Tipton Poetry Journal #28 by Tipton Poetry Journal

Tipton Poetry Journal

Tipton Poetry Journal Editor’s Note Tipton Poetry Journal, located in the heartland of the Midwest, publishes quality poetry from Indiana and around the world. Sometimes I like to look around and note who our current contributors are and where they are living out their lives. In this issue, there are 5 poets from Indiana, with others from 19 additional states There are 3 from Canada, 2 from Italy, one from Turkey and one from the United Arab Emirates. We are welcoming back nine poets for return visits to our pages (Joan Colby, Colin Dodds, Michael Keshigian, George Moore, Thomas O’Dore, Thomas Piekarski, Timothy Pilgrim, Roger Singer and Alessio Zanelli). The other poets, I assume, may not have known what they were getting into. Please look over their biographies for details. Barry Harris, Editor Tipton Poetry Journal

Cover photo, “Inverted Rosebud,” by Barry Harris The cover photo is of a dome inside the Roofless Church at New Harmony, Indiana. The dome is covered in cedar shingles shaped in folds that look like a draped cloth. Some say the dome is an inverted rosebud which casts the shadow of an open rose. The golden rose was the symbol of the utopian community that founded New Harmony. Copyright 2015 by the Tipton Poetry Journal. All rights remain the exclusive property of the individual poets and may not be used without their permission. Tipton Poetry Journal is published by Brick Street Poetry Inc., a tax-exempt non-profit organization under IRS Code 501(c)(3). Brick Street Poetry Inc. publishes the Tipton Poetry Journal, hosts the monthly poetry series Poetry on Brick Street and sponsors other poetryrelated events.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Contents Richard Boada .................................................................................................................... 1 Joyce Schmid ...................................................................................................................... 2 Joan Colby .......................................................................................................................... 3 John Repp ........................................................................................................................... 4 Claire Oleson ...................................................................................................................... 6 Kristin LaFollette ................................................................................................................ 7 Tory V. Pearman ................................................................................................................. 8 Thomas O’Dore .................................................................................................................. 9 Douglas Cole ..................................................................................................................... 10 Wade Thiel ........................................................................................................................ 11 Timothy Pilgrim ................................................................................................................ 12 Colin Dodds ....................................................................................................................... 13 Sandra Kolankiewicz ........................................................................................................ 14 Ashlie Allen ....................................................................................................................... 15 Thomas Piekarski ............................................................................................................. 16 José del Valle .................................................................................................................... 17 José del Valle .................................................................................................................... 17 Jessenia Class ................................................................................................................... 18 Rony Nair .......................................................................................................................... 19 Anthony Rintala ................................................................................................................ 20 Alessio Zanelli ................................................................................................................... 21 Ron Riekki ......................................................................................................................... 22

Tipton Poetry Journal Bruce McRae .................................................................................................................... 22 Saloni Kaul ....................................................................................................................... 24 Carl Boon .......................................................................................................................... 24 Jessica O. Nguyen ........................................................................................................... 26 George Moore ................................................................................................................... 27 George Moore ................................................................................................................... 27 Phillip Rodenbeck ............................................................................................................. 28 Christopher Stolle ............................................................................................................. 30 Robert Weibezahl .............................................................................................................. 31 John Garmon .................................................................................................................... 32 Jessenia Class ................................................................................................................... 33 Yvonne Jayne .................................................................................................................... 34 Roger Singer ..................................................................................................................... 35 Will Walton ....................................................................................................................... 36 Casey Rose Shanahan ...................................................................................................... 37 Kristin LaFollette.............................................................................................................. 38 Mike Wade ........................................................................................................................ 39 Lee Landau ....................................................................................................................... 40 John P. Kristofco .............................................................................................................. 41 Richard Boada .................................................................................................................. 42 Joan Colby ........................................................................................................................ 43 Biographies ....................................................................................................................... 44

Tipton Poetry Journal

Record Breaking Heat Richard Boada The new cat sharpens his claws on furniture like a welterweight, flares of druidic enterprise conducted in pawing jabs. He sheds everywhere and gnaws at the hibiscus brought in from freeze that never came, its flowers stunned and recessed. My toddler in the other room must resent me and the plastic mattress cover that sticks to his naked limbs and back. In bed most of the time, I sweat through sheets, but thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a new binary â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the cat instead of my wife sleeps on my chest and he sharpens his claws, leaves lobes of blood where he walks and kneads at night. Previously published in Bayou Review and in The Error of Nostalgia (Texas Review Press, 2013)

Richard Boada earned his doctorate from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. His book of poems, The Error of Nostalgia was published by Texas Review Press in 2013. His chapbook, Archipelago Sinking, was nominated for the 2012 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Book Award. His poems have appeared in RHINO, Crab Orchard Review,. Yalobusha Review, Jabberwock Review, and The Louisville Review among others. He teaches Creative Writing at Millsaps College and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Memphis.

Tipton Poetry Journal

The Smiler Joyce Schmid Sitting in her living room and smiling, chatting about the grandkids, she emulates a life. Her smile is beautiful, distracting from the bones demanding to be free of her. She holds a water glass, but does not drink. She cleans her plate of lettuce, gets it down somehow and smiles, and smiles. She says he told the kids to care for her and comfort her, but no one else can care for her or comfort her. She waits for him, just him, to come for her.

Joyce Schmid has poems published in The Harvard Advocate and fort da (Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology). Joyce won the Pushkin Prize two years in a row, awarded by Columbia University for translation of Russian poetry. She lives in Palo Alto, California.

Tipton Poetry Journal

That Old Barn Joan Colby It has stood at the end of the gravel lane For more than a hundred years. Splashed Crimson regularly by an itinerant painter, Shoveled clean of manure Each spring, shingled every three decades. Now like an aged uncle abandoned To a cheap nursing home, it declines. Hinges rusted, door flapping, Skin peeled like red potatoes, Canting in the wind as the rubblestone Foundation shifts, and most Ominously, holes in the roof where raccoons Nest and swallows fly in and out. When the roof goes, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the final Intimation, like that uncle who stops eating And fingers his bedclothes as if practicing Sums of subtraction. The winter gales Hook under the rafters, tug the beams. The home restorers eye the heart pine planks As the farmer turns his face away And lets the weather do its work.

Photo Credit Joan Colby

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), , Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers, The Atrocity Book and her newest book from Future Cycle Pressâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Dead Horses. FutureCycle has just published Selected Poems. Her book, Ribcage, won the 2015 Kithara Book Prize from Glass Lyre Press.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Ralph Pierce John Repp Ralph Pierce had more integrity than anyone else in town. He cut keys in his kiosk. Pierce’s Locksmith & Security didn’t last into a second generation near the tiny park where the war memorial crumbled for lack of funds. When a scoutmaster says “Saturday, we’re cooking flapjacks, scratch flapjacks” & one teaches oneself to make scratch batter, he should be telling the truth, especially when the festivities will unfold near the marble doughboy festooned with patriotic bunting. When one is a boy, a Mr. Pierce & his ringing No or Yes makes the lies one tells from waking to sleep lies that cut hot but quick. In that latitude, hamburger packed into camp in July goes bad in minutes but in adventure’s blank white gets fried anyway, rancid butter in the pan, sand on the plate.

