Landing west
Pacific engulfs
us from what we thought was as far west
as we could go but
no
Airplane that reaches this far takes us
down in a boiling air ride-
over
white capped green water,
The dunes that slope down into the mouth
of the not still ocean
We land past
and
stepping out into a wall of
sea air’s pungency
is a state of mind
we can’t stretch that far to
yet-
Colleen Calhoun
a case of Ball jars
valentine’s day omelets and egg one, egg two
knew the story
as the vowels sang out from our eyes over the cappuccinos,
two hot plates
rubbing against one another
on the tiny table
Carolyn Chassaigne
iOffer
i undressed
100% off
the bliss i was in
when you said
that your heart was
a once in a lifetime
super sized special offer
with extra love thrown in
then again
you did have
an erection
credit where credit’s due
the sex was fantastic
but all spent out
your pillow talk
became a rich irony
of sweet nothings
about no obligations
no commitments
shame i can’t return your offer
as ‘unfit for purpose’
i hit the supermarket
with red puffy eyes
cadbury’s chocolate
buy one get one free
but there was only one left
chardonnay £4.99
or two for eleven quid
crap offers
i can’t seem to refuse
iLearnt
i decided to decorate my room
sure i know how to paint
get out the roller
easy peasy
and whilst i’m at it
i could do with a shelf
above my bed head
one of those with invisible supports
i know what to do
my dad taught me these things
said it was important
i was always independent
but when my boyfriend came round
i acted all pathetic and frail
used my eyelashes to great effect
and one should never under estimate
the awesome power
of even my little tits
he was like putty
reckoned he could have it done in a day
so me and gemma went shopping
just a piece of magic
my mum taught me
iDrew
Neighbourhood Watch
Winter receding: the sun is darkly immanent
In the quiet, hollow grey of an hour before dawn.
I walk clumsily upright, dog eager at heels,
Past house fronts, suburban, politely glimmering
In newish brick, their glossed beams luminous
As time-markings on a watch. Such busy silence!
An exodus of dreams… there in the deepest shadow
At the side of that house, above the windless shrubbery,
Glows a red bulb, isolated as a votive offering
To conjure lovers’ return. But now paternal snores
Rasp and resonate and take curtained, full possession
Of bay-windowed bedrooms, ornate and weightless
Like theatre boxes. And within them – lurid shape-play
Within sleep’s play – each unconscious Hamlet and Gertrude
Grapple familially with that ghostly third party,
The uninsurable one, the dark thing that rocks their bed...
But mostly it is the children I imagine: sleepless,
Cold-eyed, solitary; like secret agents, defending
Much hope encrypted in wallpaper, and looking down
On an aging man, a trotting dog, disappeared by dawn.
Easter Sunday in Ramsgate
No anthems in the suburbs – only the pained roar
As a mower is started in peevish duty
Against tangles of new, lambent growth... a bore,
But here, kemptness is the standard of beauty...
Still seasons change. Spring sunshine fills the mind.
The pampered Ford reverts to sexless metal,
Motorways to nullity ahead, fear behind.
The muteness of one fallen tulip petal
Like the scream of an angel can tear apart
Winter shelters that reason and drabness made,
And leave us unearthed and free to depart
Strolling downhill (our whistling a slow fade)
To study the sea, the pattern of Spring:
For surge by surge we shall know the new thing.
Trees
Alarming all that winter,
like something serious, broken,
those stunted oaks, a small wood,
endured the damp cold, then the blusterings
of grey and darker weather.
Walking under the trees was to enter
a creaking, shadow-shifting
otherwhere which marked with gloom
half-way on my walk
where the dog cowered, half-circled, ran,
and I was left staring up through half light
in a kind of daily astonishment
at the crossing trunks and boughs:
their massiveness of ancient having-lived,
their still-living, thrusting upward
in reaching gestures justified
by their own rough tense rigidity;
and blackly labyrinthine those outermost twigs,
and beyond the clouds slithering headlong,
like a mined factory chimney in endless collapse...
