Table of Contents

Flash Interview:

1. Ira Sadoff

Poetry:

1. Bite, Danny Rendleman
2. Cat, Danny Rendleman
3. In Wartime, Danny Rendleman
4. House of Lost Causes, Dinah Berland
5. Falling Out of Love, Dinah Berland
6. Exit Row, Dinah Berland
7. At the Airport, Steven Rydman
8. La Fin du Monde, Steven Rydman
9. Suppose at Twelve, I Am Not a Boy, Steven Rydman
10. Like Eyes of the Tapster, Jonathan Hayes
11. Father, Jonathan Hayes
12. Harvest Moon, Jonathan Hayes
13. Fugue, Athena Kildegaard
14. Armadillo, Athena Kildegaard
15. Deaf Smith County, 1932, Athena Kildegaard
16. Roosters, Athena Kildegaard
17. Conscience Is Never Kind, Joseph Lisowski
18. Not The Best Way To Wake Up, Joseph Lisowski
19. The Warrior for Life, Rebecca Seiferle

Flash Fiction:

1. Love Potion Tumbler Find, Jnana Hodson

Photography:

1. Untitled, Peter Hobbs
2. Untitled, Peter Hobbs
3. Untitled, Dong Soo Choi
4. Untitled, Dong Soo Choi

Bios

Info & Submission Guidlines

Editors

Links

Archives:

1. Spring 2003

Flash Interview

IRA SADOFF

The Dana Professor of Poetry at Colby College,
Ira Sadoff is the author of seven collections of poetry (most recently BARTER, U. of Illinois), a novel, O.Henry prize-winning short stories, and The Ira Sadoff Reader (a collection of stories, poems, and essays about contemporary poetry). He is the recipient of a Creative Arts Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts and a Fellowship from the Guggenheim foundation. He has published critical articles about postmodern American poetry and is interested in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century American Poetry.

1. Is there a window where you write, and, if so, what can you see from it?

I have a small studio behind my house (one room with a heater). We live on a hill and in the fall and winter I can see down to the Kennebec River. In the spring and fall there's lots of foliage to protect us from our neighbors who think Halloween is Satan's holiday. There's a quince tree and there's our house, which is old and New England-y.(You can see the studio on my website www.colby.edu/~isadoff/personal. html).

2. If God or a superhero offered to let you trade your gift (poetry) in for another, perhaps more lucrative, talent, would you? What would you want instead?

If I were fourteen I'd want to be an outfielder with the Yankees, but I can't imagine any other talent that could sustain me like poetry. If I didn't know better I might think playing music, but I think I honestly enjoy listening to music more. So I feel very blessed with my gifts, however limited they might be.

3. What outside activities, sports, or hobbies do you engage in that you feel feed your creativity?

Listening to music, drinking and talking with friends, reading, traveling.

4. What is your favorite line, written by someone else?

I DON'T HONESTLY HAVE ONE. There's something about Merwin's "This must be what I wanted to be doing," for all its ambiguity, I find attractive. For pure beauty, it's hard to top Lorca's "When the moon rises, the heart feels/like an island in Infinity."

5. What line/s of your own poetry are you most surprised by or proud of?

Those feelings change, but TODAY I do like the leaps in "Self-Portrait with Critic," from BARTER:

But passing is nobody's business, who you are
is a secret to everyone, that's American
as being an exception, believing in
your own invention, tinkering around
in a minor key since nobody's listening.


6. How political do you think the business of poetry is?

How political is being a sexual being, is going to the store, is believing in transcendence? I see political in terms of relational and struggles with power in culture. Some of us can insulate ourselves from the most obvious aspects of culture, but at a cost to ourselves and others. We live in a world where public and private life seem distant and segregated, but it's more a reflection of our powerlessness as individuals. As a result, many of us feel we can only find happiness and purpose inside our families or with our friends. The result is a much larger loneliness and numbness, a kind of costly repression that alters our capacity to be compassionate and loving human beings.

7. Is there a writing conference you'd actually recommend?

Not unless you're feeling very isolated and want to use the conference as a way of making a connection with other poets and learning a handful of things, such as finishing out who others are reading, etc. If you want to become famous, or you want to learn substance I'd almost always advise a class, which involves an ongoing process and, if you're lucky, good rigorous mentoring.

8. Does teaching inform or detract from your own writing?

Yes. It takes an enormous amount of time because I take it seriously and love my subject. It's humanizing to have a connection with people just forming their identities and asking important questions. And best of all, I get to read literature carefully that influences my work. Most recently, after teaching Whitman, I finally found a way could use him as a writer.

