Don and Darkness by Steven Hind

The boy at the wheel has lost

his twin to suicide. His sister

sits between us as he barrels up

the narrow chute of old #36

with his brights on. He passes

a second car as I see the hint

of lights over the crest ahead,

and he is talking about guns, the kind

of gun he would choose to kill a man.

And I am certain he will kill us all

in this old truck he bought with his

brother to throw the morning paper.

He swerves back into our lane as

a car blares past, and I thrill

to the breath passing my lips.

~ Steven Hind

Steven is a retired teacher and part-time farmer whose personal experiences over seventy years in Kansas have inspired efforts at self-expression, often taking the form of poetry. His books include, Familiar Ground (Cottonwood), That Trick of Silence (CKS), In a Place with No Map (CKS/Woodley), and The Loose Change of Wonder (CKS/Woodley).

Tyler Sheldon is a graduate student in English at Emporia State University. His poems and articles have appeared in Thorny Locust, I-70 Review, Coal City Review, The Dos Passos Review, and in the anthology To The Stars Through Difficulties (a 2013 Kansas Notable Book). Sheldon is an AWP Intro Journals Award nominee and has been featured on Kansas Public Radio.

William Sheldon lives in Hutchinson, Kansas, where he writes and teaches. His work has appeared widely in little magazines and small press anthologies. He has two books, Retrieving Old Bones (Woodley) and Rain Comes Riding (Mammoth), and a chapbook, Into Distant Grass (Oil Hill). He plays bass for the band The Excuses.

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Forbidden by Denise Low

He pulls fear from a wooden drawer—

an Aboriginal witching stone

his uncle collected years ago.
1

As he unwraps flannel swaddling he says,

unflinchingly unsexing me,

“Women should not see this. It is taboo.”
1

We had spent hours drinking medicinal tea

while sorting eucalyptus-bark paintings—

crocodiles, water holes, sparkling dust.
1

Now this stone. He recounts ceremonial rules—

the strict gendered intention for it.

How initiates kill women who intrude.
1

He holds the pecked lodestone to light,

a Gondwandaland lava remnant

at first unremarkable but magnetic.
1

I behold a dizzy white-on-black nebulae

a white hibiscus a frozen river whirl

a desert spring a rosette of labia stretched wide open.

(For Barnaby Ruhe, on the death of Ed Ruhe)

~ Denise Low

Denise Low, second Kansas Poet Laureate, has published over 20 books of award-winning poetry and essays, including Ghost Stories (Woodley) and Natural Theologies, essays about Mid-Plains literature (Backwater Press). Low was visiting professor at the University of Richmond and Kansas University. She taught at Haskell Indian Nation University, where she founded the creative writing program. She served Associated Writing Programs as board president. She and her husband Thomas Pecore Weso publish Mammoth Publications.

Tyler Sheldon is a graduate student in English at Emporia State University. His poems and articles have appeared in Thorny Locust, I-70 Review, Coal City Review, The Dos Passos Review, and in the anthology To The Stars Through Difficulties (a 2013 Kansas Notable Book). Sheldon is an AWP Intro Journals Award nominee and has been featured on Kansas Public Radio.

William Sheldon lives in Hutchinson, Kansas, where he writes and teaches. His work has appeared widely in little magazines and small press anthologies. He has two books, Retrieving Old Bones (Woodley) and Rain Comes Riding (Mammoth), and a chapbook, Into Distant Grass (Oil Hill). He plays bass for the band The Excuses.

Wake Up Call by Harley Elliott

A butterfly walks

up your cheek

and looks you

in the eye.

1

A stone between

your feet grows

a warm spot

in your hand.

1

Cloud shadows

race over you

peel identity and

drift it away.

1

Birds swarm and

turn in unison

becoming sky

and flashing

back as birds.

1

And yes thunder

is growling

your secret name.

1

In a moment

all the cells of

creation are

bending your way.

~ Harley Elliott

Harley Elliott lives in Salina Kansas. He is the author of ten books of poetry, including Darkness at Each Elbow and Animals That Stand in Dreams (Hanging Loose), and The Monkey of Mulberry Pass and Fugitive Histories (Woodley), as well as a memoir, Loading the Stone (Woodley).

Tyler Sheldon is a graduate student in English at Emporia State University. His poems and articles have appeared in Thorny Locust, I-70 Review, Coal City Review, The Dos Passos Review, and in the anthology To The Stars Through Difficulties (a 2013 Kansas Notable Book). Sheldon is an AWP Intro Journals Award nominee and has been featured on Kansas Public Radio.

William Sheldon lives in Hutchinson, Kansas, where he writes and teaches. His work has appeared widely in little magazines and small press anthologies. He has two books, Retrieving Old Bones (Woodley) and Rain Comes Riding (Mammoth), and a chapbook, Into Distant Grass (Oil Hill). He plays bass for the band The Excuses.

Hunting Arrowheads on the Arkansas by William Sheldon

When the eleven egrets rose

over the river bend, green shrubs

even a droughty river holds—

just as the flock had a week before,

right before he saw the small Washita,

a white triangle in the pea gravel—

he might have, had he believed

in omens, egret deities, or other magic,

thought himself lucky, looked

for another point, that moment,

at his feet. Instead, he was only

gladdened. All day he saw

gravel and minnows, light

on the water. Only later,

moving back upriver,

did he indulge his foolishness,

cursing, almost aloud, the day’s

heat, the barrenness of the river.

He saw again the ungainly grace

of wading egrets lifting in late

afternoon’s sallow light. Their blessing

had been real. “Walk slowly, look hard

in the small gravel. Move on.”

~ William Sheldon

William Sheldon lives with his family in Hutchinson, Kansas. His poetry and prose have appeared widely in small press publications. He is the author of three collections of poetry, Retrieving Old Bones (Woodley, 2002), Into Distant Grass (Oil Hill Press, 2009), and Rain Comes Riding (Mammoth, 2011).