CHIRPS FROM THE SPARROW
POETRY
Our National Treasure In Poetry
Seamus Heaney, In Memoriam
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Picture of Harvest, Ann Douglas
Proto Dream Poem…, Michael Patrick Emery
Violaceous Jay, Robert Grunst
Obrigado Means Thank You…, Matthew Guzman
Three Poems, Call to Arms, In Confidence, What Hannah Said, Bryanna Johnson
Three Tanka, Scott Alexander Jones
Ghost Story, Kim Lozano
In Our Garden, Terry Martin
Three Poems, Elaine Moynahan:
The Train to Boston
The Earth is a Woman with Scarlet Lips
The Ancient Mariner
Two Poems: Poem, Ready, Jed Meyer
The Other Girls Wear Dresses, Jules Nyquist
Phillips Island, Michele Reese
Shores of Amber, Elora Shore
Old Apple Tree, Ron Singer
Companion Poetry/Art: “Retrace,” Elizabeth Yamin
FLASH FICTION
The Intern, Alexandra Horning
All That Is Denied, Murzban F. Shroff
Don’t Trust a Motherless Mind, Jody Sperling
Dog Days in Vilnius, Aggie Zivaljevic
SHORT STORIES
Greyhounds, Caroline R. Curran
Tourism in the Land of Nod, Rich Ives
Biography, Adam Phillips
For A Favor Done, Stephen Poleskie
Cold Harbor, Jeff Richards
PHOTOGRAPHY
Pony Parade, Five In Between Two Women, AAnyang49, Julian J. Jackson
CONTRIBUTORS
Our National Treasure, Seamus Heaney
[In Memoriam]
Seamus Justin Heaney was the recipient of almost every award there was for writing, including the Nobel Prize for Literature. He held a variety of positions with Universities and institutions as a writer and teacher.
He had taught at Harvard, Oxford, Belfast, and many more institutions. What we remember most about his writing, was his ability to connect with those who read his stories and poems. “Berry-Picking” was chosen for it’s deeper meaning of temporal flux on so many levels.
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Caroline R. Curran has worked as a sports reporter for the Daily Gazette and Journal Tribune, covering everything from high school golf to pro hockey. She’s also written speeches and campaign literature for state legislators. Needing a break from politics, she went to teach English in central Italy for 11 years. She’s now a teacher’s aide in a suburban high school in upstate New York. Caroline’s short story “Outside Help” was published in the Summer 2010 online issue of the Grey Sparrow Journal. She is an active member of Backspace (http://bksp.org/) – a great community of writers whose feedback has been very helpful. She loves music and wants her words to sing. For more information, please visit Caroline’s website: www.crcurran.com
Ann Douglas’s poems have appeared in The Painted Bride Quarterly, The Colorado Review, The Meadowland Review, Nimrod, The Georgia Review, Ploughshares, Cutbank, Cake, and other journals. She is a Squaw Valley Writers’ Community member, and has benefited from residencies at Yaddow and Ragdale. She holds an MFA from Columbia University, and works in Washington State as a psychotherapist in private practice.
Michael Patrick Emery grew up in the Lost River Valley of east/central Idaho-cow country, the last of the Old West. Michael notes, “I left knowing all I needed to about cows, coyotes, fences, rattlesnakes, fly fishing, hunting, and drinking beer, but not much about the background basics for a modicum of learning. As an undergrad at Occidental College, I worked a variety of odd jobs to finance my degree in psychology and philosophy. From there, I attended the Teachers College at Columbia University for my Ph.D. in clinical psychology, but I credit my true education to the city of New York itself.” His writing has been published in Schuylkill Valley Journal and The Zuni Mountain Poets: An Anthology, edited by John Carter-North, Margaret Gross, and Thomas Davis.
Robert Grunst has been a member of St. Catherine University’s English Department for twenty-five years. His poems have been published in a variety of places including American Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Iowa Review, Nimrod, The Saint Ann’s Review, South Dakota Review, and Third Coast. A ghazal’s just out at Steam Ticket: A Third Coast Review, while another poem is forthcoming at Water~Stone.
He has two books of poems: The Smallest Bird in North America, New Issues, 2000 and Blue Orange, Ashland Poetry Press, 2012, the Robert McGovern Award winner.
Alexandra Horning is a student at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She is working towards a major in creative writing.
