Volume 42

Volume 42, the 2007 issue of Red Cedar Review, is now available. This issue features a cover photo by Nick Dentamaro and interior photography by Brian Hildebrand and Nick Dentamaro.

For more information about the contributors, click here

Table of Contents:

Editor’s Note
Teal Amthor-Shaffer...1

Holy Water
Corrine De Winter...3

Blue Jesus
J. C. Dickey-Chasins...5

My Cat’s Got Spring in Her Body
Lyn Lifshin...15

Nospaces.com
Martin Galvin...17

The Vicks
Chris Moore...19

The Buzz and the Glow
Zester
William Winfield Wright...23,25

Mark has become fussy and precise
J. Alan Nelson...27

Without Windows
Margaret Hermes...29

Marrying American
Daniel John...45

Popeye
Allan Kaplan...55

Monster
Fire in the Great Hawk Colony

Baking
Jason Tandon...57,58,59

A Souvenir for Mama
Lawrence F. Farrar...61

The Queer
Michael Evans...73

Counterpoint
Caroline Du Pree Le Guin...83

Rats with Wings
Possibly Somnambulists
Jason Kaleko...85,87

The Path
Sam Wilson...89

Psych 101, Revisited
Curtis Smith...95

In Apartments
Laura Madeline Wiseman...101

The Lake
Richard Mills...103

Contributors...115

About the Contributors:

Nick Dentamaro’s two greatest passions in life are traveling and photography. He was introduced to 35mm photography at a young age, by a fellow photographer and friend of his father. Nick started traveling at an early age as well; trips and photography go hand in hand for him. A firm believer in classic black-and-white printing, Nick now mainly uses his Canon 30D and Rebel XT for personal and freelance work. He is currently working with MSU’s yearbook, the Red Cedar Log, as Photography Managing Editor.

Corrine De Winter has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her poetry, fiction, essays and interviews have appeared worldwide in publications such as the New York Quarterly, Imago, Phoebe, Plainsongs, Yankee, Sacred Journey, Interim, the Chrysalis Reader, the Lucid Stone, Fate, Press, Sulphur River Literary Review, Modern Poetry, the Lyric, Atom Mind, the Writer, and over 800 other publications. She is the author of seven collections of poetry and prose including Like Eve, the Half Moon Hotel, and Touching The Wound. Her latest “The Women at the Funeral,” winner of the 2004 Bram Stoker Award for superior achievement in poetry.

J.C. Dickey-Chasins’s stories have appeared in Lullwater Review, Red Cedar Review, the North Atlantic Review, the Apalachee Review, the Portland Review, Gulfstream, Emrys Journal, 580 Split, Lumina, Taproot, Owen Wister Review, and other publications. Dickey-Chasins is currently working on a historical novel about Kansas. The author works and lives in rural Iowa.

Caroline Du Pree Le Guin lives on the outskirts of her home town, Portland, Oregon, where she juggles a semi-rural lifestyle—five acres, three horses, two dogs, a cat, tomatoes, blackberries, etc.—with her writing and the ever-absorbing work of teaching writing and literature at Portland Community College. Her poetry has been published in Stringtown, Poetry Motel, and Verseweavers.

Michael Evans has been in school for as long as he can remember. He is currently fretting over his pending graduation from Michigan State University. He spends his free time twitching in anticipation of being busy again. It’s a vicious cycle. His heroes include his parents, Pablo Picasso, Diane Rehm, and Prince.

Lawrence F. Farrar is a former career diplomat who has served in Japan (five times) as well as in Germany, Norway, and Washington, DC. A graduate of Dartmouth College, he holds a Stanford MA in Japanese history, studied at the Inter-University Center in Tokyo, and is a Graduate of the National Defense University. Since leaving the government, Farrar has produced two draft novels, both set in Japan. He has also written several short stories, one of them published in Red Wheelbarrow and another, more recently, in the G. W. Review.

Martin Galvin’s Wild Card won the 1989 Columbia Prize, judged by Howard Nemerov. His narrative poem “Hilda and Me and Hazel” won first prize in a national narrative poetry contest sponsored by Poet Lore in 1992. He has been published in many national magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly, the New Republic, Commonweal, the Christian Science Monitor, Texas Review, Kansas Quarterly, OntheBus, and Poetry. His poems have been included in numerous national anthologies including Best American Poetry 1997 and Poets Against The War edited by Sam Hamil. In addition to Wild Card, he has two chapbooks: Making Beds and Appetites.

Margaret Hermes’s works include a novel, a stage adaptation of an Oscar Wilde fable, and several essays. Her short stories have been published in numerous journals, such as the Missouri Review, Sou’wester, Phoebe, the Laurel Review, and the Green Hills Literary Lantern. “Transubstantiation” was chosen for the anthology 20 Over 40 just released by the University Press of Mississippi. “Her Second Lover” appears in Under the Arch, a collection of St. Louis writers from Antares Press. Another short story, “Primo Class,” appears in the 2006 issue of the South Carolina Review and “Two Marias” in the 2006–07 issue of New Millennium Writings.

