aura

Heptonstall - 13 - Kohut & Spahr-Summers

Earth is Ours

A hand goes down to fecund ground reaching the heart found in the depths, those whispers of their grace within.

Earth is ours by invitation. Nothing is given without cause.

When shutters are open to the morning sun burns the dew on summer dream lawns.

Every blade a blessing from the green world until to the eye all is perfection with angels and swans passing by, finding their way to another life.

The signs are in the air, occasionally it is a cloud, more often the shape of light painting the dawn and the dusk and every hour that forms the day. A hand may reach to touch the sky, only to find heaven’s laughter echoing.

Heptonstall - 14

Achill Sound

When the roads curve like sound and dip as if lifting to bow

Whenever all thoughts round or cluster or when hearts call down is Ireland

And as rich when poor was or as wise as bare heads in snow seemed and as twigs so frail broke into song and as true as any blight or potato could be was Ireland

So when sand laps the senses

Larew - 15

or salt drips the edges as dreams

Whenever hope streams through such heavens and moss comes home or hearts beam down is Ireland.

This poem first appeared in Words for the Wild. sign

Larew - 16 - Kohut & Spahr-Summers

Put Down for Later

As simple as they look All of the words here are buckets of complicated That you and I spit in For all that we know Entirely And if a mumble or rust spot Of this or that starts leaking Then so be it

The words will go everywhere Into nights that spill over ditches And what’s scribbled or handled As precious May get tossed out for good

As easy as it seems What happens always And right here is a mess-spill Of lines that muddy all findings

Or even slop to

So take care

And look out for Night to day or far and wide

Whenever lip-wetted pencils Start diving in

Lara Dolphin

Edward Hopper’s Google Autocomplete Predicts Cape Cod

Cape Cod home, style, renovation before and after, near me

I can capture the light off the side-gabled roof and dormers in watercolor over graphite on cream wove paper

Cape Cod cocktail, recipe, variations

Cranberry red with a lime wedge

brightly lit in a darkened studio

Cape Cod lighthouse, Nauset, at sunset

Half-light and shade, chiaroscuro

sketched in my mind to be worked out later on canvas

Cape Cod black dog, topsail schooner

gliding toward the outermost edge of the horizon where saturated colors dip into the deep blue beyond

Dolphin - 20

Towards Epiphany

1/ Caging vs Birding

I am a cage, in search of a bird. — Kafka

Wherever my mind flies, it is still Confined

Tightly to this world, this very cage of Sensory & imaginative c e l l s

In other words, I is the cage, while The whole universe am a bird

2/ Into the Reality You see, here’s the leaf dyed with the full

Changming - 21

Spectrum of autumn; here’s the dewdrop Containing all the dreams made on the Darkest corner of last night; here’s the Light pole in the forest where gods land From another higher world; here’s the swirl You can dance with to release all your Stresses against the Virus. Here you are in Deed as in need embracing

The most Mindful moment, when you can readily Measure your feel with each breath, but do Not think about time, which is nothing but A pure human invention. Just point every Synapse of yours to this locale. Here is now

3/ The Art of Living

With my third eye I gaze into The present moment, & there I find it Full of pixels, each of which is

Unfurling slowly like a koru into A whole new brave world that I Can spend days, even months to watch As if from A magic kaleidoscope

burn baby burn

Changming - 23 -

Kohut & Spahr-Summers

Gerard Sarnat 

Sarnat - 24 - Spahr-Summers

Sarnat - 25 - Spahr-Summers

Corey Mesler

Sally’s School of Thought

Sally was the girl all the boys wanted. She knew how to kiss with her tongue.

Once at a party in the church basement she took me into the dark transept and showed me the sights. I remember Sally the way I remember learning to talk. The apes were part of it. The rest was God.

Mesler

A Fair

An evening cool like the breath of cloud on the hills of spring. As a family we went to the fair. Sylvi, four, for the first time.

Wonders surrounded us. Games and a mustard tang to the air, a thaumaturge calling out men and women anomalous to us common folk. Games rigged like ships. The lights came up, a

rainbow of incandescent tubes, as night settled like a cloak upon us. Eventually, like all children, hand in hand, we had to walk home. But, just once, Sylvi looked back. It was all still there.

Anthem

I hide in the men’s room. As the anthem plays. A song the entire stadium knows. Strikes me as a song.

Constantly declaring war.

Cheating at Gin.

Gutting fish without any sense. Of the sacrifice being made.

I’ll be forever incomplete if this common.

Trading card keeps appearing.

Armstrong - 30

Simon says return home. The event has run its course.

I’ve seen more statues of horses. Than I’ve seen horses.

I’ve seen more tattoos of flags.

Simon suffers from prosopagnosia. And in turn it’s difficult to know.

Exactly who Simon is. We must take a moment to recognize. Each of these strangers rising.

Armstrong - 31

St. Guignol

He is said to have carried a bell that he rang to attract fish. They would have cavorted where the rivers and the sea converged near Brest. Breaching like mating whales. Halibut. The silver-blue herring with Mary Magdalene's face. The virile cod. In the days before his sainthood, the monk jostled his bell and gathered his repast from the tithings along the shore. He shared his abundance with widows and clubfooted beggars. The goiter-afflicted.

Heard their confessions of larceny and lust behind velvet veils. His congregation recalled him as a black-robed halo with a curious following of harlots. No one knows the sculptor who chiseled the confessor's likeness into an oaken burl. The wounds from self-flagellation carved into the grain. His holy glower. The prodigious penis rigid with its mission. But now, when a supplicant with a barren womb or shriveled manhood whittles a sliver from the staff, the archangels ring their hosanna chimes.

