Special FeatureJoanna ValenteKate Hanson Foster, special feature, poetry

Kate Hanson Foster: Never To Be Told

Special FeatureJoanna ValenteKate Hanson Foster, special feature, poetry
Kate Hanson Foster: Never To Be Told
Craig Whitehead

Craig Whitehead

Never To Be Told

 

I check all the right boxes

on the questionnaire—       

I do not want to hurt

myself or others. I am not

scared. I do not cry

all the time—panic for no good

reason. I am sleeping.

I look forward to the enjoyment

of things. I hand the clipboard

through the glass window

and smile, and a reflection

slides back, faintly female,  

rat hair rising with the upwind.

I would never blame myself.          

Kate Hanson Foster's first book of poems, Mid Drift, was published by Loom Press and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Center for the Book Award in 2011. Her poetry has appeared in Comstock Review, Harpur Palate, Poet Lore, Tupelo Quarterly and elsewhere. 

Special FeatureJoanna ValenteSammie Downing, special feature, poetry

Sammie Downing: Am I a River Or a Woman

The poet Ed Roberson told Sammie Downing, “You only have one life and you only have one work.” Advice she's taken to heart–she's filed taxes in 7 U.S. States and now finds herself working on a cattle and deer station in the depths of New Zealand. Find her fiction at Entropy Mag, my poetry at 3am Magazine and my blog at: www.herearelions.org. 

Special FeatureJoanna ValenteSammie Downing, special feature, poetry
Sammie Downing: Am I a River Or a Woman
Special FeatureJoanna ValenteDavid Boeving, special feature, poetry

David Boeving: A Crucifix Machine

David Boeving teaches rhetoric and writing at Eastern Michigan University and poetry and fiction at the Huron Valley Women’s Correctional Facility. David has published poems in Body Electric (Ann Arbor) and “‘News’ ‘Conference’ or Play Your T. Card” through Frog Island Press, and poems and photographs in NEAT, and Tongue Mag. He lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan with his loving partner and their two cats.

Special FeatureJoanna ValenteDavid Boeving, special feature, poetry
David Boeving: A Crucifix Machine
Special FeatureJoanna ValenteAshley Mares, special feature, poetry

Ashley Mares: Unclean Hands

Ashley Mares is the author of Maddening Creatures (Aldrich Press, forthcoming), The Deer Longs for Streams of Water (Flutter Press) A Dark, Breathing Heart (dancing girl press), and Killer (Ghost City Press, forthcoming). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Stirring, Whiskey Island, Sugar House Review, Glass Poetry Press, Prelude, PANK, and others. She is currently completing her J.D. in Monterey, Ca, where she lives with her husband. Read more of her poetry at ashleymarespoetry.wordpress.com and follow her @ash_mares2. 

Special FeatureJoanna ValenteAshley Mares, special feature, poetry
Ashley Mares: Unclean Hands
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