A widely published poet, fiction writer, essayist, and book critic, John Repp lives with his wife and son near Presque Isle Bay in Erie, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in many periodicals, including Poetry, Crazyhorse, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His most recent collection is Fat Jersey Blues, winner of the 2013 Akron Poetry Prize (University of Akron Press).

Tipton Poetry Journal

A House of Cards Michael Keshigian He misses those evenings with the lights turned down low, returning home late from a part-time job, his mother at the kitchen table, tight lipped, holding her breath until he entered, her thin fingers interlocked, thumbs rhythmically twirling, finally asking questions that provoked his perspective as she made him a sandwich. The rest of the family slept as he chatted, she listened, feigning a degree of comprehension to give him a sense of security until the grandfather’s clock struck midnight, making them realize the day’s impending fatigue after the twelve count ended. She understood he was not typical, choosing music over movies, philosophy over financial, creativity over commerce, commitment over coercion, and like few others, he will not find comfort within the current standards. But until she entered the silent world of her own mind, she had him convinced he was never alone. Previously published in Illya’s Honey (Summer, 2014) Michael Keshigian’s ninth poetry book, Dark Edges was released in 2014 by Flutter Press. Other books and chapbooks: Eagle’s Perch, Wildflowers, Jazz Face, Warm Summer Memories, Silent Poems, Seeking Solace, Dwindling Knight, Translucent View. He is a 5- time Pushcart Prize and 2time Best Of The Net nominee. His poetry cycle, Lunar Images, set for Clarinet, Piano, Narrator, was premiered at Del Mar College in Texas. Subsequent performances occurred in Boston (Berklee College) and Moleto, Italy. You can visit his website at michaelkeshigian.com .

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The Crêperie

Claire Oleson

It’s a feeling of flour and cream and egg That wheels up behind her pupils In a rusted french food cart. It’s a flush of strawberry in her chest, A smear of butter and light ache of vanilla, That surfaces in her eyes like a buoy on the ocean. It hasn’t got an address, but there’s a look on her face, A switchback-spill of syruped thoughts That congeals into a tenderness And tells you when she’s found it again. I love to take her there, But the feeling’s is hard to find, It always dawdles somewhere between the intersection Of arrogance and powdered sugar Parked in a french slur We can never decipher. To order is to ask if she’s alright With your hands on her shoulders. To receive a folded sheet of warm dough Bloated with the cobalt globes of blueberries And freckled with cinnamon and lemon peel Is to have walked with her down an alley that you adore But won’t ever be able to find again. It’s not a restaurant but a way of being, A tastable but unkeepable Mutter of cream and devotion across the tongue.

Claire Olson is an eighteen-year-old writer hailing from Michigan who will be attending Kenyon College this coming Autumn for studies in English and Psychology. She has had poems and stories published in the Siblíní Art and Literature Journal and Potluck Magazine.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Hemoglobin Kristin LaFollette I won’t eat the red meat for the iron or the protein— Iron is in my genetics, passed down in my family from parent to child, parent to child. My warm blood is red with the minerals of people with dark skin, eyes, hair. They can test you for these things, give you a map of your cells and the continents of your body— My head, an island off of a coast somewhere, is the color of tea granules saturated with water. Kristin LaFollette received her BA and MA in English and creative writing from Indiana University. She is a PhD student in the English program at Bowling Green State University. Her poems have been featured in LEVELER Poetry Mag, Lost Coast Review, The Light Ekphrastic, The Main Street Rag, and Poetry Quarterly, among others. She also has artwork featured in Harbinger Asylum and forthcoming from Plath Profiles: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Sylvia Plath Studies. She lives with her husband in northwestern Ohio. You can visit her at kristinlafollette.blogspot.com.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Hands Measure More Than Horses Tory V. Pearman At fifteen, when he asked for yours, did you know the work they’d have to do? I suppose you may have had some idea when your mother-in-law thrust the rough handle in your face, ordered you to shovel shit in the garden. But, still, there must have been some surprise at the first chicken neck they had to grip and snap, the feathers they plucked amid stench and blood. Your first winter, did they bristle at the pyramid of turds frozen behind the outhouse door? After some time, they found their place. Tired, they turned the washer crank, wrung endless pairs of overalls, mere practice for the pots and pots of beans—enough to fill three silos—they’d stir and the bushels of apples they’d peel and core. Gently, they pinned thin corners into diapers, wiped noses, tied shoes, turned storybook pages, even spent nights turning from the warmth of that same body they held for sixty-seven years, reaching from the bed to the cradle on the floor, until grasped by two tiny fingers. In the evenings, they clapped to the guitar, stitched patches of old shirts into quilts. On Saturdays, they turned the dial on the Philco, let the Opry fill the room. On Sundays, they pressed the organ keys and folded in prayer at the benediction.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Tonight, in your hospital bed, they lie resting against your heart, clasped just so, dreaming of finding their mates when you finally take your seat at that other table.

Tory V. Pearman is an Assistant Professor of English at Miami Hamilton University, where she teaches composition and literature. She has published poetry in San Pedro River Review and Heartland Review, as well as essays on poetry, medieval literature, and gender studies.

The Mantodea Thomas O’Dore lethal are her matins for the mantis she is not praying (with an A) the mantis she is preying (with an E) that pious pose a coiled spring those prayer-folded forelegs a trap this priestess’s spikes conceal beware courting religion else you become the Eucharist

Guys like Tom O’Dore do not have biographies.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Hawaii Mind Douglas Cole the sunlit road to the north coast the white waves coming in blond beaches and the fry shack drifters with matted hair and blown-out eyes on cosmic time on wave we arrive out of cities rattled by television and wandering around in parking lots carrying these heads like bird cages thank god for this escape thank the lead architects the soul-poets who gave us our high-rise view and the blue pools we dip into broken and wasted and from which we rise renewed

Tipton Poetry Journal

Cover Wade Thiel our bodies sprawled across sheets like insurgents across the desert show me which teeth youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve broken taking a bite out of the moments you got to share with the people you miss now that you are here safe in the quiet cornfield state tell me do you love me like you loved them? am I to you as you are to me?

Wade Thiel is a writer and reader. His work has appeared in The Polk Street Review, Daily Love, Inclement Poetry, and Etchings. Originally from Indiana, Wade lives in Chicago.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Tent not taken Timothy Pilgrim Salish Sea inked black below, teated mountains, staggered rows, summits frozen, dolloped white, raw wind wild down ragged slopes, backdropped stars put out by night -campfire cold, hunched alone, love charred, memory iced, tent cloaked in snow. Time to creep inside, breathe out the light, dream of sleep or try to try.

Timothy Pilgrim, associate professor emeritus of Western Washington University in Bellingham and a Pacific Northwest poet with over 250 acceptances by dozens of journals (such as Seattle Review, Windfall, Cirque and The Tipton Poetry Journal), is co-author of Bellingham Poems (2014) and is included in Idaho's Poets: A Centennial Anthology (University of Idaho Press), Tribute to Orpheus II (Kearney Street Books), and Weathered Pages: The Poetry Pole (Blue Begonia Press).

