Happy
Poems
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Happy Poems 〰️
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Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over 450 stories and poems published so far, and ten books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories where he manages a posse of eight review editors, and as lead editor at Scribes Microfiction.
https://twitter.com/bottomstripper
https://www.facebook.com/EdAhern73/?ref=bookmarks
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Kristine Rae Anderson is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author of Field of Everlasting. Her work has recently appeared in SALT, Literary Mama, and Inlandia: A Literary Journey. She has received Tomales Bay and Fishtrap fellowships as well as first place in the Mary C. Mohr Poetry Contest (Southern Indiana Review).
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Shortlisted for the 2023 Manchester Poetry Prize, D A Angelo is a UK-based poet with work in Eclectica Magazine, The Crank, SurVision, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Sage Cigarettes, Flights of the Dragonfly and Petrichor Mag.
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Cover artist ("Jouissance") Valen Arcelo is an emerging Filipino American writer currently living in California. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gutter Magazine, Heavy Feather Review, Cutbow Quarterly, Needle Poetry, Overground Underground, and more. You can find more of his work on Instagram: @isangbahagharingreyna.
View "Jouissance"
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Shawn Aveningo-Sanders is the author of What She Was Wearing (a poetic story of survival to empowerment), whose work has appeared worldwide in 160 literary journals and anthologies, including Calyx, Amsterdam Quarterly, About Place Journal, and Snapdragon, to name a few. She’s co-founder of The Poetry Box® press, as well as managing editor of The Poeming Pigeon. Shawn is a proud mother of three amazing humans and grandmother to one darling baby girl.
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Lavina Blossom is a painter and writer. She grew up in rural Michigan and now lives in Southern California where she is growing a native California garden of drought tolerant plants that support local fauna. Her poems have appeared in various journals, including 3Elements Review, The Paris Review, Common Ground Review, Gyroscope Review, and Ekphrastic Review, as well as earlier issues of Poemeleon.
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Laurel Blossom is the author, most recently, of -Un, a chapbook from Finishing Line Press, and of two book-length narrative prose poems, Degrees of Latitude and Longevity, both from Four Way Books. Previous books of lyric poetry include Wednesday: New and Selected Poems, The Papers Said, What's Wrong, and a previous chapbook, Any Minute. Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies and in many national, international, and online journals. Her poetry has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and the Elliston Prize. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, the New York State Council on the Arts, and Harris Manchester College, Oxford University. Blossom is the editor of Splash! Great Writing About Swimming. She served as the first ever Poet Laureate of Edgefield, South Carolina (2015-17). She currently lives in Los Angeles.
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Deborah Bogen's most recent collection is "Speak Now This Charm" from Jacarpress. She is a poet, painter, musician and politcal activist living in Pttsburgh PA.
Read "The Lesson I Taught Myself" and "The Opposite of Exile"
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Ace Boggess is author of four books of poetry, most recently I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So (Unsolicited Press, 2018) and Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017), and two novels, including States of Mercy (Alien Buddha Press, 2019). His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
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Rohan Buettel lives in Canberra, Australia. His haiku appear in various Australian and international journals including Presence, Cattails and The Heron’s Nest. His longer poetry appears in more than fifty journals, including The Goodlife Review, Rappahannock Review, Penumbra Literary and Art Journal, Passengers Journal, Reed Magazine, Meniscus and Quadrant.
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David Carlson is Professor of English at California State University San Bernardino, where he has taught for twenty three years. His poems have appeared in Pacific Review, Inlandia, and Poemeleon. He is also an amateur painter, working primarily in watercolor.
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Daniela Cascella is an Italian-British writer, working with forms and transformations of critical writing that inhabit, echo, and are haunted by their subjects: literature, voices, concealments of the self. Writing in English as a second language, writing as a stranger in a language, she is drawn toward unstable and uncomfortable forms of writing-as-sounding, and toward the transmissions and interferences of knowledge across cultures.
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Sue Chenette is a poet, editor, and classically trained pianist who grew up in northern Wisconsin and has made her home in Toronto since 1972. Her most recent books are So That We Might Finger the Words, and the documentary poem What We Said, based on her time in Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.
