Issue 16 March 2018

Editor's Comments

Welcome to Issue 16. I hope you enjoy the latest issue of Allegro which is packed with excellent poetry. For the first time this year Allegro is nominating poems for the Forward Prize. Details of the nominations can be found on the new Forward Prize page.

Sally Long



Poems

Apples

Isaac Newton in Grantham.

Scrumping for windfalls,

you threw an apple in the air,

watching it spin and spiral down,

until it landed on the ground,

landed elsewhere,

beyond the redbrick orchard walls.

  

No matter what elsewhere,

farms and colleges

held smells of field and court:

the acres of Wultsthorpe green,

      then bitter

fenland cold of Cambridge rain.

  

At the King’s School,

on the Wagon & Horses road,

your ghost-walks were rare,

a schoolboy hoping to see

      the apple fly,

the answer scribbled on the air.

Now I hear voices:

boys scrumping for windfalls,

the Woolsthorpe youngsters on a lark,

while you are far elsewhere,

      like Schrodinger’s cat,

your eyes fixed on the stars.

William Bedford

As I Walk Out One Morning 

On the canal path from town, a usual threshold of loss,

adventures morphed into dreams, I see a terrier,

distant, skittering my way where I sometimes sit,

solitary, on a bench watching cyclists, joggers.

I expect its owner carrying a leash but I’m alone

with what I now see as a rabbit approaching fast,

not a terrier, more terror-stricken, like me

by the notion of appalling decline.

This happens in seconds before I realise it’s a hare,

fugitive over gravel, not on the verge, so I stop

before it veers to the softer grass, slows down,

adjacent, eyeballing me as though I’m the one lost,

endangered, heading in the wrong direction

recalling a Cambridgeshire field, wind in my jacket,

flints and hares abundant, time’s triumph distant,

thinking now of Auden’s years running like rabbits.  

Ian C Smith

Peregrine

A high harrowing note

from the valley’s throat

tells me where she is.

I will not meet her unknowable eye

mined from dolerite and lit

with murderous intent.

I will never tear my flesh

on the butcher’s hook of her mouth

or feel her tooth that can separate bone.

I will not see how her yolk-yellow feet

barb the granite scarp

before she hatches in mid-air

above the fell’s broken spine.

But I know what it is like 

to unfold my wings, 

follow a star in my head

and climb the light over Alston Moor

to fall amongst the bilberries and heather.

Louise McKenna

Mrs Reid’s Fuchsias 

As the throats of birds open at seven am,

Mrs Reid is out watering her fuchsias.

Too full of sorrow, she doesn’t look up. 

Under the early singing light,

her and her flowers keep faith with each other.

A whole sisterhood of capitulation,

they gaze earthward like penitents 

or forsaken wives

who have forgotten their beauty,

annulled their scent.

Their vividness could, like grief,

scorch a hole in the heart.

Feverishly they sway, yet elegantly,

frangible as paper.

Perhaps purple is the ink of loss. 

I will never know the crux of her pain,

only that it makes her beautiful and delicate

like these sad ballerinas, dancing in air.

Louise McKenna

Last Word

Today the cars have all conspired

to keep her from his side,

to block each road,

clog up the arteries

which yesterday flowed free.

The colour fades from knuckles

that grip the wheel so tight,

as hard as she begs all the gods

that he will hold on to life

just long enough to hear.

That call that every wife

does not expect, but dreads,

was drowned in static,

her words unheard

so now

just sodding get there

now

just running in bare feet

heels in her hand

down antiseptic corridors

so haunted by the dead

through curtains separating

her life from his

until

gasping on her knees

elbows on starched bed

her face a foot from his

to speak,

last moments caught between

her world, and this.

You bastard, John.

You bastard.

Paul Vaughan

The Man Sleeps; His Insomniac Wife Counts Stars through a Frosted Skylight

Winter. Somewhere.

