Tipton Poetry Journal #58 (Fall 2023) by Tipton Poetry Journal

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

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. Statistics: This issue features 33 poets from the United States (20 unique states), and 2 poets from Italy and Ukraine. Our Featured Poem this issue is “Nouns” written by Philip C. Kolin. His poem, which also receives an award of $25, can be found on page 6. The featured poem was chosen by the Board of Directors of Brick Street Poetry, Inc., the Indiana non-profit organization who publishes Tipton Poetry Journal. Barry Harris reviews The Light Most Glad of All by Ken Meisel Barry Harris reviews Salt of the Earth by Patrick T. Reardon Matthew Brennan reviews The Ascension of Sandy’s Drive-In by Rodney Torreson Cover Photo: Summer Gold by Brendan Crowley. Barry Harris, Editor

Copyright 2023 by the Tipton Poetry Journal. All rights remain the exclusive property of the individual contributors 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 poetry-related events.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Contents Kasy Long................................................................... 1 Matthew James Friday .............................................. 2 Douglas Cole .............................................................. 3 Nicole Malyj Daone ................................................... 4 Philip C. Kolin............................................................ 6 Norbert Krapf ............................................................ 7 Arvilla Fee ................................................................. 7 Mykyta Ryzhykh ....................................................... 8 William Aarnes.......................................................... 9 Daniel Bourne ......................................................... 10 Cindy Buchanan ....................................................... 12 Alessio Zanelli .......................................................... 15 Victoria Twomey ...................................................... 16 Gary Barkow ............................................................ 17 Diane Webster ..........................................................18 James Green ............................................................. 19 Jim Tilley ................................................................. 20 Wally Swist ............................................................. 22 Mark Vogel .............................................................. 24 Michael Vecchio ....................................................... 25 Craig Cotter ............................................................. 26 Brian Dickson .......................................................... 27 George Freek ........................................................... 28 Jeanine Stevens ....................................................... 29 Nancy Kay Peterson ................................................ 30 Nolo Segundo ........................................................... 31

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 SG Fromm................................................................ 32 Robert L. Penick ...................................................... 34 Amy Lerman ............................................................ 35 Tia Paul-Louis ......................................................... 36 Dan Jacoby .............................................................. 38 Jack e Lorts ............................................................. 38 Frank C. Modica ...................................................... 40 John Grey ................................................................. 41 Michael Brasier ........................................................ 41 Review: The Light Most Glad of All by Ken Meisel ... 43 Review: Salt of the Earth by Patrick T. Reardon ...... 47 Review: The Ascension of Sandy’s Drive-In ............. 50 Contributor Biographies ......................................... 54

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Cocooned into a New Season Kasy Long I have burned all the leaves and let the bonfire crackle into the night. The dying flames invite me to cocoon into the blankets, and study the cornfields in the nearby farm. The cornfields know the changing seasons better than all of us combined. Crows may dive to peck at the crops, but unnerve when the scarecrow flutters in the wind. Tonight, it is quiet. The sunset fades into midnight’s shadow. With crisp air, I close my eyes and fall into a new season where the air calls me home and the owls hoot into the night.

Kasy Long is an Indiana-based writer and editor. She serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Remington Review. Her work has previously been published in Nixes Mate Review, Inside the Bell Jar, Glass Mountain, Oracle Fine Arts Review, The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, and elsewhere.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

The Vastness Matthew James Friday When the first star appears in the chalking evening night between the almost finished green silhouettes of two divine Douglas firs I know poetry. So does the dog huffing with the fever of fetch, an enthusiasm to make gods proud. Two bats swirl around dark statements of tree, bouncing between belief and myth. Hairs on my leg tingle with needling explorers with as much right to needing as the dog who noses the vastness of the grass trying to find his joy.

Matthew James Friday is a British born writer and teacher now living Oregon. He has had many poems published in US and international journals. His first chapbook The Residents is due to be published by Finishing Line Press in 2024. He has published numerous micro-chapbooks with the Origami Poems Project. Poems are forthcoming in The Oregon English Journal, New Contrast (South Africa) and The Amsterdam Quarterly (Netherlands). Matthew is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet. Visit his website at http://matthewfriday.weebly.com

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Place is the House of Being Douglas Cole We arrive in flesh machines and walk among crowds unseen while in the back of the mind god’s finger stirs a pool of dreams heads bent over brittle pages squint print words words words from which the world is made slide into the catacomb seek the great vision kiva sweat lodge high cathedral archive shrine divine altar scribblers who take us to the center

Douglas Cole has published six poetry collections and the novel The White Field, winner of the American Fiction Award. His work has appeared in journals such as Beloit Poetry Journal, Fiction International, Valpariaso Poetry Review, The Gallway Review and Two Hawks Quarterly; as well anthologies such as Bully Anthology (Hopewell), Bindweed Anthology, and Work (Unleash Press). He contributes a regular column called “Trading Fours” to the magazine, Jerry Jazz Musician; articles and interviews in Mythaxis; and editorial selections of American writers for Blue Citadel, a section of Read Carpet, a journal of international writing produced in Columbia. In addition to the American Fiction Award, his screenplay of The White Field won Best Unproduced Screenplay award in the Elegant Film Festival, and he has been awarded the Leslie Hunt Memorial prize in poetry, the Best of Poetry Award from Clapboard House, First Prize in the “Picture Worth 500 Words” from Tattoo Highway, and the Editors’ Choice Award in fiction by RiverSedge. He has been nominated three time for a Pushcart and seven times for Best of the Net. He lives and teaches in Seattle, Washington. His website is https://douglastcole.com/.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Orthodox Nicole Malyj Daone I arrive, but late as usual to Sunday service and I can’t stop from wanting to leave early Craving a cigarette from the pack I bought at the gas station Sixteen years old I slid an extra $2 to the clerk to ignore I was underage Inside the looming Church, Evil stands next to grandma dressed in his polyester Sunday best Maybe $2 could have bought him a conscience and a little style I join the procession forward for communion I kneel and tilt my chin toward while the ultimate metaphor for suffering, Jesus, turns his gaze away with birdlike arms spread, nailed wings across wood I open my mouth and settle my tongue into the shape of a warm bowl, readying receipt of bitter communion A soggy bland crouton soaked in wine blood spooned to my mouth from a gentle Father

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 The final hymn begins, and I slip back to the parking lot before the bells clang rapturously before the monster man in polyester somehow blends with everyone else pious and holy spilling forth from the mouth of gold and brimstone Fresh and sin-free they emerge while I stomp out my butt and spray Baby Soft on my neck No, Mom, I haven’t been smoking! I paste a smile on my wan face, keeping this mask for lunch with family where secrets abide, where my family only thinks that they know me I’ll be late arriving to lunch, too And I’ll leave early An imposter wherever I go When everyone else is welcome, I remain a stranger under steeple and shingle I keep these secrets I hide my cigarettes and despair Trying to be a good girl, such a good girl for them all, I am always late and avoid Evil with his horrible polyester plastered grin and roving, unholy hands. Nicole Malyj Daone lives in Hampton, Virginia and is editing her historical fiction manuscript about her Ukrainian grandparents and writes poems or stories about motherhood, WWII, and Ukrainian heritage. There are bits of memoir and comedy ideas floating in her purse or in a random file on her phone. When not writing or learning more about the craft, she teaches yoga, forages, reads, cooks, looks for animals to pet, and researches until finding composition inspiration.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Nouns Philip C. Kolin April 1995

When her brain went on strike, nouns came and went. Beds became blenders; a stove was a trawler. She called her children Pin Cushion and Roof. Her nouns rode a runaway train leaving no one to tell her story. She avoided mirrors but wanted to know who it was that passed before them. No more nostalgia or loss, which turned out to be a blessing. But her family had no nouns for that.

Philip C. Kolin is the Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus and Editor Emeritus of the Southern Quarterly at the Univ. of Southern Mississippi. He has published 15 collections of poems including most recently Reaching Forever (Poiema Series, Cascade Books, 2019), Delta Tears: Poems (Main Street Rag, 2021), Wholly God's (Wind & Water Press, 2021), and Black Trauma: Resistance Poems about Black History (Third World Press, 2023). The 12th edition of his business writing textbook, Successful Writing at Work, was published last year by Cengage Learning.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Winged Spark Norbert Krapf Emily loved the winged spark she saw soaring about but she never came near it. She said it was often taken for lightning on hot nights as it travels in the air above ground and seems to disappear then flashes again like the poems Emily wrote and left for us to read and receive their flash. Norbert Krapf, former Indiana Poet Laureate, has recently had released Homecomings: A Writer's Memoir which covers the fifty plus years of his writing and publishing life. By the end of 2023, his sixteenth poetry collection, Songs for All Souls, will appear.For more, see http://www.krapfpoetry.net/.