9. What advice about writing would you give someone just starting out?

Sustain a passion for the process, listen well, be patient, think of poetry writing as a mission and not a career. You may not end up being the best-known poet, but you won't forget why writing matters.

10. What advice about the world?

Advice is tricky, and I increasingly feel better about living with uncertainty and contingency, how wherever you are will be shortly changed. But I would say, listen hard to enter another person's heart. Be generous, be prepared to temper ideals and principles with experience. Be prepared to change your mind often.

Personal Web Page

About BARTER

Danny Rendleman

BITE

I flick the spider up off the top of the page of the Sunday Times,
Hoping it will discover wings, alight gradually into the hostas, say,
Or, failing that, not descend once again into my sight.

It discovers my arm. I had thought I launched it in a parabola, but
No, straight up, straight down, into the down of my forearm, curly
And probably longer-lived than this spider, longer-grown.

I’ve heard all spiders bite. I’m not about to test the theory:
But what to do? Smear it down along the muscle, shake it off
Like a bad memory, bad dream, omen? Welcome it into my already

Shaky life, bereft so suddenly of wife, pet, future? Right.
The remaining cat might have something to say about that;
The void I’ve accidentally created might object, too.

Curious creature, though—barely a jot of protoplasm, curious,
Adamant at being—sentient, I gather. The sunset has been
A letdown, this cabernet less than promised, no messages.

They say the stars are spiraling around us. Something within us
Might be a center of appeal, not to say attraction. Maybe I’m it.
Failing a better god, a luckier landing site—I could hope the spider

Has chosen me, exactly, wise spider that he is. A Copernicus spider!
How glad I am, how glad he is that my flick of an index
Finger did not cripple him beyond redemption, that he

Went up and up and up into the lilac-blent, new-cut grass blur
Of air, only to fall back and back and back onto me.
Unto me. Mine.

Danny Rendleman

CAT

He knows not what we do. He is too old.
Having hung around me long enough, biting his toes,
Slit in his ear from some backyard to and fro,
He has bourbon in his veins, silk in his innards,
So many plodding doves beneath his claw—

So he asks pardon from a father only he can conjure,
The arcane aches in his fat belly, too many mistresses
Who have itched his chin, worried over his diet,
Gone when he awakes stretching in the hallway sun.

Or asks for his mother, maybe, that heathen, ingrate,
Alley harlot who abandoned him like a sweetmeat.
He yowls at all we think we’ve overcome, left,
As we imagine we’ve been cruel in some way yet
To be construed, tabulated, of import.

Such cat talk.
Then, he forgives, forgets, pauses like an andiron
At the door. Looks out to seas we won’t ever know,
Looks up the stairs and asks to be chased,

Thus. And, again, thus. Until he ascends.

Danny Rendleman

IN WARTIME

for Jan

1.
She thinks she may have a button
To fit my shirt. White. She thinks she has
A whole bag full. Someone I’ve never met
Sends me advice from Flannery O’Connor.
There aren’t any jets out my window.
I have to run errands tomorrow—
Credit union, cleaners, salad greens, stuff.
We have the fruit cellar, enough water,
Perhaps, blankets, though it is spring out there.
We stepped out one night
And saw the maples abud.

2.
That was last night.
This evening we get our finances in order,
Play Scrabble, thaw some chicken,
Look askance at the cat,
Consider getting a large dog.
What are we to do with far-off cousins,
Mothers as small as elves
In ranch houses in Bay City?
She irons my suit,
She sorts her jewelry.
I cannot begin to describe my hands
On her inner thighs, nor hers
On mine. What are we to do?

3.
It will not be an easy spring—
The large-footed hound has left his prints,
His bray has entered our sleep,
His coat is as the stars melting above,
Blurred novas, smear.
We dread leaving the house.
We look back. We go.

4.
(First, the ringing in the ears,
Then the voices—the music half-heard.
To jolt awake hearing cantatas, a continuum,
A vacuum. Your name is called.
Called again until you answer.
To wake into a room
You do not know, and then know.
Know too well.)

5.
I love you, she tells me.
I love you more, I say.

I don’t think so.

We take turns having the last word.
We mean what we say.

The world is so suddenly old
Around us, brittle as kindling,
As crisp as burnt wicks.

Let us say we lost language,
Could only signal and act out.
Would the world soften, emerge
Young and darling, sweet to the taste,
Amazed at wetness, even touch?

