Apologia for Being Standoffish Sometimes — Katelyn Roth

The Youth Group held a seminar on

Hugging While Female. The leaders were men

and women; attendants, only girls. The boys

played basketball in the other half of the gym;

We learned to prevent chest-to-chest contact

with a well-placed hand at chest level.

 

I used to hug my young uncles

at annual family barbeques. Their arms

would loop loosely around my kidbody,

one hand maybe patting my back.

 

When I scuttle in sideways like a crab,

they are confused. Their loose arms reach further

to hold me long-ways. I rest my obedient hand

on their chest as I’ve been told, only it feels

so close, so lingering, so intimate, so

I back away instead, turn to hug my aunts.

~ Katelyn Roth

Katelyn Roth holds degrees in English and Psychology and will be defending her Master’s thesis in Poetry this spring. She lives in Pittsburg, KS with her husband and two dogs. Her work has previously appeared on line and in Silver Birch Press and at Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance and Solidarity.

Guest Editor Annette Hope Billings is an award-winning author and actress whose dynamic style of reciting has led fans to dub her “Maya of the Midwest!” Her first book of poetry, A Net Full of Hope (2015), garnered the 2015 ARTSConnect ARTY Award in Literature in Topeka, Kansas. Descants for a Daughter followed in 2016 and serves as a collection of affirmations from a parent’s heart. Billings most recent publication is Just Shy of Stars (Spartan Press, 2018). Her poetry and short stories also appears in the following anthologies: Gimme Your Lunch Money: Heartland Poets Respond to Bullying (2016), Twisting Topeka (2016), Our Last Walk: Using Poetry for Grieving and Remembering Our Pets (2016), and Kansas Time + Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Balkans Press, 2017) and Revealed (2017). Billings’ poetry can also be found in both online and print publications including Inscape/Washburn University, Coal City Press, Microburst and Konza Magazine.

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The Greater Mercy — Emory Jones

Suddenly, she screamed and sobbed —

I ran to her,

And, looking over her shoulder,

I saw the little bird

Lying on the concrete

Its wing broken from

Flying full force

into my rough brick wall.

 

Gently, I told my Baby

To hurry inside.

 

I got my shovel,

Scooped the quivering little body,

And took it to the ditch—

 

One quick jab and the job was done.

But how could I explain to her

That this was the greater mercy?

~ Emory Jones

Dr. Emory D. Jones is a retired English teacher who has taught in Cherokee Vocational High School in Cherokee, Alabama, for one year, Northeast Alabama State Junior College for four years, Snead State Junior College in Alabama for three years, and Northeast Mississippi Community College for thirty-five years. He joined the Mississippi Poetry Society, Inc. in 1981 and has served as President of this society. He has over two hundred and thirty-five publishing credits including publication in such journals as Voices International, The White Rock Review, Free Xpressions Magazine, The Storyteller, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Gravel, Pasques Petals, The Pink Chameleon, and Encore: Journal of the NFSPS. He is retired and lives in Iuka, Mississippi, with his wife, Glenda. He has two daughters and four grandchildren.

 

Guest Editor Annette Hope Billings is an award-winning author and actress whose dynamic style of reciting has led fans to dub her “Maya of the Midwest!” Her first book of poetry, A Net Full of Hope (2015), garnered the 2015 ARTSConnect ARTY Award in Literature in Topeka, Kansas. Descants for a Daughter followed in 2016 and serves as a collection of affirmations from a parent’s heart. Billings most recent publication is Just Shy of Stars (Spartan Press, 2018). Her poetry and short stories also appears in the following anthologies: Gimme Your Lunch Money: Heartland Poets Respond to Bullying (2016), Twisting Topeka (2016), Our Last Walk: Using Poetry for Grieving and Remembering Our Pets (2016), and Kansas Time + Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Balkans Press, 2017) and Revealed (2017). Billings’ poetry can also be found in both online and print publications including Inscape/Washburn University, Coal City Press, Microburst and Konza Magazine.

At the Table — by Kathleen Cain

—for Maya Angelou

We all claim some part of her-

memory word reflection.

And why not? She invited us all

to a place at the table. “Do you think”

 

she uncrossed her arms and asked,

allowing one of those deep pregnant

pauses to divide her words into rivers

of thought and feelings

 

“you are the only one to have suffered

the loss of love? Of a child? Or missed

the rent? Or gotten fired? Well…read

the Black poets and you won’t feel

so alone. Muted with pain, she

taught us how to sing. Constrained

by fire, she worked up steps to leap

across the flames and dance.

