ISSUE 24 SNEAK PEEK
Cullet
by Arah Ko
I’ve swallowed glass for every bottle
you drank. Call me terror. Call me
reckonings you looked for
in the bathroom mirror. Call
me shit that oughta been slapped
out of you younger, before the old
men touched you in a stained-
glass cathedral. Call me window
broken by your ruined knuckles. My
blood is your blood; my nose is your
mother’s nose. Compared to you, I am
summer that never ends, tempered glass,
a nest of unhatched eggs. I say hello & you
pray my name back to me.
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Hapa
by Leona Sevick
Taking my order by phone, she asks me
What do you look like? So I can find you?
Except that’s not how she says it. Dropping
words the way my Korean mother does,
still making herself understood, she waits
while I decide. Pausing, as I do, as
I have done since the first time someone asked
me with genuine interest what are you?
I answer this woman in a way I
know already she will never accept,
take the chance I never take. Yes, she says,
I think I know you. Spotting her just as
she comes through the door, I wait for her to
scan the room, find me and then decide. She
approaches, tosses bags on the table,
mouths the word I know she’s thinking, the word
I’ve heard a dozen times. Hapa. It is
the one my mother hates, the reason why
I was grown before she took me home to
meet her people. I see her stiff face, black
eyes of resentment at their turned backs, their
conditional love. Now I speak the truth
of who I am, or at least half of who
I am. This woman receives from me a
wide smile. I thank her, watch her go knowing
half a truth is better than any lie.
Often in Dreams She was My Girlfriend Until I Remembered, Still Asleep, That it Wasn't Okay
by Melissa Crowe
Her hair was a miracle of brown-black curls,
spring coiled and shiny, and she sprayed it
with TRESemmé and hung it over the edge
of the bed while she slept on slumber-party
Saturday nights so she wouldn’t have to
wash it before church, and six birthmarks
half a shade darker than the rest of her creamy
olive skin traced her cheek from one earlobe
to the corner of her mouth. At video dances,
held tight to the stiffening groin of my own
partner, I watched her unfocused eyes
and bored frown while a punk kid, thick chain
padlocked around his neck, nuzzled hers.
Did she like it? I couldn’t tell, but when they
broke up, he carved her name into his chest
with the point of his knife. I still think of how
those letters, crooked and keloid, must mark him
after all these years. She introduced me,
kid from a canned-fruit-cocktail family,
to the pomegranate, its pressed paper rind,
those nestled ruby cells, each with a seed
that nearly filled it. So many tiny morsels
and so much work to get their meager juice.
But sweet enough to make it worth it. To stain
my hands, my face, my precious white cotton
leggings with the delicate cuff of lace at each ankle.
On a night when we’d driven three hours south
to walk the strange, thrilling circuit of the nearest
shopping mall (Orange Julius! The Gap!), we lay
on our stiff-sheeted hotel bed in our tank tops
and underwear, facing each other in the dark,
and she asked me if I’d ever thought about
kissing a girl. I said yes. Then we stayed silent
and still until morning, neither of us rolling over
to get comfortable or adjusting our hard pillows
or hanging our hair over the bed’s edge
to keep it neat. I could hardly hear her breathe.
Changing the Rear Brakes, I Watch My Death Approach
by Mike Good
“…if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.”
—Philip Levine, “What Work Is”
You could have walked past that pockmarked driveway
never seeing the honey locust in the backyard,
behind the birch in the front where the dog tied to the porch
is making a ruckus, where rain began to fall, lightly at first,
then pinging across the roof, splashing
from the slapdash PVC downspouts,
as if these small misdirections could stop the brick
and concrete walls from sloping, bowing, from becoming dust,
where two brothers and their father crouch,
waterlogged, beneath the wheel well of a too-old car,
soaking in the grayest Pittsburgh rain, finagling bits with the needle-nose,
losing grip on the brake springs that are unwilling to stretch
across the pads, cursing each slipping piece, flinching
at the sharp and delicate kickback, tired after long
sledgehammering those rear drums apart,
only to break what was within, prying open a decade-
and-a-half of rust suturing metal
to metal, a thick and barnacled crust, heavy
and toxic as the brake fluids spilling now from the broken rubber wheel cylinder
busted open and bleeding
from all the hammering, refusing to compress
with the springs, to be anything but an obstacle, another part to repair,
for this family who cannot afford to move
beneath the mortgages, second mortgages, rent, repairs,
credit cards. You see now, both brothers still squatting,
both over thirty, both struggling to make
ends meet, like their father who works part-time even after retirement.