So really it was all moving things
that were broken! Regularly in my dreams
I would play chess against the whirling snow –
totemise limb-stripped oaks, heave them forward,
to blockade the way that led to waking…
But every morning I woke panting, feeling bruised,
as if every night I had been hurried a long way…
Then one day was spring, and the unmoved oaks
tolerated points and nodes of new green,
and as their trunks were obscured, became shape and shadow,
they seemed no more attached to fleetingness than was necessary.
Alan Gleave.
The Ghost of Something Missing
With a pint of Tango
someone’s older brother
bought us 40 years ago
neon orange
like the whoosh of a flamethrower
we climbed into the darkness
me and Neil and Steve and Andy
behind the school
and when drunk enough
walked into the dance in the gym
and unsteadily up to girls
named for months and flowers
their secret torn places
tomorrows we’d never know
Howie Good
End of Evening
After the six-lane rush, the
speed-traps, a loose dog – some-
body’s lost pet, no doubt –
swerving into traffic, we found
an exit to an unmarked turn-off, a dusty
track winding along dry flanks
of hills itchy with their destiny of drought;
climbing, then descending to a stream
smiling under sycamores.
We stopped, left the car unlocked, doors
wide open; walked to the edge of water.
Stooped to pick up what was offered:
quiet-colored, gray but flecked
with light – not quite the end
of evening – flat as wings not yet
unfolded. Started skipping
stones across the ripples, as if
we still remembered
from a former lifetime
how to fly.
Walking into Winter
Our familiar home-woods, but today
we enter to northwind’s fanfare
and ravens in treetops on the opposite hill –
scabby extrusion of chert and spindly pines.
No more gold-red-and-green ensemble
of autumn. We enter the woods
where a dry creekbed stumbles down
rock outcrops to be swallowed by a cleft
that in April sprang moist and cool,
green to shade the violets. Now
we enter the woods in such frugal
windchill weather. Were there
really violets? Come, walk with me
in these woods that open to us
like a door in winter’s moss-gray
stone.
Self-taught
Elihu Burritt, Crimean War 1853
When the American Minister says
“conditionally,” how do you translate that?
Elihu, shoemaker-farmer’s son, too poor
for formal schooling, your classroom
was the parish library (200 books)
and the Antiquarian – all those dead languages.
You with your plain petitions for peace,
for arbitration in disputes of nations –
how can you understand
the privy-tongue of a man of diplomacy?
How do you learn what his
cautious obfuscation in English really means?
Taylor Graham
Eve
At first, it was bliss:
he gave me the world for a house,
and made me its dame.
And it was the morning of life;
each dawn,
the sun spilled her gold in the lap of the sea,
and bought me a day.
I’d spend hours in a trance:
beached like a cat in the sun,
heat stroking my skin
with her fingers of gold.
Or lost in the trees,
light caught by the leaves
‘til the whole wood burned like a jewel
at the throat of a queen.
Or deep in the orchard,
where summer hung scented and ripe,
stripping the trees
‘til my basket was heavy with fruit.
I ate well:
tomatoes, split figs,
full peaches that blushed
like the down-silvered cheek of a girl.
I slept like a child.
The sea rustled close,
like the bustling skirts of a nurse.
Sometimes, I wake
and feel his eyes trained on my skin.
He’s always around,
trailing a footfall behind
or shading his eyes
on the opposite shore of a lake.
Some nights, I build him a fire
with wood bleached by the sea.
He looks at my feet.
He traces the curves of my ears
as if they were shells.
He unfolds my fingers
and plays with the joints of my limbs.
I sing.
Anything goes -
sea shanties, ballads, old rhymes
that keen in the night
like a chorus of wolves.
Yet nothing could undo
the sadness I see in his face.
I twine him close in my hair,
and rock him to sleep.
Still, when he wakes,
his cheeks will be silvered with brine.
He’ll watch all I do with a sorrow
as deep as the night.
And I am still dame of his house,
though it isn’t what I would call bliss.
What’s bliss but everyday life,
keeping house in a palace
whose walls I have already seen?
Each new sun blooms
like the sun of the day before
and draws the same charms
from the same unspeakable night.
And still, the sorrow grows wild and strange
in his eyes,
like he already knows:
knows how my days will unfold,
in grace, in quiet, with more of the same dim joy,
with nothing to alter their sun-kissed course
‘til I stray to the edge of the wood
and discover the tree.