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Gabriel Cleveland is a poet and fiction writer with an MFA from the Solstice Creative Writing Program. Along with press founder Joan Cusack Handler, he co-edited Places We Return To, a 20th Anniversary retrospective on the publishing history of CavanKerry Press, where he serves as Managing Editor and Director. An avid video gamer and music lover, he hosts The Andover Special, a weekly internet radio program on HomeGrownRadioNJ.com. Gabriel is also a mental health advocate, often working online to raise awareness, visibility, and money for psychological and psychosocial issues. He has spent several years in the field of caregiving for people with increased physical and/or mental needs and wants you to know that you’re not alone.
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Shutta Crum has won eight Royal Palm Literary Awards. She’s had 150+ poems published, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, authored eighteen traditionally published books for children, and three chapbooks of poetry. When You Get Here won a gold Royal Palm. Meet Me Out There is her latest chapbook.
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John Davis is the author of Gigs and The Reservist. His work has appeared in DMQ Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and Terrain.org. He lives on an island in the Salish Sea and performs in several bands.
Read "Dance of the Dungeness Crab," River Dancer," and "Crocodile Jazz"
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Lucille Lang Day is the award-winning author of eleven poetry collections and chapbooks, two children’s books, and a memoir, Married at Fourteen. Her latest poetry collection is Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place. She’s also the publisher of Scarlet Tanager Books and has edited three anthologies. https://lucillelangday.com
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M F Drummy holds a PhD in historical theology from Fordham University. The author of numerous articles, essays, poems, reviews, and a monograph on religion and ecology, his work has appeared, or will appear, in Allium, [Alternate Route], Anti-Heroin Chic, BRAWL, DarkWinter, Emerge, FERAL, Heimat Review, Last Leaves, Main Street Rag, Marbled Sigh, Meetinghouse, Muleskinner, Persephone, The Word’s Faire, Winged Penny Review, and many others. He and his way cool life partner of over 20 years enjoy splitting their time between the Colorado Rockies and the rest of the planet. He can be found at: Instagram @miguelito.drummalino Website https://bespoke-poet.com
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Robert Estes, who lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, got his PhD in Physics at UC Berkeley and had some interesting times doing physics, including a couple of US-Italian Space Shuttle missions. His poems have appeared in Cola Literary Review, The Moth, the museum of americana, Gargoyle, Sierra Nevada Review, and elsewhere.
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Nancy Flynn hails from the coal country of northeastern Pennsylvania and now lives in Portland, Oregon where she grows a field of dahlias in her front yard. She attended Oberlin College, Cornell University, and has an M.A. from SUNY/Binghamton. Her writing has received an Oregon Literary Fellowship; her most recent poetry book is Every Door Recklessly Ajar. She is thrilled to have two of her rare “happy poems” included in this issue of Poemeleon. Her website is www.nancyflynn.com.
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Taylor Franson-Thiel is a poet based in Fairfax, Virginia. They have a Master’s in creative writing from Utah State University, and are now pursuing their MFA at George Mason University. Their work can be found in magazines such as Vita Brevis Press, Quarter Press, Bar Bar and others.
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Keith Gaboury earned a MFA in Creative Writing (poetry) from Emerson College. Kelsay Books published The Cosmos is Alive in 2023, and Still Human is forthcoming from Falkenberg Press in 2025. Keith lives in Oakland, California. Learn more at keithgaboury.com.
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E.C. Gannon's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Meadow, Molecule, Olit, and elsewhere. A New England native, she holds a degree in creative writing and political science from Florida State University.
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Ed Gold has rebloomed as a poet in his 60s and 70s after a few decades of child-raising. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, he taught for many years at the University of Maryland. He has two chapbooks—Owl and Sundown (2023, Finishing Line Press)—and poems in the Ekphrastic Review, Petigru Review, Passager, New Verse News, Think, New York Quarterly, Kakalak, and others. He conducts the Skylark poetry contest for South Carolina high school poets. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife Amy and their dog Edie.
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Bill Griffin is a naturalist and retired family doctor in rural North Carolina. How We All Fly, from Orchard Street Press, is his seventh collection. In weekly posts Bill features Southern writers, nature photography, and microessays on ecology, nature, and the inner life of mind and spirit: http://GriffinPoetry.com
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Gloria Heffernan’s Exploring Poetry of Presence (Back Porch Productions) won the 2021 CNY Book Award for Nonfiction. She received the 2022 Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Prize. Gloria is the author of the collections Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica (Kelsay Books), and What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List, (New York Quarterly Books).Her forthcoming chapbook, Animal Grace, was selected for the Keystone Chapbook Series prize. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including Poetry of Presence (vol. 2).
