Art Np2

About the Author I was born in L.A. but am now in Decatur, GA and will be attending the University of Baltimore in the fall for the ubiquitous M.F.A. I'm excited to show people my work. I have a poem in the current L.A. Review, and forthcoming from Main Street Rag. Also, there are three posted on Madswirl.com. Hipster When it bubbles up out of frenzy – as if assured by something – that’s the best for him. The weight that was there has given away what it knows, and surrendered only to what will last. After all, we're all having a breakdown . . . ooooooh how it surprises, when it shows its grace! Undeniably, inexplicably, even with all that he can attest to! But there are other witnesses who have seen it, too. Neither tragic nor heroic – it is honest, like the way a song speaks to you, or how someone exists in their environment. It’s also romantic as hell, full of love, and to ignore that much would be a gross injustice. Growth, blessed life, shall not go unnoticed. Aestheticall

About the Author Norman Ball is a Virginia-based writer, musician and videographer. My stuff's appeared in rattle Home Prairie Companion, Liberty and numerous others. I've been doing a lot of video-poetry and poetry-based music whatever the difference is. Willy Lepers (song) Well I found an itch that can't be traced a line too narrow aiming for the midriff tell-tale heart and you beat the crime sleepin on the street an' heavin on a dead rhyme style, stealing thunder, people wanna play but you gotta take a number I ate the blame to get it all worked out prop me up like a deathrow inmate deadweight. bangin on the pink house hangin at the cathouse tappin at the outrage prance it lance it dance it advance it slip into a back page pimpin for a new age. But she's been deaf to my drift and dirt Slip it to the uplift, hip til it hurt knocking at the waist, ah sweet taste arms like licorice, thighs like a bad case fox chase black lace zip tha

About the Author GINA is an artist who discovered poetry in 2005.. She lives in Tasmania, Australia with a cat, 2 peacocks and a few outdoor fish in a garden where tomatoes are supported by rose bushes and various peppers grow as colourful shapes in their own right among summer perennials. Over 50 poems of Gina's can be found in various publications such as LYNX, Modern English Tanka, Moonset, Paperwasp, Ribbons, Simply Haiku and the Herons Nest. Blazing Heat Monokus ~ swimming into the shade its shadow follows ~~~ they shriek with seagulls wading in a rock pool A PHOTO OF YOU TAKEN IN MOUNTAINS, SOMEWHERE you, snowflakebearded you smile there forever in stainless steel light beneath an impossibly-blue sky your eyes follow me and i move just off-frame hoping you will step out of the paper and kiss me, sometimes in this tranquil room, i wonder if a morning will come when i dont think about you as memories are all i have to hold and when absence inhabits me, becoming too much to

About the artist Jeff Crouch is an internet artist in Grand Prairie, Texas. Google "Jeff Crouch" to see where he's been on the internet. A Hive of Tears © Jeff Crouch.  

About the artist Jim Fuess was on the Executive Board of Directors and Vice President for Visual Arts at the Watchung Arts Center from 1993 through 1999. He is the Chairperson and Founder of the New Art Group (NAG). For more information visit Jim Fuess Art Flowers Fleeing the Furies War © Jim Fuess.  

Savage Machinery by Karen Rigby Finishing Line Press, Kentucky $14.00 New releases and forthcoming titles Savage Machinery opens with a poem that somehow manages to be invigorating, strangely beautiful and soothing all at the same time. Bathing in a Burned House startles – and it is the first of several very good poems in this 16 poem chapbook. There is a lightness, ease of language – a capturing of sorts, of that fleeting shadow of true Beauty in Bathing, as well as in several of the 16 poems included in Karen Rigby's new chapbook. The poems employ deft sonics and delicious imagery, all while leaving the the Reader with an uneasy discomfort, a sense of Truth and something I do not find nearly enough in contemporary poetry, the desire to return to the poems again and again. The poems unfold with each read, from “The Story of Adam and Eve” inspired by piece of illumination by Boucicaut Master straight through to the “woman on Forbes" (a line from the poem Sleeping on the Buses)

TUESDAY, JULY 22, 2008 Blasted prose is all telly, takes the engine out, no matter, it is what is at hand. All that's left some say. Not much point in disagreeing, since there will be enough of that. Might be, that by 1930 it was all finished, that is the New--what followed was an interpretation, and elaboration, a thinking through. (yet one would not limit the renaissance to a small span of years, so be not too hasty as yet). Still, the reverberations of those working in those years are still with us, coloring every line of verse whether we acknowledge it or not. It is not even a matter of knowledge in most cases--the sad lot of education being what it is. Pieces of this or that are taken and declared New, at best there is an evolution--language overtakes the poetry and the poetry itself is forgotten, whatever the genre which one might choose to subscribe to, thus there is dogma and counter-dogma and anti-dogma and the piss blew the ants away and so forth. Somewhere in the center

About the artist I've done art for several magazines, newspapers, websites, commercial and governmental clients, books, and scribbling - but mostly drooling - on tavern napkins. I also create art pro bono for several animal rescue groups. I was awarded the 2004 James Award for my cover art for Champagne Shivers. I recently illustrated the Cimarron Review and Stories for Children covers. Take a gander ( or a goose ) at my online gallery: Cartoons by Cartwright Man Dog Lamps Swimming © Steve Cartwright.  

