A bus trip in the fall of 2016 from Kansas City, Missouri to Minneapolis, Minnesota. It couldn’t be more “American heartland” than that. But if you’re thinking farmers in coveralls or sweet, little ladies balancing apple pies on their laps, think again. The passengers on this bus appear wearing hijabs, Nigerian geles, and little white bonnets. The trip includes musical boys with hair braided into elaborate crowns, men in broad-brimmed hats, and tall, slender Somalians. This bus resounds with a cacophony of languages, accents, and road noises.

Pixelated Tears explores the varied nature of the female through a poetic lens with surprising language, explosive imagery, and emotional impact. In this collection of childhood memories and fantasies, adult ponderings and observations, and personal reflections, Kaecey McCormick documents the feminine experience with tenderness, humor, and candor.

Final Inventory contains the deeply personal poetry by the author, David Anthony Sam, written as his mother was dying and in the years after. Here, Sam celebrates his mother’s life and her impact on him, grapples with her dying and his helplessness to ease her from this life, and mourns her by “mothering himself a new life” absent her powerful presence. Words are a gift his mother gave him, given that she loved to read and was an author herself albeit with few publications. So it is appropriate that Sam use those words to honor her as well as convey the journey that (while individual here to the two of them) is nonetheless a universal one.

These poems are set in the remote place of Cerca, Haiti, which is home to a resilient people who live off the little that the land yields. The poems express the anxiety, joy, regret, anguish, glory and affirmation of the speaker who is trying to collaborate with the church, the villagers and his home in America to bring about peace, prosperity and justice to a small community, which has suffered from the corruption, alienation, and ignorance of government powers – both foreign and domestic.

Joel Van Valin’s first collection of poetry is a stroll through a lyrical forest filled with sonnets, aubades, hymns, spells and love poems. His verse signals a return to form, evoking Frost, Millay, Dickinson and Byron.

Kitsch is the Evel Knievel lunchbox you’ve stored in the basement, the complete set (two issues) of the Courtship of Eddie’s Father comic novels that won’t yield space on your bookshelf, the eighteen sharply creased love notes Audrey Francisco (now gone from bladder cancer) wrote you the nine days she loved you in 7th grade. They are bound in the rainbow ribbon she pulled from her hair, kissed and offered you between second and third periods on a Tuesday in October. You’ve meant to send these things to her widow or children, but you can’t.

The searching for one’s sense of self is a journey that never ends; however, significant milestones that shed light on who an individual truly is, are often times marked by age. In XXX (thirty), Xavier Pastrano explores the insights and experiences of his early thirties, observing and analyzing his milestone moments through a candid and, at times, poignant lens.