But we do speak, we say what we mean,
And the world is busy growing gray,
Ashen.

Dinah Berland

HOUSE OF LOST CAUSES

The living room is ringed with masks:
rascal rabbit, industrious donkey, parrot
of good cheer. The man and woman
put them on and walk around the house
talking, not talking. She thinks she's going to die.
He thinks he will go crazy. The kitchen
is bursting with sorrow¯stuffed squash
with sorrow, broiled salmon with sorrow,
sorrow pasta with marinara sauce. They
eat it at lunch. They eat it at supper.
And then they eat some more. How fat
we have become! he says. They laugh
and take the dogs for a walk. What else
are they supposed to do? The bedroom
is a dark blue pool they sink into at night,
faces frozen on other people's words, drifting
into Arctic, Antarctic waters, icebergs
breaking off like pillows
at opposite ends of the world.

Dinah Berland

FALLING OUT OF LOVE

Please tell me how it’s done. Do you rip off
your clothes and dive head first into
a sea of naked women? Do you swim out
to the breakers and let the riptide take you?
Or do you just lie there staring at cut flowers,
watching the petals wither and drop?
I did that once with roses when I was stuck in bed
for six weeks. Surprising how petals
shiver and jerk before they fall, how suddenly
things change. One night your teenage son
looks you straight in the eye, next morning
he’s taller than you are. One day your hair is short,
the next it needs cutting. Even babies in their cribs
grow in fits and starts. You’re pregnant or you’re not,
you’re alive one second and dead the next. So maybe
that’s how it happens--in one fell swoop,
like being struck by amnesia. One night
we ’re embracing under shooting stars, the next
you can’t remember who you’re married to.

Dinah Berland

EXIT ROW

I could grasp the red handle
and ratchet open the exit door, step out
in my terry-cloth slippers, tiptoe
to the edge of the slick metal plank, arms
outstretched like a tightrope walker, lungs
filling with frost. I could pull down
the red flap on the inflatable yellow raft, jump
aboard and waft out over the gently undulating
peneplain so slavishly swabbed by the clouds.
I could slide down those thick black arrows
neatly stenciled over that white painted stripe
and tumble all the way to the ground.
I could, but I won't. I'll keep my
seat belt fastened until the plane shudders
onto the tarmac, flaps pulled back to reveal
rotating knuckles and guts. I'll disembark
in sync with the crowd, propel my body
forward, glide down the escalator, acting
as calm as can be. I'll step outside, where
you will not be at the curb, leaning against
the car, arms folded across your chest
like a nonchalant chauffeur, not speeding
down the freeway from Vernon, hoping
my plane is late. You will not be waiting
for me to fall like a star spit into the void,
not waiting for me anywhere tonight.

Steven Rydman

AT THE AIRPORT

The woman waits, her dog
sleeping in its boxed cage
at her feet. His shocked fur
lit like a bulb of tan light
reaches for a freedom
that waits outside the bars.
The sun's light slants on her face
as it sets in the west. She will fly,
north, to a dark home,
a sleeping husband. She won't wake him
as she sits by a cracked bedroom window
the flamed tendrils of her red hair
reaching for her reflection
in the smudged glass.

Steven Rydman

LA FIN DU MONDE

Like rows of coffins, fluorescent lights
line the ceiling, processionals of dead light.
One casket is mine, and I float up into it.
A polyester warmth sizzles around me
a hot shower on fresh sunburn
though my skin is cold,
a blizzard of cerulean snow and shadow.
A pale girl wipes coffee tables around me.
Her blue hair hangs like apocalyptic icicles
creating a blue corona of light to crown her.
She wakes me from my wordless coma.
I ask: What is the most exciting thing you've seen today?
Her face blank as the page I write on.
I'll give you two, she says, coffee grounds and dust bunnies.
The scratchy needle of boredom
skipping in her mouth.
Au revoir, c'est la fin du monde!
She circles away; her white rag erasing everything.
I drift up to the ceiling again
into my blazing coffin.
Au revoir, le monde! Au revoir!
Light caresses skin, a satin lining I lie in
my eyes buried in dusty white clouds
that glow and grow into mouth, melt on my tongue
like rocks of sugar. An artificial buzz rings
the choked whispers of mourners as they pass beneath me,
the heat of their perfumed air rising to my lit nostrils.

Steven Rydman

SUPPOSE AT TWELVE, I AM NOT A BOY

But instead, I am a spring leaf
leaning easily on another leaf
drops of sap sticking between us
my chartreuse veins preening
against moist green skin.

