Stephanie Brewer Jim Cain Franklin Davis Diane Funston Heather Hutcheson Mike Shepley Ann Wehrman Nanci Lee Woody
CHEERS two people raised me one said, the glass is half-full the other said, the glass is half-empty I said, I’m not sure who to believe as I sipped my Brandy so, I brought my own drink
STEPHANIE BREWER
RIVER SHADOWS The pasty moon wrapped in gossamer swirl Hangs yellow above this city of two rivers Like a jaundice face lost in obscurity; The dull gray lick of river-shadows Paint ridged stick silhouettes On the chaste landscape of black and white As these serpentine rivers of mud Crawl along the valley floor Turgid with suicidal venom, Condemned with aboriginal death cries, Washed from the earth like salmon migrating to the sea never to return. How many nameless and hungry Prowl these muddied shores, Lost and forgotten, Their cadavers bloated afloat To be discovered at the confluence Of this city of two rivers.
JIM CAIN
FRANKLIN DAVIS Laughter used to be my escape, to another world. Now it is my most hated thing, like the sound of birds. Laughter was a way for me to cope, now it is just grief. All is ok when they laugh, it is just a joke. All is ok when you laugh, it is just a joke. They will always laugh with you, but when you are humiliated, it's ok for them to laugh because the jokes on you. Their reason for laughing is “it's just a joke.�
A JOKE
URBAN RENEWAL My old house still stands in Rochester. Faded green shingles, peeling paint, city sunburn. A street where no one walks anymore, fear of drive-bys, young men on liquored corners, empty youth hunting one another. My old house weeps tar-papered tears down disjointed gutters, dangling broken bones, Repeated domestic violence weakening the near century old wooded frame. Once a 1920's wedding present, newly built cottage, proud oak trim, hardwood floors, large butler pantry kitchen, center of the home during Depression days, on through declining decades. One window-eye without glass, knocked out in a losing battle with hard urban decay. No gentrification for the working-stiff neighborhoods, boarded up, abandoned, left to lean into the earth, that still brings forth great-grandma's grape hyacinths on an overcast April day in center city Rochester.
DIANE FUNSTON
SUMMER INSOMNIA It is 4:19am, and the only tools I have for this time of day: sheet, pillow, ceiling fan fail. The meager breeze cannot quench my middle-age furnace. I turn my pillow over and over, looking for relief, shade, the cool side to slip my palms beneath, hoping to open a spigot of ocean wind to sway me in my hammock back to sleep, to release me from gravity and this balmy plane, but my eyes are wide now. I’ve seen the first nipple of light, the sky the color of iced tea on its way to sunflower as dawn, without qualm or questions, wrenches open the tender darkness.
HEATHER HUTCHESON
BEACH STREET
MIKE SHEPLEY And the late to midnite fog again thick as to choke sound from the ears chill and muffle drum beat footsteps. Into a bubble of fey light the figure steps out of its grey haunting foreshadow, Magritte hatted, all London Fog-ged, pasty white mask in face place, eyes deader than Jacob Marley's. Then you blink and turn to watch his dim back slide past back into the rolling cotton cloud past the cone of light globe as the fog in near gossamer shreds is sucked into the dark hole of his gone passing.
LOVE AND THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM
ANN WEHRMAN
I walk through my days heart wrapped in cotton wool numb, out of my body though stone sober occasionally, I’ll jolt when about to drift into sleep come back to my body at the intersection of sleep and waking affirm life, however grudgingly my heart withdrawn cold, breathing shallow and slow from inside, peer out check to see if there has been a change as years pass, my hair in the glass, now edged with silver white strands on my jacket I still taste you hear the music in your voice
CALIFORNIA’S CRYING California’s crying, unforgiving skies rage against the rape of her mountains making hillsides slip and ooze their soggy tons of barrenness across her roads. Vengeful rivers smash efforts to subdue spew turbid violent waters over levees and sandbags into living rooms, over rooftops. Her millions, chastised crying too are praying fighting praying over their plans to build more dams their boots sucking mud as they search the muck hopeful of rescuing a photograph from its wet wet grave. They curse the rivers and their own bad luck while waterfowl rejoice in the flooded valleys they nearly forgot. They alight and take delight in humankind’s windy watery plight.
NANCI LEE WOODY
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES Stephanie Brewer lives in Northern California with her husband, three children, and a cat. Her desk is filled with numerous personal notebooks of good and bad poetry, all living in harmony. She has a self-published book of poetry, Pencil Shavings. You can follow her on Facebook @StephanieBrewerPoetry. Jim Cain began writing poetry and short stories in his late twenties, a few years after military duty overseas. He moved to Sacramento in 1974 to attend CSUS in pursuit of his goal of a degree in Life Science. He has recently retired from the University of California Davis Medical Center. He is an avid biker, and enjoys riding the American River Bike Trail. He has been published in The University Review, CSU Sacramento Focus On Writers, annual writers contest (1995), Poetry Now (July 1997), In Vivo Arts Magazine Davis Ca, Sacramento News and Review Magazine. His personal philosophy is that of understanding self in order to understand everything else! Franklin Davis was born in the month of September moved around a lot growing up switching schools and houses. As Franklin grew up he always kept himself busy by either writing or listening to music. He started to gain more interest in poetry around high school in the year 2015, when he was learning about poetry in English Class. From then Franklin couldn't stop thinking about ideas for songs, books, and poems. Franklin also wanted to learn more about the arts to help him grow in his literary and social life. This year will be his first time sharing his poem/s to the world. Diane Funston lives in Marysville CA and is becoming active in the Sacramento poetry community. She has been published in several West coast publications as well as her native New York State. She also enjoys gardening and working with felt. A professor of English in Sacramento, Heather Hutcheson is the founding editor of the Cosumnes River Journal. During the semester, she promotes a language exchange between day laborers and community college students in a parking lot, and she spends summers teaching English in Oaxaca, Mexico. She blogs at shewhodaresnothing.wordpress.com. Mike Shepley is a freelance writer/researcher who also engages in the "creative" side of that business. In the past decade and a half he has had more than 60 poems published (in ink and/or pixel) by 4 dozen literary magazines (and twice in the SN&R Poets Corner). Most recently his work has appeared in Pinyon, Penumbra, Xanadu, Vallum (Montreal) & IPR. Another will be published in Santa Fe Review this summer. Ann Wehrman is a creative writer and musician currently teaching English composition online for University of Phoenix and Ashford University. She has published in print and online journals including Tule Review, Blue Heron Review, Convergence, Sacramento News & Review, Medusa's Kitchen, The Ophidian, Rattlesnake Review, and Poetry Now. Rattlesnake Press published Ann’s broadside, Notes from the Ivory Tower, in 2007 and her chapbook, Inside (love poems), in 2011.
Nanci Lee Woody was a teacher, author of textbooks in business math and accounting and Dean of Business at American River College before she wrote her first novel. "Tears and Trombones" won an IPPY (Independent Publishers) Medal for "Best Fiction in the Western Pacific." She has also published numerous short stories and poems both online and in print anthologies. Nanci always has her camera in hand, and loves particularly to photograph birds and animals. Her artwork has shown in local galleries and in the KVIE annual on-air fund raisers.