Community Bookshelf #6

March 30th, 2026

Greetings:

…..“Community Bookshelf” is a twice-yearly space where writers who have been published on Jerry Jazz Musician can share news about their recently authored books and/or recordings.

…..This edition includes information about books published within the last six months or so, and is limited to those who submitted their news by the edition’s publication deadline. The books within this feature are made up of novels and short story and poetry collections in which the entire content is by a single author. Stories or poems published within anthologies with multiple writers are not included.

…..All book descriptions, biographies, and photos were submitted by the writers with only minimal editing. Click on the author’s name under the book cover to be taken to pages where their work has been published on Jerry Jazz Musician.

…..I anticipate the next edition will be in the fall of 2026. Please get in touch with me as soon as possible if you expect to have a book published between April, 2026 and September, 2026, and would like to be included in “Community Bookshelf, #7”

…..Thanks for reading, and for supporting those who contribute their work to Jerry Jazz Musician. And good luck to all the authors!

Joe Maita

Editor/Publisher

___

In Dubious Terrain: Lyric and Conjecture, by DB Jonas [Kelsay Books]

“Like Mr. Jonas’ earlier collections, In Dubious Terrain situates itself unmistakably in the world of thought and literature. Its rich mix of lyrics, ekphrastics, and prose meditations immerses us in the resonance of a unique voice in constant dialogue with its inspirations: Kafka, Celan, Rilke, Beckett and Blanchot, among others. These pieces are dense with time: fleeting instants, distant memories, the unsettling presence of the immemorial. Their music cuts close to the bone of our words and the breath of our speech, provoking the reader to rethink the nature of identity and difference, expression, dreaming, and meaning. These poems, more than any I know of on the contemporary scene, demonstrate how the proper response to poetry, and to the complexity of the world, is always poetry itself.”

—Stuart Kendall, author, Georges Bataille

A poem from the book:

The Absence of an Ending

How shall we make an end of stories
made from air, our tales devoid
of dire protagonists, devoid of struggle,
plot, or obstacle, innocent of any telling
detail, skulking menace, looming threat?

How do we bring to its conclusion
each inconclusive, diffident account
of just what happens, just what’s there,
of what occurs without apparent
cause or edifying consequence?

Your readers hold their patient breath
in hopes some other shoe might drop,
but in consideration of the wiggling thing
you’ve planted in that reader’s brain,
what’s left to do but stop?

DB Jonas is the author of four collections of poetry: Tarantula Season and other Poems (2023), Flight Risk (2025), In Dubious Terrain (2026) and Ut pictura: New and Selected Ekphrastics 2021-2026 (August 2026). Further examples of his work are accessible at jonaspoetry.com.

____________________

Memory of Rocks and Shells, by D.H. Jenkins (Hog Press)

Memory of Rocks and Shells gathers the wide, shimmering world into five vivid constellations—Optics, Artifacts, Ekphrastics, Animals, and Jazz. In this far ranging, deeply humane collection, D.H. Jenkins traces the connective tissue between seeing, remembering, and being alive.

From the luminous corridors of museums to the deep quiet of oceans, from Bronze Age pendants to van Gogh’s star splintered skies, from the wild poise of mountain lions to the blue fire of Coltrane’s horn, these poems collapse time and distance. Jenkins’ language—by turns intimate, visionary, and steeped in historical and artistic memory—reveals the hidden correspondences between human life and the living world that surrounds it.

Whether entering a Buddhist temple, diving among whales, walking into wartime Europe “through a mirror darkly,” or listening to the ecstatic pulse of jazz, the speaker moves through landscapes where art, nature, and spirit converge. What emerges is a powerful meditation on beauty, loss, ancestry, survival, and transcendence.

This collection invites the reader to pause, witness, and remember: that every object holds a history, every creature a lineage, every painting a world, and every moment of attention a doorway into the sublime.

Published February 16, 2026 by Hog Press, an imprint of Culicidae Press, Madison, Wisconsin.

A poem from the book:

Jazz Flag
(after Henri Matisse’s Icarus from Jazz, 1947)

A silhouette swims across the starry night,
darkness in a midnight blue backdrop;
A splotch of red where the acrobat’s heart is,
representative of a dozen of the best.

And above in the velvet depths of openness,
we see those stars Sirius, Vega, Cassiopeia,
as well as Parker, Gordon, Davis, Coltrane,
Hughes, Kerouac, Ferlinghetti and Corso.

Like officers of the line, those heroic artists
just kept on fighting this society’s emptiness
by endless improvisation—all emanating
from a red splotch of the acrobat’s heart.

Each session—a variation on the ordinary,
but at the same time something new,
and we raise this flag just after sunset
and listen to changes that are always true.

Click here for information about the book

DH Jenkins’ poems have appeared in Jerry Jazz Musician, Kinds of Cool—an interactive collection of Jazz Poetry 2025 (Unsolicited Press), The Ekphrastic Review and The Wave, Kelp Journal, as well as in Ocean Poetry Anthology 2024 (Kelp Books), Ocean Poetry Anthology 2025 (Kelp Books). For many years he was a professor of Speech and Writing for UMUC-Asia, living and working in Japan and Korea. While in residence there, he received the Bylee Massey Award for a project in the Humanities, as well as the Drazek Excellence in Teaching Award. He now lives in New Zealand.

__________

Opening Lines, a chapbook by Stephen Bett [Turret House Press]

Through 19 novels and metafictions, each poem in this collection riffs, literally, on its subject texts’ opening line(s).