Brockley - 33

The Origin of the Disappointing Son

After George Ella Lyon

I come from a disappointed father. From a Mighty Mouse who sang, Here I come to save the day. I come from Zorro and Paladin and Maverick. From the hometown of the legendary beauties, Debbie, Judy. and Patti Jo. I come from a father who said I would never drive a car. I come from Rebel Without a Cause, Lord Love a Duck, and Beach Blanket Bingo. From Raquel Welch in a saber-tooth skin bikini. Icome from a mother who died before Iimaginedmyselfaman. Icomefrom aspitzthatsleptonthehighwayFrom“SomethingStupid”and “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime.” I come from a father who mocked me for being alone. I come from Don Quixote.

I come from Brave New World. I come from people who never talked about the five uncles who rescued their sisters from fires and the husbands who abandoned them. I come from folks with a taste for gristly chicken livers. And Braunschweiger sandwiches. I come from Mexican wedding cakes and the Gil McDougald baseball glove mymother traded S&H Green Stamps for. I come from a father who never spoke to me about spark plugs or Tom T. Hall or how to pull an inside pitch. I come from the Rolling Stones, not the Beatles. From St. Guignol of Bresh, not St. Columba from the abbey on Iona. From the phallic saint, not the baptizer of seals.

Brockley - 34

blue leaf

35 -Spahr-Summers

Garrett Okenka

May 25

I haven’t been writing about 19 kids murdered at their elementary school desks

Or likely lined up first against the chalk board wall

Chalk dust floating white in sunbeam falling to settle on still bodies cooling, swirling milky in their pooled

blood as their sun kissed soft children skin holds as long as it can the promise of day

The promise of days

The sun square warmth of their south Texas town

I’m writing about her towel, Nena’s, recently used

Hidden behind the bathroom door and forgotten

So it was still here after everything of hers was packed up and driven off

With her

This morning. Okenka

May 25th, 2022

Smelling like her skin

As I wipe away tears

All my lovers drive off or die

And I’m writing about Nikki, dead now 2 days

Nikki a Blaze, Clay Pigeons, and an Iron Horse

Greyhound tickets / van life livin’ (the gritty way)

Nikki leanin’ toward the wind

You’re free, Nikki

You’ve always been

Last message you left for me

“2023 is our year!”

Okenka - 37

These days I’m livin’ more for the dead

But when it comes to living, these days the dead knew it best So Nikki climb in. It’s a town full of losers.

No account boozers.

And you, the honky tonk hero, the chrome of the rodeo.

How many towns have we pulled out of?

With the darkness always on the edge of us.

Born to lose.

Pulling out to win.

To wind up in Fist City.

Full tilt grin.

You lived the lyric I tried to wear.

And god broke the mold of acoustic guitar road cases, hard shelled wine-colored plush And Panheads ForeverWhen god made you

And if heaven is a honky tonk

Waylon’s called you hoss

I am writing

Sun square sliding across empty wood panel floor

Of empty living room

I have been writing about Nena

And I have been writing about Nikki

And I have been crying for both

Okenka - 39

But I have not been writing about 19 kids

Murdered at their elementary school desks

Their wood grain desks

Or the sun square sliding across a stilled class room crime scene

Where chalk dust settles

In silent chaos

Of dying children too scared to cry

Of dead children chalk outlined

Chalk dust settles to paste in their tears

Chalk dust swirls in cooling blood

White cloud of dust rising in classroom gun fire

White cloud of dust settles in afternoon sun

I am crying now….

I am writing now…. Okenka

I am calling out….

Calling out, but soon heading to work

Where I will disassociate in avocados again

And not write about 19 children

Or Nena’s empty room

Or Nikki’s empty room still full of her things

Or the 21 empty Texas bedrooms now haunted

Or the classroom of chalk Okenka

lightning tree 42 – Kohut & Spahr-Summers

After Thoughts

The thoughts that were in my head this morning have vanished, taking with them their rhythm, their striking metaphor and salient point. They have gone to who knows where and, if they return, it will be when I am least prepared for I know they will flee again if I have not set out for them tea and biscuits on a silver tray.

Eric Raanan Fischman

Crit

You are too grand, too monumental. What if you substitute a cargo ship for Victoria Falls? Makes the drama human. And this here, where the narrator and his love what if he were a tow truck man?

“lunge” into the current. It’s so… active! What if they dropped? Instead. This would make their sacrifice flat, not so overbearingly poignant. You make us feel too much. You make us

face our shadows in the water. What if his love were sea glass, or a favorite baseball card? Then we could pretend that we are not so lonely, that our hearts are not in cartons chained up on the ocean floor.

This is the Mission

Captain's Log: Stardate 42594.6

We've been exploring an unusual nebula off the sunny coast of an asteroid belt. As it turns out, the nebula is alive and does not appreciate our curiosity. I have explained that we aren't hostile and want only to exchange magic tricks and cultural fictions, but I do not believe the nebula speaks Captain, or else its universal translator is made of specks of dust billions of light-years apart. Presently, it's siphoning energy away from our shields like a mean kid with a bendy straw. Is that Red Alert? I'll be back later.

Captain's Log: Stardate 42596.3

The Captain is dead. As the new Captain, my first official duty will be to narrate this scene. A hard rain falls on the city of Chicago. The kind of rain that brings out the rats. Detective Centipede smokes a sharpened pencil in the dark office, 99 feet up on his desk, lightning painting the windows white. If he doesn't pay his bills this month, they'll shut off the water next, then the holograms, then the mirrors. Just as he's thinking this, a beautiful butterfly walks in with black amber wings and says, “Language is how the misinformed stay broken.”

