TABLE OF CONTENTS Family Stories: What We Pass On ...................... Alene Bikle Chicken in Black Bean Sauce ............................... Carol Lem Soup Bowl .................................................... George Manner Thanksgiving ............................................... Gary Thompson Calling Billie Jean ............................................... Verlena Orr Odysseus of D Street .................................... Kimberly White Despair is Awfully Slimming ..................... Richard Barnhart After A Drowning ............................................... Alene Bikle Irregular Breathing ........................................ George Manner Private ............................................................ Taylor Graham Safeway......................................................... Loren Chandler Rene’s Confessions ............................................. Suzan Jantz What’s Left Behind .......................................... Shawn Pittard Keeping Time ................................................... Cari Wieland Stewarts Point Store ......................................Toni Chisamore Imagine the Dark ..............................................Laverne Frith Overkill ............................................................. Stan Zumbiel Bedridden .................................................... Joseph R. Phelan Smoke and Mirrors ........................................... Cari Wieland After Parting .................................................... Shawn Pittard Divorce Dog.......................................................... Gary Short Bearing Witness ............................................... Thomas Aslin Swallowed........................................................ Irman Arcibal The Zipper Man ........................... Lisa Dominguez Abraham Separation at 70 MPH .................................... Taylor Graham 2619 Van Ness Blvd ....................................... Don Schofield The Patience Arm .......................................... Diana Henning Upstream ........................................................ Taylor Graham Autumn Song ...................................................... Suzan Jantz Rain Forest ....................................................Toni Chisamore Contributor’s Notes ................................................................
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Family Stories: What We Pass On Alene Bikle . . . and then we kept going, and even as the dark approached which usually meant just twelve more hours or three time zones, east to west, until daylight, but sometimes too a civil war, a parent’s feud. The pilot calls it heavy air: there’s comfort in our narrow seats, in past erased by clouds and wind, and when we packed your mother’s house--her china, clothes, some photos, books--we chose only what would keep us going.
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Chicken in Black Bean Sauce Carol Lem I can make chicken in black bean sauce, the only Chinese dish I watched my mother prepare. She rinsed the black beans in a small bowl, her fingers cupping the top to save the morsels from slipping through. Finely slicing the garlic, she sang along with Frank Sinatra, scratchy grooves spinning “From Here to Eternity.” With chopsticks and a little wine she crushed the garlic into a black bean paste, then placed the chopped ginger and onions on separate plates. In the sizzling wok, everything crackled as she stirred in the chicken and called me over to turn the flame low. I was ten, tall enough to see over the rim her artistry. Soon I would be twenty then forty, gone and back to take my place at the stove, while she sat at the kitchen table humming the old tunes, still instructing me. Now that she’s gone, I buy black bean paste from a jar, slice the ingredients over a skillet made in France. Sinatra shines from a CD, no cracks or pops. But the voice is the same, as is my mother’s, chiming “keep the flame low.”
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Soup Bowl George Manner I admit the inner surface of a soup bowl holds both the notion and fact of soup. I contend the outer layer is an imperfect memory of matched beggar’s palms from way back when desire was the same as need.
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Thanksgiving Gary Thompson After Dad’s quick toast, after my lordlessand-looneytoons blessing about the missing (newly-dead father-in-law, snowbound daughter, and good-husband brother), and after the children finished sticking olives on each finger, after the cranberries were cornered at the far end of the table, and after the first fork hit the floor and the first spill of milk, after everyone said yum with their mouths— full of whatever made them say it, and after carving the second side of turkey to keep up with the teens, after the green bean dish circled the table twice and still looked untouched, after the gravy was gone, after the kids were excused, after the adults yawned and went drowsy, Mom said the same thing, the same sentence, the exact same words she had said a few seconds before— after the silence, after the shared looks, after the concern hushed over us, we said nothing, we who love her, we who are of the same mind as her.
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Calling Billie Jean Verlena Orr In shades of red, our voices rainbow a thousand miles. Because it’s so far we shout our poems, believe them toll free. We echo carmine and vermillion, our blood magenta. This sky melts to one red, falling from rose to fuchsia. Our husbands will pay. We secure the ends of the line. Sister poetisa, our bridge arches the long span, holds us over the facts in our lives.
