Celebration
Editor’s Comments
Issue 7 celebrates Allegro's first birthday. It is packed
with poems about festivals, birthdays, weddings and anniversaries as well as a
range of off theme poems. This is the last issue in the current format. From
2016 Allegro will be published four
times a year with two general issues with no set theme and two for themed poems
only. In the meantime celebrate a tremendous first year!
Sally Long
Poems
Prairie
Easter
Morning glory over the door, white star at its throat,
lavender-shaded like those Easter dresses
my sisters and I wore.
We squinted into the spring sunshine,
my hands on their shoulders,
stars flying through the afternoon sky,
stars that I knew were there
even though no one else could see them.
Earth circled the sun and I felt it rotating,
its slow path circulating down and around
while the morning glory sank its deep roots
into Illinois prairie soil.
My father’s shadow stretched out
in spreading day so I would never forget
he had been there, unseen but seeing,
snapping that picture so we, my sisters and I,
would always be there in our morning glory dresses,
always eleven and six and three,
pinned to that paper forever.
Stars wheeling in the afternoon sky –
remember I was the only one who could see them –
kept me from flying off ,
kept me there, feet planted in the grass,
in patent leather Mary Janes
with white socks just like my sisters’.
Those white socks would trigger
the first battle between my father and me
next Easter because by then I would be twelve
and begging for nylons.
But at that moment I was happy
to wear an Easter dress,
still his young girl who hadn’t begun to fight.
lavender-shaded like those Easter dresses
my sisters and I wore.
We squinted into the spring sunshine,
my hands on their shoulders,
stars flying through the afternoon sky,
stars that I knew were there
even though no one else could see them.
Earth circled the sun and I felt it rotating,
its slow path circulating down and around
while the morning glory sank its deep roots
into Illinois prairie soil.
My father’s shadow stretched out
in spreading day so I would never forget
he had been there, unseen but seeing,
snapping that picture so we, my sisters and I,
would always be there in our morning glory dresses,
always eleven and six and three,
pinned to that paper forever.
Stars wheeling in the afternoon sky –
remember I was the only one who could see them –
kept me from flying off ,
kept me there, feet planted in the grass,
in patent leather Mary Janes
with white socks just like my sisters’.
Those white socks would trigger
the first battle between my father and me
next Easter because by then I would be twelve
and begging for nylons.
But at that moment I was happy
to wear an Easter dress,
still his young girl who hadn’t begun to fight.
Lisa
Rizzo
Drowned
Though doubts have
surfaced in fresh
April morning greened
light,
this rusted wrench
remains valued,
though the cheap
white plastic
chair with one
mangled leg
is more than ready to
be carted away.
Piled close-by, ready
for the dump,
many once essential
possessions sit tired,
the energy of
creation forgotten,
glossy packaging long
ago discarded,
painted surfaces
dull, dented.
Broken buckets are
already gone,
and an ancient rake
and old paint
and insulation sleep
in landfill chemistry
with unlabeled
cassettes, National Geographics,
cantaloupe guts,
dried lasagne, diapers, cat litter.
What else is
trash? Five once perfect
yellow ducklings
discovered drowned
in the kids swimming
pool, fooled by shimmering
water in easy blue
plastic, with no escape.
The dripping
struggles I didn’t see
still alive in slow
replay—the young
giving in/the tired
removal that exhausted
belief their hatching
once jump started
permanent spring
growth. A graying
alien head shakes,
and all has aged
in the turning away
from soft bodies
drenched and
stiffening/diminished
stark deaths
congealing. Nothing to do
but save
the two survivors first discovered
in panicked struggle
in mirrored water—
now walking with
confidence on
baby stilts to the
pond/young enough
to escape memory’s
tattoo. From a proper
distance no imprinted
pain seems
glued to their eager
eyes.
Mark Vogel
Translucent Treasure
There is a measure of beauty in the
translucent treasure of sea glass,
that which tumbles and twists its way
into a smoothed stone
with each pull of the persistent tide,
tumbling and twisting into something
other than what it is
and yet so far from what it will become
as it succumbs to the forceful hand that changes it,
all the while folding its sharp edges
into itself, always moving forward,
never the same again, while we continue to stride past
its washed-up beauty on the shore,
even though we too are made of glass;
doomed to smooth over into something beautiful,
only to bury deeper below the surface of the sand
like the missing puzzle piece,
the token of a completed portrait, now lost.