The courtyard inked in by nightfall,

wind rises chill under the doorsill,

a streetlight pours cold amber over the closed pane,

everywhere else a rich dark,

like the warmth of brandy, a sip of which

might cause sleep instead of an astrologer’s

night going on and on, not a single constellation

visible as stars tease and dreams refuse to come.

The man curled on his side, even breaths

meld with raw wind and deep sleep,

he faces the wall, shadows of bare branches dance,

but he is well within the visions painted

behind his eyelids, his own symphony of calm

as the hours continue in their pursuit of dawn.

Snow lightly dusts the skylight

and the long avenues,

blows into doorways like shadows,

adds to the quiet for the sleeping man,

his wife watching out the window now,

as the winter moon searches the street,

and darkness melts the distance.

So much solitude. She touches the frozen pane,

searches for a space the light fails to reach,

searches for sleep.

Tobi Alfier

Doubt is Never Very Convincing

“Do you believe in God?”

An awkward question coming from a twelve-year old boy

on the cusp of becoming a bar mitzvah,

like a tennis ball taking a sharp hop at you –

but not one he hadn’t heard before.

The rabbi put on a serious face.

“I believe I have a personal relationship with God,”

he said at last, his grave expression

meant somehow to be reassuring.

The boy persisted:

“So you do believe there’s a God?”

The rabbi wanted to deny

the list of superhero qualities

he knew the boy’s skepticism had gathered

like so many iron filings,

the arbitrary cruelty he’d probably read,

but what the rabbi finally said was,

“I guess my relationship implies

a belief in a greater power.”

Evidence, the rabbi thought, despairing,

the boy wants evidence.

Charles Rammelkamp

You Deal

Two red cards slide across the table,
ace and a ten, diamond and heart,
then the mean face of a one eyed jack.

No matches, no pairs.
A three of spades and clubs trickle in.
Two threes. The only hand to play

with a series of guesses and fakes.
A bluff. It’s not something you pick,
but I’ll play until they’re flat,

face up on the table.
I know the truth
about this game.

There’s no winning.
You just deal.

E.F. Schraeder

The Future is Dust

We are nothing 

but stick figures

on some forgotten classroom's

dusty blackboard,

waiting for a wandering child

to discover us,

eraser in hand.

Edward Lee

Better Living Through Folding

The news makes more gentle sense

when you fold the paper

into little people, 

father, mother,

child, even a dog,

if you fold well.

Stocks land across deaths,

cartoons split through TV listings,

crosswords sever cross words,

meaning diluted, weakened,

unraveled.

One can even lessen

the torment

of the outside world,

decrease the potential despair

inherent in all tomorrows;

cruel echo's of today

ever spiralling.  

Look, see this paper family,

full of all the world's woes

and tv repeats, 

yet they seem happy,

content, unaware 

of the doom written across them,

blissful in their blindness.

Edward Lee

Giver and Receiver

On her special day, now fifteen,
her face made me feel as though the gift
I had bestowed upon her
was the most precious thing I had ever owned,
like my kidney or liver or lung,
but not my heart,
for she knew that belonged to someone else.

Dennis Herrell

Eyes and Ears

I understood why he could not see them:

the cataract in his right eye was just

removed a day ago, his vision dim

behind thick lenses, black as nihilists.

But me? I too could only hear the sounds.

I peered at stands of cedar, right and left,

then turned around, and scanned the rocky lands

behind me. Not a thing. Covert, aloft,

two flocks of sandhill cranes, so high they seemed

like fabrications, near invisible

(he could not verify). Yet raw, untamed,

the calls of cranes were unmistakable:

half-honk, part bugle, sometimes like a bark,

half-trill, part rattle, how the heavens spoke.

Scott Wiggerman

  

Wingbeats

A hummingbird, that itch of energy,

zips into view, then hovers, hovers, like

abandoned dreams, a presence. Oh, to be

a form in motion, vexing space, a quick

jag here, a jaunt to there, then adiós.