Advice from an Introvert Arvilla Fee

Make plans—with yourself; read books; wear soft pajamas; never feel guilty about saying no; Be creative with dinner; slice cucumbers the long way. Ignore texts that say you should get out more. Throw a fleece blanket across your lap; sip hot chocolate sprinkled with tiny marshmallows; revel in the space around you, free of elbows, eyerolls, and awkward small talk. Arvilla Fee teaches English Composition for Clark State College in Ohio and is the poetry editor for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous presses, and her poetry book, The Human Side, is available on Amazon. For Arvilla, writing produces the greatest joy when it connects us to each other.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

*** Mykyta Ryzhykh this poem will not be written by anyone because the author will go to the supermarket for vodka and never come back

*** Mykyta Ryzhykh the leaves don't resent it when you step on them the bones barely crunch when you do people barely crunch on such occasions. death is like a land mine doesn't resent it when you step on it

Mykyta Ryzhykh lives in Ukraine and is winner of the international competition Art Against Drugs and Ukrainian contests Vytoky, Shoduarivska Altanka, Khortytsky dzvony; laureate of the literary competition named after Tyutyunnik, Lyceum, Twelve, named after Dragomoshchenko. Nominated for Pushcart Prize. Published many times in the journals Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinian magazine, Polutona, Rechport, Topos, Articulation, Formaslov, Literature Factory, Literary Chernihiv, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks Poetry & Fiction Journal, Littoral Press, Book of Matches, on the portals Litсenter, Ice Floe Press and Soloneba, in the Ukrainian literary newspaper.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Trust William Aarnes Every night you lie down and wait for sleep the way you go along with an anesthesiologist, having just met her, not understanding the word for what she says she’ll use, not knowing what she’ll charge, worried only the slightest bit about her dismissal of the risk.

William Aarnes now lives in New York City after teaching at Furman University in South Carolina. He has published poems in such magazines as in FIELD, The Southern Review, Tipton Poetry Journal and Poetry. His mosst recent book, The Hum in Human, was published by Main Street Rag in 2022.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

How It Really Was in Paradise Daniel Bourne The feathered leather of their wings, the murmur over their clutch of uncracked eggs, blessed fork of their tongues, languages begetting languages, endless hiss so much like what we now call wind, the ribbed leaves abandoning each branch until the tree so golden who cares how bitter is its fruit suddenly now is more bare than we are. And how can it be shame to cover ourselves with their splendor, scales like painted thumbs and the sweet milk offered by the fangs? And later when we must take up our toil in the orchards and lift up the nets heavy with the absence of fish, who will have time to regret the things we should have done, the animals we chose back then to love?

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

The Teacher Daniel Bourne I have just talked with a desolate student who has written a new continent of belief but I have had to point out how the shores do not quite connect with the land. There are tears in her eyes. There are tears in her writing. I wish I was not so logical, so grounded in maps. I wish I did not hold the path so dear. But from here to there I only see the gaps in her directions. And she only sees the bigger gaps in me.

Daniel Bourne’s books of poetry include The Household Gods, Where No One Spoke the Language, and the forthcoming Talking Back to the Exterminator, the 2022 Terry L. Cox Poetry Award from Regal House Publishing. A former contributor to . His poems have also appeared in Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Field, Salmagundi, Guernica, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, Yale Review, Shenandoah, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. He has also lived in Poland off and on since the Summer of 1980, including on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1985-87 for the translation of younger Polish poets and most recently in 2018 and 2019 for work on an anthology of Baltic Coast poets. A collection of his translations of Bronisław Maj, The Extinction of the Holy City, is forthcoming from Free Verse Editions later this year.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Bardo Cindy Buchanan Earth You were born, made flesh of my flesh, made body with birth onto this world you chose to reject as you hurled yourself toward the void year after year. Water At twelve you began to bleed with a need I could not understand. You sought others to feed the hungry ghost coiled inside your belly. Salt leached from my eyes and my thirst for you grew parallel to yours. Fire When I found foil blackened with residue, my heart was singed. The dragon sang its siren song to you and you succumbed: eyes half shut, your cheeks burning.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 Air You evaporated time, intangible as the emptiness of dead space left after curses were hurled at me from your dealer’s car, after telephone calls false with promises. I forgot how to breathe. Void This gap, this black space, it lies between us and has grown to such an abyss that were we to step towards each other I fear we would fall forever. Would that this void held a veil we could tear from time so we could pass into another world free from craving for the other.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Ode to Women Dancing Alone in Their Kitchens Cindy Buchanan You know who you are, you, blessedly alone at six or eight or midnight, un-lonely, no need to explain, excuse, enthuse. Tonight, you tear the clear film from a Lean Cuisine, slip off your heels, pull down the blinds, find your playlist. Buddy Guy erases images that slink behind your eyes, and you reach for the throb of drums, the throat of a guitar, a voice that strokes the skin of your belly, the firm width of your hips. You begin, one step, then more, until your arms join in with spiral moves so primal not even you can decipher their spell.

Cindy Buchanan was raised in Alaska, has a B.A. in English from Gonzaga University, and was a preschool teacher until she retired. She studies poetry at Hugo House in Seattle, Washington where she currently lives, and is a member of two monthly poetry groups. She is an avid runner and hiker and enjoys every opportunity to be outdoors. Her work has been published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Chestnut Review, Evening Street Review, The MacGuffin, Hole in the Head Review, and other journals. Her first chapbook, Learning to Breathe (Finishing Line Press) was published in 2023. Find her at cindybuchanan.com.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Mother and Son Alessio Zanelli Her child is her watch and GPS tracker, dictates both her time and her space. Most of all he is her only compass, just telling her which way to go. No before, after or whenever, no here, there or wherever, no nice or nasty weather is ever going to matter. His warning light, when on, is the one that alerts every particle she's made of, sets her own privy universe in motion, increases her energy and focus tenfold. Nothing really changes over the years, as nothing changes when quadrangles or even boundaries of realms interpose. The cord will never sever. A son remains a son. Indeed a child. Forever. Deep down her true metaverse.

Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English. His work has appeared in over 200 literary journals from 17 countries. His sixth collection, titled The Invisible, will be published in late 2023 by Greenwich Exchange (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Waving Farewell Victoria Twomey in the silent cold the old gray tree bent and gnarly that has welcomed its share of birds and squirrels yellow jackets inchworms, beetles storms and brilliant skies drops its many hands in quiet little groups letting go of the last of its golden palms fractured by vermillion veins its orange rusty fingers bitten with age fluttering down waving farewell settling upon the white snow come caroling too soon

Victoria Twomey is a Pushcart nominated poet and an award-winning artist from New York State. Her poems have been published in several anthologies, in newspapers and online. Her full-length, debut book of poetry, Glimpse, was published in April 2023 by Kelsay Books.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Huckleberry Pie Gary Barkow Rejoice! Hitler has asked for forgiveness, but I nearly pretended I didn’t want him to. For all the cheering in my soul, I forgot, I won’t hate. Hitler asked for forgiveness, then killed himself after “Yes” mistaking mercy for permission at the border of Russia and hell. Like anyone after absolution, he was tempted to become who he had been. I’m afraid I think I speak for God when rewriting our sorrow – hymns about how suffering’s a gift on the altar of our lives. But once upon a time, there was no sorrow and God held my hand when the trolley cars were on the fritz, and bullies stalked butterflies. I forgot that I was mortal at the Altar of Trolley Cars listening for iron-buffalo ear pressed to the tracks -I looked both ways for traffic, heard no suffering for miles only the buzz of a mantis praying on a neon sign. Horn and Hardarts, Horn and Hardarts. When I was five, I loved Mr. Trolley Cars and Horn and Hardarts’ huckleberry pie.

Gary Barkow lives in New York, practices Tai Chi and walks around feeling loved. He keeps a flashlight by his futon in case he has a brilliant idea at night. He doesn’t know where poetry originates, so he enjoys the mystery. He likes: God, the Earth, Mathematics, aeroplanes with propellers, earthworms, the San Francisco 49ers and AC/DC's, ‘It's A Long Way To The Top.” He taught his son, “The best time to scream is when the bagpipes play.”

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Mannequin Sales Pitch Diane Webster In front of the store the artificial human stands dressed in the latest fashion the store wants us to buy, but the artificial human looks stiff like the clothes scratch and chaff in places it can’t reach so it stands immobile, a mannequin yearning to move its articulated hand enough, in slow motion so as not to frighten real humans – just a finger to rub the itch and let its “aaah” blow away with a gust of wind.

