Guest Editor’s Note
What strikes me about this issue of Here is the wide range of emotions that it encompasses. It contains poems about joy, despair, disappointment, loneliness, gratitude, discouragement, anger, estrangement, frustration, awe, loss––the whole range of human experience. The poet’s function in society really is to wake people up to the reality of things; to what needs to be changed, what needs to be done to make this a better world; to quicken people’s awareness of what we share, what we have in common as members of the human family. We need to be reminded that the human race is one color, the color of blood. So why can’t we get along? Why is there so much injustice, so much violence? Why so much discrimination and exclusion? Each of the poets represented here comes at the human experience from a different angle using the power of the word. Poetry is really human speech at its most beautiful and they use that beauty to nudge us into greater awareness of the issues that we face as a human race to remind us all that the challenge is in the moment and the time is now.
Raouf Mama
2022 5
Frederick-Douglass Knowles II
Reverse Psychology: The Diary of the Disenfranchised Journal Entry #187:
Routine traffic stop: doing 65 in a 70
hands out the window open your door hands in the air
get out the car get on the ground lay on the hood get on your knees.
Routine traffic stop: thought it was a gun
thought it was my gun
it was dark, he was dark thought
Botham Jean’s house was her house thought
Ahmaud Arbery was robbing a construction site thought
Breonna Taylor’s house was the
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right house wrong house
Michael Brown was running about to run breathing on his back no his stomach thought George Floyd could hold his breath for 569...seconds
Eric Garner was high sold cigarettes
Filando Castillo had a legal firearm in the glove compartment thought his dark complexion made him guilty if Chauvin was found innocent the fire inside the marginalized would had burned like: Watts Newark
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Chicago
Baltimore
Detroit
Oakland
Milwaukee
Cincinnati
Philly
Miami
Kansas City
Pittsburgh
Harlem DC thought we’d dangle from your revolving rope while you reload thought Sandra Bland hanged herself thought Caron Nazario’s army uniform was invisible that Trevon’s Skittles were criminal thought it was me it could had been me you want it to be me but not him.
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Sitara Gnanaguru
Ahmaud always told his mom “I love you” before setting out. He had miles ahead of him: an open, winding road to jog blissfully, for life is not a sprint.
An open, winding road: white men carry on, no need to speed, the hunt is not a sprint.
Their prey donning a white flag, their hearts black and unforgiving as pavement.
White men carry on, no need to speed, the hunt: leisure, sport.
Their prey donning a white flag, their hearts black and unforgiving as pavement. Territorial brown thrashers. Lynchers thrill for the kill.
Leisure, sport?
What was Ahmaud seeking when he departed from home that day? Territorial brown thrashers. Lynchers thrill for the kill.
A precious Georgia peach picked green, squashed on the street for white pride.
What was Ahmaud seeking when he departed from home that day? To jog blissfully? For life?
A precious Georgia peach picked green, squashed on the street for white pride. Ahmaud always told his mom “I love you” before setting out. He had miles ahead of him.
2022 9
#RunwithMaud
What Remains to be Seen
Breonna Taylor haunts me like my reflection— in the mirror, she touches her nose piercing and I flinch.
A spray of bullets defibrillates me from sleep, and I wake only to rain tiptoeing across the roof.
My heart is a silo hollowed out by grief—gunshots echoing ad nauseum, pockmarking the walls.
Who will be charged for this wanton endangerment?
My despair ferments to rage, foments the clamoring inside of me—I demand to know who will save us from the ones who were supposed to save us.
Breonna Taylor haunts me like a promise unfulfilled.
I vow to say her name, to fight the structures that robbed her mother of her baby girl.
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Early Morning on Amtrak
Floating along railways like a dream, I watch cities smudge away outside my window.
But the structures I pass pull themselves into focus and I think about these old mill towns and the Black workers who helped build them, but were blurred out of history.
Connecticut cotton mills relied on Southern slavery for its booming textile industry.
Racism also put down roots in the Northeast— and like an iceberg, the weight of its shameful legacy pushes out from under itself.
I’ve been holding my breath as I contemplate the brick-red horrors of the past.
A long sigh escapes the prison of my diaphragm and I think about how, when airflow is restricted, even a gulp of water feels like swallowing a bullet.
2022 11
Aiyana Hardy
Coffee Shop Convo
I like my coffee with almond milk and lots of sugar
I like to barely taste the coffee
I like to barely taste the bitterness
Sometimes I think black coffee is compared to black people. Bitter and unsweetened, unloved and belittled
No matter how well I perfect my white girl starbucks order No matter how many paychecks I save for a pair of uggs
No matter how many hours it takes to straighten my kinky hair
They still assume that when I disagree with something that I’m the angry black girl
They will assume that my personality is loud and that I don’t know as much as them
They will assume that when Macy messes up my coffee order and I say something, then I’m upset with her
I’m not upset with her
I just can’t have cream, I need oat milk, I’ll even settle for silk
Two years ago I thought that was probably the whitest thing on earth, whiter than milk
Then I gave it a shot and it wasn’t too bad
If you give me a shot, I promise I won’t be so bad
I just want a normal day, when these thoughts don’t run through my head constantly
I just want to sip my coffee, and not let the caffeine get my emotions running
I wish I didn’t have to carry this history, these stereotypes, these tears, and these fears in my backpack every day
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I wish I didn’t have to go to school and worry about being called my nigga, from someone who isn’t even a nigga
I wish I could write about racial injustice and not have to resort to coffee analogies in order for you to see the problem
But now that you’re here, let’s talk about the problem
The problem goes beyond campus, beyond you or me, beyond coffee, but I promise I’ll get back to that I know you need that, so you can digest this
The problem is a world problem. The problem is a racial problem
The problem is that Black people are afraid to walk home at night
The problem is that there’s more Black people sitting in your prisons instead of inside your classrooms
The problem is that I still have to check my race on a job application that I know I’m more than qualified for
The problem is that my mom had to work overtime to make what you make part-time
The problem is that I have to worry about my brother when he gets older because his skin makes him target practice
The PROBLEM is what happened to Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd
The problem is that what happened to them is burned into my mind while you only remember them because their deaths got the most traction on your For You pages
The problem is that I sit in this coffee shop and watch this white woman tear apart the barista because she asked for iced coffee not hot
The problem is that I know her silence would echo when if came to defending a Black person who had just been shot
Sometimes I have to wonder if I’m the problem
Sometimes I have to wonder if I’m the only one who sees this shit
But I’m just gonna sit, take a sip, and when you’re ready I suppose we can grab a coffee and talk about it
2022 13
Colleen Goff
Sagging Pants Isn’t the Issue
Death fills the air of my Aunt’s Subaru, taps on the window glass and is ready to escape into the world after we drive past a Black man on the street, and she spews “No wonder they can’t run from the police, his pants are at his feet!” and she smirks and scoffs as I freeze and I swear for a second I could see his body lying lifelessly.