For there’s always a tree:
knocked crooked, awry,
split trunk like the limb of a hag,
bent low with such an unsayable weight of beauty
I’ll know without any doubt
that it is forbidden.
It’s like he already knows
that there he will find me,
there on the edge of the cage he has made me
with nothing,
no angels,
no whispering snake at my ear,
with only the blaze of my hair
and the gleam of my mouth,
the heat of my suddenly naked limbs,
warmed ‘til they burn
by the red, cupped weight of my palms.
A Doll's House
I am making a girl:
her heart is a thimble.
Her ribs are
a crushed meringue.
All day, in her cage,
my little bird sings.
I will make her a sky.
I will build her
a house of cards.
Her lips are a song.
Her neck
is a slice of the moon.
I'll make her a heart of glue
to show her she's mine.
Oh, what can I do?
I carry her face in my hand.
The shell of her ear
fits
to the ball of my thumb.
Her lashes are prayers.
How could she live in this world?
my diamond girl.
something will break
her charm,
shatter her smile,
something as hot
as the night
will shake this child
of mine.
Her neck in my hand
is a startling hart.
I'll sew her into the dark.
I'll bake her into a pie.
I shall not hear a thing;
she can make
as much noise
as she likes.
Holly Green
Vogelblut*
A line of scarlet spots in well trimmed grass:
Stark and sudden, it consumes the light. Red
Heightened by sunrays and a virent mass
Of thin leaves. Red that seems to have been bled
From the mind's eye, the colour pure and right—
No orange there, no blue to bring to mind
Other shades, other objects. These lined bright
Circles are all the same, only one kind
Of red drops like that upon a lawn. Blood.
It can't be anything else but blood here
Where there are no paints, no rubies, no floods
Of pomegranate juice. Just.birds, which veer
Too close to household cats, and so are caught--
Leaving small drops to drape each emerald stalk.
*bird's blood
Sock Puppet Dramatics
I should have told you that interesting
Lies are the way to go here. One or two
Semi plausible ones, so's not to bring
Detailed attention. Like: someone saved you,
When you were younger, from a rendezvous
With an absinth drinking lonely French man.
Or this: your lover died, leaving the span
And breadth of some dark works to you (we can
Imagine what he did). We would have preferred
Those fictions to your boring facts. Fashion
Dictates that this isn't wrong; we've all heard
The theory that modern life demands blurred
Realities and mutable frankness.
New times make new truths. You've got a thankless
Candor clinging to you. The raw rankness
Of unvarnished life sickens. I would
Have told you--if I thought about it/ drank less/
Cared more— we don't simply say what we should;
Here we can say what we like. Everything
Is plastic. Truth shines, sure... but not like bling.
Juleigh Howard Hobson
Bird Lady
They call her old maid Misty, as in fog, she misses the sun.
She runs a small pet store, more for the injured and lame,
alone and half the light bulbs have burnt out.
In the backroom everything smells of dust and feathers.
The cockatoo is cuddly and named Brenda, but has bad toiletry manners.
The macaw is well hidden, and fetches a high price on the open market, called Ginger.
Misty is surrounded by wired bird cages,
jungle noises in unfamiliar places,
and sleeps on a portable cot.
When parrots or parakeets shout shrills in the night,
her eyes squint and flash out in the dark but no one sees it.
Squinting is a lonely habit.
Misty works alone and is getting old.
On a wall, near her cot, hangs a picture?
but is it Jesus, or St. Jude Thaddaeus
carrying the image of Jesus in his hand or close to his chest,
difficult to tell darkness dimmed at night.
Misty sometimes sleepwalks at night from small room to the other?
she bumps, sometimes trips and falls, her warfarin guarantees bruises.
Misty tosses conjectures: “I’m I odd, old school, or just crazy?”
Her world is eye droppers, bird feeders, poop in cages, porcelain knickknacks.
Love left Misty’s life years ago, when World War II ended and so did her marriage.
As she ages everything is measure in milliliters, everything seems short and small?
medications in small dosages day by day.
Early in morning a young homeless boy knocks on the store front window
desperate for a job, he lies about credentials.
Misty desperate for help asks for no references.