Nicole Marte
Summer’s End
Summer clings to
the last of its green,
although its face
wears a new complexion.
Days of heat now
recede and the bees,
their season past,
say goodnight to their Queen.
It’s only time
until breezes give way to winds
and leaves unwind.
Only time until yesterday
becomes nostalgia’s
dream and what remains
its homeless
cousin.
Peter Serchuk
Love Poem to Brooklyn
Buses come every five minutes, the stops
a few blocks apart. In all weather, they flow
and let people pour out, then fill up again.
No need to learn to drive or own a car,
the buses, trains, taxis, and two strong legs
can take you there—
to Nathan’s, Coney Island, or to fish
in Sheepshead Bay. To school, and two part-time
jobs, where you count candy bars and change,
or check out groceries, and strive to be
the fastest, best cashier in there.
You’re fifteen, fearless of the hordes, ignore
men on subway cars with newspaper tents
on their laps. Your ice skates on your shoulder,
you march through Prospect Park at night, unafraid
to walk the darkened paths to skate in circles
until you’re tired of being there.
Churches, Italian markets that deliver,
deli franks, corned beef, knishes, bagels,
the alleyways and open lots, found flower pots.
Tree-lined streets, two-family homes with one
car apiece, seemed enough in ‘63.
Botanical Gardens, zoo, parks, thirty
miles of waterfront, library with curved
wall, wide steps to welcome reading there.
In Brooklyn, you go to college, bus ride
like all those before, and do your homework
on the way. Vigilance not necessary.
The campus green, cafeteria’s harsh light,
your accent’s normal here. Ahead of you
the years stretch out, striped banner bright
of success along the way from there to here.
Buses come every five minutes, the stops
a few blocks apart. In all weather, they flow
and let people pour out, then fill up again.
No need to learn to drive or own a car,
the buses, trains, taxis, and two strong legs
can take you there—
to Nathan’s, Coney Island, or to fish
in Sheepshead Bay. To school, and two part-time
jobs, where you count candy bars and change,
or check out groceries, and strive to be
the fastest, best cashier in there.
You’re fifteen, fearless of the hordes, ignore
men on subway cars with newspaper tents
on their laps. Your ice skates on your shoulder,
you march through Prospect Park at night, unafraid
to walk the darkened paths to skate in circles
until you’re tired of being there.
Churches, Italian markets that deliver,
deli franks, corned beef, knishes, bagels,
the alleyways and open lots, found flower pots.
Tree-lined streets, two-family homes with one
car apiece, seemed enough in ‘63.
Botanical Gardens, zoo, parks, thirty
miles of waterfront, library with curved
wall, wide steps to welcome reading there.
In Brooklyn, you go to college, bus ride
like all those before, and do your homework
on the way. Vigilance not necessary.
The campus green, cafeteria’s harsh light,
your accent’s normal here. Ahead of you
the years stretch out, striped banner bright
of success along the way from there to here.
Joan Mazza
"Poor ol' Bastard"
The tattoo on his
arm
read 'Top Notch'
in faded cursive
a tuft of gray
hair
stood up on the
back of his head,
gray eyebrows too,
stray hairs curling
into
the canyons
of his forehead
wrinkles
his smile is short
a few teeth
and those he has
are chipped and yellowed
he does not look
like a man
who is privileged
enough to have
top notch liquor
top notch women
top notch housing
but, by god,
he probably
deserves some.
Madison Baldwin
Centennial
Dad grew a beard for
our state’s
centennial
celebration. I was eight
at the time, and
befuddled as to why
his whiskers sprouted
a shade of rusty
iron ochre, while the
hair on his head
remained a glossy
Brylcreem ebony.
For that most
hallowed of occasions,
we were paroled from
school
and there was a
parade down on main
street. I recall
watching the town fire
engine and Fighting
Hornet High
School Marching Band
pass by Pinky’s
Piggly Wiggly and
Shaw’s Vickers
station, where
well-seized opportunities
provided free bottles
of Orange Crush
via the busted Coke
machine out front.