Lifelessly like 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who couldn’t run for his life, not because his pants were sagging but because you can’t really outrun a bullet, the speed of light fired at him twice within the two seconds police had him in sight. He died unaware as to why, unaware that police see Black boys as violent beings before they even reach their teens, unaware as to why even the park is not a safe place for him to run free.
Lifelessly like 26-year-old Breonna Taylor who couldn’t run, not because she was sagging her pants but because she was already home with no safer place to go when cops and their ammo broke down her front door and shot her dead by her own bed, her life fleeting Earth as 32 bullets tore through her apartment walls, tore through her bedsheets tore through her dresser tore through her home as 6 bullets tore through her being before she could even speak.
Lifelessly like 46-year-old George Floyd who couldn’t run, not because he was sagging his pants but because of the police-knee nudged in the crevice of his neck, because of the air that was quickly fleeing from his lungs as he used his last breath to plead for his life, and his words only echoed past White ears, echoed off into history echoed off into that place of silenced voices, unheard screams unheard by too many, unheard pleas that end up lost and re-screamed another day by another Black person.
Lifelessly like Eric Gardner, lifelessly life Michael Brown, lifelessly like Walter Scott,
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like Alton Sterling, like Philando Castile, like Stephon Clark, like Miciah Lee, like Elijah McClain, like Ahmaud Arbery, like the countless others who can’t run from police brutality, who can’t run from systematic racism, who can’t run from the bloody racist history of this nation, who can’t run from White people like White people run from it all, who can’t run from the racism White people run people of color into the ground with, into their graves with, and my aunt in her Subaru, who is also a New Jersey judge, must know this and act like she just doesn’t.
I can only feel her death-wish, thick and hot in the air of her car, knowing racism never stays confined to the racist. It emits from her skin like rancid must, doesn’t wash off in the shower, follows her to work in the courthouse and fills the air she surrounds with its deadly pollution.
2022 15
I Come From
I come from the North End of Waterbury, Connecticut, with its windy broken roads and old, broken homes, where loud cars dance up long city hills, through plastic and glass and Dutch wrappers that scatter sidewalks.
I come from teenagers who roam around downtown, smoke and walk up the Green to chill at Brass Mill, our mall that used to be filled with places and people, but is now half-empty, stuck in between destruction and rebirth.
I come from screaming students in jam-packed classrooms, dusty bathrooms, and older, disappointed faces, teachers who yell about kids who need to put their phones away, and about kids who never listen, and kids who “can’t be saved.”
I come from a place where you know nothing about anyone, where some of the funniest kids wear the dirtiest clothes, and ask for their friend’s lunch scraps as they approach the trash and shove wrapped food in their backpack for later.
I come from a small, shared bedroom, rotten windows and microwavable mac-n-cheese. I come from a single working mother’s belly, where the trauma of her life seeped into the seed of myself, like being a broken woman is a tradition in my family, and pain is passed down and distributed fairly, like grandma’s jewelry after her death.
I come from a place where all the kids grow up too fast, where some die before they reach twenty-five, or twenty, or sixteen, where hurt is hidden in everyone, where hurt is everywhere, hard to dodge and easy to find, like fentanyl laced weed and dealers who stand and work the streets, searching for night-feigns.
I come from a place that needs love because the city is full of hate and fear. I come from a place that has been crying for help, hoping some magical being, maybe God, will hear.
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Princess Zuri’ McCann
Double-Dutching in the Middle of Ward Street
I remember the adrenaline of jumping between two ropes. The slapping on the road like the dripping of water droplets onto the bathroom floor from a wet towel. First one, then the other, swinging high above the preacher’s car. Two girls controlling the ropes enough to never touch the car’s side mirror. They never look to see if they’ve gotten too close.
We had already mastered the distance between talking back and defending ourselves, or the distance between walking to the corner store alone with a neighborhood boy and walking with a neighborhood boy and a third person.
The ropes were extensions of the turners’ arms, wound around their hands. If they moved apart, the ropes could begin a tug-of-war, one girl claiming the other turned too fast or too slow, one girl trying to drag the ropes down the street, along with the other girl still holding on.
I almost never got into the middle. The ropes overlapping each other, not stopping to let me in, a game of catching the separation of the two cords. The slapping no longer a drip but turned into the same fast pace we used to play Miss Mary Mack.
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I’d perform the proper motions on the outside—the bouncing on the balls of my feet, moving my upper body to the rhythm of the ropes, lower body positioned like I was going to take off running down the street instead of into the ropes. Always looking for the glitch in the movement,
I wanted in. I risked getting hit in the face or messing up the flow. I just had to push my way through. If I wanted to get into the middle I had to wait.
I knew that I had to be ready to either join the ropes or ruin them. The few times when I made it into the middle, there was no pausing. Just listening to the ropes hit the air, wind heavy, arms locked across flat chests, lips pinched inward between teeth, no look of hard concentration, this had to seem easy from the outside. The jumping was always easy.
The small relief every time the ropes passed under me, keeping the rhythm, allowing my body to become the third rope, a dancer, twirling a time or two. Refusing to stop when a car wanted to pass by, there was enough space to go around.
There was only jumping and keeping up. The ropes crossing each other but never able to cross me, never able to stop me so they’d fall to the ground defeated by the third rope who only had to dance between them.