An innovative, sassy, but deadly and pointedly serious tour through late 20^th and early 21^st centuries’ fiction from the Americas and from Western, Central and Eastern Europe. A mash-up of signifiers and signified, numerological flakiness, and PoWorld’s bland, Mega-church hegemonies – all encountering, in the midst of our present day cocktail-hour capitalism, some of the truly great novelists of our times.

The full book—title, Novel Lines—will be out next spring with Chax Press.

Turret House Press website

Stephen Bett’s website

__________

Dreaminations, by Jianqing Zheng [Madville Publishing]

Dreaminations is Jianqing Zheng’s second collection of prose poems in haibun or tanka prose style. Haibun or tanka prose links prose and haiku or tanka to complement each other through juxtaposition to gain a new sensibility, an insight into a significant moment. This collection explores the self and the world through the working of the senses. It is a quest about where to posit the self and how a human being gains learning from nature and human nature.

A haibun from the book:

Road to Pig Out

While driving, I listen to the radio talk on biology research, which ends with a humorous twist. The female biologist answers, “No fungi!” when asked if that’s her research, and the male host quickly turns her words into another question: “No fond guy?” Both burst out laughing. My wife dozing in shotgun nods and giggles.

BBQ ad:
Wednesday is Ladies Day
Buy One Get One Free

Jianqing Zheng’s previous poetry books include Visual Chords, Soulful Dancer, The Dog Years of Reeducation, A Way of Looking, Just Looking and a few other titles. A recipient of three poetry fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Commission, Zheng teaches at Mississippi Valley State University.

__________

One Foot in Front of the Other, Poems by Russell Dupont

.
One Foot in Front of the Other is Russell Dupont’s fourth collection of poetry. He is also the author of three novels: King & Train Movin’ On, and Waiting for the Turk, as well as a collection of short stories, Norman Mailer Walks Into a Bar and other stories.

A poem from the collection:

Establishing Home Plate

My father played baseball
and was a hot prospect,
so the story goes,
pursued by the Braves
until the accident that left him
with eyes that saw two of everything –
“Tough to tell which ball to swing at,” he’d say.

Approaching the field off Columbia Road,
he’d slow the car; bring it to a stop
just before the railroad bridge
that sliced across the road;
hunch over the steering wheel.
“From over there.” He’d nod
toward the far corner of the field
where home plate fit into the slab of turf –
“I hit a ball once, over this bridge.
The longest ball ever hit here.”
Almost redundant in pointing this out,
he’d shrug and quickly accelerate
from this place.

He was good, I guess.
One of those guys
who gave truth
to the cliches –
could go to his right,
dig the ball out of the dirt,
make the long throw.

But, he never came to see me play,
and I grew away from the game;
maybe, for a while, away from him.

Until last month, transfixed,
I watched the old film clips,
heard the shouts and cheers,
saw, in all those sun-weathered faces,
my father in all his youth,
saw him once again
hunched over the steering wheel
gazing into the past
as the ball left his bat,
rose in an easy arc
over the field,
over the tracks
and descended slowly
into memory.

Russell Dupont, poet, artist, novelist, has published in the albatross, Spectrum, The I, For Poets Only, The Anthology of South Shore Poets, Re-Side, Oddball, Jerry Jazz Musician, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Rye Whiskey Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, the new post-literate, DADAKU, One Sentence, Verse-Virtual, Lothlorien Journal, Pick-Me-Up Poetry, Poetry Porch, Concrete Formalist Poetry and the Northern New England Review. He is the author of three novels: King & Train, Waiting for the Turk, Movin’ On; a collection of short stories, Norman Mailer Walks Into a Bar; four collections of poetry: Winter, 1948, Establishing Home Plate, Jazz at the Point and One Foot in Front of the Other.

__________

Stranger on the Short; Poems Inspired by Jazz, by Patricia Carragon [Human Error Publishing]

Patricia Carragon’s Stranger on the Shore is a collection of poems tracing links between jazz and poetry, musicians and poets. Not only will you linger over the poet’s words but will want to listen to every song that inspired the poems. She begins “Paris the Beautiful” with “On a rainy night, /jazz drives a taxi//makes conversation in the NYC glare.” Oh man, what a line. Talking back and talking to the characters in these songs, Carragon shares her kickin’ interpretations with us. If you are a jazz lover, you will satiate your thirst with this book. And if you’re not, you will become one.

– Margaret R. Sáraco—author of Even the Dog Was Quiet and If There Is No Wind (Human Error Publishing)

These jazz-inspired poems elate, depress, make you wonder why, doubt, and even have faith. Carragon draws on the spirits of Fitzgerald, Ellington, Coltrane, Sinatra, and many more to inhabit and guide her poetry, but the pervasive moodiness of Nina Simone is present throughout. The grittiness of New York City, with its painful solitude but also its joyful exuberance, rules this collection. From a shabby walk-up in Harlem to a swinging nightclub in Greenwich Village, for cab drivers, musicians, and for all of us, jazz rules over this domain, and it thrives in Carragon’s poetry.

– R. Bremner—author of Absurd (Cajun Mutt Press) and Pencil Sketches (Clare Songbirds Publications)

A poem from the book:

Stranger on the Shore
(inspired by Acker Bilk)

Pinot noir and jazz sang the blues
on this cold mid-February night.

I refilled my glass,
let thoughts slow dance

with the clarinet.
As I lounged in midnight hues,

the old LP played
“Stranger on the Shore.”

