Rebecca Raskin

So What: A Love Poem

You came carrying
anachronistic bundles,

heirloom lettuce, soft cheeses,
crumbling rinds like ancient plaster,
and bricks of homemade bread.

You let us speak of density,
of a past we always live,
of a marriage long over, yes,
and getting better.

You tenderized frozen chicken
until it glistened.
How did you dislodge that pepper from the broken mill?
You let it all sit. So what.

I sliced the avocado.

Did I dream you standing beside me with your hand on my hand
just the slightest pressure—your wrist on top of mine—
a single plane,
helping me guide the knife
through the sweet green flesh?

CP

Rebecca Raskin is an attorney who is taking some time off to explore her passions, which include musical theater, poetry, and people. She lives in Burlington, Vermont, with her husband and two little girls.

Gary Presley

I Could See My Blood

Beth wore blue jeans and a pale pink bra when she slapped me. And the rest was familiar too. Our bedroom, hardwood floors, the desk and the lamp, and our wedding picture above the bed. Beth's black hair, ice pale eyes afire, the weight of her breasts, and the slope of her belly, and the cradle of her hips.

I even remember the low, hard description of Jill, her sister, and our dance at last year's family reunion. But I don't remember what I said, or didn't say.

A quick hard flick. Her hand hit my nose. My eyes pinched shut with pain. And back across. Her wedding ring cut a furrow above my eyebrow.

Then bright blood streaming down my hand and onto my wrist as I wiped my forehead, salty bright blood when I licked it from my fingers. And my hand raised, cocked, ready to swing. But then Beth suddenly sat on the bed, looked at me, and smiled, lips together.

"Do it," she said. "Mark me."

I banged out the bedroom door, across the hall, and down the stairs.

"Daddy," Katie yelled, coming in from the garage. "Two tents or one?"

"Geez, Katie, both. Four people, right?"

I cranked open the tap over the kitchen sink.

"I didn't know if Aunt Jill..." Her voice trailed off when she saw the blood."What happened?"

"Nothing. Bumped my head." I dipped my face and watched blood mix with water and swirl down the drain like some obscene confection. "Get some ice cubes and a paper towel. Then go load the tents."

I splashed bleach in the sink.

"I don't..."

"Go ahead, Katie. It's okay. I took a breath and let it out slowly, exhaling until the room began to shift. I pulled her to me. "And take the stuff in the fridge, too, baby." I kissed the top of her head.

Katie mumbled, moved, and I took another breath and started up the stairs, first one by one, and then by twos.

Then I was in the bedroom, and the door was closed, and my hands behind me gripped the knob and held steady against all I might have carried in with me. Beth sat where I left her, on the bed, on my side, in blue jeans and pale pink bra still. She didn't move, not even when the door clicked shut.

Silence. I willed her to look at me. Nothing. I drew in her woman scent, the flavor of my sheets and pillow cases, of my skin in the middle of the night, of my memories midday.

Silence. I moved, pushed her knees apart, and knelt. I lifted her chin, my hand on her throat, and felt heart beat, its rhythm slow, steady, undefeated.

She leaned into me, sealed my mouth with her fingers, and pressed her lips to the cut along my brow. I ran one hand up her ribs to cradle her breast and slipped the other into her hair. No words. Nothing but her lips and my hands.

Finally, she pulled back. "Not you," she said. "you're mine. She can take, take, take, but she'll never take you."

And I could see my blood on her lips.

CP

Gary Presley is an essayist whose memoir, SEVEN WHEELCHAIRS: A Life beyond Polio, was published October 2008 by the University of Iowa Press. Find links to his other work at http://www.garypresley.com

Ivan Jenson

Drifter

because of something
someone said
you are gun-shy
at sundown


because of something
that someone did
you are no longer
trigger happy


because of
something
that happened
once
upon a time
in your west


like Clint Eastwood
you squint
your eyes
at the bright
glare of love

CP

Ivan Jenson has published widely in the US and the UK and received recognition for his bold Pop Art. His Absolut Jenson painting was featured in Art News, Art in America, and he has sold several works at Christie's, New York. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Word Riot, Zygote in my Coffee, Poetry Super Highway, Hidden City Quarterly, and many others. He now writes novels and poetry in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Diana Rosen

Gossamer Memory

Abandoning my storybook
tall, dark and handsome date,
I slink into the host's California blue pool,
get nudged into conversation

as if in mid-sentence
with a lame-legged nearly faceless man

whose every word
reveals
attaches
pulls
words that even now

haunt,

echo,

chime:

almost.

