The Blue Guitar Magazine Staff Biographies

Table Of Contents Fiction News “Ford and Chevy” – Tobi Lopez Taylor .................................... 22-25 Photos from the Spring Festival, May 2011 ...................... 40-41,76 “Forever Hold Your Piece” – Hilary Gan ................................ 33-34 Q-and-A with the architect who made a rendering of the “Billy Blip” – Andrew Pentis ..................................................... 38-39 consortium’s vision of a multicultural arts center ......................75 “Shimmer” – Joshua Daniel Cochran ...................................... 44-50 All about The Arizona Consortium for the Arts ..........................76 “Team Dixie Diner” – J. Michael Green .................................. 59-61 A thank-you to friends, contributors, supporters ........................77 “Into The Light” – William W. Don Carlos .............................. 62-69 Sign up for consortium’s newsletter ..............................................78 The Blue Guitar magazine staff biographies ..............................78 Call to writers and artists for fall 2011 .........................................79 Non-Fiction “Long-Distance Summer” – Dustin Volz ................................... 8-10 “Foreign Exchange” – Tye Rabens ........................................... 42-43 Editor’s Note Summertime and the living is anything but easy in Arizona, unless you can burrow far enough underground to escape triple-digit temperatures, or fl ee to theoretically cooler elevations, which this summer have fought Poetry their own kind of heat — wildfi res that thankfully are fi nally under “Stillness” – Issac Real ......................................................................3 control. Out of the pan and literally into the fi re. Then again, we could all “Alaskan Miniatures,” “Seeing Sitka,” “One Hundred be living in Kuwait, where a teacher friend said her plane couldn’t take off from the tarmac this past June because it was 145 degrees. Fifteen Degrees,” “Birds from the Interstate” We’re the polar opposite of more wintery – David Chorlton ............................................................................. 4-7 climes: We hibernate during the summer. So, “I Did Not Understand, But I Knew,” “There Is No Virtue In while you’re hibernating, curl up, hydrate with an Despair,” “Things Get Broken” – Kaitlin Meadows ............... 17-19 icy beverage and enjoy summertime reading that’s really cool — fi guratively and literally, as the AC “Taking the Bus to a Poetry Reading,” “After Driving Past gently wafts its refreshingly chilled air over us. Nineteen Kokopelli Signs in Northern Arizona,” “Last This issue also features the start of something new at the back of the book: biographies and Seventeen Seconds of a Graduation Speech” – Kelly Nelson ... photos of our hardworking staff. Along with these ..................................................................................................... 20-21 come my sincere thanks. A huge thank-you to: Rebecca “At the Mailbox,” “In the Middle of Summer,” “Litter — A • Elena Thornton for her vision, wisdom, hard “Becca” Dyer Poem,” “Crime in the Name of Progress” – Carrie Backe .... 28-29 work, perseverance and endurance leading us as The Arizona Consortium for the Arts enjoys its “My Condolences” – Hannah Richard ...........................................30 third year of existence. Our group is stronger than ever and still growing. “The Californian” – Cora Holley .......................................... 31-32 The Blue Guitar owes its existence to Elena. We wouldn’t be here without her. “Changing Conversations,” “The F — Word Is Back,” “Dying • Richard “Rick” Dyer (if you wondered about our same last names, on the Vine,” “On My Own” – Esther Schnur-Berlot ............. 35-37 you’re right) for his brilliant design and clean-looking production of The “Poison Letter, “The Soldier’s Words,” “two skies” Blue Guitar, issue after issue. • Marjory Boyer, artist extraordinaire, for creating our iconic image – Lilvia Soto ................................................................................. 56-58 that stands the test of time. I couldn’t do it without you three. Just as important, we couldn’t do it without the many talented writers and artists of Arizona … AND our wonderful readers! Art To all I say, please keep reading and please keep submitting! “Carob,” “Date Palm,” “Fig,” “Orange,” “Pecans,” “Pinon,” “Pomegranate Tree,” “Prickly Pear” – Alicia Bay Laurel .... 11-16 Rebecca “Becca” Dyer “Seahorse,” “Snail,” “Praying Mantis,” “Peacock,” Editor in chief “Metamorphoses,” “Swan” – Sara T. Moore ......................... 26-27 “Twilight,” “Venice,” “Long Island Sunset,” “Turbulent Sea,” Editorial Staff “Purple Haze” – Joan McConnell ............................................ 