ABOUT JACKLEG


JackLeg was an ongoing effort to bring writers together from various regions of the country. The editors believed that creativity coexists with community and the history of the written word. JackLeg aimed to bring together diverse writers, to give voice to young writers, as well as showcasing more established authors.

Content is from 1999 & 2000.

|  Maureen Seaton  |  Denise Duhamel  |  Reginald Gibbons  |  Becky Byrkit  |  Barry Silesky  |  Boyer Rickel  |  Calvin Forbes  |  Mary Hawley  |  Gale Renee Walden  |  Luis Rodriguez  |  William Marsh  |  Lollie Butler  |  Sylvia Sohn Um  |   Greggory Cullen Wagner  |  Stacey Richter  |  Simone Muench  |  Tom Chandler  |  Charles Alexander  |  Lisa Cooper  |  Daniel Tobin  |  Mark Turcotte  |  James McManus  |  Jon Anderson  |  Ray Gonzalez  |  Alison Deming  |​

This was JackLeg's website in the early 2000's.
Content is from the site's 2000 archived pages.

+++

History doesn't happen in the past tense, history is what happens through collaborative efforts done in the continuous-present (dear old Gertrude). Through our new virtual world, we are watching the building of bridges, traditional forms blending with cyber optics, cyber blending with culture.

I heard a funny joke the other day: actual reality. I'm not even sure I can define such a thing, whether it exists. I've always believed reality to be what we make it. Therefore, JackLeg is an outgrowth of my passion to bring people together, commonality, all that juicy stuff like peace, harmony, and ever lasting love. Or maybe I'm exaggerating.

Fred, I'm guessing would shake his head, tell me he doesn't get the "actual reality" of my joke & keep plugging the meter even after the car rolls down the hill into a drain ditch.

And dear Andi, I think she'd just nod and say, "Yeah, I know where you're going, let's see it."

So here it is, JackLeg, our continuous present.

--Jennifer Harris, Founding Editor


ABOUT JACKLEG people


Jennifer Harris, Founder & Editor

A poet and fiction writer whose work has most recently appeared in Fish Stories: Collective IV and The New York Quarterly, Jennifer's poetry is also forthcoming in the anthology Powerlines (Tia Chucha Press, Fall 1999). She is the editor and founded of JackLeg Press, and directs the Spotlight on Chicago Authors reading series at The Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently working with singer/songwriter Barbara Bates to organize the Chicago venue of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's millennium celebration, entitled "The World Festival of Sacred Music: A Global Quest for Unison." In the Spring of 1999, she was selected by the Poetry Center of Chicago to read in their "Emerging Poets" reading series.  Fred Schmalz, Assistant Editor

Fred Schmalz lives with his wife, Lillian Stillwell, and their cat, Dizzy, in St. Paul, Minnesota. His poetry can be found in Conduit, Mangrove and the first issue of JackLeg, and his reviews in Rain Taxi. He helped found Gazelle Poets in Chicago in 1996. Walker Art Center and The Guild Complex featured readings by Schmalz this spring. Lately, it's typesetting that keeps him awake at night. He also advises visitors to the New York Metro area to stop by Earwig Records in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It's all your soul needs.  Andrea Werblin, Managing Editor & Design Director

Andrea Werblin lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she continues her unsuccessful search for an authentic bean burrito. Online her work appears in MixnMatch.com, and The East Village. In the real world it's mostly furniture copy and occasional poems in fine publications such as Willow SpringsSun Dog, and Alligator Juniper. She is fond of goats, and makes killer gazpacho.

 

 

The Great Quantum Mysteries 
The Parable of the Cat
Beach Bunnies*

Maureen is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, Furious Cooking (University of Iowa Press, 1996), winner of the Iowa Prize for Poetry; and a collaboration with poet Denise Duhamel, Exquisite Politics (Tia Chucha Press, Chicago, 1997). She has been the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council grant and an NEA fellowship. Her poems have appeared in Paris Review, The AtlanticNew RepublicThe Pushcart Prize XX and XXII, and The Best American Poetry 1997

 