Tipton Poetry Journal

Big Rock Candy Bottom Colin Dodds The ever-quickening jive of the new millennium submerges the thousand years we called home But there are still old bars for the willful antiques who miss our younger days, when everything was old And so I’m here at the Legends Bar and Grill with the Headless Horseman and Mickey Mantle, but no grill, spilling an undisclosed well whiskey onto my seamless polo shirt I speak for hours with men I fear look like me, men like fish trying to explain a long-receded ocean, drinking liquors named for minor pirates and sloppily unfurling the accrued wisdom of a million defective spiritual choices The bottles before us purport to be haunted with the obscure wealth of the dead and the half-abjured magic of the idols Jacob stole from his father-in-law I order another, and drink until I am a child, to whom the next minute matters greatly

Colin Dodds grew up in Massachusetts and completed his education in New York City. He’s the author of several novels, including WINDFALL and The Last Bad Job, which the late Norman Mailer touted as showing “something that very few writers have; a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people.” Dodds’ screenplay, Refreshment, was named a semi-finalist in the 2010 American Zoetrope Contest. His poetry has appeared in more than a hundred eighty publications, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Colin lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Samantha. You can find more of his work at thecolindodds.com.

Tipton Poetry Journal

The Next War Sandra Kolankiewicz Ready or not! For one can never be prepared, the future unknown, a likely path developing as you go, defined stretches only intermittent. So I put out my hand, and it passed through plasma, disappeared up to the wrist until I drew back again, no sign visible on fingers that had just been elsewhere. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s when I knew the only transcendent in the world was the abstract, the rest real as can be expected when there are wormholes and different galaxies. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t worry about the next life as I do about this one, for how does one live in a world on fire with transitory emotions like hate that feel eternal, come attached to rights in this world of three dimensions?

Sandra Kolankiewicz is an Ohio writer whose poems and stories have appeared most recently in New World Writing, BlazeVox, Gargoyle, Prairie Schooner, Fifth Wednesday, Prick of the Spindle, Per Contra, and Pif. Her chapbook, Turning Inside Out, won the Black River Prize at Black Lawrence Press. Last fall, Finishing Line Press published The Way You Will Go. A fully illustrated novel, When I Fell, has just been released by Web-e-Books.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Celery Ashlie Allen Though I grabbed your fingers as you stretched in the celery garden, you did not sense me My countenance, spooky with sadness flushed until the nearby callas were jealous I am a blanched specter, not because of death but because of detachment from twisted affection "Color me." I sighed. "I do not like being rotten." I knew when I closed my eyes I was allowing my misery to seduce me

Ashlie Allen writes fiction and poetry. She is also a photographer. Her work has appeared in Clementine Poetry Journal, Gone Lawn, Burningword and others. Ashlie lives in West Virginia.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Aperture Thomas Piekarski On a gray day beside the bay Janice glides glibly across the tacky apartment parking lot, black nylons tight, chartreuse embossed cap pulled down over eyebrows, face meticulously Maybellined, crosses the road Seven Eleven or bustâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; earbuds fixed, flails arms wildly, obviously not keyed in on Andres Segovia or such soppy muzakâ&#x20AC;Ś Thankful my old friends the sea lions have reemerged just beyond the buoys. Pelicans preen in tandem upon whitewashed rocks they aptly share with an assortment of shorebirds. Wimpled wavelets minty green, whisper as if wintering on an inward tide where otters floss afloat on sticky seaweed.

Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry and interviews have appeared in Nimrod, Portland Review, Kestrel, Cream City Review, Poetry Salzburg, Boston Poetry Magazine, Gertrude, The Bacon Review, and many others. He has published a travel guide, Best Choices In Northern California, and Time Lines, a book of poems. He lives in Marina, California.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Buffalo José del Valle The way you said it in Italian. The way the front end banged crossing the bridge over the Annaquatucket. The way the bull charged the straggler — an Austrian tourist — in Pamplona, On television, and Tchaikovsky kicked the bucket. How you deal with it. How you cope. How your reason heads like runoff toward the ditch. How the least slight becomes impossible to bear. How you survive, the lane-changing son of a bitch . . . Pressed against the switchgrass and the barbed wire fence, The buffalo scratches. The moon — almost full, an almost empty cup — White like the face in a coffin, immense Behind the thin clouds bunching up On the horizon: it’s intense. Counting change, you decide to eat your poor boy standing up.

The Invention of the Horse José del Valle The elephant in the Alp — the ice & the dung. We never lost one. The goose with the noose of grape vine round her neck — Boiled in wine, the lemon from Burma, tarragon . . . The bomb in the blanket, under the seat in front. Feel free to move around in the cabin. The shrimp cooked to rubber — on crushed ice, in a plastic cup — The paperback from Manhattan, And my cellphone, here — New message: Dear Inge . . . On plane @ last. Escape from NY a close shave. Then I see — I LOST MY RING! My wedding ring — by the sink — in the room in Oyster Bay. Called the manager (Bjorn) — sd bill me, anything . . . When we fly over Pittsburg I’ll wave.

José del Valle is a Cuban-born writer living in Rockville, Rhode Island.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Home Jessenia Class Here is where they lay their firearms down for the night. Here is where they swaddle kisses, send them down rivers full of alligators and settle in limbo for their happiness, and dress like thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hope. Here, here, here. Right in this very spot as your eyes trace these letters and sounds string together in your head to form a concerto all your own. Here is where the dogs come running, here is where they lie flat on their hind legs and whimper, paws crimsoned. Allegro. Sonata. Listen, listen to King Mithridates holding venom in the spaces between his teeth, gasping, clawing at the tears welling in his eyes, willing himself just a little stronger. Here is where he lies his head on velvet, waiting for his enemies, sans fear. Here is where they will try and kill the King. This is where they will fail. Look, look, look. This is the spot where two kids played house and pretended to be in love, with sharp elbows and quick tongues. The kitchen caught on fire. Here is where they spoke soliloquies and watched sighs streak the skies like cirrus clouds. Here is where the Einstein holds the speed of light in the palms of his hands. Here is where the layman opened his mouth and it volcanoed, retching the sea in red, plaguing eyes with burns. Here is where the alligators snapped at the bundle and watched it lift into the sky, into bodiless arms. Encore.

Jessenia Class is an upcoming senior in a small town with a serious Napoleon complex not too far from the Big Apple. She has won the Mayor Award, has been published in Brouhaha Magazine and Autumn Sky Daily Poetry as well as local newspapers, and most recently has won the New Jersey PTA Reflections program for a literature entry of poetry two years in a row.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Sequences Rony Nair the potholes sequester the latest power cuts that envelope new rotting corpses of dogs. dumped in scenes out of Coronado, with a syrian christian context. In terms of morality plays And science represented. By its absences. Or would that be an ask too much? in negating the grounds of beautitude!