Today is dim, raining outside, and old maid Misty still misses the sun.
In Praise of…
I love the way your inhibitions
F
A
L
L
with modest ease,
momentarily
slowing only at your
hips.
A simple sort of gathering like
the pursing of your
lips
before the grand descent.
Then, pooling up in that little
spot
beneath the arches of
your feet,
they evaporate there in
singular,
a n t I c I p a t o r y
Heat.
As you again bestow
that grand
epiphany
on
me.
Kenneth Karrer
Pulsritude
aah, the weather so
deliciable you want to
eat It, swallow her
in ravened beast mouthfills, whole
collops of rare air Sun crisped
No, no! last vignettes
like drams of spiced vanilla
savory tune not
to be too swoon-gobbled, but
morseled, nary oso at
the hive, rather pined
le biche at the deerberry
muted nibbles, an
afternoon of faun, the clime
of delight, honeysuckle
camellia, lily
magnolia to scarlet's daze
lustraled, and the waft
of dusk's daffodil oh so
deliciable you want to...
H.E.Mantel
dolphins
shouldn't you like anyway it
plashing like a dream
in the deep bitter blue salt seas
above the acres of fallow ground
or fertile undisturbed and wanting rest
from the weight of oceans?
and there is shipwreck
for monotony of it
to be an antidote
Christopher Mulrooney
You will be with her again
In the middle of Muchena’s very quite forests, between Rupako
and Chidazuru hills there is this small stream that flows westwards.
It is a very small stream with silently dripping crystal white water
as if it’s dripping from wet clothing, and slowly it proceeds down
the terrain and a distance it pours into Nyangombe River, a deeper
and wider river
The waters of that stream met Nyangombe’s waters and mix and
together, as one body, big and insurmountable, flow through very
rough terrain in its quest to reach the sea’s waters. No one can be
able to differentiate these waters anymore and say, such and such
waters came from our stream
Then we peep through the fingers of time
Through Bende gap on Nyanga mountain
Through Chinyamusaka cleft
Is that another river there?
They meet, Nyangombe, and Kayerezi
To form a body much bigger and wider
Which proceeds through a foreign land?
Yet some distance after this meeting
Is that a headland that is dividing?
One body taking a route eastwards
And another preferring an easy terrain westwards
The waters of that river are now separated
Can we still discern our stream’s waters?
We will never forget those waters of our stream which are pelted
by the winds and the sun, which will return into our stream, in
these two rivers and other rivers as the rains, neither those waters
that sips downwards into the soil and those waters that manages
to return into our stream through that spring that feeds our stream,
or those two rivers, or other rivers, and thus the stream’s waters
separate, meet, separate, to meet again---
Thus in years full of the mysteries of the ages, through many rainy
summers and many icy winters we would look at those waters again.
Some have reached the sea; some are still in those two rivers, some
are in the clouds, some are underground, and some of the waters are
in other rivers, some are back in our stream.
Round, round like the rain dance
With hands entwined, we sang
Songs of the summer’s love
Dancing and praising our togetherness
Until we all fell down
With the end of that song.
We meet and live life together
But some day, some time
The ages old devil separate us
But another day you will be with her again
For all the eternities.
Into the welters of the unending.
Tendai Mwanaka
Horses
Horses in the shore fields
standing with their backs
to the wind
coming off the sea
and the black rocks
aching with white water.
These are the snatching winds
that cut trees and bushes
to angled stands,
the storm winds
that spin wind-vanes,
make weather-heads sing
and whip masting ropes.
These are the fate winds
that can sire horses.
Ron Ogilvie
Ghost Story
Sometimes while passing a playground
you’ll see a child so like my mother
you believe for the length of a pang
it’s me.
You can’t understand I’m not a child
anymore, that I have, like you,
grown older.
If there is joy in even the smallest
secret, then I was your greatest,
never to be shared because there was
no other you loved.
But now I am asking you to see
that even the dead change
with time.
There are no memories of me to forget,
only that I was the beginning
of a past you keep forcing
into the future.
I’m too big to be carried, even by a father,
and you were never as strong
as you pretended to be.
Mentor
In this version Odysseus was just too busy,
so his son went instead,
a little disgusted at how comfortable
the old man had become.
