A Country Rag Gloria!

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Graphic: "Baby" by Cindy Duhe, a nineteen year old writer/artist/musician from Houston, Texas. Janet Buck teaches composition and literature at the university level. Funky Dog Publishing recently released an online chapbook of Janet’s poetry entitled Strawberry Nipples, which focuses primarily on the role of writing in coping with a disability. Barbara Benepe, editor and publisher of The Horsethief’s Journal and The Green Tricycle, comments on the poet’s work in a recent review: “Buck's strength is her perseverance and focused analysis of human suffering--from the inside looking out. Everyone faces a demon or two in the course of a life--but not everyone has the skill to write about it in such an evocative way. Buck draws the reader into her very soul and we experience her suffering as if it were our own. Janet Buck's outstanding talent succeeds where others stumble. She runs headlong into her personal cauldron, screaming LIFE! and we're there, with her--every step of the way.” Boxcars by Janet Buck The only thing that hasn’t changed in crosswalks of an urban cloud-- trains that bellow when they charge-- flashing lights of fear instilled in cordial sips of country life. When rain met sand and made cement, when buildings grew faster than marigolds, we stole soft slumber of the forests, filling boxcars with our lust. I watched the train pass patiently with cordial clicking, clanking comfort ruminating over earth. Sloe-gin sweet endangered toots of horns that someday, sometime, someway turn to capsules of an underground. A subway shell, a frightening thought-- test-tube babies for our flaws. Tendrils of an octopus that troubled Norris long ago-- cast-iron thoughts of yesteryear in harbors of a red caboose. "You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours." -- Ann-Wilson Schaef In 1998 and 1999, Janet Buck has been a featured poet for Seeker Magazine, Poetry Today Online, Vortex, Conspire, Poetry Cafe, Dead Letters, the storyteller, Poetry Heaven, Athens City Times, Poetik License, 3:00 AM e-zine, Poetry Superhighway, and Carved in Sand. Her poetry, poetics, and humor have appeared in Perihelion, The Astrophysicist’s Tango Partner Speaks, Sapphire Magazine, Gravity, A Writer’s Choice, Mind Fire, Southern Ocean Review, Free Cuisinart, The Writer’s Quill, Pyrowords, Spokenwar, Illya’s Honey, Savoy, The Boa, Ygdrasil, Beaded Strand, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, 2River View, Kimera, Niederngasse, San Francisco Salvo, Apples & Oranges, Ceteris Paribus, In Motion, Pogonip, Peshekee Review, Thunder Sandwich, The Suisun Valley Review, The Red Booth Review, The Poetry Kit, Miserere, Tintern Abbey, The Rose & Thorn, The Arm’s Extent, Apollo, The Part-time Post-modernist, GreenCross, Moonshade, Waterloo Review, Pif, Word Salad, Recursive Angel, The Melic Review, and hundreds of journals world-wide.