tpj62 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.

Statistics: This issue features 32 poets from the United States (20 unique states), and 4 poets from Belarus, Canada, Italy and Ukraine.

Our Featured Poem this issue is “You, Smiling” written by Mary Sexson. Mary’s 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 Douglas Cole’s Drifter

Cover Photo: Heron in Flight by Brendan Crowley.

Barry Harris, Editor

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.

A Shadow in the Corner

DennisBarnes

I am that flickering shadow behind the blue recliner, where years before Scruffy would hide while others danced within this house that will soon burn down.

And now, since most of the furniture is gone, I try to extinguish my wife’s final words hot as these flames: You are a good man, I wish you the best of luck.

After she closes the doors, the chimney flue swallows me whole and I dissipate into the empty night like dense, black smoke flittering to nowhere.

Dennis Barnes lives in the Northern Virginia area where he leads a not-soquiet poetic life. He was the 2005 recipient of the Baltimore People’s Poetry Done the Most to Advance Poetry award. Mr. Barnes has had poems published in over forty magazines and anthologies. Shades of Light, his first book of poetry, was published in 2007.

Communion

TanyaGick

My mother shared a birthday with Muhammad Ali and never knew, not really, how to be afraid. She dropped out of university in 1969 to take mescaline in the California desert. Eyes alive with reverie, sat across from me at the kitchen table the night before my first holy communion, she allows me sips off her Old Milwaukee. We are expecting relatives the next day. The house is as clean as we can make it. I am desperate to wear my new dress, all white with a satin bow at the waist, skirt of crinoline that floats like the bell of a flower in the wind when I walk. Next day, I could wear flesh-colored panty hose for the first time, sandals with a slight cork heel, patent leather to match my prayer book. I know all the prayers by heart. I have made my first confession. My mother takes a sip of beer, begins to tell of when she was far away, diving into swimming pools at sunrise after tripping all night. She tells me heaven is actual, made of colors we cannot comprehend and around us, everywhere, all the time. She says all around us live realms, realms within realms.

Tanya Gick lives in Bloomigton, Indiana, with her cats, Mabel and Pancake.

Poser

MaryfrancesWagner

A black snake has spooled itself around our hose carrier, a good imitator, except its tail dangles like a loose thread, and its scales glisten. Our dog follows its scent, but jerky treats steer her away. Perhaps the snake knows we know it’s there, and we’re all good pretenders. We scramble back inside, know it’ll unwind and swivel its way back into comfortable wooded darkness where it’s easier to pretend the other isn’t there.

Maryfrances Wagner ‘s newest books are The Immigrants’ New Camera, and Solving for X. She co-edits I-70 Review, serves on The Writers Place board, was 2020 Missouri Individual Artist of the Year, and was Missouri’s 6th Poet Laureate 20212023. Red Silk won the Thorpe Menn book award and was first runner up in the Eric Hoffer award 2024 (reissued in 2023) and Short Listed for the Grand Prize. Poems have appeared in New Letters, Midwest Quarterly, Laurel Review, American Journal of Poetry, Poetry East, Voices in Italian Americana, Main Street Rag, Rattle, Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (Penguin), Literature Across Cultures (Pearson/Longman), et. al. She is the granddaughter of four Italian Immigrants.

An Abandoned Tractor

JohnGrey

On a back road, I stop to examine an ancient tractor, rust-colored, as idle as a rock.

The field it once commanded is now woods. Its seat is half rotted away. Its heavy wheels are sunk into the pebbly soil.

A rustle, a chirp or two, from its engine is evidence of some pragmatic nesting activity.

I indulge in a little anthropomorphism as I imagine the tractor daydreaming of its younger self: some bright yellow Disney-like character with headlamps for eyes dragging a plow up and down in straight, narrow rows while whistling a melody concocted by the Sherman brothers.

This wreck is of no use in the real world but there’s a role for it in a movie.

To The Midnight Moon

JohnGrey

It dangles like a medallion on the sky's black throat. It's always in the frame, a dead thing shining. It's the gleaming eye that watches itself being watched, boasts so few footprints and nowhere the touch of flesh. It's a strong-box of meaningless years but still can stir the wolf’s blood.

It's like my nerves' chauffeur, dropping them off in the dark places just beneath the skin. It's a hand in the face of morning barring it from my window. When I'm thirsty, it pours me a glass of undrinkable light.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident now living in Rhode Island, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Tenth Muse. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.

You, Smiling

MarySexson

Closing down your last bank account feels like

I am erasing your footprints from the path you took through this life.

You made many, and some were deep. Others barely made impressions in the sands you passed through.

I could make a map of the whimsical directions you chose, salesman, musician, painter, electrician, but I realize all the pieces won’t fit into any dreamy landscape that I could frame and hang in our living room.

I’d much rather dust off the Godzilla figure on your desk, rearrange your Big Book and your tokens, set up a picture of you where you’re smiling, with your sunglasses on.

What I’m Thinking

MarySexson

Reading the obituaries

I imagined you were checking your own statistics. How many were younger than you?

How many had you already outlived? And then there were the ones in their 80’s and 90’s, held up like a prize if you did things right. If you could just skirt your way around the weight, around the years of bad food, around the DNA strands that had already told you you’d inherited your dad’s bum ticker.

Not a hopeful forecast, was it?

But you wanted to buck the trend defy the family odds and your bad heart, live on into your 80’s, where somebody reads your obituary and sighs, hoping to outlive you.

Friends in High Places

MarySexson

When her father, so sick from chemo and radiation, inspires his daughter, who is in recovery, to reach out to her old dealer who can tell her what might cut the nausea or make him want to eat.

The juxtaposition of these needs, the starkness of who we know in this life, the dealer, the doctor, the healer, the friend who tells us that a bit of THC oil under his tongue can make a bowl of peaches more palatable, that he may not need to vomit when he’s done that this funny little bit of nature can actually help him to stomach it even as his body winces against the poisons he’s already swallowed.