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Portrait of a Black Girl with No Name (Other Than the One Someone Else Gave Her)
Her hair isn’t nappy, and her lips aren’t too big, her nose isn’t too wide and her skin isn’t too dark but people whisper that they are, adults and children alike, and she knows what they mean when they say it, but she must pretend she doesn’t hear their whispers. She’s only a child. She shouldn’t know what they mean,
but she knows, and she hears, and she sees, and they never let up, not when she straightens her hair, contours her nose, and chooses a foundation two shades lighter than her own skin. She’s now made in their image of who she’s supposed to be.
That little girl isn’t so little anymore, now she’s fourteen. She hears the whispers again, of her skirt being too short, her boobs being too big. She doesn’t know yet that it’s not okay to entice boys with a sliver of thigh skin right above the knee cap. Maybe if she knew her growing boobs were a distraction she could ask them to stop growing, but she’s too busy crying in front of a mirror over her hair burnt off by the relaxer.
Fourteen was hard, but sixteen is brutal. Now they whisper a deadline. She has until graduation to have a baby and complete their criteria of what a black girl’s potential is. She does give birth and become a teen mother,
2022 19
now they don’t call her by her name anymore, she’s ho, bitch and baby mama. It’s okay, really, she’s used to being forgotten, it’s the only thing people give her. At least her newborn daughter is beautiful but the baby girl will never know it because the whispers have already started.
In front of the mirror, I cut off all my relaxed hair taking small pieces to see how it looked before being confident enough to chop it all off.
Natural hair I hadn’t seen since I was a child, hair that seemed difficult until I realized it was full of life.
I used to sit for a relaxer now I do my hair myself twisting it with moisturizer and gel to get the perfect twists to wear for a day or two before untwisting them and wearing that as a style too stretching my coils with a blow dryer and afterward being surrounded by a huge mane of hair or gathering it at the top of my head in an afro puff showing off my face and big hair at the same time.
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◉ Natural
Now, I look at my reflection as I do my hair, and wonder how I ever thought something was wrong with it in the first place.
Clelie-Ann Ryan
We’ve Always Known that We’re Black
Before we could tie our laces spell our own names or recite our home addresses. Before we could hold up our short stubby fingers, grin stretched wide, front teeth missing, shouting “I’m this many,”
And we’ve always known that we were Black first.
Before we could decide whether to put a check mark next to female or male or other, we checked the box under “African American”— No ancestry.com needed. Before we played musicians and astronauts,
Before we lived in great big towers, waiting on noble knights to rescue us from fearsome dragons. We learned that we would have to slay the dragon ourselves. We could not afford to be damsels.
This was not told to us, it was felt.
When we looked at the TV screen wondering why no one looked like us. Questioning why our hair didn’t flow. Why it wasn’t sleek,
Why it wasn’t pretty.
Sitting in our mother’s laps for hours gelling, pinning, wide-tooth combs raking through unruly curls. Necks aching bent at odd angles. Not moving unless we wanted a smack.
When we instinctively froze in white spaces, or at the sight of cop cars; shoulders hunched, thunderstorms in our chests. Feeling irrational when they drove past.
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Our scars are hereditary.
Millions of names carved into our backs. We trace them, memorize every curve, every bump. Feel them reopen as videos of our trauma circle the internet. Feel our guilt when we scroll past and feel lucky that it wasn’t us or someone we loved.
But as I grow, I learn what being Black means:
More than trap or hip hop or any narrow box they try to put me in. More than the rage that gets me through the day or the tears that keep me up at night.
It means dancing wherever I want to whatever I want— soca, pop, rock, hell, to country music if I please— feeling the rhythm guide my body and trusting that I can let go,
that I can take up space.
Even when its hard. Even when it seems the world doesn’t want me to.
It’s knowing that my hair flows up not down because it loves to be close to the sun. It’s knowing that the sun loves me back and that’s why it smiles on my skin.
It’s recognizing that my skin is the color of the earth.
Not candy, Not caramel or hazelnut chai, But soil.
The same soil that could welcome me back at any moment.
It means thriving despite knowing that.
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Here:
Abigail Bonilla
Queer
Be good; Play dress up with the other girls at daycare; Dress in pink and only pink; Don’t get your nice dresses dirty; Why the hell were you wrestling with the boys?!; Go to ballet class twice a week and wear your best tutu; No I don’t give a fuck that you hate it; Say please and thank you; Cross your legs when you sit; Learn all the proper table ettiqute; Don’t slouch; Pluck your eyebrows; Do your makeup; Yes, girls have to wear makeup!; No jeans; No soccer; No roughhousing; Say yes to everything sparkly and feminine; Remember that boys will be boys; Remember girls are quiet; Stop yelling; One day a boy will love you, but only if you are woman enough; Stuff your bra before school; Don’t stare at the girl in math class; Pick out a new dress for the school year; No, you can’t wear that; that’s for boys; Go back to ballet and remember to suck it in this time; Please stop; Buy more heels; Remember your makeup every day; Stop fucking staring at her; Eat less; Never buy a size up; Smile more; Stop wearing boy’s clothes; What the fuck do you mean you quit ballet?; Why aren’t you dating?; Why does it even matter; Eat a meal a day; I told you to stop wearing boys’ clothes; What are you hiding?; Girls know their place in the world; Why are you playing soccer? That’s a man’s sport; You’re not skinny enough, how will a man ever love you?; I told you to stop staring at the girls; Why are you crying?; Stop fucking crying; Shave your legs; Why does your face get hot in the locker room?; What aren’t you telling me?; I never see you after school; Whose house were you at?; Girls don’t play sports; How’s home education class going? You’d be good at that kind of thing; Tell me what’s going on right now; I said now; Stop crying; If you don’t tell me, I’ll give you something to cry about; I love girls the way I’m supposed to love boys; How do you think this makes me feel?; No wonder you’re like this; Go to church four times a week; I’m mourning the child I’ve lost; Jesus will fix you; Wear more mascara; Have sex with a boy no matter how you feel; I’ll never get to be a grandmother. Why are you doing this to me?; Pray; Read the Bible; Throw out your jeans; Switch schools; Pray again; Stop crying; No wonder we never talk these days
2022 23
Jonah Craggett
...And other Black things.
