tinfoildresses

Dear Readers,

This week the season will once again change and soon we will begin a new year filled with possibilities. This poetry journal is my new possibility and I want to thank you all for your submissions and input. Without all the wonderful poets out there, and there are so many, we would not exist. This issue is filled with all kinds of poems to take you on a trip to faraway places using every sense. Thank you so much for choosing to partake in our poetry journal! We hope that you enjoy this issue.

Sincerely,

Heather Ann Schmidt

Editor of tinfoildresses

Patricia Bostonian

Parabolic Butterfly

She tips her head to

see into the mirrored blackness,

a tiny oracle bent over a steaming

fissure, gasses rising,

answers elusive and cryptic,

the question unknown.

A butterfly captured

between the curved mirrors,

convex hugging

concave,

its holographic twin

floating above,

a parabolic reflection,

a mirage.

Her fingers grab the

floating image

but take away nothing,

catch hold of air

and light;

the yellow wings leave no

dust on her hands.

But the wisdom comes.

Mirrors gathering

sunlight in their bowls,

spark spontaneous ignition

of enemy ships,

the flicking wings

setting in motion

a distant storm.

My daughter holds

my death coded

in her heart,

counting down my

beatless days.

Atoms and Angels

What happens when atoms collide,

sending particles whirling?

Do angels emerge, wings still wet,

swirling on a bit of dust?

Do they fly through accelerator walls

transparent,

giddily dancing on pins?

My experience of angels has been dull.

They sit next to me at the deli

staring moodily into their

ham on rye, let the bread

crumble between their nervous fingers.

They hover over my ironing board,

steam curling their wings

dampening their dingy gowns.

They do not pay or fold.

Angels, spilling from atoms broken

like matzoh, spreading like

lentils across an ashy hearth,

harmonic convergences of sound

and light, setting the winter birds

flying, sending the low light of

an ending day, still and pink

above the marsh crabs,

making the impossible

more so.

Jennifer Hollie Bowles

Tori Amos didn’t go to Vegas: I went to New Orleans

Forced to New Orleans,

to rip you from his skin,

forced to tug your placenta

=0 A

out of his brain.

You are my Athena,

not his dinner,

for I am guardian of mistresses,

anything that slides

between breasts.

You and the loblolly

pine are not for sale,

but that arch in your back

tells me you have fallen

into his mess.

Dealer of jazz and legs,

all that swims near his lips,

you’ll be his,

when I’m in my grave.

Tasting bold colors of French

masquerades, sounds of cayenne

architecture, watching rain while the sun shines,

you exhume shades of blues in the syncopation;

this is yours as you stroll arm-

in-arm New Orleans,

but not him.

Music is his soul mate:

you remain second to her.

The mimosa tree says

it can’t be through

by the way she twists.

You may know it’s him

by the flavor on your tongue,

but don’t bet on the musician’s kiss.

Slide through, you said,

when I’m in my grave.

Corey Cook

---After the Storm---

A gray Ford F-150 climbs the hill by Grafton’s farm, engine

tick-tick-ticking, raised plow bobbing above rambling river

of asphalt. Chad Danbury drives with one hand draped over

the steering wheel on his way to open up the last of his driveways,

Dick Rumney’s. The storm had been swept from the valley hours

ago by gusty winds, depositing nine inches of fresh snow before

leaving. Chad drives and recalls that his son, Derrick, had reported

yesterday that Dick’s son, Beau, was changing for gym class

and had red marks all down his back. Chad drops the plow and pulls

into the Rumney’s driveway, raises the plow and puts the truck

in reverse, glances at the house as the truck creeps backward,

notices Dick pacing back and forth between the kitchen and living

room, intermittently blackening the eyes of the house with his bulk,

the Coors can in his right hand glinting as he passes below

the overhead lighting in each room. Chad stops the truck and spots

Beau standing in one of the second story windows, his left cheek

looking swollen under what looks like a sterile pad, but can only

be a patch of frost etched on the cold window in front of his face.