And it was fun living by his wits,
wryly observing the passing scene
with the smugness of all travelers,
but after ten years even Troy
made him think of dust and ashes.
So when the world had finally shrunk
to his satisfaction,
he returned to discover the city free of plots,
his mother still mistress of the house,
and there on his table
the book he had always wanted to read,
with some passages underlined
by his father.
Mark Osaki
Heron
Before footfall disturbs dew,
Bamboo flickers and sussurates.
The lawn is spotted with apples,
wormy windfalls, bruised and tart.
The rock garden wears
pink and blue stitchery.
Suddenly, like an apparition,
landing, come to steal,
wading into the fish pond,
a bold heron. His grace,
for one moment, astonishes,
before we bang on windows,
disturb his breakfast. Barely
acknowledging us, he rises,
nonchalant. Lucifer
flying back to heaven,
beautiful as sin.
North Sea at Midnight
Whitby Folk Week
At the edge of land, The Metropole Hotel’s
a black shape we leave behind.
Whitby Spa shelters in the lea
of stern cliffs. Our ears ring with wild chords.
The North Sea’s brisk below, continuing
its work of ships and fishing, rolling forever
backwards and forwards, advancing in increments
of inky black sea and white foam.
Snakewatching
Nothing moves. Let your eyes
gaze out of focus; the ground’s
a Magic Eye Image you’re blind to.
Now look for a fracture, an incongruity.
The diamondback knows you by your heat.
But he’s prepared to let you go, passive
unless your foot disturbs his domed back
as he parts the grass about his quiet work.
then he’ll rattle his attack.
Angela Topping
Up
You enjoy the light in your dog’s eyes
who is rushing flat on the ground towards you
to grab the stick you have just found.
A dash warming the strand,
your here-and-now in a straight cloud of breath.
You raise the stick tracing
an arc in the air with your hand
and she just flies with it,
body at eye-level, and higher, higher,
taking off.
Clouds, gods.
Now she lands, supple legs
minimize the impact.
And you both stand, breathless
in the wake of the myth
gathered up there.
Unseen
It’s good when you start your workday by bike
taking that almost forbidden path
along the railway line, skirting the rails
while the gravel scrapes your wheels;
you slide down the desert subway and sail
under the crowded bridge, then pass by
an abandoned cabin, its window panes
crammed with parcels that are
always the same, unwrapped for ages.
You dismount by a stone balustrade
and lock the bike there with a new chain,
your glasses in the cold clouded by your own breath;
in this fog of yours you wait for the train
and enjoy feeling you are unseen
while in your mind’s track the blue chain
is suspended in a smile of silence, stone and sky,
the key to its lock, in the pocket of your being.
Early Earth
You say it’s the new lemon tree
spreading this sweet breath
but for me it’s something else, a locust tree,
its blossoms travelling maybe
with that ready scent of memories,
the season gathering its own solace,
air in its mirror of marvels.
Now it’s early morning
and I’m lacing up my boots for the hike,
the garden green stares at me,
at my hands and head bent forward
before anything: the sun that will grow
on the back of the neck with
a scrutinizing vastness,
the afternoon storm
that will enter the mountains’ gaps
like the violets and blacks
of a lion’s irises;
these and the other thousand things
fearful and surprising
and all the rest that can’t be foreseen
and is the heart of the sky.
But now it’s the trees’ stillness
and this sweet smell
of closeness and newness
that prepare me.
I pull at my laces, I love the tightness
of the boots on my ankles
and the lingering of this leafy
clustering quiet,
early earth that waits
settled and dumbfounded
with its buzz of a gaze
that expands like veins
of quartz.
Davide Trame
One Hundred Word Finally
He hauled up patched quilts
And blankets from the basement
Like a load of forgotten laundry
The previous night he gave
His pajamas of two decades
To an age old friend
Tweety bird yellow
On a white backdrop
Long sleeves fell short
At the elbows, pant legs
Ending at the shins maturely
He flexed with the curiosity
Of an ant under the magnifying
Glass, one last sigh of the seams
A clean crowning tear
And one conscientious observer
Gave her shrill objection
An exaggerated, overstressed
Final syllabic laugh, an attempt to end
This ironically mawkish desecration
Of some unknown childhood.
