Medmic: by professional poets

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

Treatment for Chronic Pain

Erin Greenhalgh is a writer, collage artist, photographer, and the author of Specimen, a zine about the power of attention and the natural world. Works of hers have also appeared in Psaltery and Lyre and Sweet Lit. You can find her work at indie bookstores in Denver.

Ars Poetica After an Abnormal Mammogram

Sara Henning is an assistant professor of English at Marshall University.

This poem was first published in
Sweet Lit.

It will also appear in the forthcoming collection of poetry entitled “Burn” published by the Southern
Illinois University Press (2024).

Re-Radiance

This poem was originally published in the Radar Poetry Journal.

Amy Miller’s writing has appeared in Barrow Street, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Nimrod, Rattle, RHINO, Terrain, Tupelo Quarterly, Willow Springs, ZYZZYVA, Fine Gardening, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and many editions of the Poet’s Market. She is the editor-in-chief of the small boutique publisher Cyclone Press.

Ms. Amy Miller can be reached at:

http://writers-island.blogspot.com/