Medmic: by professional poets

Miracle-Gro

Jennifer Blackledge is a Detroit-area poet who works in the automotive industry. She has a B.A. from Michigan State University and an M.F.A. from Brown University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in JAMA, I-70 Review, Red Cedar Review, and the Impercipient.

Avoiding Rapid Position Changes

Kelly R. Samuels is the author of the full-length collection All the Time in the World (Kelsay Books) and three chapbooks: To Marie Antoinette, from, Words Some of Us Rarely Use and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in The Massachusetts Review, Court Green and RHINO. She lives in the Upper Midwest.

The fact/s of being broken

Jessica Harkins, a native of rural Oregon, currently teaches creative writing and medieval literature at a small liberal arts college in central Minnesota, where she lives with her husband and two sons. Her first book of poems, The Paled Guest, was published by Kelsay Books, and her poems and translations have appeared in journals such as Copper Nickel, Interim, Versodove, Cimarron Review, and Exchanges Literary Journal.

Insomnia

Julene Tripp Weaver, a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle, worked in AIDS services for twenty-one years. Her third poetry collection, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, won the Bisexual Book Award and four Human Relations Indie Book Awards.

For a Friend on the Morning of His Wife’s Surgery

Jason Tandon is the author of five books of poetry, including This Far North, The Actual World, Quality of Life, and Give over the Heckler and Everyone Gets Hurt, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press.

This poem was originally published in the Southern Poetry Review.

Two Poems by Melissa Mckinstry MFA: “5.5 Shiley Long” and “Showering My Son”

Melissa McKinstry holds an MFA in poetry from Pacific University. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net, a Pushcart Prize, and Orison’s Best Spiritual Literature, and appear in Rattle, Alaska Quarterly Review, Rust & Moth, December, Tahoma Literary Review, SWWIM, Nimrod International, and Beloit Poetry Journal.

The Bind

Cate Lycurgus’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She has also received scholarships from Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences and 2nd place in Narrative’s Annual Poetry Contest for 2022. Cate lives in San Jose, California, where she interviews for 32 Poems and teaches professional writing.

Mastectomy, Simple

Bonnie S. Kaplan is a poet and educator who has worked with the justice-involved for over 25 years. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, most recently in Sinister Wisdom, Room, and The Bellevue Literary Review (Issue #40) where her poem, “Mastectomy, Simple,” was a finalist for the 2021 Marica and Jan Vilcek Poetry Prize. See more at bonnieskaplan.com