An exciting new book out now! Edited by one of our contributors, Carol Smallwood, with a contribution by yours truly: http://www.amazon.com/Women-Work-Web-Entrepreneurial-Opportunities/dp/1442244275

Synopsis: 
In a tight economy women entrepreneurs are making progress in a field that has been traditionally (along with science, math, and engineering) one which women haven’t been well represented—technology. Women, Work, and the Web: How the Web Creates Entrepreneurial Opportunities is by contributors from the United States and Canada sharing how the Internet has opened doors, leveled the playing field, and provided new opportunities. How the Internet has helped women with young children, caretakers of disabled family members, women with disabilities. How it has helped female veterans gain employment, put women into work boots, publish in a male dominated world, become editors, online instructors, and hold the First International Day of the Girl. 

Marble walls picked clean of gems, no windows just space,
no doors just air. This was once the architect’s prison.

His obsession seen down river – a white monolith to death.
The guide said it’s only a few miles by the water’s way.

I looked at my obsession, a foot from me. I closed the distance
took the outstretched hand, my body at once at ease.

I looked back at his obsession in the haze, in the distance,
I understood his need to build it – prison walls filled with tears.

The Yamuna ebbs slowly down below. The sole
connection between prison and obsession.

It’s the in-between that sees everything,
that notes the passing of it all.

In its water stands a woman, bobbing from bended waist.
She’s always been there, beating clothes against the rocks.

She’s seen it all, this woman of the river – his lover,
the architect, the building, the rise and fall of kingdoms,

the coming of the hordes,  the turning of the tides, the circle
come full round to another lover and her architect.

I’m staring at her rhythm, a timeless thrumming, each beat
a second gone, the clothes no cleaner than before.

I move to go, my obsession beckoning, the woman looks up,
eyes caught in my gaze. My heart catches her rhythm.

I know the architect’s prison, I carry it in me. We’ve seen
the river woman beat clothes against the rocks.


Author Bio:
Sonya Groves is a teacher of English and History in San Antonio. She has published a short story in the Abydos Education Journal, has poetry publications in La Noria, The Voices Project, and Aries. She has been a conference presenter at the East Carolina University Multi-Cultural Literature Review Conference. Currently she is pursuing her Master’s degree in English at Our Lady of the Lake University.

I have my coffee each morning-
he has a drink of lukewarm water out of a plastic bottle someone tossed the day before.
I have trouble deciding what to have for a meal
he decides quickly-
an old banana he found in a dumpster the night before.
I have a car to travel about-
he has his feet and legs to walk, and walk, and walk.
I have the luxury of companionship and friends-
he has no one, but the occasional stray dog that might roam his way.
I have a nice safe home for refuge-
he has no walls, no roof, no floors for protection.
I have a place for everything I own-
he has everything he owns in a backpack or old, rusty cart.
I have a soft bed to lay down at night and dream-
he has the ground, the insects, the elements as his bedroom.
I have a name and some people to recognize me-
he has no name but homeless
and, he is here for all to notice.


Author Bio:
I am a freelance writer living in Santa Fe, NM. I have sold fiction, nonfiction, and poetry over the past 20 years to various magazines and newspapers. My most recent sales include: Rise Early Old Woman to Ginosko Literary Journal; Sewn to Life to Dialogue Magazine; Mysteries of the Arroyo, Let Her Sleep, and I Float to The Write Time and The Write Place; I Dream to Westward Quarterly; and Alive Now to the Poet's Pen. I love writing. Poetry is my passion. Not much money involved, but the reward of writing something that someone else might like to read or feel an emotion or be inspired by, is worth the lack of great riches. 

Dinner With Doppelgangers - A True Story of Madness and Recovery, by one of our contributors, Colleen Wells, will be available through Wordpool Press on April 11th. The trailer for the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlnaLJfXCpk

Visit Colleen at: www.ColleenWells.com

Alone among the alien cars,
I’m guided by the crescent moon
and minarets white
to a multi-hued oasis

In a hispano-mauresque style,
fashioned by Morrocans mosaics
Tunisian verses, Turkish tiles,
La Grande Mousquée waits
hushed in reverence,
listening
for the Creator’s call

My body is covered,
the head not,
yet, an as salaam aleikum
is my passepartout
to the inner sanctum
on a Friday, after prayers
when tourists are not allowed