In all her words: a great heartbeat.

 

She was the voice of past. Present.

Future. How freedom could ring

in those syllables. How she could say

what we all need to hear. Brothers.

Sisters. In her name let’s scoot our

chairs a little closer to the table.

~ Kathleen Cain

Kathleen Cain is a native Nebraskan who has lived in Colorado since 1972. Her nonfiction book The Cottonwood Tree: An American Champion ( ) was selected for the Nebraska 150 Books Project. Two of her poems appeared in Nebraska Poetry:A Sesquicentennial Anthology 1867 -2017.

Guest Editor Annette Hope Billings is an award-winning author and actress whose dynamic style of reciting has led fans to dub her “Maya of the Midwest!” Her first book of poetry, A Net Full of Hope (2015), garnered the 2015 ARTSConnect ARTY Award in Literature in Topeka, Kansas. Descants for a Daughter followed in 2016 and serves as a collection of affirmations from a parent’s heart. Billings most recent publication is Just Shy of Stars (Spartan Press, 2018). Her poetry and short stories also appears in the following anthologies: Gimme Your Lunch Money: Heartland Poets Respond to Bullying (2016), Twisting Topeka (2016), Our Last Walk: Using Poetry for Grieving and Remembering Our Pets (2016), and Kansas Time + Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Balkans Press, 2017) and Revealed (2017). Billings’ poetry can also be found in both online and print publications including Inscape/Washburn University, Coal City Press, Microburst and Konza Magazine.

As Farmers Burn their Fields – Julie Ramon

Julie Ramon

The heat from the field on my face, it leaned
towards me, the way we lean towards something
we want, need. It was that way the first time
we met. The space between growing smaller
each time, the way bees hover until they land,
a series of small meetings and partings.

And, if you’ve walked down the path of heat,
you place your feet carefully and watch it move
and change everything it touches. Here, there’s
no space, but a line from where things lived
and stopped, and I prayed it wouldn’t notice
me if I stepped lightly and towards what I knew.

~Julie Ramon

Julie Ramon is an English instructor, specializing in English as a second language, at Pittsburg State University in Kansas. She also teaches academic writing at Crowder College in Missouri. She graduated with an M.F.A from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. Among writing, her interests include baking, sewing, traveling, and garage sales. She lives in Joplin, Missouri with her husband, son and daughter.

Guest Editor Z. Hall is a poet whose work often features ekphrasis, and explores race, gender, and culture. She is an essayist and has served as a PEN Prison Writing Mentor. She was a 2016-17 writer-in-residence at the Charlotte Street Foundation. In 2017, Hall curated the first international visual art exhibition featuring beneficial bacterial as the subject matter and medium of artists of disparate disciplines and scientists whose work crosses boundaries into artistic expression.

As an art writer and scholar, Hall’s peer-reviewed publications include works on Beyoncé and Jay Z’s ‘Drunk in Love,’ the field recordings of Stephen Wade’s “The Beautiful Music All Around Us,” emergence of the Christian film industry in Lindvall and Quicke’s “Celluloid Sermons,” and the political cartoons of the 2005 Muhammad Cartoon Controversy as rhetorical art, among other works. Hall is the Executive Director and Producer of Salon~360, a monthly, Kansas City regional event that brings together artists whose work focuses on challenging societal issues, for which she was awarded an ArtsKC Inspiration Grant.

The Sky That We Built – Ralvell Rogers II

Ralvell Roger II

Somewhere far in the distance,
our orange and pink dawn
breaks into flashes.
Sporadically tearing
our sky into ashes,
lightning strikes
our cumulonimbus bond.
In some hell far away from
blue skies and
our little clouds that always ask,
“Why?”
our storm rages on,
and we’re roaring thunder.
until we float away from each other,
and the sky that we built

~Ralvell Rogers II

Ralvell Rogers II is a senior English major creative writing minor at Emporia State University (ESU) where he works as tutor/editor for the William Allen White Library Writing Center, and is active president of the Black Writer’s Club. His work has been accepted and published by local journal, Tittynope Zine, and the ESU literary journal, Quivira.

Guest Editor Z. Hall is a poet whose work often features ekphrasis, and explores race, gender, and culture. She is an essayist and has served as a PEN Prison Writing Mentor. She was a 2016-17 writer-in-residence at the Charlotte Street Foundation. In 2017, Hall curated the first international visual art exhibition featuring beneficial bacterial as the subject matter and medium of artists of disparate disciplines and scientists whose work crosses boundaries into artistic expression.