Look closer: as far as you’ve come, you still haven’t figured out
what it is. You want to keep walking, away from each decade
of sweat, stress, and toil and call it work. You wanted to march
on Labor Day with the teachers union but you have never taught. Instead
you tried to help yourself, went nowhere. Whether you have ever taken a sledge
to a tire and missed, felt your skin frying
on some manifold or forgot to flip the emergency brake
of your car and watched it tumble from the aluminum car jack
that came with the used Nissan and the tire iron that never fit the spare,
the car that just has to make it eight more months,
just eight more months, whether you have done this all
during overtime or in the morning before your shift,
you still don’t know what it is, because the work
is still not finished, is only beginning, is learning to say
how much they mean to you, to wonder
why you need this breaking to say anything at all, before everything becomes dust,
and when they are nagging and failing, and asking a lot of you,
more than you have, and even when you can’t fathom what they mean,
and your father might very well be the strangest man on earth,
you must begin to commit to the long work, the long shift,
to repair what you’ve never had,
you must realize that there are no punch cards
to measure the dollars saved or lost. There is only rain
sleeting across the roof, falling from that front porch
where you never sat together long enough, you
never enjoyed sitting in that cramped house, you were trying
to escape. You have always been trying to escape. You never will, and now
knowing this you could begin to understand. You could begin to rejoice.
Open Heart Surgery
by Nick Martino
Bowing in their paper crowns, the surgeons
settle down for dinner
in the dining room of my father’s body.
A good son, I set the table: bone china, copperware.
The silver gently gleaming. I don’t know what to do
about the heart, that horn of plenty.
In the myth, infant Zeus breaks the horn
of the she-goat who nurses him.
Her name means Run to tenderness.
My father’s body is the book
of worship on the table, open
to a razor-thin page, warmed
by strangers’ hands. He is the winter apples
I offer our guests, an orchard—
red curtain I hide behind.
Ashamed, Zeus blesses the horn
with infinite abundance. This teaches me
to apologize with both hands: Dad,
I haven’t called you in thirty-three days.
I eat well. I know most days you eat alone,
at a bar downtown, watching whatever’s on.
X Nihilo
by Philip Schaefer
You’re akin to a kitten on fire. Your hair harpoons
black barb & lily irons without release. Release
me. Late at night the neighborhood ducks huddle.
I polish my nails with tar. I read the ceiling for progress,
purpose. You’re somewhere in this dark
Sistine Chapel dancing with an ice cube on your tongue,
a Molotov cocktail & the lit matchsticks your pupils become
when the sky goes blank with sin. I don’t want to be
in your room again. I bury myself in the spaces
between spaces with glue & a dirty cue ball. I land in every pocket.
I cannot escape the wet dryer sheets or the Polaroid of the treasure
map of your forehead. Tell me the one where the clay pigeon is tossed high
& the rifle is cocked & I’m the bullet & you’re the shatter & the sun
fiddles the song that creates beauty out of such a loud nothing.
What to Say After a Certain Kind of Man Begs for His Life
by Laura Ruby
“Mantids are sometimes called praying mantids or soothsayers
(Greek, manti = soothsayer) because their forelegs are held in
a supplicatory position resembling prayer. Nearly 2,000 species
have been described.”