CP

Diana Rosen's work has appeared in the anthologies Kiss Me Goodnight, Those Who Can...Teach, and Bold Ink plus the journals Lucidity, convolvulus, and RATTLE, among others.

C.P. Stewart

The Road

Down an avenue of limes
into the setting sun,

one warm October evening.
Above, the rooks returning,

and the lights coming on
in the red-brick Georgian houses.

Two hundred yards, or so,
until the road bent left.

I shall not forget the way you went.

—From Taking it In

CP

C.P. Stewart lives with his family in North Yorkshire. Formerly singer and songwriter with the cult band Laughing Gravy, his poetry has been widely published in England, Canada and the United States. He is currently the poetry editor of Sotto Voce. Koo Poetry Press will be publishing a chapbook of his poems Taking it In on November 1, 2009.

Carolyn Srygley-Moore

Bright Green Thriftshop Shoes

What does he do
when I speak of the darkness that ate me inside-out
the darkness that ate me alive?
He watches me fold back into the blank
like a purple iris
the integer of nonbeing where I turn toward the homeless
woman dancing on the corners
where First meets Maple
dancing in her bright green thriftshop shoes.
As a small girl she says
long ago

CP

Carolyn Srygley-Moore lives in Upstate New York with her husband and daughter. Her work has appeared widely in journals to include Antioch, Mimesis, The Pennsylvania Review, and the antiwar anthology Cost of Freedom. She is a Pushcart nominee and her digital chapbook Enough Light on the Dogwood is available here.

xTx

Underwear

I have underwear
I want to show you.
They're only good
when I bend down
and lean forward a little
to go through the back
part of the filing cabinet.

They're only strings in the back
and they are black.

The front—a lonely triangle.

CP

xTx is multifaceted. Some facets reflect light, others are dark. More from her is here.

David LaBounty

April 27th, stopped at a light

a suburban junction
without a crosswalk, he

has empty hands, a

shirt and tie,
creased slacks
and wingtips
scuffed but new, he

looks both ways,
crosses the street, his

thin body leaning
into the wind that
blows the part in his

grey & thinning hair, his

gait is hurried,
awkward,
his right foot
at a 30 degree angle, and

I can tell by the walk
&
by the way the wind
throws his tie over his
shoulder that

there isn’t a lot
of money
in
whatever it is
he’s doing.

CP

David LaBounty lives in Michigan. His work has appeared in Night Train, Boston Literary Magazine, Word Riot, the New Plains Review, and others. His third novel, Affluenza, has just been released.

Nana Ollerenshaw

—Photo by Philippe Noret

VA 777 – 300

Sleek
a mammoth dorsal fin,
laterals wing back to lift
a fuselage that narrows to a cone,
tiny unkind eyes and pointed nose
sharp enough to split and ease
the space it lives in
when it isn’t beached at gate
empty of its people,
still with the stillness
of having run the distance.
But its soul—a maw louder
than all lions with one throat,
cavernous with awful atom-splitting power,
sweeps freight past continents and seas,
indifferently.
If metal has a soul
it would be a soul to match
the menacing of cloud outside the porthole
the broad unearthly scape
of emptiness
beyond the thin divide.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

Suzy Devere

DARE TO DREAM

i hear him again and he's gone
again

i thought i'd left all this behind
and goddamnit if it isn't just right here
waiting for me

waiting to greet me
at the threshold of this
front-fucking-door

misery really is a constant lover

another reason
to hate it so much

CP

Suzy Devere is a prostitute, a drug addict, a Dr.'s wife, a Lawyer's wife, a mistress to a famous Saudi Sheik, a mother, an intellectual, an academic, an athlete, a painter, a drawer, a photographer, and writer who feels utterly, stunningly alone. Her work has appeared in various sites on-line including Black-Listed and 3:00 AM. Suzy has lived all over the world but right now lives next door to you.

