right hand pointing

Lori Romero's short screenplay, "Strange Saints," won the Manhattan Short Film Festival's Screenplay Competition.  Her chapbook, "Wall to Wall," was published by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry and short stories have been published in more than seventy journals and anthologies, and she was recently nominated for a second Pushcart Prize.  In addition to writing, Lori is a storm chaser.  Every spring and summer, she can be found on the Great Plans photographing storms, gathering stories, and collecting a few hail dents on the car, which is a rental. (She avoids using her own car as a hail probe.  Editor's note:  This is the first time the phrase "hail probe" has appeared on Right Hand Pointing.  But, we're hoping it won't be the last.)

A strange freak improvising upon an old IBM typewriter, Chris Cunningham prefers leathery Bordeaux wines, mid-sixties Miles Davis and sleeping past noon whenever possible. He's published seven books of poetry including Thru the Heart of This Animal Life, A Measure of Impossible Humor (Liquid Paper Press; 2005) , And Still The Night Left To Go: Poems & Letters (Bottle of Smoke Press; 2006) and Flowers In The Shadow Of The Storm (Sunnyoutside, 2007). He is proudly one of the founding members of the Guerilla Poetics Project. Cunningham lives with his girlfriend of sixteen years and his dog of one year in a dusty suburban compound outside of Atlanta, Ga. He can be reached at Upright Against The Savage Heavens.

Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Ed Baker lives in Takoma Park, Maryland and has published nine (or so) books and has had countless poems in many journals, including Athanor, Cold Spring Journal, Flute, Alaph, Hummingbird, South x Southeast, Modern Haiku, Odyessus, haigaonline, PoetryBridge, and Moonset. The two poems presented in this issue are from Ed's 1972 book, The City. Website at http://edbaker.maikosoft.com.

Eric Burke lives in Columbus, Ohio. His poems can be found in elimae, Poems Niederngasse Online, Spillway Review, Right Hand Pointing, Alba, Flutter, Bolts of Silk and ken*again. Other poems are forthcoming in JMWW, Word Riot, Roadrunner Haiku Journal and Tipton Poetry Journal. 

Ray Templeton is a Scottish writer and musician, living in St. Albans, England. His poetry has appeared in a wide range of both print and online journals, most recently in Magma, Eclectica, Loch Raven Review, Tattoo Highway and nthposition, and his short fiction in Antithesis Common. He is a member of the editorial committee of Blues & Rhythm magazine and a regular contributor to Musical Traditions.

Peter Schwartz is a painter, poet and writer. He's also an associate art editor for Mad Hatters' Review. His artwork can be seen all over the Internet but specifically at: www.sitrahahra.com. He's had hundreds of paintings, poems, and stories published both online and in print and is constantly submitting new work as if his very life depended on it. His last exhibition was through Aesthetica Magazine and featured a projection of his digital painting 'Terminal 4' on a busy street in York, UK. His work is currently being featured for the entire month of December at the Amsterdam Whitney Gallery in Chelsea NYC.  We've enjoyed presenting both art and poems by Peter in RHP before.

Ruth Arnison lived in several New Zealand and English towns before settling in Dunedin, NZ with her husband and two sons. Her occupations have included; librarian, nanny, accounts clerk, and process analyst. Currently she is the Receptionist in a Secondary School Student Office. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Takahe, Southern Ocean Review, Deep South, Bravado,  Current Accounts, Cadenza, Dreamcatcher, Obsessed with Pipework,  and Iota.

Chris Pommier is a poet and journalist by night (and often during lunch) and works in the legal field by day. His poems have appeared in Kingfisher, White Noise and the Big Q. What, you haven't heard of those journals? You should really read more widely. He is currently ready to leave Minneapolis despite the vibrant literary community there.  Recently he was awarded a Jerome Foundation / Intermedia Arts Mentorship for Emerging Artists.

Helen Losse is a poet, free lance writer, and Poetry Editor of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Her recent poetry publications include Ann Arbor Review, Lily, Ghoti, and Blue Fifth Review.  She has two chapbooks, Gathering the Broken Pieces, available from FootHills Publishing and Paper Snowflakes, available from Southern Hum Press.  Educated at Missouri Southern State and Wake Forest Universities, she lives in Winston-Salem, NC where she  occasionally writes book reviews for the Winston-Salem Journal.  She has published an essay on poetic craft in The Centrifugal Eye and creative non-fiction in Muscadine Lines.  She is a frequent contributor to RHP.

