President’s Message Spring 2016 Looking Back
We have a lot of people to thank for all the poetry programs that SPC puts on, and some of them are hidden behind the scenes. One important example of this is Al Gutowsky, who recently retired from his post as SPC’s board treasurer. For many years, Al has made the deposits, written the checks, balanced the checkbook every month, and done financial statements to help us stay organized and in the black. But more than that, we’ll miss his smiling face at the meetings! Thanks, Al, for your service! Kudos also to our “beautification committee,” Penny Kline, Linda Collins, and Bethanie Humphreys, who have transformed the SPC space over the last few months. If you haven’t seen the new carpet, drapes, the table and chairs, or the signature “Poet Tree,” well, then, you haven’t been to a reading! Come check out our remodeled poetry home. I want to thank our new officers Rhony Bhopla (Treasurer) and Allie Gove (Secretary), new board member Jennifer Pickering, and two very active interns (Alysa Joerger and Rachel Rosenbaum) who are helping with events, promotions, editing and more. A big thanks as well to Laura Martin and the Soft Offs (poetry plus music equals moetry), who raised over $300 in one night of music and fun at SPC at the end of March. This packed house enjoyed Laura’s signature sound and helped move us towards our matching grant goals with the Borchard Foundaton, too – one of our major funders for many years. Thanks to Laura and her merry band of musicians for their help! Also we’d like to send a poets’ thank you to the Sacramento Theatre Company for allowing us to be their Community Partner for the second year in a row. SPC theater-goers reported that STC’s version of Twelfth Night was superb. Right Now The AWP convention came to Los Angeles in the first weekend of April, and SPC had a strong presence at that national event. Frank Graham organized a Tule Review reading plus a Social
Justice reading, and many Sacramento poets signed their books at the SPC booth. Thanks to Janna Maron of Under The Gum Tree for sharing the table with SPC once again! With the blessing of RT Metro, and help from 916 INK, SPC members Mary Zeppa, Laura Martin and Anna Marie are helping to put poetry into Sacramento buses! Based on similar programs in New York and Chicago, our program, Poets on Board, features local youth poets and local artists. Watch for news about the launch of this project. Coming up soon – SPC’s annual poetry conference is Saturday, April 30 from 9am to 4pm. Tim Kahl has put together a provocative combination of poet-teachers to inspire us this year – Alexis Levitin, Salgado Maranhão, Susan Gubernat, Ken Waldman, and Sally Ashton are confirmed – so don’t miss this once-a-year event. You can register in advance, or just drop in on Saturday the 30th. $40/$30 members/$15 students. The BIG Day of Giving is Tuesday, May 3rd this year – the day when we get a chance to support all of Sacramento’s hard-working nonprofits with online donations. We hope you’ll include SPC in your gifts in 2016! Last year, thanks to dozens of donors, we raised over $3000 in the 24-hour period, and we’re aiming for $4000 this year. These funds go to both ongoing expenses (rent at 25th Street and the Hart Center, insurance) and special programs like the Dana Gioia reading in June (see below). Please help out if you can! And please come to our BIG Day of Giving party at SPC on May 3rd from 5 to 8pm. We’ll be sharing the space that evening with Women’s Wisdom Art, enjoying food, drinks, a few optional art projects to work on, and music from the Extra Innings Band. All to help two all-volunteer groups present more poetry (and more art).
Two more notes: In conjunction with SMAC, the Sacramento Poetry Center is presenting An Evening with Dana Gioia at the Crocker Art Museum, Sunday, June 26th at 6pm. This free event will be co-sponsored by SMAC, so be sure to secure your reservations – official notice should go out in mid-April.
And thanks to veteran poetry host Bethanie Humphreys, Hot Poetry in the Park will be back on Third Mondays in June, July and August. Fremont Park will be the place, June 20, July 18, and August 15 will be the days. That’s a little bit of what’s going on for spring – see you out there! Bob
Paul Aponte Allegra Jostad Silberstein Deborah Shaw Hickerson Jason Stephen Shapiro Kellie Yvonne Raines Bill Gainer Ann Wehrman James Lee Jobe Meera Ekkanath Klein Danielle Metzinger
Paul Aponte LIKE SATURDAY Gardenia scented blue skies Soft breeze on sunlit skin Like Saturday Like Friendship Gentle voices Word embraces Spoken melodies of yesteryear Constructs of tomorrow Picnic table overflowing with appetizing colors Culinary creations caressing the senses Musical imperfections perfect for the soul Speeding dandelions disappearing in infant fingers Laughter Like Saturday Like Friendship
Allegra Jostad Silberstein
Rejoinder...Sanctum Sanctorum Without an anchor you barge into the loneliness of open water. Without soul you sear the forest with your torch. Know that from unspoken places we will come for you... arcs of color touching the earth. We are earth anchored to soul. Know that we are one. Even you.