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Rosalie Hendon (she/her) is an environmental project manager living in Columbus, Ohio. Her work is published in Ravens Perch, Quibble Lit, Sad Girls Diaries, Pollux, Blue Bottle, and Willawaw, among others. Rosalie is inspired by ecology, relationships, and stories passed down through generations.
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David Henson and his wife have lived in Brussels and Hong Kong and now reside in Illinois. His work has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes, Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions and has appeared in numerous journals including The Orchards Poetry Journal, Front Porch Review, The Lake, South Florida Poetry Review, Moonpark Review, and Gone Lawn. His website is http://writings217.wordpress.com. His Twitter is @annalou8.
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Alison Hwang is a poet, artist, and competitive fencer. She is a Gold Key winner of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, was the runner up winner of the 2022 John Gardiner Poetry Contest for the High School division, and a 2021 Round 4 finalist for the New York Times Personal Narrative Contest. Ally has also published a children’s book titled Winston Finds Wonder with the Clinton Foundation. During her free time, Ally enjoys traveling, taking photos, and dancing. Ally is also a finalist for Division III Women’s Foil at the 2021 Fencing Summer National Championships. She is a member of clubs such as the Model United Nation and Red Cross. In addition, she has created, “CL Journalists,” where she encourages and advises members to freely write whatever style and topic they wish. She currently resides in Orange County and is working on her zine, Can I Cross this Bridge?. cljournals.com
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Marc Janssen has been writing poems since around 1980. Some people would say that was a long time. Early decrepitude has not slowed him down; his verse can be found scattered around the world in places like Pinyon, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and Poetry Salzburg also in his book November Reconsidered. Janssen coordinates the Salem Poetry Project- a weekly reading, and has been a nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate. For more information visit, marcjanssenpoet.com.
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Sian M. Jones received an MFA in fiction from Mills College. Her work has appeared in 3rd Wednesday and Lammergeier Magazine, among other publications. In her day job, she writes as clearly as she can about complex code. She occasionally updates jonessian.com.
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Genevieve Kaplan is the author of (aviary) (Veliz Books, 2020), In the ice house (Red Hen, 2011), and five chapbooks, most recently Felines, which sounds like feelings (above/ground, 2022). Her poems can be found in Third Coast, Puerto del Sol, Denver Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Poetry, and other journals. She edits the Toad Press International chapbook series, publishing contemporary translations of poetry and prose. Genevieve lives in southern California.
Read "[I gathered the words I had dropped]" and "May I Begin"
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Sam Kaspar was born in Canada, and lives in the US as a retired physician & part-time writer. He enjoys rowing, hiking, tennis, amateur photography, jeeps, reading, writing, travel, Oxford commas, and especially family. He's had over 50 publications so far of his poetry & short prose, plus several scientific articles. Preferred topics include nature, existence, social justice, emotion, heritage... He’s been a finalist in writing contests from Vallum, Iron Horse, Sand Hills, Cairde Sligo Arts Festival, and others. Facebook readings: Sam Kaspar the writer @MightySamster
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David Kirby teaches at Florida State University. His latest books are a poetry collection, Help Me, Information, and a textbook modestly entitled The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them. Kirby is also the author of Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which the Times Literary Supplement described as “a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense.” He is currently on the editorial board of Alice James Books.
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Tricia Knoll lives alone in the Vermont woods with two squirrely dogs. She has time to consider what happiness is. Her work appears widely in journals, anthologies, and nine books or chapbooks. Wild Apples (Fernwood Press) which came out in 2024 details downsizing, moving 3,000 miles from Oregon to Vermont, and finding peace. The Unknown Daughter (also 2024 from Finishing Line Press) includes 27 persona poems of people responding to a fictitious Tomb of the Unknown Daughter. Website: triciaknoll.com
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After a forty year hiatus, Robyne Richardson Lau recently resumed writing poetry. (Does forty years count as a hiatus, or is it quitting and then trying again?) An ecologist and lawyer, Robyne has enjoyed decades as an environmental regulator cleaning up and protecting her home state of Virginia. With three CDs to her credit, Robyne also writes and records music. She is a prolific shamanic journeyer and Gateway voyager. In addition to publishing multiple legal and scientific articles, she has published poetry in Gemini Magazine, Quarter Press, and Richmond Arts Magazine. She received The Washington Literary Award from the University of Virginia for poetry she wrote in her youth and a more recent Pushcart Prize nomination.
