S H A M P O O forty
contributors

Josh Bauer has passed through Ball State University, Indiana University, and Portland State University and has been published in The Broken Plate and Stepping Stones.  he rightly thought his poem in this issue would “fit nicely into a shampoo magazine and/or bottle.”

Lori Beckham, whose lovely SHAMPOOArt graces the right side of your screen, is from the land of cornfields and Abraham Lincoln.  she purports that she hasn’t accomplished anything worth mentioning, but she definitely likes drawing, writing, and daydreaming.

Jim Behrle lives in Brooklyn.  but is moving to Jersey City, New Jersey.  probably.

Lucy Biederman finally hit 30, and she’s still wearing jeans.  her chapbook, The Other World, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press.

Craig Cady is actually a collective of highly-educated wordsmiths who live together in a mansion and is funded entirely by an eccentric billionaire who made his fortune in the hair product industry boom of the 1980s.  Craig Cady’s blog is called dégager and consists mainly of original works and reposts of better artists.

Emily Carr is a narcoleptic vegetarian who dreams of staying up all night, moving to Key West, and writing a Miss Marple-moves-to-a-farm-in-Missouri murder mystery.  her second book of poetry, 13 Ways of Happily: books 1 & 2, was recently listed as “one of the best 11 books of Canadian poetry published in 2011” by dusie.  to view performances of other excerpts from her tarot novel, Name Your Bird Without a Gun, click here.

Otto W. Chan swims with all of the fishes.

Del Ray Cross is your loyal, if not tardy, editor.

Ray DeJesús is a big fan of chocolate egg creams.  his advice: “if you haven’t tried one, you need to get to it!”  Ray was born, raised, and still lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Jay Deshpande’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Washington Square, La Petite Zine, Narrative, Handsome, and elsewhere.  he is the former poetry editor of AGNI and he curates the Metro Rhythm Reading Series in Williamsburg.  he thinks “Party in the Front, Business in the Back” is an underutilized ethos.

Patrick James Dunagan lives in San Francisco.  for a couple of years he lived in PDX, Land of The Highway Sign for I-84/US-30 THE DALLES.  his most recent book is “There Are People Who Think That Painters Shouldn’t Talk”: A GUSTONBOOK (Post Apollo, 2011).

Dylan Fettig lives in Brattleboro, Vermont with his cat, Milky, but he’s about to get out of town for a while.  his chapbook Adoration of the Towering Weed is forthcoming from O’Clock Press.  he hasn’t shampooed so far this decade—(knock on wood).

Piotr Gwiazda was Writer-in-Residence at the James Merrill House in Stonington in the fall of 2008.  he currently lives in Pittsburgh.

Diane Harman is not taking this opportunity to promote her latest chapbook.  that’s because she’s not a poet, just a person who enjoys a cup of damn fine coffee and a slice of cherry pie.

Emily Hunt’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Conduit, Sixth Finch, and SoftSpot, and she is Assistant Editor of ActionYes.  she lives, writes, and draws in Northampton, Massachusetts.  you can also find her here.

Paolo Javier rocks!

Katia Kasch is a talking banana fruit cake from London, who knows quite a lot of words.

Vincent Katz is a poet, critic and teacher living in New York City with his wife, sons, and pet turtle, Billie.  Billie was first believed to be male but is now believed to be female; hence, the spelling of her name was changed from Billy to Billie (her complete name is Billie Carter Green).

Michael Keenan’s favorite thing to do is to drive around an old cemetery while eating a cheeseburger.  between drives he has managed to put out the chapbook Two Girls with Say No Press and receive his MFA from Brown University.  he currently sells waffles to drunk people on the late-night streets of Jacksonville, Florida.

Clyde Kessler resides in Radford, Virginia with his wife Kendall and their son Alan.  he helps with Blue Ridge Discovery Center, an environmental education organization focusing on southwest Virginia and the mountains of North Carolina.

Aaron Kiely’s book The Best of My Love was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2006 and reviewed in The Colorado Review, The Boston Review, and Traffic.  he edits Torch magazine of Poetry and Visual Art in New York and has published poets and visual artists including Alice Notley, Charles Bernstein, and Emily Roysdon.

Namita Krishnamurthy is a 17 year old student from Kerala, India who has a commendable gift of losing pencils and toppling shampoo.  she likes marshmallows and worships AR Rahman while frequently marvelling at everything and anything.  she was a Commended Foyle Young Poet in 2010.

