Here’s a tale of unexpected, dare I say grace. It starts with a workshop in March on Elizabeth Bishop at Jules’ Poetry Playhouse. We were given a few minutes to free write. A poem came to me with a bit of a vignette that I had no idea was in my head. A few months later I tweaked it, but in the main, “The New Language” is what flowed in the Playhouse. I included in a batch of poems I emailed on Monday to Lori Martin at Midwest Quarterly. Now Lori has published a few of my poems before, but only singly and only after the usual wait of a couple to three months for a response. Such a delay is normal in a literary world where a journal like Midwest Quarterly must receive thousands of poetry submissions each year. This time she responded on Wednesday of the same week, and she took not one, but three poems, including “The New Language.” I think, however, there may have been a catalyst in this surprising turn of events, and that has to do with my long time poet friend, Steve Bunch. Steve sent me a copy of the previous issue of Midwest Quarterly in which he had authored an essay on the history of the literary magazine he edited out of Lawrence, Kansas, for a decade, Tellus. More than once my name was mentioned in his essay. I don’t think it too far a stretch to imagine that my name was a little closer to the fore of Lori’s consciousness due to Steve’s essay.

In receipt of my contributor’s copy of issue #140 of Chiron Review. This mag has been in bidniz under the same title and editor (Michael Hathaway) since 1989. Since then, it has featured such authors as Charles Bukowski, William Stafford, and Wanda Coleman. Besides my four poems in issue #140, there is a feature section on Marge Piercy. When Marge Piercy visited my Lawrence, KS home (with Jan Levering) in 1971, she was clearly a cat person, and the centerpiece of the cover of issue #140 is fine photograph of a cat identified inside as Big Al.

The Man-Moth project matures with the chapbook, including Barbara Mehlman’s riveting image for the cover and publicity, and blurbs by Miriam Sagan and Stephen Bunch, being readied for publication by Poetry Playhouse editors Jules Nyquist and John Roche with design by Denise Weaver Ross. Meanwhile, Gary Barten, Corinna MacNeice, Barbara Mehlman, and I prepare for the Mayday weekend multi-media event at Teatro Paraguas coinciding with the release of the chapbook, Man-Moth & The Gospel of Possibility. As if to underscore the project momentum, Eileen Cleary, editor of Lily Poetry Review just accepted the poem, “Boy-Moth Remembers” into her Massachusetts journal that is “committed to Poets, Poems, and Literary Citizenship.”

My first appearance in the Painted Bride Quarterly is to be a poem from the book manuscript, Man-Moth & The Gospel of Possibility. “Crazy” is a poem of one of those pre-spring springlike days that draws people caged in winter outdoors to engage in manic activities. I expect the issue to appear on one of those types of days early next year.

One joy of sending poems into the world is never knowing who or how they might connect with. A poem titled “Gifted” from my last published book, Breaking Down Familiar, is based (with some poetic license) on my brother’s experience with Parkinson’s disease. Out of the blue I was contacted by the editor of The Invisible Map, Barbara Lyghtel Rohrer. Her online publication (theinvisiblemap.com) is dedicated to “helping you uncover your own unique path.” I guess you could call it a trove of inspirational self help, though that label doesn’t encompass the range and depth of art included on the site. Barbara asked to repost “Gifted,” and now it has appeared in the Submissions tab of her December 2025 issue. Thanks to her, others will be exposed to my poem that may touch them in some manner never anticipated when I wrote the poem.

The contest in which I was First Runner-Up in 2015 this year I got Honorable Mention in for the poem “A Fortune.” Good to have contact again with contest manager Art Goodtimes, moving force behind poetry and mushrooming in Telluride.

In spite of the alliterative post title, I choose to believe that Michael Hathaway’s Chiron Review is a reference to the Chiron, the wisest centaur in ancient Greek mythology, rather than the sports car. But Chiron is my champion, as on the heels of a poem’s acceptance last month, he just offered publication for three more: “Passages,” an ekphrastic poem inspired by a surreal painting by Gary Barten; “Provenance,” about a splendid cork art table; and “Rainbarrel,” which plumbs a good deal about variations in rain and how we store water.

A leading literary magazine of Great Britain, Stand has been publishing since 1953. My 10th poem to appear in this magazine since 2016 is in the just released 2025 issue. The poem concerns an imaginary bout between the poem’s speaker and a red kangaroo. In spite of the fact that humans kill about 1.5 million kangaroos a year, they do not seem to be an endangered species. If I were a betting man, I wouldn’t wager on Homo sapiens outlasting the king of the outback.

Two more poems were published in Main Street Rag, edited by M. Scott Douglass. This one arrived in the midst of a New Mexico August hot spell with a cool blue cover photo by Douglass of water birds on a wide spread of water under the moon. The two poems by me in this issue, “Changeover” and “Pandemic Masks” make four accepted from my book manuscript Man-Moth & The Gospel of Possibility. Whenever this book becomes a published reality, Main Street Rag will be prominently represented within its pages.

Michael Hathaway, editor of Chiron Review, has published three of my poems in three previous issues since 2001. I admire literary journal editors like Michael, living in small towns (in his case, St. John, Kansas, pretty much the geographical center of the state of Kansas, which is pretty much the middle-est state of the contiguous 48), who keep their publications rolling year after year while trendier literary endeavors with grants and university subsidies flash and wink out. Oh yes, and the poem Michael just accepted, “You Are A Great White Shark,” takes place about as far from the center of the continent as could be.