Mary Sexson lives in Indianapolis and is an awardwinning poet with two full-length books and two collaborative chapbooks. Her newest full-length book is Her Addiction An Empty Place at the Table, (Finishing Line Press). Chatter House Press released her second collaborative chapbook, Marriage Maps and Driven Destinies, (October 2023). Her work has appeared in Alien Buddha, Flying Island Journal, The Indianapolis Review, Of Rust and Glass, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Tipton Poetry Journal, and many other publications. Six of her poems are archived in the INverse collection of Hoosier Poets. Sexson has a Best of the Net and six Pushcart Prize nominations.

The City

BruceLevine

The city unfolds its wonders

Cavernous streets outlining paths

Glass-fronted stores and shops

Eateries mingle with clothiers

Each beckoning in their way

Fragrances drifting through doorways

Rich flavors exciting the senses

Beckoning passers-by to enter

To feast their eyes and tastebuds

Engulfed in the fineries of life

Or the simplest vagaries of fun

Menus attached to city walls

Tempting the hungry to partake

Sidewalks lined with sale racks

Clothes for all occasions available

Street performers in full regalia

Mimes or bagpipe players or a jazz band

Enticing pedestrians to stop a while

A reprieve from moving onward

Before seeking the next destination

As the city unfolds its wonders

Bruce Levine lives in Maine and is a Pushcart Prize poetry nominee, a Spillwords Press Awards winner, and a Featured Writer in WestWard Quarterly. Over three hundred of his works are published on over twentyfive on-line journals including Ariel Chart, Literary Yard, 5-7-5 Haiku Journal: over seventy print anthologies including Tipton Poetry Journal, Poets’ Espresso Review, WestWard Quarterly, and the chapbook Sweet Dreams. He is also a classical composer. Visit him at www.brucelevine.com

The Poet Dreams of Ispiration

ColleenS.Harris

Making something out of nothing when there’s nothing to be had: as much the realm of poets as poor mothers and the mad.

Colleen S. Harris serves as dean of the library at Texas A&M International University. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her books include God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark, 2009), These Terrible Sacraments (Bellowing Ark, 2010; re-released in 2019 by Doubleback Books), and The Kentucky Vein (Punkin House, 2011), and she co-edited Women Versed in Myth: Essays on Modern Women Poets (McFarland, 2016). Her poetry has appeared in Main Street Rag, Free Verse, Wisconsin Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, 66: The Journal of Sonnet Studies, and Tipton Poetry Journal, among others.

Alzheimer’s

WallySwist

Je suis desole that you hit and kicked me twice today, that you told me you were an imitation of yourself and that you were protecting the real you, that I would suffer for not buying an ice cream cone for all the girls, even though I bought one for you.

Je suis desole that you demanded that you be my boss, that you would bully me after I made you dinner, that you wanted me fired, pressing me with your threats of calling the police, even though you harangued me and I never raised my voice.

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Je suis desole that you needed to lean on my arm before I gave you a cane to balance upon and support your dizziness after I parked the car, while you remembered nothing and knew no one as I guided you to the shops and the café.

Je suis desole that you are persistent in what is hurtful, damaging, which necessitates my absolving you no matter what, despite your walking across the street before I could stop you, turning around to wave at me as you nearly walked into an oncoming truck.

Je suis desole that your mind, as doctors suggest, is dying, that you can’t even recall the last word spoken, that you no longer comprehend what is occurring in Gaza, how it’s similar to our limited conversation, our unnegotiated hostage deal.

Wally Swist’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the 2011 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition, and A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds and Nature, winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Poetry Prize. Recent essays, poems, and translations have appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Commonweal, The Comstock Review, Frontier Poetry, Healing Muse, Illuminations, La Piccioletta Barca (U.K.), Pensive, Sunspot Lit, and Your Impossible Voice. Forthcoming titles include If You’re the Dreamer, I’m the Dream: Selected Translations from Rilke’s Book of Hours from Finishing Line Press and Kelsay Books will publish Aperture, poems regarding caregiving his wife through Alzheimer’s. He lives in Massachusetts.

A Wish for Contentment

MeganMunger

I want to live like a duck, same small pond, unafraid of tomorrow. I don’t want to budget every penny. I want to do better, learn to stop and sit before diving back under.

I wake up each day, try to be grateful I have cinnamon coffee, a heated house, an almost-husband. Most days, I think he’s the problem, but he’s not. Yesterday I filled our silence with empty threats, love me the way I need to be loved or I will find someone who will. Then, over dinner I’ve given you five good years.

He met my tearful eyes, laughed, shook his head. Good, we are good here, and he smiled, so I smiled, too at least for this dinner, mozzarella rotini.

Megan Munger is a Kansas poet and Pacific University MFA Candidate. She received her M.A. and B.S.Ed. in English from Pittsburg State University, where she received the James B.M. Schick Midwest Quarterly Graduate Studies Best Essay Award in 2021 and 2022. She currently resides in Junction City, Kansas, where she teaches English at Junction City High School. Her poetry has previously appeared in the Of Our Own Accord anthology by Flying Ketchup Press and online at Kitchen Table Quarterly and The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative.

The Stars Above, The Earth Below

GeorgeFreek

Tonight the moon looks like an ancient scholar whose mind is unfulfilled. A stunning chorus of stars is singing over my bed, but it can’t tell me what lies ahead. As I look out my window, a pigeon disappears into the jaws of a darkened sky. Clouds breathe like pilgrims, who have traveled for years, only to lose their way. The night wraps me like a cocoon, as the moon turns to clay. I stare at it as at a flower of stone, which will never bloom, but will never fade away.

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. George Freek also published plays. His plays are published by Playscripts and Off The Wall Plays.

Yo no soy yo

JuanRamónJiménez

Yo no soy yo.

Soy éste

que va a mi lado sin yo verlo; que, a veces, voy a ver, y que, a veces, olvido. El que calla, sereno, cuando hablo, el que perdona, dulce, cuando odio, el que pasea por donde no estoy, el que quedará en pie cuando yo muera.