—Timothy J. Gibb, Contemporary Insect Diagnostics
When I tell you you’re a snack I mean
for real. Look at you. You got the motion,
that roll and roll swagger. The way you swivel
your head and track me with those big red eyes—
you see what I’m not: the petal-limbed orchid,
the dancing devil’s flower, hands up. No unicorns
here, either; I’m just like other girls. And I’m not
a leaf or a ghost, I couldn’t hide if I wanted to.
I pray out in the open. I can leap like a cat, adapt
in mid-air. I can tear a hummingbird right out
of the blue, a different kind of honeyeater. Isn’t
that what you came for? You already lost your
head for me, though you’ll tell yourself it’s all
for the thrill, all for the kids. And when I turn
back for that first kiss, you’ll ignore every
warning, even the last: My God, look at you.
Look at what you made me do.
“Black and blue fish"
by Aimee Wright Clow
after Nick Flynn
I take curtains off a west-facing window, fold them tightly, peer out into
the open. Not much to see: a dog, a house, a street. Paint a diagram on
the glass with a brush’s bristles fanned so the paint is not too thick, so
light threads through. I feel best with my phone tucked under blankets.
Walk to the store, where I meet a woman who needs just one cup of
flour. Sure. I bring her to my house, give her coffee and one cup of flour
while she tells me of the mountain she has just returned from, all its
height and weight, what a disjuncture returning, and back home she
found a fire had consumed all her old photographs and blankets, leaving
only a brick cocoon and an aluminum-rod bed. Oh dear. I blow over
steam and the dog outside barks. But what of you? she asks. Tell me of
you. I say, Nothing much here. But well, let me show you something. A
detail. Outside we peer through the painted panes as though we are
light. Her face settles, sinks, and she backs away slowly, holding the
flour to her chest. A swampy yard has overtaken my feet, so when I
try to follow, I find I cannot. I cannot leave my feet, so I survey the
yard, which reminds me of a stream. The road: the sound of boats.
The barking dog approaching bites at the swamp around my feet and
my ankles until I am free. I float up the hill as the rains begin, my eyes
still on the window. I don’t know what she saw, of course, what feared.
All the furniture from the side of the road; all the decorations mass
produced. From the outside looking in, I could be anyone, really. But
the bristled paint; the panes. I look away from the house to my hands
where the flour in the rain has become batter. I look down at my feet,
which are fish now. I look down to the yard, a river. I look to the house,
my boat, my home. I float. I go inside, unbury my phone from its bed of
rest. I wish to know what makes one one. I ask the internet. Who’s afraid
of? Battered fish sticks. Recipes for. Fear? It’s only a word. Run? It’s only
time. Take time. Rest. Your boat awaits. The dog barks. It’s bobbing
outside the painting. I open the window.
CONTRIBUTORS
Jeffrey Bean is professor of English/creative writing at Central Michigan University. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The Antioch Review, The Missouri Review, River Styx, The Laurel Review, and Willow Springs, among others, and online at Poets.org and Verse Daily. He is the author of two chapbooks and the poetry collections Diminished Fifth (2009) and Woman Putting on Pearls (2017), which won the 2016 Red Mountain Poetry Prize. JeffreyBeanPoet.com
Amy Childress is a book artist, writer, and librarian residing next to the Wasatch Mountains in Salt Lake City. She completed her MFA at the University of Iowa Center for the Book in 2021 and her MLS from the University of Iowa in 2020. She has studied European, Eastern and Indo-Islamic papermaking techniques with Timothy Barrett and Nicholas Cladis. She has taught book arts workshops at various libraries in Iowa and Utah, as well as for the Morgan Paper Conservatory. In 2020, she was awarded a Caxton Club grant for her thesis book, Inhabited. Her artist books and broadsides are held in academic and private collections in the United States and abroad. Her work explores the parallel between the subtle moments that happen in nature and in interpersonal relationships.