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Odysseus of D Street Kimberly White He has wandered concentric streets scattering his saga in leprous bits for the poets to pick up gathering his jewels in plastic tarps and shopping carts led by a siren song no one else hears the years in his beard hold the sagas the poets will never tell He follows Aeolian winds through clapboard canyons and chain-link alleys treasure bags hung from his shopping-cart ship stalks the clattering birds for the weather reports and neighborhood myths navigates by streetlamp stars and passing headlight comets the hissing leaves of urban trees fill his dusty head with the loose crumbs of the streets calling the tones of lover gods he will chase without looking to see if they’ve found him at night, it’s another world every sidewalk crack yawns wide to devour his ship suspicious nightbird eyes glow otherwordly red and other things fly across the moon city windows look upside down in night light 6
blind to his quest for a dry porch to hide him from the things the poets cannot name He will wander decaying streets until he himself has decayed beyond the reach of the birds coaxial time lost upon itself and his ghost eyes closed, still sailing D street.
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Despair Is Awfully Slimming Richard Barnhart I wear the same black t-shirt everyday Not the same one exactly, but the same kind To those who ask why, I often reply, can’t you see how dark and creepy I am? My sadness overwhelms Ok maybe not quite Except this one time at the mall The darkly pale register girl at the Hot Topic Said that I was weirding her out Because I never smiled I guess I just don’t feel like smiling sometimes L At my school there is this girl I know Mellon collie cherub, coal hair, powder face, blood lips Queer little Snow White in leather and fishnets I think about her when I’m alone In my dreams she lays close while we sleep . . . And now if I may, I would like to take a moment to present an evil haiku Marilyn Manson He serves pancakes with love to Bed ridden hobos My life is a horrible sucking black hole of crud I stand at the edge of the abyss Upwardly Mobile upon a downward spiral I forgot to do laundry all of my bath towels soiled I had to dry off with a black t-shirt
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After A Drowning Alene Bikle When the salmon are running, I think of how we went to get your car in the parking lot, that little car you loved, blue as the sky in a spell of quiet days, finding your gray jacket draped over the seat, forgotten in your hurry to grab your gear, board the boat, catch the tide while the Bar was calm. It was waiting like an old dog waits, while the sun moved over the day, while the others loaded their fish and departed, waiting through a sunset showing off for the tourists, until the light dimmed and it sat alone in the parking lot, waiting for your return, your satisfied fish-stink smell, and growing emptier and emptier.
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Irregular Breathing George Manner We share bodies if not love, feather touches if not tenderness, irregular breathing if not passion. If there were a metaphorical bird winging between our hearts it would be harried --- a cubist carrier pigeon out for exercise. We are rug burns, swollen lips, our tongues simple meat. I am developing a taste for your armpit salt. We’re latticed with muscles that open only to close, close to open. We carry out our missions against the other in the ever-present: our bodies shine, targets in the dark.
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Private Taylor Graham I left the expurgated lines in the motel trash. Those passages that wouldn’t fit in a poem, that itched until I scratched them out. Lines like “a closure/ pressure building, then released” and “the moon gave chase.” A page of maverick phrases. And I wonder what the woman who comes in uniform will think, shoving her heaped cart trailing soiled sheets and dingy towels? Will she look for a tip under the bed? an almost-empty bottle of cologne some traveler left? a dollar bill that slipped behind the door? Will she find those lost lines in the basket and take them home? Will they sing to her a poem in the dark?
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Safeway Loren Chandler We could almost hear the trees fall and the groans of the earth giving up another barrel of oil when the clerk said ‘‘paper or plastic?’’ If he were here Frost would say it’s a “fresh think” about the end of it alloil or trees and us standing here impatient
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Rene’s Confessions Suzan Jantz 1965 I kissed a boy today, She says--Clell Lightner- On a dare, With her shirt up. They were inside A cardboard refrigerator box In his father’s backyard, she says, And he sme1led like weeds: Like when we crawled Under the orchard fence To hunt for snakes. 1986 Before the divorce, she says, Ricky Maze pinned her After work one day-Hard-Against the bathroom wall At LuLu’s. She didn’t push back: Just grabbed her apron, Waited. Then went right back To the kitchen, washing Chicken-fried steak and gravy Down the drain. 2001 She’s been seeing a woman: Evian Sky, she says. Not her real name, But exotic, And exciting-Like when we held hands, She says, and dunked In that cove of water Behind Nojoqui Falls. We didn’t know how to swim, Remember? And we stripped To lay on Symbol Rock, Naked in the sun.