I am not I

TranslationbyDavidLeeGarrison

I am not I. I am the one I do not see though he walks beside me, the one I sometimes visit and at other times forget. The peaceful one who does not speak when I do, the one who forgives, gently, when I hate, the one who walks where I am not, the one still standing when I die.

Juan Ramón Jiménez (Spain, 1881-1958) was a prolific poet who won the Nobel Prize in 1956. Influenced by Rubén Darío, the French Symbolists, and W. B. Yeats, he became known for his advocacy of “naked” poetry, free verse that eschews literary artifice in seeking to express the inner essence of things. Ray Bradbury used a Jiménez quotation as the epigraph of his novel, Fahrenheit 451: “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.” Exiled by the Spanish Civil War, he taught for a few years in the United States and then settled in Puerto Rico.

David Lee Garrison (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University) lives in Ohio and is an emeritus professor of Spanish and Portuguese whose poetry and translations have appeared widely in journals and anthologies. He has translated Spanish poets from the sixteenth through the twenty-first centuries, including collections of the poetry of Vicente Aleixandre, José Bergamín, and Pedro Salinas.

The Normalcy of Anomaly

AlessioZanelli

Wagons clatter past, heading east, the engineer must be yawning a furlong or so further on. Not even ten seconds and swarming children run and scream like mad, exempt from law and order within a nursery school yard. All noises sound just like alarm bells, each time I jump, my heart throbs. The seasons lapse in no order, at random but pretty fast. The days ensue exact, befall as strict as decaying nuclei. I flounder on the embankment, maybe for the millionth time, slow and awkward as ever along the last few years.

I know I’m tired, of what I don’t, nor do I care.

The road, my gasps, the sky? The unmanageable change? The normalcy of anomaly? What I also know is I’m not going to stop. I haven’t had enough, not yet.

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

Too Early for Shadows

RussellRowland

Pre-sunup is too early for shadows but dawn has goldened the treetops. Soon enough, longitudes will reclaim their doppelgangers.

Let us have hearts of flesh, not of stone, for some who rise to renewed despair, after sleep’s all-too-brief morphine. Just to awaken is like getting the terrible news again. I wonder if today they will even throw shadows.

I wonder if they dreamed about shadows without bodies attached to them.

Let us walk our own long shadows, this morning, to those homes with curtains drawn against the sun.

Russell Rowland lives and writes from New Hampshire.

My mother used to eat the sweetest fruit

EstherSadoff

My mother scoops the middle of the melon, shaves the pineapple of its tough skin, and leave bowls of chopped fruit all over the kitchen. Between smacking lips, my mother orders us to eat, saying It's good for your throat (which makes more sense than It’s good for your face which she says about tomatoes). Today my mother is trying to cut down on sugar. Instead of pineapple and mango, she’s learning to love blueberries and blackberries with plain yogurt. She even eats a special nut bread from a local bakery. When I come over, she hacks chunks of bread from the loaf and hands them to me. She makes me promise I’ll come to the bakery. I nod and say It’s delicious (I learn the bakery has a schedule. April 15 is Pumpernickel Day!). My mother’s favorite words are Let’s go! and Hurry! so we hurry to the bakery, we hurry to the grocery store where we buy more fruit. My favorite moments are when my mother grabs the keys to the car, when she grabs the dog's leash (service dog in training), and when we head to the farmer’s market where (the dog watches my mother, I watch my mother, and my father watches my mother) as she can’t help but choose the sweetest, heaviest fruit.

Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Little Patuxent Review, Jet Fuel Review, Cathexis Poetry Northwest, Pidgeonholes, Santa Clara Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, among others. She has three forthcoming chapbooks: Some Wild Woman (Finishing Line Press), Serendipity in France (Finishing Line Press), and Dear Silence (Kelsay Books).

MykytaRyzhykh

I don’t know why I was born with a body because it’s killing me fresh flash meat is silent during the cardiogram behind the wall of the hospital room my parents are crying and saying that I am an ungrateful pig the doctor says I’m ready for сhristmas dinner I just have to wait until they bake me in the oven [This poem was first published by Ice Floe Press.]

Mykyta Ryzhykh lives in Ukraine, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has been published any 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.

Ahead the unwritten

MarkVogel

Wanting the job was enough in a time when no credentials were required. From the newspaper strewn garage feeling and smelling (more than seeing) the encroaching mile-wide river spawning riffraff in this stained landscape accustomed to flooding. Stacks of newspapers, together with the white cat painted with newsprint, a tail-less yellow pit bull sleeping on an oil stain, guarding four cars beaten into submission. Like a half-remembered slur, my car, a garish

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Poetry Journal

lime-green Chevy with the front passenger window gone. A soft talking hairless boss in flannel, mumbling every sentence, teaching in two days the essentials about delivering the news to the hinterland. A seventy-mile Ozark circle, racing darkness, fast as fast can go how to throw and drive, throw and drive, dropping bundles in Fredericktown, Poplar Bluff, Clearwater pushing for speed, always moving away into the land beyond the lights. Inevitable, the gray drizzle days when machines fail. The Vega won’t start and the master points to the monster black GTO, quickly teaching again how to shift and use the clutch to control tires begging to squeal. Then alone, energized, cruising fifteen exhilarating tree-lined miles of freedom, absorbing the engine roar, before I kill the beast way out beyond the last town. In ominous dusk growing darker, starting and stalling/ starting and stalling/starting and stalling/ no one there to hear/no adult eager to rescue. Tiresome the engine bursting into life/ the lurch five feet forward, then dying again. The sweet clutch smell, ten thousand cicadas singing ecstasy on a road where every mailbox long ago demanded a half mile of space. Time has a quiet but firm voice for stories like this back to life Steve McQueen saying push on. Henry Fonda speaking fucking slow like he could go on forever speaking about the art of surviving. Even as panicked momentum fueled the youthful edge/ all ahead waiting to live/a new religion sparking the ignition crank. Like a drug this seeking and finding the way to move on, the winding dark long way home.

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.