Seth Jani

A Poem about Wind

I believe in the metaphor of wind,
The thought that we are circling through
Our lives
With the same quiet passion
That blows newsprint through the night,
With the same subtle violence
That makes the thrashing of the trees
A kind of music.

I imagine what peculiar lightness comes
After traveling for centuries across the sea,
Having picked clean the bones of mammoths,
Snuffed the first, feeble flames,
Seen generations
With all their precious battles
Reduced to rumor.

I dream of how I want my heart to be
Like those solar gusts
Shooting off the sun.
Unsettling satellites.
Lighting the wake of comets.
Dancing across the distant north
As though it were a burning breath
From the bellows of the universe.

CP

Seth Jani is founder and editor-in-chief of Seven Circle Press and EarthSpeak Magazine. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Holly Rose Review, Heroin Love Songs, and Shoots And Vines.

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

Weathering

He didn’t know any better so he wore it and just as proud as
anybody, that garbage bag his mama borrowed from a neighbor,
waking up to find it raining and him without a raincoat and it
would always be so because there was always something else
needed and anyway he’d die in his eighth year because not only
didn’t he own a raincoat, he didn’t own a jacket and certainly not
one that was bulletproof—but that day he didn’t care; he was
happy to be dry like everyone else.

—First appeared in Puerto del Sol, 1991

CP

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz is a fiction writer and poet. In other incarnations, she is a teddy bear artist, a comedienne and somebody's mother.

Ivan Jenson

This is for you

this is
for the afternoons
you went
out of your way
and those
nick
of time loans
that
rescued me
from eviction
and this is
for picking up
the phone
past midnight
and for the
long rides
to destinations
that were
so very important
at the time
and after
all the
dues we paid
together
this is
still true:

I need
help

CP

Ivan Jenson has published widely in the US and the UK and received recognition for his bold Pop Art. His Absolut Jenson painting was featured in Art News, Art in America, and he has sold several works at Christie's, New York. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Word Riot, Zygote in my Coffee, Poetry Super Highway, Hidden City Quarterly, and many others. He now writes novels and poetry in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Kevin Brown

Scarred

The note is from before there was email. Back during high bangs and power ballads. She found it in a shoebox of her old things. It was the only note he ever wrote her. Yellowing and worn along the folds, she spreads it flat, running her finger over the words scribbled in pencil.

It says: I’m sorry, I can’t do this.

I should’ve told you earlier.

It’s the timing’s all. We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us.

At the doctor’s office years ago, she’d found the note in her purse. And that far along, she had to choose.

She chose him.

There’s a guy who can help us.

We’ll do this together.

She stands, strips off each layer of her clothes, and looks at herself in the full-length mirror. Grabs the skin over her hips, turns sideways. She raises her bangs and lets go, and they drop back across her forehead. Touching her cheek, she hums “Heaven” by Warrant, her eyes slicking over. Their song from a yellowed note away.

She palms her throat and swallows the way she did the second time he told her, “I’m sorry, I can’t do this.” The last time she saw him. A tear pearls at the bottom of her eye and slips down her face.

Still humming, she slides her hand over her heart, across the ridges of her chest. Runs her fingers between her breasts and along her ribcage. Traces the scar that runs down her stomach like a fossilized lizard tail, ending in a purple fleshy point. All the parts of her he just couldn’t do.

—First appeared in Conclave

CP

Kevin Brown has won several fiction competitions and been nominated for Best American Short Stories. His work has appeared in Rosebud, New Delta Review, Underground Voices, NANO Fiction, among others.

Diana Rosen

Anticipation

Only one remains of four
images, printed at a photo
booth where couples pull
the curtain: smooch, giggle,
make funny faces for the
next bright flash. These two,
so side-by-side they’re one,
beam smiles, eyes of
glorious expectation
right through the lens.
Yes, she said. Yes.
But, this was way before.
Way before.

CP

Diana Rosen's work has appeared in the anthologies Kiss Me Goodnight, Those Who Can...Teach, and Bold Ink plus the journals Lucidity, convolvulus and RATTLE, among others.

Diane Boisvert

Twenty-five Pictures

Just twenty-five pictures
on this wall.
Extracting glimmer from the past.