Or I am a stamen in a calla lily,
a proud golden rod
gently rubbing tawny dust
on smooth alabaster petals.

Yes, my father's callused palm
is just the brown scratch of bark
protecting with its harsh stroke.

And my mother is a dense thicket
of bushes and pachysandra
cradling our footsteps
and covering the dirt.

Or suppose I am just a boy
with a family of dry stick figures
pressed in black ink
next to a crayon colored house,
crumpled and thrown away
with a child's impatience.

Jonathan Hayes

LIKE EYES OF THE TAPSTER

When creation is hot
in the basement of a cool mind,
and dogs run through the street
without leashes or order,
your dark pint remains
unfinished on a wooden bar.

Jonathan Hayes

FATHER

The announcement
of freshly-smacked after shave

The contamination
of armpit sweat in a yellow Izod

And the mistake of being human

Eisenhower paragraphs of tight logic

The smell
of coffee in a deli cup.

Jonathan Hayes

HARVEST MOON

They come home at night
off rainy streets.

Going into warm apartments
that reek of the past.

And sleep on mattresses
that slowly break them

into the alarm of a tomorrow
heavier than the day before.

Athena Kildegaard

FUGUE

Sky all stars, the moon come
full to the upright cemetery,
a shuffling of feathers:
Lie down lie down
between the stones,
beneath a white oak's branch.
Dare to close your eyes,
meet unafraid the dark.

Gravestones proud in their standing
wrestled from granite,
sharp wrought in loss & pain:
how we mourn for the loss,
for what came before pain.
There too is beauty.

Stand ready in the cold,
hands in your pockets,
your breath around your shoulders:
no shadow only a bird,
no bird only an oak,
one tree hiding the moon.

Athena Kildegaard

ARMADILLO

Vestigial, half blind, almost
unable to smell what is in her path,
the armadillo has one trick:
she fills her intestines with air
and swims to the farther shore.
Otherwise, if the stream is narrow
she lumbers along the bed,
her claws precarious on the stones,
water flowing across the carapace
that arms her pale flesh.
She tastes something like pork,
this poor swine, this humble throwback
who longs only for the naked grub,
fellow burrower, joint-tenant of the dark.

Athena Kildegaard

DEAF SMITH COUNTY, 1932

Trains ground through day and night
loaded with grain and hoof and hoboes.
No one got off, no one boarded;
Herefords and winter wheat held
everyone in place. And the dust storms.

She lay wet dishcloths over the crib
and dust fell in silica layers, forming
a thin board for schoolboys' sums,
fingernails in the dust scratching through
to damp-darkened cloth, my father's
brothers glossing his asthma tent
with hognoses and hangmen's nooses
and the name of the oldest brother's beloved.

So that he, my father, breathed
in that small place, watched the shapes
and scrawls come and go, all backwards,
crabbed and faint. Once, I watched him
put everything he'd ever written in a fire,
word to flame to dust, so he could start again.

Athena Kildegaard

ROOSTERS

Hi de hi de
hi de ho at dawn,
pure mojo and love
gone wrong,
a cold bed, but hearts
fierce as swords.
They're strung with lights
and last year's tinsel,
as in a basement club
where the owner---she's big
on her stool by the open door---
lifts a cumbrous chain.
They strut their stuff,
gasconnade the riffs,
grind down the thump,
the hump, the rascally
blood pound of longing
until dawn when
they step out from smoke
and spilled gin
to answer the light.

Joseph Lisowski

NOT THE BEST WAY TO WAKE UP

Two dogs run down the stairs,
jump at the door and bark
at nothing. A man down the street
hoses his screen door in the rain.
At the corner station, a fire truck
is burning in its garage,
sending great ribbons of black smoke.
They swirl past a boy
standing on his porch.
He shoots his toy gun at your window.