Deborah Shaw Hickerson Inheritance Today, my son saw his baby in a sonogram and one of his tiny hands was pointing. As my son was being born, one of his tiny hands rested on top of his head. And as it crowned, he pointed. And then, all his fingers wiggled, and I saw a starfish, and all things of the sea.
Jason Stephen Shapiro Crabbing for Blues (Callinectes Sapidus, Forked River, New Jersey 1977) 1. When I think of that summer visiting Aunt Annie’s house in July as if you were there I’d tug your hand toward the dock we’d smell the stillness of dawn’s obsidian lagoon and we’d see the creosote soaked pilings the cattails suspended where I’d point split by the plane of water reflection inverted, darker than the morning clouds reflection of grey in your eyes. “We could crab here,” I’d tell you, “but they’re too small; we’d have to throw them back.” 2. Out on the tri-hull boat fifty-horse Mercury pushing down the water screwing out a chevron wake between undulations, the aquamarine stripe I painted with Granddad thrashes in and out of troughs, bay waves too rough, you’d throw-up the Swedish Fish you ate before lunch, queasy myself, I am thankful when we anchor at Pelican Point, the force of the ocean broken by a long shallow sand bar, inches below the water, blue jelly fish in thousands skim over—Barnegat light house in the distance. 3. Some semblance of light reaches Blues in shimmering shafts caressing their olive-green carapace the olive-green water sparkles the sibilance of crabbing, you let down your string for the seventh time, your bait on the triangle, tattered from clips of ragged blue claws we could not
lift to the surface when you pause or pull too quickly. 4. This is how it happens mostly they sense the danger those beautiful savory swimmers and before the net, crabs recede from our eyes scuttle to the sand hiding from our intentions
Kellie Yvonne Raines Theory (or The Five Step Argument for Evolution by Natural Selection) Epochs are quicker than the chance of you loving me. And yet— your existence finds my relic self (artifacted hope) with your Hellenic curved lips that unearth me; unbury me with your science-sculpted mouth. I. Variation: Individuals in a population differ in characteristics. (Some are brown, some are blue. Sense is infinite.) Have you seen my eyes trace the outline of your shape? How I observe the length of your fingers and the blueprint of your hands. I behold the framework of your variety. Glad of your blend—your hair (bohemian on your head) the color of sand and wood and bread. Your Y chromosome taste—vintage sweet port, drip to my festive vessel tongue. O, delicious little synthesis of want. II. Inheritance: This variation is passed from parent to offspring. (It takes time and Sex; love and luck take care of the rest.) You—descendant of dirt, particles of red. Earth strata brilliance. Thousands of years, Neolithic minutes. Witness: Dinosaur religion, orgasm Geography, Glaciers of Sex, bedroom Geology— evolution you to me. Blow lava, flow sand and rock. III. Competition Caused by Excess Reproduction: Organisms have the capacity to produce far more offspring than can actually survive. (There is competition for resources just as there is for your touch.)
There is more want in the marrow of my skin for your chance look than time has life. I’m not as perfect as the rest— I have only my words, my art. The philosophy of my Willendorf breasts, the ochre of my heart, the crop of my legs, the water of my touch, the shore of my womb—my oblation. IV. Differential Reproductive Success: Because there is variation (Step I) and competition (Step III), some variants will produce more successful offspring. (Have I been blessed by my own blend; inherited a chance?) I mind map your genes with mine like a school girl sketching botany in the letters of your name in margins, and note the possibilities of our touch (replicated sugar lust, infinite combinations of our limb percussion, hair collision) and reproduce ourselves into trees and proteins, as your voice embeds itself into my DNA and wraps around my name. V. Evolution: With differential survival (Step IV) and inheritance (Step II) there will be a change in the genetic composition of a population over time. (You alter me, uproot, lift.) I dare to “disturb the universe” with my experiment, by writing this. Let’s dance the mix of your breath with my skin. Tangle my laugh with your careful step. Imagine the color of eyes we might create, the bend of limbs careful in my round, kiln belly. Your smile with my sense. Your y with my x.
