"A River Divides Us" in Slant: A Journal of Poetry

One of my more recent poems appears in the current issue of Slant: A Journal of Poetry. Go to this link to read my poem, "A River Divides Us."

Richard Holinger's Manure Dreams

Choeofpleirn Press published its last nonfiction title recently. (We will start offering a short fiction contest later in 2026.) Richard Holinger's Manure Dreams is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other bookstores. 

Bards Against Hunger Kansas City

A poem of mine appears in the anthology Bards Against Hunger Kansas City on pages 12-13. It is too difficult to get a picture of the poem, so I am pasting in a copy.

James P. Cooper

Knowing When Not to Speak 

Despite my profession, I don’t discuss

subordinate clauses with the kids selling

cookies in front of the grocery store.

I don’t ask the pharmacist to give me 

three correlative conjunctions along with

my prescriptions. I don’t ask the person

in produce where the conjunctive adverbs 

are located. I don’t ask the person

needing my help to reach something 

from a top shelf to give me three signal verbs 

in exchange. I don’t ask the person saying 

“excuse me” in dairy to point me toward 

the coordinate conjunctions. I don’t ask 

the person ringing up my groceries to define 

and use an appositive in a sentence. 

Afterwards, at the post office, I don’t ask 

the clerk handing me my change to add 

three present participles to my purchase.

“We all have our specialties,” my doctor says,

when I ask her to check my lungs

for subordinate conjunctions. As we talk, 

I offer to write a prescription for comma 

splices and fused sentences, but she says 

she may call for an appointment when she needs 

to insert semicolons in between

main clauses that are related in some way.

Accepting Submissions for Poetry Chapbooks

Choeofpleirn Press is accepting poetry chapbooks of 25 to 40 pages for our annual chapbook contest. The contest is for poets who have not yet published a full-length collection. The deadline is April 30. Refer to the following link for more information: https://www.choeofpleirnpress.com/poetry-chapbook-contest

This contest will be our last chapbook contest because starting in 2027, we will be switching to a contest for full-length poetry collections.

Our previous winner was Christine Andersen's To Maggie Wherever You've Gone.