I took another sip,
watched the glass fall.

As the track turned bluer,
thoughts bled Valentine red.

When the record ended,
all colors faded to black.

Stranger on the Shore at Amazon.com

Patricia Carragon is a Brooklyn-based poet, editor, and curator. She hosts the Brownstone Poets Reading Series and edits Sense & Sensibility Haiku Journal. Her work appears widely in print and online. Her books include Stranger on the Shore (2026), along with several poetry and haiku collections.

__________

You Who Are the Stranger: Collected Poems 1979-1989, by R. Bremner [Westbrae Literary Group]

In You Who Are the Stranger, R. Bremner gathers a decade of poems that wander city streets, back rooms, dreams, and memories with an unflinching eye and a restless heart. Here are poems that drift like smoke rings and strike like thunderclaps, moving from cab rides through Paterson to late-night reckonings with fathers, lovers, and ghosts.

Bremner’s voice—by turns raw, tender, irreverent, and luminous—captures the grit of sidewalks, the ache of longing, and the absurdities of living. His poems wrestle with responsibility and rebellion, the weight of history, and the fleeting, fragile brilliance of art.

For readers of Leonard Cohen, Allen Ginsberg, and anyone who has ever felt both stranger and intimate in the same breath, Bremner’s collection offers a rare, candid music of the soul.

NOMINATED FOR THE WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS AWARD

A poem from the book:

Smoke rings like rumors
and dreams like stale cigarettes
in a cracked ashtray left behind
at the old apartment.

You Are the Stranger at Amazon.com

R. (Ron) Bremner has received honors four times in the Allen Ginsberg Awards. His poetry has appeared in International Poetry Review, Quarterday, Climate of Opinion: Sigmund Freud in Poetry, and elsewhere.
.

__________

Excavating a Relationship, by Dana I. Hunter (micro-chapbook)

Excavating a Relationship is a collection of free verse poetry that presents the reader with a creative flow of poetic situations of love’s self-discovery. From a brave search for love, ‘I am a trembling warrior,’ to a controling relationship depicted in ’Thai and Todd’, to a declaration of inner strength, ‘A Woman’s Manifesto.’

Excavating a Relationship is Dana’s first collection. The Micro-chapbook of thirteen pages is a small taste of the poet’s ability to delve into emotions often found hard to express.

A poem from the book:

I am a trembling warrior

broken arrow embedded in heart
a prayer to heal quickly from
each lover’s approach

Another arrow knocked,
target skillfully aimed.
Swift in its release.

Surrender once again,
foolishly repeat.

I am a trembling warrior
broken arrow embedded in heart
hopeful after each assault.

Dana I. Hunter, a top poet in NAMI NJ: Dara Axelrod Expressive Arts Poetry Contest, has been featured in Heather Stivison’s – Ekphrasis! Poets Respond to Art in the Gallery; featured at Pleiades Gallery; ‘Excavating a Relationship’; published by Bottlecap Press (2025); Published by Brooklyn Gangham Magazine, The Decolonial Passage Literary Magazine, Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, and The Journal of Undiscovered Poets. Dana I. Hunter is from New Jersey, U.S.A.

__________

Just Poetry, Volume 1, by Sharron M. Collins

This is my first published collection, published in November, 2025. There are 12 poems in the collection, with the theme of Motivational/Inspirational.

A poem from the book:

You’re Worth It!!!

To my dear Kings and Queens, fathers and mothers, my sisters and my brothers, you’re Worth It!

From the moment that you are delivered from your mother, You’re Worth It!

We deserve to be loved, we deserve to be happy and care-free,
Living our lives the way Our Creator intended it to be!

To be His Nubian Kings And Queens sharing His Love and Light around the world,

To everyone; to every man, every woman, and every boy and girl.

Whenever life starts Lifing, and you can’t seem to understand why?

Don’t feel defeated, always be willing to give new thoughts and ideas a try.

It may take some time to channel your balance, love, passion and purpose in life,

As you continue to overcome your obstacles, you’ll realize that You’re Worth It, and it’ll be worth every sacrifice!

Sharron M. Collins is an Educator, Empowerment Speaker and Award Winning Author. A mother of three, she resides in Florida. She published her first book in 2024, a children’s book titled Its Okay to Say No. Her second children’s book, No Room for Bullies, was awarded in the Children’s Education and Learning Category.

Click here for more information about her book

__________

The Verities of Love, by Ron Kolm [The Opiate Press]

The poems in The Verities of Love deal with my relationship to various parts of New York City. Many of the them describe events from when I was working in bookstores. For example, I met Jerry Brown in Coliseum Bookstore on 57th Street when he was running for the presidency, Patti Smith, who performed at CBGBs, in the Strand Bookstore and Valerie Solanas, the person who shot Andy Warhol, in St. Mark’s Bookshop. There is also a long poem about the time I saw Jimi Hendrix perform in Philadelphia. My main goal is to celebrate art and artists, and hope that we can all make this world a better place to live in.

The book has 57 pages. It contains three short prose pieces and twenty-eight poems.

A poem from the book:

The Arithmetic of Faith

The Archangel Michael
Kneels before God
Sitting majestically
On his throne
And whispers to him,
“Sir, Mr. Einstein
Was just quoted as saying,
‘God does not play dice
With the Universe.’
What say you to that?”

God looks down at him
And then smiles
A perfect smile
As he picks up
His dice.