No Filet Mignon for Me

ArvillaFee

~ Edward Thomas “Birds’ Nests” 1912

I’d butchered the English essay, but my professor had left the blood, red ink spilled across each page in a tsunami of comments and corrections. Lord knows I’d tried to wrestle the meat out of Edward Thomas’s poem “Birds’ Nests,” but I had apparently sprained my arm in the process, inadequately sucking the marrow of metaphorical nuances. So, sorry, Miss Professor that I didn’t filet the tender flank of seasonal allusions and marinate it with the tender juices of passing time. Please excuse my oversight, the use of too much gristle skidding through the perfect cut of prime like polished shoes on parched linoleum guess I didn’t notice the boy in the poem suffered so much from nostalgia and regret. I see now that sirloin wasn’t exactly my finest choice, what with the overcooked mention of leaves and jays. Next time I’ll use a sharper knife, and perhaps you could use different colored ink?

Arvilla Fee teaches English Composition for Clark State College in Ohio and is the managing editor for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous presses, including Calliope, North of Oxford, Rat’s Ass Review, Mudlark, and many others. Her poetry books, The Human Side and This is Life, are available on Amazon. Arvilla loves writing, photography and traveling, and she never leaves home without a snack and water (just in case of an apocalypse). For Arvilla, writing produces the greatest joy when it connects us to each other. To learn more about her work, you can visit her website: https://soulpoetry7.com/

These Things I Haven’t Told

LoisMarieHarrod

And it came to pass the great teacher said tell those things you have never told

But I could not say such things, I was like the virgin who pondered the world in her heart.

Oh, you know which virgin I mean, the one with the impossible birth.

Perhaps that is the mystery of this poem, of what springs from nothing into my mind, nothing I knew I had conceived.

Lois Marie Harrod’s 18th collectio, Spat, was published by Finishing Line Press, 2021 and her chapbook Woman by Blue Lyra, 2020. Dodge poet, life-long educator and writer, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She currently teaches college level courses in literature at The Center for Modern Aging, Princeton. More info and links to her online work www.loismarieharrod.org

Waiting for the Wind

HollyDay

She’s angry because she can’t just dump the files out the window, can’t let 50 years’ of memory float down the street. Secretly, I agree with her that all of the letters, the legal paperwork, the family photographs should find their way into dark alleys and pools of gutter runoff where the sloping forms of rats and raccoons can rip them into nests make them the foundation of an actual happy home. But the address she shared with my father for so many years is on most of the paperwork, can be traced back to her maybe incur a fine for littering. I point this out to her, remind her she’s been left too little to live on as it is, even less if she has to go to court. She sighs and agrees, replaces the papers clutched in her arms carefully in the box they came out of, almost too carefully. She’s not going to get rid of them.

Years from now, angry myself, I will be the one standing at the open window hands filled with copies of divorce papers that were never signed, only reissued every few years photographs of a happy family hiding terrible lies, will I have the strength to shred all of this baggage, or will I merely tuck it away into yet another shoebox offer it to my children as some sort of legacy, tell them this is all that’s left of a life?

Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, Cardinal Sins, and New Plains Review, and her recent book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body, and Bound in Ice. She lives in Minneapolis and teaches creative writing at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and Hugo House in Seattle.

Rebels

Mary HillsKuck

Before Sandy Hook, Before Uvalde

High school windows, raised high and then higher, let a draft of the day’s balm suffuse the stuffy classroom.

I, sub for the hour, stood among high schoolers aching to feel soft, not yet mown grass under fingers and toes, to warm their bodies in springtime sun.

Please let us go outside. . .

What’s the worst that can happen? Is there a rule about going outside?

We tiptoed right out the open side door, sat out of sight of the principal’s eye.

Some in pairs, some alone, the teenagers lounged under trees in the grass, reading, writing, and musing, a mild breeze mussing their hair.

When time was up, and we went to the door, it was locked.

No worries, said two adventuresome girls. They climbed through the windows, opened the door, let us conspirators in.

Mary Hills Kuck has spent most of her adult life in the US Northeast and in Jamaica, West Indies. Since retiring from teaching German, English, and ESOL, she has settled in Massachusetts with her husband and family. She has published poems in The Connecticut River Review, SLANT, Tipton Poetry Journal, Burningword Literary Journal, Poetry Quarterly, Main St. Rag, Amethyst, The Lyric, and a number of other journals. Intermittent Sacraments, her chapbook, was published in 2021 by Finishing Line Press, and her full-length book, Before I Forget, by Kelsay Books, appeared in 2024. One of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Beliefs

GilHoy

I don’t believe you always get what you pay for.

I believe an orange is orange only when there are eyes to see it, even a dog’s eyes will do.

I believe this poem could go on forever, like infinity: a word incomprehensible to man.

I believe in the power of positive thinking because thoughts are things and things manifest.

I believe in most of the usual unusual things, having grown up in a dysfunctional family.

I believe I’m older than my youngest child, but not as old as the youngest star.

I believe the eyes are the gateway to the soul if man has one.

I believe it’s presumptuous to say that man has a soul but an orangutan doesn’t.

I don't believe a man should eat everything on his plate if he’s already full.

I don't believe a parachute will save you if you jump off of Mt. Everest.

If you want to be a good poet, be sure to use the right words and make sure your poem is well made.

I believe we covet and fear all beliefs.

I believe planting grass seed that won’t grow is a fool’s errand.

I believe thinking about nothing is impossible, something always gets in the way.

I believe blessings at the dinner table make your food taste better.

I believe blessing others can change the blesser into God’s image.

I believe it’s constructive to be reminded of your solitude.

I believe it’s depressing to be reminded of your solitude.

I believe when beliefs keep changing there’s hope for us yet.

I believe night is as dark as your darkest belief.

I believe that a ghost looks better than a man in a morgue.

I believe too many beliefs will stunt your growth.

I believe you should casually sip wine on a Sunday evening with two whispering women and watch the sun set.

I believe too many beliefs have caused too many wars.

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I believe that without beliefs you wouldn’t utter a word. I believe that the plastic container heating food in your microwave releases toxins.

