Veterans Administration_Leavenworth

When I get the chance and want to vary where I walk, I sometimes visit the grounds of the Veterans Administration. 

Lake Juliette, which is located near the VA cemetery, provides a half-mile walking path. Although there should be more benches around the lake, it still provides a pleasant place to visit on Sunday afternoons when there isn't much traffic and very few, if any, people. I make at least two laps around the lake whenever I visit. 

No matter how hard I try to get a picture of the turtles sunning themselves on one of the sunken trees, they can detect my steps and even my shadow and slip into the water. I have been lucky enough, on a few occasions, to get a glimpse of a great blue heron when I am sitting on one of the benches.

Not all of the buildings at the VA have been renovated, unfortunately. I have managed to get a few pictures of the decaying buildings, with the aim of eventually posting these pictures in a Facebook group named Abandoned Kansas.

Seeking Collections of Essays

Choeofpleirn Press is seeking collections of essays for its nonfiction contest. More  information appears in the flyer. The deadline is December 31, 2022.

Rushing Thru the Dark 2022

Our issue of Rushing Thru the Dark 2022 is now available as an pdf through our website and as a print book through Amazon. This issue contains eleven plays, one screenplay, the work of six artists, and thirty-four poems.  

Chapbook Winners

Amy Lerman, whose chapbook Orbital Debris was selected by Laura Read, is the winner of our first annual Jonathan Holden Chapbook Contest. A few copies of the original printing of her chapbook remain available through our website. Her chapbook is now also available at Amazon. 

In her comments for selecting Amy Lerman's chapbook, Laura Reads says, 

I admire the way this collection is organized in three sections: Ground Control, Breathing Space, and Outer Space, and how the space motif, emphasized by the opening epigraph from Carl Sagan, provides unity for this collection. This unity is also created through the repetition and alternation of various themes, including memories of childhood, snapshots of a marriage, and elegies for friends lost, children not had, time going by. Each poem is well-crafted with attention to imagery, so I felt like I was a part of the speaker’s world; for example, in one of my favorite poems in the collection, “Living Below Sea Level,” the speaker describes their longing for hurricanes for “that chance/ to masking tape our windows in ‘Xs’,” which is such an exact image that captures a child’s mind and the experience of living in a particular place. I also love the poem’s ending: “So often, though, no winds/ ruptured palm fronds, no storm eye quieted, no school/ got cancelled, in spite of our loyalty, our sacrifice,/ our willingness to monitor, that taping and alarm naught,/ our only celebration some early morning chocolate milk/ and extra bowls of Alpha Bits.” These lines capture something I really like in this book: each poem is a small moment that contains something bigger when observed and described closely, a small piece of orbital debris.

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Fran Schumer, the finalist in our chapbook contest, has her chapbook Weight available through Amazon as well.