Karen Barton lives in a quarryman’s cottage – held together with ancient mud-and-hair mortar – in the heart of Wiltshire, UK, close to Stonehenge. She is currently studying a BA in the History of Art with Creative Writing at the Open University and her work can be found at Matryoshka Poetry, The Curly Mind, Thank You For Swallowing, Quatrain Fish and I Am Not A Silent Poet amongst other outlets. Her website is thepapercutpoet.blogspot.co.uk

Anna Cabe is a MFA candidate in fiction at Indiana University and the web editor of the Indiana Review. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Toast, Necessary Fiction, matchbook, Gingerbread House, Reservoir, Racialicious, and Cease, Cows, among others. She was a 2015 Kore Press Short Fiction Award semifinalist, a finalist for Midwestern Gothic’s Summer 2016 Flash Fiction Series, and a finalist for the 2015 Boulevard Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers. You can find Anna on Twitter @annablabs.

Jeannine Hall Gailey recently served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She’s the author of five books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and Field Guide to the End of the World, coming from Moon City Press in fall 2016. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review and Prairie Schooner. Her web site is www.webbish6.com.

Jessica Goodfellow’s books are Mendeleev’s Mandala (2015) and The Insomniac’s Weather Report (2014). Her work has been featured in Best New Poets, Verse Daily, NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, and Motionpoems. This summer she will be an artist-in-residence at Denali National Park and Preserve, where she will continue work on a manuscript about the death of her uncle as a mountain climber on Denali. Jessica lives and teaches in Japan.

Katherine Hoerth is the author of four poetry books, including Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots (Lamar University Literary Press, 2014) which won the Helen C. Smith Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her work has also been included in journals such as Concho River Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and the Texas Poetry Calendar. She teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and serves as poetry editor of Amarillo Bay and Devilfish Review. Her next collection, The Lost Chronicles of Slue Foot Sue, is forthcoming from Lamar University Literary Press in early 2017.

Wynne Huddleston is the author of From the Depths of Red Bluff, A Collection of Poems. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including Snapdragon Journal, Birmingham Arts Journal, Danse Macabre, and Halfway Down the Stairs. She was selected as Mississippi Poetry Society’s 2014 Poet of the Year, and served as workshop leader for the Mid-South Poetry Festival in Memphis in 2011. Ms. Huddleston is a National Board Certified Teacher with a Master of Music Education degree. When not writing, she is teaching elementary music or playing with her grandchildren. For more info, please see http://wynnehuddleston.wordpress.com/.

Jessie Janeshek’s second full-length book of poems, The Shaky Phase, is forthcoming from Stalking Horse Press. Her chapbooks are Spanish Donkey/Pear of Anguish (Grey Book Press, 2016), Rah-Rah Nostalgia, (dancing girl press, 2016), and Hardscape (Reality Beach, forthcoming, 2017). Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010) is her first full-length collection. An Assistant Professor of English and the Director of Writing at Bethany College, she holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and an M.F.A. from Emerson College. She co-edited the literary anthology Outscape: Writings on Fences and Frontiers (KWG Press, 2008). Read more at jessiejaneshek.net.

Jen Karetnick is the author of three full-length poetry books, including American Sentencing (Winter Goose Publishing, May 2106) and The Treasures That Prevail (Whitepoint Press, September 2016), as well as four poetry chapbooks. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Negative Capability, One, Painted Bride Quarterly, Prairie Schooner and Spillway. She works as the Creative Writing Director for Miami Arts Charter School; a freelance dining critic and lifestyle journalist; and a cookbook author, most recently of Mango (University Press of Florida, 2014).

Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Cavalier Literary Couture, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, Red Rock Review, and Valparaiso Review. Born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, she has also lived and worked in Arizona and in Missouri. She is married to the writer Roland Sodowsky and is one of the founders and the Co-President of the Board of SEK Women Helping Women.