I believe hot soup is a different kettle of fish than a hot kiss. I believe we should all strive to be a favorite grandchild. I believe the Rolodex of my dreams is as complicated and simple as the Pythagorean theorem.

If you want to be a bad poet, be sure to use the wrong words and make sure your poem is poorly made.

I believe you can rarely choose your entourage. I believe without beliefs you’ll disappear, like a hole that’s no longer a hole in anything.

Gil Hoy is a Best of the Net nominated Tucson, Arizona poet and writer who studied fiction and poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program and The Writers Studio in Tucson, Arizona. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. Hoy is a semi-retired trial lawyer. His poetry and fiction have previously appeared in Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, Tipton Poetry Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Chiron Review, The Galway Review, Right Hand Pointing, Rusty Truck, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The New Verse News, The Penmen Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal and elsewhere.

Thoughts Thickening

RyanDavidLeack

Backyard thoughts all endless thickening, I end them anyway. Books piled on either side, garden tranquil and softening to my left as you read to my right. Your small lips, cut from my own, part and move, eyes tracing interplay of color and light and shadow, each page awakened to its own change with mirrored clarity. Our leave will be ending soon. Listen. Hear the Absence-Presence opening to itself, being-for-itself, alone and away. Don’t clutch onto things. Cast off this memory. Pull up every anchor. For although we’ll miss the simplicity these moments bring, what could be waiting?

Dr. Ryan David Leack teaches writing and rhetoric at the University of Southern California. He’s published poetry in Tipton Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Poetry Quarterly, Pif, and Westwind, among other journals, and also served as Editor-in-Chief of Pomona Valley Review for seven years, to which he now serves as an adviser.

An Autumn Visit to My Son’s Unfinished New Home

MatthewBrennan

Suddenly, I remember being four, The end of May and green leaves bloating trees, Our family blooming promise, still estranged from grief. I've come with Dad to a tract of half-built houses. In one, the place my early life unfolds, Morning light is shining on the sink

Where, when I blink, I find my mom at work, Burnished in time, as if she is not backlit By a day long ago buried in darkness.

Matthew Brennan taught at Indiana State University in Terre Haute for 32 years but now lives in Columbus, Ohio. His most recent books are The End of the Road (2023) and Snow in New York (2021). He has contributed poems, articles, and reviews to Tipton Poetry Journal, THINK, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Sewanee Review.

Midlife Crisis

AnneBucey

One day she woke up and saw she was a grape, too ripe to be succulent, almost too ripe to taste, hanging from a vine that wrapped aging

So, she put on a skirt with pleats that rode wildly away from the sensible caps of her knees and went to Target listening for a whistle. It could have come from the short, ruddy guy outside, waiting for the bus or his buddy, for that matter, because it really didn’t only that her calves could command such a quick, lusty glance from a perfect stranger.

Later, when the priest kissed her in the deserted coat room, not once but twice and her legs lit up like flashing sirens, she emerged from the dream with the sobering thought that she’d been picked before, seasons ago, picked small and green.

Then she rose in the night to comfort the terror

28 fingers around the stainless in her kitchen.

of the brittle vine, of the passing of many nights, knowing the late hour’s ghostly visitation was surrounded by the days and years of loving a man and the children they bore, who, in turn, bore them up, like Handel’s full chorus announcing the passion, pleading for redemption. The boy of eight years looked up from his pillow and said how he wished he’d savored the bliss of kindergarten savored he said! And his mother shook her head and wondered where he’d heard that word how did he know?

Anne Bucey is a writer living in Atlanta, Georgia. Her poems have appeared in Broad River Review, The Healing Muse, Tiger’s Eye and The Rose in the World. "Canebrake," a poem from an unpublished full-length collection, was a finalist for the 2023 Ron Rash Award and appeared in Broad River Review. A chapbook collection of poems, A Shade Pulled Just Barely, will be published in 2025 by Finishing Line Press.

Dorothy

WillHemmer

‘Dotty Dot’! They think I don’t hear. I see the stains in their white uniforms. Hah! If I could get out of this chair

Zeb was a good man, I suppose. He tried. We weren’t very good farmers, though. Too dreamy. Then he got that job laying track through Kansas and never came back.

The halls at night are empty except for me. I wheel around, peek into rooms. They’re all tucked in their toy dolls all around. I’m the only one with visitors.

Tin Man and Scarecrow now and then.

Lion’s busy, of course and the little people.

I like it this way. I need to be awake. That’s when they come. It’s fine I tell them about it again. They’ve heard it all before, but they’re polite. They’re waiting for me.

He cried when the fever took our Mary then little Zeb.

I shouldn’t have blamed him. Maybe that was it what made him go.

Those awful winds! tornados even

You just have to find a way to let the storms blow over you. I should know. Em and Henry gone. I wrote my Aunt Elizabeth. She wrote back “Come.” Nothing to stay for that empty, old sod-house. I don’t know how I did it, but I did.

It’s been so many years!

I wonder if I could find the graves? Ozma said she didn’t know.

Mornings, they cluck at me, lift me into bed, let me sleep. A mercy.

I dream a lot, cry in my sleep, they say. Whisper names. Mary. Tin Man. Zeb. Was I ever really there? Oh!

Will Hemmer is a retired college math teacher. After retirement, he was a play producer in Los Angeles. He produced seven plays and two concerts (he’s also a pretty good singer), then the money ran out. Will studied creative writing with Glover Davis at San Diego State. He also studied poetry writing at UCLA. His mentors have said that he is a metaphysical poet. He’ll let you make up your own mind about that. Will was born in Ohio, April 26 in Zanesvill, Ohio.

Lucy

NettieFarris

Two hundred and six bones the skeleton of a good story.

[This poem was first published in the anthology, Something Like Sentience Scattered and Smoldering: Selections from Lexington Poetry Month 2023]

Eve

NettieFarris

All our mitochondria comes from our mothers.