Maureen Seaton

The Great Quantum Mysteries

1. The double-slit experiment

I look at myself. I'm a particle. I stop looking at myself, I'm a wave. A wave can be anywhere in the universe and everywhere at the same time. When I'm a wave I will visit Mars in several light years but a light year to a wave is nothing. I will be on Mars in an instant, shorter than an instant, instants don't exist for me when I'm a wave. I'm dead. I spread out and out, I'm a wave on Venus now. Waves are intrinsic yin, they are what the people on earth fail to see. While I'm alive I'm a mass of particles, I'm beautiful or not. I'm a supermodel, a concert pianist. I'm a welfare recipient with three smart little kids. I'm in my observable state, I observe myself, in fact, it's all I do. At the moment of my grandmother's death she was nuclear, bright as the approach of aliens, I could feel her heat down the hall, she was that ready for blast off. Her body was little and refined on the nursing home bed, small snail-self waiting to spin away. But her soul was crucial, ready to wave itself to Saturn where her husband, Ted, waited in the rings, calling to her with his sweet wave mouth, his wave heart. It was like this when she died: the light of Genevieve all over the Midwest, quick, like a kiss.

2. The duality of light and matter

We're wedged in our small plot of starry space tangled in sheet and shins and arms thrown around necks like colors of selves all this time you say we've been looking how many billions what star I knew it you say the same tribe the same dying planet. When I first slept with you there was more that sharp pain of home such longing defeated in your flesh. I'd listened to men reach up and up to God we're there we're almost there but in our still bodies I find all light. Listen to your intelligence it sings at the center of bowel and brain deeper than oil in the ocean bed. Womb inside womb fourth fifth dimension there are windows there is real dust of stars. In Chicago we can't see them but they're up there they've been dying for a billion years.

3. The absolute and irreducible indeterminism of quantum processes (does God play dice?)

When God spoke to Teresa Santangelo (in Household Saints) during a card game I was jealous I admit but then I remembered the times He spoke to me too and I thought: So, I'm in a dry spell, so what? Yesterday I put my hand over the spot where the embryo of my daughter and her boyfriend used to hang from its cushy wall and I hear God clear His throat as if to console us.  Sirens on 23rd Street sighed low. Someone looked at someone else in echo. And the red  Chelsea in the Chelsea Hotel sign came back on like a miracle while Teresa Santangelo slid down the sliding pond of life in her sureness and insanity, the way only the good can die. And there was sudden warmth in my hand like the pee of a newborn or the kiss of a spirit flying home. God said: Of all my great miracles, my favorite is tipping the scales and cheating at pinochle. He seemed happy as my grandmother shuffling the deck in '52, handing me cards with their turned-down corners and spots of grease marking the queens. I was five, oldest of all the grandchildren, you could count on me to stay alive a long time, way past goodness, way past Slap Jack and War, the time it takes to hide a black ace up your sleeve when all you've got rides giddily on the hand of a madman.

4. The quantum jump

The electron is caught in a black hole. There is no way out. Whoops, there it is outside the  hole--no discernible path, neither have we ourselves been able to free it in any way. This is how some of us recover from a great illness. One day we're sick, the next we're outside the hole. We don't understand. We don't have to. It's impossible not to want to thank something, however,  and for this we created God. Thank you, we say, those of us who have leapt crazily without any thought to our limitations, without any conscious hope at all. God or luck. God, luck, or fate.  God, luck, fate, hard work. God, luck, fate, hard work, perspicacity, birthright. Pick one. Each  time, you will be wrong.

 

Maureen Seaton Maureen Seaton

The Parable of the Cat

*note: hard copy has handwritten formula

This strange string of squiggles, much like "Mais oui, nous sommes de bons copains" to the  average American, is known as Schrödinger's Wave. I like the way it looks with its little cacti, its total incomprehensibility. Schrödinger was the one who put the kitten in the box to figure out once and for all the true nature of reality. In this way, the kitten's life was endangered, which to  some, perhaps most back then, meant squat. Still, it was only a thought experiment, and  Schrödinger didn't really squeeze a live cat into a shoe box and hook her up to a poison vial with a 50-50 chance she'd be dead in an hour. The question was: Without peeking, can you guess if  the cat is alive or dead? Last week two cars collided on Lincoln. One careened toward the Davis  Theater, pushing a concrete drum of petunias all the way to Guatemalan Travel, its driver as close to the windshield as a real number. The other knocked over a young man and invaded Lee's  market as Lee stealthily lifted a small vodka to his lips and murmured, "What the...?" The young man lay shirtless on the sidewalk. "Dead or alive?" we said as we stood a respectful distance away. We meant nothing scientific. Still, all that adrenaline among us, that simple curiosity. Lee said many things in Korean as he nailed wooden boards over his storefront. He changed them to English for me when I walked by and said hi, even though the day had been calamitous, the injured whisked away so fast we never knew his fate, the answers to our questions riding in an ambulance toward the lake, the ocean, the blood seas of Mars. The cat, we said, is alive and dead at the same time.