Theory: That which has not been disproved; a set of statements to explain fact or phenomena. It is your very moment in time, your perfect life, your feet of desert, your blood of atoms and Apollo lips, that teaches me devotion, evolution. I call on Science, Poets, any Oracle or Mother God(s), whatever will work to tell you this simple fact, replicated over and over in my heart— natural selection be damned chance or not: I love you.
Bill Gainer The Importance of it All I’ve taken up a new past time digging in the back. Moving this pile to that that pipe that pile to the other pile sometimes I make a new pile. Most days Kae St. Marie comes out says I have a cold drink for you. You might want to come in before it gets too hot. Some days I do some days I don’t It depends on the digging, She says people ask about me. She tells them, It keeps him home off the bourbon and he seems to enjoy it – the digging.
Ann Wehrman Magdalene's Song night bus, too hungry not quite lovers dark, no dinner stayed late to see you cold, late autumn, night falling hollow, hungry, empty, alone bus rocking streetlights' rhythm don't show I'm hungry don't show I'm lonely my face stares, without expression don't show I left you don't show you let me go home alone young man crowned in gold slips into seat before me sturdy body sweat stained, hulking duck-billed cap clutches half deli sandwich in plastic bag maybe leftover from his shift as server, or cook maybe part of his salary as if that makes up for it all he slides in before me peels off stained coat like a scab, slowly so it will hurt less--hurt him, or me as I watch, we sit miles pass beneath us bus rocks--cradle, trundle in the night, scents of vinaigrette and French bread
from his uneaten sandwich mitigate my starvation stenciled on the back of his T-shirt two wooden posts crossed, bearing words: Gone to visit Dad; I'll be back for you.—Jesus
James Lee Jobe ted kooser's crossword puzzle in an old book of poems by ted kooser i found a crossword puzzle, torn from a newspaper, god knows when. three clues were left unsolved, all in one corner of the puzzle. i could see it was my own writing. ink. i do crosswords in ink. the book where i left the puzzle is many years old, there's no telling how long ago it was that i gave up. or did i? perhaps i had just run out of time, and chose that book because i love ted kooser's poems, and so knew that i would return there eventually and find that puzzle, and complete it. looking, i could see that i still did not know the three answers, but i reached for a pen anyway. one needs closure in life.
Meera Ekkanath Klein Creating A Poem It begins as a light fluttering, Delicate as dragonfly wings. It grows with every breath, every sigh, Until it spews forth, a rushing tide. The idea has turned into words, A string of sentences, long and short Each paragraph added to that garland of words Marigold bright, jasmine sweet. Those petals loop to form a tale. The words grow, stretching slender necks, Searching for inspiration or light. The need for oxygen is now dire. Stories told in life’s blood and sweat. Sweet, tragic or mundane, A story created, an author born.
Editor’s Choice Danielle Metzer Sacrowmento walking home from work down P street toward the Zebra Club early evening fresh air orange tinged sky i look up slightly squinting at 4 trees full of chatting crows flanking both sides of P street squawking louder than the tunes in my earbuds great black mysteries some land some perch chatting chirping squawking intelligently all at once glistening like the still wet asphalt and just as slick I haven't forgotten the old stories crows are tricksters I know good when you're on their good side mischief makers opportunists devious but not always malicious too true to their wily natures to be fickle all these trees full of tricksters sniffing and squawking in the finally wet branches of nearly bare oaks perched restlessly above cars and curbs and discarded Christmas trees garbage long since picked over by these loud ebony pranksters i cock my head sideways and meet their unreadable, void like eyes with a knowing glance something in my mitochondrial DNA dictates an appeasing posture in the presence of a not-quite-threat-not-quite-friend a murder i think is what they call a group like this
the gang squatting and squawking about the recent rain, complaining over the barrenness of trees, commenting on the potato peel smell evaporating from the dumpster outside the cafe next to the laundromat savvy street smart more Sacramentan than even me i bet they'd try their tricks on me if there weren't so much to squawk about
Self Portrait over a Capitol Park bench sun drenched you say I feel like we aren't really FROM anywhere my head rests on your shoulder heart echoes, homesick we imagine our family running from names, death, illness, famine, angry men any reason we can think of to push across boat ride, canyon hike, native camp bury the dead in the snow traveling no parents or papers down the river leave at sunrise like me, always running and they must have collected things a new name - from a book or mistranslated a borrowed aunt or uncle warrants