A twinkle that expands
beyond the vast background
into the universe of emotion.

A gold bracelet stands out
with the smiles.

Unified children. Separate
but not equal to the older ones.

Tastefully collaged.

Images that reality has abandoned.

Memories that belong to someone.
More pictures are somewhere.
With other memories.

Births and funerals—weddings and joy.
Turmoil that spoils it all.

Perfect matches.
Not so perfect retractions of covenant
interactions.

Fantasy would work just as well.
The equation has no mathematical
formula. Chance and disasters are
part of the scene.

CP

Diane Boisvert lives in Malta, New York. Her work has appeared in Flask and Pen and Psychopoetica.

Carolyn Srygley-Moore

Commence with a Flower

Commence with a flower, imperfect, red
or the motion of mountains
by virtue of lightplay, shadow, the snow falling
or the grasses, river grasses, dying
as the boat forces its wake:

or his eyeglasses, balanced on the bedside table
with a bent arm
(I watch his eyes change behind them, all day long
a blink, a wink
held in the hot crease of my hand
as if clearing the old leaf-stains
making room).

All of it, as the oak resists the wind
& flails, against the wind
against strangers come with hammers inverted
to take the treehouse down, nail by nail...
voluptuous branches, memories
unripe pears, global, erotica:

& beside the shed, an upturned wheelbarrow, blue
an unused shed, dirty walls of vinyl, blue again
(the voluptuous memory of you
who do not remember
the space between heartbeats
wherein our lovemaking occurred)

& one must end in the blaze of the flower, scarlet
petals torn / whipping the wind.

CP

Carolyn Srygley-Moore lives in Upstate New York with her husband and daughter. Her work has appeared widely in journals to include Antioch, Mimesis, The Pennsylvania Review, and the antiwar anthology, Cost of Freedom. She is a Pushcart nominee and her digital chapbook, Enough Light on the Dogwood, is available here.

S.C. Morgan

Guaro

Her face is as hard and
drawn as desiccated beef liver.
Chopstick thin legs wobble
under a swollen belly.
Her companion,
with his wild blond Rasta braids askew,
gesticulates at druggies in the street,
proffering a quarter bottle of cheap guaro rum
for another fiesta:
tourists from Hell,
come to visit this tropical paradise.
Crossing the street, she staggers,
catching her balance
on wonky platform espadrilles,
and then drops
her dirty yellow Capri pants to her knees,
urinating for all the world to see.

Oh, señora, do you have parents?
And how do they reconcile
the child they knew with this lost life?

CP

S.C. Morgan lives on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. An American expatriate, her writing has appeared in Escape From America, Real Travel Adventures, and Notre Dame Magazine. She writes about nature and human nature—anything that is interesting.

W. J. Prescott

You Hear It

The rumbling of artillery fire passing overhead, the sharp crack of a small-caliber projectile just missing you, the trembling roar of the exploding shell, the scream of agony, the filthy joke, the ugly language, the laugh of amusement, the hysterical laugh, the frightened laugh, the reassuring laugh; someone whistling, singing, whispering, yelling, and the slur of a drunk.

You hear the clatter of the tank, the whine of the shell, the cough of the mortar, the hiss of the flame thrower, the burp of the machine gun, the tinkling of glass and the silence, the loudness of the silence.

Shots in the distance, shots nearby, orders being shouted; complaining, excited voices, soothing voices, calm voices, and incoherent voices. You will hear the screech of an airplane, the throbbing of its guns, the impact of its droppings, the indescribable sound of a plane "going in," and again the silence.

An explosion followed by the tumbling debris of a building, the wail of a child, or of a hysterical woman, of an old man, of a frightened animal, and you will hear yourself curse, pray, then curse again.

You will hear the sucking wound you can't stop, names at mail call and the boasting about the letter they have just received; false fronts of indifference regarding a Dear John, yells of pride, curses of hate and words of hurt; talk of women, of the Old Man, of the Lieutenant, the Sergeant, of the man who didn't make it through yesterday, of his effects and what they found, of the censoring officer who mixed up some letters; of going home, being cold, hot, wet, hungry, thirsty and tired.

