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ISSUE 20 SNEAK PEEK

In which a chihuahua visits my dream thirty years after the night before my anthropology final 

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by Ronda Piszk Broatch

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“they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink 

deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all...” 

—Mark 16:18 

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One day I’m standing at the intersection 

telling the sky everything the moon forgot. 

Death isn’t on fire, and I’ve got a ten page

 

paper on the Holy Ghost People, due tomorrow 

and I haven’t been to class all semester. 

Night before finals I’m dancing, next morning 

​

I’m lying on the pine floor, speaking 

to the ceiling, bargaining with heaven above 

that I won’t have drunken sex anymore, 

​

any time soon. The universe is one enormous 

prayer book I haven’t read yet. To calm myself 

I think of the grim reaper as teacup 

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chihuahua, snake-shaped Christmas ornament 

I step on on my way to class. Night before finals 

I’m grateful that in twenty-four hours 

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none of this will be reversible. One day 

I’m the teacup of strychnine and the chihuahua 

murmurs to the grim reaper, something about faith,

 

something about failure, and I know I need to study, 

but I can no longer argue with the cold hard 

floor nor the roof over my head. I’m not even sure 

​

if I passed the intersection already, passed 

my classroom, my class, my test, and who needs 

snake salvation anyway? I like it right 

​

here, the loose boards groaning beneath 

my spine, tiny nail heads like fangs searching 

my bones for a way in. 

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Issue 20 is sold out, but you can download an electronic version for just $2 from our Purchase page.

Contributors
Handler

Buy the Knives

by Shelby Handler

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All the girls at recess are a gaggle 

of little mothers. They’re being horrible 

to each other. Imagine them as parents,

 

punishing their adorable future horribles. 

This whole set-up is a set-up: being born 

to folks who must betray us to keep us

 

alive. We end up first-in-line to shovel 

soil over their breathless bodies. It’s like, 

I DIDN’T ASK TO BE BORN! 

​

is valid critique. Think about it: what’s not 

coercion? Yesterday, I resented the sunset 

in my eyes and squinted. Today, I ate splinters 

​

of cold butter and sunflower sprouts on toast. Still 

dark outside: this is breakfast in winter. 

This is the life I was amputated 

​

into. My mom sighs, Don’t have children. I can’t 

love anyone else. Love is an exhausting business 

model. A pyramid scheme. We get so far in, 

​

instinct forces us to buy the knives, find stuff 

to mince. As a kid, I learned, distraught, 

my death will happen on a normal day.

 

It’s not fair. Life is so full of shit 

we love, any blade is too dull to carve us 

cleanly out of it. This is the thing 

​

I can’t remember: what my mother said 

when I couldn’t stop crying about dying. 

Whatever it was— her hands held my face. 

​

She followed it with a question, You wanna go 

take your bath? I didn’t have a choice. I nodded. 

Yes, I felt myself choose it. I stayed in the tub 

​

until my tiny hands puckered, suddenly ancient. 

Dingman

While My Brother Spends Years Drinking Himself to Death

by Chelsea Dingman

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The future splits 

into atoms in a nuclear facility 

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we don’t mention 

anymore. The hares arrive 

​

in winter as windows. 

They come, but they don’t

 

leave, becoming 

landscape as we 

​

sleep. What truth is worth 

bearing? People appear as angels 

​

in the distance of the mind. 

Perhaps, in the dark, 

​

we leave ourselves in order 

to begin. What dark 

​

do we need in order to continue? 

The roof shakes 

​

with any weather. 

The dead pretend to stay 

​

dead. A body wrests the dark 

from the bottom of a lake 

​

so the cold need not be 

alone, or unwanted. 

Scott

[ Anxiety, Little Sister ]

by M.A. Scott

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Anxiety, little sister, look at us, our grips unsteady on the child-proof lids meant to keep us from what we need. We stand still & race at the same time, like there’s a rabbit on the chest thumping lucky feet against the clover of our clavicles. How can we comfort each other over the distance? We tried to save daylight for another time & it left us in the dark, waiting for sleep to come. I lie awake waiting for rest as the ceiling erupts, thighs clenched against the cotton night. Look at us, all grown up & nothing to spend it on. It was easy, once, to sand our edges, watching the football hit Marcia Brady in the nose over & over & over again. Little sister, if anxiety were to leave us, where would that leave us? Sometimes I wish I could just relax & learn to love corn mazes. Soon the crickets will die for the season & I’ll be left counting my breaths, or the tiny white pills that glare at me like lice. No going back to a home we don’t remember losing.