Photo Credit Rony Nair

In south asia, saints are annointed by ointment applied as salve once their pasts are re-invented.by Lee-Kwan-Yu type secularists who reinvent secular wheels. In pieces. In peace. In holdouts against believers! The sophomore saints get trained next to the refuse drain where sobriquets and bouquets are washed in leathery rivers that one looks away from like gutter snipe and snot they used to flow once over pipes that once brought the semblance of liquid from dam burts of un-reason. how many days before we have concrete poured over the next water body, the next lake how many days before we have sealants for our souls! Rony Nair, 41,works an oil and gas Risk Management and Quality professional based out of Dubai. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been 20 years in oil and gas since starting off as an Industrial engineer a long time ago. Ronyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work previously appeared in Semaphore, Ogazine, Two Words For, New Asian Writing, Yellow Press Review, 1947, and others. He was a published columnist with the Indian Express and is also a photographer about to hold his first major exhibition. Rony has been profiled by the Economic Times of Delhi and has also written for them.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Smokies

Anthony Rintala

Old stone blade's mossed dull, but still incises clouds, guts sun, and drops hazy entrails which roil. The swole egg of the belly, cracked, spills brass across the slope in coils. The olde wyrd is not at play here. The Smokiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; edges are too sharp to fear the trammeling wheel. Here, the land pins down the sky, pinching it so like crimped tin, it tears. Burst, the sun runs stone cheeks. Before, the stars were sheep penned, but what's corralled shall be fled, will run scatter through the steel field. Fog is left to peel like shorn flock.

Anthony Rintala, Southern Indiana Review's Media Editor, was trained to write, edit, and teach poetry at the University of Southern Mississippi and Louisiana State University. Before coming to the University of Southern Indiana, he taught at LSU, Texas A&M University, Blinn Community College, and Ivy Tech College, and has edited for Callaloo, New Delta Review, New Tex[t], and Blinn Literary Journal. His work has most recently been published in New Plains Review, Kudzu Magazine, Muse: A Quarterly Journal, Ishaan Literary Review, Oklahoma Review, Copperfield Review, A Few Lines Magazine, Mad Hatterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Review, Foundling Review, Muddy River, Penwood Review, St. Ann's Review, Sakura Review, Avatar Review, Triggerfish, Fieldstone Review, and MidWest Quarterly.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Blue Dahlia Alessio Zanelli Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always been about all that recalls him just, and us all remaining: a withered dahlia stem in a jar on a sill at the back; the do-it-yourself doghouse peeling in a darkened room; the camo ripstop poncho still hanging in the hall. A truly modest tomb. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s funny pictures, mostly black and white, lined on dusty shelves; and paltry fishing prizes, made of hooks and bobs, along with other types too knotty and odd to tell. One hurried crazy ride forever on the edge. A promise hard to sell.

Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English and whose work has appeared in about 150 journals from 13 countries. He has published 4 full collections to date, most recently Over Misty Plains [Indigo Dreams, UK, 2012].

Tipton Poetry Journal

I Hate The Famous Ron Riekki I’d set their fuel-drums on fire, brick their foreheads if I could only wrap up their rich indoor sun and break it into eighty wardrobes. There are those who stumble into shut up. They have their job to do, and by to do, I mean to have sex with, to impregnate work—of course, it’s really the work of others, of Others, of the great orgasm of the dying poor.

Ron Riekki lives in Florida. His books include U.P., The Way North, and Here.

Evictee Bruce McRae You mean the house inside the house. You mean the mythmaker’s lodgings, with its many doors and million windows. Which is the sea under the mountains or a thirteen billion year old light ray. Which is everywhere, like ancient snow. Oh, but why didn’t you say so? You mean the house next door to the nothingness, across the road from the flaming hospital, by the exploding dancehall. 22

Tipton Poetry Journal Where the carbon blobs happily dwell and midnight barks like a dog. Where the spectral sailors are knocking. The house made of bones being broken. The house of minds snapping. The house where the World used to live, until Tragedy stopped by for a while, until Time spat out its toothpick. I remember the blinds in the kitchen coming down hard. Like a fist on a table or satellite crashing. I remember there were walls in the cellar and an angry lightbulb on all night. With vast continents hidden under its floorboards, Mr. and Mrs. Chemical, long dead now, rearranging the grassblades, old toys still in the yard, bejeweled in the glistening rain, the roadway passing filled with the childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lost voices: like a skip-rope-rhyme in my feverish mind. Previously published in The Journal (2009)

Pushcart nominee Bruce McRae is a Canadian musician with over 900 poems published around the world. His first book, The So-Called Sonnets, is available via Silenced Press and Amazon. To see and hear more poems go to BruceMcRaePoetry on YouTube.

Tipton Poetry Journal

The Sage Saloni Kaul Straight upright in position lotus, all those points about he correlates. Within he vanishes, swift enters self, the rising energy exacerbates. Dissociating all himself from time and space, the Sage then levitates.

Saloni Kaul, author and poet, was first published at the age of ten and has been in print since. As critic and columnist, Saloni has enjoyed thirty seven years of being published. Saloni Kaul's first volume, Saloni Kaulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Book of Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Poetry was published in the USA in 2009. Subsequent volumes include Universal One and Essentials All. She is a broadcaster and producer-presenter of radio documentaries and features. Upcoming poetry will appear in Poetry Quarterly, The Horrorzine and Eye on Life Magazine. Saloni lives in Rome and Toronto.

December 1, 1963 Carl Boon The wind crowds the trees. The green-eyed girl looks to the grandfather clock in the corner of the room and closes her eyes. There was a grandfather once, and a clock, and a corner, and a room the wind couldn't touch. She holds her hands very near the sky and waits. Something is bound to happen, someone is bound to speak the words she can't.

Tipton Poetry Journal

In a different language, maybe, and pots of soup making the kitchen pungent, and uncles gesturing here and there in neckties. The clock reads 12:15. They have returned again from churchâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;so quicklyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and the aunts are amazed that the snow hasn't started yet. Then football, then a rattling of forks, bowls. Oh no, a fumble, a voice from the bathroom, a need so weary of death. It is December of leaves dim yellow and three cars have passed since she raised her hands to the sky. Mother calls for everyone to come and eat. The grandfather clock's long chimes sound a disastrous thing few care to contemplate. A President is dead nine days. Father holds a glass of beer. Christmas will be a stupid thing, like math and why the Iroquois faltered. But the soup is so hot, and the world a symphony of sudden things coming.

Carl Boon lives and works in Istanbul, Turkey. Recent or forthcoming poems appear in The Adirondack Review, Posit, and Rain, Party & Disaster Society.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Untitled Piece Jessica O. Nguyen His eyes were weary, his mouth was inquisitive, but with a stroke of his pen, these words were scrawled: Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a Peace about your sadness that is difficult to place. Like an empty harbor, waiting for a ship; or a graveyard waiting for a corpse. Like a flowerbed without flowers, I am without you and you without me â&#x20AC;Ś like that, we quietly undress our skins so we can catch the Sun, or the Disease. Come and lay your head on the crook of my arm; I am but a dead soul, but I am still warm Your beacon of light calls to me there is an air of familiarity I can feel in my bones. Have our souls met before? I am skinless. I have yet to see such words crafted with such artistry for the likes of me. Your warm aura is alluring But Do you not fear me and my chestnut locks, mahogany eyes, and amaranth pink lips?