Nettie Farris is the author of four chapbooks of poetry: The Alice Poems (dancing girl press, 2022), The Wendy Bird Poems (dancing girl press, 2022), Fat Crayons (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and Communion (Accents Publishing, 2013). Her reviews have appeared in Blue Lyra Review and North American Review. Her flash lyric essays have appeared in Miracle Monocle. She lives in Floyds Knobs, Indiana.

Early Sunday, Before the Storms

RichardJordan

In this age of prizes for wrong answers the only thing I can think to do is feed the crows who wake me raucously at dawn expecting peanuts. Pollen swirls thick on the bowl of cream I left out overnight for the neighborhood tomcat. Thunderstorms are in the forecast, but I have my iced coffee and maybe an hour out here on the porch before my neighbor revs his F-150 and chugs to church, always the 7 AM service, always in his NRA ball cap. Let me tell you something: I love these crows. That may seem strange to say, but it’s the way they work through all the peanuts, softly tapping shells with their beaks, cocking their heads to listen, picking each one up, weighing carefully. Or perhaps it’s because they’re wise enough to fly away as soon as the neighbor’s lights flick on. This morning: heat and clouds. God, thank you for the crows. Now let the rain begin.

Richard Jordan’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Cider Press Review, Connecticut River Review, Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Gargoyle Magazine, Sugar House Review, Tar River Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal and elsewhere. His debut chapbook, The Squannacook at Dawn, won first place in the 2023 Poetry Box Chapbook Contest. He serves as an Associate Editor for Thimble Literary Magazine and lives in the Boston area.

Initiation

M.BenjaminThorne

At the appointed hour friends and relations gather, greet me with slow nods, thin smiles. On a long table lay a heavy spread of unwanted offerings. I approach the podium, recite my practiced words. Then the throng of uncles and cousins who with handshakes and half-hugs welcome me, accepted initiate, into this intolerable fraternity, the brotherhood of fatherless sons.

M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Rogue Agent, Feral, Gyroscope Review, Molecule, Red Eft Review, and Thimble Lit Mag. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The Thing is …

KittyJospé

We are less bored than our ancestors were, but we are more afraid of boredom. We have come to know, or rather to believe, that boredom is not part of the natural lot of man, but can be avoided by a sufficiently vigorous pursuit of excitement. Bertrand Russell

The thing is, I could start there, and go on about force-fed programs to toddlers championing a virtuality someone has determined cute, an antidote to dull.

Or go on to a bigger thing about how we try to turn off pain, discomfort, and polish everything with politeness, so we avoid calling something idiotic, idiotic or something absurd, absurd and also avoid understanding why it is to us, and perhaps not to the other.

The darn thing is, it's so hard to see what someone else sees, even if we try to put on their shoes. That doesn't guarantee we wear them, walk in them, do the things they do, live their life.

The good thing is, when I am tempted to say to my son, Can't you see (after planting seeds on dry land, with the grasshoppers eating the few sprouts that came up, for example) it's not worth repeating? I remind myself that he could tell me how my compulsion to weed the sidewalk, sweep up the trash tattering away in dead leaves on my downtown street is also a waste of time.

The best thing is, when we can look at each other and laugh. We're just little specks in this immense cosmic dance.

Kitty Jospé is in love with words, champions the power of keen observation and careful reflection. Retired French teacher and art docent, she has been crafting poems since 2005, and since 2008 leading weekly poetry appreciation sessions in Rochester, New York.. She is known for her enthusiasm as teacher and reader. Her work is in 7 books and appears in a variety of reviews and anthologies.

A Walk in America After His Overdose

JamesCroalJackson

Don't have space for strangers' laughter, their happy hour on Butler Street the flags halfmast for a different awful reason I do not care to research. Flags above dead soldiers, shuttered storefronts, cracks in the heavy sidewalk–quiet as I try, my shoes stomp over. Can't help the noise. What’s in my head. A crucifix of windows reflects the blue and cloudy sky and how rapidly it can change when you don’t expect it, even when you know to.

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet in film production who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, His latest chapbooks are A God You Believed In (Pinhole Poetry, 2023) and Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022). Recent poems are in The Garlic Press, Remington Review, and ONE ART. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Nashville, Tennessee. (jamescroaljackson.com)

Choices

AlinaZollfrank

I read Francesca Bell. Barbara Kingsolver. Jane Wong. I read Sandra Cisneros. I read and read. I tire. I tire of poetry about victims. About gashes this and gashes that - pain

inflicted by childbirth. Life. How the human body has wronged us women. How this planet is incorrectly spinning. How finger pointing yields Pushcart prizes and name calling Poet Laureate titles. Lamentations of patriarchal domination, usurping appropriation, generational supplication. Spittle on narcissists, nepotists, dictator rapists. Vivid images, close up, yield clicks. Perceptive words about hurt, brilliant phrases about wrong, too. What do they say? That which doesn’t kill also doesn’t make strong? I’m so tired. Zart besaitet, my people might call me – made up of too-tender strings. Sure, some victims turn out strong or angry or both. Smart or smarting or both. Detached or enlightened or both.

In the tepid bath, skinny book of poetry rising, falling on my belly, I succumb to water’s behest. A fret-free head. No unjust slanting of the world - please. I want to wish away the wounds, mine and others’ – thanks. I’d like to let the tired be. Meld. Be held by something and that’s thatto not have wounds.

So, Mary Oliver, you’re it - ointment on thin skin. Let me anoint myself – then, grow delicate armor.

Alina Zollfrank from (former) East Germany loathes wildfire smoke and writes in the Pacific Northwest to get out of her whirring mind. Her essays and poetry have appeared in Thimble, The Braided Way, Wordgathering, Feral, Psaltery & Lyre, Halfway Down the Stairs, Reckon Review, Full House, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and others. Her essay "Mein Apfelbaum" will be featured in the 2024 garden anthology by Wild Librarian Press, and her poem "Forces" in the Ecobloomspaces print anthology by Iron Oak Editions.