Kristina Marie Darling

The Book of Music

She remembered the book from her prior home, with its damselflies and its blue shutters. And she recalled a passage from within the book, describing the sound of a cello: …the hollow mumbling. A hum like the cold that undoes one’s teeth in winter and rattles the gums. Those mornings she thumbed through its pages, listening. The shutters flying open as though they were wings. Some nights, she slept in a room with crystal dishes and harpsichords. She dreamed the movement between octaves in electric light.

William Doreski

Teaching You to Play Hockey

Teaching you to play hockey

in July requires us to skate

on the tile kitchen floor. A goal

by the refrigerator. Slap shots

chip the ivory enamel.

Our blades groove the tile. A flick

of your body checks me headlong

into the range, which explodes

in a mess of sparks. Good thing

I insisted we wear helmets.

The rasp of our skates reminds me

of extremities of dental work.

The floor scars so deeply in places

we can see into the basement.

If we play long enough the room

will collapse and we’ll tumble

onto a boiler that gloats like

some overwrought Hindu god.

You love hockey as few women do,

wielding the stick with murder

in your gaze. I block a shot

and you swing hard enough to behead,

but I duck and skate down the hall

and hide in the bathroom. You rage

in the kitchen, smashing dishes

and windows, banging utensils

and slashing the innocent walls.

Teaching you to play hockey

is fun, but I should have waited

a month or two, so maybe

you could imagine winter muffling

your anger in a sweater

almost too big for your ego.

A Concert in Vermont

In the music shed we’re young again, the crowd around us

mostly in its eighties, white hair fluffy and gold watches gleaming.

Varèse, Webern, Stravinsky. Oboes suffer and violins tauten

as the notes stretch from Paris to Vienna to Vermont and back.

A warbler teases the musicians by competing with easy trills

from the windy trees a few feet past the lawn where adolescents

sprawl with gallon jugs of wine without paying admission.

We, however, paid seventy dollars to hear Stravinsky’s soldat

lose his soul to Old Nick. The day sighs loudly from the south,

a snore so powerful a pine topples and the power blinks.

The musicians pay no mind. Their faces clench as they squeeze

every chord like a raspberry ripened by the midsummer light.

We agree that the smattering of famous musicians among

twenty-year-old aspirants ignites the music and the crowd

with enthusiasm rarely found in the classical repertory.

That heady south wind isn’t escorting a shower,

but we’d enjoy sitting through the concluding Schubert trio

with a storm to discipline the headstrong maples tossing their manes.

Instead, the birdsong quickens as the pianist leans

into her work, the cellist saws his score into uniform segments,

and the violin’s high notes ruffle the turf on Schubert’s early grave.

Donald Dunbar

What We See Is What We Imagine

What we see is what we imagine, or only what it sounds like. I go to sleep with a fly in my mouth for bait, wake with a click-spider there, breathing. Its breath is my breath, briefly, as is its body. Its clicks my pulse, its eggs my eyes. Its legs my spine, and its thoughts: the energy of my favorite brand-names and advertisements. The glow of hand-made, limited-time, discounted; the thrust of life, the sustaining love of all things for all things, the imperative salivate, swallow, digest.

Amy. L. George

Anger

Like the slow loosening of a tooth,

I noticed the shift in your body,

imperceptible to

the unfamiliar eye.

Your jaw twitched,

clenched behind your lips,

and still he rambled.

I took your hand,

stroked it,

as though applying salve

or balm

to angry, reddened skin.

Lakeside Retreat

Perhaps a bench

once adorned

the concrete slab,

a place for lovers

to watch morning rays

christen the lake.

But by the time

we found it,

only an empty

square remained,

covered as if to protect it

from wandering rain.

After dinner one night,

we drove out

to the platform,

rolled down the windows

to hear the cradlesong

of the star-lit water.

We stepped out onto

the empty stage,

became lakeside shadows

illuminated by car headlights

as we danced.

Only the moon saw us.

Stanka Gjuric

NAMJERA

Rano se budim;

da bih pogledala kroz rešetke

u mrklo jutro.

Možda ću moći saviti kovinu,

provući tijelo kroz uzan prolaz,

poletjeti.