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Daniel Lehan – former paperboy, choirboy, shop assistant, ice cream seller, chip shop manager, petrol pump attendant, pub caterer, post office worker, theatre usher, cleaner, adult education tutor, leaflet distributor, front of house manager, t-shirt designer, screen printer, children’s book author and illustrator, gardener, teacher.
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Laurence Levey has been published in Versal, Ellipsis, the Barcelona Review, the New Guard, the Worcester Review, and elsewhere. He earned Honorable Mention for the 2022 Princemere Poetry Prize, and was a semi-finalist in the 2018 New Guard Fiction Contest and a finalist in the 2016 Breakwater Review Fiction Contest.
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Lawrence Linder's background is in the visual arts. He is an architect by training and has had a long successful career. He is also an artist and exhibit at a gallery in New Orleans.
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James M. Maskell has taught high school English in Massachusetts for over twenty years and writes in the early mornings before heading off to class. His poetry and fiction has been featured in Loud Coffee Press, Lucky Jefferson, Crow and Cross Keys, Vita and the Woolf, and the Dance Cry Dance Break podcast. His non-fiction has been featured in recent issues of Waccamaw, Windmill, and Paper Dragon. You can read his other work at jamesmmaskell.com.
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Elissa Matthews began writing poetry when she turned 65 and retired from the corporate world. She has short stories and poetry in several journals and anthologies, including Red Rock Literary Review, Lilith, and Art Times. She was previously Editor-in-Chief of Goldfinch, A Literary Magazine.
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Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam). Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Prairie Schooner, The MacGuffin, Poet Lore, Slant, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia.
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Katy McKinney divides her time between her home in rural Trout Lake, Washington and in the winters, a sailboat on which she and her husband can be found cruising anywhere from Mexico to Panama. Her poetry has been published in a number of journals (The Sun, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Windfall, and others) as well as in several anthologies. Her first book, Fireproofing the Woods, was published in 2013 by Dancing Moon Press and was the winner of the 2019 North Street Book Prize in poetry. It’s available through www.katymckinney.com.
Read "The Pelican Paints a Self-Portrait" and "Before There Were Words"
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Stephen Mead is a retired Civil Servant, having worked two decades for three state agencies. Before that his more personally fulfilling career was fifteen years in healthcare. Throughout all these day jobs he was able to find time for writing poetry/essays, and creating art. Occasionally he even got paid for this work. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, https://thestephenmeadchromamuseum.weebly.com/
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Jill Michelle's honors include a Best of the Net nomination for the title poem of her debut collection, Underwater (Riot in Your Throat, 2025), and the 2023 NORward Prize. Her latest poems appear/are forthcoming in Black Coffee Review, Drunk Monkeys, Lips Poetry Magazine, Poetry Breakfast and Sheila-Na-Gig. She teaches at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Find more of her work at byjillmichelle.com.
Read "To the Man Who Left Five Minutes into Our Family Date"
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Emily Rose Miller (she/they) graduated magna cum laude from Saint Leo University where she received her BA in English and is currently earning her MFA in creative writing at the University of Central Florida. Her work has been published in Capsule Stories, Cagibi Lit, and Passengers Journal, among other places. Find her online at emilyrosemiller.com, on Instagram @emily.rose.miller, or in real life in Orlando, Florida cuddling with her cats.
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Mark J. Mitchell has been a working poet for fifty years. He’s the author of five full-length collections, and six chapbooks. His latest collection is Something To Be from Pski’s Porch Publishing. He’s fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Dante, and his wife, activist Joan Juster. He lives in San Francisco
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Penelope Moffet is the author of three chapbooks, Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022), It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You (Arroyo Seco Press, 2018) and Keeping Still (Dorland Mountain Arts, 1995). Her poems have been published in many journals, among them One, ONE ART, Natural Bridge, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor and The Rise Up Review
Read "Lying in a Hammock by a Tiny House in Soquel, California" and "A Rising Boat Lifts My Tide"
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Dominic Palmer is a teacher, writer, and church musician living in Manchester. His poetry has been published in several journals, including EGG+FROG, Ekstasis, and Amethyst Review. Dominic and his wife have recently become parents for the first time, and he thoroughly enjoyed introducing their son to the snow.
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Hailing from South Central, Los Angeles, Tauwan Patterson is a Black + Queer Poet and recent graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. With his poetry Tauwan aims to, in the words of the great Poet and Thinker Marcus Jackson, announce his freedom and presence. Making a sound that echoes in the end that says Tauwan Patterson. No more. No less.