Tanis MacDonald is the author of three books of poetry, including Rue the Day (Turnstone Press). Recent poetry has appeared in Iron Horse Review, PRISM International, Canthius, Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, and Best Canadian Poetry 2015 (Tightrope Books). She lives in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Jennifer Martelli’s debut poetry collection, The Uncanny Valley, was published in 2016. She is also the author of the chapbook, Apostrophe. Her poetry has appeared in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Vector Press, and Tar River Poetry. Her prose has appeared in Drunken Boat, The Green Mountains Review, and Gravel: A Literary Journal. Jennifer Martelli has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes and is the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. She is a book reviewer for Up the Staircase Quarterly, as well as an associate editor for The Compassion Anthology. http://www.jennifermartelli.com

A. Non, artist, poet and member of a number of intersecting marginalized communities, acknowledges that naming – of ourselves, of others – remains an act of power and of longing. Most of the material world that shapes us survives content in its namelessness. Namelessness is not a tragedy, but a fact of identity solidified long before language arose on the planet or arises in a human being. The multiplicity of the unnamed, human or otherwise, have things to teach. By coming up under the skirts of language, art enables me to learn; learning is my chosen purpose. I am therefore A. Non.

Tricia Park is a concert violinist and the violin/viola professor at the University of Notre Dame. The recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a graduate of the Juilliard School, she has appeared in concert on five continents and is also Artistic Director of MusicIC, (www.musicic.org)  a chamber music festival based in Iowa City that explores the connection between music and literature. Her writing has appeared in Cleaver Magazine. To hear Tricia play, visit:  www.triciapark.com.

JC Reilly publishes across genres, and is the author of the poetry chapbook La Petite Mort (Finishing Line Press). She is the incoming managing editor of The Atlanta Review, and has work published or forthcoming from Donut Factory, Riding Light, Glassworks, the Citron Review, the Xavier Review, and Naugatuck River Review. Read her blog at jcreilly.com or tweet at her @aishatonu.

Alexis Rhone Fancher’s poem, “when I turned fourteen, my mother’s sister took me to lunch and said:” was chosen by Edward Hirsch for inclusion in The Best American Poetry of 2016. Find her poems in Rattle, The MacGuffin, Slipstream, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles, Hobart, Chiron Review, Quaint, Fjords Review, Broadzine,Cleaver and elsewhere. She’s the author of How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen, (Sybaritic Press, 2014) and State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (KYSO Flash Press, 2015). Since 2013 Alexis has been nominated for 7 Pushcart Prizes and 4 Best of the Net Awards. www.alexisrhonefancher.com

Lois Roma-Deeley is the author of three collections of poetry: Rules of Hunger, northSight  and High Notes—a Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist. She has published in numerous anthologies including Villanelles (Pocket Poets Series) and Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity. Further, her work has been featured in numerous literary journals including, Spillway, The Transnational,  Windhover, Bellingham Review, Water~Stone, and many others. She is a recipient of an Arizona Commission on the Arts 2016 Artist Research & Development Grant. http://www.loisroma-deeley.com/

Renee Rossi’s first full length collection of poetry, TRIAGE, was published in 2016. She has published two poetry chapbooks, STILL LIFE, winner of the 2009 Gertrude Press Chapbook Prize in poetry, and THIRD WORLDS.  She is an Otolaryngologist and holds an MFA in Creative Writing.  A native of Detroit, she currently lives and teaches in Dallas.

Lynn Schmeidler’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous literary magazines including Barrow Street, Boston Review, Fence, Cider Press Review, The Pedestal Magazine, and New Delta Review. Her chapbook, Curiouser & Curiouser is available from Grayson Books.

Sagirah Shahid is a Minneapolis, Minnesota based writer. She is a 2015-2016 winner of the Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series Award in poetry, Sagirah’s work has been published or is forthcoming in: The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Mizna, The Fem, Bluestem, For Harriet, Black Fox, Knockout Literary Magazine, Paper Darts, Switchback, and Qu Literary Journal.

Austyn Wohlers lives in Atlanta, where she is an undergraduate in the Creative Writing program at Emory University. “The Art of the Blues” is her first published story.            

