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Past EditorsIssue # 42 Spring 2020
Editors for this Issue:
Dorian Gossy
Roger Mitchell
Table of Contents
(Click on title of the piece to go directly to it.)
Poetry
Carol Alexander
Agape
The Idea of Valley
Pacemaker
Tony Beyer
Father again
Nature morte
Still teaching at 71
Charles Cantrell
The Last Rehearsal
No Resolution
Culvert
In the Woods
David R. Cravens
Southerners
Steven Deutsch
At 10
Heartland
Brian Fanelli
Dylan Cool
Another Decade, Another Protest at Courthouse Square
Aaron Fischer
Expatriate Elegy
Moonrise from a Balcony in Brooklyn
Lust for Life (MGM: 1956)
Guide to New Jersey
Night Piece: New Jersey
Kara Goughnour
Twenty-Four and Humbly Bored
Using Chairs as Tables
Using the Wendy’s Takeout Window as a Confessional Booth
Pat Hanahoe-Dosch
What I Know About Death
Nels Hanson
Day to Day
Marilyn Humbert
Shadows of Troy
Alex MacConochie
Wasp Nest
Assyrian Panels
Bruce McRae
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
Such is Fate
Tom Montag
Three poems from The Woman in an Imaginary Painting
Mary K. O’Melveny
Lifting Cosmic Veils
Simon Perchik
(3 poems)
Claire Scott
Survival
The Accident
Getting Away With Murder: A Ted Talk
Barry Seiler
Basic Skills
A Late Century Poem
Poetry Class
David Spicer
Our Sunday Drives
Tim Suermondt
Du Fu Was Right
What We All Think
Casablanca
Wasting Time on a Winter’s Day
Reed Venrick
Water Without Borders
Nuit Blanche
Erin Wilson
Drift
In Concert
Prose
Dorian Gossy
Introduction to this Issue
Joe Giordano
Together Forever
Natascha Graham
The Art of Almost
E.J. Myers
9/14
My Lunch with Trump
Caroline Sutton
Into that Good Night
Eleanor Levine
Algorithms in the Garden
Contributors' Notes
Carol Alexander is the author of the poetry collections Environments (Dos Madres Press) and Habitat Lost (Cave Moon Press). Her chapbook Bridal Veil Falls is published by Flutter Press. Alexander's poems appear in a variety of anthologies and in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, The Canary, Chiron Review, The Common, Cumberland River Review, The Goose: A Journal of Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada, The Healing Muse, One, Poetrybay, Southern Humanities Review, Sweet Tree Review, Stonecoast Review and Third Wednesday. New work is forthcoming in 2020 in Aji, Denver Quarterly,and the Raintown Review.
Tony Beyer writes in Taranaki, New Zealand. His recent print titles are Anchor Stone (2017) and Friday Prayers (2019), both from Cold Hub Press.
Charles Cantrell has poems in recent or forthcoming issues of Mudfish, Confrontation, Rumble Fish Quarterly, Mobius, Citron Review, Seven Circle Press, West Texas Literary Review, Appalachian Heritage, Pinyon Review, South85 and Miramar Poetry Journal. A book of poetry, Wild Wreckage, will be published by Cervena Barva Press in 2020. Nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize in poetry, he's also held residencies at Ragdale, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center.
David R. Cravens grew up in the Southeast Missouri Ozarks. He’s won the 2008 Saint Petersburg Review Prize in Poetry, and the 2011 Bedford Poetry Prize. His work has also appeared in literary journals in England, Ireland, Canada, Croatia, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout the United States, as well as the anthologies, Resurrection of a Sunflower and Just Like Peer Gynt. He lives in Florissant, Colorado.
Over the past two years, Steve Deutsch’s work has appeared in more than 2 dozen journals. He was nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2017 and 2018. His Chapbook, “Perhaps You Can,” was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full length book, Persistence of Memory, will be published in September, again by Kelsay Press.
Brian Fanelli’s most recent book is Waiting for the Dead to Speak (NYQ Books), winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Poetry Prize. His writing has been published in The Los Angeles Times, World Literature Today, Main Street Rag, Paterson Literary Review, The Pedestal Magazine, and elsewhere. He has an M.F.A. from Wilkes University and a Ph.D. from Binghamton University. Currently, he teaches at Lackawanna College. www.brianfanelli.com.
Aaron Fischer worked for 30+ years as a print and online editor in technology publishing and public policy. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in After Happy Hour, Briar Cliff Review, Five Points, Hudson Review, Nervous Ghost, Sow’s Ear, and other publications. His chapbook, Black Stars of Blood: The Weegee Poems, was published this past summer. He has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes as well as for Best New Poets 2018.
Joe Giordano was born in Brooklyn. He and his wife Jane now live in Texas. His stories have appeared in more than one hundred magazines including The Saturday Evening Post, and Shenandoah. His novels, Birds of Passage, An Italian Immigrant Coming of Age Story (2015), and Appointment with ISIL, an Anthony Provati Thriller (2017) were published by Harvard Square Editions. Rogue Phoenix Press published Drone Strike in 2019 and will publish his short story collection, Stories and Places I Remember, in 2020. Joe was among one hundred Italian American authors honored by Barnes & Noble to march in Manhattan’s 2017 Columbus Day Parade. Read the first chapter of Joe's novels and sign up for his blog at http://joe-giordano.com/
Kara Goughnour is a writer living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They are the author of "Mixed Tapes," a part of the Ghost City Press Summer 2019 Micro-Chap Series. They are the recipient of the 2018 Gerald Stern Poetry Award, and have work published or forthcoming in The Bitchin' Kitsch, Third Point Press, and over fifty others. Follow them on Twitter and Instagram @kara_goughnour or read their collected and exclusive works at karagoughnour.com.