Aaron Wiegert
Chastity & Cracked Assurance
left by the Osprey
in the dimeter next to the gray living room
Chastity made a commitment
to never smoke cigars again
though the taste of snuff
with its thick tusk
consigned with brevity
of taste
inhaled
with greed
liked me
most of me
abstained
Chastity never tampered
with her maturity
though I wonder why she flinched
with ire
for the many who carelessly gamble
with rest
in hope of peace
like the pieces of chemical
assurance
singing in the wisps of quick minded
smokey
clouds
of lies
leaving smiles unto smiles
though Chastity never knew of them
I know in Heaven she now knows
something
of smiles
of herself
I surmise
with
cracked
assurance
Today, Afternoon & After Class
spilled along the chalk board
were your letters
hints of hemlock
stained the garrulous feud
frozen
in gray marble
beneath my feet
students were transfixed
like inward taste buds
accustomed to numbness
as whenever the teacher
uttered
words
salient expressions,
built with alacrity
smoothly
yet irregularly
along
faces
dead faces,
moved with faint pulses
for the sake of something
beyond
bland
something
captive
like Africa
today
afternoon
and after
class
Ernest Williamson III
Doug Bond is a writer, runner, husband, father, and singer of songs who has endured life in Manhattan and along the Western fault lines, most recently in San Francisco in loving, creative partnership with his wife, daughter, Ben (a lab), and assorted other creatures.
Colleen Calhoun is an expat American writing, painting and living in Europe. Copenhagen is home to her for over 25 years. Having studied English Literature at the University of Copenhagen she received her BA and MA there. She also went to Billedskolen art school in Copenhagen. Space/ place and the exploration of these fill her writing and art. She lives in and gets energy from this European city but reflects on the wilderness and open spaces of her native country.
Colleen has published poetry in England and the United States in: Passages North, Bee Museum: The Journal of Baltic Writers Journal, Perceptions: Women's Poetry for a Change, Chiron Review, Poetalk, among others and exhibited paintings and graphics for the past 25 years in both Europe and the United States.
Carolyn Chassaigne is a 23 year old dreamer living and loving in Boston, Massachusetts. She calls the busy neighborhood of Mission Hill home, along with her 9-year old cat, overweight guinea pig, boyfriend and best friend.
Writing under the name of iDrew to co-ordinate with her titles, Essex girl Drew has previously been published in various magazines such as: ‘The Delinquent’, ‘Battered Suitcase’, ‘All Things Girl’, and the ‘Read This Skin Deep Anthology’. She enjoys shopping, boys and clubs but claims these are all merely research for her writing. She is also one of the founding members of the Clueless Collective and can be found at: www.cluelesscollective.co.uk
Alan Gleave was a secondary school teacher in Liverpool for thirty years. Taking early retirement, he wondered whether it was too late to turn to trying to write poems and short stories of his own. Encouraged by Deal Writers, he has had poems published in The Reader, and the international academic journal, Dante Studies. One of his short stories was short listed in the Meridian short story competition of summer 2009.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University
of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 11 poetry
chapbooks, including Still Life with Firearms
(2009) from Right Hand Pointing, Visiting the Dead (2009)
from Flutter Press, and My Heart Draws a Rough Map (2009)
from The Blue Hour Press. He has been nominated three
times for a Pushcart Prize and four times for the Best of
the Net anthology. His first full-length book of poetry,
Lovesick, was released in 2009 by Press Americana.
Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. His poems have appeared in American Literary Review, International Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Poetry International, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, he is included in the anthology, California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Taylor's book The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006) was awarded the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. His latest is Among Neighbors (Rattlesnake Press, 2007).
Holly Green was inaugurated Wirral's First Young Poet Laureate in 2008. Then aged sixteen, she wrote and performed poetry for private, public and civic events across Wirral and the North West. Now aged seventeen, she continues to write and deliver her own poetry and recently performed alongside Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy at Wirral Libraries' 'Bookfest' - the first time any young poet has performed alongisde an established Poet Laureate.
