Harp & Altar
POETRY
Amaranth Borsuk is the author, with programmer Brad Bouse, of Between Page and Screen (Siglio Press, 2012), an augmented reality book of poems, and Handiwork (Slope Editions, 2012), winner of the 2012 Slope Book Prize. Abra, a book of conjoined poems written with Kate Durbin, is forthcoming from ZG Press. Her poems have recently appeared in Gulf Coast, CutBank, Colorado Review, SPECS, and The Destroyer. She has a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing from USC and is currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at MIT, where she works and teaches at the intersection of print and digital media.  

Tina Brown Celona is completing a Ph.D. in poetry at the University of Denver. She is the author of The Real Moon of Poetry and Other Poems (Fence Books, 2002) and Snip Snip! (Fence Books, 2006). Her poems have recently appeared in Action, Yes, Octopus and Colorado Review, and in the anthology Gurlesque: The New Grrly, Grotesque, Burlesque Poetics (Saturnalia, 2010).
 

Oisín Curran grew up in Maine and now lives in Montréal with his wife and son. His novel Mopus was published by Counterpath Press in 2008.
 

Kate Dougherty lives in Chicago, where she received an MFA from Columbia College and is currently studying library and information science at Dominican University. Recent poems appear in Fourteen Hills, Word For/Word, Handsome, and Bone Bouquet.
 

Farrah Field is the author of Rising (Four Way Books, 2009) and the chapbook Parents (Immaculate Disciples Press, 2011). Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Sink Review, Sixth Finch, and Fou, and two of her poems were included in The Best American Poetry 2011. She lives in Brooklyn, where she co-hosts the event series Yardmeter Editions and is co-owner of Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop. Her second book of poetry is forthcoming from Four Way in 2012.  

Kevin Holden is the author of two chapbooks, Alpine (White Queen) and Identity (Cannibal Books). His work has been published in many magazines and journals, and is forthcoming in the anthology The Arcadia Project from Ahsahta Press. He also translates poetry from Russian and French.  

Gregory Howard has published work in Birkensnake, Tarpaulin Sky, elimae, and Hotel St. George, among others. He is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at the University of Maine.  

Paul Killebrew was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the author of Flowers (Canarium 2010), and he currently resides in Louisiana, where he is a staff attorney at Innocence Project New Orleans.  

Noelle Kocot is the author of five collections of poetry, including Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems (Wave, 2006), Sunny Wednesday (Wave, 2009) and The Bigger World (Wave, 2011); the discography Damon’s Room (Wave, 2010); and a book of translations, Poet by Defaut (Wave, 2011), of the French poet Tristan Corbière. She has received awards from numerous organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fund for Poetry, the American Poetry Review, and the Academy of American Poets. Born and raised in Brooklyn, she now lives in New Jersey and teaches writing in New York.
 

Dan Magers’s first book of poems, Partyknife, will be published in 2012 by Birds, LLC. He is co-founder and co-editor of Sink Review, an online poetry journal, as well as founder and editor of Immaculate Disciples Press, a handmade chapbook press focused on poetry and visual arts collaborations. He lives in Brooklyn.  

Aubrie Marrin’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pequod, Western Humanities Review, Guernica, and Colorado Review. She is a graduate of New York University, where she received the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Poetry Prize, and earned her MFA in poetry from Columbia University in 2005. She was a finalist for the 2012 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. Born and raised in upstate New York, she currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
 

Patrick Morrissey is the author of Transparency (Cannibal, 2009). He lives in Chicago.
 

Michael Newton’s gallery reviews appear regularly in Harp & Altar. He also conducts tours of New York’s contemporary art galleries; find him online at www.loculis.com.  

Jenny Nichols
lives in Providence, RI, where she is currently trying to figure out a couple of Kris Kristofferson songs on a church organ.
 

Sampson Starkweather is a founding editor of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry press. He is the author of Self Help Poems, The Heart is Green From So Much Waiting, City of Moths, and The Photograph. He works at the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he helps organize the Annual Chapbook Festival and Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative.
 

Mamie Tinkler’s recent group exhibitions include “Day of the Locust” at White Flag Projects in St. Louis and “Drawings, Drawings, Photographs” at Rachel Uffner Gallery and “Painted Pictures” at Blackston Gallery, both in New York. Born in Tennessee, she received her BA from Columbia University and her MFA from Hunter College, and now lives and works in Queens.  

Jared White lives in Brooklyn, where he co-curates Yardmeter Editions and has recently founded a bookstore, Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Esque, Coconut, We Are So Happy to Know Something, Action,Yes, and elsewhere. His chapbook Yellowcake appeared in Narwhal from Cannibal Books in 2009. He blogs sometimes at jaredswhite.blogspot.com.  
A Poem About Katie in Two Parts: I Should Be Constantly
Kate Dougherty

We can trace her ankle and heel

and watch the hands how long it takes her

to make our contact.

 

I caress her lips and promise the rest of us

I’m still the same person you’ve always known,

that same girl.

 

The one who saved the old blue kitty,

knotted a ribbon around her neck.

The towhead gone and saved.

The soft, wet lips.

 

See it.

 

Katie arrived holding her belly,

a seed, she cried, blossomed

and died. How many ways can we tell it?

gate arm lifted and car drove through.

boy pedaled bike on sidewalk, crossing

driveway. car struck boy and driver hit brakes.

bike toppled. boy dropped knee,

elbow on cobblestone. children playing

outside howled.

Katie screamed.

 

She’d worn a patterned linen

now soaked between her legs. It wasn’t a warm.

At parts so thick it clot to the skin.

Guffaw. We untaped and unfolded the elastic envelope.

We cushioned her. We kissed her knee

and fell to our elbows in muck.