1. On Reading Black Poetry in an All-White Class
I recall
The way the room shut down, The way the voices clamped, How the outies became innies When they found out
It was not Frost, It was not Poe, It was not Plath, It was not Twain,
It was McKay. I recall
How the bee lost its sting, The fish, its fin, The brute, his mean left hook;
The groans for haste, The refusal to water the flower
planted with Black hands, Nestled in black soil, Under tar black eyes For Black ears.
A song sang to the world, Understood in part, Lived in part, Heard only by Black ears.
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Preamble:
I, too, know something about not belonging Losing my name
Not counting.
I’m writing this because I see them. Because they need to be seen.
Bloodlines
The tears, the tears
We cried then, with you.
Oklahoma bound, four thousand strong. One young buck, gave For an acre.
Given back.
Home.
Returned.
The trail. The trail.
We walked it with you. Cherokee, Red and Black strong, Freed the Freedman Back to nowhere.
And cut their tongue, Four thousand strong.
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2. The Trail (For the Cherokee Freedman)
3. Water
There are an estimated one million Black bodies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The corpses of slaves Hugging the sandy reefs. Who will retrieve their bones?
It seems like Black skin was made for water, How we crave its embrace. The sting of ocean salt and firehose torrents must have been Attractive to our color, must have been cooler than the heat of being Passed along.
And yet
It’s so cruel, the way It rejects us.
Alligators, and water fountains, and Public pools, and silk presses Kept us away from water so long That now we can’t swim––
So, who will retrieve their bones?
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Vivian Shipley
The Soul of El Paso: In Memory of 22 Victims of the Walmart Massacre, August 3, 2019
“Simply put, walls work and walls save lives.” Donald Trump, State of the Union Address, 2/5/2019
It’s Texas. An hour from Matamoros, Mexico, I find a man propped as if under an umbrella anchored by sand in a dense thicket of live oak.
Leathered remains, he must have always been skinny but now his skeleton is more obvious, hat, water jug banked by what was a hand.
Mouth a cathedral, dreams unspooled, he is interred in open space of Chihuahuan that unfurls upside down cones of Luisache,
shrubby gray blackbrush gnarling sand, zig zag branches, straight thorns in pairs that could have been used to crown Jesus.
Rain would have saved this man. No other witnesses to his end, only patches of mesquite, huisache crowding the horizon.
Secreted in this desolate place, nothing of him will green again. Surely, death was the easy part. He must have been ferried
by hope, could not have believed his journey would end like this. He couldn’t have. Perhaps the dead can teach the living,
but I won’t carry this corpse in my arms and make him a statistic for anthropology
students doing research at Texas State in Brownville on death of illegal immigrants.
There’s no lesson here for anyone. Walls don’t save lives. Walls erase them.
2022 27
José B. González
The Montville Board of Ed Votes to Retire Mascot
The Board put the gavel on calling them Indians, and the graduates said “We’ve heard enough drivel.” They took out their yearbooks and tossed them like they were Indian Head pennies, the ones with the whiteness of liberty’s lady on the side, then they took out their feathered dream catchers and used them to snatch memories of football games, the Indian Head helmets, the cheers that began with an “I” and ended with a jump of an “N,” what does that spell? The loud answer embroidered on cheerleaders’ skirts and sweaty jerseys, the chants and chops on Friday night fields, but now the Board had taken their Injun Joe mascot away, yanked him from their childhoods. The way they cried, you would have thought the tears were from trails and that they had lost land from the mountains to the prairies–or that they had lost their home sweet home.
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Samuel Perez Lopez
Protest of Monarchs
Fist firmly outstretched in the air, fighting injustice, We are the Monarchs that you hear about, Forever migrating into our dreams
As we fight and take flight to make them our reality.
We are the Monarchs you always see that the media labels “illegal.” As if it were illegal to want to prosper in life, As if living was a crime, As if people can be “illegal.” As if we stood with arms raised only to destroy your land. We are not the criminals that you say we are. We do not protest so that you cannot live Your life. We protest so that we may live ours.
We would not have to protest if there were nothing to protest about. So you only have yourself to blame for your racist views And your pompous and hypocritical ideals of freedom; Your cries for the right to representation And your fight against oppression cannot Hold the same weight
While you turn around in the same breath and silence Those who choose to call out your injustice; You cannot claim liberty for yourself and cage Others for trying to assimilate to your style of living.
So, yes, we raise our fists and clench them as hard as we can For we are holding onto the only piece of our “American Dream” That we can hold––The only piece you are willing to spare. Because you may not welcome us here And you may not want us to thrive,
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But like mi gente says, You tried to bury us, But you didn’t know we were seeds, You didn’t know that we would grow, bloom into the Monarchs of tomorrow
Because we are here to stay.
We will continue to grow
Because we are the Monarchs that will migrate into our lives And make them what we dream of watering them into.
And we will not rest until our tamales at Christmas heritage
And our pozole pride:
The one thing that you may try to erase Stands tall and proud, unmovable, whenever you silence our call, Our grito Mexicano.
And try to tell us that we don’t belong in this place.
We are the Monarchs that you try to eradicate, The ones you cage in cells
As if a steel chrysalis could hold us in When in fact we are only becoming stronger and more beautiful The more you try to build your walls around us.
Because we are the Monarchs that you hear about, Forever migrating into our dreams
As we fight and take flight to make them our reality.
So we will stand tall with fists firmly formed
Because we are the Monarchs, the ones who have transformed.
Note: The monarch butterfly represents the dignity and resilience of migrants and symbolizes the rights of all living beings to move freely.
Here: a poetry journal 30
Christie Max Williams
Becoming America
America, my love, you see you’re not alone: I’m here among the many who would be your better angels.
In your streets, as in our homes, we would help you live your natural goodness.
America, my love, I’m here because you will not listen, because you’ve sold your soul to corporate gigolos. because you’ve lost your mind to visions of dominion, because you’ve auctioned off the land, the sea, the sky, the very fate and future of your people.
America, my love, stop reading those deceitful press releases, the ones proclaiming you the greatest, richest, and most powerful, because if it were true your people would not want for health, for learning, for rent and food, we would not wonder why our happiness and welfare are not in the national interest, we would not wonder why we fight and lose long wars in places we have never visited nor wanted to, or why our war vets wander abject streets in madness and despair, seeking manhood in a bottle or a needle.