a shovel another secret a silver spoon tied in her hair a coin sewed into the hem of his pants a blue marble to scare away the evil eye a native bride clad in leather like something in a movie like me, easy to pack up but we haven't witnessed even one sketched fables at best. no relics or histories made their way to us except high cheek bones and long straight noses. diluted DNA is all that's left finally we rise walking reverently past massive California trees you keep walking while I pause longingly under the Betula Nigra 'Heritage' River Birch all jutting awkward branches and flaky dead skin bark like me, a little different I want push under the peely beige bark slip my arms into the angular arthritic branches all wrists and elbows use my fingers to lift and shiver the thin flat green leaves twist my legs into those river birch curls see if I photo synthesize any better for the knots in my limbs like me, seeking sunlight a true Californian then maybe I can be from the river birch in Capitol Park let drought-rationed recycled water surge through me
you say see, look the branches run from their roots too but I see roots that nourish the branches that stretch ever farther from rocks and rotten fruit our dark dirty roots paid and toiled, transplanted for the sunlight, and still lift us sun drenched river daughters taller than buildings always digging always growing
Paul Aponte is a Chicano Poet from Sacramento. He is a member of Escritores Del Nuevo Sol (Writers Of The New Sun) and Círculo. He is the author of Expression Obsession published in 1999, and his work has been published in WTF, Rattlesnake Press, La Bloga - an L.A. based online publication & review, El Tecolote Press, and Un Canto De Amor A Gabriel Garcia Márquez a publication from Chile containing poems from around the world with 31 countries represented. Allegra Jostad Silberstein grew up in Wisconsin but has lived in California since 1963. Her love of poetry began as a child when her mother would recite poems as she worked. Accomplished in many forms of art and performance, she positively influences the work of her peers. In 2010, Allegra was named the first ever Poet Laureate of the City of Davis. Her work is published in over a hundred journals; her book, West of Angels, published by Cold River Press, had a filled-to-capacity reception. Deborah Shaw Hickerson is a fifth generation northern Californian. She has lived in Yolo County for over thirty years. She studied Anthropology at UC Berkeley and taught English and Social Sciences. She lives in Winters where, two years ago, she established Winters Out Loud, a community poetry open mic which she hosts monthly. Her poetry has appeared in The Yolo Crow, Winters Express and Moonshine Ink. She's been invited to perform for community events and was a featured poet for The Other Voice in Davis. Jason Stephen Shapiro resides in Sacramento, albeit originally from the east coast. He has a background in theater, photography, and radio. He served on the American River Review as a fiction editor in 2012 at American River College. At Sacramento State, Jason became poetry editor for the Caleveras Station Literary Journal. He graduated cum laude from CSU Sacramento, is working on his MA in creative writing, and as executive editor of Calaveras Station. Previously, he published in the ARR and The Gapped Tooth Madness literary journals. Jason’s poetry grinds at what the soul cannot speak through disparate juxtapositions. Kellie Yvonne Raines is an Associate Artist with KOLT Run Creations. She directed THE ADORATION OF DORA and her KOLT performance credits include ESCAPE FROM HAPPINESS, ANTIGONE, VINEGAR TOM, and MY OWN STRANGER. She has performed for several local theatre companies in the region. She works for KVIE Public Television and can be seen on air during pledge drives, the annual ART AUCTION, and as a host for KVIE ARTS SHOWCASE. She has a degree in Dramatic Art from the University of California, Davis. Bill Gainer is a writer, editor, storyteller, humorist and poet. He earned his BA from St. Mary’s College and his MPA from the University of San Francisco. He is the publisher of the PEN Award winning R. L. Crow Publications and is the ongoing host of Red Alice’s Poetry Emporium (Sacramento, CA). Gainer is
internationally published and known across the country for giving legendary fun filled performances. His latest book, Lipstick and Bullet Holes, is from Epic Rites Press, Canada (2014). http://billgainer.com. Ann Wehrman’s poetry, short fiction, literary analysis, and creative non-fiction have appeared in various publications including Convergence, Blue Heron Review, Tule Review, Medusa’s Kitchen, WTF, The Pedestal Magazine, The Ophidian, Rattlesnake Review, Calaveras Station Literary Journal, Cosumnes River Journal, and Sacramento News & Review. Her 2007 broadside, Notes from the Ivory Tower, and her 2011 self-illustrated chapbook, Inside (love poems), are available from Rattlesnake Press. She currently lives in Sacramento, CA. James Lee Jobe has been published in Manzanita, Tule Review, Pearl, and many other periodicals. His online publications include Convergence, Knot Magazine, Poetry 24, Medusa's Kitchen, and The Original Van Gogh Anthology. Jobe has authored five chapbooks. http://jamesleejobe.tumblr.com. Although fiction is her forte, award-winning author, Meera Ekkanath Klein, is thrilled to have a poem published in Poetry Now. Klein deftly weaves her love of cooking and story-telling into an irresistible tale. My Mother’s Kitchen: A novel with recipes (2014, Homebound Publications). The book has won several awards and was a Winner in the 2015 International Book Awards in the Multi-Cultural Fiction category. Klein lives in northern California and is working on several other writing projects. http://meeraklein.com/ EDITOR'S CHOICE Danielle Metzinger lives and works in Sacramento, CA. Her poetry has been published in Metonym and the SPEAK Project. She is working on publishing a chapbook within the next year.