Long

Preservation

by Joel Long

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After they buried the man, the villagers returned 

for the crocodiles. They did not care which one 

killed the man. Some were longer than the dead man; 

​

some were small as children. They were housed in cement boxes, 

slick green, squared water beneath, not mangrove swamps 

or deltas, estuaries or river mouths. The villagers did not 

​

care they were safe for now, did not care it was only one. 

They brought ropes and tied serrated snouts of crocodiles 

that, with a leap, could catch, swallow whole bats, leaping fish, 

​

birds out of air. They dragged 300 bewildered beasts 

from ponds into the open where the villagers wailed 

the death of one of their own, lifted knives for every animal, 

​

hammers, clubs, beat down the long heads, inscrutable eyes 

hooded by scales that not one villager could see far enough 

inside to make him hold back once since all knew the spark 

​

they needed extinguished inside the heart of the one animal 

before them, inside that brain that they intended to crush 

until there was nothing more worth crushing, some groan 

​

we cannot translate seeping from the roped mouths. The man, 

they say, was picking grass when the crocodile attacked. Now hundreds 

of crocodiles, each perfect in its skeleton, in the way the stomach

 

worked and tongue, that heart stilled in artisan chambers whose 

electric pulse sent blood from nostril to tail, each animal its own 

size, colored like agates and jade, every scale a worry stone, round, 

​

one for every hand, now hundreds of crocodiles are dead, and we cannot 

make one of them, make even one come back, a pile of limp weeds 

shaped like crocodiles swimming in crocodiles stilled: one dead man 

​

cannot say a thing about what he thinks about the body 

and what was undone and the darkness he left behind, smoke, 

rising from perfect bodies of crocodiles into the flame of sky. 

Lynn

I Wanted to Be a New York Love Poem

by Robert Lynn

 

To the woman getting off the train who offered to throw 

away my browning banana peel. To these men posing 

​

for photos with their cat on the beach. To Nancy screaming 

at Coney’s seagulls: Today I am twenty-four and you don’t care. 

​

To the seagulls who don’t care staring religious into January 

winds. To the strangers and strangers and strangers still 

​

catching Jillian as she passes out on the 77th Street station stairs. 

Or again on the Brooklyn Bridge. Again in that forever hallway 

​

connecting the 7 to the G in Queens. To the woman having trouble 

modulating her voice on the Staten Island Ferry when she sees 

​

the backlit statue: This is my America, Randall. I’m not going 

back to Atlanta. Even to the person whispering I’m sorry 

​

I’m sorry I’m sorry so softly to the rest of us as he jerks himself 

off in the corner of this subway car. To the grace of his embarrassed 

​

turning away. To everyone. I wanted to be a love poem to everyone 

but I couldn’t. There was all this hardness. There were cops breaking 

​

broomsticks in Abner Louima. They wanted us to forget. Hoped 

we’d move away. Forget if Eric Garner sold loose cigarettes 

​

or played center for the Nets. I spent the morning visiting a friend 

in Rikers Island. Visited mostly its indifferent way of turning a day 

​

into early evening with nothing to show for it but the waiting. 

They broke his leg before they put him here. They already forgot. 

​

They thought we’d be happy being love poems. We still might be 

if we hold space for the way this love sharpens like a bottle 

​

in a bar fight. I hold it firmly but gently like a cat on a beach. 

The way you would a stranger falling back into you on the stairs. 

​

None of us are going back, Randall. You hear me. None of us. 

Grothaus

Linguistics

by Laura Grothaus

 

after Still life by Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps 

 

Even now, I try to be generous with language

like bats with blood, who turn out their stomachs’ 

larders for hungry drifters. I tender my bluntness 

​

and barber my temper. My hands dance 

open with speech. Tell me again how 

wings and tongues make consequences out of air.

 

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Contributors #20

CONTRIBUTORS

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Linette Marie Allen is earning an MFA in creative writing and publishing arts at the University of Baltimore. A native of Washington, she’ll drive 40 miles anywhere for single-origin coffee and dog-eared books. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, Notre Dame Review, and Prairie Schooner.