Rebecca Seiferle

THE WARRIOR FOR LIFE

No, I’m not a warrior. When whatever I’m battling
vanishes or suddenly turns to me with open arms
and a laugh or a smile, I feel only my own weariness,
and the way the wound within me, after all these years,
is surely turning me to shadow. The battles
were different when I was a child--sword fighting
with a heavy blade and a crosshandle that I fashioned
out of wood, my friends and I astride the lawns
of summer, trading crashing blows, never stabbing
at one another but with a mighty thwack! trying
to shatter the swords. No cruelty in our fury, just
a ferocious energy; we were like fountains bubbling
over into themselves, each drop of energy spent
returning quickly to us, and by day’s end, our arms
and shoulders aching, our knuckles scuffed,
well-pleased, we felt we’d defeated every shadow
in our bright realm: our crusade, just a desire to play
and not be reined back to the fenced yard and the chill
definitions of our parents’ table, where girls with swords
were forbidden or had to disguise themselves as boys.
The Maya believed that women who died in childbirth,
like warriors who died in battle, entered paradise
immediately, but that’s only the valor of death,
so, no, I’m not a warrior. The only time I’ve ever
worn a warrior’s face was when my son was born.
His head was turned, and I had to use the pain
and shudder of my own body like a hand to guide
him out, though it was the hand and arm of the nurse
reaching up into me that grasped gently the crown
of his head and turned him by slow millimeters
for minutes and minutes toward the light. I was glad
for her gentleness, for I had to trust her, to let
my breath and muscles obey her voice as she told me
to wait, to push, to wait again, and all the while
her arm wedged into me was as forceful
and painful as the force contracting my body.
It was a battle she and I were fighting–-myself,
both warrior and battlefield--a fierceness upon
our faces, without crying out, laboring together
until an hour later, with the pushing force of at last
and a mighty groan, his head turned toward this world,
and her arm slipped out, and the baby followed:
all nine and a half pounds of him, his 23 1/2 inches,
spilling out, his limbs drumming with a beautiful fury,
and as everyone did this and that--the cord clipped,
the tear in me stitched, the baby assessed and
bundled, the nurse slipped away quietly with
a pat on my arm, and I was wheeled to another
room where I lay back on the bed and put my arms
above my head and stretched out and smiled,
as if I were lying in a meadow full of flowers
that were only slightly crushed, as when children
roll and play upon the grass and the flowers
spring back up, and my husband took my photo,
and there, on my face, that’s the look of a warrior--
a happy warrior, one who has been victorious
in battling another to life.

Jnana Hodson

LOVE POTION TUMBLER FIND

True love doesn’t hit that way, D.L. thought. No, he argued, it starts slow and builds over years. He envisioned Tessa Logan in Grindingle and wondered what could possibly be better. But Mitch had called, to say he needed a place to stay for the weekend. Said he had found the love of his life. And so, practical concerns pressed.

" I’m not sure. I’ll hitch down Friday, don’t know exactly when I’ll arrive. Depends on the rides."

D.L., meanwhile, needed to discover there’s nothing more glorious than the many manifestations of intimacy. Mitch said he had to get away from his campus a bit.

" Of course. So what’s the big deal? Is your ex-prima donna, prima mamma after your tail with a pitchfork?"

" No, no, nothing like that. It’s simply that Yvonne attends Daffodil, just like you."

Which is when D.L. realized he’d been indoors too long. When, in being set up for a magical introduction, he entered a lobby where any wait would feel like an eternity. Getting an elevator could take eons.

Yvonne? Didn’t matter. Rather, the spirit wrapped in strawberry and Dublin-colored suede a step behind her caught his attention. The soft voice had him hoping to capture each syllable. Whatever pierced him at that time would affect his memory forever, even if he could remember next to nothing of what was actually said.

* * *
She was about to sweep away shards remaining from his high school crackup – more precisely, his breaking up over romance in his senior year. Ever since, his heart and skull had continued warring, sometimes erupting feverishly into a death mask mirrored in his own hands. Despite later dates and embraces, the artistic and social projects he retreated to whenever that suffocating midnight grip loosened, the self-therapy of hunchbacked miles along thunderstorm’d sidewalks, the scalding showers, exhausted jogging, throbbing woofers and shrill tweeters, hours of dreamless sleep – D.L. had never fully eluded that gigantic amoeba. Disconcertingly, in trying to withdraw, he rolled back to his own deficiencies time and time again. The most painful message in all this, perhaps, was that he could not conquer everything he set out to accomplish; many things would remain beyond his range or his abilities.

