Issue 10 September 2016

Issue 10

Editor's Comments

Welcome to Issue 10. This is a general issue and contains an excellent range of poems from poets new to Allegro Poetry as well as some familiar faces. As always submissions were strong which makes my job as editor challenging and exciting.

Sally Long



Poems

Advice to a Daughter

There’s no man worth it

to throw away your education

like it was some frilly shawl

you wore for show, then

ditched it when it got too warm

leaving it in a wrinkled heap

slung across your chair, its

fringe all frayed and knotted

in despair.  I know.  I did it.

I left college just before I

graduated.  Now what fool does

that?  Your father sweet-talked

me into it, saying he’d take

care of me forever.  Well, missy,

there’s no forever, as I discovered,

only a lot of promises unraveling

and a man walking out the door.

Now what am I left with?  A

paisley patterned shawl lying

in a puddle on the floor.

Karen Loeb

Abolina K. Greenwood

A bat-winged shadow cloaks the granary

out past Newville where the night watchman parks

a rusted Dodge, plucks the rungs everytime

he winds his way around the parapet,

music on his mind. A Fender Bass thrums

through his forehead, rekindling memories

of the afterglow with Abolina,

her lips sticky with watermelon juice.

The past tiptoes to the top step, won’t stop

teasing his cortex with the enchantment

of her fingers wiggling in lacy gloves,

one night forever etched. Prom queen serene,

she winks at him nightly in sulfur light,

the way fireflies lantern the river bed.

James Himelsbach

mammogram -

the moonlight is patterned

on it

Lavana Kray

Yorick

I have jumped out of my skull.

What was my skull anyway

But a sidewinding planet

Of cat's eye constellations

Of what I was imagining

At any given instance,

Remnant thoughts

Such as the hugeness of love

Crowding out all other feelings.

Of course I have a mind

Filled with fitful reminiscences

Spinning in opposite directions

Like some dying star,

Galxies of astonishments &

Gasps, high-speed shocks,

Odds & ends of theories,

Spirals of names & faces,

But what good will all this do me

In the Land of the Dead?

Louis Phillips

Dawn, Car Under a Tree at the Rim

We had pulled onto the interstate,

a few miles’ drive to put eleven-month-old

son to sleep. God knows he screamed

enough to wake up the floor

and the one below us too at the country inn

where we had naively decamped.

He slept peacefully in the car,

lone occupant of the summit

parking lot at the lost King Ridge ski area.

We did not, reclined the bucket seats as far

back as they’d go, watched the sun

rise over the lake to the west.

We couldn’t wait to return to the city

to the south like Moses turning around

without waiting the requisite number

of years he’d been commanded to wander.

Jeff Bernstein

Tracing Back the Eyes

My grandfather took pictures of villagers

on that side of the mountain at a time when nobody else

had a camera. After developing them, he kept copies,

drawers full of sepia photographs with scalloped edges.

I wish I could go back to the old house and return them

to the girl who has no other pictures. She is held up

by a mother who looks like a child herself—both smiling

against the background of hand-woven tapestries.

Wrapped in a silk scarf delicate like the wings

of a butterfly, an old woman, now gone for sixty years,

looks familiar, as if I should know seven

of her great-grandchildren, spotted them passing by.

Who remembers, who traces back the lines

of genealogy, who recognizes one’s own eyes?   

Lucia Cherciu

Blood Knot

He made me choose and cut

a willow switch that slashed five welts

into the skin of my calf.  He drove me

to dance class on Wednesdays. Afternoons,

he slipped downstairs

and into the long howl of the power saw.

Behind the bruise colored door,

at the center of a murmuring hive,

he makes a single ripple in the bed. Specialists

bring things in, take things away, seek

some balance of awareness and pain.

I had measles, and he read me Cinderella,

sat beside me as my fever rose. I missed

curfew so he lashed me with his belt.

The acid line ticks on the vectored screen.

Here’s death’s muzzle –

inches from his foot. Will I take

his hand? Can I parse the word, Love?

The little girl dancing in terror

under the unleashed belt—

she would have said she loved him.

