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.
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.
Frederic Foote MD is physician who lives near Washington DC. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Commonweal, The Progressive, and The South Carolina Review. My 2014 book of war poetry, Medic Against Bomb, won the Grayson Poetry Prize and other honors
(www.medicagainstbomb.com).
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.
These 4 poems are part of his collection “The Actual World” published by Black Lawrence Press
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.
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.
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
Eric Dessner MD is an ophthalmologist in private practice in Brooklyn, NY.
He’s the founder of www.medmic.com
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.
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).