A yucca beckons—to the pink it heads.

A trumpet call—and vineward, off it goes,

this effervescent dynamo that treads

the air like water. Oh, to feel that thrum

within the breast, such throbbing through the veins;

to hear a life of unimpeded hum.

But fifty flaps a second is insane!

I’ll write and watch this world whiz by, conserve

my pace, decelerate my wings, observe.

Scott Wiggerman

Three Games

when I asked about that Super Bowl, I didn’t mean the game

I meant the blue

lights strung along the walls behind the still

-running train—

I meant your hand

or mine in yours, or mine

and now that my team’s lost again

I can’t ask again

if you knew all along I meant

the alley where we kissed goodnight, the seal

waxed

on the letter in which you explained

goodbye

so I wouldn’t think I was unlovely

—strange word, for a woman

who drank her whiskey neat in 2006

when you mixed yours with beer

in case you’ve learned how to dissemble

I want to hold on to that night

when my team had lost and won, and when you saw

the look you wrote

into paper and—believe—your memories

and somehow it means more than that St. Patrick’s Day

when you took me home

and sobered me

before we had our ways, years

before we finally won

and then again we lost

and tied ourselves up in blue LEDs

Elizabeth Kate Switaj

Fossil

Studiously stooped, fists on thighs,
my grandson eyeballs a rock
working out of the clay

of our rutted driveway,
straightens slowly up, sighs,
and kicks it free;

he's almost three,
generous in his ways,
so raises the gift to me,

a chunk of limestone, worn
and clay-stained, veined with age,
ocean-stone air-borne

in my freckled right hand,
a shard of sea-floor
unlocked from land, and, behold-

a brachiopod! Well, no-
its imprint, a delicate fan
the size of a moth's wing,

an engraving of fragile ribs
from millennia before
the dinosaurs.

When we leave
what do we leave
behind?

Not so bad, to slip into the flow
of years, years from now
when he is a grandfather

and I am gone.
I believe he will feel
my impression

when he picks up
and holds
my banjo, my watch, my hammer.

Curtis Harrell

In Kyoto 

An impossible beauty

of lantern lit alleyways

palace roofs and temples;

so many temples

each with an allotment

of songbirds, banners

of sun, moon and stars

carved wall to wall

into shrines but so close

a glass symphony rises

over the station

where the Shinkansen glides,

dispenses its cargo of people

for hotels, department stores

famous coffee shops.

The pavilion’s golden

oriole admires its own reflection

in the still waters of the lake.

Stone monks process,

their quest for alms

undisturbed by passing years.

On riverside terraces

under bamboo lattice

diners dip chopsticks

            into fine china bowls.

Frances Spurrier

Alice has left the building

The Red Queen

waits the other side of the glass.

She has stowed her anger

along with the mallets

            in a place where

            the clock runs backwards

and time is in retreat.

The tea pours ever on

but there are none to drink.

Across a chequerboard lawn

high hedges race.

She despises white roses.

They inhabit her psyche

with lonely scent;

like the girl in white

who dropped in from nowhere,

            then vanished

            leaving only a smile

a half-finished game.

Frances Spurrier

East of Ogasawara 

(Even in the 21^st century, the giant squid had never been seen alive – until now).

I led you here

one thousand meters deep

beneath the ocean’s surface

to places of illimitable night.

Your science follows me, allows

our meeting in a strange marriage

of submersible and elemental.

We exchange offerings: you to me

give bio-luminescence, the living glow

a small proffered meal of fish;  I bring

the myth, the haunting of your years

your literate dreams of discovery.

Here a mysterious shroud of twilight

covers your last unmapped world

and is for a time the place of our pact,

our few lonely moments together.

You are shocked that I am gold,

that I survive here in these dark waters.

I have offered you what I know of a truth.

What can you offer me?

Frances Spurrier

The art of napkin folding

In a riverside restaurant

the noise of voices is an assault.

Words swim unheard, hands communicate.