Rich Ives has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction, editing, publishing, translation and photography. His writing has appeared in Verse, North American Review, Dublin Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Quarterly West, Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Virginia Quarterly Review, Fiction Daily and many more. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander. In 2011 he received a nomination for The Best of the Web and two nominations for both the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. He is the 2012 winner of the Creative Nonfiction Prize from Thin Air magazine. His book of days, Tunneling to the Moon, is currently being serialized with a work per day appearing for all of 2013 at http://silencedpress.com
Julian J. Jackson has been a professional photographer for over ten years now. He was employed by the Times/News of Hendersonville, N.C. from 2006 to 2010. He’s had his work published in Our State Magazine, Bold Life Magazine, The Whitefish Review, Aperion Journal, Wholesome Living Magazine, and the Mountain Xpress among others.He relocated to China with his wife, author Cathy Adams, and they now live on the campus of Sias University in Xinzheng, China.
Julian’s url is: http://jjjacksonphotography.zenfolio.com/
Bryana Johnson’s poems have been published in a number of literary journals and she is the recipient of several poetry prizes, including, most recently, a prize in the 2012 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg contest. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Having Decided to Stay, was released with Ethandune Publishing in 2012. Among many other things, Bryana loves G.K. Chesterton, rain, acrylics, J.S. Bach, educational theory, Emily Dickinson, political science, and children. She writes over at bryanajohnson.com about literature, the good life, and the World’s Great Lover.
Scott Alexander Jones is the author of the chapbooks “That Finger on Your Temple is the Barrel of My Raygun” (Bedouin Books, 2013) and “One Day There Will Be Nothing to Show That We Were Ever Here” (Bedouin Books, 2009). His poems have appeared in over fifty journals, including Roanoke Review, Third Coast, and Tribeca Poetry Review. He holds an MFA from The University of Montana, where he co-founded the literary journal Zerø Ducats. He has won a variety of travel grants and literary awards, including the 2011 Nancy Dew Taylor Award for Poetry for an excerpt of his long poem, “elsewhere.” Additionally, he was Writer-in-Residence at The Montana Artists Refuge during October of 2009. Having lived in Seattle, Austin, Portland, and Wellington, New Zealand, he now lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where he is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kansas. In 2014, Black Lawrence Press will publish his first full-length collection of poetry, “elsewhere.”
Richard Levine is a painter and photographer whose professional career has spanned more than 30 years in the graphic arts working for prominent design firms and corporate clients. He studied oil painting for four years with artists Alan Turner and Andrew Lattimore. Extensive travel throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia have formed the foundation for his personal work. Photo documentary work has included the Darfur refugee camps in Eastern Chad for the International Medical Corps and childhood health conditions in the Mississippi Delta in conjunction with the Ann E. Casey Foundation. View of his work at: www.richardlevine.net
Richard has exhibited widely on the East Coast from Virginia to Maine in both solo and group shows. He has won a NY State Certificate of Merit for his exhibit: India, A Traveler’s Reflections. His work is held in both private and public collections. “Much of my painting reflects my love of travel and the inspiration, both spiritual and visual that I derive from travel. Experiencing new landscape, people and culture invigorates my work and challenges me to both portray and understand our world.”
Kim Lozano teaches creative writing for Oasis in St. Louis, Missouri. She serves as a contributing editor at River Styx and also co-directs the River Styx at the Tavern reading series. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Poetry Daily, The Iowa Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Journal, Denver Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Midwestern Gothic, The Pinch, the anthology Discoveries: New Writing from The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.
Terry Martin is an English Professor at Central Washington University, and the recipient of CWU’s Distinguished Professor Teaching Award and the CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year Award. Her poems, essays, and articles have appeared in over 300 publications and she has edited both journals and anthologies. Her first book of poems, Wishboats, won the Judges’ Choice Award at Seattle’s Bumbershoot Book Fair in 2000. Her second book, The Secret Language of Women, was published by Blue Begonia Press in 2006. A new poetry manuscript, titled The Light You Find, will be forthcoming in 2014. She lives with her family in Yakima, Washington.
Elaine Moynahan is an American poet emerging at the age of 74. She graduated from Trinity College in D.C. in 1959, married and is the mother of nine children. Upon retirement, she began writing and in addition to winning the Hoosac River Poetry Contest, she has poems published or forthcoming in Spindrift, TheNorth Adams Transcript , Off the Coast, The Green HillsLiterary Lantern, Rise Forms, Avocet, Storm Cellar, Wilderness House Literary Review, Boston Literary Magazine and Written River.
Jed Myers is a Philadelphian living in Seattle. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International Journal, Jabberwock Review, The Quotable, Atlanta Review, Barely South Review, Crab Creek Review, and elsewhere. He received the 2012 Mary C. Mohr Editors’ Award from Southern Indiana Review.