Awful Baby
Red Paint Hill Publishing, 2015
Reviewed by Leslie Rzeznik

Mary Lou Buschi’s first full-length book of poetry, Awful Baby opens with a start – “When the Wreck Has Been” is a flight of brutal images – a suicide, shared lives remembered, and a letting go that looks like a chasing after.

. . . My hands reach into a bag of cool ash, bone

that my fingers search for and recoil from as once, like a tongue rooting
for a raw nerve at the base of a tooth. It’s your body I toss from my hand

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . .always just beyond my reach

“When the Wreck Has Been” gives a nod to Emily Dickenson, setting a tone of grievous isolation that weaves through the collection. It’s a smart move that was likely as intuitive as it is cunning – Buschi describes her writing in an interview with Swarm (http://swarmlit.com/interview-with-mary-lou-buschi/) “I usually have no idea where I am going when I write. I let the poem find its way.”

Split into three parts, Awful Baby follows the speaker through stages of grief. The opening section wanders between memory and fantasy. Many of the poems have a surrealistic feel – indeed, “Persistence of Memory” begins with an ekphrastic response to Salvadore Dali. “Worn-off legs / a watch resting / like a saddle or face”. The poems mostly favor the short line, mimicking the days and weeks after a death (especially an unexpected and violent one) that are as fragmented as the family unit. “If a family is a body / how does the brain / deal with a missing limb?” (“The Mirror Box”) Before the section closes, another amputation.

The middle section utilizes mostly prose poems, mirroring the running narrative that emerges as the fog of initial loss dissipates – anger, longing and (not-quite) regret competing for the speaker’s attention. Many of the poems travel – by train and by car. In “Drive 2”

Robert proposes a miracle. You can no longer feel the wheel you
are holding and the fitted white gloves make stars of your small hands.
There is an inch of glass between you and rest of the world. A drifting
backdrop―wind whispering your name, for several nights, or for several
thousand nights.

There’s a feeling of disembodiment, especially when the speaker reminisces, and like an oily film over a camera lens – you’re never quite sure of the veracity of the memories.

In the final section, the speaker begins to emerge from their oppressive grief to explore their own mortality. Longing for their world to untwist itself, the speaker in “Oh Poem, Hopeful Body” imagines

All the chains inside of your jewelry box untangle,
agree never to commingle with other chains,
so that you can easily choose an intimate object for your neck.
(Maybe the diamond earring you lost will know how to find you,
and will once again light up your face.)

Even the poems in this final section seem to breathe easier. They have shorter lines, more white space, are trying to reach past the ghosts who haunt their pages. The past and present remain entangled, despite the desire for separation.

As a whole, Awful Baby is a haunting mirror to the long-term effects of loss, suicide, survival, loving, and longing. Buschi’s language is enticing and even though you may want to – you just can’t look away.

E. Kristen Anderson is the author of seven chapbooks including A GUIDE FOR THE PRACTICAL ABDUCTEE (Red Bird Chapbooks 2014) PRAY, PRAY, PRAY: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press, 2015), 17 DAYS (ELJ Publications) ACOUSTIC BATTERY LIFE (ELJ 2016), FIRE IN THE SKY (Grey Book Press 2016), and SHE WITNESSES (dancing girl press, 2016). Her nonfiction anthology, DEAR TEEN ME, based on the popular website of the same name, was published in October of 2012 by Zest Books (distributed by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and her memoir in verse, THE SUMMER OF UNRAVELING, is forthcoming from ELJ. She’s currently a poetry editor for Found Poetry Review and also edits at Nonbinary Review and Lucky Bastard Press. She lives in Austin, TX and blogs at EKristinAnderson.com.

Prerna Bakshi is a Macao-based writer, scholar and translator of Indian origin. Her work has previously been published in over three dozen literary journals and magazines including Silver Birch Press, Wilderness House Literary Review, Peril Magazine: Asian-Australian Arts & Culture and Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature, among several others. Her full-length poetry collection, Burnt Rotis, With Love, is forthcoming from Les Éditions du Zaporogue (Denmark) later this year. She tweets at @bprerna.