 

Geoff Anderson founded the non-profit Janus: Arts & Letters, focused on developing multi-racial, multi-ethnic poets. He’s a Callaloo fellow, and a cat person with a dog. He is assistant poetry editor with Flypaper Mag, and has work in Yemassee, Southern Indiana Review, and The Journal. AndersonGeoff.com.

 

Devon Balwit teaches in the Pacific Northwest. Her most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems and reviews can be found in Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, apt, Free State Review, Timberline Review, Rattle, and more. More of her work can be found at Pelapdx.Wixsite.com/DevonBalwitPoet.

 

Scott Beal’s first book, Wait ’Til You Have Real Problems, was published by Dzanc Books in 2014. His chapbook, The Octopus, won the Gertrude Press 2015 Poetry Chapbook Contest and was published in 2016. His poems have recently appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Rattle, Opossum, Diode, Pleiades, and other journals, and have won awards including a Pushcart Prize. He teaches writing at the University of Michigan, serves as Dzanc writer-in-residence at Ann Arbor Open School, and cohosts the monthly Skazat! reading series in Ann Arbor.

 

Ellery Beck has poems published or forthcoming in Potomac Review, Arkana, Little Patuxent Review, Thin Air Magazine, The Broadkill Review, Prairie Margins, and The Susquehanna Review. She was a winner of the 2019 AWP Portland Review flash contest. She is the interview editor for The Shore Poetry.

 

Sheila Black is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Iron, Ardent (Educe Press, 2017). She is a coeditor of Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability (Cinco Puntos Press, 2011). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Spectacle, The Nation, The New York Times, and other places. She currently divides her time between San Antonio, TX and Washington, DC, where she works at AWP.

 

Melissa Brewer lives in a Lubbock, TX cotton field and shares her home with three sweet mules and one stubborn (yet quite charming) husband. She holds an MA in playwriting from Boston University and a BA in creative writing from Texas Tech University. Her poems have most recently appeared in Southern Poetry Review, riverSedge, Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VIII: Texas.

 

Kierstin Bridger is a Colorado writer and author of Demimonde (Lithic Press), the 2017 Women Writing the West’s Willa Award. She is also author of All Ember (Urban Farmhouse Press). Winner of the Mark Fischer Poetry Prize, the 2015 ACC Writer’s Studio award, and short-listed for the Manchester Poetry Competition in the UK, Bridger is both editor of Ridgway Alley Poems and codirector of Open Bard Poetry Series. She cohosts Poetry Voice with poet Uche Ogbuji. Find more of her work in December, Prairie Schooner, and Painted Bride Quarterly. She earned her MFA at Pacific University. KierstinBridger.com

 

Poet and photographer Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations (MoonPath Press, 2015). Ronda was a finalist for the Four Way Books Prize, and her poems have been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize. Her publishing credits include Blackbird, Prairie Schooner, Sycamore Review, Mid-American Review, Puerto del Sol, Public Radio KUOW’s All Things Considered, among others.

 

B.J. Buckley is a Montana poet and writer. Her most recent horticultural experiments involve growing tomatoes and peppers upside down.

 

Bailey Cohen is the author of Self-Portraits as Yurico (Glass Poetry Press, 2020). An undergraduate student at New York University, Bailey studies English literature and politics. His work has appeared in publications such as Southern Indiana Review, Boulevard, PANK, Raleigh Review, Boiler Journal, Longleaf Review, a part of Poached Hare’s monthly special, and elsewhere. Bailey edits Alegrarse, an online publication of poetry and interviews, and serves as associate editor for Frontier Poetry. He can be found online across most social media platforms @BaileyC213.

 

Katharine Coles’ latest collection of poems is Wayward (Red Hen Press, 2019); her collection of essays, The Stranger I Become: Essays in Reckless Poetics, will be out from Turtle Point Press in 2021.

 

Star Coulbrooke is the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Logan City, UT. She founded the Helicon West reading series and directs the Utah State University Writing Center. Her most recent poetry collections are Thin Spines of Memory, Both Sides from the Middle, and City of Poetry

 

Lee Ann Dalton is a poet, fiction writer, and LGBTQIA+ youth advocate. She holds an MFA from Vermont College and her poetry has appeared in journals such as Mezzo Cammin, New Ohio Review, and Faultline. She keeps bees and can catch a swarm without getting stung. She lives in southern New Hampshire with her husband and daughter.