Gail C. DiMaggio

Identity

You were a city. Edges outlined with palm trees and stray thin clouds. Roads winding in and out of narrow geography, like cartography gone wrong. Lanes thick with houses made of

mud and mortar. Hands like wings of birds tasting freedom for the first time. Skies painted as hymns across the horizon. Water tearing at the seam, tendrils rising on your skin.
You loved like a mirage in the desert of slow thunders. The rains never came. The lightening never renounced its arms. Wars were fought like wars.
When I tried to stitch crevices into your barricades, you said you didn’t like light. Your skin cracked under the heat of the green sun, shafts of light struck your body like glass shards. You made love the way you created art, and the wind that hummed the tunes of your pining shook every windowpane, wall, firmament.
 That's when I knew you were a house with shut doors. I knocked for a long time – three years, five days, ten hours.
One day, I saw you inside a maze of pulled-over blinds, your eyes breathing the sound of enough. Your face was the dust settling on forgotten bedrocks, a bruised sky holding a fistful of broken stars.

Trivarna Hariharan

The Persistence of Memory (Dali, 1931)

                  

Time has melted away…

all I knew is gone.

Like an elastic timepiece on a branch…

I simply wither.

My hands, too, are pasted to my face…

to shield the horrors I see.

And like the world of Dali…

Time has melted away.

Chris Knodel

Sorrow

In heavy rain, the movers carry a plastic sheathed table

across the yard to the truck. A disconnected dog

snuffles at rivulets, nudging a broken toy. The movers return

for the sofa, then the mattresses, which they stack

like tombstones. Next, the beds are dismantled.

The rain does not let up. Hours go by.

At last, the truck coughs to life, belches exhaust, cuts

through the flooding street, into the growing darkness.

Fred White

The Gender Case, Act II

The jury is in, it's all put to bed.

Yet with such tired roles, who is to say:

the curtain is closed, the last line now said?

We've all guilty pleasures locked in our heads.

But our organs play one tune, so today

the jury is in, it's all put to bed.

Even when we feel these shackles of lead

we dance the same old steps and come what may,

the curtain is closed, the last line now said.

Like smokers fresh from the hospital bed,

we choke and we choke, resigned with dismay

- the jury is in, it's all put to bed.

But this show is finished, frankly it's dead.

Let's not judge those who switch parts, let's not pray

the curtain is closed, the last line now said.

Actresses, Actors, with eyes cast ahead, 

learn this new script and go freely to play.

The jury is in, it's all put to bed.

The curtain is closed, the last line now said.

Sean McDonagh

First

This is what he did:
he walked into your house.

First, he looked at the art on your walls.
If you had any.
Those walls whispered your secrets,
spoke to him of your desires;
what sad habits or wild thoughts you had hidden.

Next, he checked out your bookcases.
If you had any.
Your books told him where you had been
and what you dreamed
and any little avenues of escape you planned.

After that,
he took no notice of furniture,
unless it lured him
with nouveau or crafts or old charm
or had a mind of its own.

Besides all that,
he walked your floors with disinterest,
except if some design bit at his ankles,
Persian measured his step,
or wood gleam enchanted his eye.

In other respects,
he was your normal guest.
He chatted friendly,
poked among the appetizers,
and hoped for uncommon wine.

Dennis Herrell

The Joke Of The Clown

The punchline is
His face seems to live in another phase of pottery--

And there are lead-ins that will dribble
From his face's gloss--

Build-ups that will mummify the tent--
His legs poised like a pair of magical matchsticks--

His red nose an alarming flare that quits the night.

Jason Visconti

Piecework

Until the age of nine or ten, I thought

the old man was on peace work.

I knew my Mum weren’t, though,

she’d tell me so from behind a steam

of nappies or with her head half in the oven

when I rolled in starved and muddied

from a kick-about on the common.

What an unlikely worker for peace

he’d have been, with his penchant for boxing

and fondness for grudges. I imagined

he spent his night shifts devising lists

of don’t do thisses, to deliver

the next morning, while my Mum and I

stayed up late to enjoy The Great Escape.