Jules Nyquist lives in Albuquerque and is the creator of the Poetry Playhouse where she encourages others to play with poetry using poetry movie nights, house readings and writing workshops. She received her MFA from Bennington College, VT. Her first full length poetry collection, Appetites, (Beatlick Press) includes poems on food, drink and sex along with recipes and photographs and was a finalist for the New Mexico/Arizona 2012 Book Awards. Her forthcoming book of poems is “Behind the Volcanoes.” (Her url is www.julesnyquist.com/)
Adam Phillips currently teaches 8th grade English in Boise, Idaho.
Stephen Poleskie is a writer and artist. His writing, fiction, nonfiction, and art criticism, has appeared in many journals in the USA and in Italy, Germany, Mexico, the UK, and Australia. He also has short stories in two anthologies, Being Human, and The Book of Love from W. W. Norton, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has published six novels. His artwork is in the collections of numerous museums including the Metropolitan Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York: and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Tate Gallery in London. Poleskie has taught, or been a visiting professor at twenty-seven colleges and art schools, including: MIT, Rhode Island School of Design, the School of Visual Art in New York and the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a professor emeritus at Cornell University. He lives in Ithaca, NY. Web site: www.StephenPoleskie.com/
Michele Reese is an associate professor of English at the University of South Carolina Sumter and the director for the South Carolina Center for Oral Narration. Her first book of poetryFollowing Phiawas published by WordTech Editions. Her poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, Poet’s Lore, and Smartish Pace.
Jeff Richards’ fiction and essays have appeared in more than two dozen publications including North Dakota Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, Compass Rose, Caveat Lector, River City, Forge, Gargoyle, Mary: A Journal of New Writing, The GSU Review, Phantasmagoria, Prick of the Spindle, Aethlon, Karamu, Radio Void, Weber Studies, The Houston Chronicle, and Zone 3. His work has also been included in two books of essays, Tales Out of School (Beacon Press) and Letters to Salinger (University of Wisconsin Press). He was fiction editor of the Washington Review and is a contributing writer to Blueswax, the online blues magazine.
Elora Shore was born in Hannibal, Missouri, the town of Mark Twain and grew up farther south, graduating through home school. Elora has been writing poems and stories since she was a child, and has been published in Vox Poetica, Moon Drenched Fables, Moon Washed Kisses, and other online magazines.
Murzban F. Shroff is a Mumbai-based writer. His fiction has appeared in over forty premier journals in the U.S. and UK. Three of the stories have received a Pushcart Prize nomination; one has been the recipient of the John Gilgun Fiction Award. His debut fiction collection,Breathless in Bombay, published by St. Martin’s Press, New York, was shortlisted for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in the best debut category from Europe and South Asia. The work received a high degree of critical acclaim from forums like Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Review, Booklist, The Huffington Post, and the BBC Asian Network. It featured fourth in the Guardian listing of Top Ten Mumbai books. Shroff has completed a larger-than-life India collection and is at work on a serio-comic novel.
Ron Singer (www.ronsinger.net) has pre-viously published three books: a poetic memoir, A Voice for My Grandmother (Ten Penny Players/bardpress chapbooks, 2nd ed, 2008); an e-book of long stories, The Second Kingdom (Cantarabooks, 2009); and a serial story, The Rented Pet (Kindle Select/Piker Press/Akorin Books, 2012). Geistmann, a serial thriller, is at: JukePopserials.com. Singer has also just completed a fifth book, Uhuru Revisited, which is based upon interviews with pro-democracy activists in six African countries (Africa World Press/Red Sea Press, forthcoming).
Ralph Smith, originally from Minnesota, came to NYC by way of Rockport, Maine and Rochester, New York. He attended the Rochester Institute of Technology earning a BFA in Photography and now lives in Brooklyn with his wife and cat. For more of his work visit: RalphSmithPhoto.com
Jody J. Sperling lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife, son and three cats. He attends Eastern Washington University in pursuit of an MFA in fiction writing. His works have appeared in Garbanzo, SPECS, Graze, and elsewhere.
Elizabeth Yamin (b.1945) grew up in New York, studied painting with Phoebe Helman and Jack Sonenberg, at the School of Visual Arts and the University of Chicago. She received a fellowship in Graphics from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The National Academy Museum in New York, The Painting Center in New York, the Sideshow Gallery in Brooklyn and the Stadler gallery in Kingfield, Maine. Her work can be seen at www.thepaintingcenter.org
Aggie Zivaljevic was born in Sarajevo, in the former Yugoslavia, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. Her fiction has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Joyland Literary Magazine, Crab Orchard Review and Speakeasy. Her short story “Eva’s Room” won third place in the Summer Literary Seminars 2012 Unified Literary Contest, judged by Mary Gaitskill. “Where is My Boy?” short story was selected as one of the top five stories in Narrative’s Story of the Week section in 2009-2010. She is also the recipient of three scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She lives in San Jose, California.
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