Farah Ghafoor is a fifteen-year-old poet and a founding editor at Sugar Rascals. She believes that she deserves a cat and/or outrageously expensive perfumes, and can’t bring herself to spend pretty coins. Her work is published in places like alien mouth, Really System and Synaesthesia, and has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Find her online at fghafoor.tumblr.com.

Courtney Jameson is The Bowhunter of White Stag Publishing. Her chapbook “the unrequited <3<3 of red riding hood & her lycan lover” is forthcoming in 2016 from dancing girl press.

Katherine Nelson-Born lives in Pensacola where she writes and consults for K & K Manuscript Editing.  Her poems have appeared in the Birmingham Poetry Review, Ellipsis, Emerald Coast Review, Excelsior ReView, GSU Review, Longleaf Pine, Maple Leaf Ragand Penumbra among others.  Her poetry previously won the University of New Orleans Ellipsis award for poetry and placed twice among finalists in the Agnes Scott College Writer’s Festival, with a recent poem earning “Honorable Mention” at the 2015 Alabama Writers’ Conclave, http://alalit.com/.

Amy Meckler received her MFA in creative writing from Hunter College where she garnered the Academy of American Poets Award. Her poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Rattapallax, Margie, Lyric, Brooklyn Review, Whiskey Island, Cider Press Review and Portland Review among other publications. Her first collection, What All the Sleeping Is For, won the 2002 Defined Providence Press Poetry Book Award and was published that year. Amy has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has taught poetry at Hunter College and currently works in New York City as a Sign Language interpreter.

Penny Montague writes fiction and poetry. She’s a Londoner who has just completed an MA in Literary Linguistics, during which she gatecrashed the Creative Writing classes and corralled her fellow students into creating an anthology. Her work has been published by Bunbury Magazine and Ink Pantry. She tweets at @pjmontague.

Sarah Frances Moran is a writer, editor, animal lover, videogamer, queer Latina. She thinks Chihuahuas should rule the world and prefers their company to people 90% of the time. Her work has most recently been published or is upcoming in The No Se Habla Espanol Anthology, Elephant Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Rust+Moth, Maudlin House, Blackheart Magazine, Red Fez and The Bitchin’ Kitsch. She is Editor/Founder of Yellow Chair Review. These days you can find her kayaking the Brazos in Waco, Texas with her partner. You may reach her at http://www.sarahfrancesmoran.comJulianne Neely

Sam Regal is a poet in Brooklyn. She is currently working toward her MFA at Hunter College.

Erin Slaughter holds a Bachelor’s of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of North Texas. After spending a year working as a publishing intern for a non-profit poetry press in the Pacific Northwest, she is currently an MFA candidate at Western Kentucky University. Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction has previously been published in The Harpoon Review, The North Texas Review, Hemingway’s Playpen, The Yeah Write! Review, Emerge Literary Journal, and S/tick.

Elizabeth Theriot is a Louisiana-native and enthusiastic feminist. Recently graduated from the University of New Orleans with an English degree in tow, she is currently in her first year as an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Elizabeth is also a mother to two small kittens, Simon and Mr. Darcy, and would like some lime with her whiskey, please. If you’re feeling brave, find her on Twitter at @elizavacious.

We are ecstatic (and slightly exhausted from all the glitter tossing) to announce our nominations for the 2015 Pushcart Prize.  Due to the rules of the contest only work published in Alyss Issue Deux qualified for this year.  However, even that one issue gave us a great group of work to chose from and it wasn’t easy.  We’re extremely grateful to all the writers who support our little zine.

This year’s nominees are:

everytime I speak my gums bleed by Amber Atiya

America as a Room by Cassandra de Alba

Grundy County by Tammy Bendetti

Almost Someone Coming Home by Alexandra Smyth

Allen at 25 by Alyssa Yankwitt

Date-Rape by Natalie N. Caro