A special bronze
medallion was minted
that year showcasing
the state seal,
several stalks of
ripened wheat, and some
other cool
inscriptions. It fell behind my
bedroom dresser.
Mom's vacuum sucked
it up in a dust
bunny.
Kevin Heaton
Emetophobia
Two thousand years before our
birth,
societies siphoned the
cerebellum,
salted the skeleton,
built homes for the bones.
We are the archaeologists of our
own osteology
plucking our sternums from the
siroccos.
We paint our eyes sockets with
silt and side-stream smoke,
line our lungs with kohl.
Truth is the feather down your
throat;
Cleopatra left a letter
but you died alone,
heart replaced with a hollow
comb.
Nobody painted your body on a bed
of gold,
removed your frontal cortex with
oxidized iron tongs.
Nobody figured out what kind of poison
trampled your heart
but your sister still had to buy
a black dress.
You were the one who weighed your
virtue with clanking scales,
but they still buried you empty
and I turned away after.
Laura Ingram
Boomer Babies
Ike was in the White
House: Macmillan
on Downing Street,
Adenauer in Berlin,
and Fidel had just
parked his jeep in Havana.
Betty dropped out of
eleventh grade to go live
with an aunt in Taney
County. She magically
reappeared nine
months later.
We had three tv
channels: one was snowy,
one unfocused without
adjusting the rabbit
ears, and on the
clear one; Ben Cartwright
rode Rawhide through
the Twilight Zone.
Debbie C. went
missing from tenth grade.
I wondered, had
someone killed her?
Mom always managed to
fill our 1958 two-
toned Plymouth wagon
with groceries
for thirty-three
dollars, including: bottles
of Chocolate Soldier,
candy, and on occasion;
some Silly Putty or a
Duncan Yo-Yo. Bread
cost .20 cents, gas
.25, and dad made .90 cents
an hour.
Next, my sister’s
best friend Mary left
to visit her
grandmother in Harrison. She
was gone for months.
Nixon and Nikita sat
down at a kitchen
table for a chat. At
school we dove under
our desks for nuclear
civil defense drills
after swallowing
polio vaccine sugar cubes.
The Dalai Lama fled
Tibet for India, and
Ben Hur rode his
chariot across the big screen.
Mary miraculously
returned to school nine
months later in the
fall to repeat the same
grade she’d left.
Shortly thereafter, her
parents adopted a
baby girl.
Kevin Heaton
The Warp
Thoughts on verse 3.6.1 of the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad*
We stood at the tapestries
I thought they were spiritual
‘upon what is this whole world woven?’ gargi asked
was he thinking of unicorns
the whole time?
‘on what, then, is water woven
back and forth?’
my connection was to the sea and for once
he would take me to the beach
between us- just the wind
‘on what, then, is air
woven back and forth?’
he thought of summer mornings he had missed
days he could have taken her to watch
the sun rise
No, they would have met
at
the lookout. She was not in love with cemeteries.
‘on what, then, is sun woven
back and forth?’
she must have written odes to something other
than resilience. She must have finished odes
monthly.
‘on what, then, is moon
woven back and forth?’
We both missed the sky in pennsylvania.
the sky was that moon, eerie, in my window
and the stars I saw from the seats in the car
we slept in
not wanting to grow up away from rain, to the
world of Men
‘on what, are the worlds of the stars woven
back and forth?’
together they know what makes
a star a star
but in his eyes I think sometimes
‘on what, then, are the world of the gods
woven back and forth?’
gargi vacaknavi fell silent.
*translation used: Olivelle, Patrick. The Early Upanishads. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998. pg. 85.
Rashi Rohatgi
My Birthday in the Desert
Glow bugs string
their parabolas
scooping like a
swoop neck swing dance
and they glitter
their greedy bodies all over my glass
sometimes I let my
lips sit on its edge
like dangled feet
in a pool that ripple and wrinkle the face of the moon
I go cross-eyed
watching
Our friends’ porch
is better than ours
It’s easier to see
the desert underwater
their saguaro beds
of coral and the back-stroking scorpions
frozen loaves of
bread in their freezer
we dance to toaster
chimes and olive oil songs
we burn cakes in
their oven and fan frantic out the smoke
you hold my waist
like the handles of a suitcase
and we travel
around the island
kitchen counter
I was three,
twenty-two, sixty-four
in the camber of
your hands
Amanda Pfeifer
Green Skirts
after
tunes on “Open Hearth” by
Mary and Andrew MacNamara
Mary and Andrew MacNamara
The green-gowned girl off to California,
peacock feathers sewn onto her collar,
irises iridescent as a prism.