(Behind Every Door)

RickK.Reut

…the Whole World and all there is, including your soul. Shadows stretch from the sun, seeking the end of the day, which is about to run out of light on the way to tomorrow. Few eyes see and few ears hear the truth. Plenty of lies swarm around in fear. In the night, fear waits deep in the dark behind every door. It inflates like a balloon on your mind. Fear tears through the air just like a poisoned dart. It’s almost everywhere, even in abstract art galleries. It’s on walls like cobweb. Fear hides in emergency calls. It is felt on both sides of any dead-end street, stalking you to your place. It feels like it will slit your throat if you see its face in a sharp piece of glass. Spilling some boiled blood from your heart, try to guess WHO has no fear. GOD is certainly not afraid of anything: HE made…

Rick K. Reut was born in 1984, in the USSR. He studied philosophy at EHU in Minsk, Belarus, and literature at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia. For most of his life after graduation, he has worked as a translator and a tutor of English as a foreign language. “Behind Every Door” is an excerpt from Around A Word, a collection of what the author calls cyclic verse, which presupposes a poem having no beginning or end and working in both rhyme and prose. Rick’s Facebook page is https://facebook.com/rick.reut.

Day Care

ElizabethHill

As I enter the day care center, the kids yell Lili’s here. During circle time, Logan and Quinnie must sit next to me. Later, Penny sits in my lap, listening to One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, rapt and still, snuggling against my body. And at snack time, Freddie’s very small face is entirely focused on chewing. His eyes serious. His whole face churning, entirely unable to notice me. Leafy-loo sports tiny glasses magnifying his blue, blue eyes. He talks a blue streak of precocious sense, but also nonsense. Leo wants to be called Neptune. He’s into the planets says Molly, the head of the center. Augie asks Will I die? I ask Molly Isn’t three young to ask about death? She answers Augie has always been existential. When I leave, two-year old Ethan surprisingly blows me ten kisses with his barely formed hands and the lips he cannot quite pucker. For these moments, there is no climate disaster, no fascist movement, no genocide.

Elizabeth Hill was a Finalist in the 2022 Rattle Poetry Contest and nominated for the 2023 Pushcart Prize by Last Stanza Poetry Journal. Her poetry has been published in 34th Parallel Magazine, Boomerlit, SAND, and Catamaran, among other journals. Elizabeth is currently a candidate for an MFA at VCFA and is a retired Administrative Law Judge who was responsible for suits between learning disabled children and the school system. She lives in Harlem, New York City, with her husband and two irascible cats.

The Day Your Crush Kisses You Is the Day You Fail a Math Test

SarahDaly

You are Penelope waiting for Odysseus, Persephone waiting for Spring, marking off each day, until one January afternoon, he pulls you in the broom closet and sawdust gets in your hair, and the dreariness does not strike you, in fact, will never penetrate you, for all you will remember is the unexpected happiness (though you, as a rule, do not like surprises) and the brief affirmation of your passion; and how later, in calculus class, when you are all aglow among the uncouth, unlearned adolescents who do not care about Taylor Series (and in fact, you will never quite understand them either) you do not even realize that the teacher is passing out the graded unit exams and that you failed.

Sarah Daly is an American writer from Ithaca, New York whose fiction, poetry, and drama have appeared in forty-two literary journals including The Inflectionist Review (nominated for Best Spiritual Literature Awards, Orison Books), Northwest Indiana Literary Journal, The Fictional Cafe, and The Pomona Valley Review.

Dreadnoughtus

HollyGhadery

(for Joe)

runs deeper than interest blooms bird brains, bone maps, metric tons of timeless devotion: doesn't know fractions but will recite the bite force of 29 prehistoric predators doesn’t buy time, says, they’re not in the world any longer, but they’re not in the past either

they’re taking up space, everywhere

and if you can’t see that, you need to think Bigger. Holly Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, is scheduled for release with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Holly is a co-host of Angela’s Bookclub on 105.5 FM, as well as HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist and the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

Inanimate Objects

JustinEdse

A shopping bag dances down the sidewalk beside the regulars without a care in the world

experiencing life through their eyes same time, same place every morning here they come

up from the underground like hordes of the undead mouths open standing among, steel alters frozen in time by golden handcuffs

their eyes altogether too red pre-occupied by dollar signs rather than humanity uncaring unfeeling and when you catch their gaze it's fleeting, means nothing like a shadow. there's a person there but they might as well not be there at all.

Hollowness rules the day and life takes on a repeat. The shopping bag blows, the sax-man saxes,

and the lights change from red to yellow to green even for empty streets the same show goes on every day for the same reasons while a new gust of wind brings change, the bag moves is lifted up higher and higher above the crowds the churches, the steeples Shimmering as society tries with its ever might to tear it down because it's not like the rest of us going its own way of a setting sun backdropped by transformation time and change day becoming night and night becoming day again. And the bag can see this time everything and everyone for who they really are and it decides to stay up there for a little while longer.

Justin Edse lives in Columbus, Ohio with his cat Stella where he is a programmer by day, and a poet by night. His work has been featured in the San Antonio Review and he loves writing poetry that highlights voices of people seldom heard from; the everyday working stiffs, the down and out, the lonely and looking. He hopes to reach out and let them know that they aren’t alone with their thoughts in this sometimes-crazy world. In his spare time, Justin enjoys antique hunting, hitchhiking, and collecting typewriters.

Review: Drifter by Douglas Cole

ReviewedbyBarryHarris

Title: Drifter

Author: Douglas Cole

Year: 2025

Publisher: Finishing Line Press

Douglas Cole's Drifter is a captivating exploration of the human experience through the lens of wandering and introspection. The collection invites readers to embark on a journey that is both physical and metaphysical, as the author navigates the landscapes of memory, identity, and the passage of time.

Cole establishes a contemplative tone from the beginning. In the poem "Drifting with Others," he captures the essence of shared experiences and the connections formed. The imagery of drifting alongside others evokes a sense that our journeys are intertwined with those we encounter along the way. This theme resonates throughout the collection, as Cole emphasizes the importance of community in the act of drifting.