Diane Webster retired in 2022 after working 40 years at a local newspaper. Her work has appeared in El Portal, North Dakota Quarterly, Verdad, New English Review and other literary magazines. She also had a micro-chap published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022. A poem of Diane's was nominated for Best of the Net by Star 82 in 2022 as well. She lives in Colorado.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Starry Night James Green Awake at midnight, I walk into the silver-glow of another starry night, like some character from a Gothic novel lured by the prospect of meeting his lover on the moor, one of those souls so lonely he expects to talk to ghosts. The kind of night that Keats and Hopkins rhapsodized and van Gogh painted, over and over. Wandering as far as a field of ripening corn alongside a stand of pines, their branches semaphoring to the cloudless night, I rove the sky for stars that are familiar, the same ones as in 1962, when I first kissed a girl. And the same as the night I left college, when I entered life’s lottery. I lose track of time while Hercules soldiers across the western sky. If the boy on the bench with his girlfriend could time-travel as starlight does, what should I say to him? Should I warn him that life, though mostly good, comes with a lot of fine print? About all the diverging roads? How it’s easier to see things for what they aren’t than what they are? Still ranging the sky, stars begin to fade and a lop-sided moon rises watery-white in front of Leo. A solitary robin carols from somewhere within the pines. James Green has worked as a naval officer, deputy sheriff, high school English teacher, professor of education, and administrator in both public schools and universities. Recipient of two Fulbright grants, he has served as a visiting scholar at the University of Limerick in Ireland and the National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan. In addition to academic publications, including three books, Green is the author of three chapbooks of poetry and a fourth, Long Journey Home, is forthcoming after winning the Charles Dickson Chapbook Contest sponsored by the Georgia Poetry Society., Individual poems have appeared in literary magazines in England, Ireland, and the United States. He resides in Muncie, Indiana.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

So Much Depends Jim Tilley

Wives and lovers know how you think, whether they’re one and the same. Under oath, I’d swear, like the President, “I surely did not have sexual relations with that woman, not a single time. It depends on what you mean by relations.” Just a damn good time. Or so he had hoped, but didn’t say because his world would end. Some say the world will end in fire, some in ice. Depends on what you mean by fire and ice. For wives ice, for lovers fire? My lover and I were a stick snapped in half and tossed into a stream. We found different currents and rocks, no longer one and the same. Lover from long ago, whom I met by chance years later. She left without finishing her wine. I took mine to the piano and let my fingers learn to talk again. When I’d tasted the last drop, I decanted the sunset instead. So much depends on what you mean.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Not a Nursey Rhyme Jim Tilley

If only the cow sprinting for his life down a street in Canarsie could have jumped over the moon to escape his fate, but a worker with a lasso from the slaughterhouse finally captured the animal and brought him back to be butchered— until a truck driver from New Jersey bargained to let him run free at Skylands, his 232-acre pasture. Said that, unlike most cows, his rescues are free-thinkers with a fighter instinct. What if instead they were creatures bent on freedom and willing to die, thinking not only of themselves, but also their fellow creatures? What if they wanted to take up arms for the cause and send their families to pastures where they would no longer feel threatened? Just imagine what might happen if cows had proper weapons to defend their turf. They might all be over the moon.

Jim Tilley has published three full-length collections of poetry and a novel with Red Hen Press. His short memoir, The Elegant Solution, was published as a Ploughshares Solo. His poem, On the Art of Patience, was selected by Billy Collins to win Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize for Poetry. Four of his poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His next poetry collection, Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe: New & Selected Poems, will be published in June 2024

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Shadow Play Wally Swist You and I were on a beach, the sand smooth as putty, the crash of waves ending in lacy foam at Acadia in Downeast Maine more than twenty years ago. You challenged me to a game of who could gather the most sand dollars. There were so many scattered across the beach by the edge of the sea it astonished us, and I was winning when a man appeared, apparently out of nowhere, and handed you several sand dollars so that you could beat me, both of us standing and looking at each other in amazement, and when we looked around the man had vanished without a trace. We thought he might have been an angel, but now so many years later I pause to think that not unlike the man who handed you the bounty of sand dollars we have had been given the gift of grace more times than we can remember and much like the disappearance

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 of the man on the beach your memory has nearly disappeared to the degree that when I shared my memory of the sand dollars you lifted your head and peered into distance, and relayed you could barely remember that at all, making me think what you saw when you squinted your eyes were only a cast of shadows at play.

Wally Swist’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as co-winner in the 2011 Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Contest, and A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds & Nature (Ex Ophidia Press, 2019), the winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize. His recent poems have appeared in Asymptote, Chicago Quarterly Review, Hunger Mountain: Vermont College of Fine Arts Journal, The Montreal Review, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, Poetry London, Scoundrel Time, and The Seventh Quarry Poetry Magazine (Wales). He lives in Massachusetts.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Erosion Mark Vogel Maybe nothing dies, things just get lose. Memory convalesces on our skin. --Victoria Chang, The Trees Witness Everything, p. 106.

Those with vision, like Carl Phillips, are strong enough to peer at acts of erosion, time’s tentacled patterns of shadowy dissolution, and see how artful change melts once-fresh boundaries. Necessary, those writing the future book on slow breathing bravery in the context of ruin, the process of destruction, but also finding possibilities of beauty, a certain clumsy gravitas in the already crowded graveyard. How we stood close that winter day joking with friends before Dad rouged in the casket (without a hint of a smile), like scientists studying how us kids evolved into what we would be—how colors shifted and the bones of the future narrative grew long and white. Necessary, this impulsive talk—this acting to stop cold the melting. Necessary too, the flowers, the card that suggests we might well be next. Dad loved the pale blue lichen patterns on the messy rock, how art leaked from the sacred seam. He tried to capture the moment the garden dances. Enough now to pause before looming violence/ before the windy rain drowns ancient faces. Enough to remember the fogged kiss, births/deaths glued tight/how again we can become who we once were/see with fresh eyes the sediment patterns on the inexorable path. Hallelujah in this religious tightening. So vivid in morning shadows, the fisherman is me wading backed up Indian Creek, the Mississippi encroaching. Once, in sync, we drove to the town boundaries to experience the miraculous un-named whole coming on—

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 the insistent river’s chocolate water/logs/dead fish so pale running over and away/ancient sediment layers smelling of all that once thrived. Amen, in the long pause before what is good and right, so to be. In the great Midwest, without oceans or mountains, us kids stood close, taking in the casket. Without words—the quiet intricacy of beauty. Mark Vogel lives at the back of a Blue Ridge holler with his wife, Susan Weinberg, an accomplished fiction and creative non-fiction writer, and two foster sons. He currently is an Emeritus Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Poems and short stories have appeared in several dozen literary journals.

A Suddenness in Fall Michael Vecchio Looks like leaves Floating in water. Or premonitions unfolded On a blue velvet. A wing’s Work is suggested As air Whipping near one’s Ear Finishes the thought. To be clear Is to be still. Michael Vecchio now lives in Houston after living in New York and California. Michael views poetry as a form of teaching and learning. His work is strongly influenced by his experiences with the natural world.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Sanamluang Craig Cotter I’m invited to Thailand in 3 weeks but too ill. Some relief I gave up trying. This pen not greased until this morning I wrote Dhani Harrison an email asking him to record a guitar solo to replace George Martin’s piano part on “In My Life.” Dreams of the paper boy in socks. It traveled from Japan and Ohio before the odometer moved. When was the king last on the royal field?

Craig Cotter was born in 1960 in New York and has lived in California since 1986. His poems have appeared in Southword (Ireland), Chiron Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, The Gay & Lesbian Review, Great Lakes Review, Hawai’i Review, & Tampa Review. His fourth book of poems, After Lunch with Frank O’Hara, is currently available on Amazon. www.craigcotter.com

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Bus Stopping for an Incredible Amount of Time on a Snowy Evening Brian Dickson This corner I think I know. Lavandería was here, mattress place there, construction crew home to watch the Broncos or snow. Route 0 needs much rest. This stop with salt and dirt near planks and plywood, near a last cigarette. The human services marquee scrolls as if asking Where to? The only other sound is breath and more breath rolling up glasses, windows. Outside dark and stark, quiet—not a step to exit into an abyss dreaming of a field, a meadowlark.

When not teaching at the Community College of Denver, Brian Dickson avoids driving as much as possible to traipse around the front range region by foot, bike, bus or train to connect with the quotidian. Past publications include two chapbooks, In a Heart’s Rut (HighFive press), Maybe This is How Tides Work (Finishing Line Press), one book, All Points Radiant (WordTech, Cherry Grove Editions) and various journals, most recently Panoply.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

December Thoughts George Freek The moon is an old woman. She’s not good company for me. The stars keep me awake. The stars which know nothing of our fate. The wind rises, making the trees shake. Clouds smother those stars, and shadows fill my room. Sunk in self-pity I see one star through the trees, shining on my reverie. But I don’t think it is shining for me.