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S. J. Perry is the author of Soul, a poetry chapbook (Arroyo Seco Press). His work has appeared in Cholla Needles, Inlandia:A Literary Journey, The Ekphrastic Review, The Journal of Radical Wonder, Last Leaves, and elsewhere. He studied at Emporia State University and the University of Kansas. A retired high school English teacher, he has lived in Southern California’s San Gorgonio Pass since 1985.
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Katherine Quevedo hails from Portland, Oregon, where she works as an analyst and lives with her husband and two sons. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Rhysling Award, and her mini-chapbook The Inca Weaver’s Tales is available from Sword & Kettle Press. Find her at www.katherinequevedo.com.
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Sarah A. Rae (she/her): Publications include her chapbook, Someplace Else (dancing girl press, 2020), and work appearing in Gyroscope Review, Jet Fuel Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, the New Orleans based Poetry Buffet Anthology, the Mexican journal Revista Blanco Y Negro, and in video format in Jill! a Woman+ in Translation Reading Series. She lives in Chicago.
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Shawn Rampaul is a 23-year-old law graduate. He has work published in EllipsisZine, BLEACH!, Stone of Madness Press, Major 7th Magazine, and Harpy Hybrid Review, and has work forthcoming in Eunoia Review and Gone Lawn.
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Marybeth Rua-Larsen lives in Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Magma, and Crannóg, among others. She won the Luso-American Fellowship for the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon and was a Hawthornden Fellow in Scotland. Her chapbook Nothing In-Between is available from Barefoot Muse Press.
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Winner of the poetry prize for Orisons’ Best Spiritual Literature 2023, Merryn Rutledge’s poems have appeared widely and as Sweet Juice and Ruby-Bitter Seed (Kelsay Books.) Merryn teaches poetry craft, reviews poetry books, and works for social justice causes. She formerly taught literature, film, and creative writing at Phillips Exeter Academy, and then ran a US-based leadership development consulting firm.
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Linda Scheller is the author of Fierce Light, published by FutureCycle Press in 2017, and Wind & Children, published by Main Street Rag in 2022. Ms. Scheller is a retired educator and a widely published writer who serves as vice president of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and volunteers as a programmer for KCBP Community Radio. Her website is lindascheller.com.
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Alex Wells Shapiro (he/him) is a poet, artist, and organizer from the Hudson Valley, living in Chicago. He serves as Poetry Editor for Another Chicago Magazine, and co-curates Exhibit B: A Literary Variety Show. He is the author of a full length collection of poems, Insect Architecture (Unbound Edition 2022), and a chapbook, Gridiron Fables (Bottlecap Features 2022). More of his work can be found at www.alexwellsshapiro.com.
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Susan Shea is a retired school psychologist, who was raised in New York City and now lives in a forest in Pennsylvania. In the past year her work has been accepted by a number of publications including: Across the Margin, Ekstasis, Feminine Collective, The Avalon Literary Review, Persimmon Tree Literary Magazine, Military Experience and the Arts, Triggerfish Critical Review, Amethyst Review, Litbreak Magazine, A Time of Singing, Gastropoda and others.
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Shauna Shiff is an English teacher in Virginia, a mother, a wife, and a textiles artist. Her poems and short stories can be found in Stoneboat Literary Journal, Atticus Review, Cold Mountain Review, Rock Salt Journal, Cola and upcoming in others. In 2022, she was nominated for Best of the Net.
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Mike Sluchinski is a mature, part time student and does construction and demolition work. He gratefully acknowledges the Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Foundation for their support of writers and the arts. Find more of his poetry and spoken word at @nastystairspoetryspokenword on youtube. His poetry has been published in Kelp Journal, Freefall, In Media Res, and very gratefully published by poemeleon.
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Space-Time is a multidisciplinary artist that uses the human condition in art as spacial diagrams. Space-Time’s diagrams are useful in visualizing and understanding relativistic effects such as how different observers perceive where and when events occur.
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Travis Stephens is a tugboat captain who lives and works in California. His book of poetry, “skeeter bit & still drunk” was published by Finishing Line Press. Visit him at: zolothstephenswriters.com
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Wendy Vardaman, PhD, works as a website manager. The author of two poetry collections, her creative practice includes editing, prose writing, printing, and book arts. She served as Madison, Wisconsin poet laureate from 2012 to 2015 and volunteers as a graphic designer.