Click here for more information about the book

Ron Kolm’s books include A Change in the Weather, Welcome to the Barbecue and The Bookstore Book: A Memoir. He’s had work in The Brownstone Poets anthologies, Maintenant, Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts, NYC From the Inside
and The Silver-Tongued Devil anthology. Ron’s papers are archived in the NYU Library.

__________

The Tower Jockeys, by Bruce Golden [Shaman Press]

Part satire, part memoir, The Tower Jockeys (Shaman Press, 2025) is both hilarious and heartbreaking. Full of political and pop culture references from the early 1970s, it tells the story of the last American military draftees and how they became part of the U.S. Army’s most infamous and uproarious unit while guarding nuclear missiles in the Republic of South Korea. Come for the sardonic tower jockeys, stay for the sabotaged missile, the Bravo missions, the court martial, the tower ghost, the great raid, and the Korean businesswomen who loved them . . . or at least were fond of hitching a ride to America.

Based on actual events, this narrative will take you back to a time when young men feared being drafted into the military and sent halfway around the world to die in a war they didn’t necessarily agree with or even understand, and introduces you to a group who avoided that fate, but ended up mired in soul-wrenching tedium.

For more details, click here

An excerpt from The Tower Jockeys

Gruntner saluted again as the general and his entourage walked away. But the general stopped. Something had occurred to him. He said something to his followers, who stayed in place as he turned and approached the helicopter perimeter. He walked towards the missile container, until Wishi stepped out in front of him and said very loudly, “Halt!”

I cringed as I watched my friend with the gas mask bag full of dope challenging the general.

“Do you see these stars on my collar, soldier?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Wishi, still holding his M-16 out between him and the general.

“Are you trying to prevent me from inspecting the work going on here?”

“No, sir.”

“Then are you going to let me pass?”

“No, sir. We’re not allowed to let anyone into the area without the say-so of our mission commander.”

The general’s menacing glare bored into Wishi like a diamond-tipped drill.
“Outstanding, Private Wishikawa,” he said, reading Wishi’s name tag. “Don’t let some brass big shot try to roughshod you into disobeying your standing orders. What unit are you with, Private?”

“The 110th MP Company, sir.”

“I’m putting you in for a promotion, PFC Wishikawa. You’ll be Spec 4 Wishikawa next time I see you. Outstanding work.”

The general saluted. Wishi didn’t move. He held his M-16 in position as the general turned and walked over to Gruntner, who snapped to attention once more. The general said something to Gruntner I couldn’t hear, leveling his finger at Wishi before walking away with his entourage.

And that’s the tale of how, on a clandestine mission to replenish the weed rations of the 110th MP Company tower jockeys, Wishi got back the E-4 rating he’d lost when he went AWOL from his tower on Christmas night.

Bruce Golden’s short stories have been published across more than two dozen countries and 40 anthologies. His novel The Omega Legacy looks at A.I. through a post-humankind lens. His book Monster Town, a satirical send-up of old hard-boiled detective stories featuring movie monsters of the black & white era, has been stuck in TV series development hell for some years now.

__________

No Packing Necessary: Poems for the Solo Journey, by Patricia Joslin [Main Street Rag Publishing Company]

The title of this collection comes from a line in one of the poems—a reminder of what we carry in our hearts. These poems explore memory, grief, and the difficult work of moving forward after loss. The book is available for purchase at the Main Street Rag Publishing Company bookstore and at patriciajoslin.com

A poem from the book:

One More Move

I live alone. No cat. The king mattress
no longer needed for sex replaced last month.

Exhausted, I fall asleep in minutes. Too many
thoughts and things to do. The move in weeks.

Boxes, sealed and labeled, crowd the kitchen
where once graced our family table. Donated.

Loveseats gone, along with his leather chair.
I’ll keep the matching ottoman, pottery we collected.

But what about his mother’s good dishes?
Our travel treasures? Old photos and journals?

Pack light. The new apartment is compact,
yet the 9th floor corner suite has treetop views

of the city and the steeple of my church. I think
about him, our children. His easy manner,

strong arms holding me. His last breath.
I sigh, smile and bend to fill another box.

Memories follow easily. No packing necessary.

Patricia A. Joslin is a poet from Charlotte, North Carolina. Her debut poetry collection, I’ll Buy Flowers Again Tomorrow, was published in 2023. Since then her work has appeared in a variety of literary journals. Patricia travels widely, often alone, seeking immersive experiences that inspire her poetry. She believes that every stage of life holds its own magic. Discover more at patriciajoslin.com

__________

Not a Violin, by Martin Agee [Kelsay Books]

“It is the rare writer who can enter the mysterious world of music making and then conjure words that come very close to describing an experience that is arguably near impossible to describe. Martin Agee, a prominent New York City violinist, does just this in his debut poetry collection, Not A Violin (Kelsay Books, 2025). From the horizon of a childhood Kansas prairie to the intimate space between his chin and violin, to Carnegie Hall and a Broadway show pit amidst Mahler and Sondheim, Agee plumbs the human condition with wisdom and empathy. His poems are lyrical and assured and funny and heartbreaking, all at once, making this marvelous collection a joy to read.”

-Marcia Butler, author of Dear Virginia, Wait for Me

A poem from the book:

I Am Not a Violin

Nothing unreal exists and yet
I lie in pieces:
spruce, maple, rosewood, cuttings of ebony.
Alongside fine chisels and sandpaper, I wait

for the artisan’s glue so that I may rise again
and wander the world to protect you.
Like air, I’ll rise.
I am your canopy of trees.