Sabrina folds a cocktail napkin, sections its planes,

gathers edges to centre.

Finds dimensions from its flatness.

She coaxes flaps into petals,

and a rose blossoms in her palm.

We carry it into the conference chamber,

place it on the window sill. Just below,

the river smooths the creases in its storm surge;

its elbows are cuffed with foam.

While we talk and listen and laugh the rose grows,

so quickly within an hour tendrils tap the ceiling

and hundreds of blooms block out the light.

The river rises, curious to see

what’s on the other side of the wall.

Sabrina folds the curtains into a life boat.

Hannah Stone

Grandma's House

Through the summer 

I'd clog drains with mud

or mess in dusty corners

where dead flies lay clenched

tight as fists and webs hung low

near holy statues positioned

to ensure she'd go to heaven.

Explored my uncles' rooms

while they were out at work,

found a priest's collar from Spain

in one, a drum kit in the other;

broke open dog-ends to taste

gold strands, sweet on the tongue

but bitter in the throat.

She sang rebellion as her sponge

slopped from bucket to floor

or argued in the bare-bricked kitchen

with my aunt, or cracked eggs

that turned white the moment

they hit the hot plate, or wiped

my face before we went to Mass.

Careless through the summer,

urging lead and plastic armies

to battle across the dingy carpet,

then parties would erupt at night

with beer and music from a portable.

Baez, The Dubliners; young ears

hearing the words all wrong.

John Short

last day of the year​,​

first page on the agenda –
I pour
a dream from last year
in the cracked mug

Lavana Kray

Newspaper Obituary Page

They are all smiling,

some more broadly than others,

some with barely a smirk

or a curving up of the lips.

Living mostly long these days

past the prime of the portraits,

they are how they wish to be remembered,

or how the survivors wish to recall them,

even if they grew wizened and wrinkled.

That is for those pictured,

in depictions selected by grieving

or relieved relatives,

one never knows which,

or perhaps by the deceased

in preparation for the expected

solemn or hilarious memorial service,

depending upon the sense of humor

or the desire for dignity and acknowledgment

and a dream of permanent memories.

Take your choice.

The pictures do not speak

nor do the dearly departed,

only the obit in simple text

summing up for who knows exactly

what quirky reader of obituaries?

Howard Winn

Respite

                                                                                                                                      
In my kitchen, next to the apples, squats
the baby monitor, its sighing huffs
soothing the restless clack of fretful pots
rocked in the dishwasher's embrace. Puffs
of slumbering breath I'd have to strain to catch
if I were crib-side to my grandson fill
the air. No anxious bending here to snatch
from their lovely normalcy the grateful thrill
his mother's infant snufflings inspired.
Amplified, their tiny gustings swell
with remote, encrypted signals from a weary
baby that instruct me, All is well.

Rustlings hint he’s seeking out the sweet spot

in his sleep, smoothing the sheet with stubby,
searching hands to rediscover what
exactly does the trick. They’ll meet in clubby,
trusted partnership beneath his cheek,
and by the time these dishes come to rest
and he’s awake, he’ll wear their print. I’ll sneak
my kisses in at once, before his zest
for action balks at tricks to make him late.
Restored, how can he reasonably pause?
The taxing pleasures of his day await.
How can he know this respite served his cause?

Jagged keening jolts the green, curled
apple peel unfurling from my knife.
It’s not my grandson’s voice I hear. The world
beyond where he’s asleep, another life,
has hacked a route to my unruffled space.
This guileless baby monitor can’t choose --
it lacks the art -- to grant the kindly grace
of ignorance; to filter out the news
that out there, on the street, some hapless child
has dropped a treasured toy, or stubbed a toe,
or navigates, perhaps, a life high-piled
with hurts I beg, for just one hour, not to know.

Ceri Eagling

Poem Where I Talk to My Poem, and My Mother Talks to Me

Son,

there are too many skins to your body

to call them words.