Ray Miller

I Love You

Say it? Don't be so stupid.
Why should I say it, what about or for?
You're ridiculous and so sensitive,
completely contrary on both counts.

You're mine, right, you've got the best bits of me,
(though I'm not embittered by it)
and no one knows you like I do.
Why do you say that? Of course you're free.
I don't care, it doesn't matter to me.
I don't need to see anything you do
really. Go off, leave me here alone
And when you go
I won't even remember you've been here
or that you'd been and gone before.

I did give up everything for you, you know.
Everything in 30 years because
I'm so selfless. I never told a lie. Ever.
Even your father would spit that out.
You though, you've needed watching.
You've kept so many secrets under that skin
hiding them within, from me. It's scheming.

Is it no surprise that I get tired sometimes of your shifting eyes?
I honestly don't know where you've come from -
you're not like me. You left me in the dark with your
old stuff and dust and that
if you'll remember. With the rest of the old tat.

I've already given you a womb, a room,
a roof (you used it all like a b&b later)

but no matter. I grew you, I'm proud of what I did,
but I wish I'd grown another one afterwards to be my friend
and sit with me, repaying me, until
I'm finished this life and at my end.

It's just words, I don't need to say anything.

It's implied, as birds squat on eggs until they crack and sing.

Anyway, pass me the tea, I'm busy
and I need to get to the brother's next.
Hurry up girl, or you'll never get ahead.

Caroline Hardaker  

When I knew / you were gone

The owl’s belly blurs white past the windshield. Somewhere out there in the field is no, no, no life. Out there are noiseless harbingers with sphinx-dead faces. Someday we'll rationalize paleness. Not now.

Tyto alba, common barn owl. Known to meander, to lurch through night like a moth. Known to call the time of death. Known to infest visions and hover on druids. Known to proliferate. Feathers stir on every continent but Antarctica. Gathers in glarings, hootings and parliaments. Aka ghost owl, church owl, demon owl, hobgoblin owl, monkey-faced roarer. Owl of many faces, some of them nightmares.

The barn owl plummets in whispers. Blinks and snake-hisses. Rends the back of the skull until breathing ceases. Watches the eyes of a vole bleed life as memories erase in a crushing grip. Tyto alba. Cherubim. Prophet of brain death. Never. Never.

Richard Manly Heiman

Ruth and Boaz at the Threshing Floor

Gleaning girl, lap full of destiny.

There is a knowing in your

olive eyes...planted in you

before your day began.

It pulls you to a place

of certainty-to yellow fields

and to a planted man.

I will lay down for years

of nights, for him.

Your lips and tongue

drip corn silk at his feet.

Broad muscled manhood

ripples down his arms--

you picture your hair on

his burnished chest.

I will be here when he wakes up,

you sigh. And if he will not

take me then, I know

I’ll dream him mine and 

lay me down again.

And in the morning,

fathoming his face

you see down tunneled

years, one bleeding son.

Richard Manly Heiman

Coffeehouse Poem # 140

A girl with glasses

is equal to

10 angelina jolies

5 julia roberts  

3 halle berrys

and one marilyn monroe

as she sits sipping her

iced  coffee

black stiletto heels

Standing out like an

exclamation point

Erren Geraud Kelly 

Cabin Fever

What lies beneath the desire to leave one’s home?

Perhaps what chafes at her is Paris. The Paris

that was then, not the one now besieged.

Ateliers, shops, bookstores—the little man

who saved her from a Moroccan

when she ducked in. The train waiting

to take her back to a place where veal, seasoned

by an uncle, would be cooked in pure butter.

There, mussels sat in their blue nacre shells

for her reluctance and the usual coaxing,

followed by a hard swallow of Beaujolais.

The colorless aunt who owned this uncle.

The drama of their child, closeted again to scream

its head off. No one to rescue and nothing to be done.

Judith Skillman

Illusion (1)

Design each frame with time gaps

stroke roots and branches

into the fertile mind, 

where dreams project flat shadows

stretched into the frames

of terms and expressions.