Coltrane took his sax out of the case
and made it look easy.
With butterflies and ravens
his fingers flew

rising like moons and suns—
the Coltrane riffs, they kept
bending the blues, waggling the improv
with the certainty of tides,

the alto, the tenor, the real, the unreal
existing in pieces, in riffs
made up. I never could make shit up
but still, I fly. I am your compass—

I am not a violin, I am not a sax,
more an orphan sold by nuns
to Sephardic Jews. They glued me together
and sent me out to wander the world.

Click here for more information about the book

Martin Agee’s career as a violinist has brought him to the major concert halls, recording studios, and theatres of New York City for over thirty-five years. Not a Violin (Kelsay Books, 2025) is his first full-length poetry collection.

__________

chorus echo, by debora Ewing [Igneus Press]

While the author describes these 86 poems as “the anatomy of a crush” she also claims a deep-dive into the psychology of human connection: how we build constructs in our minds based on what others choose to share with us and how they respond to what we share of ourselves.

chorus echo has earned acclaim from scientists and poets worldwide. Themes of music, impermanence, and nature build the sets of these glimpses into debora Ewing’s mind and heart. Images on the book cover were taken by multi-instrumentalist Joel Tepp.

A poem from the book:

pointless candy

are you pointless candy
or a green piece of fruit blushing
under the last leaves of autumn

either way not sustenance
but a 4am craving oh yes
a wincing on my tongue

too much poisons the blood
more might have been a meal
had winter chill not set in

do I rustle you out of bed
leave an apple on the counter
or spare you my boredom

do I stop?

pointless like summer thunder
on a high desert mountaintop
like a single drop of rain

a fairytale in practicality
fruit too green to eat
too cold to ripen

debora Ewing writes, paints, and screams at the stars because the world is still screwed up. She improves what she can with music collaboration, peer-review at Consilience Poetry Journal, or designing books for Igneus Press. Follow @DebsValidation on X and Instagram. Read her self-distractions at FolkWorks.org and JerryJazzMusician.com.

__________

In a Small County, by Robert Nisbet [Seventh Quarry Press]

The book is set in the author’s native West Wales, a place of beaches, harbours, villages and hills, of small towns and their inhabitants and, of course, of Dylan Thomas’s Boathouse. It is published by Seventh Quarry Press, of Swansea.

The poems take the poet’s perceptions of the region, from childhood, through the burgeoning ambitions and hopes of the 60s, and on to very recent times. For all the local nature of their setting, many of the poems were first published in the USA, four receiving Pushcart nominations and another for Best of the Net.

A poem from the book:

Found in a Jam Jar

In a large jam jar, sealed and cast off
from the Welsh coast in 1964
and found now in Tilbury, shall we say,
or Southampton, a set of objects.
Two cinema stubs, at one-and-nine,
a Press cutting, Jazz on a Summer’s Day,
two cards for folk club membership,
a plectrum for guitar, sheet music,
Seeger, We Shall Overcome. Then
a message, a declaration really:
We are going forward. We are strumming
the bright rhythms of sex, the sounds
of brotherhood and love. Whether
our message will be heard in Cabinets
and coalfields, as yet we do not know.
But we know that tonight the street
to the folk club is busy with moonlight,
that people are arriving hand in hand.
The plectra will strum those strings,
we shall hear the songs’ clarion, and we,
moon-lit, hand-holding, a duet,
believe these things implicitly.

Click here for more information about the book

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh writer whose poetry has been published widely, in both Britain and the USA, for the last 15 years, having been quite well-known in Wales before that as a short story writer, with six collections

__________

Before the Fall, by Mike Wilson [Kelsay Books]

Mike Wilson’s second collection of poetry, Before the Fall (Kelsay Books, 2026), has been described by author Sylvia Ahrens (A Girl, Her Slipper, and Yesterday’s Rainbow) as a “riotous blessing of emotion.” Part politics (“War is warped cooperation”), part love (“Love draws a bow across my heart”), part humor (“Order a pizza/and see if it obeys”), part dream (“putting my dreams to bed, these tired/children who breathe on their own but/depend on me to feed them”), and part religion (“Dear God, Pimp My Ride”), this collection “celebrates the multitudes in all of us” (Marianne Peel, Singing is Praying Twice and Untamed Arabesque). In the words of Wendy Jett (author of the trilogy Girl, Tainted, and Woman), “this collection is one to be read and reread as the meaning behind each poem will continue to call you to ponder, to sing, to explore the magical relationship of heart and brain.”

A poem from the book:

.
Saturday

There are no cloudy Saturdays –
Saturday shines from inside out,
warming even the coldest day.
Saturday is the omnipotent smile,
the overpowering grace
rescuing every droopy face.
Freed from the cage of
Monday through Friday,
not yet kneeling in Sunday’s pew,
everything’s possible on Saturday.

Vows repeatedly broken
spring up like crocuses.
Time expands until a
universe can be crammed
into a single afternoon.
Should we all ever learn
to love one another,
it will happen on a Saturday.

Saturday is recess and merry-go-rounds,
the day it’s okay to eat dessert.
Heaven will be endless Saturdays
where Jesus cleans out the garage
Mary cooks a Christmas pie
and the Holy Ghost inflates us,
laughing and laughing.

Click here for information about ordering the book

Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in many magazines and in Mike’s books, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic (Rabbit House Press), Before the Fall (Kelsay Books), and a debut novel (Food Court, Main Street Rag) forthcoming in 2026. Mike lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Click here for his website

__________

Is There Not a Cause?, by Nathaniel Terrell [Warrington Publishing]

.
Is there not a cause? (2014-2025) is a stirring poetry collection that challenges, inspires, and awakens reflection in every verse.