Tamo vani čeka me prepreka

koju ne mogu i ne želim zaobići:

čovjek sačinjen od uvjerenja i prkosa.

Stoji poput kosca

sa samrtnim ljubavnim osmijehom

na svome licu prikrivenog bestidnika,

progonjen žudnjom kojoj ne može uteći.

Ja ih dolazim razuvjeriti;

sobom od sebe;

to dvoje nerazdruživih,

kompulzivnih prijatelja.

OBLIVION

Everything that I touch has fallen into oblivion.

Broken, it follows its trail in the forever forgotten past.

Having once been a shadow amongst strange vegetation,

its vicious, poisonous thistle, suddenly it becomes invulnerable,

and in that land of oblivion it finds its day's end

only in the remembrance of its pain.

Gabe Gregoire

Mom Is Clean Now

Mom is clean now

In the way a gun with the serial number scratched off is clean

I don’t know what’s worse

The fact that she once suggested that my brothers and I park and burn her minivan

For the insurance money

Or the fact that I considered it

On TV the mentally ill are often killed before they kill again

And the killers of the killers only sometimes face charges

On TV there is such a thing as impartial justice

In the real world

There isn’t

Just ask any loser

Like the lottery players that come into my store

Claiming they usually play the numbers that won last night

But didn’t this time

A fluke

Damn

They say

The game is fixed

And they’re right

Lady Luck is a girl of dubious proclivities

And that chick who holds the scales of justice

Is her promiscuous sister

Two daughters of the American devolution

Wallowing in

The myriad versions of a debased reality

The marriage proposal based on an eight-week season of scripted dates

The trial infected with phrases trying too hard to catch on

The garbage they tell us is gold

Buy

Sell

Buy

Bye-bye

To everything you believed in

As a young person

Welcome to the world

Michael Lee Johnson

Harvest Time

A Métis Indian lady, drunk,

hands blanketed over as in prayer,

over a large brown fruit basket

naked of fruit, no vine, no vineyard

inside ¾ approaches the Edmonton,

Alberta adoption agency.

There're only spirit gods

inside her empty purse.

Inside, an infant,

refrained from life,

with a fruity wine sap apple

wedged like a teaspoon

of autumn sun

inside it's mouth;

a shallow pool of tears start

to mount in native blue eyes.

Snuffling, the mother offers

a slim smile, turns away.

She slithers voyeuristically

through near slum streets,

and alleyways,

looking for drinking buddies

to share a hefty pint

of applejack wine.

Ami Kaye

Appassionata

Somewhere the sun rose

and stars tucked in

for the next turn of planets,

yet the world seemed

draped in dark.

The night you left

I heard the wind carry a sigh;

perhaps it came from me.

In your voice I heard

bleak decision-

shock stabbed bloodlessly.

Passion's dying leaves,

burnt crimson and grey,

rose high in a bloodied sky

then descended slowly.

I heard the weeping mist

calling to my pain,

my heart recognized

the whisper of your name.

Karen Neuberg

Red State of Mind

Red is the expression of vital force, of nervous

and glandular activity, and so it has the meaning

of Desire and all forms of appetite and craving.

Max Luscher

Wish I could stay my medallion arguments. Catch your never mind until it raised onto its elbows. There I’d slip under your heightened, twine my tape, split half to quarter and remain past longer. While suitcase filled with still to do waits be-side the door. I’m forever just about to, spacing hesitation into bottled lines upon the window ledge, light flowing through in seams. Remembered association trying to pretend another song, another singer. Afterglow sits pretty posture braiding her hair, long out the window. She’ll climb down some night,

run the seeded field.

Binh Nguyen

MORNING OBSERVANCE

how

stunning

that carnation

is: its scarlet petals

etched deeply into the

pale page of the wooden

fence: not unlike the dew

collecting upon this

single leaf!

TWO QUESTIONS

Must one near the end of the alphabet

to arrive at “senescence”

so one can look back and understand

the “essence” of one’s life?

Must one advocate for the presence of things

as they enter one’s ken—

say, this glass of oj,

this bouquet of sunflowers in that vase,

the glinting trail the snail makes

while scaling her personal Kilimanjaro?

