VALERIE A. SZAREK - Bone Games

quartered

247 – Spahr-Summers

Valerie A. Szarek

Bone Games

“There is dinosaur tar in my bone marrow” Fred Lamotte

I, like you, have risen from the earth From eggs carried by our grandmothers, All of us birds, wings folded under our skin

My vertebrae are made of turtle shell Skin christened by the Milky Way Nails the translucent petals of skeleton flowers

Dinosaur tar came from my Hungarian side When we ate stone and maidenhair fern

When the earth was softer, more malleable Everything that ever was is in our marrow,

Szarek - 248

Every being a word in this long poem As a lizard I feared the pterodactyl As a worm I feared deluges that drown As a baby bird I feared the cold As a dinosaur I learned to fear

The tar that held my feet in place

As a human with shared DNA in my bones How can I OM myself peaceful How can I trust a clouds’ shadow to Not be a hunter searching for me How can I learn to trust the rain?

As a being of earth Whose consciousness do I walk in?

It is a miracle

If we are not afraid

All of the time

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Contributors’ Notes

Dee Allen is an African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. Active on creative writing & Spoken Word since the early 1990s. Author of 7 books--Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater, Skeletal Black [ all from POOR Press ], Elohi Unitsi [ Conviction 2 Change Publishing ] and his 2 newest, Rusty Gallows [ Vagabond Books ] and Plans [ Nomadic Press ]--and 61 anthology appearances under his figurative belt so far. Currently seeking a new publisher to transform his finished manuscript into a finished, printed 8th book.

Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, zines, and online publications. He is the author of 19 chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including “No Destination” (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2021) and “The Ants Crawl In Circles” (Whiskey City Press, 2022). He runs Between Shadows Press.

Brian Barnett is the author of the middle grade novellas Graveyard Scavenger Hunt and Chaos at the Carnival. He has over three hundred publishing credits in dozens of magazines and anthologies such as the Lovecraft eZine, Spaceports & Spidersilk, Scifaikuest, and Three Line Poetry.

Ben Barrett is a middle school life science teacher in northern Virginia. He spent six years in Colorado exploring and journeying into local realms of music, farming and alternative medicine. He values simple pleasures over finer things, humility over recognition, and kindness over critical acclaim. Most of his free time is spent contemplating new ways to speak truth to power and bring light to the world's dark places.

Dennis J. Bernstein is an award-winning poet. His previous volume, Five Oceans in a Teaspoon, won the 2020 IPPY Gold Medal Award for Poetry and the 2020 Best Book Award for Poetry by the American Bookfest, and was a finalist in 2020 Best Book Award, Poetry International Book Awards. Bernstein’s previous collection, Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom, won the 2012 Artists Embassy International Literary Cultural Award. (cut save for the inside of

book?) His poetry has appeared in The New York Quarterly, Bat City Review, Texas Observer, ZYZZYVA, and numerous other journals. Bernstein’s artists’ books/plays French Fries and GRRRHHHH: a study of social patterns, co-authored with Warren Lehrer, are considered seminal works in the genre, and are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Georges Pompidou Centre, and other museums around the world.

Chara Booker is the Empress of All She Surveys. Looking for the magic and poetry in our daily lives continues to inspire her.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in RockPaperPoem, Marrow Magazine, and Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Art of Bob Dylan. Poems are forthcoming in Parliament Literary Poetry Journal and Shorts Magazine.

Steven Bruce is a poet, writer, and award-winning author. His poetry and short stories have appeared in magazines, webzines, and anthologies worldwide. In 2018, he graduated from Teesside University with a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing. He is the recipient of the Indies Today Five-star Recommendation Badge. Born in the North of England, he now lives and writes full-time out of an apartment in Barcelona.

Nick Bruno has appeared in publications such as: Shenandoah, NoD Magazine, Adirondack Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Arabesques Review, Blue Fifth Review, Eclectica, Stirring, Snow Monkey and Sidereality. He is presently living and writing in Canada.

Mary K. Cain is a poet and nonfiction writer from Arvada, CO. She received a poetry fellowship from the Colorado Council on the Arts. Her nonfiction book The Cottonwood Tree: An American Champion (2007) was nominated for a Colorado Book Award and included as part of the Nebraska 150 Books Project. Recent work has appeared in Abandoned Mine, Bristlecone, The Comstock Review, and Mad Blood #7 (Spring 2022). She was also a featured reader for the 2022 100,000 Poets for Change event in Denver.

