Attendees say:

"The Colrain Manuscript Conference managed to pack into a weekend what a lot of grad school teachers never had time to do in their classes or individually: offer finishing touches to a manuscript eager to be picked up by a publisher."
Steve Fellner, Brockport, NY

"...It was a goldmine for me especially, removed as I am from the academic world and from a community of serious poets."
LouAnn Muhm, Park Rapids, MN, Teacher, Creative Writing

"...extremely helpful to hear responses to the other manuscripts. I learned as much or more from the critiques of others' manuscripts as I did from the critique of mine."
Mary Crow, Fort Collins, CO, Poet Laureate of Colorado

"I have been to many good conferences, but what I liked about this one (Compleat Manuscript Conference) was the sustained attention of my (and others') work, to whole manuscripts."
Carol Gilbertson, Professor of English, Luther College, Decorah, IA

"It (Compleat Manuscript Conference) helped me see with an editor's eyes. I now can imagine the process even more thoughtfully. You did a great job organizing and helping me with my book."
Paul Brooke, Ames, IA

Streets

Streets love desperation
Somewhere old awakenings
visit the future

This world is failing
Our time unsure...

For the guillotine
surrounds my consciousness
Wrapped in blood...in tears

My head fits firmly in the stocks
Just waiting for the world
to mock my severed life

Copyright 2006 Ron Cervero

From Biographical Trails is published by Outskirts Press, Denver, CO, ISBN 978-1-4327-0748-4 (156 pages). Order it today from Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Ingram, Baker & Taylor, or at outskirtspress.com/buybooks. To order directly from the author, please send $12.95 payable to Daugherty Enterprises, 149 North 16th Avenue, Pocatello ID 83201. This price includes taxes, shipping and handling. Enjoy a unique "poetry travel" experience. Questions? Please email rond@cableone.net.

Brother August: A Psalm
by Bobbi Dykema Katsanis

The first thing I must speak of is God's mercy.
God has cared for me as tenderly as a newborn lamb,
licked me clean of all my sin, and restored me to righteousness.
God gave me a wonderful wife, though she wasn’t pretty,
she loved me truly, a helpmeet to me all my days.
He sent us a fine son who obeyed us always, worked hard,
helped out with the cattle and fields, proud to serve his country.
I do not blame God for the three children taken by the influenza,
or the Kraut bullet that took my son, or the ravaged face
of my Hilda as she breathed her last.
I do not grudge Him the years I spent alone, the faces
of grandchildren denied me, or the years the crops were poor
and the ground blew away to nothing.
God took care of us well enough, I guess, and we always ate.
We always had a roof over us.
He has lain me down beside my sweet Hilda, never to be parted
in death as well as in life.
He has welcomed me to His bosom.
And here my belly never rumbles, and I have my children
all around me, and my Hilda, and I praise God day and night.
The grass is ever green, and the creeks do not run dry.

Grayson Books
P.O. Box 270549
West Hartford, CT 06127

Cicadas
by Rob Hardy

Slit down the back
like a plastic change purse
from which the cicada
has withdrawn its body's glisten,
the dry shape still clings
to tree bark, pompeian,
surprised by self-eruption,
a mold into which one might pour
molten insect.
It rose in body like heat,
its high-tension drone
disembodied in the air:
song of buzz saw and drill,
as if August were
a season under construction,
a scaffolding of dry skin
on the trees, the sky at dusk
a blueprint for fall.
Somewhere there has been
a resurrection,
but the only sign I have
is the calloused husk,
an abandoned house
whose inhabitant has gone
to attend the miracle.


Read this and other poems in Mr. Hardy's chapbook, The Collecting Jar, on sale at Grayson Books.

California Institute of Arts and Letters
Robert G. Cohn Prose Poetry Award
3057 Sacramento Street, No. 18
San Francisco, CA 94115

THE BOY
by Kathleen Lynch

alone in the yard
crosses the lawn halfway
and begins dancing,
his shadow a lively
dark spider monkey.
A little riffle of applause
runs across the birches.
The sun holds to its gentle
phase. Earlier, he practiced
dying, a soldier flung full face
down, then one who crumpled
slowly, then Stagger Man,
bent, clutched, slow-zigging
the whole green distance
as if he couldn’t decide
whether he was more attracted
to grass or air. But now
he is dancing—a yanking,
loopy kid. What music
he hears, I can’t. Was I ever
such a creature outside
of time? Now his arms
become wings. He runs full bore
the length of green, then in one
quick, horsy surge bolts
up, leaves ground. This
is where I’ll leave him,
all virtuosity,
caught and held
by nothing.

THE FLOOD
by Aaron M. Beatty

In the village, a flood came: wall of water
all force, all power, the whole world unraveled.

In the street, people wept water up to their knees,
up to their waists, and some were washed away.

I was young when the church bell called the dam’s
given way, the dam’s given way. None of us could stay.

I was sure of nothing that day. Only the tourniquet
my mother’s hand made above the bend in my arm.

It was in the fields, near the river, where the water
doubled its girth, vanished the ground below.

It was in the waters, possessed, where all
that was loose flowed mad, away from where it began.

I was not old enough to understand nature,
the desperate knowing it would take me back.

I was wet from the rain and the running sweat,
the splashing up of water underneath my feet.

In the late hours of the day, the worst of it gone,
we waded toward the house where I was born.

In the dark coming, it was hard to tell the damage
done, so we stood outside till our feet went numb.

I was sad like I had never been before,
the kind that eats you whole.

I was not alone, but really, everyone on the street
was alone or felt it in their bones.

It was in the next few days the water left slow,
uncovering the wreck of ground below.

It was in the sun kept coming up we remembered
hope, though it was not easy, for we had lost so much.

I could not sleep much, but when I did I dreamt
a force much greater than myself.

I was tired from trying to build back what we had known
and learned what it was to carry on.

At Either End of the Web
by Regina M. Brault

She spins by moonlight
weaving wet strands
from mailbox to brass knob,
binding my door shut with her silk.

Each morning I claw at the web,
unraveling her mending from the night before.
She watches from behind a clapboard, waits for darkness.

What is this web to her
that she will not surrender
but patiently repair my damage?
Am I connected to its strands?

Like the crumpled moth trapped
in the sticky tangle in my hand,
or like a nightmare snared in a dreamcatcher?

What is this thing
I rip apart—some kind of primitive survival map whose
language has been lost to me? Just as her instinct is
to claim this space, mine is to tear down obstacles.

Neither of us will back down. One has to go,
be banished from this struggle over territory.
Perhaps this is the way all battles begin—
small battles fought in strands of gossamer.


Copyright 2007 by Regina M. Brault