Cami Park

Winstons

Once we got the hang of it,

we breathed circles around each other.

Skipped foreheads off

rocks,

chewed embers.

Jellyfish,

left to their own devices,

developed spines, got

religion, eschewed

risk,

made Gods of stick

Peter Schwartz

pillow talk

asleep, I can speak

your name as if through

a hole in the wall

I don't know it but here

on this couch, I know its

one syllable, the space

of a single breath; a

ghost-name, a slight

indentation on

my pillow.

R Jay Slais

What? About Me

I killed her. My mouth was the weapon,
my head wanting what I thought
was worthy; my adolescent needs.
Anyone could see she was dying,

pain had surrounded her, pulled her skin
down, cheek bones had risen up,

flesh glistened as if a marble statue in the rain.
Oh mother. I knew she felt sick

that day. I saw traces of vomit
on the floor, like a blood trail
from a wounded soldier,
leading right up into her bed.

She never complained, I should have
known better than to allow

the earth to revolve around me.

Her ocean colored eyes were drained,

her body an island, deserted, focus
strained. Her smiles like the outer most
rings of a dead still ocean ripple,
faint but rolling, moving farther away.

The lumps of cancer were little hills
to stand on, so I stood and my
I want was like a shot from a gun.
My words bore deep inside, she slumped,

stressed, finally landing in a hospital bed.
Father, her husband, retaliated,
pupils narrowed like a shield to block
my advance. He glared

a cold death like stare that cut me down.

If my request was a gun,
I would have placed it back
into my mouth, swallowed the bullet

thus ending this current misery.

The emotion that was spilled changed
everything; hope was only just a word now.
She came back burdened, filled with regret;

22
she could no longer mother me.
My words that day, a mortal wound
that would never heal;
she knew a death would follow.

Felino Soriano

Trumpet's Many Tongues # 1

—after Flamenco Sketches – Miles Davis

She

with dragonfly wings

attached with genial patterns of

alluring excitement

to hips of a favorite vase,

shaped in elements of

eyes' calling toward artistic interest.

Her twirls among the delicate language

of motional rhythms, skeleton of skirt

an image or mirage, the light's angle

ascertains. Gesturing hands call to

the symbolic dove

whose feathers form with winged

devotion

a disposition of many options,

layering the full body

exploration into dance, the dove dancing

atop oscillating rhythms of

accelerated air.

Constance Stadler

Tuesday Morning

Mist on silver glass

The anonymity

Of ritual

Ablution.

Much as

Automatic aftermath

Of soon forgotten lover.

Dark and brimming

China cup

Censer

Swirls

Prayered palm psalm

In promise steam

As sun streams

Through aspen leaves

Filling black coffee

With stars.

In full gallop, joyously akimbo

I gather incrementals

Of doing and being

Feeling

Everyone

Emerge

From the cisterns

Of themselves.

Automotive interrogations

Re-commence.

Scribbling

In their notebooks

Of raindrops

To be avoided

At all cost

Much as rumors

Of cathedral

Pine.

Alex Stolis

Teresa White plays piano for her daughter

who left home at fifteen. robins fly

back every year to make their nests

and the neighbors' names have changed

more times than she can remember.

there's no penalty in waiting for a savior

and no reward without sin

that's the way of the world

as she was taught. all that remains

are the half-starts and false endings

she creates to pass the time

while her husband looks the other way,

reminds her of what she used to know.

Elizabeth Kate Switaj

Minerva Dressing

Lavinia Fontana, 1613

with Cupid occupied

lifting black & red-plumed helmet

bigger brothers wear in war

artist woman lift green velvet

draped your hiding chest

& look

look at naked wisdom art

she tilts her head to look at you

one pale leg back completes the arc

she lift her robes of state

of gold scarlet gauze

insignias her circlet

can teach you to decode

above her shadowed lips

& pointed shield at feet

One of Barbara Longhi's Virgins

in gold light just paler

than my rose-covered locks

my eyebrows thinned & arched in court

(geometry & harmony

two figures withird cross

I hook my arm around

cousin's toddler

turn my face to who foretells

no, will foretell-- angels did

infant who draws

Berkeley

you turn off wet silver & chip

in bathtub starts to drown

as you put on lipstick

your fingers by brush g|aze

over your porcelain skin & clawfoot b|ush

your eyes

cannot be touched

but show & color through

digitally enhanced green & black

ready to go out

without

you

Antonio Vallone

Thinking of Koi in Winter

“What do they do, the fish and all, when that whole little lake’s a solid block

of ice...?”