Jessica O. Nguyen is the co-editor of the Hemetera Literary Journal and her work has been published in Hemetera Literary Journal as well as Sisyphus Quarterly. Jessica currently lives in Massachusetts.

Tipton Poetry Journal

The God Plot George Moore This box ainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t nearly good enough. The old manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lodge would not approve. You need one with satin sheets and silver tassels. This chapel washed in so much grief: who weeps for the names on these plaques, and knows a man only by his missing soul? Fork over the remains of the estate. The physical was always his burning tongue. This much is good to go to the mound. I negotiate with the believers for the State, and wish for no more than ash, and bury their dead in unholy ground.

The Caper Berry George Moore The bud the tongue cannot tell from its flower, green as the little river on Paros, an undiscovered thread through the village of Lefkes. But greener still is this love brewing in the butcher shop. You, the light wine of my time, sunlight inside, sudden, alive. Bud on the end of my tongue. George Moore now lives on the south shore of Nova Scotia. Recent poetry collections include Children's Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry 2015) and The Hermits of Dingle (FutureCycle 2013). Publications include the Atlantic, North American Review, Poetry, and Colorado Review.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Windmills: Indiana Phillip Rodenbeck From the moraine north to the twang, bitten beaches to the belt of soul, halfway between that half, a swath of pinwheels churn: the mark is four miles wide and I have never seen the end. Here, I have seen them. I have seen them in the dark, like gods. Always waiting, unmoved. Blinking. Their gaze is a figment of passing through, a fictional judgment brought to life by myself, conscious of transgression. Towering. They are constant, lofted. I have seen them in the fog, like bathers. Slipping wing from cloud. Porcelain bodies dressed, undressed in rhythm, yet unbidden, moved with wind. O, they are like the women, thought the men, whose women kept them trued to furrows. I have seen them in their pieces, like beasts beneath the sand, unearthed. One blade fills a truck bed, one tooth fills an urn. Tack them to a stem, each plesiosaur fin, through the corn and soybean build a drive-through mausoleum.

Photo Credit David Wagner

Tipton Poetry Journal

But more than these have I seen them in the day, the realist Indiana day, these windmills, stuck straight from green or golden rows, themselves in rows, though fuzzed a little, as cornflowers in a wild-becoming field when the mantle has not passed. The son went in to business. He was tired of the space. O, I have seen them, how old men maneuver at their base. Reluctant. Yet in concert. With the ways. Natural, almost natural, like a prosthetic with nothing to replace.

Not long ago, Phillip Rodenbeck quit his job as a mechanical engineer to start an Indiana-based, one-man watch brand (Visitor Watch Co.) and, hopefully, write more. His poetry has been featured in Caveat Lector, Blood Lotus, and the Max Ehrmann Poetry Competition, which he won in 2012. Phillip published his first book-length collection of poems, Redevolver, in 2014 and currently resides in Indianapolis.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Scavengers Christopher Stolle If we’re ever stranded on a deserted island together, you need to know how I like my tea: sweet, milky, sanguine, squeezing that well-dunked bag dry. If we’re ever the last people remaining on Earth, you need to know where I like to put my hands: around your back, pressing our lips to guide our skin. If we’ve ever the two volunteers sent to explore Mars, you need to know what this means for my dreams: circumscribed, destroying any chance for forgiveness.

Christopher Stolle’s poetry has appeared in more than 100 magazines in several countries, including the United States, Singapore, Canada, Australia, and Japan, and in three anthologies (In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself [1997 and 2002] and Reckless Writing [2012]). Despite being a professional book editor, he recently began a poetry writing resurgence, trying to fulfill a longtime dream of being a writer, but has found some success by publishing two nonfiction books with Coaches Choice: 101 Leadership Lessons From Baseball’s Greatest Managers (2013) and 101 Leadership Lessons From Basketball’s Greatest Coaches (2015).

Tipton Poetry Journal

Yellow Boat Robert Weibezahl Ya no anclará sino en mis duros sueños.—Pablo Neruda

My father had a yellow boat, wooden, cared for, with varnished trim and cleats of shining chrome. A vessel of tidy demeanor. My father rebuilt our house from its fall from grace— clapboard and shingle, a farmhouse once, sturdy with porch and gables. My father lives in a yellow house, careworn if clean, cared for by others, the joists of memory suspect, lost vessel sailing still.

Robert Weibezahl has returned to writing poetry after a long hiatus. He is the author of two novels, The Wicked and the Dead and The Dead Don’t Forget, as well as a number of short stories. He has been a finalist for the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Derringer Award. A columnist for BookPage for more than a decade, his work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Reader, Ventura County Star, Mystery Readers Journal, Bikini, and Irish America, among others.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Pretend John Garmon Pretend I’m in prison For writing bad poems Upstate somewhere A life sentence For weak imagery No chance of parole You are out there In your prosaic life Making the best of it Pretending to be free I’m locked up here With no paper or pen Character is destiny I’ve heard it said Heraclitus was correct It doesn’t take a Greek philosopher Who never did do time To tell me I never step In the same river twice So pretend I’m doing life Far away upstate Barely bearing the winter Glad to be alive Sorry to be held Against my will But it’s all pretend I’m just around The corner here Hoping you will Get past the guards And we can enjoy A conjugal visit

John Garmon has been published by Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Passages North, Paradise Review, Ploughshares, Radius, Open Cell, Bardic Echoes, Happiness Holding Tank, West, BlogNostics, ExFic, Commonweal, Poet Lore, Midwest Quarterly Review, Southern Humanities Review, South Dakota Review, The Oregonian, The Lyric, Forum, Quartet, Painbrush, and others. He is a native Texan, now living in Las Vegas, 75 and still going. He once met Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky, with whom he shares a birthday, May 24, 1940.

Tipton Poetry Journal

A Conversation Between Atheists Jessenia Class Question: When a tree falls in the forest, does it know what sound is? Does it know that it has fallen, with no hope of ever getting back up again - can it even see the forest through its leaves? Your hands are trembling like thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a wind whistling between the spaces in your open hand but the earth is still right now, so still that the poltergeists in my bones are the only ones screaming â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but if I have fallen, and you, you are nowhere to be found, did I even fall? Was there even a revenant, a whisper to be heard?

Tipton Poetry Journal

The Uncaring Yvonne Jayne Your letter never came. I searched your e-mail in my spam folder, I waited by the phone, registered with call waiting, I wrote you a hundred imaginary times, begging your forgiveness for something I did not know I did. Did or didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do? It is the bruising of the words cast out like a net to make sick the herds of innocent sea creatures and sleeping cherubs. You ignore budding life, you are gone, chasing bulging wallets non-complaining hero worship, sitting in decorated beer gardens while I wait, paused for a miracle or a hot cup of tea I am grateful for.