A bag of spuds peeled and left behind.
Leave the harvest, leave home
before the morning star sets, she's murmuring
to the boy in the wood, who's fast asleep back in his bed,
his blood and lymph not bestirred
except when dreams take him to her room.
Glad she's not in bad humor, her mood is not melancholy,
she whispers Holy Mother, sighs the sign of the cross.
Vapors falter over the bog
like steam from the kettle she boiled earlier.
peacock feathers sewn onto her collar,
irises iridescent as a prism.
A bag of spuds peeled and left behind.
Leave the harvest, leave home
before the morning star sets, she's murmuring
to the boy in the wood, who's fast asleep back in his bed,
his blood and lymph not bestirred
except when dreams take him to her room.
Glad she's not in bad humor, her mood is not melancholy,
she whispers Holy Mother, sighs the sign of the cross.
Vapors falter over the bog
like steam from the kettle she boiled earlier.
Cathryn Shea
Total look
She comes as starlight
Steady stream
Of yesterday
Never, ever, here today
To see her requires
No obedient scope
No sense of stars
Of cunning
configurations.
She shines merely
For the sake of seen
And seen, discovered.
Her light speeds lonely
Blinding search
Faster than dark;
Its purpose and soul
To convey a blink,
A tearing eye.
She comes so far
Never to know
She has been seen
And seen, held.
Timothy L.
Rodriguez
Early December
The small and grey
fingers of trees
sliced into half inch joints
by the horizontal blinds.
Beyond them and above,
their touch is pressed
onto early winter sky,
lightened grey, white
with the smear
of approaching snow.
It is early December.
The horses may still be seen
and the lake still rushes
its last dash before sleep.
As the darkness over-
takes the room, sleep
settles slowly, with
a preface of memory.
Some time ago there were plans
that had to be put off
till after the late winter’s
frost.
Somewhere in the muffled distance
of closed and frosted windows,
a single-engine plane
propels its lone rider
to whiter and more breathless
heights.
Above us, he rejoices in the
chilly clouds.
Without a glance at gauges
he knows where he is
and feels confident of reaching
his destination.
Anthony DeGregorio
For
Evren, A Groom Today
You’ll
feel it soon enough:
a
strange woman on the street
who
seems to know you in a glance.
Perhaps
you already have.
She’s
standing there at the Friends
Cafe
where you walk in Istanbul.
April
will have passed into winter
so
quickly. You’ll have forgotten
summer
and fall's red spectacle.
You’ll
be carrying a plastic bag
with
bread, a newspaper, and she’ll
tantalize
and haunt you, and suddenly
seize
you. It will happen in an instant.
There
will be no pause to ponder why.
Around
you the birds will be still.
Beneath
your jacket you will sense
this
catastrophic pull, this sweet
madness,
and by the time you get home
it
will be too late. The life you held
will
be in her hands. The marriage
you've
made she’ll unmake, brick
by
brick, all the way down
to
the dinner plates, the silverware,
the
candy dishes still in their boxes.
Carl Boon
Flying Kimonos
(for Martha Ronk)
Sheets become the wind’s kimono.
Tiny dinosaurs and rabbits escape
the earth,
slide off their cotton terrains,
unhinge gravity’s latch and
unravel a course towards heaven.
A surge of air twists the linen
into an odd but perfect fit
over wind.
Standing on swings
the twins lose their cries,
lick away tears
from faces and sleeves
and gaze upward open-mouthed.
The sky dresses and undresses
itself
in freshly washed laundry.
Red and yellow animals float
before the sun,
freckle the pudgy cloud cheeks.
Brother and sister unpin the
socks, the panties,
the bras and
blouses
and launch them from
“The Clubhouse” roof
encouraging other gusts to dress,
to swirl the clean clothes
into gliding wardrobes.
Dress
yourself, Wind. Dress now!
Put on our clothes,
Wind. Do it now,
Please!
Anthony DeGregorio
Gift for an anniversary
Not a distant da Vinci
landscape,
or a Turner - although
some days
boundaries of sky and
sea are unclear.