Natascha Graham was raised simultaneously by David Bowie and Virginia Woolf, Natascha Graham is a fiction writer, artist, and screenwriter who lives with her wife in a house full of sunshine on the east coast of England. Her work has been previously published in Acumen, Litro, and Flash Fiction Magazine.
Pat Hanahoe-Dosch earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona. Her poems have been published in The Paterson Literary Review, Rattle, The Atticus Review, Confrontation, Conjunctions, Rust + Moth, American Literary Review, among many others. A poem was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2014. Her books of poems, The WrackLine, and Fleeing Back, can be found on Amazon.com or the FutureCycle Press website. Her short story, “Sighting Bia,” was selected as a finalist for A Room of Her Own Foundation's 2012 Orlando Prize for Flash Fiction. Short stories of hers have been published in The Peacock Journal, In Posse Review, Sisyphus, Manzano Mountain Review,and The Schuylkill Valley Journal. One of her stories was nominated for the Best of the Net award, 2018. Her nonfiction articles have appeared in Travel Belles, On a Junket, and Wholistic Living News. Check out her work published online at http://pathanahoedosch.blogspot.com/
Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.
Marilyn Humbert lives in the Northern suburbs of Sydney NSW Australia. Her tanka and haiku appear in international and Australian journals, anthologies and online. Her free verse poems have been awarded prizes in competitions, published online and in anthologies.
Eleanor Levine’s writing has appeared in more than eighty publications, including Fiction, Evergreen Review, The Toronto Quarterly, Faultline Journal of Arts and Letters, The Denver Quarterly, Spoon River Poetry Review, Maryland Literary Review, Gone Lawn, South Dakota Review, The Citron Review, and Drunk Monkeys. She has work forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review (print edition) and Boudin, the online home of The McNeese Review. Her poetry collection, Waitress at the Red Moon Pizzeria, was published by Unsolicited Press (Portland, OR) in 2016. Her short-story collection, Kissing a Tree Surgeon, is scheduled for publication by Guernica Editions (Canadian publisher) in 2020.
Alex MacConochie currently lives and writes in Hartford, Connecticut. The recipient of the Connecticut Poetry Society's Nutmeg Award for poetry (2020), he has published poems in Meridian, Tar River Poetry, The Summerset Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,600 poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press); An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy; (Cawing Crow Press); Like As If (Pski’s Porch); Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).
Tom Montag's books of poetry include: Making Hay & Other Poems; Middle Ground; The Big Book of Ben Zen; In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013; This Wrecked World; The Miles No One Wants; Imagination's Place; Love Poems; and Seventy at Seventy. His poem 'Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain' has been permanently incorporated into the design of the Milwaukee Convention Center. He blogs at The Middlewesterner. With David Graham he recently co-edited Local News: Poetry About Small Towns.
E.J. Myers was born in Denver and grew up in Colorado, Mexico, and Peru. His work history includes employment as a bricklayer, EMT, cabinetmaker, and editor. He has published three novels, two works of nonfiction, and thirteen children’s books. In addition, Myers has co-written or ghostwritten fifteen books, mostly in the areas psychology, health, and business. He lives in rural Vermont.
Mary K. O’Melveny is a retired labor rights lawyer who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY. Her work has appeared in numerous print and on-line journals and anthologies and on blog sites such as The New Verse News and Writing in a Woman's Voice. She is the author of A Woman of a Certain Age and MERGING STAR HYPOTHESES (Finishing Line Press 2018, 2020) and co-author of An Apple In Her Hand (Codhill Press 2019).
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Rosenblum Poems published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.
Barry Seiler has published four books of poetry, three of them by University of Akron Press. Frozen Falls, the most recent, was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. The NJ State Council named him a Distinguished Artist in Poetry. He lives on the outskirts of Roxbury NY, in Hubbell’s Corners, with his wife Dian and cats.
David Spicer is a former medical journal proofreader. He has published poems in Santa Clara Review, Synaeresis, Chiron Review, Remington Review, unbroken, Third Wednesday, CircleStreet, The Bookends Review, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Moria, Oyster River Pages, and elsewhere. Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart twice, he is author of six chapbooks, the latest of which is Tribe of Two (Seven CirclePress). His second full-length collection of poems, Waiting for the Needle Rain, is now available from Hekate Publishing. His website is www.davidspicer76.com.
Tim Suermondt is the author of five full-length collections of poems, the latest Josephine Baker Swimming Pool from MadHat Press, 2019. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, december magazine, Galway Review and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.
Caroline Sutton’s essay collection, Don’t Mind Me, I Just Died, was published by Montemayor Press in 2017, and her memoir, Mainlining, will appear in May 2020. Her essays have appeared in Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, North American Review, Cimarron Review, The Pinch, The Literary Review, Ascent, and Southwest Review, among others. In 2012 Sutton received Southern Humanities Review’s Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award for nonfiction. She lives in Dobbs Ferry, New York, where she is currently working on a new collection of essays focused on the natural world.
Reed Venrick lives in Key West, Fl., and usually writes poems centered on nature. He has taught English and linguistics in universities in Brazil and Japan, and published many poems and stories in online and print journals, most recently in Sky Island Journal, Edify Fiction, and DASH, at Cal State, Fullerton.
Erin Wilson's poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Salamander Magazine, Pembroke Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, Under a Warm Green Linden, The Literary Review of Canada, and elsewhere. Her first collection, At Home with Disquiet, has been published with Circling Rivers Press. She was recently long-listed for Canada's CBC poetry prize. She lives and writes in a small town in northern Ontario, Canada.
T H E H A M I L T O N S T O N E R E V I E W
Virgens de Guadalupe by Lynda Schor