Aimee Wright Clow is a writer and book designer living in Durham, NC with their cats, Bifo and Susan G. Their writing and video poems have appeared in journals including Salt Hill, The Bennington Review, [PANK], A Gathering of the Tribes, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Ghost Proposal, and The Lifted Brow. Their book arts project, A Brief Map of Albany, is available from Utilities Included.
Paula Colangelo has taught poetry in healing-focused rehabilitation programs. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Lily Poetry Review, SWWIM Every Day, and Canary Literary Magazine. Her book reviews appear in Pleiades and Rain Taxi.
Aidan Coleman has published three collections of poetry and his work has appeared in Best Australian Poems, Poetry Ireland Review, Glasgow Review of Books, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review. His most recent book of poems, Mount Sumptuous (2020), was published by Wakefield Press.
Stephen Cramer's first book of poems, Shiva’s Drum, was selected for the National Poetry Series and published by University of Illinois Press. His second, Tongue & Groove, was also published by University of Illinois. Bone Music was selected by Kimiko Hahn for the 2015 Louise Bogan Award and published in 2016. His ninth and most recent book is The Disintegration Loops. He is also the editor of Turn It Up! Music in Poetry from Jazz to Hip-Hop. His work has appeared in journals such as The American Poetry Review, African American Review, The Yale Review, Harvard Review, and Hayden’s Ferry Review. An assistant poetry editor at Green Mountains Review, he teaches writing and literature at the University of Vermont and lives with his wife and daughter in Burlington.
Melissa Crowe is the author of Dear Terror, Dear Splendor (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019), and her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Four Way Review, New England Review, Poetry Northwest, and Thrush, among other journals. She’s coordinator of the MFA program at UNCW, where she teaches poetry and publishing.
Emma DePanise’s poems are forthcoming or have appeared recently in River Styx, The Minnesota Review, Reed Magazine, The National Poetry Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. She is the 2020 winner of the Blue Earth Review Summer Contest in Poetry, a 2019 winner of an AWP Intro Journals Award, and the 2018 winner of the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. She is an MFA candidate in poetry and teaching assistant at Purdue University, a poetry editor for Sycamore Review, and a coeditor of The Shore Poetry.
Eran Eads is attending the University of Maryland. Eran is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches writing at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and University of Maryland Global Campus. Their poems have appeared in Juked, Berkeley Poetry Review, and SOFTBLOW; their chapbook fat was released from Atomic Theory Micro Press. Check out their Instagram and other social things @eraneads.
Casey Epstein-Gross is a writer and student from Tallahassee, FL, and her poems have recently appeared in Soundings East, Permafrost Magazine, Thin Air Magazine, The Dillydoun Review, and Up North Lit. She was recently named the Bucks County High School Poet of the Year and will be attending Wesleyan University in the fall.
Kindall Fredricks is a practicing registered nurse and an MFA candidate at Sam Houston State University, focusing on both poetry and the intersection of literature and the medical sciences. Her work has appeared in New Letters, Quarterly West, NELLE, The Coachella Review, Menacing Hedge, WomensArts Quarterly, The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Badlands Literary Journal, The Bitchin Kitsch, and The Academy of American Poets' website.
Court N. Fund is a poet, playwright, oral historian, and all-around cowperson. Between writing and research projects, they are a backcountry cook and wrangler in the high Sierras. Court’s poetry queers rural lexicons, troubles binaries, and re-centers queer longing in natural landscapes. Their work can be found in Stonewall 50: 21 Poets Connected by Arkansas on Queer Life after the Stonewall Riots, and in the Voices of Gay Rodeo online, oral history exhibit.
Mike Good lives in Pittsburgh and serves as managing editor at Autumn House Press. Some of his recent poetry and book reviews can be found in or are forthcoming at Bennington Review, december, Five Points, Full Stop, Ploughshares, Salamander, SOFTBLOW, Waxwing, and elsewhere, in addition to anthologies such as The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Guidebook (Belt Publishing). His work has received support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and The Sun, and he holds an MFA from Hollins University. Find more at MikeGoodWrites.wordpress.com.