Neither will a snow
scene by Brueghel do
with valleys and hills
held fast in bleakness.
Instead, a watercolour
we created ourselves.
Tipping and tilting the
paint we allowed it
to pool, dry in its own
time or bleed as it chose.
We layered crimson on
viridian on burnt sienna
so all we could make
out was black. Mixing
pigment with earth, we
left it outside to be
washed by rain and forgotten
in the sun.
Still the white paper
shone through, amazing us
with how the pattern of
colours glowed.
Yvonne Baker
Breaking Glass
“Wow, he did that with authority,”
a friend commented in an e-mail
after I forwarded the six-second video
my sister-in-law had recorded on her cellphone
of my son-in-law stamping on the wineglass,
the final ritual in the wedding ceremony
before he and my daughter
officially became husband and wife.
I try to remember myself
stepping on the foil-wrapped glass
at my own wedding on a cold February day
at a synagogue in Newton, Mass.,
about a third of a century ago,
in an era when typewriters ruled
the office and the study,
but no details come back,
memory as fragile as the glass –
the vows, the lives
the act is said to symbolize.
“Wow, he did that with authority,”
a friend commented in an e-mail
after I forwarded the six-second video
my sister-in-law had recorded on her cellphone
of my son-in-law stamping on the wineglass,
the final ritual in the wedding ceremony
before he and my daughter
officially became husband and wife.
I try to remember myself
stepping on the foil-wrapped glass
at my own wedding on a cold February day
at a synagogue in Newton, Mass.,
about a third of a century ago,
in an era when typewriters ruled
the office and the study,
but no details come back,
memory as fragile as the glass –
the vows, the lives
the act is said to symbolize.
Charles Rammelkamp
I Approach My 70th Year
I approach my 70th
year.
Quietly.
Carefully.
From behind.
So as not
to frighten it away.
J.R. Solonche
Celebration
Each year on my birthday
an old admirer sends flowers.
The house fills up with the smell
of dahlias, lilac, peonies. He sends them
to remind me how I sundered his heart
his prickly, bleeding heart
and how I crippled his life.
They remind me of gloom
of the hothouse orchid
he needed me to be
with him, the keeper of my air and light. I lied,
told him I loved another.
I fling open the door to unscented air,
to watch the dappled late afternoon light
slip through the clutch of the maple’s leaves
across the lintel of my latest love’s brow.
Liz Dolan
Anniversary
We talked of what
years do to us.
It was a fairly
average day.
We made love with
old, familiar lust.
We put our daughter
on the bus.
We said the things we
had to say.
We talked of what
years do to us.
We had appointments
at the dentist,
for cleaning and for
x-ray.
We made love with
old, familiar lust.
No one called. No one
made a fuss.
The January sky was
gray.
We talked of what
years do to us.
You returned a
nightgown, Christmas
gift too big. It was
on the way.
We made love with
old, familiar lust.
Did we kiss? I think
we did kiss.
But
anyway... So anyway...
We talked of what
years do to us
and made love with
old, familiar lust.
J.R. Solonche
Christmas
My house is percolating happily,
it's fat and full of people.
Radiant
it zaps the bits of snow like insects (“don't
you dare approach my humans.”)
Hiding us;
we laugh at how ferocious.
But inside
we all enjoy the halo;
feel ensconsed
while listening to the steam
pipes gurgling
as if the house were floating,
or as if
our own small afterglow could
melt the world.
It waits for this all summer:
“Full again.”
Kathryn Jacobs
On
my fifty-fourth birthday
spring equinox
On my birthday
I camped at Las Negras.
Easter was late that year:
the first day of Spring
eluded formal celebration.
Spanish sparrows skirmished
with perpetual wind tearing
down steep-sided thirsty valley
as olive, eucalyptus and pine
sucked sparse nourishment
from caress of late March rain.
On my birthday
our tent shook in off-shore
gusts.
I cooked fish and garbanzos
in a rich Catalan, garlic stew,
drank cheap, sharp Cava and
watched rainbows shimmer on a
vernal sea.
Helen May Williams
Red Salute
Glorious Thirty Years
of Left Front Government
emblazoned
on the tram.