JULIA CONNOR Julia Connor’s spiral staircase in front of her bookshelves immediately inspired us to chatter our compliments upon entry, expressing awe at the creative image of her crafted welcome in the form of a living room scape. Ms. Connor showed us in and we entered her majestic, warm home. Her welcome and immediate ease around someone new made me feel submerged into acceptance, the way artistry takes someone in without them knowing. We found our way into the trellises of her flowering garden; the leaves were climbing like a poet’s imagination. Julia let us lay claim our own chair, and we moved our bodies so that the three of us fit together around a table in the middle of an oasis. Luna, the soft-haired sweet-faced poodle, stayed inside, but she was ready to listen to the stories she already knew. A Mentor and Friend: Ms. Connor shared the story behind one current responsibility, a big one: As the estate inheritor of the late Mary Caroline Richards (M.C. Richards), Ms. Connor is to engage the public at the Black Mountain College Museum in North Carolina on the 100th birthday of M.C. Richards. She is organizing and editing a catalog for the event. Her eyes softened as she spoke about how she met Richards:
“In 1969, Nixon became president . . . the ceramics movement had turned towards funk and cleverness, and I didn’t get it. I felt disheartened, so I said, ‘I’m out of here.’ My family and I moved to Canada. Before I left, the partner of my ceramics teacher placed a book in my hand. The book was by M.C. Richards. We moved with our two babies to Canada, and I didn’t read the book for a year. Then, I read it . . . you’ve had the experience: you’re nodding the whole time you’re reading. It’s like this person’s inside your mind.” By 1974, Ms. Connor and her family had returned to California, where she was teaching clay at the Sacramento Waldorf School in Fair Oaks. One day she saw a flyer on the school’s bulletin board for a 3-week workshop in New York with M.C. Richards. She approached the administration, “You pay the airfare and I’ll pay the tuition, or, you pay the tuition and I’ll cover the airfare.” She got her wish. They both became friends, and remained so for 26 years until Richards’ death. “She was the “good mother that comes into your life when you need her.” It was the time in the ‘70s when there was a reawakening to the study of humanities in education. I was in San Francisco at the New College of California in the Poetics Program studying with Robert Duncan, who I found out had also been at Black Mountain College. I brought the two of them back together – the mother and now the father.” Clay, Painting, and Resolve has helped her overcome a physical condition: With no sign of any tremor, Julia confidently shared with us that she has an Essential Tremor, a neurological and vibrational condition. Having the need for tactile interaction with journals, paint, brushes, clay, she “lost her place in her journal.” Although she started teaching her writing workshops in 1992, she realized she could no longer take notes during discussion due to the tremor. In 2012, she stopped holding the workshops. “It’s hard to teach if you are not writing. It feels disingenuous asking people to write when you’re not practicing.”