Captain's Log: Stardate 22119.4

Somehow we've gone back in time to the moment in the first Terminator movie when Arnold Schwartzenegger

walks into the biker bar naked. I've instructed the crew not to do anything to disrupt the timeline, like offering him Federation boxer shorts or asking for an autograph. The humans of this period have a primitive obsession with animal hides and are monumentally racist. My chief engineer believes we were pulled into the Terminator's time travel bubble by our own warp field, like a baby dragging behind a shopping cart.

Captain's Log: Stardate 42591.7

Just then the lizard people and the pumpkin people declare interstellar war. The lizard people are not lizards but they do like to sunbathe on rocks. The pumpkin people are all pumpkins. In fact, they are not people at all.

When the lizard people meet the pumpkin people in battle they discover ships full of dead gourds. Some of them have faces carved into them or cartoon characters from the '80's. None of them can operate a weapons array. A couple of Romulan warbirds decloak and everyone sneaks out of the party through the backyard.

Captain's Log: Stardate 42618.2

I've put us in orbit around an M class planet which possesses the precise conditions necessary to sustain luaus. Its atmosphere is 30% nitrogen, 40% oxygen, and 60% pork. Thankfully, Starfleet regulations ensure that all crew members are uniquely attractive and unabashedly sexual. In a cave on the planet, my First Officer was mistaken for a red shirt and summarily executed by plot point. This has plunged us into an alternate reality where all star dates are occurring at once, like a goulash made of leftovers. Meanwhile, in a warm bed of bioluminescent moss, an android and an alien go where no sentient matter has gone before.

Fischman - 48

Fischman - 49 -Spahr-Summers

Teahouse Pastoral

in the cherry table engraved a black scroll wooded text like boats in the sky

their guarded island

the painted yellow wall

sunrise over a plastic cliff

the fountain, waterfalls in a forest of ferns face of the teacup

the bald, golden dragon

grasps at the sun

claws tangled delicately in a carpet of storms

Fischman - 50

the long, paper lamp hangs like a larva ringed exoskeleton a cocoon out of which, light paradise found

Fischman - 51 -Spahr-Summers

The Manifesto of Secrets

I look at you.

I feel the secrets, let’s feel them together and don’t say a word the secret of language is silence

the secret of silence is knowing

the secret of knowing is science

the secret of science is religion

the secret of religion is politics

the secret of politics is truth

the secret of truth is belief

the secret of belief is love

the secret of love is understanding the secret of understanding is language

the secret of language is silence and silence is the answer to all our questions.

fishy

Dephy - 53 - Kohut & Spahr-Summers

John Zedolik

Strike

Wedge-driving requires the sharp edge perpendicular to the rings for no age of the fallen tree

is the concern of the steel’s bit submerging into fiber’s sea until reaching the bottom, so clanking upon soil or stone beneath and taken up again to sink sharp tooth and pounds into another depth whose thick waters will provide heat

under the strike of flame

but only after these hefty strokes of the sledgehammer flush upon the blunt and mushrooming little rusted head that will ring into the abyss, a beacon sounding the drop, drop, drop of the progress hoped true for the crisp split of one into two or four, manageable morsels for the closed stove of cast iron to digest in its infernal belly

much hotter than the body with its sweat and hands aching from the impact of handle and metal to metal, remembering the needed blows in muscles and connecting tissue,

mindful for several days of crackle

and combustion ’til another week to descend upon the surface of the sectioned oak and drive, drive, drive that sharp end through the standing sentinels until the cylinders halved, quartered convenient for a stack against the wall’s bricks and a bundle in the arms’ compass to carry

into the needing home where the mercury is lowering but the heavy wood, tricked by muscle, forge, and brother branch is now compliant, perfect now for springing alight. Zedolik

Brian Barnett

Barnett - 58 - Spahr-Summers

Barnett - 59 - Spahr-Summers

Barnett - 60 - Spahr-Summers

The Redshift of Birds

The galaxy's waistline expands until it sings through the red cardinal, summer tanager, vermilion flycatcher, scarlet ibis, scarlet flycatcher, and red-billed firefinch. Like the robin carrying sunrises in its breast, each bird pockets the weight of stars in sung notes.

What drags to the point of possible liquefaction isn't gravity, but the flammable mass of our mistakes.

Ward

Safety, Numbers

From Battersea Bridge, the World's End tower blocks are termite nests. Buddleia with anteater snouts manifest themselves by Clapham Junction.

I swear, on the journey back, the blocks shifted closer to the crook of the river. How I long for this.

Mark DuCharme 

Notes on Turbulence for Rose DuCharme

Jetlag Blues

The body’s not so easily fooled

It knows when something’s up with day & night

Something that it won’t resolve tonight

While the blood moon looks askew

On the canal you won’t get back

To the source of your dreams

News returning to an older land

Clouds on the drawer as before DuCharme - 64

In the rhythm of whatever you have to say

When night falls off the table

Magots Jesus Jetlag Flore

Cobblestone Filigree Nous

The goat climbed on the table

We left until we could bear no more

In the rhythm of plastic saints

& The heat in others’ cries

In my dream, it’s Thursday & Another small child cries from across the street

Just like those two infants

Further up the plane

Cried almost in unison

On that transatlantic flight

DeCharme - 65

Unbearably. In the rhythm of plastic saints

In case one’s mouth falls off

In a concordance of wild arrivals

The child slid down the banister

With no room for despair

Paris is ongoing

The tennis court letters are embossed with canal scum

More than I have yet to say is already here

What use transcendence?

