Joanne N. Ford and Thomas Juvik

Therapy in Photographic Time
(A Tribute to Ansel Adams)

Joanne N. Ford

Today’s therapy session will be off the record.
There will be nothing to interpret.
No scenarios of what is or might be.
Nothing to analyze; except the photograph
Of the mountain peaks and the heavy clouds
Heaving themselves against the native skies.
We’ll discuss how the soft winter light
Glides as smoothly as oil
Above the timberline and the shadows
Leaving traces on the brazen plains.
How still everything is and how thin the pockets of air are.
The trees with their stark pencil branches
Leaving sketch marks across the valley below.
We’ll wonder about the snow descending (ever so slowly)
Like yesterday’s pain blanketing and wrapping itself
Around the troubled heart and mind.
Perhaps, today we’ll learn something new.
Solve some problem hidden in the darkroom.
Photographic paper emerging from the tray of chemicals,
Erasing the deepest darkness as it ascends upwards,
Thundering, Spirit-fire flashing across the horizon.


Watching Grant
Tom Miller Juvik

From the moment that the Baumgartners moved to the cul-de-sac at the end of Conifer Park Drive, watching Grant proved to be a necessity. As Will “Baumie” Baumgartner backed the U-Haul into the driveway, he could see Grant sitting on the roof of the house across the street, a nine-year-old BB-gun sniper with red hair and freckles. more

Bronwyn E. Haynes and Paul R. Wellons

On Sorrow
Bronwyn E. Haynes

How does one write sorrow?
It is not exactly bar-napkin
or business-card material--
it is too deep, too wide,
to be written on such small surfaces.

It must be deep enough that if a reader
leaps in, there will be the sensation
of drowning--but once settled,
feet flat on the bottom,
it will be only neck-deep.

It must be heavy enough to imply
forever; to cause the reader
to contemplate how it would be
to carry this weight always,
but not so heavy that it cannot be moved.

Most importantly, it must breathe--
not as if it were vibrantly alive,
or as if it could fly away,
but instead as if it were dying.
It should flutter against the reader's palm

as if it might perish at any moment.


Give Me Fire
Paul R. Wellons

Like part of a macabre parade, Lance Corporal David Edge jogged behind a five-ton truck as it moved down a nameless Fallujah street. The truck spewed hot black smoke from its tailpipe and into Edge’s sweating face. more

2007-2008 Parnell Poetry Prize Winner Announced

Barrie Kreinik has been selected as the 2007-2008 Parnell Poetry Prize winner by judge Patricia Smith.

Kreinik is a professional actor and singer who has performed in NYC and with the Virginia Shakespeare Festival. Kreinik graduated from Cornell University in 2007 with a B.A. in Theatre and English; while there, she served as Editor-in-Chief of Ink Magazine and her poetry was published in several campus journals. Her poems have also appeared in Artis Magazine. She is a native of Hartford, CT and currently resides in New York City.

The following were finalists for the prize:

Harry Bauld, "I Argue with Neruda Over You"

Linda M. Black, "Going North"

Carissa A. DiGiovanni, "Old Keys and Strangers"

Willa Granger, "And In New Jersey"

Shaine Latham, "Family Portraiture"

Rumit Pancholi, "The Pledge of Allegiance Heart Attack"

Marian Kaplun Shapiro, "Moving On"

Charles Toll, "Creative License"

The 2007-2008 Parnell Poetry Prize-Winning Poem:

Chorus Call

Barrie Kreinik

This scratching is the worst: our cattish clawing
rips across narrow boxes
where we pack in fishlike, piled
on panes of wood. Our tremors echo higher
than the ceiling can support.
Primordial slime, rage simmers
under all this polished spit; we are
angry at the odds, but dead set on bludgeoning them
if it takes all day.

We're taught to crush each other into dust,
to drag our red nails over a milky face
then walk away from the blood and silk debris.
A kind one might toss a band-aid
over her shoulder. Usually we just smile
and hide the knife.

Those who preach hardness or spout challenge
from the safety of a cubicle or bench –
they know nothing of this sweat-stained room,
its corners.
Belongings strewn in heaps,
thick music books; piles of photos
now stacked on tables to be
sorted later, rejects labeled "SHRED."
Toes squeezed into shoes squeezed into hallways
hot with breath and emotive mumbles. Even
colors splash rudely – BVM blue
is in this season; black is the new last year.

We compete for attention down to our very socks.

At last, the clouds of chaos weave into queues; we paint ourselves
by number, stand and wait, or force square pegs
into circles to stay typed-in.
Once in the room (there are ifs involved),
you have about twenty seconds –
eight bars, four thank-yous, a double door,
and done. The previous victim sighs
as the next inhales.

What can they tell of us in twenty seconds?
They say, try to see it from our side
of the table; try to imagine
you're there to save the day.

But all that remains are shards:
a broken chair,
an echo
and a rainbow on the floor.

Ken Valenti

Stupid Ghosts
Ken Valenti

Emma Hazen had died of whooping cough in the 1850s, but still roamed the halls and rooms of the Sweet Rain Inn in Vermont.

So the story went.

“Emma won’t do any real harm,” the innkeeper, Carol, told Melissa and me. She pulled us two drafts of a local brew, Black Bear Lager. “She may hide your car keys. You may wake up to find your hair dryer going. Nothing serious.” (more)

Patrick Carrington and Donna Moss

A Different Day’s Light
Patrick Carrington

I have soaked you in and I hold you,
like the wood of an old house
holds its carpenter’s sweat.
You built me

in the shadows of a different
day’s light, stained my
deepest grain. But I no longer feel
the work of your hands. Forgive

me for forgetting
the joinings,
the glue and pressing of thumbs,

for allowing your craft to rot
like salty wreckage spit
from a sea. I can’t find you

in me even as I creak, even
as I leak from windows
watching days I can’t unsee.


Signs and Messages
by Donna Moss

I’m hiding in the closet at my parents’ house. Crouched beneath my hanging pants and beside an open suitcase. There’s banging on the front door. (more)

Fredrick Zydek and Kathleen J. Stowe

Old Blind Charlie
Fredrick Zydek

How many years he lived there,
nobody really knew. Since
all the men on the block were
children was the suggestion.
And no one understood why he
only spoke to the delivery clerk
who brought groceries to his
door, or why he ordered them
by mailing lists to the store.
Children call him crushing names,
and rumor had it that his wife
died of syphilis he brought home
after the war. The woman who
cleaned for him on Thursdays
claimed he left her salary in a
dish on the kitchen counter and
sat on the front porch until she
finished and left by the back.
She claimed the walls were filled
with framed photos of his wife,
she knew he could not see.
Except for the music we heard
coming from his piano each day,
no sound came from the house.
He played but one piece of music,
a tune called Dear Old Girl.


Out of the Rain
by Kathleen J. Stowe

Anne waited. She sat hunched over on the top step of the front stoop with the border collie, Mischa, pressed against her left side, the gray-striped alley cat, Dexter, huddled next to her right thigh. (more)