America, my love, we’ve taken to the streets that lead to your great heart, because your justice is not color blind because the cops keep killing young black men, because Latinos fear a knock upon their door, because your streets aren’t safe for your most fragile citizens, because they are afraid to vote, because your judges, senators, and president force feckless sex prerogatives on women in their power, and get away with it, because it’s time that women run the country.
America, for love of you we won’t stand down –not while our congress wanders hollow-eyed among the cloakrooms of the Capitol,
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craving one more corporate fix, not while lobbyists serve as pimps purveying cash fellatio, not while buying politicians with campaign donations is called free speech, not common bribery.
America, my love, it’s your ideals that make you rich, they are your capital to spend on us, spend on a nation yearning for your goodness.
Of, by, and for us, we the people insist on government that gives you courage to fulfill your principles of justice, freedom, and equality.
America, my love, we won’t stand down ‘til we can breathe, a free people, equal in each other’s eyes, proud of the country that we love.
Richard Krohn
Gallo Pinto
Black beans, white rice, the past refried to start a new day, what Cubans call moros y cristianos, but on the mainland gallo pinto, a spotted or speckled rooster, colors and flavors mingled and delicious.
The beans can also be red pintos, with culantro, sweet pepper, onion, a splash of habanero that looks like wattles and head, on top a fried egg
as the coming sun, though some say it’s meant to remember the hen.
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◉
If we are, where we are, then…
I am a cottage on the edge of a town frightened by Black witches yet suckling from brown breasts.
I am in love with the overgrown rosebushes tangled Like afro berries, the romantic cobwebs that dance
tangos in a tired whirlwind overhead. I wish this land, under my wooden foundation were in mossy London—
or that these bare windows faced a sandy Caribbean song. Song rolling off waves, held by a tone-deaf tongue, ragged
this roof, tiny cottage shies against the sun. Framed by hearty flowers planted in fall, beaten by daddy’s rainy mornings
where blue patois once rested on the eaves. Wildwind whispers secrets ‘bout the unnamed and uncut blades of green grass
I once laid naked atop. I am a cottage on the outskirts, where my doors stay unlocked, blinds drawn wide, waiting to be read like a book left open on the bedside.
2022 33 Summer Tate
Maria Mazziotti Gillan
A Murder of Crows
A murder of crows wakes me this morning, their sharp voices quarrel in the cherry tree outside my window. I look up the expression “murder of crows,” only to find that it means the crows have gathered to decide which of their own they should kill.
Later, I hear an owl hooting softly in my garden and I’ve never heard one during the day before. Every morning, every afternoon, I hear it. And then I walk out onto the front stoop and the crows now lurk in the huge oaks in the yard.
Oak Place used to look like a country lane. It used to be lined with 200-year-old oaks, but now most of them are gone. They fell down in storms or people didn’t want them on the street or in their yards. Too much of a mess, they said. The oaks are still in my yard, but not many are left. I have replanted trees on my property, but I’m surrounded by people who don’t want to rake leaves. Two of my neighbors asked me to cut down my mulberry tree. The tree is messing up their yards.
This summer we had strange weather––thunderstorms, lightning, tornadoes, days and days of rain. The climate is so different from anything I’ve known in all the years of my life. The west is burning, mudslides, floods.
This country is divided over masks or no masks, over whether the coronavirus is real. People cannot get along for five minutes, like my neighbors, like the crows.
I love the owl hooting. I love his soft soothing sound. I try to hold on to my memories of what summer used to be.
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The World Is Getting Hotter
The world is getting hotter but we’re not dead yet. Today spring softens the air. The cherry trees tear into bloom. The forsythia waves its hopeful arms across the edges of Route 287. It’s so easy to forget how much we have done to destroy the perfect beauty of the world. I watch a program on TV about a company in China that recycles used plastic bags into small plastic pellets.
The owner says he makes money by turning this garbage into a product he can sell to other companies, to make plastic toys and bottles and more plastic bags. The camera pans in. Large plastic bags are stacked up on plastic pallets so they can be shipped again for use in the United States. We go on feeling good when we place plastic bottles in our recycling. The world is getting hotter and we’re only glad we’re not dead yet.
Steve Myers
His Name
Above us, the Cross. Around, the township dies toward silence, at least at this junction of red-dirt lanes. It’s ten p.m. A heap of rock chunks, rusted metal and broken glass rises up from the ground where a car would pass if anyone owned one. JFK
erected NASA tracking stations here. For Kissinger, here was yet another stay
against Communism. Now we provide kids with pb&js, and so extend this intimate friendship. Jesus, if I’d stood here when the news came down, and the men rocked the streets after he KO’d Quarry, crying his name, Ali! Ali! Ali!
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Joan Seliger Sidney
Leaving Egypt
What does He want us for, this God of ours? Forcing us from our doors, this God of ours.
Not an hour to tarry or say good-bye. Bread flat as a slap, for this God of ours.
Not a horse to ride or a tent for sleep. Sorrows flood shores. What more, dear God of ours?
Freedom? Pharaoh’s soldiers thundering near. Only doves can soar. Crazed, this God of ours.
Dead ahead no safe space, the Red Sea roars. No one knows what’s in store but this God of ours.
Better being slaves in Egypt than Yocheved or the son she bore for this God of ours.
N.B. Yocheved is my Hebrew name & was Moses’ mother’s name.
Brad Davis
Familiar Spirit
In the dark, say an hour before sunrise, when what little light there is in the room gathers to the rug’s edge and softer lines of our matching chairs—the floating lampshade between them—sight is most like hearing, intimating presence, these few collected treasures
of a long marriage glad that I have joined them. Of course,
it is not they who are glad. Mornings are when light gathers, whispering her magnificent suggestions.
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Rennie McQuilkin
Ultima Thule
NASA scientists reveled on New Year’s Eve 2019 when a spacecraft launched in 2006 passed close enough to a tiny planet-in-progress, Ultima Thule, to send back images of this most distant object ever visited in the Solar System.