Read "Lluïsa Vidal invents herself, Self-Portrait, 1899" and "dancing a lecture"
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Amanda Vogt is a Copywriter living in Buffalo, New York. She has studied Fashion and Creative Writing in college, her work reflecting her love and fascination for the beautifully bizarre. More of her pieces can be found in Bridge Eight Press and Ignatian Literary Magazine. In her free time, Amanda loves a reality show binge watch and going on walks with her Chihuahua.
IG: @amandav843
FB: Amanda Vogt
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James Von Hendy is a technical writer, life coach and birdwatcher. His poetry has appeared most recently in Aji Magazine, Thanatos, and Monterey Poetry Review. He is the author of a chapbook, Rain Dance.
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Suellen Wedmore, Poet Laureate emerita for the small seaside town of Rockport, Massachusetts, has been awarded first place in Writer’s Digest’s Rhyming Poem and Non-Rhyming Poem Contests. Her chapbook Deployed won the Grayson Press annual contest, and her chapbook Mind the Light won first place in Quill’s Edge Press’s "Women on the Edge" contest. Four of her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and recently Down East Books published her full-length book of poems: A fixed White Light: Poems of Women Lighthouse Keepers.
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Hilda Weiss is co-founder and curator for www.Poetry.LA, a website that features videos of poets in performance, interviews, and other poetry-themed programs. She has poetry published in Cultural Weekly, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Poemeleon, Rattle, Spillway, The Comstock Review, and Thimble, among others. Her chapbook, Optimism About Trees was published in 2011.
Read "In front of a patch of denuded narrow-leaf milkweed plants"
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André Le Mont Wilson is a Black Queer poet who won the 2022 Newfound Prose Prize. In 2024, he published in Beneath the Soil: Queer Survivor's e-Zine, Brown Bag Online, folk ku journal, Fourteen Poems, Fruit, The FruitSlice, and won the First Frost Award for best haiku in issue #7.
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Terry Wolverton is author of twelve books of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction, including Embers, a novel in poems, *Insurgent Muse: art and life at the Woman’s Building,* a memoir*, and her most recent novel, Season of Eclipse*. She has also edited sixteen literary compilations. She is the founder of Writers At Work, a creative writing studio in Los Angeles, and Affiliate Faculty in the MFA Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles. http://terrywolverton.net
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Ian Woollen lives in Bloomington, Indiana. Recent poetry has appeared in Peregrine Journal and Two Hawks Quarterly and is forthcoming at Bombay Gin. A new novel, SISTER CITY, is out from Coffeetown Press.
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Kenton K. Yee’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Plume Poetry, Cincinatti, Kenyon, Threepenny, RHINO, Indianapolis, TAB, Constellations, Grain, Terrain.org, Sheila-Na-Gig, Cortland, Hawaii Pacific, The Ecopoetry Anthology: Volume II, and Rattle, among others. Kenton holds a PhD in physics from UCLA and law and business degrees from Stanford. He writes from Northern California.
INSTA: @kentonkyeepoet
X: @leanpig
FB: @scrambled.k.eggs
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Laura Zaino has an MFA in Creative Writing from The City College of New York. A wife and a mother of one, she teaches yoga in NY’s lower Hudson Valley, where you can also find her on the hiking trails. Her self-published poetry collection, Hindsight Notwithstanding, is available on Amazon.
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Dear Everyone,
What does it mean to be “happy”?
I’d like to start by saying: YOU make me happy.
Even those of you who’ve been unhappy with how long it is taking me to post this issue. Trust me, I understand that frustration! I’ve been frustrated, too.
Back when I started this journal, circa 2005, I had far fewer obligations and could drop everything to put up an issue. These days, I am full-time running Inlandia Institute, which means less time for personal projects like Poemeleon.
The idea for this issue came when I was exchanging poetry manuscripts with the poet Laurel Blossom, who also happens to be family. (Not to be confused with Lavina Blossom—no relation [that we’re aware of] who is also a dear friend.) It was also partially inspired by the fact that I personally have trouble writing “happy” poems, though now more than ever the world needs a little jolt of joy. Happiness. Hope!
Because of our exchange, Laurel wrote this exquisite poem, “Happiness as a Prompt”, which first appeared in Inlandia: A Literary Journal. This was the impetus for an entire issue of happy poems.
I want you to be happy, dear readers! And I want that happiness to spread out like a jar of spilt honey across all of the world so that we’re sticky with joy, with hope, with happy.
So please explore this issue for a healthy dose!
Happily yours,
Cati & the editors