Stick your head out the Window, not your Whole body, please Those who escape breath

Are too worrisome to appear from far away

In a land we might not seem to bear

I think I may have left A small wine stain on the Tabletop

Forgive me; I am a poet & I don’t know what I’m doing

after Williams

Tiles in place of night

The night went far away

Stars of placable fidgets

Tousled in factory-sealed mirth

Geese & supper clubs

Anywhere you emerge from, really

Drinking Spanish merlot in France

While writing out of tune «»

In the Gang of Four song

“At Home He’s a Tourist”

The “he” of the lyric has no Natural place in the world He inhabits. He

Belongs to this world

The “he” of the lyric yet feels Apart from it Meanwhile, others pass At “the disco” or elsewhere

Hoping to connect With a final destination

The utter alienation Of “tourist” from place

The moon’s not yet here & I can’t go on

Tell the work to stop that Turbulence

While motorcycles & garbage trucks

Crowd the narrow street

Pigeons playing with scraps

Of what? on the wet sidewalk

All the good

Decked out in Catholic saints

Make a wish I wasn’t there

Argot relief for the harried classes

In the silence of those blown apart

Bush II with Putin mask on

It won’t come clean

Without your reticence

À la gare without a grimace

If you skew your words

In reverse, the sun will hide

Behind the face

Of whatever darkness

You can trace «»

All that history

Looking over your shoulder

All that modernity

Staring right back

Coda: Back Home

Prevail, washy seawall

As something we share

In a café down the canal

Or cobbled streets at other distances

From our hearts or the depths they bear

With so much history under the skies

& Above the palms to allay our swaying

The salt in the sea does not stamp out

The flames

Of our hearts’ wildnesses

All we know is all we are

Yet all we are is yet what we became

Or can, when molten noon sets forth

& The sea’s an azure scrawl

A boon to the dumbfounded

Who swoon down boulevards

& Suburban routes alike, entirely

Fruitless to those who would blossom in tune

The light a turbulent prank

A sad confusion.

Where is Paris who is always away

Like we, who are beholden

To its mirth & shade?

rain

DuCharme - 72 -Spahr-Summers

Dennis J. Bernstein 

Bernstein - 73- Spahr-Summers

Bernstein - 74 - Spahr-Summers

Grzegorz Wroblewski

At a Dogs’ Shelter with Larsen

translated from the Polish by Agnieszka Pokojska

If I stayed too long, I would certainly grow attached to one of the dogs, which would poison it’s heart.

Damned Earth! Just popping in is discouraged, too.

Old German shepherds would take me for a grim supplier of pig bones.

However, lying to Larsen that I won’t go because I have a date with Lise to see a film

Wroblewski - 75

on conquering uninhabited islands, would make me a plain coward.

the way of the world

Wroblewski - 76 - Kohut & Spahr-Summers

Grief

To be cradled in the eyes of a beloved is akin to silk threads yet barbed not unlike razor wire, intertwined threads, now frayed bonds. I want to collect the spools of thread, reconcile the frayed wires, with lacerated shaking hands, mending the fading potentialities of futures now lost. To mend the chasm between past, future, you and I.

flamingo crossing

Zolty - 77 - Spahr-Summers

From Your Friend on the Road

I've been in Montana, driving a rental car with California license plates.

I took photos of mountains, lakes and forest. And a black bear. And some bison.

I’ve been on a reservation. And explored this old cavalry fort.

I’m wearing this pine-tree green t-shirt and my old faithful Levis.

I’m in some canyon where I can’t get a signal. So I’m writing this down, the old-fashioned way. What needs expressing works with the materials at hand.

Canyon

In the valley of the stone gods

Noble faces gaze sternly

Under heavy brows

Over prominent noses

The gods tell their story

In layers upon layers

So burdened with the weight of history

It crumbles and falls

Back into the arms of the mother

From where it all began

Vendetti - 80

those who wish to sing always find a song

Terry Miller

reunion of old lovers

after Reunion by Megan Fernandes

odd interface potentiometers of patience dashboard lights blink in disbelief the plane has made it around the world again here we are at the starting point but the sun has moved into a garage with room for only my Prius we move to say something then stop realize the old philosopher is right the waters of this river are different now and so are we and so are we

Edward Hirsch and I write eulogies

him dotting my eyes me crossing my heart

from the windows of skyscrapers you see the city as it probably sees itself difficult to make out

the people below attending to little lives they end up at the same place

the diner without menus the old man at the counter nursing his heavy white cup of coffee

the napkin before him riddled with ink a pensive look on his face as he scratches out Miller - 83

Feathers Falling

We are falling falling down falling under rising up

The wind lifts us a tempest against a fading storm

We spread our feathers a wild beating of wings

Against the throngs below they are not us

they are ages old

They wish a return

We wish a future

And time is on our side

If they haven't used it all up

They cannot last forever

We have flown so far

We have seen the moon and the stars

We have risen

We will not be dragged low

We spread our feathers a wild beating of wings

They cannot contain us

We must soar

The Death of a Heart

I watched you slip from the bridge and you made less sound than God, what can I say when you are the lucky one, among some. I kept my hands for the opening you could have taken: of hands from someone, for someone who forgave, a small house without a window on the ledge of the ocean–who

Watkins - 88

can bare to see it anyways?

That’s what you said!

You were sore from the smiles given to you, with pockets too meager to conceal the joyous memories.

(I hide the relief in your heart.)

When the rain on sunny days never made sense, when it rained anyway, shade was dry and the day you thought it would never stop, shade followed us back home. We laughed about the mud on our finest shoes and put our chuckles in compartments for the trouble we would be in; threw a rock towards the sky,

Watkins - 89

made the moon and that day we walked so long inside the lonely ones and broken hearts we held up.

Watkins - 90 - Kohut & Spahr-Summers

Michael Lee Johnson

I Age

Arthritis and aging make it hard, I walk gingerly, with a cane, and walk slow, bent forward, fear threats, falls, fear denouement─

I turn pages, my family albums become a task.

But I can still bake and shake, sugar cookies, sweet potato, lemon meringue pies. Alone, most of my time, but never on Sundays, friends and communion, United Church of Canada.