Brian Hildebrand was born in the Metro Detroit area, where he spent his childhood until becoming a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, in 2003. Says Brian of one of his two photographs appearing in this issue: “‘South 102’ is one in a series of over eighty images taken last year of the Rhode Island School of Design freshman Quad. At the beginning of every fall, the small freshman class of around 400 moves into, and occupies these spaces. As the project developed, knocking on one door after another, the photographs seemed to capture both the differences and similarities of the inhabitants’ belongings, and the way in which they were kept. The last images developed were taken not by me, but by a friend with whom I left my camera, an addressed envelope, and five dollars for shipping.”

Daniel John was raised in Saskatchewan, Canada. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in, among others, Ocean City, the Amherst Review, the Comstock Review, Drumvoices Revue, Mindprints, the Owen Wister Review, Phantasmagoria, Phi Kappa Phi Forum, Rio Grande Review, Soundings East, Thin Air, Valdosta Voice, and the North Dakota Quarterly. His essay, “Dust to Dust, Ashes to Children” was one of the winners in the 2001 Campbell Corner Essay Competition sponsored by Sarah Lawrence College. He was a finalist in the Ruth Stone Hunger Mountain Poetry Contest and the Comstock Review Annual Poetry Contest.

Jason Kaleko has been described as subtle, but deliberate, by his colleagues. Although his middle name is just Thomas, he tries to take risks and leave readers speechless. Jason doesn’t dare to dream, but dreams about daring, and occasionally inks these ideas onto paper, in stanzas. He enjoys designing T-shirts, playing guitar, and freestyle rap. He attends Carnegie Mellon University and is 5’ 10,” dirty blonde with blue eyes, probably single and loves to be googled.

Allan Kaplan’s interests include: enthusiastically cooking for wife Almaz, feverishly writing poetry, and passively watching latenite movies, while growing older in NYC and the Catskill mountains. Books: Paper Airplane (Harper & Row), Like One of Us (forthcoming from Untitled). He has appeared in many journals over the years, including Oyez, Apalachee Quarterly, Slant, Hubbub, Washington Square, Fine Madness, Half Tones to Jubilee, Wind, Gulf Stream, Sulphur River Literary Review, and Widener Review.

Lyn Lifshin’s recent prize-winning book Before It’s Light (Paterson Poetry Award) was published winter 1999–2000 by Black Sparrow Press, following their publication of Cold Comfort in 1997. She has published more than 100 books of poetry, including Marilyn Monroe, Blue Tattoo. She has won awards for her nonfiction and edited four anthologies of women’s writing including Tangled Vines, Ariadne’s Thread and Lips Unsealed. Her poems have appeared in most literary and poetry magazines and she is the subject of an award winning documentary film, Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass, available from Women Make Movies. For interviews, photographs, more bio material, reviews, see: www.lynlifshin.com.

Richard Mills was born in Ireland and raised in Canada. His work has appeared in journals in both Canada and the United States, including: Other Voices, Descant, Dandelion, Grain, the Massachusetts Review, the Dalhousie Review, River Oak Review, Sou’Wester, Crazyhorse, and Ascent. He currently lives and teaches in New York City.

Chris Moore is a recent graduate of Michigan State University’s creative writing program. He lives in the suburbs of Metro Detroit. Although unemployed, he currently has interviews lined up for prestigious positions within many fine companies (Taco Bell, Pottery Barn, and Wal-Mart) in which he may use his valuable “people skills,” learned from majoring in English, on a daily basis.

J. Alan Nelson, a former journalist, is currently a lawyer in Texas. Nelson has been published in an eclectic array of publications ranging from Cottonseed Digest to the Wittenburg Door to Federal Lawyer to the Baylor Law Review. He’s also been published in the South Carolina Review, the Wisconsin Review, the Pegasus Review and has upcoming publications in the Hawai’i Review and Illya’s Honey.

Curtis Smith’s stories and essays have appeared in over forty literary journals including American Literary Review, Mid-American Review, Mississippi Review, Passages North, Hobart, Bellingham Review, West Branch, and many others. His work has been cited by the Best American Short Stories, the Best American Mystery Stories, and the Best American Spiritual Writing. His second novel, Between Sound and Noise, and his story collection, The Species Crown, will both be released this year.

Jason Tandon’s poems have appeared in many journals, including Poet Lore, Euphony, the Bitter Oleander, Del Sol Review, Regarding Arts & Letters, Folio, Columbia Poetry Review, and Pavement Saw. He holds degrees in English from Middlebury College, and is completing his MFA at the University of New Hampshire where he teaches literature and composition. Since August 2005 he has served as an intern poetry editor at the Paris Review.

Sam Wilson grew up in Southern California and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1994. After college he worked for years as a geek in the computer industry and now equally long as an employee in a bicycle shop. This is his first publication and the first thing he’s done that is remotely related to his English degree from UC Berkeley.

Laura Madeline Wiseman is working on her dissertation in creative writing at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. She is currently working on a collection of poems on the Juarez murders. Her works have appeared in the Minnesota Review, the South Loop Review, Tar Wolf Review, and elsewhere. She is an e4w.org editor and a Prairie Schooner reader.

William Winfield Wright lives in Grand Junction, Colorado. He has published in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Field, Permafrost, the Ninth Letter, Phoebe, the Seattle Quarterly, the South Carolina Review and elsewhere.