 


 

I discovered Maureen Seaton during a period when I was deeply involved in enhancing the digital infrastructure of a publishing company, particularly focusing on our website and back office operations. We faced a unique challenge: our data management was anchored by FoxPro, a legacy application that, while once cutting-edge, is no longer supported. This situation posed significant limitations, especially as we sought to interface with more modern software solutions to streamline our publishing processes and enhance our digital presence.

The importance of updating outdated software in such a context cannot be overstated. Continuing to rely on FoxPro limited our ability to efficiently manage the vast amount of data associated with publishing operations, from manuscript tracking to sales analytics. Modernizing our system was not just about keeping up with technology trends; it was crucial for ensuring the sustainability and growth of our business. The task at hand involved finding a suitable replacement for FoxPro that could seamlessly integrate with the latest software platforms, thus enabling more effective data management and operational efficiency.

Amid these technical challenges, Maureen Seaton's poetry provided a much-needed creative escape. With nineteen poetry collections to her name, both solo and collaborative, her work offered an endless source of inspiration and contemplation. Her most recent publication at the time, "Caprice: Collected, Uncollected, and New Collaborations" (with Denise Duhamel), published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2015, stood out for its innovative blend of ecofeminism, humor, and literary craft. Seaton's ability to reimagine classic characters and condense novels into sonnet-sized pieces with every nuance intact was particularly compelling.

The process of transitioning away from FoxPro mirrored, in a way, the thematic explorations of Seaton's work: a journey through complexity towards a more integrated and efficient form. Just as her poetry navigates through layers of meaning and reconfiguration, our project aimed to transform our outdated systems into a cohesive digital ecosystem capable of supporting the future of publishing. In this period of transformation, both technical and literary, the resilience and adaptability inherent in Seaton's poetry became a source of inspiration, highlighting the importance of embracing change and innovation. Jason Alexander

 


 

Denise Duhamel

Beach Bunnies*

Denise is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Kinky (Orchises Press, 1997). She was the recipient of a 1989 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and the winner of a Poets & Writers "Writers Exchange" Award. Denise's work has been published in magazines such as The American Poetry ReviewPartisan Review, and Ontario Review as well as in anthologies including The Best American Poetry 1994 and The Best American Poetry 1993.

Maureen Seaton & Denise Duhamel

Beach Bunnies*

Venus Calms (Veneridae) are probably the most successful of all the clams. Over 400  abundant species occur the world over. A flexible external ligament and a powerful muscle  attached to the interior of the shells enable the animal to open its valves and close them to protect its soft body.  - from Seashells in My Pocket

1. King Venus (Southern Florida to the West Indies)

She's a wet-sand wallower, a sucker  for surfers named Tulip and Sweet Limpid, her boogie board, slick with sea foam that hints  of underwater sex. Even the straight  mollusks rip off their goggles to watch her bait deep-sea hooks, snag starfish, throw them back in  and head for McDonald's. King's father's grin  was hers, even before her first bright tooth  bloomed above water. At night she's aloof, pensive, a bruise in the sand, a figment  of her own detachment. King's spotted pigment is hardly the envy of most Venuses  who prefer seaweed soup and real penises.  Silly clams. Only the Queen gets to fuck her.

2. Elegant Venus (Texas to the Caribbean)

This princess prefers silly clams around her  to out-of-reach-deep-sea types who dress  in green-thread algae. Elegant spends less on clothes than...no one, come to think of it,  not even the glamorous Textile Cone, twit-  of-the-sea, not even tiny Pertusa. Elegant is luscious wet. To lose her  would bring Mister Venus to the foamy edge of her bristly purple shell. Uncaged,

she gulps down enough ocean for a bath, enough sand for pearly intestines. Paths  all lead to Elegant, her soft body  a percussion of undertow, muddy,  delirious as the sea's fickle weather.

3. Lightning Venus (North Carolina to Brazil)

Crazy about delirious weather, Lightning creates a good storm. Thunder booms,  typically, and she precedes it--zoom, zap, cutting close to her lover's bones.  She aches, pulled palp and muscles, electric moans that curl dulse leaves and tough eel grass. Once she smoked an entire avalanche  of sea potatoes. It's her specialty:  beach peas, wrinkled rose, and link confetti  flash fried, a potion that works every time,  deadly as ink blood of octopi. Briny  ghosts follow Lightning's phosphorescent foot,  her shadowy imprint, her haloed hood--  the flash of her push, the flash of her lure.