About this whole poetry thing,

the sky was not red before the world ate it blue.

It was a melon. That’s why it ripens with the day,

why the day ages. That’s why when

you look into your own mouth

you see night.

Foam on the floor. Holes in the foam. Son,

one day you have to ask, where’s this going?

A line does not write little marks on its movements

before it turns into them. A line becomes direction

as patiently as you become me.

Did you get the mail? Yes. I got the mail.

Did you see in the mail which you got

the letter that was already inside you? No.

Every piece of my body was once the blueprint

to yours.

Son, why do you keep changing the subject?

I am the subject I keep changing. Son, why

do you keep getting older?

You talk like you’re going to grow Ganesha’s

trunk along yourself. You talk

like your grandmother did.

We have all combusted into grotesque leaves.

We have all died before.

Why do I even look up? All I see is things

coming back down. We’re not gods.

We don’t get spare heads.

Daniel Kuriakose

Horses See Ghosts

It's no cat, no fox, no large bird walking

that has their ears and eyes engorged

no dog, no coyote that brings them to

such rapt attention, no blowing bag that

skips and snags that makes them look like

they are statuary stone and mesmerized

One snorts and blows and shakes his head

but otherwise he's a concrete horse and

cannot move or he would run, the other

does not move at all, her head held high

and nostrils wide, withers quiver, if

it's a ghost they see, it holds their thrall

I align my gaze to theirs and see nothing

but the blowing brome yet I feel the vibe

with them a frisson travels up my spine

I holler "Go!" That breaks the spell, they

run and buck, throw clods into the haunted

air, their memories short, begin to graze.

Guinotte Wise

Homophonia

Do you know what a homophone is? I asked.

A person who hates gay people, she explained.

Her sea-blue eyes looked seriously at the sheet,

blowing expectations to tatters. Wheels revolved,

cogs turned,  as thoughts tried to outsmart

each  other. I thought of weals on flesh, the twist

of scar tissue on your brow, the remnant

of a homophobe’s rage.  Think about it,

I suggested: What does ‘homo’ mean –

in words like homogenous or homo sapien?

What is ‘phone’ – as in telephone, xylophone, Dictaphone?

The teacher in me wanted her to tease the meaning out

 - wanted to laugh, to cry.  A pause, then:

Is it, like, trans? she asked, at last.   No, no,

it’s nothing to do with gender. Phone means ‘sound’; homo

means ‘the same’.  She bit her lip, curled her hair

around her index finger.  So it means all queers

sound the same? she asked, face serious, no hint

of irony or wind-up. Then: My teacher at school’s a homo,

miss.  He learned us homophonia in class last week. 

I’m too weak with pent-up words to respond.

Louise Wilford

A School Cleaner Retires

She tidies rooms and scrubs floors to replay
childhood; enjoys a gin for happiness,
buries her home life in untidiness,
fattens the cats to glue a papier-mâché
of love; these diaries of fantasy bliss
will word her sleepless hours. But not enough.
Tonight the well-fed felines brought her stuff
to pot and boil and bubble a witching list.
Her grandma taught revenge is cast in spells
sweeter than any prayer. Her hands wove shapes.
No teacher of tedium ever did escape
a telling rash or fetid fishy smells.
Her black ribbon of letters, crows in snow,
now nest on desks. They spell her childhood woes.

Phil Wood

Impact

They say when he jumped, he leapt from his sneakers,

the impact of the train dislodging them somehow.

Do the birds exchange such morbidities,

passing them, one to the other, like millet seeds,

"his head was ripped clean off"?

I recall few details of the event, if I ever knew them at all,

an event that occurred nearly thirty years ago:

the college boyfriend of a girl with whom I attended high school.

No name. No date. No place. Just the moment of his death and the

impact that it made.

I picture his shoes settled neatly by the tracks,

the one beside the other, as if he had slipped them off just before,

a consideration in entering the house of a friend.