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What’s Left Behind Shawn Pittard A red pipe burnished by his thumb. A gold watch silvered by his pocket. Five wooden nickels he gave his grandchildren. The family tree scribed in the illuminated Bible. My faith buried in the bone and ash of my grandfather’s belief – sealed inside a metal box in the shade of a palo verde tree.
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Keeping Time Cari Wieland Your heartbeatsteady, solid, reminiscent of your heavy footsteps on the day you marched into my life, a man on a mission to sweep me off my feet, carry me over the threshold of our new life together. Your heartbeatÂdependable, reassuring, quietly thumping away in the background like a soundtrack, evoking memories of the tall grandfather clock in my childhood home; passed down from some forgotten ancestor, it stood sentinel, ticking away the minutes of my youth. How many beats can we share before one of us runs down, keeping bad time, and can’t be wound again?
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Stewarts Point Store (for Tom) Toni Chisamore I miss picnics on the road eating salami out of the package, your fingers reaching into the sticky sweet pickle juice, stretchy white bread soft enough for dough balls from Stewarts Point store. You loved that store. Someday we’ll go back again you and me together. We’ll scatter and drift and float on the wind settling into frothy waves to ride the riptide out to sea behind the weathered white emporium.
You wanted to buy it, you would say, when you retired. Swap stories with tourists traveling the backroads, sell treasures from your one-room inventory, peppers in jars; wine and cheese; bait; fishing nets; hardtack; hairspray; and shrimp the size of fists wrapped in glossy wax paper. You would climb the ladder in the backroom for hammers and nails, squeeze behind the counter for gum and chocolate bars and maybe, just sit on the porch in that squeaky old rocker on slow days.
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I miss eating with a knife, pinwheels dripping cookie crumbs onto the seat between my legs, and watching you crawl out onto the hood with Windex and a red rag. I miss sharing your red-leather world of diesel smoke and Dwight Yoakum. Staring through innocent glass to watch the sun play hide and seek with the water I miss the sound of your voice kissing my face.
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Imagine The Dark Laverne Frith as you would a child that has not learned to give the night its distance. Imagine it as something that has waited for the longest time to sate its hunger. Fear it as you would a wide-mouthed beast, let it linger undisturbed behind its curtain as long as you can, as long as your day will last, for nothing can guarantee the night. So when you finally must engage it, listen in the dark for the sign it will give you, and learn to release your fear as you would a butterfly, gently, letting it fly away. Look within the night for circles of light, the occasional luminosities that will reassure you, hold you for another day.
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Overkill Stan Zumbiel “... Tomahawks did not always hit their targets. After the August 20 strikes, President Clinton had had to call Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif to apologize for a wayward missile that had killed several people in a Pakistani village. Sharif had been understanding, while commenting on American ‘overkill.”’ [The 9/11 Commission Report, page 134] A child sleeps in his hard bed dark desert sky open to dreams: running free on sunlit mountain trails, village roofs jumbled below like spilled stones, bright rivets of stars. An old woman prays for long life for her grandchildren: “Let them not be beset by disease or famine. May the sun shine on their faces and even their play bring glory to your name.” A young woman prepares a late night supper for her husband— flower petals remain scattered in the corners from bridal bouquets. He looks at her over a folded newspaper; she disorders her rough skirt a little at the ankle— vegetables are left unchopped on the table. A man, white whiskers close to his face, sits over coffee at an outside table. The moon projects his shadow against the whitewashed wall his face creased with smiles at a thought so funny his eyes shine.
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Bedridden (for JJ) Joseph R. Phelan Her breathing hoarse as raven’s cries fills my ear, pressed against the warm and sweaty phone I hear JJ’s bed rustle like wings birds in flight migrating across a mirage ocean outside my living room window Stellar Jays, wild turkeys, robins, a pair of California quails, and that unknown white breasted spotted large bird, again. “my dream life opens the window . . . haven’t eaten in a month, can you believe it?” I can’t I search for avian names in the book she gave me, Christmas 1999 when her legs held her upright before she phoned and named the cancer, pancreatic, that uninvited, invaded “. . . brown leather jacket . . . , the one with fringe,” she tells me, 1966 I recall tree swallows - I think and a male northern flicker dig for grubs in a rotted tree stump
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“I give myself the right to freak out if the pain gets too bad,” she reminds me, I’d promised to help her leave . . . eddies of baby quails circle around their mothers, there’s always one that stays behind her words slur like the cooing of doves - songs run together morphine memories I look at the phone and wish I could reach through the miles of tangled wires switches clicking on and off like the gnawing termites that downed the Cypress outside my window and stroke her falcon face just two months ago we examined our appointment books searching for time she’d promised me a Thanksgiving dinner for my birthday turkey stuffed with homemade cornbread and water chestnut stuffing tonight I watched the moon slide down disappearing behind the Douglas firs.
