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September 28, 2023: Two poems by Kelley Jean White: "Marmots Beware" and "Winnipesaukee, Snow Moon"

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Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner-city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle, and JAMA . Her most recent chapbook is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and is currently Poet in Residence at Drexel University College of Medicine. Her newest collection, No.Hope Street has just been published by Kelsay Books. Marmots Beware   Old Faithful, Yosemite, El Capitan! These cheeky little creatures will not be denied. You must wrap your car in plastic like enormous trash or Christmas presents lest the little fellows crunch up electrics or your engine. Don’t forget the underwrappings, they can squeeze into your chassis, and do more damage than our average little eastern squirrels. They live at elevations over 7000 feet so we’re mainly safe from their sharp little teeth here along the Atlantic. But a chipmunk’s brought down many an old car left idle in
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Thursday, August 31, 2023: John Grey's "In Greenwich Village"

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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review,  and Sheepshead Review. Latest books, Between Two Fires , Covert , and  Memory Outside The Head , are available through Amazon. Grey has work forthcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, and California Quarterly . In Greenwich Village Away from grid smoke and subway rumble, I find chess players in Washington Square, bongo players drumming up a beat I first heard many years ago, a guy strumming a guitar with cap at his feet, and pigeons… so many pigeons, so much pigeon droppings. I drink coffee in a downstairs café, nibble the glaze off a stale donut, look around at the clientele, aging bohemians mostly, paying for java out of their social security checks. Then I stroll the narrow streets, am constantly reminded how far the world has come from this neighborhood’s heyday. The last record store is boarded up. The bookstore window offers Marxist tracts dirt cheap. What w
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Friday, August 4, 2023: Barbara Anna Gaiardoni's "Made in Italy", and "Misunderstanding"

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                                                                     photo © Andrea Vanacore Barbara Anna Gaiardoni alias @bag is an Italian pedagogist and author. Winner of the First Prize in the 2023 “Zheng Nian Cup National Literature Price”. She began writing Japanese-style poems in 2019 and since has been published in Asahi Haikuist Network, Haiku Dialogue THF,The Japan Society UK, Drifting Sands Haibun, and 75 other international journals. Her works are been translated on Japanese, Romanian, Arabic, Malayalam, Hindi, French and in Spanish languages. Drawing, swimmer and walking in nature are her passions. Her motto is "I can, I must, I will do it.” Made in Italy “Cakes, biscuits and chocolates, all personalised in musical instruments shapes, notes, pentagrams and treble clef”, scream a peddler. If you're not already familiar with the italian markets, you will be fascinated by the very special atmosphere: colours and fragrances mingle with the shouts and banter of the ve
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Thursday, July 20, 2023: Lorraine Caputo's "Wraiths"

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  Lorraine Caputo is a wandering troubadour whose poetry appears in over 400 journals on six continents, and 23 collections of poetry – including In the Jaguar Valley (dancing girl press, 2023) and Caribbean Interludes (Origami Poems Project, 2022). She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks. Her writing has been honored by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2011) and nominated for the Best of the Net. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America with her faithful knapsack Rocinante, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. WRAITHS Ghostly nebulous tendrils drift past the hills & drape the ancient spires of temples Ghostly music drifts across this late night hour, down the canyons of cobblestone streets The dull clangs from a church’s campanile vibrate this predawn darkness © 2023 Lorraine Caputo
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Thursday, June 29, 2023: Three Works of Art by Sonjaye Maurya

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Sonjaye Maurya is an eminent artist with international recognition. He is a self taught artist, who has made a strong niche in the world of art in a short span. He is bestowed with numerous awards like, Kala Ratn; Swami Vivekanand Excellence Award, and an Honorary Doctorate, to name a few. He is also a World Peace & Brotherhood; and World Humanity Ambassador. His works have a mysterious quality, a magical touch that makes them stand apart from the works of other contemporary artists. Everything that he paint s has a deep meaning and message in it., may it be Buddha, or even if he is painting fishes or a landscape. His works are, many  times, a transformation from realistic to abstract, and vice versa. Untitled Desert My Village From Top © 2023 Sonjaye Maurya
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Friday, June 24, 2023: Jan Steckel's "Voyage"

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Jan Steckel’s book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, 2018) won Rainbow Awards for LGBT Poetry and Best Bisexual Book. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Voyage All night long I’d dreamed of old books, secret rooms, packing trunks. When I got home I drank snakebite chicory, remembered the fifteenth century, when I was a clerk in a ship’s hold. The big blond sailor with the Scandinavian name, I thought we’d burn in hell for what we did but didn’t care. Only ale and grog to drink,  the occasional rain, the cask-water too brackish for anything but washing. Cries of gulls long gone, turtle soup, dry biscuit, a bit of shoe leather called salted beef. Writing was a skill that only I and the captain had.  My Viking friend could break me with one hand. I liked it that way. Time enough to we
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Saturday, May 27, 2023: Review of Richard Modiano's "The Forbidden Lunchbox"

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  If there is no part of you unfulfilled by stock options and prime time programming and cutting edge digital technology – then perhaps these poems are not for you (From “Notes to Self”, Richard Modiano) It’s not often you find a warning label in a poetry book; it’s refreshing, and sometimes necessary. To be honest, poetry is not for everyone, especially poetry that champions the causes of those who are not socially/economically/racially privileged, that’s also political, passionate, and deeply personal. Richard Modiano’s The Forbidden Lunchbox (© 2022 Punk Hostage Press), is all of these things.  Full disclosure: I’ve known Modiano, though not as well as I’d like to, for almost two decades. I know him as an expert haiku/senryu poet, a guy who was instrumental in steering Beyond Baroque back from the brink of financial ruin, and as a certified member of the Industrial Workers of the World . I know him as an honest, forthright, decent man, who, once committed to a cause, integrates it
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