Kelly Garriott Waite

House Hunting
 

Our gaze travels
the length and width of
the entire complex, searching
for
objects, for
furnishings,
which house
parts
of ourselves.
 

Where is it
we feel most at home?
In the elegant folds
of cream-coloured curtains?
Or the ornate details
of glass lampshades?
 

No, we decide. I find myself
underneath
the shame-woven rugs
left smothering
the floorboards,
you in the distorted
reflections
of cracked mirrors.

David Hanlon

her last place on earth

a child sucks on the straw of a sugary drink,

flings its packaging to the ground, the dust beneath

his little bare feet splotched with sweetness

women’s bodies laced in pinks, yellows and purples,

sarongs trimmed with gold; men with white headdresses

smoking cigarettes; the laughter of chickens in the air

and nearby, amongst the talkers, smokers and sippers,

the body of a woman wrapped in white, waiting to be burned;

white flowers bunched around her, bamboo roof above

a gas hose snakes the ground, leads to her last place on earth;

beside her a slumped mattress on a smoking pile

of coconut husks, pottery, and ash upon ash from other burials

the flare of red and scorching blue helps her on her way;

surrounds her as two men throw plastic cupfuls of gasoline

to feed her; her tiny lifeless body finally alight and glowing

gas propels itself beneath her, its breath exhaled,

a fire-breathing dragon devours the white that covers her;

two fires blaze at once: her body at one, her last bed the other

only the bamboo roof above is yet to surrender; her flowers

swallowed in a tongue of fire, a rice field black and empty; a life

consumed in one brief moment, short as life itself.

Lisa Reily

Contributors

Tobi Alfier (Cogswell) is a multiple Pushcart nominee and multiple Best of the Net nominee.  Her current chapbooks include Down Anstruther Way (Scotland poems) from FutureCycle Press, and her full-length collection Somewhere, Anywhere, Doesn’t Matter Where is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).

William Bedford has published poetry in Acumen, Agenda, The Dark Horse, Encounter, The London Magazine, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Warwick Review and many others. Red Squirrel Press published his collections The Fen Dancing (2014) and The Bread Horse (2015).

Ceri Eagling grew up in Wales, has lived in France, and is a long-time resident of the United States. Her writing reflects all of these experiences. Her poetry, which is a fairly recent focus, has appeared in Antiphon and Verse-Virtual. Her short stories and essays have been published elsewhere.

David Hanlon is from Cardiff, Wales, and currently living in Bristol, England. He has a BA in Film Studies and is training part-time as a counsellor/therapist. You can find his work online in or forthcoming with Ink, Sweat and Tears, Fourth and Sycamore, Calamus Journal, Occulum, Riggwelter Press and The Rising Phoenix Review, among others.

Curtis Harrell writes and teaches in northwest Arkansas where he also busks with the banjo and leads tours through a cave in the summer.

Dennis Herrell lives in a 1920’s bungalow in the old historic Heights of Houston, Texas. He 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. About 500 poems published in various magazines since July, 2000, plus 3 books.

Lavana Kray is from Iasi – Romania. She is passionate about writing and photography. She has won several awards, including WHA Master Haiga Artist 2015. Her work  has been published in many print and online journals, including Haiku Canada Review, Haiku Masters, The Mainichi, Ginyu, Ribbons, Atlas Poetica, etc. She was chosen for Haiku Euro Top 100, 2016. This is her blog: http://photohaikuforyou.blogspot.ro

Daniel Kuriakose is a college kid who loves poems and fears death.

Edward Lee's poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smiths Knoll.  His debut poetry collection Playing Poohsticks On Ha'Penny Bridge was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection.

Louise McKenna is an Australian/British poet currently residing in Adelaide.  She is widely published in Australia.  A chapbook, The Martyrdom of Bees, appeared in 2016.  Her most recent work was featured in Flightpath published by Hallowell Press, an anthology of poetry from Australia, Singapore and New Zealand.  