On Looking in the Mirror George Freek When my hair falls out, it won’t grow back. Flesh wraps my body, like a canvas sack. Wine hardens my liver, and it tastes like distilled grass. The overwhelming sky yawning above me tells me I will die. I have to agree, if people avoid my company. George Freek is a poet/playwright living in Belvidere, Illionois. George Freek's poetry appears in numerous journals and reviews. His poem "Night Thoughts" was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His poem "Enigmatic Variations" was also recently nominated for Best of the Net. His collection Melancholia is published by Red Wolf Editions.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Mirror Image Jeanine Stevens Neuroscience tells us we are programmed to see faces in the everyday: clouds, shadows, foliage. Jane Goodall’s photos show gorillas peering through green fronds. Was it really black fur and bloodshot ovals? I buy you a set of eyes, nose, mouth resembling the Green Man you hang on the rough bark of Jeffrey Pine. Features meld, a familiar or enemy? Inanimate objects are for lessons: the crack in my cup—scar on the chin, crooked lifeline—premature wrinkles? Da Vinci saw profiles in granite outcrops. Cave artists used rock formations: curve of jaw, rough shoulder, speckled hide. See Jesus in that pancake, St. Francis in that potato chip? The brain insists on closure, constructs what it wants. Take the Rorschach, who is that hiding in the mirror image?

Jeanine Stevens’ latest publications are No Lunch Among the Day Stars (Cold River Press) and Tea in the Nuns’ Library (Eyewear Publishing, UK.) Work has appeared in Chiron Review, Evansville Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and Two Thirds North (Sweden) Espresso Review, and others. Jeanine is instructor at American River College in Sacramento, California.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

I once heard dreams are glimpses into your soul

Nancy Kay Peterson

I dream the house again: cement front stoop leads to living room stretches left to sun parlor, straight ahead, a narrow room leads to kitchen, in the back pantry, stairs lead up to the haunted attic, storage space. Each time I visit, the ghost progresses from watch me to pooled cold spot to suddenly shifting furniture to inarticulate whispered sounds, and last time, an indistinct shape. True, the detached garage, neglected, needs paint. The drive needs patching. The flower beds need weeding, but the backyard shows promise. I’m usually moving in. Some rooms change, not quite what I remembered. Once a new bedroom off the back porch, Once a new front deck off the sun parlor and a wonderful view of a marshy lake. It’s an amalgamation of everything wanted in a house, even the ghost. Nancy Kay Peterson’s poetry has appeared in print and online in numerous publications, most recently in The Bluebird Word, Dash Literary Journal, HerWords, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, One Sentence Poems, RavensPerch, Spank the Carp, Steam Ticket: A Third Coast Review, Three Line Poetry and Tipton Poetry Journal. From 2004-2009, she co-edited and co-published Main Channel Voices: A Dam Fine Literary Magazine (Winona, Minnesota). Her work has been included in two anthologies: Haikus for Hikers (Brick Street Poetry, Inc.) and Play (Outsider Press). Finishing Line Press published her two poetry chapbooks, Belated Remembrance (2010) and Selling the Family (2021). She lives in Washington State. For more information, see www.nancykaypeterson.com.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

The Low Hanging Sun Nolo Segundo I went to take out the trash, the good trash, glass and paper destined for re-incarnation and as I stepped outside, the air cool and pearly white, the low hanging sun smiles, throws a late afternoon warmth over my body, a blanket of silk. For a moment I stopped to think, then thanked the low hanging sun for being there, the last defense against a cold deep unto death.... In our immense Universe, wall-less, ever expanding, is mostly night, utter and fearsome darkness, all pitch-black and cold, a coldness beyond comprehension or life--so the light and heat of every myriad star is precious, precious….

Nolo Segundo, pen name of L. J. Carber, became a published poet in his 70's in over 170 literary journals in 13 countries. A trade publisher has released 3 collections in paperback: The Enormity of Existence [2020]; Of Ether and Earth [2021]; and Soul Songs [2022]. These titles reflect the awareness he's had for over 50 years since having an NDE whilst almost drowning in a Vermont river: That he has--IS--a consciousness that predates birth and survives death, what poets since Plato have called the soul. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and thrice for Best of the Net, he's a retired English/ESL teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia] who's been married 43 years to a smart and beautiful Taiwanese woman.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

loose ends SG Fromm my brother believes solitary lives need not bequeath loose ends so he bought a burial plot in cash along with a black headstone (last date pending) now all he has to do is find a shovel and fall into the hole to close his very last loose end

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

thursday rain SG Fromm looks like rain Thursday a trolling line thrown across the chasm of our kitchen table but instead of taking the bait you take another hit of wine and seek refuge in television’s daily dose of carnage while i prowl the depths of what’s come between us

SG Fromm’s work has appeared in several publications, including Salamander, Crosswind Poetry Journal, Door is A Jar and Prometheus Unbound. Fromm lives in New Jersey.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

1972 Robert L. Penick Does anyone else remember it? The smokestack-chimney of the elementary school, that drew us to it, an obelisk of warmth and indoctrination. The hallways would be cool, the classrooms warmer, as we were fed the rules of grammar, conformity and prejudice. Does anyone remember Mr. Jones, who shoveled coal in the basement three times each winter morning: At dawn, before lunch, and just past Noon. Letting the building cool before we pulled on our parkas and trudged home through January. Jonesy lived in a room in the back of the barbershop and did good, holy work. I drove past, years later, noticed the smokestack gone, wondered why they never taught us which things to forget.

The poetry and prose of Robert L. Penick have appeared in well over 100 different literary journals, including The Hudson Review, North American Review, Plainsongs, and Oxford Magazine. His latest chapbook is Exit, Stage Left, by Slipstream Press. The Art of Mercy: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming from Hohm Press, and more of his work can be found at theartofmercy.net. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

The Subject of Noses Amy Lerman This evening, while flicking channels, I stop when seeing Alice, in her Corningware blue uniform, talking to Mrs. Brady, as they fold over brown, lunch bags for six cheerful, children soon to be migrating through the kitchen. My husband knows I’m fluent in Brady, so he asks which episode this is: Greg’s already got sideburns, so it can’t be one from the Grand Canyon. Please be Marcia’s “Oh, my nose.” While he laughs, I shift my torso forward until my nose abuts the flat screen, flush with the green percolator resting on the orange, formica table, and I can smell the Maxwell House, just like shopkeeper Cora made for her customers in those old commercials. A momentary turn to my husband’s playing a game on his phone shifts me, and I push my face in. There is no noise--other than backgrounding xylophone in tune with the children’s steps—and my body follows, levitating, seeping in, plasma upon plasma, until I land in one of the six, swivel chairs, though there are eight in their family. The women keep chatting, leaving me unnoticed, so I drop to my knees, crawl toward the living room’s eleven-layered staircase only an architect like Mike Brady could design, to search for my new siblings, to share their Jack and Jill bathroom, to learn Marcia’s technique for hair brushing, to sing between Cindy and Jan on the local television show, to have their smiley acceptance--until my husband’s cough stops me, though he’s not noticed my televising. I look out, see how our cat swirls his side, his long eyelashes that Eskimo-kiss my cheek, and I u-turn at the lacquered credenza, not even acknowledging the family’s hospitality, just seeping back out, back into him.

Amy Lerman lives with her husband and very spoiled cats in the Arizona desert where she is residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College. Her chapbook, Orbital Debris (Choeofpleirn Press, 2022) won the 2022 Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest, she has been a Pushcart nominee, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Box of Matches, The Madison Review, Radar Poetry, Slippery Elm, Rattle, and other publications.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Lazybug Tia Paul-Louis The floor’s sticky and the smell of rotten puree, slimy tomatoes, burned steak, and broiled broccoli steam the kitchen you claim I’m too lazy to clean. Lazy. With a maple leaf above my head, a journal on my lap, purple ink (what a spell) spilling accented and stressed vowels of a tale about the times you claim I waste, I am flying and it’s only you who sees me still. Waste? Nights of all seasons I waited. Still, when you came, the Magnolia branch winded against my window was all that spoke to me. It often dropped its petals on my bed, softening the tone of my lilac duvet. I tuck myself within these pages – white, wrinkled, and sometimes damped – seeking an awakening. Touch is no longer a skill you and I possess. Why should I tender mops and dishes some place I’m left alone. This, Love, is a waste and laziness is simply a soothing and habitable place.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Beneath Tia Paul-Louis Some of us are bad apples. It's inevitable to reach inside these bags. Brown and white hands alike take us all to be thrown in a pool of scums. Bags are renewed, though. Torn, aged, or soiled – renewed. Yes – our seeds prevail within our rotten flesh. It’s not our fault they're barren. Maybe this earth is too rough. Yes – rough – sucking every root down to their descendants. Bad apples. What better way to forget us than to sit beneath palms and maples while chewing our kin. Their peeling stretches from hours to seasons. It's our fault they don't cry out. Bad apples weep in silence. Tia Paul-Louis is a fiction writer and poet from Florida. She began experimenting with songwriting at age 11 and later felt a deeper connection to poetry. Her themes portray family life, gender role controversies, mental health, and spiritual values. She admires the freedom of expression in most forms of art such as music, acting, and painting.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Nightmare Dan Jacoby had one nightmare, in color it was back at launch site had just crawled off slick one-one was dead door gunner’s head gone most with shrapnel wounds, bleeding morphine drip on one of the little people bright light gone out I’m 76 years old last night I was 22 all the fear all the adrenaline I am exhausted

Dan Jacoby is a graduate of St. Louis University, Chicago State University, and Governors State University. He has published poetry in Bombay Gin, Euphony, Red Fez, American Poetry Review and other fine publications. He is a former educator, steel worker, green beret, and counterintelligence agent. He was born in 1947 on the second floor of a cold water flat at 55th and Halsted, Chicago, and currently lives in Illinois. His work is influenced by the poets John Knoepfle, Al Montesi, Dobby, and John Logan to name a few. He has been nominated in 2015 and 2020 for a Pushcart and Best of the Net in 2021. He is the author of the book Blue Jeaned Buddhists.