The longing for the cave`s 

safety draws together,

transforming trust into logic.

Perforated strips germinate

the illusion of reality,

clustering around brighter spots.

With impermeable mirrors

the ego-hero projects, where violence 

is trying to gain importance.

The reel rolls. 

Motion can be stopped

at any point.

You can join the dots 

at their peril - making lines

with happy ends.

Csilla Toldy

Moving Image Illusion (2)

gaps of time

root and branch

in the fertile soil

of a mind unspoilt

by 

the dreams 

that project flat shadows

cut -

stretched into frames of units and/or digits

the longing for the cave`s 

safety makes us to slaves

of drum and dance,

throbbing

reality is looming 

around bright spots, 

impermeable mirrors

machinate

there’s a hole in every whole

and movement is illusion

Csilla Toldy

Fleeting Glimpses

She takes a fleeting glimpse at her wristwatch

while I steal a glance at mine.

Pauses between sentences grow ever longer.

Strained smiles testify to our civility,

as we both lie about how we have work early next morning.

The food was sumptuous, the decor was conducive,

the stage was beautifully set

but the actors lacked the chemistry

making this dress rehearsal a first night flop.

The savvy waiter presents the bill.

He deserves a good tip for quickly delivering

a kind of euthanasia to this stillborn romance.

Dutch treat is now the vogue, so we'll divvy up the tab,

which is much cheaper than if it were a divorce.

Richard Fein

The Overturned Table

             after Giotto’s The Expulsion of the Moneychangers from the Temple

The virgin birth seems inconceivable;

the death makes little sense, renewed life less.

But here’s a scene that is believable:

a man of principle making a mess

of moneychangers’ lives.  The makeshift scourge

too small to lash with dire effect, he glares

with serene righteous eyes.  Cowed by this surge

of true authority, his followers

hang back, haloed but unsure if they’ll need

some alibi (The worst of them takes bribes.)

Livestock get loose.  The frightened children hide.

And nose to nose, two wise, bearded scribes

assure themselves they know just who’ll arrange

the lawful ways to save their world from change.

Jack Kristiansen

Letter to a smart-arsed son

I believed he could barely write his name

or at least feared language, his speech hesitant.

He resented my sly words, bristling, repeatedly

falling back on his lengthy army days list,

charges and punishments learned when he joined up.

He was fifteen, following his brothers

after leaving their auntie’s crowded house at thirteen.

Insubordination; Dumb Insolence; and more,

not the language of his strident South London streets.

I could be confined to barracks if I wasn’t careful.

He did allow me to read his dishevelled Daily Mirror

when I snapped awake in my shadowy bedroom,

the sky lit by Venus the Morning Star, ending his shift

after he drove his trolley-bus through post-war nights.

While he brewed tea and fried bread I read

about champion boxers and successful jockeys,

sketching action shots in the margins of newsprint

and picking winners when he was finished with it.

When I was an adult I received a thank-you letter

written at the urging of my mother, I suspected,

in beautiful copperplate handwriting that silenced me.

Life a ceremonial circle ever decreasing,

the Morning Star now the Evening Star,

I recall his letter now, wishing I had it still.     

Ian C Smith

The Page I Tore Out

Books so like little worlds and usually,
I respect their creases and folds. Their indiscretions.
But this time, I removed one piece of the story.
One page. The part about the dog.

I probably don’t have to say which part.
After a long description of his vulnerability
his affection for children and praise,
the author turned him into a metaphor, 
of course, for greater loss.

Human loss. But, here’s the thing,
without the page and its cruel, symbolic 
small death, the story held.

E. F. Schraeder

At Peace

Death is a bit like labour, I suppose.

In reverse though. Not moving towards

the explosion of air in the lungs

but towards the last breath.

It isn’t good for us, the living,

to go too near it.

We loathe it, maybe.

Yes, it makes our flesh crawl.

But we know it will be our last midwife.

as it comes close to take our hand.

“At peace”, some say but

at peace is for those who are sleeping.

My sister is not sleeping.

I will not say what she is doing.

It is all that is left now

for her to accomplish.