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Smoke and Mirrors Cari Wieland I find myself avoiding mirrors, darkened windows, the eyes of everyone I can’t bear to see myself reflected the way you say you saw me
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After Parting Shawn Pittard The brittle smell of sycamore leaves eases through our house. Kitchen curtains luff and sway over an open window. Jasmine tea steeps inside a little iron pot. The weight of her hand lingers on my shoulder. Does she feel my body’s heat in her distant palm?
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Divorce Dog Gary Short The dog sighs, worried, tired, the eyes close. The woman stacking CD’s in a cardboard box, looks at the dog and says, “Shasta, don’t you get enough love?” But the dog can’t settle as the household is dismantled. The dog moves in circles around the living room, as the man carries an armful of clothes to his van. And the woman carts a box of books to her station wagon. “It’s OK, it’s OK,” they reassure the dog. The old Dalmatian, same age as their relationship, for years the watery eyes and tears have stained the fur like rust, a leaky faucet drip on white porcelain. The clothes dryer creaks like a honeymoon bed. “Would you mind folding the laundry,” she says, “It could save some time. That big beach towel— you can have it or give it to Goodwill.” He stacks plates on the kitchen counter. “Did you take the big blue bowl?” he says, ‘‘I wanted that.” Silence. Then she says, “I’ll trade you two yellow bowls for the large blue one.” “Whatever,” he sighs. “Forget it,” she replies. He looks at the dog and says, “Do you need some love?” The dog trembles. “We should decide about the good wine glasses,” she calls from the back room. “I mean it’s silly to have just three. One of us should keep six.” Divorce, is a sad dog. Goodwill or you can have it. Who gets enough love?
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Bearing Witness Thomas Aslin After arson fire swept through our sanctuary, I was told God kept vigil anywhere we welcomed Him on bent knee. I learned one gilded chalice and a plaster cast statue of the virgin were saved. Always, I confused the mess of snakes at her feet, crawling over burgeoning continents and seas, for flesh made evil. Once I thought the evil in others was made manifest in their lives. I will never recall who first said your mother has cancer, though everything you might imagine was whispered to give comfort, as if that would cure all that ailed me. Alone in church or in chapel at school, I prayed to Padre Pio who lived in a small monastery, shrinking the goiters of the poor and clearing their consumptive lungs, to come lay hands on my mother and make her well. Why fear the dying? A life winds down. Tumors metastasize and grow. Thin skin pales, then mottles. I hope I have forgiven myself for living on. And though my fears are assumed in my dreams, I have come to love again sunlight that passes through window panes, wind that reveals itself in what moves, and stars (the shop-worn machinery of the heavens) that skew light from there to here, to kingdom come.
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Swallowed Irman Arcibal He picks up a stick of compressed charcoal, plunging into the paper with the same impetus that compels a child to jump into a puddle. Some strokes are heavy, pouring black dust into the pits of the page; other particles delicately cling to the sheet like drops of water dangling from the edge of a roof. The paper is a storm drain, swallowing him as he scrapes and scratches the charcoal stick across the surface. He rubs the dust into the page the way a waterfall caresses rock. The powder saturates his fingers like rain-soaked socks and pant leg bottoms. He wipes regions of the sheet with a chamois, lifting dark and leaving gray. With an eraser, he slices in streaks of light, like sun rays that poke through cumulonimbus. Inhaling the dust, breathing it in so deeply his tongue tastes its bitterness, until the storm drain spits him out.
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The Zipper Man Lisa Dominquez Abraham His card reads technician, not tailor, a master who welcomes the ripped made tough enough to be saved. A tackle box of top stops and sliders salvaged from jackets too threadworn for Goodwill is wedged between cones of industrial thread, the dark blues and tans of coveralls and duffle bags. Strong thread none of the cheap modern crap. His early life as a big shot engineer made him a genius at fabrication, but a car accident and broken neck proved to him the trick is in repair in not being too proud to wear scars or follow a passion your friends can’t understand. The fin’s in the puzzle, piecing together sections that don’t fit neat, a craft that will end in this small shop. Old tools and a radio, there’s no apprentice left. Even so, he grins showing teeth of a zipper made right, the links hooking smooth and tight.