 

Julie Danho’s first full-length collection, Those Who Keep Arriving, won the 2018 Gerald Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press, and her chapbook, Six Portraits, received the 2013 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Award. Her poems have appeared in Pleiades, Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, and New Ohio Review, among others. She has received fellowships from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the MacColl Johnson Fund.

 

Chelsea Dingman’s first book, Thaw, was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2017). Her second book, Through a Small Ghost, won the Georgia Poetry Prize and was published in February 2020. Her recent work can be found in The Southern Review, The New England Review, and The Kenyon Review, among others.

 

Michael Raudzis Dinkel is a writer and artist living in Anchorage, AK. He has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alaska Anchorage. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in River Teeth, The Gettysburg Review, and Orion.

 

Wendy Drexler’s poetry collection, Before There Was Before, was published by Iris Press in 2017. Her poems have been, or will soon be in The Atlanta Review, Barrow Street, J Journal, Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, Mid-American Review, The Hudson Review, The Threepenny Review, The Worcester Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others; featured on Verse Daily and WBUR’s Cognoscenti; and in numerous anthologies. She’s the poet in residence at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, MA, and a programming co-chair for the New England Poetry Club.

 

Jeff Ewing’s poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Crazyhorse, Southwest Review, ZYZZYVA, Willow Springs, Subtropics, and Saint Ann’s Review. His debut short story collection, The Middle Ground, was published in 2019 by Into the Void Press. He lives in Sacramento, CA with his wife and daughter.

 

Kim Garcia is the author of The Brighter House (White Pine Press), DRONE (The Backwaters Press), Madonna Magdalene (Turning Point Books), and a chapbook, Tales of the Sisters. Her poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, and Mississippi Review. Newer poems have appeared or are forthcoming in IMAGE, Tupelo Quarterly (winner of the 2019 Broadside Prize), New Ohio Review, The Summerset Review, and Colorado Review. Garcia teaches creative writing at Boston College.

 

Marie Gauthier works as a marketing projects specialist at Pioneer Valley Books. She is a Franklin County Regional Representative for Mass Poetry, curator of the Collected Poets Series, and President of the League of Women Voters of Franklin County. She serves on the LWVMA Membership Steering Committee and on the Buckland-Shelburne Elementary School Local Education Council. Her poems have appeared in Cave Wall, Poetry Northwest, The Common, and elsewhere. She lives in Shelburne Falls, MA with her family.

 

Caroline Goodwin’s poem in this issue is from a manuscript about the death of her husband in 2016 entitled The Trades. She is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry; she lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her books are Trapline, Peregrine, The Paper Tree, and Custody of the Eyes.

 

Laura Grothaus is a Baltimore-based poet and visual artist. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and garnered awards internationally, from Poetry in Pubs in Bath, England to the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Competition in Cary, NC. Galleries in New York and San Diego have shown her drawings, and she’s partnered with musicians, activists, and visual artists on workshops and performance projects in Chicago, Cincinnati, and Baltimore. When she was five years old, she lit her hair on fire with her own birthday candles.

 

Shelby Handler is a writer, organizer, and educator living on Duwamish territory/Seattle. A 2019 Richard Hugo House fellow, their recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, Pacifica Literary Review, Homology Lit, 3Elements Review, and the Write Bloody anthology We Will Be Shelter: Poems for Survival. Follow them: @shelbeleh

 

Jessica Hincapie is a writer and teacher raised in south Florida. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Texas and is currently the program director at the Writing Barn, a workshop and retreat space in south Austin. She teaches creative writing to children, young adults, adults, and senior citizens with onset memory loss. She is the recipient of numerous poetry awards including winner of the Michael Adams Thesis Prize in Poetry judged by Camille Rankine, honorable mention for Gulf Coast’s Poetry Prize 2017, finalist for Frontier Poetry’s 2018 Industry Prize, and more. You can find her work in The Indiana Review, Meridian, Ruminate Magazine, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere.

 

Michael Hurley is from Pittsburgh. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Cincinnati Review, Sycamore Review, New Delta Review, The Massachusetts Review, Copper Nickel, Mid-American Review, Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, North American Review, FIELD, Crab Orchard Review, Blackbird, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Wooden Boys, is available from Seven Kitchens Press.