Dagwood Bumstead Jack e Lorts Whatever happened to Dagwood Bumstead? I recall reading about him and Blondie and Mr. Dithers on Sunday mornings when I was growing up in Wichita, or listening to them on the radio--didn’t know then he lived in Joplin, Missouri, almost 190 miles away. I thought

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 he lived over on the west side of Wichita, where Dad told me the Syrians lived in their conclave, calling them West Side Indians (Dad was a cop and a little racist). Unique about Dagwood was his hair, two sprigs kinda sticking off both sides of his head. and who could not love Dagwood’s sandwiches—I still devour them, but they are somewhat smaller. Unfortunately, I myself, turned into Mr. Dithers and became the boss nobody liked very much. But I still think of Dagwood & his sandwiches when I’m really hungry. I looked him up on Wikapedia and it appears he may still be alive, over in Joplin, that is if he survived the tornado a few years ago. Ah, Dagwood and Blondie, I miss ‘em, like an old friend from my childhood I haven’t seen in 60 or 70 years.

Jack e Lorts, a retired educator, lives in rural eastern Oregon, where he continues to publish widely, if only occassionally, online and such places as Windfall, Phantom Drift, Chiron Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Verse Virtual & Verse Daily. His most recent book is The Love Songs of Ephram Pratt, many of which appear widely online.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Small Scars Frank C. Modica You are something so small, so obscure we don’t see you, don’t know you exist until we feel your piercing bite. we reach down, rub you out, make you a smashed, bloody shell. As we flick your guts off our arms, we think about our first fifty years; how we felt almost bullet-proof, unassailable until the bite of a different needle, blood tests revealing cells we didn’t see, couldn’t feel, never knew existed. They burrowed deep into our flesh, silent tumors, no-see-um diseases we couldn’t reach down, scratch out, but we remember all the scars

Frank C. Modica is a retired teacher who taught children with special needs for over 34 years. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dust Poetry, New Square, Sheila-NaGig, and Pomona Valley Review. Frank's first chapbook, What We Harvest,nominated for an Eric Hoffer book award, was published in the fall Of 2021 by Kelsay Books. His second chapbook, Old Friends, was published this past December by Cyberwit Press.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Natural History Museum John Grey I stop and stare into the non-eyes of the rhinoceros that is not a rhinoceros. From there, it’s to the African elephant or, mucho stuffing wrapped in chemically preserved skin, topped off with real tusks. Then it’s the un-monkeys, nailed to branches in mid-frolic and the constrictor that won’t be constricting anything any time soon. Meanwhile, the pseudo whale, suspended by strings, swims in an ocean of glass-enclosed air. It makes me think of how much money and time it cost me to go on that unsuccessful whale watch out of Bar Harbor. I could have just sent a dummy in my place, one dressed.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident now living in Rhode Island, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Washington Square Review and Floyd County Moonshine. Latest books, Between Two Fires,Covert, and Memory Outside The are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, La Presa and California Quarterly.

In the Margins Michael Brasier The solar system trails down the twisted curvature of your vertebrae, the sun blazing, blushing from the waistband as you lean over like the sun peeking through overcast clouds.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 How many planets are drawn on your spine? Only eight. Pluto didn’t cut it. The outcast would be jealous, left to wonder what it’s like to touch your skin. That’s Boo you say, pointing to the ghost on your arm. He likes to party. You point to the word crybaby because you cry. A lot, and you don’t care. It was your nickname in the army. You trace a red fox on your wrist with exact strokes, redrawing the moment a friend from your unit convinced you to get the same tattoo as her. I want to pluck the serotonin inked on your arm and use it as a bookmark to leaf through your pages. Maybe even end up there scribbled somewhere in the margins.

Michael Brasier is a writer born and raised in the Missouri Ozarks. His fiction and poetry have appeared in journals, such as Crack the Spine and The Phoenix, and also in the anthology, Paddleshots, compiled by the River Pretty Arts Foundation. When not writing on the banks of a Missouri river, Michael works as a copy and content editor for various publishing companies.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Review: The Light Most Glad of All by Ken Meisel Reviewed by Barry Harris

Title: The Light Most Glad of All Author: Ken Meisel Year: 2023 Publisher: Kelsay Books

Ken Meisel’s latest book, The Light Most Glad of All, is a masterful exploration of light, love, and transcendence. Meisel's use of vivid imagery and lyrical language creates a sensory experience, immersing readers in the beauty and complexity of his poetic world. The poems in this collection are written as if the lovers in the book’s poems actually find one another in 5th dimension spiritual time and, by the mysterious logistics of lovers’ destiny, reincarnate together in 3rd dimensional time as two separate people wedded within their particular destiny. It helps to know that. Meisel provides an opening poem, “Preface, Forward & Prologue on the Gazer Within,” that introduces us to the lovers in question before their reincarnation: & just before the couple went to sleep, the messenger whispered that love is the awakening of the Eternal Gazer within. & that without the Gazer, we would see one another through the dark pall of reluctance – like a fear of being born: & only gazing love reveals, & only through a light most glad of all, will we ever see.

One notable theme throughout the book is the idea of light as a transformative force. Meisel demonstrates how light can awaken and

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 illuminate, both physically and metaphorically. In the poem "Orb, Floating in the Almond Groves," a gold finch sings in the almond groves, demonstrating the presence of light and beauty in the natural world: Off Highway 5, in the San Joaquin Valley, I spotted a gold finch, his yellow shoulders prideful, glorious, like poured stars, & he was singing in the almond groves. Let me whisper a secret to you: I heard the bird before I saw it. I’d been kneeling in the orchards, trying to pray. & that is because prayer is the way we try to complete something. & I was finished with something lonesome in me…

Another prominent theme in the collection is the exploration of love. Meisel delves into the complexities and nuances of human relationships, showing both the tender moments of connection and the challenges that can arise. In the title poem, "The Light Most Glad of All," the poet reflects on the power of physical intimacy: That love’s a trade-off of what robes it / and what disrobes it also ... / so that nakedness / is the light most glad of all. Am thinking the light most glad of all is what my wife smiles / when she’s finding me in that old darkness ... / am thinking once I held her after a nightmare .../ this was in Paris ... / odd light crossing the weary hotel walls / and cockles resembling the very same shells / in Ocracoke and that / as we woke up together / we cried from inside the light most glad of all. She’s not who this poem’s about / but love-making / is / the light most glad of all / surfing our bodies / for resemblance / for that luminous / after glow / for that range of cockle shells our bodies are made of…

Throughout the collection, Meisel's writing is rich with symbolism and metaphor, allowing readers to delve deeper into the themes and ideas presented. In the poem "Coda: Afterwards," the speaker describes a small lamp glowing like a forbidden tattoo, perhaps symbolizing the inner light and strength that can be found in moments of contemplation:

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 You were sitting in meditation again, awake with all the deities around you. You were outside of all religion. Totally free of it. You were in the intermediate stream of the light most glad of all. & the small lamp burned there, glowing like forbidden tattoo so that all the darkness, surrounding it, seemed like skin, & your folded legs, heavy as fresh baked bread, ached, & your mind – so empty if felt like a dark oven, a bowl – was more wide than a case-bound book, emptied of words.

