Waste   The huge hunk of Prime Rib gangrened in the fridge. Tipped into the trash, the delicate arc of animal ribcage. A former rancher remembers his grandfather driving his truck to the barn to shoot the Mockingbirds trapped in a cage there, each day at dusk. Asked why, he said because I can, and when he used Malathion in that green valley every last songbird died in one light-dappled morning, in one-tenth of a day.

God Seed   God, seed. Sprout, shoot, root, stem, bloom, womb, fruit. Blight, hand of man, gourd and husk. Famine, dust, ash, loaves, of stone. Rain, rain and rain and rain. Sun. Sea and land, a fish-head in each mound.

Lorna Stevens received her MFA in Sculpture from Columbia University. Her work has been exhibited at the Bedford Gallery, the Donna Seager Gallery, the Falkirk Cultural Center, the Henry Miller Library and the  Museum of Contemporary Art in Santa Rosa and has been acquired  by the diRosa Preserve in Napa, the Numakunai Sculpture Garden in Japan and several private collectors. She has taught Three Dimensional Design at Bridgewater State College and has mentored art students at the University of San Francisco.
 
Rebecca Foust’s books Dark Card and Mom’s Canoe won the 2007 and 2008 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prizes, and her full length manuscript was short listed for Poetry’s Emily Dickinson First Book Award. Foust’s poetry was nominated for two Pushcart Prizes in 2008 and appears or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Nimrod, North American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Women’s Review of Books and others.

back to issue #10