Special FeatureJoanna ValenteJeff Whitney, poetry, special feature

Jeff Whitney: Nobody Likes You When You’re Counting Demons

Special FeatureJoanna ValenteJeff Whitney, poetry, special feature
Jeff Whitney: Nobody Likes You When You’re Counting Demons
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Dear Phil,

Nobody likes you when you’re counting demons

all the time. For example, oh, it’s such a nice day

shame about those demons. What great weather, too bad

the eternally damned will ruin it. Sorry

is not the same as forever and I’m sorry

Pluto isn’t a planet. Sorry the celestial body

is pooping out. My biggest wish is to be

in the audience at my own funeral cracking

one-liners until nobody remembers

the greatest trick of Death

is a barbershop where we all lack hair.

If we were the type to buy stocks,

to go on 1980’s cocaine benders,

I’d be rubbing my gums right now

and you’d be yammering

about the tennis ball economy. Thank god

that isn’t us. That we never learned

to be quiet. When you’re down

there is always a highway in Montana

with your name on it. And cities

keep their lights on all night.

I’ve tried to say one great thing

or several somewhat great things.

This is god, this is god. This is

what one says no matter the language

they are speaking. The earth

is a red horizon, cloudless ocean.

Strange bird coming always back to earth.

Jeff Whitney is the author of five chapbooks, two of which were co-written with Philip Schaefer. Recent poems can be found in 32 Poems, Adroit, Baltimore Review, Booth, Meridian, Oxidant Engine, Prairie Schooner, and Verse Daily. He lives in Portland.

Special FeatureJoanna ValenteCatherine Esposito Prescott, special feature, poetry

Catherine Esposito Prescott: To Forgive Us Everything

Catherine Esposito Prescott is the author of the chapbooks Maria Sings (forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press) and The Living Ruin (Finishing Line Press).  Recent poems have appeared in Pleiades, Southern Poetry Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Poetry East, MiPOesias, and elsewhere.  A graduate of NYU’s MFA program in Creative Writing-Poetry, Catherine is cofounder and curator of the SWWIM reading series.  She lives in Miami Beach with her husband, two sons, and daughter.

Special FeatureJoanna ValenteCatherine Esposito Prescott, special feature, poetry
Catherine Esposito Prescott: To Forgive Us Everything
Special FeatureJoanna ValentePhilip Schaefer, special feature, poetry

Philip Schaefer: Everyone Else’s Darkness

Philip Schaefer’s first collection of poems Bad Summon won the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize from the University of Utah Press and will be released Summer 2017. He is the author of three chapbooks, two of which were co-written with friend and poet Jeff Whitney. He won the 2016 Meridian Editor’s Prize in poetry and has work out or due out in Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Thrush Poetry Journal, Guernica, The Cincinnati Review, Salt Hill, Bat City Review, The Adroit Journal, Baltimore Review, and Passages North among others. He tends bar in Missoula, MT.

Special FeatureJoanna ValentePhilip Schaefer, special feature, poetry
Philip Schaefer: Everyone Else’s Darkness
Special Feature, Me Too SeriesJoanna ValenteLeah Mueller, poetry, special feature, me too

Leah Mueller: Don't Get Too Comfortable

Leah Mueller is an indie writer from Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of two chapbooks, “Queen of Dorksville” (Crisis Chronicles Press) and “Political Apnea” (Locofo Chaps) and three books, “Allergic to Everything”, (Writing Knights Press) “Beach Dweller Manifesto” (Writing Knights) and “The Underside of the Snake” (Red Ferret Press). Her work appears in Blunderbuss, Summerset Review, Outlook Springs, Crack the Spine, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, and other publications. She was a featured poet at the 2015 New York Poetry Festival, and a runner-up in the 2012 Wergle Flomp humor poetry contest.


Special Feature, Me Too SeriesJoanna ValenteLeah Mueller, poetry, special feature, me too
Leah Mueller: Don't Get Too Comfortable