About the artist Carrie Crow is a New York City based photographer. Her photographs can be found at baron & crow in collaboration with poet, John Greiner. Wall Tree © Carrie Crow.  

About the artist Peter Schwartz is a painter, poet and writer. He's also an associate art editor for Mad Hatters' Review. His artwork can be seen all over the Internet but specifically at: www.sitrahahra.com. He's had hundreds of paintings, poems, and stories published both online and in print and is constantly submitting new work as if his very life depended on it. His last show was at the Amsterdam Whitney Gallery in Chelsea NYC and went well enough for them to invite him back. artificial respiration bangs & whimpers bones & bruises © Peter Schwartz.  

About the Author Luke MacLean is a Canadian boy who has been published in Read This(UK), Centrifugal Eye, Origami Condom, and is forthcoming in various American literary journals this summer. Absurd Death Albert Camus, Albert Camus Albert don't look in that rear view mirror The ocean is straight ahead It's undertow projects your solid and liquid seeping through shattered windshield sailing through the headlights of your fortune and it feels so… From Villeblevin to… Can you hear the crickets Albert? Albert Just then a star from the sky flickered in your eye I wish you didn't have to see that star flicker in your eye or that fucking cigarette continuing to burn a hole in your front pocket where you kept a train ticket. © Luke MacLean

About the Author Anne is a teacher-writer-mother-wife-woman who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. She likes to travel in the summer for inspiration. She hopes to be a poet one day. Man Dies, Sheep Bleat, Dog Dances O’Malley died some twenty years ago but when you ask about him in the pub everybody knows you mean old Michael Joe as if he’d just now finished reciting Yeats over a pint of Guinness. Michael Joe could not be buried upright, like he wanted, though they walked him up the stony hill and pick-axed at the ground for hours, the men at last gave up, laid him down, and the sod, and went back down for a draught of poitin in his name. Sheep of meek intelligence sheer the grass about his grave and bleat like mourners whether it rains or whether it stops as it sometimes does. I saw you bow your head there, wipe your eyes beneath the oilskin brim. Pongo the Third, who never knew him, danced as only sheep dogs can a merry ring around the cairn. No headstone, no inscription, you co

About the Author I'm a hiker and biker who teaches philosophy. I edited Parabola Magazine for a decade and my poems have appeared in such places as APQ, Commonweal, and Verse Daily. Braille Reading a book the man says reading a book the words like a fishbone choke on life a gasp meaning the book falls open the man says the book a slip of paper catches the wind sails the open sky the man says until he taps a white cane on the way Alphabet With the crane's flight ages flew past also the babble of the crib the child's zeal then the frown of unfounded words then the man in the desert of thought alone before temptation bent, yielding O why do ideas soar so grandly with that spoon-billed long-necked silhouette flapping molecular north? Why does passion lift so thin? This zeal to a lone man emerges from a cistern's mouth one day into blaring sun & their majestic brace in which all the letters of all the words ever to be writ ever to be writ are © David Appelbaum

About the Author My writing credits include 2River, elimae, Softblow, Blood Orange Review, Stirring, and Triplopia. I was nominated for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart anthologies for poems in 2007. For more information, email Jeffrey Calhoun Love, or how lithium changed my life for John Updike Dearest reader, most of my cells are no longer suspended in fluid, replaced as if by a miracle, a heavy injection of love. A doctor inspects the wiring of my soul to see if it is ordered, properly grounded. My wife balances on the point of a white pyramid, screams as I mumble about August rains and deadly science. I sit on a concrete throne like a misanthrope god, dismissing the possibility of a love phenomenon. I smile at her fingerprint whorls, the rose wilting adjacent to her ribcage. She asks about beauty, but all I can think of are onions, attractive and sitting forever in a still life. It is that I have become indifferent to her nakedness, the lack of anything exotic which is i

About the Author John Greiner For more information Email John Greiner Forward Strain After so many months of silently sitting at the ticket counter counting change I find myself standing shocked at the thundering thought that my tongue let slip. My legs are set in motion. I run towards the book depository at Alexandria not realizing that it was long ago burnt to the ground, and that the scribes and snivelers who once resided there are as lost and lifeless as the beautiful conclusions captured in the ashes. Standing with a solitary thought surrounded by ruins after so much time sitting saying neither this, nor that at the entrance to the mansion where the mind shut down impels my heart towards a heaven with gates unchained, and free of charge. Spengler on a Toothpick Flow river glass broken tombs monk’s eyes falling from face the nation is in a panic the world is a nutshell is nothing but a confidence game played out by well born

July 14 through July 31, 2008. McDaniel brings an aesthetic awareness to common, overlooked elements of daily life. His String Theory transforms bailing twine from mundane, utilitarian material into an evocative, tactile art experience. The simple, meditative, and playful installation is informed by a Zen Buddhist concern for mindfulness. McDaniel hopes to draw attention to the richness of daily life and the unexpected beauty of the material world. Harley McDaniel completed his BFA from Bowling Green State University and his MFA from Miami University in Oxford, OH. He is currently Assistant Professor of Art at Kankakee Community College in Kankakee, IL. Harley McDaniel