Living, by Shevaun Brannigan

Shevaun Brannigan is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, as
well as The Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House at The University of Maryland.
Her poems have appeared in such journals as Best New Poets, Rhino, Redivider,
and Crab Orchard Review. She is a 2015 recipient of a Barbara Deming
Memorial Fund grant. Her work can be found at shevaunbrannigan.com.

Self-Portrait as Seven Deadly Sins, by Carol Berg

Carol Berg’s poems are forthcoming or in DMQ Review, Sou’wester, The
Journal, Spillway, Redactions, Radar Poetry, Verse Wisconsin, and in the
anthology Forgotten Women. Her most recent chapbook, The Johnson Girls, is
available from dancing girl press. She was a recipient of a grant from the
Massachusetts Cultural Council.

About the poem:
This poem was inspired by a prompt (thanks Jannie Dresser!) about the seven deadly
sins of Catholic doctrine. I gathered a word bank and used my journal to find images
I liked. I then used the phrase “I travel” to keep a coherence to the poem. The prompt
provided Latin terms and I used the ones that felt most sonic to me. I got positive
feedback from the group so decided to keep the poem.

Benign, and Other Words for This Kind of Reprieve, by Carolee Bennett

Carolee Bennett is an artist and poet living in Upstate New York, where she
has fun saying she has been the “almost” poet laureate of Smitty’s Tavern.
She has an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from Ashland University in
Ohio and works full-time as a writer in social media marketing.

About the poem:
My mom died of colon cancer when she was 56. Often, I’m convinced I have the
disease, too. Although screening procedures are intended to alleviate fear, they’re
burdened by the unavoidable fretting and so many odd humiliations. Expecting bad
news after my first screening, it was somehow more surreal to learn that I was
perfectly healthy.

Golden Torch, by Cynthia Anderson

Cynthia Anderson lives in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National
Park. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, and she is the author
of seven poetry collections, the most recent being Waking Life. She coedited
the anthology A Bird Black As the Sun: California Poets on Crows & Ravens.
www.cynthiaandersonpoet.com

About the poem:
For over 25 years I lived on California’s Central Coast, where I indulged in my love of
the desert by amassing a large collection of cacti and succulents. The annual bloom
of the golden torch was a much-anticipated event. My husband and I retired to the
Mojave Desert in 2009.

A Conversation with Rheea Mukherjee, author of "Transit for Beginners"

A conversation between Sayantani Dasgupta (author of Fire Girl: Essays on India, America, and the In-Between, Two Sylvias Press) and Rheea Mukherjee (Transit for Beginners, Kitaab International). First published in the 2017 Fall issue of Crab Creek Review.

Rheea Mukherjee 

Sayantani Dasgupta

The Heroic Penetrates the Quotidian, by Diane Seuss

Today's poem is by Diane Seuss, from her forthcoming collection Still Life with Two Peacocks and a Girl (Graywolf Press, 2018).