Matt Clifford is the author of eight books, bassist of Black Market Translation, co-founder of Punketry and Boulder’s full moon midnight alleyway reading, editor at Turnsol Editions, and treasurer of four nonprofits.

Those all being indeed nonprofitable, for money Cliff provides a sliding scale accounting service facilitating the relationship of overtaxed and underfinanced artists and anarchists with their government. He holds an MFA from Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and lives in Denver with the cat Bjorknado de BoopBoop trying not to take shit too seriously. www.mattclifford.org

Pat Connors first chapbook, Scarborough Songs, was released by Lyricalmyrical Press in 2013, and charted on the Toronto Poetry Map. Other publication credits include: The Toronto Quarterly; Spadina Literary Review; Sharing Spaces; Tamaracks; and Tending the Fire. His first full collection, The Other Life, is newly released by Mosaic Press. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/patrick.j.connors.3 Twitter: https://twitter.com/81912CON

Ojo Olumide Emmanuel is a Nigerian Poet and Book Editor. He is the Author of the Poetry Chapbook "Supplication For Years in Sands" (Polarsphere Books, 2021). His works have appeared and forthcoming at Feral, Quills, Poemify, Melbourne-Culture, Fictionniche, TNR and elsewhere. He is the editor-in-chief of the Nigerian Review. He is a fellow of the SprinNG Writers Fellowship. Say hi to him on Twitter @OjoOlumideEmma2

Gerry Fabian is a published poet and novelist. He has published four books of his published poems, Parallels, Coming Out Of The Atlantic, Electronic Forecasts and Ball On The Mound. In addition, he has published four novels : Getting Lucky (The Story), Memphis Masquerade, Seventh Sense and Ghost Girl. His web page is https://rgerryfabian.wordpress.com Twitter @GerryFabian2 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/gery3397/ Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerry-fabian-91353a131/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010099476497. He lives in Doylestown, PA

Dan Fijlek is an author and poet in Longmont, Colorado.

Eric Raanan Fischman is an MFA graduate of Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He has taught free writing workshops in Nederland, Boulder, and Longmont, and has had work in Bombay Gin, the Boulder Weekly,

Suspect Press, and more, as well as in local community fundraising anthologies from Punch Drunk Press and South Broadway Ghost Society. His first book, "Mordy Gets Enlightened," was published through The Little Door in 2017.

Richard Fleming is an Irish-born poet and short story writer currently living on the island of Guernsey, which is located in the channel between England and France. He has written material for the BBC and various mainstream publications, and has two poetry collections in print: the more recent one, Stone Witness, is available online at https://www.blueormer.co.uk/ More of his poems and short stories can be found online at Bard at Bay, Http://redhandwriter.blogspot.com or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564

Nicholas Gentile was born and raised in Yonkers NY. He is now retired and lives in York, SC. His poems have appeared in World Haiku Review, Better Than Starbucks, Poetry Quarterly, Three Line Poetry and several other journals.

G. Timothy Gordon Dreamwind was published 2020 (Spirit-of-the-Ram P), Ground of This Blue Earth (Mellen), while Everything Speaking Chinese was awarded Riverstone P Prize (AZ). Work appears in AGNI, American Literary R, Cincinnati P, Kansas Q, Louisville R, Mississippi R, New York Q, Phoebe, RHINO, Texas Observer, among others. Recognitions include several Pushcart nominations, residencies, and NEA and NEH fellowships. Gordon’s eighth book, Empty Heaven/Empty Earth, will be published November/December 2022. (69). Gordon divides lives between Southeast Asia and the Southwest Sonoran Desert Organ Mountains.

Amy Wray Irish grew up near Chicago, received her MFA from the University of Notre Dame, then fled the Midwest for Colorado sunshine. Amy loves work that blurs the lines between body and nature, image and word. Read more of her work at amywrayirish.com. And check out her 2020 chapbook, Breathing Fire, which was greatly influenced by Denver artist Madeleine Dodge and her metalwork “Rust” series.