As the President of Earth’s most benighted nation celebrated another year of doing his best to desecrate the planet, and as a man-made virus danced its way toward the destruction of many millions at midnight of a New Year’s Eve ushering in the direst year in recorded history,
a visionary robot had other ideas, training wide-open eyes on the bowling-pin-shaped beginning of another planet in the outermost regions of the Solar System, merely 10 by 20 miles across but drawing in whatever debris it could to rival its distant relative, Pluto.
That night the youngest member of the scientific team reveling in victory envisioned a fast-motion progression of Ultima Thule toward a state in which microbes would try again, growing arms and legs and living peaceably on the shores of an underground ocean, guided by the ancient legend of another planet whose beauty was undone by minds too big for their bodies.
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Robert Cording
Woodstock Idyll
This morning a breeze sallied in the wind chimes announcing warmer air from the south.
You cried as you read the newspaper— a young Black man shot in the back as he ran from police.
I looked up from the COVID charts of the infected and the dead. A morning of spring light.
We talked of how our son could possibly be dead almost three years already. Poppies turned
the air impossibly orange around them, irises swelled, about to open in the garden.
Now, in the dusky light of the day’s end, I think again of the question that sharpened
the day’s arrival—why these events should exist side by side?—and how, amid the daily chores of living
and the sun disappearing, it goes unanswered each day, whether we want it to or not, but always returns.
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In the jury box of my living room, I weigh the tellings and re-tellings of Breaking News; my remote pointed like a gun, I take aim at all I have avoided, lasering between channels, as if these hours of watching CNN and MSNBC could be a form of change or at least relief from the penance I do watching Fox to learn—what? that the detonated American dreams of the nameless are nothing compared to our American greatness? Why $600 might encourage the out-of-work not to work? I am seventy, retired, a white ex-professor who writes poems that cannot possibly put down in words what it’s like to be put down every day for the color of my skin. Here I sit, my Black Lives Matter sign posted beside my rural mail box, listening to a mother, who like me has lost her son, but, unlike mine, hers was shot in the back. I’m a bobble head doll nodding now as two Black historians connect the retrieval of runaway slaves and, later the KKK, to police brutality and the power Reconstruction had to deconstruct the slightest foothold of Black Americans. This is retirement: a world moving across my screen that screens me from the world even as I take in the tearful/angry/ exhausted faces of those trapped in the same old storyline—as they fill their city streets in black t-shirts that state what should never need stating, and who look, just now, like targets caught in the crosshairs of cable news.
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Kai-li Davey
Avoidance for my father
The five o’clock news comes on. Headlines flash across the screen. You grab the remote, change the channel.
Gray hair greased back, you yawn and pick at your fingernail. Occasionally glancing up at the clock, wondering when you should resume watching yelling politicians. Hoping that the headline has disappeared.
Like this is an issue you can just wish away.
With a roll of your eyes, you heave a sigh, almost leave the room, but you are not a racist.
You adopted me from another country, traveled around the world. So, of course, you are not a racist.
That one time a Black man approached our vehicle at the airport you locked the doors and told me not to make eye contact.
Whenever I talk about my friends, I see you trying to picture them. Then, you respond with a shocked expression, “Oh, the Black girl.”
Isn’t it strange when people refer to you, they don’t say, “The White man.” Yet, you have the audacity to do that to others. Simply because they are not your race.
I wish I could talk to you and have my words burst through the ceiling. Make you imagine
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yourself in someone else’s shoes. I wish I could converse with you without it turning into a shouting match. I wish I could have a heart-to-heart conversation and feel free to speak my mind.
Mom stays silent.
Whenever she does call you out, she sinks in her seat. Gets swallowed by the couch, watching swirls rise up from her coffee mug. Keeps her words contained for fear of starting a verbal disagreement. You would never lay a hand on her, but sometimes your words slash through. It’s difficult to see her back down when I know she has a mighty voice of her own.
You hit the control and I watch as the chair tilts back. You close your eyes. Almost as if you’re pretending that we exist in a peaceful society. There is a lot that don’t you see, or refuse to see.
Which is even worse.
Protests spread, people use their voices. A racially diverse protest. White protesters, Black protesters, protesters of other ethnicities. They all stand in solidarity, in unison, raising their voices until the world can see that this call to action is long overdue.
Hundreds flooded the streets of Minneapolis.
You ignore that there’s a problem in the broken world we live in. While you sit in your recliner and change the channel.
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Pegi Deitz Shea
All American Waste
“All American Waste” said the truck in red, white and blue block letters. Its backside the same gaping maw of old-time haulers —not the new removers with robotic arms that pick up your molded plastic bulky bins.
All American Waste could feed a continent with meals half-eaten, leftovers fuzzy with mold, tossed stale crackers, years past so-called expiration.
All American Waste— nonpartisan, homogenous, class-less. Chicken bones are bones of chicken, whether free-ranged or caged, Trucks don’t discriminate between artisanal bread or Wonder. Peaches yield pits whether plucked by illegals or Pick Your Own-ers.
All American Waste fleets rumble past compost heaps, to head down hometown streets lined with banks too big to fail and food banks too big to fill. The smoke-spouters deposit payloads atop mounds to the delight of birds, or on barges to the demise of fish, or in your own back yard if your zip code is zip tied.
America wants not American Waste.
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John Long
Letter to a Friend
1976, For Kenneth Mnonopi
The weather here always changes going from humid to hurricane in a day, and fall is coming. Remember autumn? You said it was the best surreal landscape ever seen in one lifetime. You were delighted that first year not knowing winter was coming with snow: you’d never seen it.
Now I read news of trouble in your country: riots in Soweto change nothing. Whites cling to their master race, give it the name civilization and divide the races. They refuse to learn a new language.
I remember your pride in speaking three languages. Xhosa, your native language, was the one you recited every night after drinking vodka. Were those times good, easy for you like my memories?
Here I sit in America, powerless in this land of power, knowing our governments censor all letters. I cannot send my few helpless words, but you don’t need me to tell you all this––you are Black, South African.
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Paul Martin
The Wrapped Fig Tree
“The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us . . . unconsciously.”