Erica Goss is the author of Night Court, winner of the 2017 Lyrebird Award from Glass Lyre Press. Her flash essay, "Just a Big Cat," was one of Creative Nonfiction's top-read stories for 2021. Recent and upcoming publications appear in Oregon Humanities, Oh Reader, Spillway, A-Minor, Redactions, Consequence, The Sunlight Press, Pedestal Magazine, San Pedro River Review, and Critical Read. Erica served as poet laureate of Los Gatos, CA, from 2013 to 2016. She lives in Eugene, OR, where she teaches, writes, and edits the newsletter Sticks & Stones.
Anthony Hagen is a native of northern Virginia and currently lives and works in Pittsburgh. Recent work can be found in American Poetry Journal and Willawaw Journal.
Originally from the flatlands of central Illinois, Justin Hamm now lives near Twain territory in Missouri. He is the founding editor of the museum of americana and the author of three poetry collections—The Inheritance, American Ephemeral, and Lessons in Ruin—as well as two chapbooks. His poems, stories, photos, and reviews have appeared in Nimrod, The Midwest Quarterly, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and a host of other publications. His work has also been selected for New Poetry from the Midwest and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize from the St. Louis Poetry Center.
Paula Harris lives in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where she writes and sleeps in a lot, because that’s what depression makes you do. She won the 2018 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize and the 2017 Lilian Ida Smith Award. Her writing has been published in various journals, including The Sun, Hobart, Passages North, New Ohio Review, and Aotearotica. She is extremely fond of dark chocolate, shoes, and hoarding fabric. Website: PaulaHarris.co.nz | Twitter: @paulaoffkilter | Instagram: @paulaharris_poet | Facebook: @paulaharrispoet
Katherine Indermaur is the author of I|I (Seneca Review Books, 2022) and two chapbooks. She is an editor for Sugar House Review and the recipient of prizes from Black Warrior Review and the Academy of American Poets. Her writing has appeared in Coast|noCoast, Ecotone, Frontier Poetry, New Delta Review, the Normal School, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Colorado State University and lives within sight of the Rocky Mountains.
Christine Jones is from Cape Cod, MA and is author of the full-length poetry book Girl Without a Shirt (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and coeditor of the recently released anthology Voices Amidst the Virus: Poets Respond to the Pandemic (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2020). She is also founder/editor-in-chief of Poems2go and an associate editor of Lily Poetry Review.
Christen Noel Kauffman lives in Richmond, IN with her husband and two daughters. Her hybrid chapbook Notes to a Mother God (2021) was a winner of the Paper Nautilus Debut Chapbook Series. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays (University of Nebraska Press), Nimrod International Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, Willow Springs, DIAGRAM, Booth, Smokelong Quarterly, Hobart, and The Normal School, among others.
Kevin King is the author of the novel All the Stars Came Out That Night (Dutton). His first poetry book, Ursprache, was published in January 2022. He is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and has published in numerous journals, including Ploughshares, Stand, and Threepenny Review, etc. His CNF piece “Back from Abroad” was published recently in the Potomac Review. He has poems in recent issues of The Minnesota Review, Cider Press Review, Spillway, Arc, and Chiron Review.
Arah Ko hails from an active volcano but is currently based in the Midwest. Her recent work has appeared in Sidereal, Fugue, Grimoire, and New Reader Magazine, among others. Arah is an MFA candidate in creative writing at the Ohio State University where she serves as Wheeler Prize editor for The Journal. When not writing, Arah can be found correcting her name pronunciation or making a mean pot of coffee. Catch her at ArahKo.com.