Davide Trame is an Italian teacher of English, born and living in Venice-Italy, writing poems exclusively in English, his second language, since 1993; they have been published in around three hundred literary magazines since 1999, in U.K, U.S. and elsewhere: Poetry New Zealand, New Contrast (South Africa). Nimrod (U.S.) and Prague Literary Review among them. His poetry collection as a downloadable email-book was published by www.gattopublishing.com in 2006.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of three poetry chapbooks, Death of the Frog Prince (2004) and Heartland (2007), both from FootHills Publishing, and Strangers & Angels,  from Scintillating Publications. He was recently nominated for the second time for a Pushcart Prize.  Howard work appears frequently on Right Hand Pointing.

Jonathan K. Rice edits and publishes Iodine Poetry Journal. He has a collection of poems, Ukulele and Other Poems, (Main Street Rag, 2006) and a chapbook, Shooting Pool With A Cellist, (Main Street Rag, 2003)

Joseph Reich is a social worker who works out in the state of Massachusetts; a misplaced New Yorker, who sincerely does miss diss-place, most of all the Smoothies on Houston Street, the Thai food, and bagels and bialys from The Lower East Side; He has had works which have appeared in such literary journals as Poesy, Dispatch, Falling Star, Color Wheel, Bareback, And Then, Graffiti Rag, Main Street Rag, Bouillabaisse, Decanto, Rogue's Scholar, Poetry Motel, The Beat, The Potomac, Poetry Super Highway, Panic Brixton Poetry, Istanbul Literature Review, Stirring, Scrivener Creative Review, CC & D, Down In The Dirt and Ascent Aspirations.

Ken Jones has been a published poet for over 20 years in academic and underground journals, magazines, anthologies, websites and other forums. He earned an M.A. in English/Creative Writing from the University of Texas at Austin and is a full-time faculty member at the Art Institute of Houston. He has also given readings of his original work since college at innumerable bookstores, bars, conferences, coffeehouses, and other venues. His collection of previously published poems Unutterable Blunders and Palace Disasters was released in 2006 by PlainView Press.  We've been pleased to have Ken's work in this and two previous issues of RHP.

Liesl Jobson is a Johannesburg artist. Her creative writing is forthcoming in FRiGG, Mississippi Review, Literary Mama and Per Contra. Her photographs will appear in New Contrast and Fifth Wednesday. She is a poetry editor at Mad Hatters' Review. Her collection of flash fiction and prose poems, "100 Papers" is due out from Botsotso Press in Spring 2008. She is working on a YA novel.  We're glad to see Liesl's work again in RHP.

 

Mohammad Shafiqul Islam received his BA Honors and MA in English at the University of Chittagong in Bangladesh. He was born and raised up in Sakhipur, Tangail, Bangladesh.  Currently he is teaching at Metropolitan University, Sylhet, Bangladesh, as Lecturer in the Department of English.  His poetry has appeared in SNReview and in Flutter Poetry Journal. His work appears regularly in The Daily Star, the leading English newspaper in Bangladesh, as well as The Bangladesh Observer and the weekly magazine the  Dhaka Courier. He is the Executive Editor of The Newsletter, published quarterly by the Metropolitan University, and an Editorial Assistant for Metropolitan University Journal, a platform for the enthusiasts of research and scholarly writings, where his work has also appeared. He is translating celebrated Bengali writings into English.

Stella Brice received her degree in English Lit. from Rice University; & has worked, variously, as housecleaner, tarot reader & performance artist.  Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Frank, Fine Madness, Southern Poetry Review, Curbside Review & many others.  Online, her work can be found at Radiant Turnstile and Clean Sheets.  Her poems have been anthologized in Tierra Cruzada/Crossed Land, Bleeding on the Page & The Anthology of Texas Poets.  She is a winner of the John Z. Bennet Prize & is co-editor of the literary journal Art Club.  Her first collection of poems Green Lion was released in the spring of 2005.  Stella's work pops up here regularly and sometimes frightens the editor.

Manfred Gabriel moved to the U.S. in 1997. He divides his time between Western Massachusetts and New York City.  He has had fiction and poetry previously in Right Hand Pointing.