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Separation at 70 mph Taylor Graham How could I lose someone I’ve traveled with for almost 30 years? the two of us, for once in separate cars, four lanes bound the same direction; but oh, the variables of interchange and exit. You say you can practically read my mind. How could you not know I’d have to stop for gas? Or did you have to stop too? and where? and why? flat tire? surely not a crash . . . How many vehicles per second slip beneath this concrete overpass at Exit 37B? What’s my chance of spotting a white Toyota in a dizzy speeding flow of white SUVs, 18-wheelers and delivery vans? Are you ahead of me, accelerating to catch up? Or still behind, no matter how fast I drive? Will two old lovers on their parallel lines ever meet before the final destination? What city? What’s the name of the motel? How did you ever find me in the first place? And what the odds I’d ever find you?
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2619 Van Ness Blvd Don Schofield Even then, 1957, that house was crumbling, plaster falling from its ceiling like pages from a book. Yet here, in this photo on the front lawn, it’s Sunday, I’m eight-years-old forever, arms around that mother hard and straight as a door. House, was it you I loved? If I could know just half your thoughts, embrace your long gone warmth like the ivy climbing your walls . . . house that towers in memory, strong and beautiful, you who saw us fall from love, that world come unhinged, tell me: was the swamp-cooler’s mournful drone her despair or yours? the cuckoo’s insistent, oracular song? the brooding of ballerinas on her disheveled dresser as all along your papered walls that horse and carriage raced headlong into a darkening forest . . . ? O house, keep holding on, so I can, to Sunday, to love, to 1957, that bright grey lawn.
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The Patience Arm Diana Henning When I wear short sleeved shirts my scar smiles up at me, little darling, cryptic offender, reminder of my blind insistence when you wanted to catch a movie just released, so alone I cleared debris from our back yard, messes the sellers left: old fence posts, half-buried bottles, wire so old and rusted it snapped. The fire of burned things roared, burn permit in my pocket, but when I impatiently thrust a post too heavy onto the flames, unbeknownst to me, an imbedded nail cut open my flannel shirt, and underneath a perfect incision, neat as any surgeon makes; and only slowly did it bleed, as though the wound itself longed to drag the drama out, while I, a curious onlooker asked, who did this happen to? which character is this? —not believing my own body had opened before me to reveal the fine packed blood which, at first, seemed backed up, then gushed down my arm. Only then did I feel faint, head for the house where I bound the wound, rested on the sofa so as to look thoroughly injured upon your return, wistful you might regret not helping out, but no, you only inquired what’s for dinner?
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Upstream Taylor Graham You travel mostly at night. It’s easier that way— who can tell by truck-stop light and the soft green glow of an instrument panel if one’s features are French or Cree? Your destination’s still not clear. Road maps draw you town to town, east and north, guiding on a constellation you used to call Rough Rider, years before you learned those Cowboy-Indian games had you shooting at yourself Your parent died without telling their child her heritage: the quarter of your blood that runs true red. Somewhere in Canada the streams converge. Now, your own child grown, you carry him in spirit. Sacajawea of the four-lane, you bear his future toward your ancestors’ past, traveling among foreigners; foreign to yourself. Inside, so much unexplored territory. North and east, moving upstream against and with the blood.
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Autumn Song Suzan Jantz See how the world Comes to you In breaths of wind Blowing early maple leaves Across your path. Magenta thistle fades To brown. Fallen fruits Of peach, apple, plum, signal The coming of cold. Stripped Corn stalks break Beneath the moving Plow. Beneath the wooden Bridge, creek water Trickles a cantata On quartz. How good it is-足 My lover, my friend-足 To be with you Now: before life, After all, slips slowly Into frozen winter mute.