(In that brief, disastrous infatuation he had sought validation. Having a beautiful, charming, intelligent girlfriend would be a sign of completeness, of fulfillment. He believed that something in the mystery of woman spelled salvation, which is, of course, a terrible weight to place upon anyone. How could he burden his beloved with his own suffering? Any American boy who isn’t an athlete is handicapped – especially in the nation’s heartland. He wasn’t sturdy enough for football or even basketball, swift enough for track or cross-country, forceful enough for baseball, at least for the success he demanded of himself. He knew these activities weren’t "play," despite usage, and believed only victory would compensate pain and exertion. His strengths and speed lay elsewhere. But you remained loyal to people and institutions. Adolescent birds leave nests and stake out new territory. He yearned for loving, a special acceptance. He spent weekends in grandstand choruses, screaming himself hoarse in spectacles where he was cast as a eunuch rather than a warrior who could claim spoils – nights memorizing contours of smooth legs, dreaming of kingdoms and harems, power, authority, and consolation. The more his activities had taken him along their corridors, the more petty jealousies he discerned; rather than piety and devotion, there were raw politics. Dogma he embraced did not lead to angels. Yet, when fundamentalist Doris began flirting, he anticipated multidimensional glory, hoping not only for salvation in her woman-spirit, delights of her smile and torso, and prestige, but also for strength through her convictions. He had expected too much. When her friends revealed how she had lied, something besides love soured. A rocket exploded on take-off. A facade collapsed, taking sky and street with it. A giant fish had been caught not for feasting or trophy but to rot in sun. In a pulpit he could no longer speak what he believed. He could not proclaim his metamorphosis without wrecking everything at home. He remained strictly honest, however covertly, by directing hootenannies, film festivals, picnics, and dances. When the academic year ended, he never again entered that congregation.

And now, this brilliant Lumina in other fields was setting out to encounter fair Disillusionment in this young woman named Pepper. She, too, was ready to set forth, needing only someone who could appreciate her interests, which overlapped with much of his own dreaming.

In short, he had it - and had it bad. She knew a suitor had come, and he was all hers.

As a second Joint Venture moved closer to publication, D.L. was asked to design a psychedelic cover. These days, thanks to Pepper, he saw only stars. This time around, there was nothing symmetric. In fact, everything was unbalanced - like life.
Now, at last, all the past was countered, all his yearning reversed, all had seemingly healed, all was waiting to happen again.

Peter Hobbs copyright 2003

Bios

Danny Rendleman's last book was THE MIDDLE WEST. Recent poetry and fiction can be found in The Isle Review, Facets, Marlboro Review, and Drought. He teaches rhetoric and creative writing at UM-Flint.

Dinah Berland's poetry has appeared in The Antioch Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and Margie, and won second prize in Atlanta Review's 2003 International Poetry Contest. She received her MFA from Warren WilsonCollege, a fellowship from the California Arts Council, and works as a book editor for Getty Publications in Los Angeles.

Steven Rydman is currently working on his Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Antioch University Los Angeles. In the summer of 2000, he was named the Grand Prize Winner in the Detroit Metro Times' Fiction and Poetry Issue. In 2001, he received a Commendation Award in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards given by The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey, which included publication in The Paterson Literary Review. More of his work has appeared in Rattle and Connecticut River Review.

Jonathan Hayes is the author of ECHOES FROM the SARCOPHAGUS (3300 Press, 1997) and ST. PAUL HOTEL (Ex Nihilo Press, 2000). Recently published by Sidereality, Some Words and Unlikely Stories; he edits the literary / art magazine, Over the Transom.

Athena Kildegaard lives in Morris, Minnesota. Her poems have been published in several journals including Faultline, The Malahat Review, Puerto del Sol and The Florida Review.

From 1986 to 1996, Joseph Lisowski was Professor of English at the University of the Virgin Islands. St. Thomas serves as the setting for Looking for LISA, his recently published novel now available from Fiction Works (http://www.fictionworks.com). Dr. Lisowski is now teaching at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina. Recent chapbooks include Letters to Wang Wei, along with two essays, (Words on a Wire); After Death’s Silence (2River View); and Grief Work (Kota Press), JB, a dialogue in poem form between John the Baptist and King Herod (PoetryRepairShop), and Stashu Kapinski Strikes Out (Rank Stranger Press).

Rebecca Seiferle is the publisher of The Drunken Boat, an online literary quarterly. She teaches English and creative writing at San Juan Community College and is listed with Tumblewords, the New Mexico Arts Program. She lives with her family in Farmington, New Mexico. Her third poetry collection, BITTERS, published by Copper Canyon Press, won the Western States Book Award and a Pushcart prize.

Jnana Hodson’s prose has also appeared recently in Jack Magazine, Hobart, La Petite Zine, Organic Literature Experiment, and The Sidewalk's End.

Peter Hobbs is the Photography Counsel at Portfolio Center, in Atlanta, Georgia. Visit his Web site at: Peter Hobbs Photography

Dong Soo Choi is a professional photographer who lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Spring2003