James Baldwin
When I wrapped the fig tree in black plastic against the winter winds, a rope tied around the top, another around the bottom, a shape vaguely human, how could I know the way it sways in the wind insinuates a body swinging from a tree. What a grim drama has entered through the hedge fence that screened out the world, one I’m helpless not to see even after April arrives and I undo the wrapping, the tree either a dead stick I’ll have to prune back to its roots or a pliant sapling, buds beginning to open, either way never again the same tree.
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Jeffie Titus
Ode to Marsha P. Johnson
August 24, 1945 - July 6, 1992. Activist, gender non-comforming self-identifying drag queen, performer, survivor, prominent figure in the Stonewall Uprising of 1969. The ‘P’ in her name stands for “pay it no mind,” which was her response to her gender identity.
“No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.”
We owe it to you
To do what we do.
The way we can dress how we please And can live with more ease.
The way we can tell them “pay it no mind” Because it’s not viewed as a crime. Your impact is more than external––
Your legacy feels maternal, Bravery manifesting itself in our DNA. The freedom to be gay. The freedom to exist
Without the fear of being put on a list Just for being ourselves.
Without you and your friends, My friends and I would have nothing. Your impact extends Farther than you know, Your soul — omnipresent and forever inspiring, Inspiriting us to grow.
When I think of you, Marsha, I think of how you deserved so much more. I think of how you were taken from this Earth, Discarded by those who claim to protect. You never received justice, A case gone cold.
You spent your days criticizing those dirty cops, You stood for what you believed in, An activist for all, And in death, proving yourself right.
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While your tragic demise is continuously mirrored In deaths of your descendants, We continue to mobilize. We strengthen our community, Build up our chosen family Through your example. Every day you woke up and decided Not to live in fear. You decided to fight back, To make your voice heard, To be who you are.
Every day I wake up and try To live like you. Fearless, Resilient, Free.
Although this world isn’t perfect, Your legacy remains And for that, We thank you.
Georgia Chesworth
Looking Out at the Beach, Rocky Neck State Park, 2017
Blue and green become one in the center of your swirl, And my tears will disperse within the expanses
Of your aquamarine.
Mama points at the houses on the horizon And wishes she was rich enough to live by the sea. Dad makes a joke about winning the lottery, And both take in the peaceful view without me, Although I’m there.
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I prefer the peace of silence over the truth.
The sound of waves over my voice.
And the people, like ants in the distance, Away from me, from us, Blended into the lens.
“Take a picture,” they tell me, and I do,
With no one in it. Family photos, I cannot do, Not yet. In a place where I should find peace, My beach, I instead find dread.
Because the boy they were so proud of, recently sixteen, Did not exist, in my heart. And because I hated him, Because he was not real,
But still, somehow, me.
And I wanted to see the trees touch the three clouds in the sky, And the houses of the privileged along their private dock, And the sun-bleached stones at the breakwater.
To feel like something other than a traitor.
But instead, I wanted to sink into that aquamarine And disappear
Because I didn’t think they’d still love A girl the world told was a boy.
Because I didn’t know that I’d be lucky enough to be wrong.
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Margaret Gibson
What Are Words
As a child I used to listen to my father’s silences, so thick I could nearly hear them suck the air out of the room.
When I asked, my mother told me only this: he had the breath knocked out of him as a child.
Older now, a woman whose work is saying words,
I ask you, what are words but shaped breath?
If you take from a man his words you take his breath.
If you take from a man or a woman breath, you take life, you take away the freedom to live with respect.
It doesn’t matter if the word is written or punched into a machine—a word still is breath,
and if you suppress breath, you suppress life. No breath, no words, no life.
Would you press your knee to a man’s throat so he couldn’t speak his mind?
Would you knock the breath out of a woman?
Would you?
Would you?
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Contributors Notes
Abigail Bonilla is a fourth-semester English major with a concentration in Creative Writing at the University of Connecticut. Abigail takes pride in her identities, both as a Latinx woman and a member of the LGBTQ+ community. In her free time, you can find Abigail writing, reading, or being with her friends.
Georgia Chesworth is a junior English major and Psychology minor at Eastern from Manchester, CT. She loves writing of all kinds, and how self-expression through words can help us understand more about each other’s lives, and share the meaning of our own.
Robert Cording’s tenth book of poems, In the Unwalled City, is due in this year. New work is due or out in The Common, The Hudson Review,Southern Review, 32 Poems, AGNI, Poetry Northwest, and Image.
Jonah Craggett received his Bachelor’s Degree from Eastern Connecticut State University and is a current MFA candidate in Southern Connecticut State University’s Creative Writing Program. Jonah writes with the intent to give agency to Black voices of the past in order to understand the stories of the present. His writing decentralizes the White gaze and effectively portraits the unique experience of his upbringing, his relationship with history, and the multiple facets of his identity. He is committed to producing written content that focus on equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice.
Kai-li Davey is a junior English major from Southbury, CT with a concentration in Creative Writing and a minor in Psychology. She seeks to unite people together through both written and spoken word and believes that poetry has the amazing power connect people and give the ability to share and listen to each other’s unique stories.
Three years ago, Brad Davis moved back to Connecticut’s northeast corner. A new collection, Trespassing on the Mount of Olives, was published in 2021, and individual poems have appeared recently (or are forthcoming) in Spiritus, JAMA, Vallum, Connecticut River Review, Brilliant Corners, Presence, and Rock & Sling. Five years ago, he learned that his first citizenship was Canadian and that he’s a Canadian still.
Margaret Gibson is the author of thirteen books of poems, most recently The Glass Globe. She is also the editor of Waking Up to The Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis. She is Connecticut’s Poet Laureate. https://margaretgibsonpoetry.com/
Maria Mazziotti Gillan, American Book Award recipient, is the author of twenty-four books, founder of the Poetry Center in Paterson, NJ, editor of the Paterson Literary Review, and Professor Emerita of English & Creative Writing at Binghamton University. Her newest poetry collection: When the Stars Were Still Visible.
