Poet's Ink Review

Robert Demaree

Robert is the author of three collections of poems, including Fathers and Teachers, published April 2007 by Beech River Books. The winner of the 2007 Conway, N.H., Library Poetry Award, he is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. He has had 375 poems published or accepted by 100 periodicals. For further information see http://www.demareepoetry.blogspot.com.

A. D. Winans

A. D. Winans is a native San Francisco poet and writer. His work has appeared world-wide and has been translated into eight languages. He is the former editor and publisher of Second Coming Press. In 2005 a song poem of his was performed at Tully Hall, NYC. In 2006 he was awarded a PEN National Josephine Miles Award for excellence in literature. In 2007 Presa Press published a book of his poems, The Other Side Of Broadway: Selected Poems 1965-2005.

Donal, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, MO. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, and other publications.

Wind blows the red-orange leaves.

Wind blushes my cheeks.

It must be the same wind.

Mike Lewis-Beck

Michael is a professor of political science and gardener in Iowa City. He began writing poetry in his “whiskey shack,” a timber retreat. He has published in Albatross, Lyrical Iowa, Daily Palette and with Bun Fight Press. His poems aim to “capture moments.” Recently, he completed a novel, Deadly Walks on the Riviera, forthcoming at Catstep Press.

Love Poem

We place our arms behind our heads, bodies
embers just doused. Nothing urges now—
just you and I, spent and past scrutiny.
The ceiling fidgets when your numb hips twitch.

Matthew Byrne

Matthew received an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana, where he served as the head poetry editor of CutBank for one year. He now works at an insurance agency in Chicago. His poetry has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2007, The Antioch Review, Poet Lore, POOL, and other journals.

Karma

Your tactless tongue eagerly explains the blackened eye,
Stitches animate your senseless lips.
You had it coming.

Anne Rucchetto

Anne is a student in her first year of university. She has been writing poetry for the last two years.

It Isn’t Cute

It isn’t cute we still hold hands,
Nor sweet that we still kiss;
For fires banked beneath their ash
Are hot and dangerous.

John Byrne

John writes short stories and poems that have appeared in numerous magazines and e-zines, most lately in Naugutuck River Review, The Lyric, Centrifugal Eye and the summer 2009 humor section of the Umbrella Journal.

To a March Fly

Two green eyes, white bands
beneath lace wings;
I’d love such beauty — except, of course, he stings.

Murray Alfredson

Murray is a retired librarian and lecturer, and a former Buddhist Associate to the Multi-faith Chaplaincy at Flinders University. He graduated in German and History from the University of Melbourne and holds a research masters degree from the University of Wales. He began to write poetry in his undergraduate days and resumed in retirement. He has published poems and essays on Buddhism, spirituality and inter-faith matters in journals in Australia and the UK.

october night

northeast wind rattles the trees
shakes loose
the last scrap of summer

J. Brasseur

J Brasseur lives in Virginia with her family and assorted pets.