Welcome to Issue Twelve! I hope you enjoy the 24 poems, 5 stories, and 6 essays collected here. They come to you curated with the purpose to lift you beyond the everyday and into a new awareness. All of these pieces have a touch of the Rockvale vibe – that blend of boldness and vulnerability, the hard and the soft, the rock and the vale.
The same way spring rises into new life with color and texture, I hope you let these words lift and inspire you, challenge and charge you with new ways of thinking. May you be inspired and intrigued.
One of my favorite Mary Oliver quotes is this: “I don’t ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.” I think reading poetry and prose is the perfect way to improve the depth of our seeing, to open ourselves to the power of words, and perhaps find a new range of sights and sounds, empathy and understanding. That’s the charge I give you for this issue – to allow yourself to be moved in a new way. And don’t forget to check out Sarah Rehfeldt’s amazing art pieces using mosaics. If you want to be moved and inspired, visual art can do it too!
Huge thanks to all the contributors. And to Roseann, Kelly, Patricia, Matthew, and Daniel: kudos and grateful praise for your attention and introspection on this issue. Thank you for your help in launching these beautiful words.
Sandy
Poetry
Treefall – by Ben Boegehold
I Never Reached Enlightenment – by Elizabeth Rae Bullmer
Summer Comes In Through the Window – by Abigail Cargo
Annie’s Studio – by Simona Carini
Hike in the Rockies – by Phyllis Carito
Firefly – by Ann Chinnis
Memorial – by Ben Corvo
River – by Chris Ellery
Water, Flight – by CJ Giroux
Sixty Days of Summer – by Therese Halscheid
In Passing – by Rob Hardy
In the Mountains – by Michael Hettich
I have told the Gila woodpecker – by Dawn Hogue
Therapist-Survivor – by Natalie Jill
The Expanding Universe – by Kristin Laurel
Gift – by Kevin LeMaster
Traveling Cajalco Road to See You in Corona – by Cora McCann Liderbach
Hidey Holes – by Tim Louis Macaluso
Educational Philosophy – by Josh Nicolaisen
Our Daily Bread – by Susanna Rich
Thinking of You – by Phillip Sterling
Crabapple Summer – by Allie Stokes
Daughters – by Lily Tobias
Does a uterus remember – by Pennie Bisbee Walters
Short Fiction
The Birthday Lunch Box – by Heather Bartos
The Pizza Pie, or a Slice of the Sky – by R. M. Davenport
Three Invitations – by Austin J. Fowler
Mr. Daley – by Paul Lamar
Blame – by Emma Space
Creative Nonfiction
The Age of a Beach – by Laurie Dainer
It Takes Faith – by Helga Gruendler-Schierloh
Moonstruck – by Kathryn Jankowski
My Grandparent’s Drug Dealer – by Daniel O’Leary
On the Brink but Not Over the Edge, Yet – by Mary Pauer
Boom – by Jayne Raparelli
Featured Artist – Sarah Rehfeldt
Click HERE to read about the Featured Artist and view the art.