Robert Knox is a poet, fiction writer, Boston Globe correspondent, and the author of the “Suosso’s Lane,” a novel of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. As a contributing editor for the online poetry journal, Verse-Virtual, his poems

appear regularly on that site. They have also appeared in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, New Verse News, Unlikely Stories, and others. His poetry chapbook "Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty" was nominated for a Massachusetts Best Book award. He was the winner of the 2019 Anita McAndrews Poetry Award.

David Lawton is the author of the poetry collection Sharp Blue Stream (Three Rooms Press) and chapbook Inspiritive (Moonstone Arts), and serves as an editor for greatweatherforMEDIA. He has work currently in From The Inside: NYC through the eyes of the poets who live here (Blue Light Press) and Call Me {Brackets} and upcoming in P-Queue and the New York Quarterly anthology Without a Doubt: Poems Illustrating Faith.

Morghan Leigh, a Boulder based visual artist, was born in the trash. Discovering the discarded as an art supply Pheonix, she transformed found objects into masterpieces. After attending the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD),Morghan realized that she did her best creative work in her home town on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Working as a set designer for a non-profit with no budget honed her skills of spinning straw into gold. With new hopes of regenerative farming and “Bike Life,” Morghan decided her next masterpiece would be life exploration. Packed down with all the essentials and a few extras she began the Journey that eventually landed her in Boulder, CO. She can be found howling in alleys, screaming on stage, and paling around with poets. A new sublime scene where words are wings and everyone is flying Rocky Mountain High.

Marie C. Lecrivain is a poet, publisher, and ordained priestess in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the ecclesiastical arm of Ordo Templi Orientis. Her work has been published in California Quarterly, Chiron Review, Gargoyle, Nonbinary Review, Orbis, Pirene's Fountain, and many other journals. She's the author of several books of poetry and fiction, and editor of Ashes to Stardust: A David Bowie Tribute Anthology (forthcoming/copyright 2022 Sybaritic Press, www.sybpress.com).

Brice Maiurro is a poet and storyteller from Lakewood, Colorado. He is the founding editor of South Broadway Press. His books of poetry include Stupid Flowers and Hero Victim Villain. He is very happy to be an amateur mycologist and apiarist.

Benna Gaean Maris is an interdisciplinary and basically conceptual artist interested in raising awareness on metaphysical, human, social and environmental issues, expressing through a whole range of art disciplines, either

material or immaterial, including poetry, flash fiction and artist's book. Tirana International Biennale of Graphic Arts 2022 - Tirana Art Gallery - Tirana, Albania ; Geumgang Nature Art Biennale 2022, Gongju City, Korea ; Metaverse Biennale 2022, Bur Dubai, UAE / Internet ; The Wrong 5th Biennale of Digital Arts, internet, 2021-2022 ; Šiluva Art Biennial - Touched Land, 2021 - Pilgrim Center, Šiluva, Lithuania ; MADATAC XI Biennial of New Media Arts 2020 - NH Eurobuilding, Madrid, Spain ; BIENALSUR 2019 - Latin America Biennale - Various venues, Argentina / Brazil / Guatemala ; Triennale della Fotografia Italiana 2017 - Armenians Palace, Venezia, Italy Merit Awards @ UPWARD Gallery 2022, internet ; Exhibiting artist @ Festival of Time International Contest 2020 - St Michael church, Sermoneta, Italy ; 2nd Prize @ ExperimentoBIO 2019 - BilbaoArte Foundation, Bilbao, Spain ; 2nd Prize @ Cine Cube Award 2018 - Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Germany ; Videographics Prize @ Pasinetti VideoPrize 2018 - Liceo Guggenheim, Venice, Italy ; 1st Prize + Performative Prize @ STAR Bene Contest 2017 - Municipal theatre, Teramo, Italy

Joan McNerney has poetry included in numerous literary magazines worldwide. She has four Best of the Net nominations. Her latest title is At Work available on Amazon.com.

Bruce McRae is an Canadian musician, a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books include ‘The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press); ‘An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy; (Cawing Crow Press) and ‘Like As If” (Pski’s Porch), Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).