Yvonne Jayne's poetry is published in San Francisco Peace and Hope, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal (Western New Mexico University), To Hold A Moment Still: Harbinger Asylum Anthology of Best Poetry, 2014, The Metaphor, and The Aleola Journal of Poetry and Art. Yvonne lives in Hawaii.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s All About Roger Singer Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a life of folding. Pressed down, gazing into unassuming faces, like clouds, changing and then reshaping. Songs are the blankets of thoughts. Small voices provoke streams of words. Silence opens the eyes to creative volumes. We protect. Holding the candle of our flame close. Opening up too soon could close us down. Dreams tempt us for another night. Its all about who we are when were not who we are.

Roger Singer lives in Madison, Connecticut. He recently published a collection of jazz poems, Poetic Jazz.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Last Visit with a Friend’s Dad Will Walton He was asleep when I got there, in his recliner, his spot, the same spot he’d been in since I was a child, the same endless bowl of pistachios on the coffee table, a new TV blaring the same History Channel World War II documentaries in HD. ‘Well look-a here,’ he said, as he rubbed his eyes. ‘Walton! What’s going on?’ ‘Not much, John.’ I plopped down on the couch, then reached in the bowl & cracked open a shell. There was nothing inside. ‘How about yourself?’ I asked. He was dying of lung cancer— that’s what was going on. Stage 4. The radiation had burned his throat so bad he couldn’t swallow. He’d been eating through a tube for months. He could only speak a few words at a time. He was drowning in oxygen. ‘Not too bad,’ he said, then spat up a wad of black phlegm into a 40-ounce Hardee’s cup. I sat with him a while. Every now & then he’d point up at Hitler & say, You mother fucker. . . Will Walton is thirty-two years old, and currently lives in Georgia. He has a BA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Valdosta State University. Most recently, his poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Quarterly, Lost Coast Review,Waterways, Common Ground Review, IthacaLit, SN Review, The Oddville Press, and others.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Song of a Self-Appointed Mermaid Casey Rose Shanahan Breathing has never come naturally to me. I lived underwater as a child, where I hung, Suspended, and did not have to face the weight Of my own mortal bones. Years beneath the surface taught me to be very good At denying reality– At listening to my lungs scream for air and insisting anyway That I was fine. When the lakes froze in the winter, My heart froze, too, and I learned to turn my arms into rivers That flowed strong, and emptied into a lake far down the drain, Just to feel something through the cold. I decided I was superhuman when I realized being mortal wasn’t working. Being vulnerable wasn’t working. So I was fine, I was more than fine, I was spectacular. I was a faery, I was a princess, I was dying. I spent six years sinking, freezing, And convinced myself that I was a mermaid to protect myself From the realization that I was drowning. When they pulled me out of the water, I hated them for it. I hated myself even more for breathing still. I have only been on the land a short while. There is still water in my lungs; There are still apologies on my lips every day: “Forgive me, body, for I have sinned against you.” But sometimes, at night, I swim out to sea And feel the waves beat against my chest and know I am forgiven.

Casey Rose Shanahan is an 18 year old writer from Connecticut.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Infinite Glass Kristin LaFollette First: We talked about how the ice looked like infinite glass, how our bodies could not survive outside of the Midwest— Second: How I’d felt truly happy, (how long had it been?) the orange sun pumping the missing vitamin D into our skin as we stared at it across fields of mirrors shaped like farmhouses with old barn wood— Third: I meant it when I said I was glad you knew her, my grandmother— I don’t know why it’s so hard to cry in front of you—

Tipton Poetry Journal And last: I smelled summer on you, heard the way the insects sound through a screen door with a porch light on, the air all seed packets and vegetable skin.

Kristin LaFollette received her BA and MA in English and creative writing from Indiana University. She is a PhD student in the English program at Bowling Green State University. Her poems have been featured in LEVELER Poetry Mag, Lost Coast Review, The Light Ekphrastic, The Main Street Rag, and Poetry Quarterly, among others. She also has artwork featured in Harbinger Asylum and forthcoming from Plath Profiles: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Sylvia Plath Studies. She lives with her husband in northwestern Ohio. You can visit her at kristinlafollette.blogspot.com.

You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to shout Mike Wade The third steep of the tea reveals the pure drabness of it All. Thick tea from the first steep shouts in deaf ears, as does the second, though less offensively. How fortunate to have such a thin, whispering, and patient brew from the third trip â&#x20AC;&#x201C; through its weak show, flowers can just be flowers.

Mike Wade lives in Franklin, Indiana.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Me And Lloyd Lee Landau Just me and Lloyd on his second-hand hog two joints trashed us, then time to arrive at Shul only one hour late for Yom Kippur service. Day of Atonement, big time holiday. Everyone searchin’ for sins looks to forgiveness, except for heathens like me. We enter sanctuary foolish, loose, laugh away regrets to looks of censure. We giggle embarrassed under the influence, daring anyone to call us out. Dad snores or mumbles through this bitchin’ service six hours long. Mother glares her board of Trustee’s anger. She dovens a long list of sins meant to capture God’s ear. Mother’s new hat extravaganza, birds of paradise speak in song. Tra-la-la…la...la. No sign of a personal god anywhere— Adonoi, Jesus, Allah, Buddha No sign, not even a reception signal. One thousand voices chant as hyperbole stretches around our sun and its planets, like strings knotted between 1,000 Tallit prayer shawls.

Lee Landau hones her craft in cold, snowy winters of Minnesota to jumpstart her creativity and spark her imagination. She explores family moments and envisions their fractured backstories. Lee’s poems are published or forthcoming in The Monarch Review, Hudson Valley Magazine, Michigan Review, Rockhurst Review, Elsewhere Lit, Vending Machine Press and ICEBOX Journal. Lee was a finalist for the Rosenburg Prize at Poetica Magazine.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Students wait for class…. John P. Kristofco ….like twenty separate instruments, chaotic chorus in their heads, ambition, email, fear, “check engine” in their car; it’s like talking to a stand of teaming trees, as if they’d pay attention, as if I could compete with sun that raised them up at dawn and takes them on a walk across the sky; the universe in Simic’s stone, light that cannot come or go, fish that bump against the rocks, against the glass and space that ever keep us separate. We’ve gathered here by circumstance, on paths set through the woods so we can look but dare not touch the twist of dark and light, branches that might teach us all the sacred song of night.

John P. Kristofco, from Highland Heights, Ohio, is professor of English and the former dean of Wayne College in Orrville, Ohio. His poetry, short stories, and essays have appeared in over a hundred different publications, including: Folio, Rattle, The Bryant Literary Review, The Cimarron Review, Poem, Grasslimb, Iodine, Small Pond, The Aurorean, Ibbetson Street, Blue Unicorn, Blueline, and Sheepshead Review. He has published three collections of poetry: A Box of Stones, Apparitions, and The Fire in Our Eyes. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times.