Imagination, sound logic and life experiences, blend with a poetic style of quality storytelling, to paint vivid pictures of various scenes of everyday life.

This collection is the poet’s fourth book and it is also a 2026 Literary Titan Book Award winner.

A poem from the book:

.
Valleys, Plateaus, Peaks

After being swept away in memories of yesteryear,
the last thing I remember was,
fog clouding my vision

I struggled to see through the lens of an opaque scope
My soul was weighted with survivor’s remorse
My free spirit was incarcerated and dying to roam

I wonder if that necklace
reached the bottom of the Genesee River?

She was supposed to be a notch on my belt,
but it was her smile that made my heart melt

At some point I heard a voice say
“don’t you ever darken my doorstep”

I would be disingenuous
if I were to gloss over the pain I felt at that time

Clever as a fox and plotting to get over,
fast forward, karma bounced me off the rim

I found myself plummeting headlong
down the drain without a courtesy flush

After many years had passed,
I climbed from rock bottom to finally overcome

Mediocre efforts will yield meager results
I fear that I am running out of time
Inevitably, teardrops slide down closed caskets

After I unwound a coil of misery
within the fields of the midnight garden,
I witnessed the dawn of evolution

Click here for more information about the book

Nathaniel Terrell is an award winning author, and accomplished poet, and storyteller. He is the author of two collections of poems, Before the world moves on, and Is there not a cause? 2014-2025. Nathaniel also creates spoken word videos for his youtube channel and social media pages.

__________

Wayside: a small boat, a vacant lot, a man, by Kathryn MacDonald [Big Pond Rumours Press]

A small boat named Bliss is tied to a slip in a harbour where a river flows into a bay, a refuge. As the reality of a cancer diagnosis sinks in, the ironically named boat becomes claustrophobic and the narrator begins to walk past a wasteland and along a river trail through unfolding seasons, tracking life in summer’s parched land and winter’s ice and snow. A heron appears, a Modigliani figure, an old man, perhaps you might think, metaphor. Tentatively the narrator ventures to the edge of things and thought, probes the myths of flora and fauna, seeks solace where water laps the shore.

The 28-page chapbook includes doodle-sketches by the poet and poems.

A poem from the book:

It Began Where the River Flows

……..into the bay – blame it on the light-headedness
of sunshine cavorting with waves,

his smooth stride down the dock, or the way
his lips brush mine when we part

leaving my blue bicycle wobbling
as I peddle the trail without looking back.

……..We meet again
………………………………….and again
……………………………………………………….on water –

……..the bay ….the sea.. ..and on the river –
……..weave water dreams of summer-drifting
……..among the islands on the St. Laurent,

……..before the dream is forsaken
……..for dockside on the river
……..aboard a small boat called Bliss.

Cells in his body blossom ….multiply.

I wander through a wasteland of wild blooms,
meander along bay and river trails

breathe the blue of fleeting petals
listen as his cane shatters silence

track life in summer’s parched land
and winter’s snow and ice, drift

beside the shore
………………………………….seek solace
……………………………………………………….a myth to live by.

photo by James Archbold

Kathryn MacDonald’s poetry has been published in Canada, U.S., U.K., and Indonesia. Her newest poetry collection, The Blue Gate will be released in Spring 2026 (Frontenac House). Published work includes the chapbooks: Wayside: a small boat, a vacant lot, a man (Winter 2026, BPR Press); Liminal Spaces (2025); Far Side of the Shadow Moon: Enchantments (2024). Her poetry collection, A Breeze You Whisper (2011) and her novel, Calla & Édourd (2009) were published by HBP.

For more information: https://kathrynmacdonald.com

__________

Quartets, by Mark Kerstetter

“Quartets” is a collection of four part poems on music, love, identity, and other subjects.

A poem from the book:

Different Every Time
for Robert Wyatt

I
This dish serves the cosmos
your politics is in it
which does not mean it will be served
or the argument is justified
that politics provides micronutrients
even if it’s mixed in with the good stuff
or—let’s be straight about this—
if it’s the saw in the belly
the point is you must share
and you do share, knowingly or not
so it’s better to know
the plate is always bigger
than a wide-open set
of eggs sunny-side

II
I think about that time you hit
rock bottom
and had to learn a new way
to fiddle sticks
a toy organ
and a trumpet pout
as pain poured in
and the little boy out
no chair could bind
a sound heretofore
unheard

III
Every stream returns
to the source
every dream brings the core
to the level of skin
drawn exactly taut
to serve
song

IV
Different every time
and the same
the same difference
comforts of habit
expectation of stability
do not seal out intruders
always interrupting a rhythm
always requiring a righting
of balance
neither side greater
or more important
always in need of a touch
a voice
to resound or greet
—this is music
whether pudding
or meat

Click here for more information about the book

Mark Kerstetter is the author of Twilight and other books, is a two time Pushcart Prize nominee for his poetry, and a winner of the Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award. He is the former poetry editor of the online arts journal Escape Into Life.