4. Golden Venus (Philippines and East Asia)

One flashy mama, a pushy crone clam, reef-famous Golden holds her own among  whipper-snappers, rappers and slackers, young  upstarts. Golden loves the sea when it's gray,  rusty treasure off the coast of Asia,  tilted ships pining on the ocean floor.  She's seen entire shorelines shift, sea wars, and giant tourists in green water-wings  floating to paradise. Golden careens  down Ocean Boulevard like a pelican  on rollerblades, hungry and determined. She hates being called ma'am, "Loving Care Silver" all she ever uses on her hair,  the color of neap tides, dazzling star-streaked sand.

5. Lettered Venus (Indo-Pacific)

Her dazzling studies claim stars control tongues  and tides--not man or the moon. Shocked academics  speculate about her bold linguistic  powers, wonder if her words predate God-  babble: the Koran, Torah, St. James, odd  holy books that read like dark fairy tales. One day she woke with the lyrics of whales imprinted on her back--their brackish mumblings,  disgruntled or ecstatic etched rumbles.  Anywhere words have been swallowed by the sea  she carries history, her body a key to salty laws and knowledge that swells from carp livers and the aortas of eels,  from the swordfish's sword, the lungfish's lung.

6. Pointed Venus (southern Florida, Texas, Mexico)

Pointed's got that sword-to-the-lung attitude. Addicted to bivalve adrenalin,  she power-lunches with crestfallen  Sanguin Clams, gives them no-nonsense peptalks re: clam defense, clamouflage, and walking  like a clam-man. Pointed is all mer-woman,  fin-sharp and liquid, a lover of lumin-  ous debate. Once she fought off a whole school of pacifists, detonating peace symbols in the Gulf of Mexico. Pointed  wants to go where no Venus has gone--join  the Volutes in West Africa, pilgrimage up the Mississippi to the edge of fresh water, lethal ponds, forbidden food.

7. Glory-of-the-Seas Venus (North Carolina to Texas)

She's the Mother of Ponds, slick forbidden deep-water siren who sings you to death  with her dolphin-inspired crystal-meth  melodies. Venuses worship her fluent fluid ideas about valve-control, the Ten  Glorious Suggestions, earning her a place  of saint-like stardom in offshore bass-  holy waters. Glory is not only Diva of the Deep, Bivalve Supreme, Roaring Pink-Mouthed Queen, and Patron Saint of Pismos, but she also conjures cures for dismal beaches. She purifies polluted oceans,  tweaking the little toes of humans  who wallow in the wet sand sucking up clams.

 

Reginald Gibbons

Reginald Gibbons has published six books of poems, most recently Sparrow: New and Selected Poems (LSU Press, 1997) andHomage to Longshot O'Leary (Holy Cow Press, 1999), a novel, Sweetbitter (Penguin, 1996) and other works. He was the editor of TriQuarterly magazine from 1981 to 1997, and now teaches at Northwestern University and in the low-residency MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. 

Reginald Gibbons

War and Camps

     It is already some years since I arrived in the city of my exile. I am preparing a report. As  I sat in an awkward vigil over the as yet unfinished shape of a dream one night a motorcycle arrived outside my house and was snarling angrily as the driver revved it again and again. Mechanical analogue of bitter anger.

     The son is angry at the father, or is beginning to realize that he is angry; and the father is already angry enough to kill his son. The brothers furiously hate each other. (Fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts, said to them as they grew up, "Hate! Hate! Remember what they did!")

     An armed legion of fathers, invading for oil and a port. An armed legion of sons  advancing to meet them, deployed by a belief. But it varies. Sometimes there comes an army of men with no goal but to destroy.

     In a hall, a provisional parliament, a tent, a bombed-out church, a well-accoutred chamber of deputies and representatives, a huge tavern, gather the patriots of what they think is an unchanging race. Everyone else has gone back inside but the leader stays out in the night,  planning.

     The father is death and war; the son rushes away to escape him.

     Then comes the son, and it is he who is harrying live souls toward death, and the aged father takes the aged mother by the hand, and as quickly as they can, which is not quickly at all, they run into the forest.

     Do not asked what happened to my daughter.

     The time of war--the bulldozers with which our army prepared mass graves before anyone was even brought to be murdered there.