You hear boots sloshing in the mud, boots dragged along in the dust; moaning in the aid station, the quiet orders of the doctor, the urgent yell for "Doc!" and the radio operator desperately attempting to establish contact; noise so loud it hurts your teeth, silence so loud it hurts your ears; a bird singing, a cricket chirping, a dog barking, a vehicle roaring into life; the patter of rain, the sinking of a tent peg, a portable radio broadcasting the news, an ex-radio man interpreting the static as short-wave letters, sounds that are not there, and be prepared to hear this every minute for years, then brush it aside as though it just simply didn't exist.

—From "Combat: It Insults the Senses" in Army Magazine, December 1965

CP

Lt. Col. W.J. Prescott, an Army combat veteran and instructor, wrote of war's assault on the senses after being asked countless times by inexperienced young officers, "Help me prepare for war."

Ross Eldridge

—Photo courtesy Ross Eldridge

Waterville

Forty years ago, I did my first dog-sit at an old home in Bermuda called Waterville. My friend MEM, named for her initials, and her husband Mike lived in an apartment there and were off to the Azores looking at property. They wanted someone to feed and walk their golden retriever.

Brandy was a lovely dog. He'd appeared at MEM's door, a stray, and attempts to locate his owners had not succeeded. Mike and MEM had a cat, Charlie Marmalade, who died not long after they adopted Brandy. Charlie was buried in a pet cemetery on the Waterville grounds.

Built in the 1700s, Waterville backs onto the harbour and was one of the grand homes of the Trimingham Family. The living quarters were upstairs and the ground floor had been warehouse space. The Triminghams had a centuries-old emporium in Bermuda, a famous place selling high-quality goods, but the business went broke a few years ago and their Front Street shop has been pulled down.

In 1969, Miss Elsie Gosling, the retired Head Librarian, lived on the upper floor of Waterville surrounded by family portraits. Her mother had been a Trimingham. The ground floor was divided into the large apartment where MEM and Mike lived (where the American author James Thurber had stayed regularly at one time) and an office of the Bermuda National Trust, which had taken over the property. When Elsie Gosling passed on, the Trust moved into the upper floor, and they are there now.

On the grounds of Waterville, back in the 1800s, a lawn tennis court had been laid out. The court was still there in 1969, though it was no longer used. The turf in Bermuda is locally called crab grass and it is rough and thick. I imagine the court was nowhere near as fast as the grass courts at Wimbledon.

Although I don't play tennis, I decided to buy the equipment to play badminton. With friends I would set up the net on Waterville's old lawn tennis court, and we'd knock a shuttlecock about in the evening and on weekends if I wasn't working overtime. I had sufficient hand-eye coordination 40 years ago to make a bit of a game of it. Frankly, more fun was the challenge of keeping the shuttlecock in the air as long as possible.

I continued my pet-sitting for years. I spent summers and Christmases at Waterville with Brandy and was sometimes joined by friends. James Thurber's ghost never visited. Finally, MEM and Mike retired and left Bermuda, not for the Azores, but for British Columbia. Brandy followed Charlie Marmalade to the Waterville pet cemetery.

Over a decade ago the National Trust turned Waterville's grass tennis court into a rose garden and placed a sculpture in the center. The huge tamarind tree that had shaded one end of the court for a hundred years partially collapsed and was cut down.

I was last at Waterville about five years ago. I ate sandwiches with a friend in the pagoda and told him about Brandy and Charlie Marmalade. As we walked through the overgrown rose garden, my friend was amazed to hear that, once upon a time, I'd lain on a tennis court there, shaded by a very tall and broad tree that is no more.

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog. His blog is called Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, and it is dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

David LaBounty

a poem about nature

October, the

air outside
is blowing
cold, blowing

beautiful
dead leaves
in the smoky
scented air
while the

air inside
is warmed
by the color
TV, is warmed
by the box
of pizza
simmering
on the lonely
kitchen counter
along with

the three beers
inside my
stomach as
the football
on the TV
plays, as my
pants are
tight and
my face is
red but it’s

autumn, no

reason to
look good
or
feel bad.

CP

David LaBounty lives in Michigan. His work has appeared in Night Train, Boston Literary Magazine, Word Riot, the New Plains Review, and others. His third novel, Affluenza, has just been released.

xTx

I'll Be Seeing You

We all would watch a man on a ledge. I know I would. We all would watch a drunk lady stripping herself naked in a fountain. I know I would.