Tim
Youngs
Happy Halloween
We unearth quick disasters
that come by seeking a road back
from the red edge of the world
while reading an unreliable map—
A rain of dull diamonds befalls
our twilight that never ends—
The ticking clock heart wanders
in aimless working of the body—
We are made of invisible bones
and the light that comes from
a hidden synaptic re-echo of all
that we can re-member of ancestors—
So how is it to be lost in broad
daylight, out of control with
every wind that blows us toward
a crossroads of something missing?
Don’t forget to go home at the end
of a day of being scared nameless--
what light comes from inside
surprises us to orange hope.
We unearth quick disasters
that come by seeking a road back
from the red edge of the world
while reading an unreliable map—
A rain of dull diamonds befalls
our twilight that never ends—
The ticking clock heart wanders
in aimless working of the body—
We are made of invisible bones
and the light that comes from
a hidden synaptic re-echo of all
that we can re-member of ancestors—
So how is it to be lost in broad
daylight, out of control with
every wind that blows us toward
a crossroads of something missing?
Don’t forget to go home at the end
of a day of being scared nameless--
what light comes from inside
surprises us to orange hope.
David Anthony Sam
Art of the Party
Comfort zone, no
where in sight,
retreat
To the bathroom, again
regroup, in the
mirror
*
*
*
Even as host, suspect
attendees are liars
pretenders—
not really having a
grand time
Though chips & dips are all devoured,
laughs track
authentic, smiles genuine
enough, there is much
to recycle
Mark Danowsky
Precipitation
Images collide,
chased by a niagara of words
and nonwords. Every
outing is a buffet
in an al fresco of
experience. This season,
there is no struggle.
I have to shift my salver
to the stations:
stewards fix the scarcities.
Sometimes the
proportions aren’t right
but that isn’t worth
a wrangle. Nothing is:
when rain has weight,
wetness is beatitude.
May every bash be a
banquet in this riff of rainstorms.
Sanjeev Sethi
Contributors
Yvonne Baker has been writing for several years and
has been published in numerous magazines, including Acumen, Envoi, Orbis and
Brittle Star. She has recently had a poem commended in the Second Light
competition.
Madison Baldwin survives on a steady diet of dark
humor, coffee in various forms, local produce and Marlboro 27's. Her poetry has
appeared in the Sequoya Review. She lives in Tennessee, USA and runs
MBwrites.com.
Carl Boon lives and works in Istanbul, Turkey. Recent or
forthcoming poems appear in Posit,
The Tulane Review, Badlands, The Blue Bonnet Review, and many other magazines.
Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in Alba, Cordite,
Grey Sparrow, Mobius, Shot Glass Journal, Third Wednesday and other journals.
Mark is originally from the Philadelphia area, but currently resides in North-Central
West Virginia. He works for a private detective agency and is Managing Editor
for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.
Anthony DeGregorio has
a master’s degree in Writing from Manhattanville College, where he has
been teaching expository writing for seventeen years.
Liz Dolan’s first poetry collection, They
Abide,was nominated for The Robert McGovern Prize, Ashland University. Her
second, A Secret of Long Life, nominated for a Pushcart, has been
published by Cave Moon Press. An eight-time Pushcart nominee and winner of Best
of the Web, she was a finalist for Best of the Net 2014.
Kevin Heaton lives and writes in California. His work
has appeared in a number of publications including: Guernica, Rattle, Slice
Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Adroit Journal, and Verse Daily. He is a
Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee.
Laura Ingram is a tiny girl with large glasses. She has been
published in Cactus Heart Review, The Crucible, Gravel Magazine, Canvas Lit,
and several others. Laura was featured as a national fiction winner in the
Sierra Nevada Review's 2014 fiction contest. She has received four gold and two
silver keys as well as several honorable mentions in the Scholastic Art and
Writing Awards for young people in America. She is a recent graduate of
Appomattox Regional Governor's School for the Arts and Technology. She enjoys
most books and all cats.
Kathryn Jacobs is a poet, professor, medievalist, and editor of The
Road Not Taken, A Journal of Formal Poetry. Her
fifth volume of poetry, Wedged Elephant, has just been published by
Karen Kelsay Press. She has also published 20, a book on Marriage
Contracts with the University Press of Florida, and almost 200 poems in
journals that range from Measure and The
New Formalist to The
Xavier Review, New South and Whiskey Island.
Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist,
psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart nominee. Author of six
books, including Dreaming Your
Real Self (Penguin/Putnam),
her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Kestrel, Slipstream, American Journal of
Nursing, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Buddhist
Poetry Review, and The
Nation. www.joanmazza.com
Amanda Pfeifer is a middle school math teacher,
residing in Tucson, Arizona. When she is not grading papers or planning
lessons, she enjoys writing poetry and music, drawing blind contours of objects
around the apartment, and going for walks in the hot desert.
Charles Rammelkamp's latest book is MATA HARI: EYE OF THE
DAY (Apprentice House). He edits the online literary journal, The Potomac
http://thepotomacjournal.com - and is the Prose Editor at BrickHouse
Books in Baltimore, MD, where he lives.
Lisa Rizzo is the author of In the Poem an Ocean (Big
Table Publishing, 2011). Her work has appeared in such journals
as 13thMoon, Earth’s Daughters, RiverLit and Calyx Journal. Two
poems received the 2011 BAPC
poetry prize. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Timothy L.
Rodriguez was a journalist when
newspapers counted, he is a poet when poetry doesn’t count for much, and he is
a novelist when the fate of fiction is uncertain His novel—Guess Who Holds
Thee?—is available on Amazon. His most recent novel Never Is Now is being
serialized in the UK at www.newlondwriters.com.
Rashi Rohatgi teaches
cultural studies at Skidmore College’s London campus and through the Council on
International Educational Exchange. Her writing on comparative world poetry can
be found in Wasafiri, Matatu, and Comparative Critical
Studies, among others, and her fiction can be found in The Misty
Review. She lives in London.
David Anthony Sam is the grandson of Polish and Syrian
immigrants. He has written poetry for over 40 years and has two collections,
including Memories in Clay, Dreams of Wolves (2014). He lives in Virginia USA
with his wife and life partner, Linda, and currently serves as president of
Germanna Community College.
Peter Serchuk's poems have
appeared in a wide variety of US literary journals including Hudson Review,
American Poetry Review, Poetry, North American Review and other journals. He is
the author of two collections: Waiting for Poppa at the Smithtown
Diner and All That Remains. He lives in Los Angeles,
California.
Sanjeev Sethi is author of Suddenly For Someone, 1988
and Nine Summers Later,
1997. His poems have
found a home in The London Magazine, The Fortnightly Review, Solstice Literary
Magazine, Off the Coast Literary Journal, 3 Quarks Daily, Lemon Hound, Poetry
Australia, Eastlit, Indian Literature, The Statesman, The Hindu, and elsewhere.
Bloomsbury is publishing, This
Summer and That Summer, his third collection. He lives in Mumbai.
Cathryn Shea’s poetry is forthcoming in Absinthe, Main Street Rag, Modern
Poetry Quarterly Review, Permafrost, and Sonic Boom, and has
appeared in Gargoyle,MARGIE, Poet Lore, Quiddity, Soundings East, and elsewhere.
Her chapbook, Snap Bean,
is by CC.Marimbo (2014). Cathryn is in the 2012 anthology Open to
Interpretation: Intimate Landscape. Cathryn served as editor for Marin Poetry Center Anthology and worked as a writer at Oracle.
J.R. Solonche, four-time Pushcart and Best of the Net
nominee, has been publishing in magazines, journals, and anthologies since the
early 70s. He is co-author of Peach Girl:
Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books).
Mark Vogel has published short stories in Cities
and Roads, Knight
Literary Journal, Whimperbang, SN Review, and Our Stories. Poetry
has appeared in Poetry
Midwest, English Journal, Cape Rock, Dark Sky, Cold Mountain Review, Broken
Bridge Review and
other journals. He is currently Professor of English at Appalachian State
University in Boone, North Carolina, and directs the Appalachian Writing
Project.
Helen May Williams is Associate Fellow in the Department of English,
University of Warwick. Her
poetry has been published in numerous small press publications, including Hearing Voices, Horizon, Raw Edge,
Roundyhouse, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Ink, Sweat and Tears and the collection Bluebeard’s Wives, Heaventree
Press 2007. She received a special commendation in the Welsh Poetry Competition
2015