Poems in the collection stand in praise of the intimacy of marriage while at the same time aware of the difficulties in building and sustaining relationships. Meisel has spent over 30 years as a marriage psychotherapist and, he states, has been “both healer and undertaker in the arena of love’s domain.” The collection showcases Meisel's skill in crafting language and rhythm. His use of vivid, evocative imagery and carefully chosen words creates a musicality and flow that heightens the emotional impact of the poems. This is exemplified in the poem "The tongue is carnival, is light of the most divine," where Meisel's use of alliteration and repetition create a lyrical and rhythmic experience for the reader. Overall, The Light Most Glad of All is a compelling collection of poems that invites readers to explore the transformative power of light, love, and self-reflection. Meisel's mastery of language and imagery creates a rich and immersive reading experience, leaving a lasting impression on the reader. This collection is a testament to Meisel's talent as a poet and offers a deeply resonant exploration of the human experience.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 Ken Meisel is a poet and psychotherapist

from the Detroit area. He is a 2012 Kresge Arts Literary Fellow, Pushcart Prize nominee, winner of the Liakoura Prize, and the author of nine poetry collections. His books include The Light Most Glad of All,(Kelsay Books, 2023), Studies Inside the Consent of a Distance (Kelsay Books, 2022), Our Common Souls: New & Selected Poems of Detroit (Blue Horse Press, 2020), Mortal Lullabies (FutureCycle Press, 2018), and The Drunken Sweetheart at My Door (FutureCycle Press, 2015). He has published poetry in Rattle, Crab Creek Review, Concho River Review, San Pedro River Review, Rabid Oak, Muddy River Poetry Review, The MacGuffin, Lake Effect, Panoply: A Literary Zine, St. Katherine Review, I-70 Review, Trampoline, and Sheila-Na-Gig.

Barry Harris is editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal and four anthologies by Brick Street Poetry. He has published one poetry collection, Something At The Center. Married and father of two grown sons, Barry lives in Brownsburg, Indiana and is retired from Eli Lilly and Company. His poetry has appeared in Kentucky Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Grey Sparrow, Silk Road Review, Saint Ann‘s Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Boston Literary Magazine, Night Train, Silver Birch Press, Flying Island, Awaken Consciousness, Writers‘ Bloc, RedHeaded Stepchild and Laureate: The Literary Journal of Arts for Lawrence. He graduated a long time ago with a major in English from Ball State University.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Review: Salt of the Earth by Patrick T. Reardon Reviewed by Barry Harris

Title: Salt of the Earth: Doubts and Faith Author: Patrick T. Reardon Year: 2023 Publisher: Kelsay Books

Salt of the Earth: Doubts and Faith by Patrick T. Reardon is an extraordinary collection of poems that intertwines themes of faith, hope, and love. Reardon invites readers on a profound journey of self-reflection and contemplation. Salt of the Earth comprises a series of thought-provoking poems that explore spirituality, social issues, and the human experience. Reardon weaves together a tapestry of emotions and images, creating a narrative that resonates with readers at a deep level. One of the most striking aspects of Salt of the Earth is its exploration of faith and spirituality. Reardon's poems provide a unique perspective on religion, urging readers to embrace the divine in everyday life. He transforms complex concepts into vivid imagery that allows readers to visualize and connect with his words.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 For example, here is the opening to “The archangel Michael”: The archangel Michael stopped Friday morning at the McDonald’s on Western, just north of Pratt, and sat hunched over the corner table, eating his Egg McMuffin and blazing with the glory of the celestial throne …

Reardon’s use of metaphors, vivid descriptions, and rhythmic language draws readers into each poem, effortlessly combines simplicity with profound insight. The poems flow seamlessly. Here is an entire poem, “Magi” (actually one of a sequence of poems tied together as “Testament, a Sequence”), which I think serves to demonstrate the essential Reardon poetry: Three kings or wise men or scholars or rich men or scientists— looking deep into the warp and woof— find an infant, as I did. One wipes his butt. One feeds him milk. One tickles him and watches the Cosmos in his eyes, as I did.

Reading Salt of the Earth is like embarking on a spiritual journey. Reardon’s words urge readers to question their own faith and beliefs. The poems touch upon love, loss, and the search for meaning in life. They resonate authenticity and invite readers to connect as well. Reardon's collection also confronts social issues, such as inequality and injustice, highlighting the importance of compassion and mercy in today's society. Through his poetic lens, he urges readers to embrace change and advocate for a better world. The collection's diverse range of themes and subjects ensures that there is something for everyone in Salt of the Earth. Whether it is a reflection on nature or an introspective exploration of personal struggles, Reardon's poems have the power to leave a lasting impression.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 Salt of the Earth is an exquisite collection of poems that encapsulates the human experience in all its complexity and beauty. With its thought-provoking themes and masterful use of language, this collection is a must-read for poetry enthusiasts and anyone seeking to delve into the depths of the human spirit. Patrick T. Reardon, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, has authored fourteen books, including the poetry collections Requiem for David (Silver Birch), Darkness on the Face of the Deep (Kelsay Books), The Lost Tribes (Grey Book), and Let the Baby Sleep (In Case of Emergency Press). His memoir in prose poems Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby, published by Third World Press with an introduction by Haki Madhubuti, has been described by Mindbender Review of Books as “the most improbable and intriguing personal account by a writer published in 2022, but quite possibly the most ingeniously imagined memoir by any writer in any given year.” Reardon, author of the history The Loop: The “L” Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago (Southern Illinois University Press, 2020), was a Chicago Tribune reporter for 32 years. His poetry has appeared in Rhino, Main Street Rag, America, After Hours, Autumn Sky, Burningword Literary Journal and many others. His poem “Lent litany banquet” was a finalist in the 2022 chapbook contest of Divot, a Journal of Poetry, and his poem “The archangel Michael” was a finalist for the 2022 Mary Blinn Poetry Prize of After Hours Press. His website is patricktreardon.com. Barry Harris is editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal and four anthologies by Brick Street Poetry. He has published one poetry collection, Something At The Center. Married and father of two grown sons, Barry lives in Brownsburg, Indiana and is retired from Eli Lilly and Company. His poetry has appeared in Kentucky Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Grey Sparrow, Silk Road Review, Saint Ann‘s Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Boston Literary Magazine, Night Train, Silver Birch Press, Flying Island, Awaken Consciousness, Writers‘ Bloc, Red-Headed Stepchild and Laureate: The Literary Journal of Arts for Lawrence. He graduated a long time ago with a major in English from Ball State University.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Review: The Ascension of Sandy’s Drive-In

Reviewed by Matthew Brennan

Title: The Ascension of Sandy's DriveIn Author: Rodney Torreson Year: 2023 Publisher: Kelsay Books

I have been reading the poetry of Michigan poet Rodney Torreson for more than a quarter century, ever since his first full-length book appeared. The Ripening of Pinstripes (1998), runner-up for the Nicholas Roerich Prize, delighted baseball fans with its focus on Yankees history in poems such as “Dreams Should Not Dog Great Centerfielders,” which evokes the anguished lives of Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio. But these poems, so rich in metaphor, proved equally attractive to poetry fans with no affinity to the Bronx Bombers. Indeed, mastery of metaphor recurs as Torreson’s stylistic signature in his two later books, Breathable Light (2002) and The Jukebox Was the Jury of Their Love (2019). Whether writing about baseball, Midwestern farms, or Rock and Roll, Torreson takes subjects from ordinary American life and finds the extraordinary within them. Torreson’s new book, The Ascension of Sandy’s Drive-In, extends this approach in nearly seventy poems organized in four sections. There are poems about basketball (both literal, “Backboard and Hoop,” and figurative, “It Would be Fitting for a Small Town”); the poet sets many poems on farms; and others invoke iconic figures— Jesse James, Ulysses Grant —Cary Grant, but these icons appear only as shadowy prompts in common places, Northfield, Minnesota, Galena, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 Torreson often seems in the mold of older Midwestern poets such as Jared Carter, Ted Kooser, and James Wright as he finds nuance and meaning in the region’s landscape and characters. Torreson plucks some characters off the sidewalks of small towns, like a man trying to light a cigar in front of his parents’ hardware store or a blind stranger on porch steps begging to use the bathroom. But Torreson is at his empathic best when writing autobiographically about characters he really knows. For instance, in “Karla Could Ply a Smile from a Storm Cloud, Get the Sunlight to Flap Its Wings,” which first saw print in Tipton Poetry Journal, Torreson captures the excitement the speaker feels for his college girlfriend: She makes him note “sunlight on the silverware” and leads him to find “the sweet spots” in “the alfalfa field on the edge of town.” But Karla rips “a piece of sky” when she relates surprise at falling “for someone who wasn’t handsome.” With psychological aplomb, Torreson surprises us by his telling Karla to wait for someone who is, a move both self-sacrificing and vengeful. Another favorite character poem is “I Never Climbed a Tree,” which is about meeting in a restaurant with a teenage poet he’s coaching. The poem skillfully creates an extended metaphor that yokes tree climbing and writing poems. To dramatize how the youth’s talent exceeded what he could teach her, Torreson ends the poem with a stunning, but organic metaphor: . . . a brilliant girl who had branched into other fields too. I didn’t know, but it was the last time she’d write for me, as up where the wind was leaf-smacked she scaled, way up and out the top of her poem.