Jim Conwell

Lisp

Still remember the speech pathologist’s admonition
keep your tongue behind your teeth.
A flick and tap of the tongue tip,
hold it back there red-red flapping
against the gums. Spit sloshed loose
trying to enunciate months,
time pacing long and steady steps ahead
of me as other children tittered, sibilant.
I practiced in a small room
round a table half-moon hooped,
fists across so many s-words repeated
on green paper stacked like tapestries.

Somewhere along the line, though,
I slipped up. This tongue got loose
and reaches between my teeth
when I stutter, nervous, through speeches
and through wrong thing said,
my mouth a wider circle.
I’ve studded silence with esses,
esses, esses, hissed into microphones
and staircased pages onstage.

This tongue’s worked its way unhilted
to sing about snakes, persimmons,
permissions, sparklers
and cisterns Sistine Chapel-titled
across the tiled sassafras
of the palate. Months
are still impossible, but I can
handle moths and listen,
the small powder wings.

Finding the words inside mandibles,
the small jawbones and hollow spaces
of teeth and meaning, it gropes
back behind the molars
to siphon a chorus,
sip the sacred well water
of the muse again.

Kelly Weber

You do not understand

You do not understand. Our thoughts can’t touch.

I am right; immune to any question.

It’s not that I don’t care. I care too much.

The truth is mine, its peerless beauty such

that I have need of no other lesson.

You do not understand. Our thoughts can’t touch.

The hands are false that at my hands would clutch

whispering of patience and compassion.

It’s not that I don’t care. I care too much.

The wrong words cannot remain unhushed

and I am right, so this is my burden.

You do not understand. Our thoughts can’t touch.

To what is in my way, my eyes are shut

and I am blind to daughter, wife or son.

It’s not that I don’t care. I care too much.

Don’t bother asking what can be enough.

Don’t bother asking me what I have done.

You do not understand. Our thoughts can’t touch.

It's not that I don't care. I care too much.

John Townsend

The Sacred City

Dismantled stone by stone,

each stone sold

for a loaf of bread,

each becomes a miracle,

the last ones fed on stones.

History comes looking

for its sacred places,

a well of tears,

fonts of holy water,

subterranean crypts of popes,

to find the stones gone,

people cheering

in the streets,

the food of lost years

growing in the cracks,

the buildings bleeding,

the streets flooded with milk.

George Moore

Do you know yet

Do you know

how my brother died?

I dialled the number,

got through

to the coroner.

We do, he said.  Death by hanging.

Hanging?  I said.

I tried the word.

It didn’t fit.

Silence on the end of the line.

Oh, hang on, sorry, 

I’ve got the wrong Mr Brown.

We don’t know yet.

I hung up.  Life

hung in the balance.

Janet Hatherley

I must lie down

Lay me down on the grass

with the hum of the earth and the sky,

and the warm earth

and the clouds scant

with the hum of the bee going by,

and the ant’s scurry,

the bird’s flurry,

the floating seed on the breeze

with its white wisp

and its clock tick

and the catch of the wind in my hair,

and the hare’s breath

and the rabbit’s flick

of its paws in its flutter and hurry

to draw in fast

through the soft earth

with the catch of the wind in its fur.

Janet Hatherley

Contributors

Jeff Bernstein, a lifelong New Englander, divides his time between Boston and Central Vermont. His second chapbook, Nowhere Near Morning, was published in 2013 by Liquid Light Press. His manuscript “Nightfall, Full of Light” was a Finalist in the 2015 Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award for a full-length collection. 

Lucia Cherciu was born in Romania and came to the United States in 1995. She teaches English at Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie, NY and her latest book of poetry is Edible Flowers (Main Street Rag, 2015). Her poetry has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and for Best of the Net. Her web page is luciacherciu.webs.com.

Jim Conwell has an original background in Fine Art, but has worked in mental health for thirty years. He has had poems published in magazines in the UK, Ireland, Australia and North America and had two poems shortlisted in the Bridport Poetry Prize 2015. He lives in London, England.