__________

Images of America: Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area, by Jeff Dingler and Brigette Janea Jones [Arcadia Publishing]

Beginning 20 miles east of Atlanta, the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area encompasses portions of DeKalb, Henry, and Rockdale Counties, with Arabia Mountain and its lunar-like landscape and the historic city of Lithonia at its heart. Dominated by two granite mountains, Arabia and Panola, the area once contained the nation’s biggest rock quarrying and chicken grit operations. Over time, these businesses, along with agrarian industries, would weave a uniquely diverse cultural tapestry that centered on family, faith, and fortitude. Some of these stories include civil rights heroes from Lithonia like Lucious Sanders and Marcia Glenn Hunter, Trappist monks in Conyers who marched with Dr. King, quarry workers at Arabia who helped build DeKalb’s first public school for Blacks, and a landscape architect who worked at the White House and helped preserve Panola Mountain.

An Atlanta-based writer and journalist, Jeff Dingler has written for New York Magazine, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Atlanta Magazine, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and more. Brigette Jones is a historian, speaker, writer, and thought leader whose work has been recognized by the Smithsonian Institute, National Public Radio, the Tennessean, and the New York Times best-selling The Moth Presents: A Point of Beauty. Using the heritage area’s archival images and photographs sourced from partners and the community, Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area is a photographic tour through time and place on the nature, culture, and history of southeast Metro Atlanta.

Jeff Ellis Dingler is an Atlanta-based writer, journalist and actor. A graduate of Skidmore College with an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University, he’s written for New York Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times “Tiny Love Stories,” Newsweek, Salmagundi, Strange Horizons, Slate, Flash Fiction Magazine and WIRED. His writing has earned him a Pushcart Prize nomination, two scholarships to the New York State Summer Writers Institute, the Denis Marcil Prize in fiction, and a Alpine Fellowship shortlisting. In addition to writing, he’s previously worked as teacher, guitarist, and tent laborer. More information at jeffdingler.org

_________

We Are Not Yours, A novel by Alex Morton [Arts and Letters Publishing]

In 1972, the Greek people overthrew an authoritarian government by virtue of their spirit … and a lot of help from their musicians, artists and writers. We Are Not Yours is a novel of that time.

What could be more relevant, now, when democracy is under such threat?

His songs inspired a nation to resist an oppressive government, and for it he was chained to the deck of an old freighter and sent into exile. When he managed to break free and swim to the island of Mythos, it took an epic struggle to avoid capture and torture. Eventually, an entire island was involved in protecting him.

An excerpt from the book:

When Stratos was writing music with Perdiki, nothing else existed. They would stay together for days, drifting off to their rooms when their energies failed. It was always late at night when they wrote, the words and music fighting to get along and find each other. It was something that could not be done in daylight because the sun is too bright and you can only stare for so long, but at night when the view is everlasting there is a chance of writing something that is eternal or at least worth singing for a while.

Perdiki sat at the battered old Steinway in the living room when they worked. They would stop to eat and drink and wind up with grease on piano keys and guitar strings and tzatziki on the score and they just kept going. If it was going well, they’d get up and dance the zeibekiko together, with the joy of it. “All this for one song?” Stratos would shout, and then pick up the lyra, a tiny version of a violin that he stood on his knee like a miniature standup bass and play something so ironically poignant that they would laugh and then get back to work.

Click here for more information about the book

Alex Morton, the author of eleven books and numerous magazine features, divides his time between British Columbia, Canada, and the Greek island of Ikaria. Along with Canadian bassist, Terry Forster, he was co-host of a jazz radio show in Nova Scotia.

www.alexmortonwriter.com

__________

Poem From the Sky, by Michael Keshigian [Cyberwit]

Michael Keshigian’s 15^th collection of poetry, Poems from the Sky, was recently published (3/2026) by Cyberwit.com.

The poems focus primarily upon a fascination with the minute aspects of nature being the inspiration and catalyst of daydreams. Realization centers around the ability to commune with the elements which in turn might induce an insight to self-discovery beyond the societal structure. The magic created beyond human control that surrounds us is too often taken for granted or overlooked. These poems journey toward a realm of self-realization and innate satisfaction through simple observation toward complex actualization.

A poem from the book:

Head in the Clouds

At least once a year,
on a clear, crisp Spring morning,
he hikes with a colorful backpack,
most of the 6,200 feet
of a Mt. Washington trail,
dodging boulders and brush
to find a clearing
where he can spend most of the day,
counting clouds that parade
the blue dome northward,
barely whisking the peak.
With any luck and to carry on comfortably,
he might locate a rather sturdy white pine,
climb a muscular limb
and build a nest
upon adjoining branches
with the gear he packed,
just in case,
then lay back and stare upward
with pencil and pad in hand
to connote quantity and types,
odd formations and densities.
Most friends think him a bit eccentric
and he somewhat agrees,
being obsessed with the abundance
and wonder of it all,
delicious moments of quiet
interrupted only by whispers
amid the leaves
or the occasional crow’s caw
which awakens him
from the hypnotic state clouds invoke,
realizing the basis of his compulsion
rooted in a complete and utter fascination
with timelessness

Michael Keshigian from Londonderry, NH, is the author of 14 poetry chapbooks and collections. Published in numerous national and international journals, he is a 7- time Pushcart Prize and 3 – time Best of The Net nominee. His poetry cycle, Lunar Images was set for Clarinet, Piano, Narrator and premiered at Del Mar College in Texas. Subsequent performances occurred in Boston (Berklee College) and Moleto, Italy. Winter Moon, a poem set for Soprano and Piano, premiered in Boston. His latest work has appeared in the California Quarterly, Chiron Review, San Pedro River Review, Oak Bend Review, and Sierra Nevada Review.

