Volume 14:1, Winter 2013
In this issue, we are honored to highlight seven authors who recently published their first full-length books. This is the third in a popular series of First Books issues of Beltway Poetry Quarterly. You can find our other issues in the series, published in 2011 and 2009, here and here.
Many thanks to the presses who published these books, for permission to reprint individual poems: Cherry Grove Editions, Gival Press, Main Street Rag Books, Press 53, Washington Writers Publishing House, and Willow Books. If you like what you read, please support these authors and buy their books! A link to each press is provided at the bottom of their web pages.
Kim Roberts, Editor
Table of Contents
Melanie Henderson
from Elegies for New York Avenue (Main Street Rag, 2011)
Surveyors and Clockmakers
Little Benny
Altar to Emma Louise
Outside My Row House Window
On Theodoric C. James’ Porch
Kathleen Hellen
from Umberto’s Night (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2012)
From the Metro
How Light Bends at the Exxon
Evidentiary
A Pillar of Fire by Night
Belly Song
Clifford Bernier
from The Silent Art (Gival Press, 2011)
Pax Harmonica
Hymns
Rainy Night in Old Town
Blues for Trane
Carmen Calatayud
from In the Company of Spirits (Press 53, 2012)
Buying Back My Voice
Driving Miguel’s Low Rider Across the Border to Heaven
Tale from Chiapas
In the Company of Spirits
Joseph Ross
from Meeting Bone Man (Main Street Rag, 2012)
A Grave Marker at Gettysburg Soldiers’ National Cemetery
The Buddhas of Bamiyan
Before My Father Was My Father
On Emptying My Childhood House
When the Dead Stand Up to Sing
Donna Lewis Cowan
from Between Gods (Cherry Grove, 2012)
Transplant
Virgo
The Painter
Children
Cleaning Lincoln Logs
Alan King
from Drift (Willow Books, 2012)
Horn
Chagrin
Cravings
High Noon
At Selam’s