I chug a few down, love my Blonde Canadian Pale Ale,

Copenhagen long cut a pinch of snuff. I can still dance the Boogie-woogie, Lindy Hop in my living room, with my nursing care home partner. Aging has left me with youthful dimples, but few long-term promises.

summer creep

Johnson - 92 - Spahr-Summers

Johnson - 93 -Spahr-Summers

Crypt in the Sky

Dedicated to the passing of beloved Katie Balaskas. Order me up, no one knows where this crypt in the sky like a condo on the 5th floor suite don’t sell me out over the years; please don’t bury me beneath this ground, don’t let me decay inside my time pine casket. Don’t let me burn to cremate skull last to turn to ashes. Treasure me high where no one goes, no arms reach, stretch. Building for the Centuries then just let it fall. These few precious dry bones preserved for you, sealed in the cloud Johnson -

no relocation is necessary, no flowers need to be planted, no dusting off that dust each year, no sinners can reach this high.

Jesus’ heaven, Jesus’ sky.

Johnson

storming

- 95 - Spahr-Summers

How Do Water and Stone Converse?

We pass a dozen waterfalls sudsing creamy leaf decay before a glacial boulder wigged in ferns greets us with crystals crowned by a derelict bird’s nest.

The boulder settled in this spot during the last, best ice age, which settled geological debts neither humans nor gods incurred. You admire the fern wig more than

the erratic, but touch the stone with reverence like mine. Knowledge inert in granite seems remote, but sometimes I feel it tingle in my fingertips. We also touch the ferns, which survived hard frost, and the nest abandoned late in summer when the brood matured. You press along the path toward the largest series of waterfalls, a stairway a hundred yards long with risers of a foot or two. The brook chuckles down this flight with a silver cast impossible to affix in digital photos.

Doreski

How do water and stone converse when we’re not overhearing?

You insist they’re planning for a post-human world when sighs of evolution resume molding specimens riper and smarter than us. The flux in which we swim is a medium we’ve created with our minds rather than our hands, and its chemistry confuses us.

blue Doreski - 98 - Spahr-Summers

Wayne Burke

$20

Some cock and bull story from a guy in the park about his car out of gas stranded and with a pregnant girlfriend at home says if I loan him something he will pay me back double ha ha "pretty good story," I say. "It is true," he says. I ask what make of car, and he tells me. Where is it at?

How will he get gas into it? He has the answers, maybe had them memorized, who knows?

I reach for my wallet, peek inside.

Just my luck: nothing but twenties.

Oh well I give him one and watch him walk off. I kiss that sawbuck goodbye.

My Mother's Bucket List

My mother danced with the stars

Thursday nights sitting on her quilted couch, her second husband or was it her fourth resting beside her, pencil and notebook in hand, taking notes.

Once a week they ballroom danced in the large dining area of Aging Best and every two weeks they competed in their age group or with anyone over sixty. They won quite often, dancing in the stars of applause and compliments.

She glorified every moment, sent videos of their wins to the TV show never hearing from them. No matter.

She danced knowing in the language of star and her husband basked in the applause every intricate step she took gathering enough shooting stars to satisfy everyone.

A Winter of No Content

21 degrees below in Fairbanks I can’t conceive when your breath could explode here in Portland we worry in the teens when pipes can freeze or a little warmer when the rain becomes ice on impact taking trees and power lines to the ground

what of my inner weather the winter of my life my 70 plus circuit around the sun of existence billions of existential suns obscured and subservient to the planetary rhythm trying to keep up with our sun chasing

who knows what hunger, as if that could be just science, the sun may not show today the clouds that hide me could be latent emotional precipitation or thunder nowhere near the surface, or that I have no reason to let out, get out, no means to enter another’s solar system where our lights are almost as faint as our gravities

There

The roads are still there still taking us places that are darker now than when light was less precious. What’s the cost of traveling in an age that doesn’t believe in age or time? Bend a little. Stretch a lot. Just don’t expect returns in that place to place the seed and flow. That Kenyon - 108

stand of content. That there.

Kenyon - 109 - Spahr-Summers

Dilemmas

Feeling choices atop the protruding bone of each shoulder primal and ferly inching closer to the rising light of all fears that is nothing more than transition traversing momentum without the rudder’s consent.

Bringing in the Wood

One full breath and the air swims into you, cold as a silver fish. Skidding on the steps, you pile the logs first this way, then that, weaving a wooden blanket. Chopping, splitting, stacking, carrying, banging your boots to shake snow from your treads. So much goes into building a fire.

But so much goes into many things that come to nothing. That tree house started last summer, the rowing machine that never hits the imaginary lake, The shed that needs painting, having a baby, Mishcon - 111

finishing that novel. Many things don’t get done. And what of things that do? A four layer cake that listed left, grown child that won’t call back, books that were completed. The thing about bringing in the wood, fingers dry and split as the logs being hauled, the long muscle on your right side tugging on you like a tired child, this wood will be laid on the iron grate, flue opened, popcorn balls of newsprint and sticks of kindling tucked inside the tee-pee of lumber, a match set to the structure. And after all of that, there will be fire.

See me Now

I like to look and see nothing remembering all the broken themes, things of relearningpretending or portending, as I wallow in scenes reality too strong, stark, & bright.

Organized screams

Orchestrated daydreams sifting sorting sadness. I’m zoned out here in the endzone Alone in la-la-land & I can’t hear you because it’s too loud here.

Oh Lewis, you’d never know the parsimonious parsing of reality.