 

Christine Jones is author of the full-length poetry book Girl Without a Shirt (Finishing Line Press, 2020). She’s also the founder/editor-in-chief of Poems2go, an international public poetry project, and an associate editor of Lily Poetry Review. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and online, including SWWIM, 32 Poems, Cagibi, Passager Books, Blue Mountain Review, Ruminate, Mom Egg Review, Literary Mama, and Salamander. Her poems have also been broadcasted on WOMR’s Poet’s Corner, and WCAI’s Poetry Sunday. She lives in Cape Cod, MA.

 

Kate Kingston has published two books of poetry, History of Grey, a runner-up in the Main Street Rag Award and Shaking the Kaleidoscope, a finalist in the Idaho Prize. She has also published three chapbooks and is the recipient of numerous awards including the W.D. Snodgrass Award for Poetic Endeavor and Excellence, the Ruth Stone Prize, and the Atlanta Review International Publication Prize. Kingston is currently working on a series of memoir poems titled “The Future Wears Camouflage.”

 

David Dodd Lee is the author of ten books of poetry, as well as a forthcoming book of collages and poetry entitled Unlucky Animals. He writes and makes visual art and kayaks in northern Indiana, where he lives on the St. Joseph River. He is an associate professor of English at Indiana University South Bend.

 

Joel Long’s book Winged Insects won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Lessons in Disappearance (2012) and Knowing Time by Light (2010) were published by Blaine Creek Press. His chapbooks, Chopin’s Preludes and Saffron Beneath Every Frost were published by Elik Press. His poems and essays have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Sports Literate, Prairie Schooner, Bellingham Review, Rhino, Bitter Oleander, Massachusetts Review, Terrain.org, and Water-Stone Review, among others. He lives in Salt Lake City.

 

Robert Lynn is writer and attorney from Fauquier County, VA. He is currently an MFA student in poetry at New York University. His poems have been featured or are forthcoming in American Literary Review, Antioch Review, Blackbird, New Ohio Review, and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn.

 

When not hiding in the fifteenth century, and sometimes even then, Jennifer A. McGowan has published poetry and prose in many magazines and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic, including PANK and The Rialto. Her latest collection, With Paper for Feet, a series of dramatic monologues and folk tales, is available from Arachne Press (UK).

 

Owen McLeod’s poems have found homes in Copper Nickel, Massachusetts Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Sun, and many other places. His debut collection, Dream Kitchen, won the 2018 Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry.

 

Michael Mercurio lives and writes in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts. A graduate of the Lesley University MFA program, he has poems published in the Indianapolis Review, Crab Creek Review, Poems2go, and Rust + Moth. Michael is a member of the steering committee for the Amherst Poetry Festival, held every September at Emily Dickinson’s house.

 

Avid cyclist, end-of-life counselor, and grandmother of five, Nancy Meyer lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in Colorado Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Bitterzoet, Indolent Press, The Centrifugal Eye, Sand Hill Review, Caesura, Snapdragon, Passager, Ageless Authors, and TheAsexual. She has been published in eight anthologies, most recently Open Hands by Tupelo Press and Crossing Class by Wising Up Press.

 

Anna Newman holds an MFA from the University of Maryland. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2017, Rattle, Poetry Northwest, Tikkun, and elsewhere. She lives in Salt Lake City with her husband and dog, Bentley.

 

Dan O’Brien’s three poetry collections, published in the US (Hanging Loose Press & Measure Press) and in the UK (CB Editions), are War Reporter (winner of the UK’s Fenton Aldeburgh Prize; shortlisted for Forward Prize for a First Collection), Scarsdale, and New Life. His fourth poetry collection, Our Cancers, is forthcoming from Acre Books (University of Cincinnati Press) in 2021.

 

Will Reger is the inaugural Poet Laureate for the city of Urbana, IL. He is a founding member of the CU (Champaign-Urbana) Poetry Group (cupoetry.com) and teaches at Illinois State University in Normal. His work appears in Zingara Poetry Review, Passager Journal, Eclectica Magazine, The Blue Nib Literary Magazine, Broadkill Review, Cagibi, and Innesfree Poetry Journal. His first chapbook is Cruel with Eagles.