Holden Caulfield, in The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

Fish we call carp the Japanese call Koi. In Japanese folklore, Koi symbolize power, strength, courage, & passion. In American folklore, if carp appear at all, they symbolize trash or food for the poor.

Even today, young men in Japan yearn for the Koi’s perseverance in overcoming obstacles & reaching their ultimate goals.

Feeling lonely & unloved before Christmas, Holden Caulfield wondered what happened to the carp when the Central Park lake they swam in froze solid.

This season, perhaps even more than others, I love what is unloved, too: children like Holden who worry about things unnoticed by the rest of us & those things themselves, shimmering without the slightest need for praise.

Old Dog Teaching Me New Tricks

My spaniel found a way

during a lightening and thunder storm

to open a door and a gate.

She climbed two flights of stairs

and sniffed down the hall

to my bedroom, off limits to her.

When she was fresh from the pet store,

a pup eight weeks old, barely

weaned from her mother,

I drove home

through blinding rain and hail

to find her, finally, after searching

through the whole house,

cowering in the bathtub,

wide-eyed, shivering.

Last night, I tried to coax her

back downstairs, half-dragging

her by the collar.

She wouldn’t budge.

My wife away, I gave up

and slipped back in bed, waiting

for her to whine

until I lifted her up with me.

But my dog split her time

sleeping on the floor

at the foot of my bed

and outside my son’s door,

her eyes half-open

in the rumbling and trembling streaks of light,

transforming her old fears

into something powerful and new.

for Toffee, sweet dog

Shit, Rising

The Saturday morning of my 50th birthday, I stayed in bed until 10:30, four hours later than normal. When I finally woke, I went down to the basement to see if the three bottles of Professional Strength Drano cleared the clog in the laundry’s twin sinks. Instead, I saw lint grey laundry water turning brown, clumps of human waste rising to the lip of each sink.

I could say this was the perfect metaphor for my life, fifty years on good old planet Earth, two operations in four years: flesh-eating bacteria too near my groin for anyone’s sake except my surgeon’s and a quintuple bypass leaving my leg and chest looking like relief maps of some wasted planet. Ahhh, goodbye, Playgirl centerfold and modeling career.

But, hell, my life’s not so bad. I quit all my administrative jobs this morning by emails to the deans. My buddy, Rob, is springing for lunch tomorrow. Yesterday, I bought some fountain pens and flirted with the waitress at dinner. During dessert, my wife whispered to me, “I prefer you this way instead of shivering and complaining about how cold you are.”

And for only $165 bucks, the weekday rate because he felt sorry for me, the Roto Rooter guy cleared my drain, apologizing for the cost as he—instead of me—

reached shoulder deep into shitty water.

What more could I want or ask for to start the second half (more or less) of my life than that?

The Kisses You Gave Me

were foil-covered chocolate, misshapen,

melted slightly from being held

in your pocket all day.

I wasn’t expecting them.

I wasn’t expecting anything else.

All seven—a lucky number—

are stilled piled on my desk.

I want to save them.

Someday, after you’ve moved away,

I’ll eat them.

I hope I won’t be tempted

to devour them

all at once.

I want to let them melt under my tongue

like a heart patient’s nitroglycerine tablets.

I want to wait years between each one.

I want to savor their sweetness

the way I savor seeing you.

Deciphering Winter’s First Message

As we walked across the campus courtyard,

my companion said, "No two are alike."

"Students?" I asked.

"No, snowflakes," she answered.

So we stopped and looked up, saw

the white of snowflakes like words

of encrypted messages, their secrets

written on the blue sky

and carried away on coats and backpacks

of students until they're deciphered

in the covert warmth of class rooms

and cars driving home.