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Rain Forest Toni Chisamore Quetzalcoatl’s city rises from subterranean labyrinths where rain is born and wild orchids drip from every tree. I listen to my heart breathing in your scent exhaled from the heat of my body inside your shirt. I imagine you where Toucans, Parrots, and Scarlet Macaws explode over dripping branches like brilliant bursts from a paintball gun; where Mayan ancestors whisper in the mist begging bountiful blessings from indifferent gods. For a brief moment I dwell with you in the temples above the sky, my nose pressed against the wiry warmth of your face. Lightheaded in the altitude of your kisses I stagger against the emptiness that pervades inviting the intoxication that harbors numbness. Bombay Sapphire over ice stirred with tonic, a squeeze of lime conjures up archaic chants of sacrificial desire copulating in the ancient dust that permeates the sanctity of caves. I am lost where raindrops become tears, trailing your footsteps through a civilization devoured by hunger for Mayan Gold.
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Contributor’s Notes: Irman Archibal, a r esident of Vallejo, gr aduated fr om Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in Biological Science and now studies art at Solano. Thomas Aslin lives in Seattle; unlike Philip Levine, he continues to work at a stupid job. His A Moon over W ings is looking for a publisher. Richard Barnhart is an English major at SCC. He cur r ently r esides with his wife and two children in the bushes outside your house. They might be hungry — why not bring them something to eat? Alene Bikle lives in Sacr amento and has published wor k in the New York Times, Poetry Motel and Rattlesnake Review. Loren Chandler is a for mer SCC student with cour ses in How to Take Care of Water; a UC Davis graduate with courses in California’s Rivers and Streams and The World’s Oceans; a graduate of CSU Fresno’s writer’s workshop with absolutely no courses dealing with water in any form. Toni Chisamore has wr itten a non-fiction article for Just A bout Horses and had cowboy poetry published on-line at the BAR-D Ranch site. She is a previous contributor to Suisun V alley Review. Lisa Dominguez-Abraham has wor k in T ule R eview and T ertulia Magazine as well as work forthcoming from Main Street Rag. Laverne Frith co-edits the poetry journal Ekphrasis and is the author of the chapbooks In the Translated Day (White Heron Press 2004) and In a Fast Food Place (Talent House Press 1999). Taylor Graham’s poems have appear ed in A merica, Grand Street, The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly and elsewhere. She is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. Dianna Henning holds an M.F.A. in wr iting fr om Ver mont College. She has published in many journals including Crazyhorse, The Louisville Review, Peregrine and The South Dakota Review. Her new book is The Tenderness House (Poet’s Corner Press 2004). Suzan Jantz is a cr eative wr iting student at CSU Chico. Her wor k has appeared in W atershed and Sinister W isdom. Carol Lem is the author of Shadow of the Plum and she teaches writing at East Los Angeles College. George Manner teaches cr eative wr iting in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work has been published in Shenandoah, Gulf Coast, Glimmer Train Stories and the Texas Review, among others. His book, My View Of The Mountain, was published by Red Wing Press in 2004. Denay Morales, a for mer student at SCC, teaches pr eschool and, besides drawing, designs tattoos.
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Verlena Orr r eceived her M.F.A. in cr eative wr iting from the University of Montana. She lives in downtown Portland and has a new book due from Howlet Press in 2005. Joseph R. Phelan, a for mer editor and contr ibutor to Suisun V alley Review, lives in Mendocino. His poems have appeared in Poetry Now, Kaleidoscope, and Todd Point Review. Shawn Pittard has had poems and stor ies in Cimarron R eview, Confrontation, Salamander and Spillway. His first chapbook of poems, These Rivers, is just out from Rattlesnake Press. Don Schofield has been a r esident of Gr eece for over twenty year s. He is the author of two books of poems, Of Dust (March Street Press, 1991) and Approximately Paradise (U of Florida Press, 2002) and the editor of the newly-published Kindled Terraces: A merican Poets In Greece (Truman State University Press). Gary Short’s second book, Flying Over Sonny L iston, won the Western States Book Award. His third book, 10 Moons and 13 Horses was published in 2004 by University of Nevada Press. Gary Thompson, editor of Cedar House Books, is an “old salt in training aboard his old trawler, Keats.” His latest collection of poems is On John Muir’s Trail (Bear Star). Kimberly White has been published in Primavera, The Tule Review and others. She lives in Sacramento. Cari Wieland is an English student at SCC and this is her fir st published work. When she’s not working, studying, or writing, she dabbles in the performing arts. Stan Zumbiel is active in the Sacr amento Poetr y Center and lives in Fair Oaks, CA. He has taught both middle school and high school in Sacramento.
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