Gail C. DiMaggio spent decades helping her husband, a jazz trombonist, pursue his music in a world where no artist ever gives up a day gig.  Refusing to become discouraged, she writes about the life of an ordinary woman because for this she has all necessary credentials.  And besides, as a friend recently told her, “What else have you got to do?” Her work has been published in a number of journals among them, Blue Lyra Review,Aries, Antiphon Cactus Heart, and Kestrel.

Richard Fein was a finalist in The 2004 New York Center for Book Arts Chapbook Competition. A Chapbook of his poems was published by Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has been published in many web and print journals such as Cordite, Cortland Review, Reed, Southern Review, Roanoke Review, Green Silk Journal, Birmingham Poetry Review, Mississippi Review, Paris/atlantic,  Canadian Dimension, Black Swan Review, Exquisite Corpse, Foliate Oak,  Morpo Review, Ken*Again   Oregon East, Southern Humanities Review, Morpo, Skyline, Touchstone, Windsor Review, Maverick, Parnassus Literary Review, Small Pond, Kansas Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Exquisite Corpse, Terrain Aroostook Review, Compass Rose, Whiskey Island Review, Oregon East, Bad Penny Review, Constellations, The Kentucky Review, Muddy River and many others.

Caroline Hardaker lives in the cold north of England, and her poetry has been published in Neon Literary Magazine, the Three Drops from a Cauldron Midwinter Anthology, Pankhearst, and the I am not a Silent Poet blog. She is due to be the featured 'Fresh Poet' on the Pankhearst blog in March 2016.

Trivarna Hariharan is an author whose work appears or is forthcoming in various literary magazines such as Textploit, Writers Asylum, Literature Studio, TheOriginalVanGoghsEarAnthology, A Penny for a Thought, Orange Almonds, The Bougainvillea Lit Road Magazine, Mad Swirl, Tuck Magazine, Life In 10 Minutes, The Quail Bell Magazine, CultureCult, Tangerine Heart Lit Zine, Vigilante Publications, Germ Magazine, Paper Lens Zine, The Criterion, On The Rusk and elsewhere. She serves as the editor in chief at Inklette, the poetry reader for Sprout and is the Head Officer for Journalism at Redefy. Her first poetry collection Home and Other Places, is being published by Nivasini Publishers, and is scheduled for a 2016 release. She believes strongly in the power of art to bring about a change in the world.

Janet Hatherley is a London teacher.  She has published in The Lake, Ink Sweat & Tears, Copperfield Review, Obsessed With Pipework, has won third prize in the 2015 Barnet poetry competition and has work forthcoming in South Bank Poetry.

Dennis Herrell writes both serious and humorous poems about his life in this civilized society. (Poking fun at himself is almost a full-time job). He especially likes to look at the small things in everyday life that make us (him) so individual and vulnerable. In addition to U.S. acceptances, international magazines include Ascent Aspiration Magazine (CA), Current Accounts (UK), Ink, Sweat, & Tears (UK), Ottawa Arts Review (CA), Pennine Ink (UK), Poetry Salzburg Review (AT), plus U.S magazines.

James Himelsbach is an actor and poet living in New York City. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Witness, Notre Dame Review, Birmingham Review, Main Street Rag, Slipstream, Blackbird, among others.

Erren Geraud Kelly is a Pushcart nominated poet from Los Angeles. He has been writing for 25 years and has over 150 publications in print and online in such publications as Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine(online), Ceremony, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, Poetry Salzburg and other publications. His most recent publication was in Black Heart Literary Journal; I have also been published in anthologies such as "Fertile Ground," and “Beyond The Frontier.” His work can also been seen on Youtube under the " Gallery Cabaret," links.

Chris Knodel, ‘Irish Goat’ is an author, poet and a graduate student in the Creative Writing MFA program at Houston University-Victoria. His poetry and short fiction have been featured in Ealain, Highfield Press, Kind of a Hurricane Press, Wolfian, Write Place at the Write Time, Writer’s Quibble, Yellow Chair Review, Zodiac Review & Zombie Logic Review. 