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His most recent books are American Zeitgeist (Apprentice House), and a chapbook, Jack Tar’s Lady Parts (Main Street Rag Press). Another poetry chapbook, Me and Sal Paradise, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press.

Lisa Reily is a former literacy consultant, dance director and teacher from Australia. Her poetry has been published in several journals, such Panoply, Magma and Foxglove Journal. Lisa is currently a budget traveller with two bags, one laptop and no particular home. You can find out more at lisareily.wordpress.com

E.F. Schraeder’s work has appeared in Four Chambers, Slink Chunk Press, Glitterwolf, and other journals and anthologies. Schraeder has an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in the humanities and serves as contributing editor at an animal advocacy webcomic. Current projects include a novella and manuscript of poems. Come visit at efschraeder.com.

John Short was born in Liverpool. After a degree in religion at Leeds University he spent years in the south of Europe, finally settling in Athens. His poems have appeared in many magazines including Ink Sweat and Tears, Frogmore papers, Prole, Orbis, Dream Catcher. He reads at venues round Liverpool.

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

Frances Spurrier’s work has been widely published and anthologized, most recently in The Poet’s Quest for God (Eyewear, 2016) and the Mary Evans Picture Library. Her first poetry collection The Pilgrim’s Trail won the Cinnamon Press Collection Award in 2014.  Frances blogs at https://wordpress.com/view/volatilerune.blog

Hannah Stone co-edits the poetry ezine Algebra of Owls and convenes the poets-composers forum for Leeds Lieder. Her collections are Lodestone (Stairwell Books, 2016) and Missing Miles (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2017). She reads at spoken word events in the north of England.

Elizabeth Kate Switaj (www.elizabethkateswitaj.net) is the Chair of Liberal Arts at the College of the Marshall Islands. She holds a PhD in English from Queen's University Belfast and has taught in Japan and China. Her first collection, Magdalene & the Mermaids, is published by Paper Kite Press, and her poems have recently appeared in Hawaii Review, Corium Magazine, and Figure 1.

Paul Vaughan lives in Yorkshire. His work has been (or shortly will be) featured in Agenda, Acumen, Prole, Frogmore Papers, Poetry Salzburg, Obsessed with Pipework and Ink, Sweat & Tears, among others. Co-edits the e-zine Algebra of Owls.

Kelly Garriott Waite’s work has appeared most recently in the Hopper, Tributaries (Fourth River) and in the Journal of Wild Culture.

Scott Wiggerman is the author of three books of poetry, Leaf and Beak: Sonnets, Presence, and Vegetables and Other Relationships; and the co-editor of Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry, Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga, Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems, and Earthsigns, the anthology of 2017’s Haiku North America conference.  Recent poems have appeared in Switched-on Gutenberg, brass bell, Modern Haiku, Chelsea Station, and Sin Fronteras.

Louise Wilford, a Yorkshirewoman, is an English teacher and examiner.  She has had around 50 poems and short stories published in magazines including Popshots, Pushing Out The Boat, Iota and Agenda, and has won or been shortlisted for several competitions.  She is currently writing a children's fantasy novel. 

Guinotte Wise is a Pushcart nominee and author of four books. His fiction collection Night Train Cold Beer won the H. Palmer Hall Award and his poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous journals including Santa Fe Writers Project, Atticus, The MacGuffin and American Journal of Poetry. Some work is at http://www.wisesculpture.com

Howard Winn's writing has appeared in Xavier Review, Southern Humanities Review, Long Story, Galway Review, Antigonish Review, Blueline, and Evening Street..  His B. A. is from Vassar College, M. A. from Stanford University, and doctoral work at N. Y. U. He is Professor of English at SUNY.

Phil Wood works in a statistics office. He enjoys working with numbers and words. His writing can be found in various publications, including: The Lampeter Review, The Open Mouse, Nutshells and Nuggets, London Grip, Ink Sweat and Tears.