Sitara Gnanaguru is a Tamil-American writer and proud alumna of the University of Connecticut. Her poems have appeared in Here, the Connecticut Literary Anthology, Suttervillle Review, and Gray Sparrow Journal
Colleen Goff is a senior Eastern Connecticut State University where she majors in English, with minors in Creative Writing and Secondary Education. Recipient of Eastern’s Alexander “Sandy” Taylor Memorial Endowed Poetry Scholarship, Colleen was one of only four young writers chosen to participate in the 2021-22 Connecticut Poetry Circuit Outstanding College Poets 2021-2022 Tour. Her poetry has been published in the Willimantic Chronicle. Colleen’s hometown is Waterbury, Connecticut.
José B. González is the author of two poetry collections, When Love Was Reels, a Finalist for the Connecticut Book Award, and Toys Made of Rock an International Latino Book Award
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Finalist. He was born in San Salvador, El Salvador, and immigrated to New London, CT, at the age of eight. He knew no English and now holds a PhD in English. A Fulbright Scholar and the editor and founder of Latino Stories (latinostories.com), he teaches at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. https://www.josebgonzalez.com/
Aiyana Hardy is a graduating Eastern senior from Bloomfield, CT, who majors in English. Her goal is to create a safe space for Black voices and empower other young women to express themselves freely. Poetry has become her outlet and she believes her words can make a change.
Frederick Douglass-Knowles II is an educator and activist fervent in achieving community augmentation through literary arts. He is the inaugural Poet Laureate for the City of Hartford and the recipient of the Nutmeg Poetry Award and the 2020 Artistic Excellence Award from the Connecticut Office of the Arts. He is the author of BlackRoseCity and a Professor of English at Three Rivers Community College in Norwich, CT.
Richard Krohn has spent most of his life in mid-Atlantic states, but he has also had two multi-year stays in Central America. He currently teaches Economics and Medical Spanish at Moravian College. In recent years, his poetry has appeared in Poet Lore, Tar River, Southern Poetry Review, I-70, and Rattle.
John Long is a poet and playwright. His poetry has appeared in Connecticut River Review, Here: a poetry journal, Dark Horse, and The Hartford Courant. John’s plays have been produced at Seventh Sign Theater, Ensemble Studio Theater, and Phoenix Stage Company. He was a Lecturer in Drama and Film at the Torrington and Waterbury campuses of the University of Connecticut.
Samuel Perez Lopez is a student at Eastern Connecticut State University, where he is an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing. As a Mexican American writer, he hopes to be able to elevate his own voice and inspire others within his community to do the same.
Guest Editor Raouf Mama is a CSU Professor of English at Eastern Connecticut State University. He has received the Grand Prix Littéraire du Bénin, a Trophy of Merit by the Benin National Teachers of English Association, the National Multicultural Children’s Book Award, the Kwabo Trophy, the Erasmus Mundus International Fellowship, and Eastern’s Distinguished Professor Award. His many books include Fortune’s Favorite Child, Why Monkeys Live in Trees and Other Stories from Benin, The Barefoot Book of Tropical Tales, Pearls of Wisdom (with Mary Romney), and Why Goats Smell Bad. He is the only person in the world today who tells folktales from Benin and other parts of the world in English, French, Fon, and Yoruba.
Paul Martin has published two books of poetry, Closing Distances and River Scar, as well as three prize-winning chapbooks. Poems published in America, Boulevard, Commonweal, New York Quarterly, Passages North, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Poetry Review
Princess Zuri’ McCann has an MFA in poetry from Southern Connecticut State University. Former poetry editor of the Noctua Review, she has had poems published in Plainsongs Journal and Call + Response Journal. She loves women poets like Ntozake Shange, who speak on the discontent that women, especially Black women, feel when told to endure their struggles and remain silent.
Rennie McQuilkin served as Poet Laureate of Connecticut from 2015 through 2018. His nineteenth poetry collection, The Rounding, was published in 2022. He has fellowships
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from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the CT Center for the Book. In 2010 his volume of new and selected poems, The Weathering, was awarded the Center’s annual poetry prize under the aegis of the Library of Congress; and in 2018, North of Eden received the Next Generation Indie Book Award in Poetry.
Steve Myers has published a full-length collection, Memory’s Dog, and two chapbooks. A Pushcart Prize winner, he has recently published in places such as Callaloo, Kestrel, The Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, several editions of Here, and Valley Voices. He heads the poetry track for the MFA in Creative Writing at DeSales University.
Clelie-Ann Ryan is a junior English major from Bloomfield, CT, with a concentration in Creative Writing and a minor in Communication. She hopes that her writing can one day connect people regardless of race or gender and believes that writing creatively takes us on a journey to uncover truths about ourselves, the world, and our relationships with others.
Pegi Deitz Shea’s first book of poetry for adult readers, The Weight of Kindling, was recently published. Her work has appeared in past issues of Here as well as numerous other journals and anthologies. She was the inaugural Poet Laureate of Vernon. Her books for young readers often focus on human rights.
Vivian Shipley is the CSU Distinguished Professor, Emeritus. Her 12th book, Hindsight: 2020 is forthcoming in 2022 from La Lit Press at Southeastern Louisiana University. An Archaeology of Days was a 2020-21 Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist and the 2020 Housatonic Book Award for Poetry Finalist. She won the 2020-21 Poet Hunt from The MacGuffin.
Joan Seliger Sidney is a second-generation Holocaust survivor. Her books, Body of Diminishing Motion and Bereft and Blessed, recount the survival stories of her parents and others. www.joanseligersidney.org.
Summer Tate has been writing and performing poetry for twenty years. The bulk of her work surrounds her experiences as a daughter, woman, and revolutionary thinker. She currently is an adjunct professor at Fairfield University and teaches English in Hartford, Connecticut. Summer holds a Master’s in English Education and received her MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing from Fairfield University.
Jeffie Titus is a senior English major with a Creative Writing concentration at Eastern Connecticut State University. Jeffie’s work focuses on the ups and downs of the human experience through their eyes, as a way to process and heal. They hope others can find solace and connect with their words, regardless of race, gender, or sexuality.
Christie Max Williams’s debut book of poems, The Wages of Love, was awarded the William Meredith Poetry Prize and was published in 2022. A writer and actor, he lives in Mystic, CT, where he co-founded and for many years directed The Arts Café Mystic, which is in its 28th year of presenting programs featuring readings by America’s best poets, complemented by music of New England’s finest musicians.
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