Kathleen Ellis
is the author of four poetry collections, Vanishing Act, Entering Earthquake Country, Red Horses, and The Calamity Jane Poems. (The latter two published under the name Lignell.) She is co–editor of The Eloquent Edge: 15 Maine Women Writers and has received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Maine Arts Commission. Her poetry and translations have been published in Another Chicago Magazine, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Common Ground Review, Latin American Literary Review, New England Review, New Letters, North American Review, Rhino, and Southwest Review, among others. She teaches English and Honors at the University of Maine in Orono.
John Driscoll, M.D.
practiced cardiology in Portland, Maine for thirty years after receiving degrees at Yale University and Tufts University Medical School. He is now retired.
Paula Cisewski
is the author of two books: Ghost Fargo (selected by Franz Wright for the Nightboat Prize and forthcoming early 2010) and Upon Arrival (Black Ocean, 2006) and of three chapbooks: Two Museums (Macahu Press, 2009), Or Else What Asked the Flame (w/Mathias Svalina, Scantily Clad Press, 2008), and How Birds Work (Fuori Editions, 2002). She lives in Minneapolis.
Panic Grass and Feverfew
by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc
After a quiet flash: a second sun
rose and fell and flattened four square miles —
half–grown potatoes cooked in the earth,
odd–shaped shadows burned on stones —
twelve days later,
wildflowers would overtake
the epicenter’s remains.
Sickle–senna
ruled next to goosefoot and yellow–eyed
bluets; Spanish bayonets and morning glories
grew near hairy–fruited bean. Broad green
with mealy–white undersides, sword–like
leaves, stubby white rays, climbing vines,
pea–flowers enclosed in burs with hooked spikes:
a field stood swaying, where houses had been.
Neck–high wildflowers — where houses had been.
— after John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”