Stephen Mead is an outsider multi-media artist and writer. Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. He is also grateful to have managed to keep various day jobs for the Health Insurance. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, The Chroma Museum

Mark Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up in southern California. His latest poetry collection, Roshi San Francisco, was just published by Norfolk Publishing. Starting from Tu Fu was recently published by Encircle Publications. A new collection, Something to Be and a novel are forthcoming. He is very fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka

and Dante. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster where he made his marginal living pointing out pretty things. Now, he’s looking for work again. He has published 2 novels and three chapbooks and four full length collections so far. His first chapbook won the Negative Capability Award. Titles on request. A meager online presence can be found at https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/ A primitive web site now xists: https://www.mark-j-mitchell.square.site/ I sometimes tweet @Mark J Mitchell_Writer

J.B. Mulligan has published more than 1100 poems and stories in various magazines, and has published two chapbooks: The Stations of the Cross and THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS, as well as 2 e-books: The City of Now and Then, and A Book of Psalms (a loose translation), plus appearances in more than a dozen anthologies.

Tendai Rinos Mwanaka is a Zimbabwean publisher, editor, mentor, thinker, literary artist, visual artist and musical artist with over 50 books published. He writes in English and Shona. His work has been nominated, shortlisted and won several prizes, that has also appeared in over 400 journals and anthologies from over 30 countries, and translated into Spanish, Shona, Serbian, Arabic, Bengali, Tamil, Macedonian, Albanian, Hungarian, Russian, Romanian, French and German. You can listen to his music here:https://soundcloud.com/tendai-rinos-mwanaka

Don Narkevic is from Buckhannon, WV. MFA National University. Current work appears/will appear in Agape, New Verse News, Bindweed, and Book of Matches. In Spring 2022, Main Street Rag published a novella of poetry entitled, After the Lynching.

J.D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words in his subterranean laboratory. His poetry has appeared in many small press publications, worldwide, since 2002. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Cinderella City (The Red Ceilings Press, 2012). Nelson’s poem, “to mask a little bird” was nominated for Best of the Net in 2021. Visit http://MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. His haiku blog is at http://JDNelson.net.Nelson lives in Colorado, USA.

Kirsty A. Niven lives in Dundee, Scotland. Her writing has been published in several anthologies including Poetry for Ukraine, This Book Is A Work: A Pro Wrestling Anthology and Landfall. Kirsty’s poetry has also appeared in numerous journals and magazines such as Up! Magazine, Pastel Serenity Magazine and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. You can also find her work online, on websites such as The Lake Poetry, Postcards from Malthusia and Bonnie’s Crew.

Benjamin Nambu has an affinity to antiquity, adores music and anything considered wild and unconventional. He believes he was born to inspire people to realize feats. He is from Ghana in West Africa, an identity he is proud to showcase on every platform.

Abigail Elizabeth Ottley writes poetry, short fiction from her home in Penzance in the UK. This poem was inspired by her relationship with an ailing, undernourished magpie fledgling she fed through the winter three years ago.

George Pestana a.k.a. OddWritings, is a life-long poet who started publishing his poetry in 2020. He has several self-published collections listed on his web site http://oddwritings.com, and has been published in Skyway Journal, Open Skies Quarterly, Writes of the Round Table, and Quintessence. He enthusiastically promotes the dissemination of poems in the form of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), and has published many of his poems in that format on the OpenSea and Voice platforms. He was also the featured poet in issue # 48 of The Tickle and has been interviewed by The Metaverse Post concerning his NFT and metaverse-related activities. He lives in Austin, Texas, worshipping his air conditioner and his massive collection of old books.

Dave Prather is the author of We Were Birds from Main Street Rag Publishing. His work has appeared in several print and online journals, including Prairie Schooner, Still: The Journal, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Seneca Review, and many others. He studied acting at the National Shakespeare Conservatory, and he studied writing at Warren Wilson College.

Juanita Rey is a Dominican poet who has been in this country five years. Her work has been published in Pennsylvania English, Opiate Journal, Petrichor Machine and Porter Gulch Review.

Charlie Robert is a writer and poet living in Silicon Valley. His work has appeared in Milk and Cake Press, Iconoclast, NOMADartx, Rat’s Ass Review, The Rye Whiskey Review, Synchronized Chaos, Sacred Chickens, Orchards Poetry Journal, Pikers Press, and is forthcoming in others. He is currently seeking publication of a new Chapbook. Find him at: https://www.charlierobert.com/

Maggie Saunders is Beyond Academia LLC Chairperson. Autodidactic Poet. Absurdoist. Anarchist Educator. Frenetic Hummingbird. Martyr Heretic. Syncopated Dancer. Tangential Chaos.”