She's won the Australian Returned Serviceman's League's ANZAC Day Award for poetry. She was a finalist for the 2006 Morton Marr Poetry Prize. Poetry of hers has been nominated for "The Best of the Net", and for The Pushcart Prize.
Michael Lee Johnson is
a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois. His new poetry
chapbook with pictures, titled From Which Place the Morning Rises, and
his new photo version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom are
available at: http://stores.lulu.com/promomanusa. The original version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom, can be found at: http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7.
Michael
has been published in over 22 countries. He is also editor/publisher of
four poetry sites, all open for submission, which can be found at his
Web site: http://poetryman.mysite.com. All of his books are now available on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=michael+lee+johnson. E-mail: promomanusa@gmail.com.
Follow Michael Lee Johnson On:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Lee-Johnson/605601763
Twitter: http://twitter.com/poetrymanusa
MySpace.com: http://www.myspace.com/469391029
(
H.E. Mantel/HaroHalola of Hallandale Beach, Florida; published Poet/Writer in Print and Internet Ezines/Journals/Anthologies, including Ascent Aspirations, Shampoo, Record Magazine, The Apocalypse, A Hero's Journey Anthology, Poetry By Moonlight Anthology, World Artist Network Magazine, Poetry Soup (Featured Poet/Competition Award Winner), The National Quarterly; awaiting the publication of Poetry collections, "Bananas' On The Moon...A Collection Of Revisionist Haiku" & "Sophistigates: A New Book Of New Poetry."
Christopher
Mulrooney has written poems in The Delinquent, Moloch, Drunken Boat,
Caesura, and Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore.
Tendai Mwanaka has had poems published in USA, UK, Italy, South Africa, India, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, in over 50 among other journals, magazines and anthologies; Yellow medicine review, Off-the-coast, Phoenix review, The Redwheelbarrow, Pomezia Notizie, Memoirjournal, PoetrySZ, Poetry institute of Africa, Beyond the rainbow , New contrast, Earls court, Mobius and others. She has also won several prizes and her manuscript, BLOODLINES, BILE AND A CRYING CHILD was short-listed for the Erberce poetry prize(2009), and a book of short stories dealing with Zimbabwe's political situation, MAD BOB REPUBLIC-ECHOES OF AN UNFINISHED CIRCLE, will be published by Lionpress Ltd(UK).
Ron Ogilvie is a member of the Deal Writers Group in Kent. Ron is a Scot by birth but has been out of Scotland since 1984. He is a husband and father and trained as a scientist. He now works in the pharmaceutical industry. Ron has been writing poetry since he was a lad and has grown in confidence since joining the group in Deal in 2008. 'Horses' is a recent piece, written on Islay in the Hebrides in August 2009.
Mark Osaki's work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including: The Georgia Review , Carrying the Darkness—The Poetry of the Vietnam War (Avon, Texas Tech University Press), South Carolina Review , Men of Our Time—An Anthology of Male Poetry in Contemporary America (University of Georgia Press), Breaking Silence—An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Poets (Greenfield Review Press), Onset Review and Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac (National Public Radio).
Angela Topping's latest collection is The Way We Came (bluechrome 2007). She is the suthor of two previous collections published by Stride. After a long teaching career, she is now working as a freelance poet and critic. Based in Cheshire, she is married with two adult daughters.
Davide
Trame is an Italian teacher of English. He has been writing
exclusively in English since 1993. Davide's poems have appeared in
magazines since 1999.
His poetry collection “Re-emerging” was published by www.gattopublishing.com in 2006.
Aaron Wiegert graduated from Iowa State University where he had the privilege of working with the critically acclaimed professor/poet/novelist/memoirist Debra Marquart. He now lives in the Twin Cities area and is in the process of compiling his first book of poetry.
Ernest
Williamson III has published poetry and visual art in over 220 online
and print journals. He is a self-taught pianist and painter. His poetry
has been nominated three times for the Best of the Net Anthology. He
holds the B.A. and the M.A. in English/Creative Writing/Literature from
the University of Memphis. Ernest is an English Professor at Essex County College. Professor Williamson is also a Ph.D. Candidate at Seton Hall University in the field of Higher Education Leadership. Visit his gallery
http://www.yessy.com/budicegenius/