David Lee was Utah’s first poet laureate; in 2001 he was finalist-runner-up for United States Poet Laureate. He is the author of two dozen volumes of poetry, including The Porcine Canticles, A Legacy of Shadows, So Quietly the Earth, and Last Call. Lee is a former seminary student, semi-pro baseball player, and hog farmer. His awards include multiple fellowships from the NEA and NEH, Western States Book Award, Mountain and Plains States Booksellers Awards, Critics Choice Award, Utah Book Awards, Elkhorn Poetry Prize, Evolutionary Poem of the Year, and Utah Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. Retired, he scribbles and wanders rural roads and byways, all at about the same pace, and maintains an intense training schedule to achieve his goal of becoming a World Class Piddler. He resides in Seaside, OR.
Jon D. Lee is the author of three books, including An Epidemic of Rumors: How Stories Shape Our Perceptions of Disease and These Around Us. His poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlantic, Sierra Nevada Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, One, The Laurel Review, and The Inflectionist Review. He has an MFA in poetry from Lesley University, and a PhD in folklore. Lee teaches at Suffolk University.
Jennifer Manthey's poems have appeared in places such as Crab Orchard Review, Best New Poets, Calyx Journal, Prairie Schooner, and Palette Poetry. She teaches writing at The Loft Literary Center and North Central University in Minneapolis.
Nick Martino grew up alongside the ocean of Lake Michigan. As an MFA candidate in poetry at UC Irvine, his work has been published in Volume Poetry, quiet lightning, and Foothill Journal.
James Davis May is a 2021 National Endowment Arts Fellow in creative writing and the author of two poetry collections, both published by Louisiana State University Press: Unquiet Things, which was released in 2016, and Unusually Grand Ideas, forthcoming in 2023. His poetry has appeared in Guernica, The New Republic, Plume, The Southern Review, and other journals. He lives in Macon, GA with his wife, the poet Chelsea Rathburn.
Rose McLarney’s collections of poems are Forage and Its Day Being Gone, both from Penguin Poets, as well as The Always Broken Plates of Mountains (Four Way Books). She is coeditor of A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia (University of Georgia Press) and the journal Southern Humanities Review. Rose has been awarded fellowships by the MacDowell Colony and Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences; served as Dartmouth Poet in Residence at the Frost Place; and is winner of the National Poetry Series, the Chaffin Award for Achievement in Appalachian Writing, and the Fellowship of Southern Writers’ New Writing Award for Poetry, among other prizes. Her writing appears in The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Blackbird, The Oxford American, and American Poetry Review. Currently, she is associate professor of creative writing at Auburn University.
Kevin Miller’s Vanish won the Wandering Aengus Publication Prize in 2019. He taught in the public schools of Washington state for 39 years.
Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English, and now he tries writing himself what he spent so many years teaching others to understand and enjoy. He has had a handful of poems published in 2River View, Cobalt Review, English Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Poem, and other literary magazines. He prefers ice cream to cruciferous vegetables.
Cameron Morse is senior reviews editor at Harbor Review, a poetry editor at Harbor Editions, and the author of six collections of poetry. His first, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Far Other (Woodley Press, 2020). He holds an MFA from the University of Kansas City—Missouri and lives in Independence, MO, with his wife, Lili, and two children. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.
Greg Nicholl is a freelance editor whose poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Ecotone, New Ohio Review, North American Review, River Styx, Smartish Pace, West Branch, and elsewhere. He is the winner of the 2021 River Styx International Poetry Contest selected by Adrian Matejka and was a finalist for the 2021 Patricia Cleary Miller Award for Poetry from New Letters.
Lucas Daniel Peters is a queer poet from rural Indiana. He received his MFA from Syracuse University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Five Points, Greensboro Review, Gulf Coast, Missouri Review, Southern Indiana Review, and elsewhere.
Scott Poole is a poet and painter. He is the author of six books of poetry. Two of them are chapbooks combining 20 poems and 20 paintings. Scott is best known for his 11-year stint as house poet on Public Radio International's Live Wire! radio variety show. He lives in Vancouver, WA where he exhibits his paintings. You can find out more about his work at ScottPoole.com.
