Contributors’

At lunch in Cambridge, England, he asks me unironically. A hush falls over

our table—no context here for such a question. I could say yes, I do believe

in a God I don’t comprehend, a wisp, or maybe a force stronger than anything,

far from me, outside the cosmos. I can’t see what it is, not a him or her, no robes,

no arms, no legs. I could say no to Fred, I don’t believe in your God.

He’s too small, too human. And how could you still believe anyway, Fred,

after he took your daughter, gave her a stupid infection from a fall in the road?

I look out of my eye sockets, and I feel a power near me or in me. It grabs me

when consciousness leaks out of me, grabs me, and shakes me alive.

82

“For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.”

—Job 3:25

Water the daisies. Watch the dirt turn dark with relief.

Love the bees. Like you, they have names and middle names, memories, deaths.

Open your hand to the tug and huff of toddlers, the macaroni on the table hardened to half-smiles, half-moons.

Watch the fish rise from the lake of childhood. See how they’re filled by the fruit of air.

Refine stillness. Let the good milk spill.

Praise each freckle, a star in a constellation of your vast fleshy galaxy.

Thank it — what eats your heart into grave simplicity, leaving it easy to pack, the pit of a plum.

Guard your true promise. Be lucid and wide. Animal-soft. Full as a bride.

What matters is nearly invisible. Search for it snout-like, close to the ground, bloodhound sharp

and howl.

83

E. KRISTIN ANDERSON is a poet and glitter enthusiast living mostly at a Starbucks somewhere in Austin, Texas. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press), and her work has appeared in many magazines. She is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press), We’re Doing Witchcra (Porkbelly Press) and Behind, All You’ve Got (Semiperfect Press). Find her online at EKristinAnderson.com and on Twitter at @ek_anderson

MARY KATE BAKER currently resides in Philadelphia, PA, and holds a BA in English from the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in Rainy Day Magazine, Fish Food Magazine, The Write Launch, and GRIFFEL.

JAMAICA BALDWIN’s poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in RHINO, Prairie Schooner, Guernica, The Missouri Review, and TriQuarterly, among others. She is a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, the 2019 winner of the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference Contest in Poetry, and a 2020 Tupelo Press Berkshire Prize Runner Up. Jamaica currently lives in Nebraska where she is pursuing her PhD in English at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. www. jamaicabaldwin.com

ALIKI BARNSTONE is a poet, translator, critic, editor, and visual artist. She is the author of eight books of poetry, the most recent of which include: Dear God Dear, Dr. Heartbreak: New and Selected Poems (Sheep Meadow, 2009), Bright Body (White Pine, 2011), and Dwelling (Sheep Meadow, 2016). Among her awards are a Senior Fulbright Fellowship in Greece, the Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and residencies at the Anderson Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is Professor of English at the University of Missouri and served as poet laureate of Missouri from 2016–2019.

MILDRED K. BARYA is a writer from Uganda and Assistant professor at UNCAsheville, where she teaches creative writing and world literature. Her publications include three poetry books as well as prose, poems or hybrids forthcoming or published in Shenandoah, Tin House, Obsidian, poets.org, Poetry Quarterly, Asymptote Journal, Matters of Feminist Practice Anthology, Prairie Schooner, New Daughters of Africa International Anthology, Per Contra, and Northeast Review. She’s at work on a collection of nonfi ction, and one of the essays—Being Here in This Body—won the 2020 Linda Flowers Literary Award. www.mildredbarya.com

ALLISON FIELD BELL is a Jewish American writer originally from California. She holds an MFA in Fiction from New Mexico State University, and she is pursuing her PhD in Fiction at the University of Utah. Her work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, West Branch, The Cincinnati Review, Witness Magazine, Shenandoah, The Pinch, The Florida Review, Fugue, New Madrid, and elsewhere. “Of the Eating Variety” is a chapter from her novel-in-progress, Bodies of Other Women.

84

BEN DORY is an artist and metalsmith originally from Kansas City, KS. Dory received his BFA in Metalsmithing/Jewelry from the University of Kansas and his MFA in Metalsmithing from Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2014. Dory recently finished a three-year artist-in-residence position at the Windgate Center of Art + Design in Little Rock, AR. www.bendory.design

SADDIQ DZUKOGI is the author of Your Crib, My Qibla (University of Nebraska Press, 2021). His chapbook Inside the Flower Room was selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the APBF New Generation African Poets Chapbook Series. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Oxford Review of Books, Poetry Society of America, Gulf Coast, African American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Verse Daily. In 2017, Saddiq was a finalist for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he is currently studying for a PhD in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

NOAM ELYASHIV is an Israeli-American artist whose work focuses on the conversation between drawings to objects on the body. She explores the formal changes, visual gestures, and the duties of function that accrue due to relocation and gravity, when a shape emerges into its dimensional phase. She received her BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art & Design and her MFA from RISD, where she has been a faculty since 1994. www.noam-elyashiv.com

MICHAEL GARRIGAN writes and teaches along the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania and strongly believes that every watershed should have a Poet Laureate. He is the author of two poetry collections: Robbing the Pillars (Homebound Publications) and the chapbook What I Know [How to Do] (Finishing Line Press). His writing has appeared in Gray’s Sporting Journal, The Hopper Magazine, Permafrost, and Split Rock Review. You can find more at www.mgarrigan.com

MARY JO FIRTH GILLETT’s collection, Soluble Fish, won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. She’s also published four prize-winning chapbooks, most recently Dance Like A Flame (Hill-Stead Museum). Her poems have appeared in The Southern Poetry Review, New Ohio Review, Salamander, the Poetry Daily and Verse Daily sites, and elsewhere. She’s won a Kresge Fellowship in the Literary Arts and the New York Open Voice Award.

Born and raised in New York City, SOPHIE GLENN received her BFA in Sculpture and Drawing from SUNY Purchase College, and her MFA in Furniture Design and Woodworking from San Diego State University. She has exhibited her work across the country, and has received several grants, fellowships, and residencies to help advance her career. Sophie has taught workshops and has held academic appointments at Tennessee Technological University and Mississippi State University. www.sophieglenn.com

JILL BAKER GOWER is a metalsmith and educator who resides near Madison, WI. Jill received her BS from UW-Madison, and her MFA from Arizona State University. Her work has been in many juried and curated exhibitions nationwide and has been published in Metalsmith magazine and books such as 500 Enameled Objects, CAST, and Little Dreams in Glass and Metals: Enameling in America 1920 to the Present. In 2019 she had a solo exhibition at the Metal Museum in Memphis, TN. www.jillbakergower.com

ANDREW HAYES, born in Tucson, AZ, studied sculpture at Northern Arizona University. He left school to learn more about

85