Snow Days

Last night, I stayed up late, watching

television news & listening to local radio,

waiting for word about the weather

until my mother shooshed me off to bed,

signs of snow everywhere—

the radio’s static storm,

the television’s picture shrinking

to a single flake, white dust swirling

around my feet as I ran up the stairs.

I woke early—way too soon for school.

Still half-asleep, I peeked from bed

between the curtains, praying

for window-high white drifts. Later,

I felt my mother’s hand touch my shoulder,

holding me close to sleep. Whispering

all the news I needed, she shut off my clock’s alarm

& trudged off to work. No Monopoly

with my brother & sister today.

My best friend called. Wearing our warmest coats,

boots, gloves, hats, & scarves,

we walked alone outside.

Though we’d been told to stay in, we knew

these knee-deep fields of freshly-fallen snow

held all the lessons of our day.

Contributors' Notes

Patricia Kennedy Bostian is the editor of The Wild Goose Poetry Review and Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice.

Jennifer Hollie Bowles lives in Knoxville, TN with her prurient animus, harboring many unpacked boxes. Her writing has been accepted for publication in Word Riot, Zygote in my Coffee, Literary Chaos, Ampersand Review, and Identity Theory. Jennifer loves to hurl honey and fire at unsuspecting readers, and she often stands on her head waiting for a literary agent to accept her novel Surreal Self.

Corey Cook's work has recently appeared in Ad Hoc Monadnock Online, The Aurorean, Brevities, The Henniker Review, Loch Raven Review, ocean diamond, and Pemmican. New work is forthcoming in Pearl and Plain Spoke. Corey is employed by a not for profit and edits The Orange Room Review with his wife, Rachael. They live in New Hampshire with their daughter.

Kristina Marie Darling is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. She is also the author of six chapbooks of poetry and nonfiction, most recently Night Music (BlazeVOX Books, forthcoming in 2008). Her work has appeared or will appear in New Letters, The Mid-American Review, CutBank, Smartish Pace, Redactions, and other journals. Recent awards include residencies from the Centrum Foundation and the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts.

William Doreski teaches writing and literature at Keene State College in New Hampshire. His most recent collection of poetry is Another Ice Age (AA Publications, 2007). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, and reviews have appeared in many journals, including Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, The Alembic, New England Quarterly, Harvard Review, Modern Philology, Antioch Review, Natural Bridge.

Donald Dunbar's poems have recently appeared in DIAGRAM, alice blue review, and Painted Bride Quarterly. I also have poems forthcoming in GlitterPony, sawbuck, and The Madison Review

Amy L. George holds an MFA in Creative Writing from National University. Her poetry has been published in journals both online and in print, including Poesia, The Orange Room Review and Word Catalyst Magazine and is forthcoming in Pennsylvania English. She lives in South Carolina with her husband and two psychotic cats.

Stanka Gjurić is born in Čakovec, and now she lives and work in Zagreb (Croatia). She is a poet and essayist with nine published books: eight books of poetry and one book of essay. She has received numerous literary awards for her poetry including the first and the second prize at Goranovo proljeće (she has won five awards at "Goranovo proljeće" altogether). In 2007. she won a ZVONIMIR GOLOB poetry prize.

Gabe Gregoire lives and works in Virginia Beach, Virginia. His essays, reviews, and poems have appeared in The Maine Times, The Thunder Child, and The Gnu, respectively.

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois. He is the author of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom, http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7. He has also published two chapbooks of poetry and is presently looking for a publisher for two more. He has been published in USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Scotland, Turkey, Fuji, Nigeria, Algeria, Africa, India, United Kingdom, Republic of Sierra Leone, Nepal, Thailand, Kuala Lumpur, Finland, Malaysia and Poland internet radio. Michael Lee Johnson has been published in more than 240 different publications worldwide. Audio MP3 of poems are available on request.