Jennifer Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. Recent works include A Collection of Recollections, Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups. She is the 2022-2023 Montgomery County (PA) Poet Laureate.

Gregg Shapiro is the author of eight books including the poetry collection Fear of Muses (Souvenir Spoon Books, 2022). Lit-mag publications include The Penn Review, RFD, Gargoyle, Limp Wrist, Mollyhouse, Poetic Medicine, Impossible Archetype, Red Fern Review, Instant Noodles, Dissonance Magazine, The Pine Cone Review, as well as numerous anthologies. An entertainment journalist, whose interviews and reviews run in a variety of regional LGBTQ+ and mainstream publications and websites, Shapiro lives in South Florida with his husband Rick and their dog Coco.

Julianza (Julie) K. Shavin relocated from Atlanta, Georgia to Woodland Park, Colorado in 1993 on the advice of her doctor, has favorite words: elegie (spelled this way), solace, oasis, refuge, pilgrim and Mommy among them. A dedicated depressive, insomniac and chocoholic who has been called a poet of place, she recently completed an M.A. in Creative Writing; her thesis consisted of sixty video poems comprised of her poems, photography, other visual art and music (the last, mostly found, and attributed). The Pikes Peak Arts Council awarded her the Performance and Page Poet of the Year honors two years consecutively. Winner of the Mark Fischer Prize in 2016, in 2021 she merited 2nd prize in the National Federation of State Poetry Societies’ most prestigious single-poem contest, its Founder’s Award, along with 3rd in its four-poem BlackBerry Peach written/audio contest. An embarrassed, chagrined seven-time Pushcart nominee, her most recent of five books is Elusive Solace. New York-based spoken-word artist Hank Beukema has produced 29 of her poems, setting them to musical background. Self-flagellating with a poem-a-day practice for three years, she is Assistant Editor, Proofreader and Production Consultant for FutureCycle Press (Athens, GA), and lives in an under-lipsticked pig on an old dream of land in Fountain, Colorado with five rescue pets and a human partner-in-grime.

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers is a native of Colorado. He began exploring art mediums as a teenager while in South Africa during the 1970’s, quickly settling on photography and poetry. A commercial photographer in Chicago in the early 1990’s, he was active in the saloon poetry and publishing scene. Jeff’s poetry and photos have appeared in numerous print, online magazines and anthologies. He is the former publisher of Poetry Victims (2004 – 2014) and Snapping Twig (2013 – 2015) online magazines. He has published 19 books. He currently writes and publishes poetry, flash fiction, memoirs, and historical articles. Jeff is the founder of Cherry Publications, and Jasper’s Folly Poetry Journal.

Valerie A. Szarek is an award-winning performance Poet and Native American Flute player. Her poems are healing, present, political, and Shamanic, and cross between the seen and unseen worlds effortlessly. Her words, music and workshops are featured at festivals and events around Colorado, including the International Young Leadership conference, The Mercury Cafe, The Telluride Literary festival, and Ziggie’s Poetry Festivals. She was named “Poet of the Year” Blissfest, 2018. Other awards: Colorado Author’s League best poem 2020, 2021 and 2022 plus The National Poetry Federation Winner’s Circle Award 2016. Valerie offers “Writing as Ceremony” workshops monthly. She has been a leather artisan for 50 years and owns Breezy Mountain Leather as well as a Shamanic Practitioner and energy healer with a private practice. Bibliography: SOAR READY: MEDICINE POEMS FOR A CHANGING WORLD (2020) SIGNS OF LIFE (2015) 13 MOONS ON TURTLES BACK (2005)

David Williams was born deep down near the bottom of the Ethnocentric Gorge and grew up on the banks of the great Ethnocentric River just like everybody else who was ever temporarily alive.

Tom Zimmerman (he/him) teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits The Big Windows Review https://thebigwindowsreview.com/ at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His poems have appeared recently in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Rough Diamond, and Sixpence Society. His latest book is the chapbook The House of Cerberus (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). Website: https:/thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com Twitter: @bwr_tom Instagram: tzman2012