On Balance
A deeply
flawed person
you flail
fail
and fall
but stay
more or less
happy
to be
a person
at all
LATE
“Are you able to turn off thinking about work
in order to get an adequate amount of sleep?”
— Psychology Today
It’s true I’m tired.
What else to say?
And uninspired,
it’s true: I’m tired.
And yet required
you, triolet.
It’s true I’m tired.
What else to say?
“Late” first appeared in The Bluestone Review.
Robert West’s chapbook Convalescent was published by Finishing Line Press in 2011. He’s co-editor of Succinct: The Broadstone Anthology of Short Poems (Broadstone Books, 2013) and editor of The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons, forthcoming in two volumes from W. W. Norton this fall. He teaches at Mississippi State University.
Learn more about Robert West at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-west
Donna Wolf-Palacio is author of What I Don’t Know and The Other Side, published by Finishing Line Press. She taught a poetry workshop at the University of the Arts and was editor/consultant of the UARTS Poetry Review. She has published her writing in Poetry, The Pennsylvania Gazette, The MusehouseJournal, Intro, The Interpreter, Poems ftom the Heart: Poems about Adoption, and Voices.
Maryfrances Wagner’s books include Salvatore’s Daughter, Light Subtracts Itself, Red Silk (Thorpe Menn Book Award for Literary Excellence), Dioramas (Mammoth) and Pouf (FLP). Poems have appeared in New Letters, Midwest Quarterly, Laurel Review, Voices in Italian Americana, Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (Penguin Books), Literature Across Cultures (Pearson/Longman), Bearing Witness, The Dream Book, An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women (American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation), et.al. She co-edits I-70 Review.
Eric Allen Yankee is a poet and freelance writer. His poems appear in publications like Crab Fat Magazine, Vanilla Sex Magazine, Yellow Chair Review, The Good Men Project, The People’s Tribune, and more. His work has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. His chapbook RIOT is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. His second chapbook American Bullet will be out later this year through Atomic Theory Micro Press (December 2017).
Lisa Richards earned her B.A. in English and Creative Writing from U.C.L.A., and her M.S.W. from U.S.C. She is a Board Certified Diplomat in Clinical Social Work, and has maintained a consulting practice in Southern California for over thirty years. She is published in her field and has presented at numerous conferences. Lisa received an Honorable Mention from the Academy of American Poets. She recently won residencies from Turkey Land Cove Foundation, Hypatia-in-the-Woods, and University of Washington’s Helen Riaboff Whiteley Center. In 2012, Lisa co-authored Dear Mallory: Letters To a Teenage Girl Who Killed Herself (New Middle Press) following the 2011 suicide of her only child. Dear Mallory received an Honorable Mention in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards, and was called “hauntingly candid” by The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Dear Mallory has been added to the recommended reading list of the American Association of Suicidology, and is being used as a suicide prevention tool in schools and psychotherapy offices. Dear Mallory is also a resource for survivors of suicide loss.
Deborah Kahan Kolb was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. Much of her poetry reflects the unique experiences and challenges of growing up in, and ultimately leaving, the insular world of Hasidic Judaism. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetica, Voices Israel, Veils, Halos & Shackles (an international poetry anthology on the oppression and empowerment of women), New Verse News, Tuck, Literary Mama, Poets Reading the News, 3Elements Review, Rise Up Review, and Writers Resist. Her poetry won the James E. Tobin Award at Queens College and was selected as a finalist for the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Award. Deborah’s debut collection, Windows and a Looking Glass (Finishing Line Press, 2017) was a finalist for the 2016 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition. You can visit the author at:
Patricia Carragon’s recent publications include Bear Creek Haiku, Sensitive Skin, and Sensations Magazine among others. Her latest book is Innocence (Finishing Line Press, 2017). The Cupcake Chronicles is forthcoming from Poets Wear Prada. Patricia hosts Brownstone Poets and is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology. She is an active member of brevitas, as well as the PEN Women’s Literary Workshop, Women Writers in Bloom, and Tamarind. She is an executive editor for Home Planet News Online.
Rachael Ikins is a 2016 Pushcart, 2013 CNY Book Award nominee, award winning poet/artist. Her artwork has appeared in one-woman and group exhibits in Syracuse galleries and from Hamilton to Albany and the NYS Fair and her writing in journals around the world. 7/17 she juried into SUM a show by PATF at Point of Contact Gallery, Syracuse. She has been featured poet/artist at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, Tyler Gallery SUNY Oswego 2017, Aaduna fundraiser 2017 Auburn, NY and at Palace Poetry, Syracuse NY. April 2018 she will feature at Word Revisited through the Cayuga Museum, Auburn, NY. Rachael founded and moderated Monday Night Poetry at Sushi Blues, feature & open mic, Hamilton NY.
Laurel S. Peterson is an English professor at Norwalk Community College and her poetry has been published in many literary journals. She has two chapbooks, That’s the Way the Music Sounds (Finishing Line Press) and Talking to the Mirror (Last Automat Press). Her full length collection, Do You Expect Your Art to Answer? (Futurecycle Press) was released in January 2017. She has also written a mystery novel, Shadow Notes, which is available through Barking Rain Press. She currently serves as the town of Norwalk, Connecticut’s poet laureate.
Stephen Page is from Detroit, Michigan. His is part Shawnee and part Apache. His other books include The Timbre of Sand and Still Dandelions. He graduated from Palomar College, Columbia University (with honors), and Bennington College. He has received a Jess Cloud Memorial Prize for Poetry, a Writer-in-Residence with stipend from the Montana Artists Refuge, a full Writer Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center, an Imagination Grant from Cleveland State University, and an Arvon Foundation Ltd. Grant. His book reviews have been published regularly in the Buenos Aires Herald and on Fox Chase Review. He also writes short stories, novels, and screen plays. He has taught world literature, ESL, and film studies. He loves family, friends, spontaneous road trips, and throwing his cellphone into a large body of water. Above all he loves his wife.
The Paddock Review 