I’ve learned the same lessons over and over But my memory’s bad so it’s deja vu every fucking second of my life. Now at least, as I seek, to be, finally in the right place at the right time.

tie-o-rama

Skyfield - 115 -Spahr-Summers

Dearth

Blonde she was on the boulevard, in moonlight, in crescent of moon-grin; golden hairs white as Lear’s under moonlight; the old power coming easy as Paris faring through the Dardanelles.

The moon, flat as a cookie, sails higher; wreaths of smoke lie fallow in space. But blonde on a bicycle goes fast and quiet; the ripple of her passing disturbs all of us, wandering on the foreshore of no adventure. Home, Palinurus; turn the rudder and home.

No blondes heave to in the moonlight; your bed, empty and wide as a car, awaits you. reaching

Harvey - 118 - Kohut & Spahr-Summers

Hum of a Heartbeat in this hard, vacant sleep under a moonless sky of things left unfinished, of what things have come to, I find ways to listen to the cacophony of love playing deep inside your chest like battered, un-tuned music. maybe if I hold you close enough and let the resonance in repetition be let the repetition of your heart,

of the seasons that pass be I can fix the broken strings that hold the instrument of you together. when they are cured, replaced with unbreakable golden twine, I can play them like a guitar with soft, unscarred fingers and gain a quiet melody out of you that no one else will know.

Breakfast

Sip on Bloody Marys made of cheap vodka and V8s and pick the strings of celery soaking up red juice.

Drag them out of their stalks like hangnails down skin.

A headache that never seems to leave: the braying sound of children in an empty, echoey space; your ex-wife’s crinkled forehead looking like worry-canyons; the scan she gives you when you crumble on the porch, a man of six foot five a mass of booze and speckled hair.

Sip on Bloody Marys like it could be an elixir of life and pick the strings of celery like they could be an extension of your body.

Drag them out of you like that hedonistic presence she says you hold. Something that never seems to leave: Her.

Nation - 121

Like a spasm in your back. Like a claw on your throat.

Her.

Her.

And her freckles and too-pale skin and big nose like yours.

Like a sad seraph with an exposed, wounded back.

Her.

Sip on Bloody Marys like sweet medicine that never asks you for anything, that lets you take, still, despite this.

A reminder of loss. A reminder of ruin. A reminder of defeat.

Nation - 122

Vyacheslav Konoval

Devastated Hearts

Traction bridge crossings, engine compartment and blade turbines, destroyed the hydroelectric power station, water poured from the dam into the floodplain, the seawater now stinks of a stagnant pond.

The city of Kherson is without electricity, and with it the city of Kakhovka, swamps in the villages and hamlets, the Russians brought trouble to our home in the South.

Konoval

The water is coming closer to the houses, evacuation from bombs and water, one after another such a carousel of life.

What kind of brave act is this?

Ecocide or terrorism?

Oh, how wonderful everything is, humans loudly celebrate despotism in Russia.

Glorious Day of the Russian Language in such a noble institution as the UN, Putin's propaganda will spit in your eyes and laugh.

Contributors

Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. His latest book is Night School: Selected Early Poems.

Brian Barnett is the author of the middle grade novellas Graveyard Scavenger Hunt and Chaos at the Carnival. He has over three hundred publishing credits in dozens of magazines and anthologies such as the Lovecraft eZine, Spaceports & Spidersilk, Scifaikuest, and Three Line Poetry.

Dennis J. Bernstein is an award-winning poet. His previous volume, Five Oceans in a Teaspoon, won the 2020 IPPY Gold Medal Award for Poetry and the 2020 Best Book Award for Poetry by the American Bookfest, and was a finalist in 2020 Best Book Award, Poetry International Book Awards. Bernstein’s previous collection, Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom, won the 2012 Artists Embassy International Literary Cultural Award. (cut save for the inside of book?) His poetry has appeared in The New York Quarterly, Bat City Review, Texas Observer, ZYZZYVA, and numerous other journals. Bernstein’s artists’ books/plays

French Fries and GRRRHHHH: a study of social patterns, co-authored with Warren Lehrer, are considered seminal works in the genre, and are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Georges Pompidou Centre, and other museums around the world.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in Lion and Lilac, Shorts Magazine, and Assignment Magazine. Poems are forthcoming in Gargoyle, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, samfiftyfour, and Ekphrastic Review.

Michael H. Brownstein's latest volumes ofpoetry, A Slipknot to Somewhere Else (2018) and How Do We Create Love (2019) were both published by Cholla Needles Press. In addition, he has appeared in Last Stanza, Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. He has nine poetry chapbooks including A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (Camel Saloon Press, 2012), The Possibility of Sky and Hell: From My Suicide Book (White Knuckle Press, 2013) and The Katy Trail, Mid-Missouri, 100 Degrees Outside and Other Poems (Kind of Hurricane Press, 2013). He was the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).

Wayne F. Burke's poetry has been widely published in print and online. He is author of eight published poetry collections and one book of short stories. Poems of his have recently appeared in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Red Eft Review, Dissident Voice, The Flying Dodo, Five Fleas, The Rye Whiskey Review, Beatnik Cowboy, and Ephemeral Elegies. He lives in Vermont (USA).

Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations, 15 chapbooks (most recently Sinosaure) and appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline and 2019 other literary outlets worldwide. A poetry judge at Canada's 2021 National Magazine Awards, Yuan began writing and publishing fiction in 2022.

David Dephy is an American award-winning poet and novelist. The founder of Poetry Orchestra, a 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee for Brownstone Poets, an author of full-length poetry collection Eastern Star (Adelaide Books, NYC, 2020), and A Double Meaning, also a full-length poetry collection with co-author Joshua Corwin, (Adelaide Books, NYC, 2022). His poem, A Senses of Purpose, is going to the moon in 2024 by The Lunar Codex, NASA, Space X, and Brick Street Poetry. He lives and works in New York City.