Don’t know if
the tiles of the grand court
are as warm as those in my land
but each sound reverberates
with the same hushed echo
as it does in warmer sands

I wander away
from heavily kohl lined glances
to a deserted structure
with waterless canals
flowing along graceful lines
to an inverted cupola,
which takes me back
to my ancestral garden,
hauz-e-khas in its lush days

Birds twitter
in the same pattern,
leaves have the same habit
of rustling
as their brothers
thousands of miles away
while the only water that flows
is down my cheeks

I recite ancient words
out of habit
in the depths of my heart
where they echo and re-echo
with no one to hear them
except the listening birds
and the leaves
in the pauses
between their rustlings

As twilight gathers strength,
the faded walls come closer
to surround me
like a well-worn chador and
ghosts of women I never knew
of my long lineage
spanning centuries of dunes,
and the green plains
of the monsoon land

Gather to comfort me
in this quiet oasis
where nostalgia, culture,
roots, history, prayer
all weave rich patterns
and place
an intricately embroidered shawl
warm with their blessings
around my shoulders

Lulling me to a dream
transporting me to a familiar place
of twittering shadows,
rustling canals,
echoing with the poetry
of mysteriously obscure
ancient words.



Author Bio:
Of Indian origin, Sultana Raza has an MA in English Literature. Her articles have appeared in Flick Feast (UK), Sound on Sight (USA), the Peter Roe Series (Tolkien Society UK), Le Jeudi, the Wort and paperjam in English and French. 

Her short stories and poems have been published in numerous publications, including Ancient Heart Magazine (Australia), India Currents (USA), Kindred Spirit (UK), Arabesque Review, London Grip (UK), Literary Gazette (USA), All Things Girls (UK), and Caduceus (Ed. Yale University, USA), Beyond Bree, (an American MENSA newsletter), The Whirlwind Review (USA), and Silver Leaves Journal #5 (Canada). 

An awarded artist, she has taken part in numerous group exhibitions in the USA and Europe, such as ArtExpo New York (alongside Andy Warhol), and Art Monaco in 2014.

It is midnight down the rabbit hole
Everything is topsy-turvy
I’m filled with awestruck wonder
Gazing at what lies before me
Roses splattered with ruby red paint
Teacups spinning all around
The queen is shouting “Off with her head”
My world’s been turned upside down
Suddenly, things begin to seem hazy
These visions are not what they seem
I jolt my eyes open and look around
I guess it was all just a dream


Author Bio:
Ashley Virginia Matthew is a recent graduate of Cedarville University. She majored in Journalism and has two minors in Creative Writing and Bible. She currently lives in Fairfield, Ohio and enjoys writing fiction and poetry. Ashley has been writing as a hobby since childhood and enjoys writing on a variety of genres, from fantasy to romance. Her writing is influenced by a vast majority of topics, including sports, personal life events, historical figures and more. 

In her spare time, Ashley also enjoys exercising, watching professional wrestling, blogging and listening to music. Some of Ashley's previous writing experience includes being a staff writer for KayfabeKickout.com, an intern reporter for The Pulse-Journal, a reporter for two collegiate student newspapers and a reporter for her high school student newspaper. Ashley's writing goals include someday being a published novelist and to always strive to improve at her craft for writing.    

Up the road, where a field is bright with hawkweed,
I remember other times I have passed by
less quickly, and that if I want to see
the bunched up flower, the frayed petal edges,
I need to stop, bend at the knee,
and not remember what it looks like.
And when I see nothing except for the green
shade and the ripe grass and the yellow flower
on its fragile stem, I see there’s fleabane close by,
with light ray petals, so pretty, and a stem
that bends over with the near weightlessness of its
pink flowers and clear green leaves as if, on this
spring day, it is this kind of attention that tires it.


Author Bio:
Gigi Marks lives in Ithaca, New York. Her poetry has appeared in many publications, including American Poets Against the War, The Atlanta Review, Best American Poetry, Green Mountains Review, Lilith, North American Poetry Review, Northwest Review, Poetry, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, and others. Her first chapbook, What We Need, was published by Shortline Editions. A second chapbook of her poems, Shelter, was published by Autumn House Press in 2011. Most recently, her collection of poems Close By was published by Silverfish Review Press in Spring 2012. Close By was nominated for the National Books Critic Circle Award in Poetry in 2012. Recent poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry for 2013.