 

Seattle poet Susan Rich is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, Cloud Pharmacy (Julie Suk Prize shortlist) and The Alchemist’s Kitchen (Washington State Book Award finalist). She has been granted a Fulbright Fellowship, the PEN USA Award for Poetry, Times (of London) Literary Supplement Award, and an Artists Trust Fellowship. Rich’s poems appear in Harvard Review, Image Journal, New England Review, and World Literature Today, among many other publications. She has two collections forthcoming: A Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Press) and Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press).

 

Suzanne Manizza Roszak is an assistant professor of English at East Carolina University. Her poetry has appeared in Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, and Third Coast.

 

Eric Roy has poetry forthcoming at Third Coast, Salamander, Bennington Review, and Westerly. His poems can also be found at Green Mountains Review, The Minnesota Review, Tampa Review, Salt Hill, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere. 

 

M.A. Scott’s poetry has recently appeared in or is forthcoming in The Mid-American Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, The Adirondack Review, Heron Tree, and Unlost. She grew up in Rhode Island and currently lives in New York’s Hudson Valley, where she likes to spend time with trees.

 

D.R. Shipp, originally from Texas, is an observer finding his way. His work can be found in JuxtaProse, Chaleur, Cleaver Magazine, HCE Review, Silver Needle Press, and Waxing & Waning. He splits his time between now and then, traveling. He has a curious online following, Instagram @shippwreckage.

 

Johnna St. Cyr is currently an MFA student at the University of New Hampshire, where she serves as the poetry editor for the literary journal Barnstorm. Previously, she studied English and creative writing at Colby College, where she earned the Mary Lowe Carver Prize in Poetry. Her fiction has been a finalist in the Glimmer Train Emerging Writers Series, and the Very Short Fiction Competition. Her poetry is forthcoming in Gulf Stream.

 

Anastasia Stelse is a native of southeastern Wisconsin, a graduate of the MFA program at American University, and a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi’s creative writing PhD program housed in the Center for Writers. She currently teaches at the University of South Florida. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Sou’wester, Passages North, Fairy Tale Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among others.

 

Nancy Takacs’ The Worrier poems received the Juniper Prize for Poetry. Author of three books, and four chapbooks of poetry, she is currently the Poet Laureate of Utah’s Art City, Helper. A former wilderness instructor and creative writing professor at Utah State University, she teaches workshops for communities of writers. Nancy also spends time in Wisconsin, near the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore on Lake Superior. Nancy is an avid hiker, boater,  swimmer, and enjoys spending most of her time outdoors.

 

Adam Tavel’s third poetry collection, Catafalque, won the 2017 Richard Wilbur Award (University of Evansville Press, 2018). He is also the author of The Fawn Abyss (Salmon Poetry, 2017) and Plash & Levitation (University of Alaska Press, 2015), winner of the Permafrost Book Prize in Poetry. His recent poems appear, or will soon appear, in Verse Daily, The Georgia Review, Puerto del Sol, New Ohio Review, Sixth Finch, Salamander, Potomac Review, and American Literary Review, among others. You can find him online at AdamTavel.com.

 

Isaac Timm graduated from Utah State University in 2014; he holds bachelor’s degrees in history and English creative writing. His poems have been published in The Helicon West Anthology (2016). He lives in Logan, UT with his wife, Aaron.

 

William Trowbridge’s eighth book of poetry, Oldguy: Superhero—The Complete Collection, came out from Red Hen Press in October 2019. It’s a greatly expanded collection of the poems appearing in the 2016 Red Hen graphic chapbook Oldguy: Superhero. Trowbridge is a faculty mentor in the University of Nebraska Omaha Low-residency MFA in Writing Program and was Poet Laureate of Missouri from 2012 to 2016. For more, see WilliamTrowbridge.net.

 

Laura Walker holds an MFA from Northern Arizona University, where she was editor-in-chief for Thin Air Magazine. She writes both poetry and fiction, and teaches writing classes at Southern Utah University. She comes from Southern California by way of Flagstaff, AZ, and always finds herself wishing for a little more snow and a little less sun. She has fiction featured in Black Works from Underwood Press and poetry featured in Gravitas, Roanoke Review, and CircleShow.

 

Steve Yates lives in southern Utah where he enjoys cooking, hiking, and working on a random variety of arts-related projects, including photography, sketching people, painting, and writing. For relaxation he enjoys watching low-budget monster movies with his beloved woman and interpreting shadows on cave walls.

 

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

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