Lara Dolphin, a native of Pennsylvania, is an attorney, nurse, wife and mom of four amazing kids. Her first chapbook, In Search Of The Wondrous Whole, was published by Alien Buddha Press. Her most recent chapbook, Chronicle Of Lost Moments, is available from Dancing Girl Press.

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Dogs Don’t Care (2022). His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.

Mark DuCharme’s sixth full-length book of poetry is Here, Which Is Also a Place, new from Unlikely Books. Also new is his chapbook Scorpion Letters from Ethel. Other recent publications include his work of poet’s theater, We, the Monstrous: Script for an Unrealizable Film, published by The Operating System. His poetry has appeared widely in such venues as BlazeVOX, Blazing Stadium, Caliban Online, Colorado Review, Eratio, First Intensity, Indefinite Space, New American Writing, Noon, Otoliths, Shiny, Talisman, Unlikely Stories, Word/ for Word, and Poetics for the More-Than-Human World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary. A recipient of the Neodata Endowment in Literature and the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry, he lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Eric Raanan Fischman is an MFA graduate of Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Colorado. He has taught free workshops for Beyond Academia Free Skool in Nederland, the Firehouse Art Center in Longmont, and Mi Chantli in Boulder. His work has appeared in the Boulder Weekly, Bombay Gin, Twenty Bellows, New Feathers Anthology, and the debut issue of Jasper’s Folly Poetry Journal, as well as in community fundraising anthologies from South Broadway Ghost Society and Punch Drunk Press. He curates the Boulder/Denver area poetry calendar at boulderpoetryscene.com and is a regular contributor to the blog. His first book, Mordy Gets Enlightened, was published through The Little Door in 2017. For more, visit ericraananfischman.com.

Wendy Freborg is a retired social worker whose work has appeared in Right Hand Pointing, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Rat’s Ass Review, and WestWard Quarterly. Her life includes one husband, one son, two grandchildren, enough friends, too many doctors and not enough dogs. Her pleasures are her family, crossword puzzles, learning new things, and remembering old times.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Rathalla Review. His latest books Covert, Memory Outside the Head, and Guest of Myself are available through Amazon. He has work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired. His book, Mark the Dwarf is available on Kindle.

Geoffrey Heptonstall’s third collection of poetry, The Wicken Bird, was published by Cyberwit November 2022. His first collection, The Rites of Paradise, received critical acclaim when first published by Cyberwit in 2020. Sappho’s Moon followed. A new volume, A Whispering, is in preparation. A novel, Heaven’s Invention, was published by Black Wolf in 2016. A number of plays and monologues have been workshopped, staged, broadcast and/or published. He is also a prolific short fiction writer, essayist and reviewer.

Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 44 countries, a song lyricist, has several published poetry books and anthologies, and has been nominated for 6 Pushcart Prize awards and 6 Best of the Net nominations. Over 285 YouTube poetry videos as of 04-2023.

Joseph Kenyon is the author of one novel, All the Living and the Dead (Mill City Press, 2016), as well as short stories and poetry. When not writing, he teaches the craft at The Community College of Philadelphia and spends time studying the myriad ways light shifts moment to moment, in and around us.

Amy Kohut is a visual artist living & working in far-east Boulder County, Colorado. She has a BFA in fine arts from University of Denver, studied a semester in Provence w/ the Cleveland School of Arts, yet has never received a more potent art lesson than that given to her from her grandpa as a young child. “Amy, don’t draw what you think you see, only draw what you actually see”.

Vyacheslav Konoval is a Ukrainian poet whose work is devoted to the most pressing social problems of our time, such as poverty, ecology, relations between the people and the government, and war. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Anarchy Anthology Archive, International Poetry Anthology, Literary Waves Publishing, Sparks of Kaliopa, Reach of the Song 2022, Diogenes for Culture Journal, «Scars of my heart from the war», «Poetry for Ukraine», «Rhyming», «La page Blanche», Vyacheslav's poems have been translated into Spanish, French, Scottish, Italian, and Polish languages. His poems also have been read at meetings of various poetry groups, including Newman Poetry Group, Never Talk Innocence, Voicing Art Poetry Reading for Ukraine, Worcester County Poetry, Brussels Writer's Circle, Poets Anonymous May Middle-Met, Brett Show by Andrea, the Manx Bard group, Allinghman Art Festival, Versopolis Poetry Expo 2023, poetry readings «Poetry of Struggle and Solidarity», «Poetic Voices», Coal Literary Journal's Eve. He is a member of the Federation of Scottish Writers.

Hiram Larew, As founder of Poetry X Hunger, brings the world of poetry to the anti-hunger cause. His poems appear in Poetry South, Contemporary American Voices, Best Poetry Online, Honest Ulsterman, San Antonio Review and elsewhere. www.PoetryXHunger.com and www.HiramLarewPoetry.com

Corey Mesler has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 25 books of fiction and poetry. His newest novel, Cock-a-Hoop, is from Whiskey Tit. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On, which won The Memphis Film Prize in 2017. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.

Terry JudeMilleris aPushcartPrize-nominatedpoet from Houston. Hereceivedthe2018CatherineCase Lubbe Manuscript Prize for his book, The Drawn Cat’s Dream. His work has been published in the Southern Poetry Anthology, The Lily Poetry Review, The Comstock Review, and The Oakland Review and in scores of other publications. He serves as 1st Vice Chancellor for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies.

Melissa E. Mishcon’s fiction and poetry has been published in: The G.W. Review, The Arkansan Review, Aaduna, Blue Unicorn, Boston Literary Magazine, The Literary Nest, Girls Gone 50, The Berkshire Review, Tiny Seed Literary Journal and Urthona. Her essays have appeared in The Women’s Times, The Artful Mind, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Albany Times Union, The Berkshire Edge, among others. Her novel, Just Between Us, won first prize from Birmingham Southern University’s Hackney Award. Her work has also been noted for commendation by Serpentine (1st Prize), and New Millennium. She is a practicing psychotherapist, and lives in The Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts.

