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Thursday, August 13, 2026: Sandra Tanhauser's "Five Thousand Stone Steps"

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  Sandra Tanhauser first started writing poetry in the early 1970’s when she lived in the Santa Monica/Venice Beach area. The artistic scene then centered around small bookstores and Beyond Baroque which was a venue for poetry readings and other artistic performances. She had a number of poems published in Bachy and Momentum . After retirement from a career in IT, she returned to writing and has been very involved with poetry scene at the Sacramento Poetry Center. Several of her recent poems have been published in Voices and LAdige Review . She finds poetry a beautiful avenue for exploring the essence of life. Five Thousand Stone Steps Five thousand stone steps, where runners in sandals climb thru orchid laden forests hung with mist thru clouds that hover over valleys and waterfalls that spiral over cliffs. lead to Machu Picchu meeting point of earth and heaven amid soaring iridescent peaks. Magnificent city of stone, clay hills terraced in succession high above rounding rivers...
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Thursday, July 30, 2026: Lorraine Caputo's "Serenading the Eight-Fifteen"

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  Wandering troubadour Lorraine Caputo is a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear internationally in over 500 journals and 24 collections of poetry – including Orinoco Plains (dancing girl press, 2025) and Santa Marta Ayres (Origami Poems Project, 2024). She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks. She is a Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada honoree (2011) and multiple Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. 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 . Social media https://latinamericawanderer.wordpress.com https://www.facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer https://www.instagram.com/lorrainecaputoc https://bsky.app/profile/lorrainecaputo.bsky.social Serenading the Eight-Fifteen I serenade the freight trains with tunes played on a silver pennywhistle The strains of songs the high notes reach ...
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Thursday, July 16, 2026: Jan Steckel's "Sea of Ghosts"

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  Jan Steckel’s debut fiction collection Ghosts and Oceans came out from Zeitgeist Press in 2023. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, 2018) won two Rainbow Awards. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her creative prose and poetry have appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, Canary, Assaracus and elsewhere. She lives in Oakland, California. Sea of Ghosts Buried ships of San Francisco sail under a ghost Bay Bridge, though neither saw each other in life. In another era, Chinese men in a bay-side camp watch ghost schooners sail by. The laborers eat cockles, mussels, bite the heads off squid. Grains of the rice they steamed run through a giant hourglass. One old man draws a bow across a two-stringed erhu. Another plucks individual r...
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Thursday, July 2, 2026: Jeffrey Bryant's "A poem that could be about Oakland -----"

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Jeffrey Bryant is a Pushcart-nominated queer poet from Los Angeles. His work has appeared in the LA Weekly , LA Times , Poetic Diversity, New Verse News , Poetrysuperhighway.com , Synkroniciti, Quill and Echo, Tension Literary, Journal of the Plague Years, Coiled Serpent, Altadena Poetry Review, Shadowplay, Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts, Cholla Needles Literary Journal and Tender Hearts Club . He will appear in a forthcoming photography book of Los Angeles poet portraits from Moon Tide Press. His debut collection The Catacombs of Vanished Lovers is out now on Cherry Pie Press. @thecherrypiepress A poem that could be about Oakland ----- I carry my favorite ocean  with me on the plane,  saltier than bags of nuts,   and drink bottomless coca cola,  its ice cubes  dying in a vat of corn syrup.  I moan the safety lecture back word for word in my best Jayne Mansfield,  aroused by the idea of holding my ankles  if the engines fail,  taking ...
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Thursday, May 22, 2026: Michael La Bombarda's "Social Adjustment"

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  Michael La Bombarda is a poet and fiction writer who has six books of poetry for sale on Amazon and has most recently published in the Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Oddball Magazine . He is retired and lives in New York City. SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT I was a French-Italian kid Who thought he was Haitian-Italian. I was Haitian when my relatives Were around and Italian-American With my Italian friends, and Haitian-Italian when a black uncle Was around who was not my uncle. That said, my friends were a good Bunch of guys, but I would not pick Them again, and I would try Being more studious, I think. It’s no wonder I took things to excess And screwed up my life, but you can’t Screw up your life without help from some Other people who limit your choices. Either deny myself and have a house, A family, and a good-paying job, Or try to create a life of books, Thoughts, and writing these days. It all seems clear on paper— The choices I made and didn’t make, But life is not all that understandabl...
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Thursday, April 30, 2026: Matt McGee's "Colonel Kurtz Slows to a Stop"

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  Colonel Kurtz Slows to a Stop Dr. Robert Hudson has seen a lot of patients who’ve said he’s the only person that listens to them. Some accuse him of listening just because he gets paid to do it. Technically that’s true, but he knows he’d do it for free. People have good stories. Hudson hasn’t owned a television since 2006. He says there’s no point. The stories told in his office are the best entertainment. And Clay Chalmers’ story, he thought, was pretty entertaining. In their first session Clay told Hudson he didn’t have anyone to listen to his innermost thoughts anymore. His parents had died young, he’d never said how, so Hudson suggested Clay write his thoughts down and send them to himself. “I don’t really believe in the mail system,” Clay said. Hudson rolled his eyes. “Tell the truth, I don’t really believe in listeners anymore either.” Clay wrote the letter anyway, and the following week he brought it to the office. “Open it,” the psychologist said. Clay did and, without he...
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