     The time of camps--the double fences guarded by dog-men, the stockpiled food and medicine outside the fences, the dead of hunger and sickness like flung broken dolls.

     Memory tells me a story from its own place, not even from my only life: When I reached the age of adult thoughts, I found my father digging hard one day. What are you doing? I asked. Digging a hole, he said. I felt stupid. I watched him finish, and then he filled it up again, almost. What else goes in there? I said. Don't worry, he said, something will. I'm leaving here, I said. He said, I wish I could, but all places are the same to me. He began to dig another hole. 

 

Becky Byrkit
Roman Numeral ten Forays Into the Telling
Becky founded the Voice & Range Registry of Collaborative Artists and Affiliates in the spring of 1997, and worked with choreographers, using her manuscript, Solar System for Criminals, as a text for dance. Becky's work is included in anthologiesFever Dreams (University of Arizona Press) and Night Out: Poems about Hotels, Motels, Restaurants and Bars (Milkweed Editions). She was also a member of the writing faculty at the University of Arizona. 


 

Barry Silesky
England
Steps
Back
Barry is the author of a book of short-short fiction, One Thing That Can Save Us, and the biography, Ferlinghetti: The Artist in His Time. His poems and fiction have been in numerous magazines including: BoulevardLaurel ReviewThe Prose Poem: an International JournalPoetry EastMany Mountains Moving, and Spelunker Flophouse. He is also the editor of Another Chicago Magazine (ACM). 


 

Boyer Rickel
To A Friend 
The Lover's Lament
Boyer's first book, Arreboles, was published by Wesleyan/New England. His manuscript, Disclosure, is titled for a five-poem sequence, and appeared in 1997 in CutBank. A seven-poem sequence was recently published by Volt. A long-time student of the poem sequence, Boyer is the Assistant Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Arizona. 


 

Calvin Forbes
Plain Song
Threads
Two
Calvin Forbes teaches writing at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has received fellowships from the NEA, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, in addition to a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship in Poetry at Breadloaf Writer's Conference. He has written three books of poetry - including Blue Monday and From the Book of Shine - and his work has been widely published in both magazines and anthologies. 


 

Mary Hawley
A Sense of Balance
The Pioneer
4 a.m. #1
Mary Hawley's work has appeared in Spoon River Quarterly, Notre Dame ReviewStrong CoffeeHammersHawaii Pacific ReviewRambunctious Review, and other publications. Her poems have also appeared in two Chicago anthologies: Naming the Daytime Moon: Stories and Poems by Chicago Women and Stray Bullets: A Celebration of Chicago Saloon Poetry. Her first book of poetry, Double Tongues, was published by Tia Chucha Press in 1993.


 

Gale Renee Walden
Rewind, Pause
The Healing
Gale Renee Walden is the author of Same Chevy Blues, a collection of poetry published by Tia Chucha Press. She currently resides in Urbana where she teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois. Her poems and fiction have appeared in several literary magazines including the Harvard ReviewPrairie Schooner, and Fiction Magazine


 

Luis Rodriguez
Eva sitting on the curb with pen and paper before the torturers came to get her
Victory, Victoria, My Beautiful Whisper
Luis Rodriguez is the author of the memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. (Curbstone Press 1993, Touchstone Books/Simon & Schuster 1994), which won a Carl Sandburg Literary Award, a Chicago Sun-Times Books Award and was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book for 1993. His books Poems Across the Pavement (Tia Chucha Press 1989) and The Concrete River (Curbstone Press 1991) have won the Poetry Center Book Award from San Francisco State University and the PEN West/Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence, respectively. In 1998, Curbstone Press published his children's illustrated and bilingual book, America Is Her Name, and a poetry collection Trochemoche


 

William Marsh
C-
William teaches writing and literature in San Diego, where he also co-directs PBrain Productions, a video and web arts initiative. His work has appeared in AntenymmembraneWitz, and Chain


 

Lollie Butler
1001 Ways To Write A Poem
Lollie Butler lives and works in Tucson, Arizona. 




Sylvia Sohn Um
Perdita
Sylvia Sohn Um graduated from the University of Arizona in 1994. Among her honors are the Arizona Regent's Academic Achievement Award, a University of Arizona Fine Arts Scholarship, the Hattie Locket Poetry Award and the Outstanding Senior Award from the College of Humanities. She died on November 7, 1996 as a result of treatments from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, dating from 1989. She was in her second year of the Master of Fine Arts Program in poetry at the University of Maryland. She is remembered by her family, teachers, and many dear friends. 