Veronica Nation is a Colorado-based poet and artist. Her work has been featured in Hive Avenue Literary Journal, Scapegoat Review, Capsule Stories, and other literary journals. Veronica enjoys writing about the intricacies of grief, love, and loss, largely influenced by nature and lived experiences. Her writing can be found on her website at www.veronicanation.com.

Garrett Okenka wrote his first Runaway note to his mother at the age of twelve. Though he didn’t get far, he has continued running and writing since. Currently living in Boulder, Colorado but from all parts East. His poems have been published in Boulder Weekly, Spit Poet Zine, and Grains of Sand (a Poetry Anthology). He has performed alongside the ever popular Black Market Translation in the chaos known as Punketry.

Agnieszka Pokojska is a Krakow-based literary translator, mainly from English into Polish. Her most recent work includes two volumes of essays by Margaret Atwood (forthcoming, 2021). She has been translating Grzegorz Wróblewski’s poetry since the late 1990s and her translations have been published in book form Let's Go Back to the Mainland, (Červená Barva Press, 2014), in literary magazines and online.

Dan Raphael's poetry collection In the Wordshed was published by Last Word press last December. More recent poems appear in Bindweed,Fireweed, North Dakota Review, Mad Swirl and Subjectiv. Most Wednesdays Dan writes and records a current events poem for The KBOO Evening News.

Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, Poetry in Arts First Place Award/Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of Pushcarts/Best of Net Awards. Gerry’s widely published including in Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, LA Review, and NY Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Chicago and Columbia presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry’s a physician who’s built

and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor/healthcare CEO. Currently he’s devoting energy/resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids/six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters.

Jessica P. Skyfield struggles to balance herself in this world and finds some solace in writing poetry as she grapples with the gravity of life, not just hers but all of our collective dreams, desires, and designs as they're played out time and time again.

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers is a native of Colorado. He began exploring art mediums as a teenager while in South Africa during the 1970’s, quickly settling on photography and poetry. A commercial photographer in Chicago in the early 1990’s, he was active in the saloon poetry and publishing scene. Jeff’s poetry and photos have appeared in numerous print, online magazines and anthologies. He is the former publisher of Poetry Victims (2004 – 2014) and Snapping Twig (2013 – 2015) online magazines. He has published 19 books. He currently writes and publishes poetry, flash fiction, memoirs, and historical articles. Jeff is the founder of Cherry Publications, and Jasper’s Folly Poetry Journal.

Sarah Vendetti lives in Massachusetts with her young son and husband. She is a middle school science teacher who enjoys exploring the north woods of New England and hiking the White Mountains. She is a seeker of outdoor adventure in our nations National Parks, from desert to mountain to coast.

Christian Ward is a UK-based writer who has recently appeared in Dodging the Rain, Blue Unicorn, The Seventh Quarry, Bluepepper, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Amazine and Rye Whiskey Review.

Jennifer Watkins is new to the publishing world and is excited that it has finally begun after years of dedication. She studied creative writing at the University of Iowa, where she was immersed in the writing scene. She began writing in third grade and put together her first book. She assembled her second book in sixth grade. By the time she was in high school at Iowa City West High, she was receiving high honors from English and writing teachers. She strives to be the best at what she does. She works hard to come up with innovative ideas and creative prose. Her writing is imaginative and unique and writing will always be a passion of hers.

MT Williams lives in the cornfields of Southwestern Ontario with his wife, daughter and far too many animals. He's been featured on Fleas Of The Dog, Agony Opera and Better Than Starbucks. He can be found on Twitter @emptywill or at emptywill.com.

Grzegorz Wróblewski was born in 1962 in Gdańsk and grew up in Warsaw. Since 1985 he has been living in Copenhagen. He is the author of many books of poetry, drama and other writings. As a visual artist, he has exhibited his paintings in various galleries in Denmark, Germany, England and Poland. English translations of his work are available in Our Flying Objects (trans. Joel Leonard Katz, Rod Mengham, Malcolm Sinclair, Adam Zdrodowski, Equipage, 2007), A Marzipan Factory (trans. Adam Zdrodowski, Otoliths, 2010), Kopenhaga (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Zephyr Press, 2013), Let's Go Back to the Mainland (trans. Agnieszka Pokojska, Červená Barva Press, 2014) and Zero Visibility (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Phoneme Media, 2017). Asemic writing book Shanty Town (Post-Asemic Press, USA, 2022). He has been awarded with scholarships from Danish Literature Council (Litteraturrådet) and Danish Arts Foundation (Statens Kunstfond).

John Zedolik is an adjunct English professor at Chatham University and Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and has published poems in such journals as Abbey, The BangaloreReview (IND), Commonweal, FreeXpresSion (AUS), Orbis (UK), Paperplates (CAN), Poem, Poetry Salzburg Review (AUT), Third Wednesday, Transom, and in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In 2019, he published a full-length collection, entitled Salient Points and Sharp Angles (WordTech Editions), which is available through Amazon, and in 2021 published another collection, When the Spirit Moves Me (Wipf & Stock), which consists of spiritually-themed poems and is also available through Amazon. John recently published his third collection, Mother Mourning (Wipf & Stock), again, available on Amazon. His iPhone is his primary poetry notebook, and hopes his use of technology to craft this ancient art remains fruitful.

Zachary Zolty is a theology graduate student. He is pursuing a Master’s degree in Religion, and his interests include Eastern Orthodoxy and activism.