In “Cold Clean Skeleton,” Cole employs vivid imagery to convey the complexities of life’s journey. The lines, "the river running through youth years / curves off from the shimmering temple dome," illustrate the transition from youthful confidence to the uncertainties of adulthood. The metaphor of the river serves as a symbol of life's flow, while the "gleaming city beyond" hints at aspirations of what might lie ahead. The poem reflects on the nature of existence, as seen in the lines, "the sound of the river, lulling sad / ego-familiar strain the dead hear." Here, Cole contemplates mortality and invites readers to reflect on their own journeys.

Cole’s language is rich and evocative. His use of metaphor and imagery creates a vivid tapestry that immerses readers in his landscapes. The

Tipton

poem's closing lines, "the time has come to rise / from the blue home of troubled sleep / and cruise the warm indulgent seas," pose a sense of awakening and the desire to explore. The poet issues a call to to break free from the confines of routine.

In "Divine City," Cole crafts a poignant exploration of longing, connection, and the search for meaning within an urban landscape. The poet's desire to "see outside of time" reflects a longing for transcendence and a deeper understanding of their surroundings. The city, with its “hieroglyphic brass dance steps” and “shapes flow from the smoke,” becomes a character in itself.

Cole's use of sensory details enhances the poem's emotional resonance. The sounds of traffic, the sight of the “gold window,” and the presence of the “cat that moves soft as silk” create a vivid tableau that immerses readers in the speaker's experience. Ultimately, "Divine City" serves as a meditation on the interplay between the sacred and the mundane. Especially effective are the final lines which serve as a kind of benediction:

Blessings to sighs and crows that jeer, Blessings to the nightmare dwellers

And to their faces carved with fear, Blessings to the honest drunk Who weeps among the accident flares, And blessings to the one I cannot see but know is there.

Douglas Cole's ability to blend personal narrative with universal themes makes this work a compelling read. Drifter offers a rich and rewarding journey that lingers after the final page is turned.

Tipton Poetry Journal

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/.

Barry Harris is editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal and several 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.

He graduated a long time ago with a major in English from Ball State University.

Contributor Biographies

Dennis Barnes lives in the Northern Virginia area where he leads a not-so-quiet poetic life. He was the 2005 recipient of the Baltimore People’s Poetry Done the Most to Advance Poetry award. Mr. Barnes has had poems published in over forty magazines and anthologies. Shades of Light, his first book of poetry, was published in 2007.

Anne Bucey is a writer living in Atlanta, Georgia. Her poems have appeared in Broad River Review, The Healing Muse, Tiger’s Eye and The Rose in the World. "Canebrake," a poem from an unpublished full length collection of mostly historic persona poems, was a finalist for the 2023 Ron Rash Award and appeared this year in Broad River Review. Another chapbook collection of poems has been accepted for publication and will likely be in print sometime next year.

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 in Zionsville, Indiana. He has a passion for photography and loves taking photographs of his home country, Ireland, and here in Indiana.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Holly Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, is scheduled for release with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Holly is a co-host of Angela’s Bookclub on 105.5 FM, as well as HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist and the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

Tanya Gick lives in Bloomigton, Indiana, with her cats, Mabel and Pancake.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Colleen S. Harris serves as dean of the library at Texas A&M International University. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her books include God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark, 2009), These Terrible Sacraments (Bellowing Ark, 2010; re-released in 2019 by Doubleback Books), and The Kentucky Vein (Punkin House, 2011), and she coedited Women Versed in Myth: Essays on Modern Women Poets (McFarland, 2016). Her poetry has appeared in Main Street Rag, Free Verse, Wisconsin Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, 66: The Journal of Sonnet Studies, and Tipton Poetry Journal, among others.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Mary Hills Kuck has spent most of her adult life in the US Northeast and in Jamaica, West Indies. Since retiring from teaching German, English, and ESOL, she has settled in Massachusetts with her husband and family. She has published poems in The Connecticut River Review, SLANT, Tipton Poetry Journal, Burningword Literary Journal, Poetry Quarterly, Main St. Rag, Amethyst, The Lyric, and a number of other journals. Intermittent Sacraments, her chapbook, was published in 2021 by Finishing Line Press, and her fulllength book, Before I Forget, by Kelsay Books, appeared in 2024. One of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Bruce Levine lives in Maine and is a Pushcart Prize poetry nominee, a Spillwords Press Awards winner, and a Featured Writer in WestWard Quarterly. Over three hundred of his works are published on over twenty-five on-line journals including Ariel Chart, Literary Yard, 5-7-5 Haiku Journal: over seventy print anthologies including Tipton Poetry Journal, Poets’ Espresso Review, WestWard Quarterly, and the chapbook Sweet Dreams. He is also a classical composer. Visit him at www.brucelevine.com

Tipton Poetry Journal

Russell Rowland lives and writes from New Hampshire.

Mary Sexson lives in Indianapolis and is an award-winning poet with two full-length books and two collaborative chapbooks. Her newest full-length book is Her Addiction An Empty Place at the Table, (Finishing Line Press). Chatter House Press released her second collaborative chapbook, Marriage Maps and Driven Destinies, (October 2023). Her work has appeared in Alien Buddha, Flying Island Journal, The Indianapolis Review, Of Rust and Glass, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Tipton Poetry Journal, and many other publications. Six of her poems are archived in the INverse collection of Hoosier Poets. Sexson has a Best of the Net and six Pushcart Prize nominations.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Maryfrances Wagner ‘s newest books are The Immigrants’ New Camera, and Solving for X. She co-edits I-70 Review, serves on The Writers Place board, was 2020 Missouri Individual Artist of the Year, and was Missouri’s 6th Poet Laureate 2021-2023. Red Silk won the Thorpe Menn book award and was first runner up in the Eric Hoffer award 2024 (reissued in 2023) and Short Listed for the Grand Prize. Poems have appeared in New Letters, Midwest Quarterly, Laurel Review, American Journal of Poetry, Poetry East, Voices in Italian Americana, Main Street Rag, Rattle, Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (Penguin), Literature Across Cultures (Pearson/Longman), et. al. She is the granddaughter of four Italian Immigrants.

Editor

Barry Harris is editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal and several 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. 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.