Besides the adroit wrapping up of the poem’s conceit, these closing lines include both expressive enjambment after “smacked,” which stands out since three of the last four lines are end-stopped, and some unobtrusive but deft sound repetitions: Ws in where, wind, way; S and K sounds in smacked and scaled; the Ps in up, top, and poem; and the Ts in out and top. And, of course, what better word to end the poem on than poem. “I Never Climbed a Tree” reveals expert craftsmanship.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 In several poems Torreson remembers his late father, an Iowa farmer who, we learn in various works, castrated hogs and lost a hand in an accident, then later played pool when he could “barely stand.” Perhaps the best of these is “Father and I Out Driving, Not Knowing It Is the Last Time.” In this moving poem, the concrete details draw us in to exercise our full empathy. Torreson underlines the silence between father and son by mentioning the sounds they make in the car: . . . silence growing louder in lulls while rolling up the windows, unfastening seatbelts and slamming car doors shut. Soon I’m following him, a step behind on a wordless path. . . .

Once again the closing is perfect, unfolding a metaphor that pulls the thread of the poem’s theme of silence and evokes a resonance we feel long after putting the book aside: In the graveyard where the father now lies, tombstones are “tongues, growing confidence to speak for us.” Torreson’s The Ascension of Sandy’s Drive-In is substantial and accomplished and shows poem by poem a mastery of metaphor. Somehow, no matter the topic, Torreson perceives correspondences that bring delight, surprise, and insight. His books deserve a place on the shelf, just below those by Carter, Kooser, and Wright.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 Poet Rodney Torreson grew up on an Iowa farm, and his plainspoken yet mystical poems draw on the landscapes and traditions of the Midwest. He earned MFA from Western Michigan University, and his poetry collections include The Ascension of Sandy’s Drive-in, The Jukebox Was the Jury of Their Love (2019), A Breathable Light (2002), and The Ripening of Pinstripes: Called Shots on the New York Yankees (1998). The former poet laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Torreson has won the Seattle Review’s Bentley Prize, and his poems have been featured in former US poet laureate Ted Kooser’s syndicated newspaper column “American Life in Poetry.” Torreson lives in Grand Rapids, where he taught creative writing at Immanuel St. James Lutheran School for 32 years. In 2007, he created the online youth poetry journal Through the Third Eye. Matthew Brennan has published six books of poetry, most recently Snow in New York (2021). His seventh, due in early 2024, is titled The End of the Road. His poems and criticism have appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, Sewanee Review, Notre Dame Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, New York Times Book Review, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Poetry Ireland Review, Southern Quarterly, and elsewhere. His latest critical book is The Colosseum Critical Introduction to Dana Gioia (2020). He taught for three decades at Indiana State University, but when his wife, Beverley, retired, they crossed the state line and now live in Columbus, Ohio.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Contributor Biographies William Aarnes now lives in New York City after teaching at Furman University in South Carolina. He has published poems in such magazines as in FIELD, The Southern Review, Tipton Poetry Journal and Poetry. His mosst recent book, The Hum in Human, was published by Main Street Rag in 2022. Gary Barkow lives in New York, practices Tai Chi and walks around feeling loved. He keeps a flashlight by his futon in case he has a brilliant idea at night. He doesn’t know where poetry originates, so he enjoys the mystery. He likes: God, the Earth, Mathematics, aeroplanes with propellers, earthworms, the San Francisco 49ers and AC/DC's, ‘It's A Long Way To The Top.” He taught his son, “The best time to scream is when the bagpipes play.” Daniel Bourne’s books of poetry include The Household Gods, Where No One Spoke the Language, and the forthcoming Talking Back to the Exterminator, the 2022 Terry L. Cox Poetry Award from Regal House Publishing. Bourne lives in Wooster, Ohio. His poems have also appeared in Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Field, Salmagundi, Guernica, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, Yale Review, Shenandoah, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. He has also lived in Poland off and on since the Summer of 1980, including on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1985-87 for the translation of younger Polish poets and most recently in 2018 and 2019 for work on an anthology of Baltic Coast poets. A collection of his translations of Bronisław Maj, The Extinction of the Holy City, is forthcoming from Free Verse Editions later this year. Michael Brasier is a writer born and raised in the Missouri Ozarks. His fiction and poetry have appeared in journals, such as Crack the Spine and The Phoenix, and also in the anthology, Paddleshots, compiled by the River Pretty Arts Foundation. When not writing on the banks of a Missouri river, Michael works as a copy and content editor for various publishing companies. Cindy Buchanan was raised in Alaska, has a B.A. in English from Gonzaga University, and was a preschool teacher until she retired. She studies poetry at Hugo House in Seattle, Washington where she currently lives, and is a member of two monthly poetry groups. She is an avid runner and hiker and enjoys every opportunity to be outdoors. Her work has been published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Chestnut Review, Evening Street Review, The MacGuffin, Hole in the Head Review, and other journals. Her first chapbook, Learning to Breathe (Finishing Line Press) was published in 2023. Find her at cindybuchanan.com.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 Douglas Cole has published six poetry collections and the novel The White Field, winner of the American Fiction Award. His work has appeared in journals such as Beloit Poetry Journal, Fiction International, Valpariaso Poetry Review, The Gallway Review and Two Hawks Quarterly; as well anthologies such as Bully Anthology (Hopewell), Bindweed Anthology, and Work (Unleash Press). He contributes a regular column called “Trading Fours” to the magazine, Jerry Jazz Musician; articles and interviews in Mythaxis; and editorial selections of American writers for Blue Citadel, a section of Read Carpet, a journal of international writing produced in Columbia. In addition to the American Fiction Award, his screenplay of The White Field won Best Unproduced Screenplay award in the Elegant Film Festival, and he has been awarded the Leslie Hunt Memorial prize in poetry, the Best of Poetry Award from Clapboard House, First Prize in the “Picture Worth 500 Words” from Tattoo Highway, and the Editors’ Choice Award in fiction by RiverSedge. He has been nominated three time for a Pushcart and seven times for Best of the Net. He lives and teaches in Seattle, Washington. His website is https://douglastcole.com/. Craig Cotter was born in 1960 in New York and has lived in California since 1986. His poems have appeared in Southword (Ireland), Chiron Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, The Gay & Lesbian Review, Great Lakes Review, Hawai’i Review, & Tampa Review. His fourth book of poems, After Lunch with Frank O’Hara, is currently available on Amazon. www.craigcotter.com After 34 years with Eli Lilly and Company, Brendan Crowley set up his own consulting and executive coaching business, Brendan Crowley Advisors LLC. He helps executives grow in their roles and careers. Brendan is originally from Ireland and lives with his wife Rosaleen in Zionsville, Indiana. He has a passion for photography and loves taking photographs of his home country, Ireland, and here in Indiana. Nicole Malyj Daone lives in Hampton, Virginia and is editing her historical fiction manuscript about her Ukrainian grandparents and writes poems or stories about motherhood, WWII, and Ukrainian heritage. There are bits of memoir and comedy ideas floating in her purse or in a random file on her phone. When not writing or learning more about the craft, she teaches yoga, forages, reads, cooks, looks for animals to pet, and researches until finding composition inspiration. When not teaching at the Community College of Denver, Brian Dickson avoids driving as much as possible to traipse around the front range region by foot, bike, bus or train to connect with the quotidian. Past publications include two chapbooks, In a Heart’s Rut (HighFive press), Maybe This is How Tides Work (Finishing Line Press), one book, All Points Radiant (WordTech, Cherry Grove Editions) and various journals, most recently Panoply. Arvilla Fee teaches English Composition for Clark State College in Ohio and is the poetry editor for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous presses, and her poetry book, The Human Side, is available on Amazon. For Arvilla, writing produces the greatest joy when it connects us to each other. George Freek is a poet/playwright living in Belvidere, Illionois. George Freek's poetry appears in numerous journals and reviews. His poem "Night Thoughts" was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His poem "Enigmatic Variations" was also recently nominated for Best of the Net. His collection Melancholia is published by Red Wolf Editions.