When I was a kid, I saw two naked people fucking on a riverbank. I was floating down the river on an innertube and I came around a bend and they were there, fucking. We had the ‘porn view’. (crotches/insertion) I say ‘we’ because whoops! My dad, and my brothers were floating down the river with me.

I looked at my dad and he put his finger over his mouth. We all watched them while the river moved us past on its quiet.

If you are going to fuck on a riverbank, then just know, people might watch.

CP

xTx, sometimes 16 feet tall, also has a wide following.

Jim Harrington

They Laughed

Mom said I wasn't capable of living by myself and couldn't move out of her house until I married. Sounded easy enough. Lots of people did it.

I tried and tried to find me a woman. The last one laughed when I proposed. The sound erupted from her like someone had performed that hindlick thing on her. The noise followed me out the door like monkeys on a rope and into my car. I thought covering my ears would help. It didn't.

I was so upset when I got home Mom decided to send me to a psychiatrist. He said I had gynohobia, whatever that was. Told me rejection was a good thing, a learning experience. I learned I didn't like rejection.

I heard about this new game show on a local TV station where you filled out a survey, and they matched you up with your perfect mate. Tonight was my turn on the show. I used extra deodorant after my shower and slicked my hair real good.

When they called my name, I walked out of the Green Room and onto the stage. I saw her sitting on the couch. Well, I saw someone. She was too far away for me to see her face, even when I squinted. I thought about going home, but then I heard Mom's voice in my head.

A man whispered in my ear and gave me a shove to jump start me. I baby-stepped across the shiny floor until I was in front of a redhead with purple lips. I lowered myself to one knee and took the paper out of my shirt pocket with the words I'd written out so I'd get them right. Trouble was the paper was soaked with sweat and the letters had disappeared.

I closed my eyes and took a breath like the doc showed me. The pressure in my head eased, and I pulled Mom's ring from my pocket. It felt heavy. When I looked up, the woman smiled. That was a first. Maybe I'd finally found the one.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My mouth dry, I tried again. Nothing. On the third attempt, I heard words, but they weren't mine. At first, I didn't understand. Then the words repeated from behind me.

"Contestant number four? I'm sorry, but time's up for this week's show."

The woman covered her mouth, but I still heard her snicker. The nice man told me I could come back next week and try again. I told him no thanks.

I inched along the freeway on the way home, stuck in traffic. It didn't matter. I wasn't in any hurry.

CP

Jim Harrington lives in Huntersville, NC, with his wife and two cats. His stories have appeared in Apollo's Lyre, Every Day Fiction, Bent Pin Quarterly, Long Story Short, and others. He is a flash fiction editor for Apollo’s Lyre. You can read more of his stories here.

Daniel Romo

Blood Brothers

When we were 10
We pricked our index fingers,
Squeezed them tight
Until they resembled a crimson
Cyclops,
And rubbed them together.

He moved four years later
And I never saw him
Until the other day,
When I was bored at work
And succumbed to
Facebook again.

His shaved head,
Bad tattoos,
And double birds
Made it difficult to recognize
My friend.

I recalled that day
In Ms. Barrett's class
When we manipulated staples
And became family—
The two-story, built-in pool, white boy
And the two bedroom, Doughboy, Latino—
Brothers Forever…

However
The swastika he now wore
On his left wrist,
Told me
We lost touch,
Long ago.

—An earlier version appeared in Verdad

CP

Daniel Romo lives in Southern California and teaches high school there. He has been published in various forums, and is currently seeking admittance into a rather swell low residency MFA program. He's addicted to SportsCenter and thinks gray sky the utmost inspiration.

Mark Kerstetter

Consciousness Spins

Consciousness spins, and the soul sits.
The all-consuming melange of nest-building activities
all too easily overruns the feeble string
singly stirring

not yet song

CP

Mark Kerstetter has been neglecting his duties to write poetry again. His work has appeared in Jerry Jazz Musician, Shaking Like A Mountain and Unlikely Stories. He is a regular contributor to the online art journal Escape into Life and he blogs here.