 



 

Greggory Cullen Wagner
Neighbor
Greggory Cullen Wagner lives with his daughter, her mother, and their three dogs on Chicago's West side. He has been published in FishStories: Collective I., and featured on the "Literally Speaking" section of Metropolis on WBEZ. He is also a founding member of the Gazelle Poets. 


 

Stacey Richter
Revolt of the Debutantes
That Period In My Account
Stacey Richter's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Mississippi ReviewThe Greensboro ReviewThe Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Pushcart Prize XXII. Her poems have been published in River Styx and Sonora Review. She received her MFA from Brown University and lives in Tucson, Arizona where she reviews films for the Tucson Weekly



 

Simone Muench
Letters From a Lover From Another Planet 
On Hearing My Father Pulled a Shotgun on My Grandparents During Thanksgiving Dinner
Simone Muench has published poems in The Bloomsbury ReviewCalyxLouisiana Literature, and The New York Quarterly. She earned her MFA from the University of Colorado, and is an associate editor of ACM



 

Tom Chandler
The Census Taker Describes His Art
Tom Chandler's poems have appeared in PoetryOntario Review, and Boulevard. He is a winner of the Galway Kinnell Poetry Prize, and has twice received writing fellowships from Yaddo. His latest book, Wingbones, was published in 1997 by Signal Books. Tom teaches poetry at the Rhode Island School of Design. 



 

Charles Alexander
Cardinal
3/31/97
(Cynthia Miller)
(Jeff Hansen)
(Katherine Kuehn & David Abel)
(Lisa Cooper)
Charles Alexander's books of poetry include Hopeful Buildings (Chax Press, 1990); arc of light/dark matter (Seque Books 1992); Four Ninety Eight to Seven (Meow Press, 1997) and Pushing Water (Stand Stone Press, 1997). He has also published reviews and critical essays on contemporary literature and culture. He is the founder and director of Chax Press in Tucson, Arizona. 



 

Lisa Cooper
Grey Alchemical #4 
Grey Alchemical #7
Lisa has lived in Tucson, Arizona most of her life. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines including HamboneAPR,Sonora ReviewBlue Mesa Review, and others. Her book & Calling It Home was published by Chax Press. 




Daniel Tobin
Elegy for Smallpox
Daniel's poems have appeared in many literary journals, among them PoetryThe Tampa ReviewThe American Scholar, and the Atlanta Review. In 1995 he was awarded the "Discovery"/ The Nation Award, and in 1996 a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His critical study of Seamus Heaney's poetry, Passage to the Center, is forthcoming from the University Press of Kentucky. 


 

Mark Turcotte
Before Electricity
Mark lives and works in Chicago, Illinois and Door County, Wisconsin. He has published work in TriQuarterly, and he was awarded a Community Residency for the fall of 1997 by the National Writer's Voice. Also, his first book of poetry, The Feathered Heart, was recently re-published by Michigan State University Press. 


 

James McManus
>Trip
James McManus is the author of four novels. The most recent, Going to the Sun, won a Carl Sandburg Literary Award. He is also the author of a collection of short stories and a book of poetry. He has received fellowships from the Shifting and Guggenheim foundations, and twice from the National Endowment for the Arts. James' work has appeared in the Atlantic MonthlyParis ReviewSalmagundi, and in The Best American Poetry anthologies of 1991 and 1994. He teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 


 

Jon Anderson
Far, Far Away
Princess Harumi 
Asking
Perry Como
Jon is a professor at the University of Arizona. His new manuscript is entitled So Long, Ernie Vanilla. Jon's poems have appeared in The Antioch Review, the Iowa Review, and the Southern Review. He has three rats, a dog, a son, and a wife. 



 

Ray Gonzalez
Five Happenings
Gorilla Brain Tumor 
His Face
Radishes
Ray Gonzalez is a poet, essayist, and editor born in El Paso, Texas. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently The Heat of Arrivals, and one memoir entitled Memory Fever: A Journey Beyond El Paso del Norte. He is the poetry editor for The Bloomsbury Review and teaches at the University of Illinois in Chicago. 



 

Alison Deming
from The Monarchs: #'s 20,21,22,29,54

Alison is the author of Science and Other Poems (LSU, 1994), Temporary Homelands (Picador USA, 1996), and The Monarchs: A Poem Sequence (LSU, 1997). Alison taught at the University of Hawaii in Monoa. She was the Director of the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and has recently joined the faculty as an __________ professor. 



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