51-55 Editor in chief: Rebecca Dyer “Barrel Fire,” “Hypertension,” “Inner Light,” “Monsooning,” Publisher: Elena Thornton “Northern Clouds” – Ehren Fritz Gerhard .............................. 70-74 Production Editor: Richard H. Dyer Jr. Artwork for front, back covers: Marjory Boyer The Blue Guitar arts and literary magazine is a project of The Arizona Consortium for the Arts www.TheBlueGuitarMagazine.org Summer 2011 2 1 Poem by Issac Real Stillness © 2011 “It looks like an island,” he said, As his lighter sparked a fi reball at the cigarette in his mouth. He pointed the lighter towards the dead camel that bobbed and fl oated, then crept towards us as we sat in fl amingo pink lawn chairs, behind black machine guns on the long strip of an Iraqi oil platform in the middle of the gulf. Around us, still dragon fl ies Issac Real is originally from Salinas, CA and is currently a pasted themselves to the sandy gray student of Creative Writing at sky, their transparent wings moving Mesa Community College. He can be contacted at ireal1985@gmail. too fast to tell. The Iraqi watchstanders chased com. and grabbed at them, tied strings to their tails, and held them like pinwheels as they smiled behind bushy mustaches that could strain a drink like baleen. The silent current pushed the camel past us, under us, on its side as we drowned in the heat watching it drift just past red and black oil tankers and back out to sea. The second of peace was broken by his voice. “I wonder what it did.” “What?” I said “The camel, it must have bit someone and they killed him, the way they kill dogs that bite kids.” His cigarette looked like shed snake skin when it bit his fi ngers and he picked up the butt and dropped it overboard then leaned against the machine gun. “I could never do it, kill something.” I told him. He walked to the pinwheel and removed the string. “You’re in the wrong place then.” And we went back to watching nothing and shooting nothing and never really wanting to. www.TheBlueGuitarMagazine.org Summer 2011 3 4 Poems by David Chorlton Alaskan Miniatures © 2011 V I Late on a summer night Snow clings to time a blush passes over and rock beneath the clouds the forests across the sound where long rivers end as a chill whets the peaks their journeys into light. to a sharper edge. II VI The fi ne green rain A winter wren fl ies in the forest between trees so close is to water together there what the ferns are is no space for shadows. to the trees. VII III A raven at the crossroads A cellist with a snow cap looks both ways: toward at each shoulder the poles the Tlingit made plays with an eagle at the tip of the bow and at the cross he draws slowly across above the church in which the low clouds. the Russians prayed. IV VIII A woodpecker drums into the silence An hour before midnight trapped beneath the water is still pale in the cove a spruce’s bark. where darkness is moored. David Chorlton came to Arizona in 1978, having lived in England and Austria. His poems appear in numerous magazines, including Main Street Rag, Skidrow Penthouse, Presa, Slipstream and Avocet, as well as online in The New Verse News, Untitled Country Review and a previous Blue Guitar Magazine among others. A copy of one of his recent poems was sent with the documentation for some seeds from Arizona to the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, demonstrating that poetry sometimes reaches unexpected locations. Information on his publications can be found at: http://www.davidchorlton.mysite. com/. www.TheBlueGuitarMagazine.org Summer 2011 4 Seeing Sitka © 2011 The battleground is quiet today with water lapping at the shore and low cloud in the trees where the natives once lost in hours what had taken centuries to build. There’s light rain at the moment, clearing later to reveal the mountains. No trace remains of the disease the invaders introduced, just their church in which the prayers begged for a cure and when it arrived the natives prayed there too to thank the new god for saving them. The forecast used to be for showers of smallpox followed by the scent of incense though the weather doesn’t change by more than a few degrees from day to day while the seasons fl oat up and down the sound behind the ships that stop here now. Their passengers disembark for a few hours before sailing on with their souvenirs into the short hours of darkness when an eagle folds the night away beneath his wings. He’s perched above the road that runs along the edge of land where the Bishop’s house recalls the time of porcelain settings on the table with the samovar when the talk was of trading for the rubel, before it made way for the dollar, but whatever the fl ag the true currency was always fur torn from animals’ backs. www.TheBlueGuitarMagazine.org Summer 2011 5 One Hundred Fifteen Degrees

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