__________

Red, White, and Blues, by Sean Murphy

Red, White, and Blues is the fourth installment of a large, ongoing project acclaimed artist Matthew Shipp describes as “a kaleidoscopic, deep, and opulent journey.” Once more, Sean Murphy explores America and its mythology through poems that function as biography, history, and cultural commentary. Where earlier collections focused primarily on jazz and blues musicians, this volume turns its attention toward politics and the figures who have shaped—and distorted—our shared cultural imagination. A moral cross-examination spanning history, war, religion, and pop spectacle, the collection asks what we worship, what we excuse, and what the stories we tell do to us.

Deconstructing figures such as Ronald Reagan, Roy Cohn, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, the poems dissect the ideologies and decisions that have impacted countless lives. Fractious events—including George Custer’s massacre of Native Americans, the police beating of Rodney King, and Rudy Giuliani’s crackdown on the homeless in New York City—are remixed with nuance and urgency. Fictional legends inspired by real figures, including Willy Loman and Gordon Gekko, appear alongside scenes from films such as Apocalypse Now, Wall Street, and Blade Runner, exposing how certain worldviews not only reflect history, but actively shape it.

A poem from the book:

“Haitian Fight Song,” 1957

There’s the day the most enthusiastic, even smug obsessive realizes—although he’s been listening for years and processed the miracle of five men making all this racket—as that epic bass solo winds down and the band returns to the battlefield, those surreal shrieks that burst forth, splattering the horns like lamb’s blood is, in fact, Mingus himself, hollering as he did; and perhaps it’s at this moment one wonders holy hell how did he imitate a muted trumpet so uncannily, so perfectly only to understand, at last: this is not a man mimicking the urgent wail of brass and air, it’s the instruments that are translating sounds wounded men have been making for centuries.

Click here for more information about the book

Sean Murphy has appeared on NPR’s “All Things Considered” as well as in USA Today, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and AdAge. A long-time columnist for PopMatters, his work has also appeared in Salon, The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, The Good Men Project, Memoir Magazine, and others. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Click here to visit his website.

__________

How It Was; How It Is; New & Selected Poems by Phil Linz (Illustrated by Ryn Gargulinski)

I started writing in college. The first poems were in 1971; I’ve included them herein, just as a starting point. I’ve lived in several cities, had several jobs, several relationships (none of which had lasted); life, as it does, goes on. There’s a poem which described how I drank, a couple of AA poems, a couple of work poems, a couple of manic or depressed poems, a couple of sex poems; there are also a few “Remembrances of Things Past”-type poems. I’m 72 years old and feel like Whitman in his 37th year, with such a powerful desire to get these poems out into the world. I’ve written a few jazz-type poems for jerryjazzmusician.com; very grateful that they were published on the site. I’m a member of the Academy of American Poets, the Beat Museum, and the Mad Poets Society.

-Phil Linz

A poem from the book:

.
Subway: A NYC Poem
…………………for Robert

Onto the subway, crowded, mid-morning rush hour;
Standing, lurching forward. The familiar beginning.

Alone, the midst of the crowd, silent ‘midst the train’s roar,
A quiet time for prayer: approaching; maintaining this contact.

Eyes closed; deep calming breaths; relax. Breathe, into the emptiness.
Slowly the eyes open. The faces of the crowd: the morning commuters.

And the clear realization: not the angry subway crowd, not the working commuters,

But all, holy living souls, all interwoven, all connected.
Namaste: the G-d in us all.

[Hold, in this timeless moment. The subway, moving:
G-d, surrounded by G-d.]

NYC
October 97

Phil Linz has been writing poetry since 1971. He’s the founder & publisher of Fierce Grace Press, specializing in chapbooks & believing in the concept of “Publishing Under the Radar.” The Chapbooks: Collected Poems (2019), and How It Was; How It Is: New & Selected Poems (2026) are available online.

__________

And Wales by Accident (poetry and Prose), by Linda Lerner [Iniquity Press/Vendetta Books]

This collection is 81 pages, consisting of about two-thirds poetry, and the rest are short prose pieces.

It explores various aspects of how change is experienced, how what’s personal becomes linked to something larger, and being forced to acknowledge that this computerized world is no longer the one I was born and grew up in.

There’s the struggle of always feeling like I don’t belong, and how my father must have felt after he escaped from Russia, trying to learn English in a country he never felt at home in. There are the changes caused by aging, and the way politics is transforming this country I love into something barely recognizable, a place I’m becoming ashamed of.

Linda Lerner’s Taking the F Train (NYQ Books, 2021) was a finalist in the 2022 Paterson Poetry Prize). Her book How It Was (2020—2021) and Is, is a chapbook of pandemic related poems, Her poems have recently appeared in Gargoyle, One Art, Big City Lit, and Pinyon Review.

__________

Fastival, by Duane Vorhees [Hog Press]

Fastival is my seventh poetry collection from Hog Press, out of Madison WI. It was published on March 2 and has 216 pages (which includes a lengthy afterword by Peter Wodarz). The poems are various in terms of style and subject matter, including a couple of jazz-themed ones.

A poem from the book:

Just a Moment

That night we togethered,
our snowball moon may melt
and its blizzard of stars,
but our being
there,
then,
thus
was that moment
that will never move
into the being
that we had not yet been,
those plants and stones to come,
the selves surrendered,
sundered,
variously victims or victors,
a deluge of confusion among
pussies and asses,
the tomorrows
of other peters, other cocks,
of betrothals and betrayals,
and the knowledge known
that could not change anything..