Lavana Kray is from Iasi – Romania. She is passionate about writing and photography. Her work has been published in: Haiku Canada Review, Asahi Shimbun, The Mainichi, World Haiku Association, Daily Haiga, Heron’s Nest, Frogpond, Acorn, Ardea, Ginyu, and others. She was been chosen for Haiku Euro Top 100-edition 2014.This is her blog:http://photohaikuforyou.blogspot.ro

Jack Kristiansen exists in the composition books and computer files of William Aarnes.  Kristiansen’s poems have appeared in such places as FIELD, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Literary Review, and Main Street Rag.

Karen Loeb’s stories have won prizes (http://www.wisconsinacademy.org/magazine/walk-makino & http://www.carvezine.com/story/2014-fall-loeb) and her poems have appeared in Hanging Loose, New Ohio Review and elsewhere.

Sean McDonagh is a 26-year old graduate of the University of Leicester with a BA in English (2:1), including a year's study at the University of Turin. Hailing from Birmingham, he now lives in London, where he works for Bloomsbury Publishing.

Richard Manly Heiman lives in the Sierra Nevada of Northern California. He works in the lucrative field of substitute teaching and writes when the kids are at recess. Rick's work has appeared in Rust & Moth, After the Pause, Bop Dead City, and elsewhere. His URL is poetrick.com.

Ray Miller has had poems printed in various magazines - Antiphon, Prole, Snakeskin, even The British Journal of Psychology.

George Moore has recent poetry in Stand, Orbis, Arc, The Journal, and Queen’s Quarterly, and his sixth collection, Saint Agnes Outside the Walls, will be released with FutureCycle Press in 2016. His last, Children’s Drawings of the Universe, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2015. He lives on the south shore of Nova Scotia. 

Louis Phillips has published books of poems, short-stories, & plays. His web-site is louis-phillips.com His most recent book is The Domain of Silence/The Domain of Absence: New & Selected Poems (Pleasure Boat Studio).

E. F.  Schraeder, author of a poetry chapbook, holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. and teaches part time. Schraeder's work has appeared in Four Chambers, Glitterwolf, Slink Chunk Press, Hoax, Lavender Review: Poems From the First Five Years, and other journals and anthologies. Schraeder also contributes to an animal advocacy webcomic, clawtheory.com.

Judith Skillman’s recent book is House of Burnt Offerings, Pleasure Boat Studio. Her work has appeared in Cimarron Review, J Journal, Sewanee Review, Tampa Review, Prairie Schooner, FIELD, The Iowa Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. Awards include an Eric Mathieu King Fund grant from the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of fifteen collections of poetry, and a ‘how to’: Broken Lines—The Art & Craft of Poetry. Skillman has done collaborative translations from French, Portuguese, and Macedonian. www.judithskillman.com

Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in , Australian Poetry Journal,  Cream City Review, New Contrast, Poetry Salzburg Review,  The Stony Thursday Book, Two-Thirds North, & Westerly.  His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide).  He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.

Csilla Toldy is a Hungarian born poet living in Northern Ireland. Her poems appeared in online and printed magazines: Poetry Monthly, Snakeskin, Lagan Online, Headstuff, Sarasvati, A New Ulster. She had two poetry chapbooks published by Lapwing Publications Belfast Red Roots - Orange Sky and “The Emigrant Woman’s Tale”.

John Townsend lives in Devon and has started writing again and performing at open mic sessions before it's too late.

Jason Visconti does computer work using various software programs. He has been published in many poetry journals, including most recently Ink Sweat And Tears and Mad Swirl. His favorite contemporary poets are Sharon Olds and Billy Collins.

Kelly Weber’s fiction has appeared Rose Red Review, and her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in several publications, including Gravel, Avatar Review, Aleola,Bird’s Thumb, Agave, and her chapbook All My Valentine’s Days Are Weird through Pseudo Poseur Press. She has taught composition and poetry at Wayne State College.

Fred White's poems have appeared in The Cape Rock, Rattle, South Carolina Review, and most recently in Off Course Literary Journal. He lives near Sacramento, CA.Issue 10