Gen Del Raye is half Japanese and was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan. Currently, he lives in Minneapolis, MN. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets and Poetry Northwest, among others, and he is the winner of the Up North and Great Midwest poetry contests.
Laura Ruby is primarily a novelist with eleven books published, including Bone Gap (Balzer & Bray, HarperCollins, 2015) and Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All (Balzer & Bray, HarperCollins, 2019), both National Book Award Finalists. Her short fiction has appeared in The Florida Review, Pleiades, and Beloit Fiction Journal, among other magazines, and she has poetry in Clockhouse Vol. 8 and forthcoming in Poetry Online. Currently, Laura teaches writing at Hamline University and is an MFA candidate in poetry at Queens University.
Kelly R. Samuels is the author of the full-length collection All the Time in the World (Kelsay Books, 2021) and two chapbooks: Words Some of Us Rarely Use and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in Salt Hill, The Carolina Quarterly, The Pinch, Permafrost, and RHINO. She lives in the upper Midwest.
Brian Satrom is the author of the poetry collection Starting Again, published by Finishing Line Press in 2020. His poetry has appeared in a variety of journals including Cider Press Review, The Laurel Review, Poetry Northwest, Rattle, and TAB, which nominated his work for a Pushcart Prize. His work has also featured on Verse Daily and Vandal Poem of the Day. After completing his MFA at the University of Maryland, he lived in Madison, WI, and Los Angeles before settling in Minneapolis. His website is BrianSatrom.com.
Philip Schaefer’s collection Bad Summon (University of Utah Press, 2017) won the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize, while individual poems have won contests published by The Puritan, Meridian, and Passages North. His work has also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and in The Poetry Society of America. He recently opened a regionally focused Mexican restaurant called The Camino in Missoula, MT.
Linda Scheller is the author of two books of poetry, Fierce Light (FutureCycle Press) and Wind and Children (Main Street Rag.) Her poetry, plays, and book reviews are published in numerous journals including Poetry East, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Terrain.org, Notre Dame Review, Poem, West Trade Review, and the museum of americana. Recent honors include Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominations. For more information, please go to LindaScheller.com.
Leona Sevick is a professor of English at Bridgewater College in Virginia, where she teaches Asian American literature (she is an Asian American poet). Sevick was named a 2019 Walter E. Dakin Fellow for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and serves on the advisory board of the Furious Flower Black Poetry Center.
Sarah J. Sloat splits her time between Frankfurt and Barcelona, where she works in news. Her poems, prose, and collages have appeared in The Offing, DIAGRAM, and Sixth Finch, among other journals. You can keep up with her at SarahJSloat.com.
Beth Suter studied environmental science at UC Davis and has worked as a naturalist and teacher. As a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Barrow Street, DMQ Review, Poet Lore, and Birmingham Poetry Review, among others. She lives in California with her husband and son.
Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s poetry can be found in Western Humanities Review, New Ohio Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, SWWIM, The Maynard, Ruminate, and other journals and anthologies. She is the author of The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press) and The Ache & The Wing (2020 Sundress Chapbook contest winner). Wilkinson also won New Ohio Review’s NORward Poetry Prize and the 2020 Joy Harjo Prize from Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. She teaches at Weber State University and lives in northern Utah with her husband and three sons.
Holli Zollinger is a self-taught artist who has made a career of her talents: drawing, painting, and surface design. She is continually inspired by her surroundings living in the desert town of Moab, UT. She is highly motivated by the art of creativity and incorporates the color, texture, and pattern she sees in the world around her. Holli’s work has been published and featured worldwide. HolliZollinger.com
A native of Utah, Shari Zollinger divides her time between her work as a professional astrologer and independent bookseller. She has been known to write a poetic verse or two with published work in Sugar House Review and Redactions: Poetry & Poetics. She recently published Carrying Her Stone, a collection of poems based on the work of Auguste Rodin. ShariZollinger.com