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 Matthew James Friday is a British born writer and teacher now living Oregon. He has had many poems published in US and international journals. His first chapbook The Residents is due to be published by Finishing Line Press in 2024. He has published numerous micro-chapbooks with the Origami Poems Project. Poems are forthcoming in The Oregon English Journal, New Contrast (South Africa) and The Amsterdam Quarterly (Netherlands). Matthew is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet. Visit his website at http://matthewfriday.weebly.com SG Fromm’s work has appeared in several publications, including Salamander, Crosswind Poetry Journal, Door is A Jar and Prometheus Unbound. Fromm lives in New Jersey. James Green has worked as a naval officer, deputy sheriff, high school English teacher, professor of education, and administrator in both public schools and universities. Recipient of two Fulbright grants, he has served as a visiting scholar at the University of Limerick in Ireland and the National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan. In addition to academic publications, including three books, Green is the author of three chapbooks of poetry and a fourth, Long Journey Home, is forthcoming after winning the Charles Dickson Chapbook Contest sponsored by the Georgia Poetry Society., Individual poems have appeared in literary magazines in England, Ireland, and the United States. He resides in Muncie, Indiana. John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident now living in Rhode Island, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Washington Square Review and Floyd County Moonshine. Latest books, Between Two Fires,Covert, and Memory Outside The are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, La Presa and California Quarterly. Dan Jacoby is a graduate of St. Louis University, Chicago State University, and Governors State University. He has published poetry in Bombay Gin, Euphony, Red Fez, American Poetry Review and other fine publications. He is a former educator, steel worker, green beret, and counterintelligence agent. He was born in 1947 on the second floor of a cold water flat at 55th and Halsted, Chicago, and currently lives in Illinois. His work is influenced by the poets John Knoepfle, Al Montesi, Dobby, and John Logan to name a few. He has been nominated in 2015 and 2020 for a Pushcart and Best of the Net in 2021. He is the author of the book Blue Jeaned Buddhists. Philip C. Kolin is the Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus and Editor Emeritus of the Southern Quarterly at the Univ. of Southern Mississippi. He has published 15 collections of poems including most recently Reaching Forever (Poiema Series, Cascade Books, 2019), Delta Tears: Poems (Main Street Rag, 2021), Wholly God's (Wind & Water Press, 2021), and Black Trauma: Resistance Poems about Black History (Third World Press, 2023). The 12th edition of his business writing textbook, Successful Writing at Work, was published last year by Cengage Learning. Norbert Krapf, former Indiana Poet Laureate, has recently had released Homecomings: A Writer's Memoir which covers the fifty plus years of his writing and publishing life. By the end of 2023, his sixteenth poetry collection, Songs for All Souls, will appear.For more, see http://www.krapfpoetry.net/.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 Amy Lerman lives with her husband and very spoiled cats in the Arizona desert where she is residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College. Her chapbook, Orbital Debris (Choeofpleirn Press, 2022) won the 2022 Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest, she has been a Pushcart nominee, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Box of Matches, The Madison Review, Radar Poetry, Slippery Elm, Rattle, and other publications. Kasy Long is an Indiana-based writer and editor. She serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Remington Review. Her work has previously been published in Nixes Mate Review, Inside the Bell Jar, Glass Mountain, Oracle Fine Arts Review, The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, and elsewhere. Jack e Lorts, a retired educator, lives in rural eastern Oregon, where he continues to publish widely, if only occassionally, online and such places as Windfall, Phantom Drift, Chiron Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Verse Virtual & Verse Daily. His most recent book is The Love Songs of Ephram Pratt, many of which appear widely online. Frank C. Modica is a retired teacher living in Illinois who taught children with special needs for over 34 years. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dust Poetry, New Square, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Pomona Valley Review. Frank's first chapbook, What We Harvest,nominated for an Eric Hoffer book award, was published in the fall Of 2021 by Kelsay Books. His second chapbook, Old Friends, was published this past December by Cyberwit Press. Tia Paul-Louis is a fiction writer and poet from Florida. She began experimenting with songwriting at age 11 and later felt a deeper connection to poetry. Her themes portray family life, gender role controversies, mental health, and spiritual values. She admires the freedom of expression in most forms of art such as music, acting, and painting. The poetry and prose of Robert L. Penick have appeared in well over 100 different literary journals, including The Hudson Review, North American Review, Plainsongs, and Oxford Magazine. His latest chapbook is Exit, Stage Left, by Slipstream Press. The Art of Mercy: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming from Hohm Press, and more of his work can be found at theartofmercy.net. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Nancy Kay Peterson’s poetry has appeared in print and online in numerous publications, most recently in The Bluebird Word, Dash Literary Journal, HerWords, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, One Sentence Poems, RavensPerch, Spank the Carp, Steam Ticket: A Third Coast Review, Three Line Poetry and Tipton Poetry Journal. From 20042009, she co-edited and co-published Main Channel Voices: A Dam Fine Literary Magazine (Winona, Minnesota). Her work has been included in two anthologies: Haikus for Hikers (Brick Street Poetry, Inc.) and Play (Outsider Press). Finishing Line Press published her two poetry chapbooks, Belated Remembrance (2010) and Selling the Family (2021). She lives in Washington State. For more information, see www.nancykaypeterson.com.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 Mykyta Ryzhykh lives in Ukraine and is winner of the international competition Art Against Drugs and Ukrainian contests Vytoky, Shoduarivska Altanka, Khortytsky dzvony; laureate of the literary competition named after Tyutyunnik, Lyceum, Twelve, named after Dragomoshchenko. Nominated for Pushcart Prize. Published many times in the journals Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinian magazine, Polutona, Rechport, Topos, Articulation, Formaslov, Literature Factory, Literary Chernihiv, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks Poetry & Fiction Journal, Littoral Press, Book of Matches, on the portals Litсenter, Ice Floe Press and Soloneba, in the Ukrainian literary newspaper. Nolo Segundo, pen name of L. J. Carber, became a published poet in his 70's in over 170 literary journals in 13 countries who lives in New Jersey. A trade publisher has released 3 collections in paperback: The Enormity of Existence [2020]; Of Ether and Earth [2021]; and Soul Songs [2022]. These titles reflect the awareness he's had for over 50 years since having an NDE whilst almost drowning in a Vermont river: That he has--IS--a consciousness that predates birth and survives death, what poets since Plato have called the soul. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and thrice for Best of the Net, he's a retired English/ESL teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia] who's been married 43 years to a smart and beautiful Taiwanese woman. Jeanine Stevens’ latest publications are No Lunch Among the Day Stars (Cold River Press) and Tea in the Nuns’ Library (Eyewear Publishing, UK.) Work has appeared in Chiron Review, Evansville Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and Two Thirds North (Sweden) Espresso Review, and others. Jeanine is instructor at American River College in Sacramento, California. Wally Swist’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as co-winner in the 2011 Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Contest, and A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds & Nature (Ex Ophidia Press, 2019), the winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize. His recent poems have appeared in Asymptote, Chicago Quarterly Review, Hunger Mountain: Vermont College of Fine Arts Journal, The Montreal Review, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, Poetry London, Scoundrel Time, and The Seventh Quarry Poetry Magazine (Wales). He lives in Massachusetts. Jim Tilley lives in New York State and has published three full-length collections of poetry and a novel with Red Hen Press. His short memoir, The Elegant Solution, was published as a Ploughshares Solo. His poem, On the Art of Patience, was selected by Billy Collins to win Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize for Poetry. Four of his poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His next poetry collection, Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe: New & Selected Poems, will be published in June 2024. Victoria Twomey is a Pushcart nominated poet and an award-winning artist from New York State. Her poems have been published in several anthologies, in newspapers and online. Her full-length, debut book of poetry, Glimpse, was published in April 2023 by Kelsay Books. Michael Vecchio now lives in Houston after living in New York and California. Michael views poetry as a form of teaching and learning. His work is strongly influenced by his experiences with the natural world.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023 Mark Vogel lives at the back of a Blue Ridge holler with his wife, Susan Weinberg, an accomplished fiction and creative non-fiction writer, and two foster sons. He currently is an Emeritus Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Poems and short stories have appeared in several dozen literary journals. Diane Webster retired in 2022 after working 40 years at a local newspaper. Her work has appeared in El Portal, North Dakota Quarterly, Verdad, New English Review and other literary magazines. She also had a micro-chap published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022. A poem of Diane's was nominated for Best of the Net by Star 82 in 2022 as well. She lives in Colorado. Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English. His work has appeared in over 200 literary journals from 17 countries. His sixth collection, titled The Invisible, will be published in late 2023 by Greenwich Exchange (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2023

Editor Barry Harris is editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal and four anthologies by Brick Street Poetry: Mapping the Muse: A Bicentennial Look at Indiana Poetry; Words and Other Wild Things and Cowboys & Cocktails:Poems from the True Grit Saloon, and Reflections on Little Eagle Creek. He has published one poetry collection, Something At The Center. Married and father of two grown sons, Barry lives in Brownsburg, Indiana and is retired from Eli Lilly and Company. His poetry has appeared in Kentucky Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Grey Sparrow, Silk Road Review, Saint Ann‘s Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Boston Literary Magazine, Night Train, Silver Birch Press, Flying Island, Awaken Consciousness, Writers‘ Bloc, Red-Headed Stepchild and Laureate: The Literary Journal of Arts for Lawrence. One of his poems was 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. He graduated a long time ago with a major in English from Ball State University.