As an art writer and scholar, Hall’s peer-reviewed publications include works on Beyoncé and Jay Z’s ‘Drunk in Love,’ the field recordings of Stephen Wade’s “The Beautiful Music All Around Us,” emergence of the Christian film industry in Lindvall and Quicke’s “Celluloid Sermons,” and the political cartoons of the 2005 Muhammad Cartoon Controversy as rhetorical art, among other works. Hall is the Executive Director and Producer of Salon~360, a monthly, Kansas City regional event that brings together artists whose work focuses on challenging societal issues, for which she was awarded an ArtsKC Inspiration Grant.

Insider Trading – Jeff Worley

Jeff Worley

We lie together after good love,
passing from hand to hand
the currency of touch,
our mutual fund.
Though I’m spent I’m full
of a warm emptiness,
watching you scratch
behind an ear and stretch
like a well-endowed trust.
Oh preferred holding,
you make me rise
like a blue chip stock
in this joint merger–
the dividends from this
incorporation of flesh!
Legal tender, most tangible
asset, ours has never been
a stock exchange, this
timely profit-taking,
this sweet commerce.

~Jeff Worley

[first appeared in The Beloit Poetry Journal]

Jeff Worley, born and raised in Wichita, was the second graduate of the Wichita State MFA program (1975). He is extremely grateful to Bruce Cutler, founder of the program, for his invaluable help with early fledgling poems. Jeff has published 10 collections of poetry, the most recent, A Little Luck, winner of the 2012 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize from Texas Review Press. Now retired from the University of Kentucky, he and his wife, Linda, split their time between Lexington and their Cave Run Lake cabin.

Guest Editor Z. Hall is a poet whose work often features ekphrasis, and explores race, gender, and culture. She is an essayist and has served as a PEN Prison Writing Mentor. She was a 2016-17 writer-in-residence at the Charlotte Street Foundation. In 2017, Hall curated the first international visual art exhibition featuring beneficial bacterial as the subject matter and medium of artists of disparate disciplines and scientists whose work crosses boundaries into artistic expression.

As an art writer and scholar, Hall’s peer-reviewed publications include works on Beyoncé and Jay Z’s ‘Drunk in Love,’ the field recordings of Stephen Wade’s “The Beautiful Music All Around Us,” emergence of the Christian film industry in Lindvall and Quicke’s “Celluloid Sermons,” and the political cartoons of the 2005 Muhammad Cartoon Controversy as rhetorical art, among other works. Hall is the Executive Director and Producer of Salon~360, a monthly, Kansas City regional event that brings together artists whose work focuses on challenging societal issues, for which she was awarded an ArtsKC Inspiration Grant.

Call to Prayer at Primrose Gardens – Maril Crabtree

Maril Crabtree

He hears her murmurs as he moves
down the hall after dinner each night.

They call to him like church bells or
a distant muezzin’s chant. She hums

tuneless mantras that seem in rhythm
with his wheels. He steadies his walker

with one hand and opens her door
with the other. Hugs, smiles, kisses.

No words. They have all disappeared
into another realm. But the kisses

linger, their lips still a faithful trail
to communion, body and soul.

~Maril Crabtree

Maril Crabtree lives in the Midwest and writes poetry, creative nonfiction, reviews, and occasional short fiction. Her work has appeared in Canyon Voices, Main Street Rag, Coal City Review, and others. She is a former poetry editor for Kansas City Voices.

Guest Editor Z. Hall is a poet whose work often features ekphrasis, and explores race, gender, and culture. She is an essayist and has served as a PEN Prison Writing Mentor. She was a 2016-17 writer-in-residence at the Charlotte Street Foundation. In 2017, Hall curated the first international visual art exhibition featuring beneficial bacterial as the subject matter and medium of artists of disparate disciplines and scientists whose work crosses boundaries into artistic expression.

As an art writer and scholar, Hall’s peer-reviewed publications include works on Beyoncé and Jay Z’s ‘Drunk in Love,’ the field recordings of Stephen Wade’s “The Beautiful Music All Around Us,” emergence of the Christian film industry in Lindvall and Quicke’s “Celluloid Sermons,” and the political cartoons of the 2005 Muhammad Cartoon Controversy as rhetorical art, among other works. Hall is the Executive Director and Producer of Salon~360, a monthly, Kansas City regional event that brings together artists whose work focuses on challenging societal issues, for which she was awarded an ArtsKC Inspiration Grant.