Ami Kaye publishes "Pirene's Fountain," a poetry journal. Her poems have appeared in various journals and she is working on her third novel. She holds a master's degree and has studied Counseling and English literature. She enjoys a diversity of genres in reading and writing, reflected by her eclectic style. Ami is of Indian heritage, born in Paris, France. She has been married for 30 years and has two grown sons.

Karen Neuberg resides in Brooklyn , NY and West Hurley NY with her husband. Her poems have appeared or are pending in many journals, including Diagram, 42Opus, BOXCAR Poetry Review, Comstock Review, The Dirty Napkin, and miller’s pond. She is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, holds an MFA from the New School and is an assistant editor at Inertia Magazine.

Born in Da Nang, Viet Nam in 1981, Binh Nguyen lived in San Diego, California since 1993. Binh studied literature and creative writing with the poet Jim Crenner at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, in upper New York State, where Binh founded SCRY!: A Nexus of Politics and the Arts. The journal attracted an eclectic mix of submissions from all over the country from undergraduate writers to in-house faculty members (in addition to Crenner, the poet David Weiss; Deborah Tall, the late editor of the Seneca Review; and James McCorkle, winner of the 2003 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize), to far-flung professionals of considerable standing (from Canada, Anne Carson being the most prominent). Binh danced with the Lower Left Dance Collective in their Satellite Project in Marfa, Texas and La Jolla, California from the summer to the winter of 2005. He is currently an M.F.A. candidate in Creative Writing at The New School, in New York City. Binh was in a near-death accident in the summer of '07 after having been hit and subsequently run over by a train in Brooklyn. He was incapacitated for nearly half a year but he is getting stronger each day and is putting on his shoes to help inject a jolt of energy into the dance and poetry scenes of NYC.

Cami Park writes what she can, as best she can. The results can be found in journals such as Quick Fiction, Smokelong Quarterly, No Tell Motel, Forklift, Ohio, Ward 6 Review, Juked, elimae, FRiGG, and Opium Magazine.

Peter Schwartz has more styles than a Natal Midlands Dwarf Chameleon. He's been published in Arsenic Lobster, Epicenters, Tiger's Eye, 42 Opus, Verdad and VOX. His chapbook 'ghost diet' will be published by Altered Crow Press in late 2009. See the extent of his shenanigans at www.sitrahahra.com.

R Jay Slais’ most recent and forthcoming publications include poems at Cause & Effect, Every Day Poets, Flutter Poetry Journal, Literary Tonic, MiPOesias, Neon, and The Orange Room Review. A single father raising his two children, he makes a living as an engineer/inventor in Metro Detroit Michigan.

Felino Soriano is a Californian philosophy student and case manager

working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. His

chapbook "Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes" was published by

and is available through Trainwreck Press, 2008. An E-book is also

forthcoming from BlazeVOX Books "Among the Interrogated", in 2008.

The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of

classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic stimulation. Visit

www.felinosoriano.com for a publication history and for more

information.

Constance Stadler is the co-editor of the e-zine "Eviscerator Heaven". Her most recent work appears in Ditch, ken*again, Pen Himalaya, Clockwise Cat, Gloom Cupboard and other places. As a political anthropologist specializing in North Africa and a violinist, her influences are multiform. Work in formative years with the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks was seminal, but no less so than Sufi Dervish dancers, and the challenges of mastering Bruch's first concerto.

Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis.

Elizabeth Kate Switaj (www.elizabethkateswitaj.net) graduated from the

now-defunct New College of California Poetics MFA program in 2004. She

has two books of poetry forthcoming: How to Drink a Floral Moon from

Blue Lion Books and Magdalene & the Mermaids from Paper Kite Press.

Her chapbook, The Broken Sanctuary, is available from Ypolita Press.

She edits CRIT Journal, blogs for Fringe Magazine, and is assistant editor of Inertia Magazine.

Antonio Vallone is an associate professor of English at Penn State DuBois. He also teaches in National University’s online MFA program. Editor of Pennsylvania English and publisher of MAMMOTH books, his own books are Golden Carp, The Blackbird’s Applause, Grass Saxophones, and Chinese Bats. Forthcoming are American Zen and Blackberry Alleys: Collected Poems.