Tipton Poetry Journal

The Bell Ringer of St. Louis Cathedral Richard Boada Her body recoils like a pistol, spine whips and sluices with each clap on metal, with each boom off dome. The menagerie of tongues and crowns jettisons tolls. Hammers smack bronze curves and skirts. Each bell fatigues, cannon after cannon. She clasps to ropes, bells on pulleys and flat peals over the square. She mouths a dull, bowing, beautiful. Previously published in Bayou Review and in The Error of Nostalgia (Texas Review Press, 2013) Richard Boada earned his doctorate from the University of Southern Mississippi. His book, The Error of Nostalgia was published in 2013. His chapbook, Archipelago Sinking, was nominated for the 2012 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Book Award. His poems have appeared in RHINO, Crab Orchard Review,. Yalobusha Review, and The Louisville Review. He teaches Creative Writing at Millsaps College and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Memphis.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Family Photos Joan Colby Photos of the children fill Tupperware vaults. They were The only grandkids so he lent his Talents despite a proclivity for still Lives or fog-drenched seascapes. The edges curl, hundred of wideEyed infants, little girls in Easter bonnets Or posed with that first two-wheeler. The youngest snap-shirted in cowboy gear Or lounging long-haired with his friends. Who wants them now? He, who took so many Angles of their lives, has been dead For years. And they Capture their own children now on Ipods for another generation To ignore.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Editor Barry Harris is editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal and has published one poetry collection, Something At The Center. Barry lives in Brownsburg, Indiana and is retired from Eli Lilly and Company. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Kentucky Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Grey Sparrow, Silk Road Review, Saint Ann‘s Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Night Train, Silver Birch Press, Hiss Quarterly, Cherry Blossom Review, Flying Island, Lily, The Centrifugal Eye, Flutter, Wheelhouse Magazine, Houston Literary Review, Snow Monkey, Fissure, Awaken Consciousness and Writers‘ Bloc. One of his poems is on display at the National Museum of Sport and another is painted on a barn in Boone County, Indiana as part of Brick Street Poetry‘s Word Hunger public art project. His poems are also included in these anthologies: From the Edge of the Prairie; Motif 3: All the Livelong Day; and Twin Muses: Art and Poetry.

Biographies Ashlie Allen writes fiction and poetry. She is also a photographer. Her work has appeared in Clementine Poetry Journal, Gone Lawn, Burningword and others. Ashlie lives in West Virginia. Richard Boada earned his doctorate from the University of Southern Mississippi. His book, The Error of Nostalgia was published in 2013. His chapbook, Archipelago Sinking, was nominated for the 2012 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Book Award. His poems have appeared in RHINO, Crab Orchard Review,. Yalobusha Review, and The Louisville Review. He teaches Creative Writing at Millsaps College and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Memphis. Carl Boon lives and works in Istanbul, Turkey. Recent or forthcoming poems appear in The Adirondack Review, Posit, and Rain, Party & Disaster Society. Jessenia Class is an upcoming senior in a small town with a serious Napoleon complex not too far from the Big Apple. She has won the Mayor Award, has been published in Brouhaha Magazine and Autumn Sky Daily Poetry as well as local newspapers, and most recently has won the New Jersey PTA Reflections program for a literature entry of poetry two years in a row. Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), , Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers, The Atrocity Book and her newest book from Future Cycle Press—Dead Horses. FutureCycle has just published Selected Poems. Her book, Ribcage, won the 2015 Kithara Book Prize from Glass Lyre Press.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Douglas Cole has had work in The Chicago Quarterly Review, Red Rock Review, Midwest Quarterly, The Adirondack Review, Salt River Review, and Avatar Review. He has published two poetry collections, Interstate (Night Ballet Press) and Western Dream (Finishing Line Press, as well as a novella called Ghost (Blue Cubicle Press). He was recently the featured poet in Poetry Quarterly and was awarded the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry from Western Washington University; the Best of Poetry Award from Clapboard House; First Prize in the “Picture Worth 500 Words” from Tattoo Highway; as well as an honorable mention from Glimmer Train. Currently, he is on the faculty at Seattle Central College. José del Valle is a Cuban-born writer living in Rockville, Rhode Island. Colin Dodds grew up in Massachusetts and completed his education in New York City. He’s the author of several novels, including WINDFALL and The Last Bad Job, which the late Norman Mailer touted as showing “something that very few writers have; a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people.” Dodds’ screenplay, Refreshment, was named a semi-finalist in the 2010 American Zoetrope Contest. His poetry has appeared in more than a hundred eighty publications, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Colin lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Samantha. You can find more of his work at thecolindodds.com. John Garmon has been published by Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Passages North, Paradise Review, Ploughshares, Radius, Open Cell, Bardic Echoes, Happiness Holding Tank, West, BlogNostics, ExFic, Commonweal, Poet Lore, Midwest Quarterly Review, Southern Humanities Review, South Dakota Review, The Oregonian, The Lyric, Forum, Quartet, Painbrush, and others. He is a native Texan, now living in Las Vegas, 75 and still going. He once met Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky, with whom he shares a birthday, May 24, 1940. Yvonne Jayne's poetry is published in San Francisco Peace and Hope, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal (Western New Mexico University), To Hold A Moment Still: Harbinger Asylum Anthology of Best Poetry, 2014, The Metaphor, and The Aleola Journal of Poetry and Art. Yvonne lives in Hawaii. Saloni Kaul, author and poet, was first published at the age of ten and has been in print since. As critic and columnist, Saloni has enjoyed thirty seven years of being published. Saloni Kaul's first volume, Saloni Kaul’s Book of Children’s Poetry was published in the USA in 2009. Subsequent volumes include Universal One and Essentials All. She is a broadcaster and producer-presenter of radio documentaries and features. Upcoming poetry will appear in Poetry Quarterly, The Horrorzine and Eye on Life Magazine. Saloni lives in Rome and Toronto. Michael Keshigian’s ninth poetry book, Dark Edges was released in 2014 by Flutter Press. Other books and chapbooks: Eagle’s Perch, Wildflowers, Jazz Face, Warm Summer Memories, Silent Poems, Seeking Solace, Dwindling Knight, Translucent View. He is a 5- time Pushcart Prize and 2time Best Of The Net nominee. His poetry cycle, Lunar Images, set for Clarinet, Piano, Narrator, was premiered at Del Mar College in Texas. Subsequent performances occurred in Boston (Berklee College) and Moleto, Italy. Michael lives in New Hampshire. You can visit his website at michaelkeshigian.com .