“I was depressed, angry, determined… I went through the whole vocabulary of emotional responses before acceptance. Caffeine, chocolate, computers, any stimulants make it worse. There are things I can do to make it worse; nothing I can do to make it better.” Increasing the use of the computer was not the answer. She felt there was a vibrational impact, and the computer, many times, became the problem and not the answer. She was not writing, so she redesigned her plan. “There is this philosophy that I always had but never lived until I was being forced to: all art – whether it is ceramics, painting, or poetry – is a path. It’s a path, not a career, and it takes you where you need to go. I thought my path was to stop. I searched for where I needed to go somewhere else. I thought about being a political activist… all kinds of things. But I was wrong. The mind reacts to obstacles, but the feet and the heart just keep going.” She returned to clay in 2012, feeling a meditative calm, and took it as matter having vibration. She emphasized the “path” as being the center of her being. “Check your pride,” she said. Now, her workshops take on a whole new path. The attendees take notes, then she reviews them; she reflects on her teaching by taking each footnote, each candid remark in the margins to be a second voice, one that informs her subsequent lesson, and discussion. Painting was the last art form she returned to. She was worried that it would be too difficult, but she missed painting terribly; in her own words, she was “starved for the experience of color and the impact of what I had been doing and seeing when I painted.” After trying to paint again, she saw that the tremors were causing her hand to make marks where they were not intended. One day my husband said, “Why don’t you take a class?” The same day, she saw an advertisement for an abstract painting class in Davis. She enrolled. That’s where she had an idea: she would stop trying as hard. To be less rigid, she now uses Henri Matisse’s old trick of tying the brush to a long stick. She liked the painting she created, and it resulted in a poem the very next day.
We gazed at the beautiful painting, and listened to Ms. Connor read the poem. It appeared to us, and offered a gentle punctuation at the end of Ms. Connor’s telling of her personal story. Julia Connor, Board Member, Sacramento Poetry Center, 22 years: After receiving the news that she would serve as Poet Laureate of Sacramento starting in 2005, Ms. Connor decided to resign from the Sacramento Poetry Center Board to devote her time to the Poet Laureate position. When looking back at the early years with SPC, Ms. Connor recalled, with vibrancy, a shared bottle of wine between her, and friends Pat Grizzell, and Mary Zeppa. She recalled those stressful days, times when they would wonder if the organization could withstand the challenges ahead. Those were the early days when they would cut out and paste the publications together, their hands on assemblage of words – ideas took place. She has many strong memories of the Sacramento Poetry Center, but now thinks of the evolution of the organization with great pride: it is no longer in the stages of initiation; it is substantial. “When I walk into SPC, I think, this is substantial; it’s not going to go anywhere. Back then, we were in the initial phases; there was no history, no backing, no reputation. Now, it has a past, an archive. A person’s contributions and the nourishment they get from the poetry community changes over time.” In the next ten to fifteen years, Julia Connor hopes the Sacramento Poetry Center will create a Residency Program, where a notable poet can come and stay for several weeks. They could temporarily reside in the “Poet House”, attend events, and give readings, workshops, and classes. Our eyes glazed over in contemplation of what had been shared. Julia Connor watched us put our notebooks and pens away; without our knowing, Ms. Connor had changed our little world in that abundant haven. Her hand-molded art, her drops of gentle flowers, the sound of the gurgling fountain echoing in the background, was the fulfillment our morning.
Julia Connor will be teaching poetry at the Surprise Valley Writing Workshop in September.
Interviewers: Alysa Joerger and Rhony Bhopla
Farewell to Francisco X. Alarcón, Sacramento, California — Betty Sánchez
Driftwood at Nuevo Vallarta, Nayarit, México — Betty Sánchez
Agave at Mismaloya Jalisco, México — Betty Sánchez
The Diver at Bucerías Nayarit, México — Betty Sánchez
Morning Glories, 26th St. — Jane Blue
Mustard Near Napa — Jane Blue
A Piece of Pie ― Tamara Lee Standard
Bouquet of Roses ― Peter Spencer
PHOTOGRAPHERS Betty Sánchez, Sutter County resident, amateur photographer; enjoys traveling and documenting her travels with photographs. Jane Blue is primarily a poet who likes to take photographs. She has been published since the 1970s in quite a few places, both print and online, including anthologies, books and chapbooks. A new book of poems, Blood Moon, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2014 and is available onAmazon. A photograph of hers was chosen for the cover of Tule Review in 2012. She was born and raised in Berkeley, California but now lives near the Sacramento River with her husband, Peter Rodman. Tamara Lee Standard, Modern Mystic Yoga Academy founder and director, is always looking for ways to express beauty, transformation and transcendence, whether it be through yoga or art. http://modernmysticyoga.com Peter Spencer fell in love with photography in college and has been nurtured by it ever since. Photography, like poetry, requires focus and attention in uncovering what is apparent, but not always clear or understood. He is currently at work on a series of abstract images with Viola Weinberg’s poetry in a series titled “The Ghosts of Electricity.”