Tipton Poetry Journal Sandra Kolankiewicz is an Ohio writer whose poems and stories have appeared most recently in New World Writing, BlazeVox, Gargoyle, Prairie Schooner, Fifth Wednesday, Prick of the Spindle, Per Contra, and Pif. Her chapbook, Turning Inside Out, won the Black River Prize at Black Lawrence Press. Last fall, Finishing Line Press published The Way You Will Go. A fully illustrated novel, When I Fell, has just been released by Web-e-Books. John P. Kristofco, from Highland Heights, Ohio, is professor of English and the former dean of Wayne College in Orrville, Ohio. His poetry, short stories, and essays have appeared in over a hundred different publications, including: Folio, Rattle, The Bryant Literary Review, The Cimarron Review, Poem, Grasslimb, Iodine, Small Pond, The Aurorean, Ibbetson Street, Blue Unicorn, Blueline, and Sheepshead Review. He has published three collections of poetry: A Box of Stones, Apparitions, and The Fire in Our Eyes. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times. Kristin LaFollette received her BA and MA in English and creative writing from Indiana University. She is a PhD student in the English program at Bowling Green State University. Her poems have been featured in LEVELER Poetry Mag, Lost Coast Review, The Light Ekphrastic, The Main Street Rag, and Poetry Quarterly, among others. She also has artwork featured in Harbinger Asylum and forthcoming from Plath Profiles: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Sylvia Plath Studies. She lives with her husband in northwestern Ohio. You can visit her at kristinlafollette.blogspot.com. Lee Landau hones her craft in cold, snowy winters of Minnesota to jumpstart her creativity and spark her imagination. She explores family moments and envisions their fractured backstories. Lee’s poems are published or forthcoming in The Monarch Review, Hudson Valley Magazine, Michigan Review, Rockhurst Review, Elsewhere Lit, Vending Machine Press and ICEBOX Journal. Lee was a finalist for the Rosenburg Prize at Poetica Magazine. Pushcart nominee Bruce McRae is a Canadian musician with over 900 poems published around the world. His first book, The So-Called Sonnets, is available via Silenced Press and Amazon. To see and hear more poems go to BruceMcRaePoetry on YouTube. George Moore now lives on the south shore of Nova Scotia. Recent poetry collections include Children's Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry 2015) and The Hermits of Dingle (FutureCycle 2013). Publications include the Atlantic, North American Review, Poetry, and Colorado Review. Rony Nair, 41,works an oil and gas Risk Management and Quality professional based out of Dubai. He’s been 20 years in oil and gas since starting off as an Industrial engineer a long time ago. Rony’s work previously appeared in Semaphore, Ogazine, Two Words For, New Asian Writing, Yellow Press Review, 1947, and others. He was a published columnist with the Indian Express and is also a photographer about to hold his first major exhibition. Rony has been profiled by the Economic Times of Delhi and has also written for them. Jessica O. Nguyen is the co-editor of the Hemetera Literary Journal and her work has been published in Hemetera Literary Journal as well as Sisyphus Quarterly. Jessica currently lives in Massachusetts. Guys like Tom O’Dore do not have biographies. Claire Olson is an eighteen-year-old writer hailing from Michigan who will be attending Kenyon College this coming Autumn for studies in English and Psychology. She has had poems and stories published in the Siblíní Art and Literature Journal and Potluck Magazine.

Tipton Poetry Journal Tory V. Pearman is an Assistant Professor of English at Miami Hamilton University, where she teaches composition and literature. She has published poetry in San Pedro River Review and Heartland Review, as well as essays on poetry, medieval literature, and gender studies. Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry and interviews have appeared in Nimrod, Portland Review, Kestrel, Cream City Review, Poetry Salzburg, Boston Poetry Magazine, Gertrude, The Bacon Review, and many others. He has published a travel guide, Best Choices In Northern California, and Time Lines, a book of poems. He lives in Marina, California. Timothy Pilgrim, associate professor emeritus of Western Washington University in Bellingham and a Pacific Northwest poet with over 250 acceptances by dozens of journals (such as Seattle Review, Windfall, Cirque and The Tipton Poetry Journal), is co-author of Bellingham Poems (2014) and is included in Idaho's Poets: A Centennial Anthology (University of Idaho Press), Tribute to Orpheus II (Kearney Street Books), and Weathered Pages: The Poetry Pole (Blue Begonia Press). A widely published poet, fiction writer, essayist, and book critic, John Repp lives with his wife and son near Presque Isle Bay in Erie, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in many periodicals, including Poetry, Crazyhorse, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His most recent collection is Fat Jersey Blues, winner of the 2013 Akron Poetry Prize (University of Akron Press). Ron Riekki lives in Florida. His books include U.P., The Way North, and Here. Anthony Rintala, Southern Indiana Review's Media Editor, was trained to write, edit, and teach poetry at the University of Southern Mississippi and Louisiana State University. Before coming to the University of Southern Indiana, he taught at LSU, Texas A&M University, Blinn Community College, and Ivy Tech College, and has edited for Callaloo, New Delta Review, New Tex[t], and Blinn Literary Journal. His work has most recently been published in New Plains Review, Kudzu Magazine, Muse: A Quarterly Journal, Ishaan Literary Review, Oklahoma Review, Copperfield Review, A Few Lines Magazine, Mad Hatterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Review, Foundling Review, Muddy River, Penwood Review, St. Ann's Review, Sakura Review, Avatar Review, Triggerfish, Fieldstone Review, and Mid-West Quarterly. Not long ago, Phillip Rodenbeck quit his job as a mechanical engineer to start an Indiana-based, one-man watch brand (Visitor Watch Co.) and, hopefully, write more. His poetry has been featured in Caveat Lector, Blood Lotus, and the Max Ehrmann Poetry Competition, which he won in 2012. Phillip published his first book-length collection of poems, Redevolver, in 2014 and currently resides in Indianapolis. Joyce Schmid has poems published in The Harvard Advocate and fort da (Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology). Joyce won the Pushkin Prize two years in a row, awarded by Columbia University for translation of Russian poetry. She lives in Palo Alto, California. Casey Rose Shanahan is an 18 year old writer from Connecticut. Roger Singer lives in Madison, Connecticut. He recently published a collection of jazz poems, Poetic Jazz.

Tipton Poetry Journal Christopher Stolle’s poetry has appeared in more than 100 magazines in several countries, including the United States, Singapore, Canada, Australia, and Japan, and in three anthologies (In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself [1997 and 2002] and Reckless Writing [2012]). Despite being a professional book editor, he recently began a poetry writing resurgence, trying to fulfill a longtime dream of being a writer, but has found some success by publishing two nonfiction books with Coaches Choice: 101 Leadership Lessons From Baseball’s Greatest Managers (2013) and 101 Leadership Lessons From Basketball’s Greatest Coaches (2015). Wade Thiel is a writer and reader. His work has appeared in The Polk Street Review, Daily Love, Inclement Poetry, and Etchings. Originally from Indiana, Wade lives in Chicago. Mike Wade lives in Franklin, Indiana. Will Walton is thirty-two years old, and currently lives in Georgia. He has a BA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Valdosta State University. Most recently, his poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Quarterly, Lost Coast Review,Waterways, Common Ground Review, IthacaLit, SN Review, The Oddville Press, and others. Robert Weibezahl has returned to writing poetry after a long hiatus. He is the author of two novels, The Wicked and the Dead and The Dead Don’t Forget, as well as a number of short stories. He has been a finalist for the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Derringer Award. A columnist for BookPage for more than a decade, his work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Reader, Ventura County Star, Mystery Readers Journal, Bikini, and Irish America, among others. Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English and whose work has appeared in about 150 journals from 13 countries. He has published 4 full collections to date, most recently Over Misty Plains [Indigo Dreams, UK, 2012].