Marshall Walker Lee is 85% sure that “progress” is myth.  he prefers to wash his hair with bar soap.

at the moment she composed this bio, Jennifer MacKenzie was living in Damascus, Syria, where jousting has long been practiced via flocks of pigeons, and where a recent rise in both thefts and donations of winter clothing can be noticed.  she has published poems in more journals than she has fingers, including Fence, Verse, and Esque.  but who knows, come spring, where she will be, or what so many people you’ve never met will be wearing?

Jesse Nissim is the author of the chapbooks, Alphabet for M (Dancing Girl Press) and Diagram Her Dream of Flight (forthcoming from Finishing Line Press).  her poems have most recently appeared (or soon will), in H-NGM-N, Barrow Street, Stone Canoe, Court Green, Verse, and Requited.  she lives in Syracuse, New York, where she collects large icicles for her dog.

Deborah Poe is author of the poetry collections the last will be stone, too; Elements (Stockport Flats Press 2010); Our Parenthetical Ontology (CustomWords 2008); and the novella in verse Hélène (Furniture Press 2012).  her writing is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Handsome, 1913, ecolinguistics, Mantis, Horse Less Review, Denver Quarterly, Open Letters Monthly, and Peep/Show.  she sells shampoos with seashells by the seashore.  she sends thanks to Anny Ballardini and Obododimma Oha for also including “The Storm” in 100 Thousand Poets for Change.

Julien Poirier:  Allergies: Penicillin, Dust, Long-haired Cats, Barcelona.  Broken Bones: Right Leg (Germany), left Big Toe (Bronx).  Visible Scars: Bridge of Nose (racquetball accident), left Thumb (umbrella accident).  Physical Peculiarities: Short Tongue, Red Dots, Fatty Deposits, Hairy Cheekbones.

K. Holden Pumphrey is a multimedia artist looking for a wharf to moor her new manuscript, Catamaran.  she used to dream of sea-faring vessels near every night, but her subconscious has inexplicably moved on to large, airy kitchens.  less live-creatures, but more snacks!

Quinten Redd falls in love.

Michael Schiavo is the author of The Mad Song and the chapbooks 275 Ocean Avenue, Beautiful School, Ranges I, and Ranges II. He lives in Vermont and blogs occasionally at The Unruly Servant.  often he is permitted to return to a meadow, now that his probation is over.

Oscar Schwartz is torn.  he watches many music videos on YouTube, and after having watched them, he reads the comments, and, inevitably the inane arguments.  he would like to tell all those detractors of Justin Beiber that one day their kids will lament that there are no internet crazes as gloriously talentless and mind-blowingly viral as Beiber.  but he can’t bring himself to actually press ‘post’.

Chelsea Smart is trying.  when her dander flairs, she buys shampoo.

Alison Strub likes reading about climbing mountains > 8,000 meters, Titus the dog, cured meats, and SHAMPOO.  she is a WordPress developer and builds many a website.  Google her for more.

Drew Scott Swenhaugen hails from Minnesota.  he lives in Portland, Oregon, where is the co-creator of Poor Claudia and the Bad Blood Reading Series.  he is starting to collect sports pennants again.

Russel Swensen. “do lobsters feel pain?  I mean, like, is it possible to make them feel pain?  because I would like to do that.”

Charles D. Tarlton: “when I was very young I loved poetry; to make a living, I became a professor of politics.  when I retired after 40+ years of college teaching, I returned to poetry.  I live now in the Oakland hills with my wife, Ann Knickerbocker, a painter and art blogger-raconteur.”

Derrick Tyson is a poet and fine art photographer living in Georgia.  he is the editor of Sinescope: A Journal of The Arts, and one can find his photographs here.  his throat is like a vocabulary airport: words going to and fro.

Corey Wakeling lives in Melbourne.  his work appears in Australia and internationally, having never heard of leave-in conditioner until now, the 2 in 1 dandruff shampoo cretin.  he is a once-a-day candidate and tutor at the Salon of Melbourne.

Nick Whittock’s cycling name is Toni.  his personal best for the Athlete’s Hour is 33.3 km (exactly 100 laps of the Brunswick velodrome).

Chrissy Wright aged in Bourbon beneath a walnut tree with a satchel full of skittles and a grave work ethic.  her passion is sharing, imitating lions, and creative writing.  she can currently be found finishing a degree in secondary education at Indiana University.

Tim Wright enjoys counting laps in different languages.  prefers the Coburg velodrome.

Tim Yu rules!

Changming Yuan grew up in an eighteenth century Chinese village and output several monographs before moving to Canada.  currently Yuan teaches in Vancouver and has published 2 sons greater than his 2 poetry books, and received 4 messages stronger from Zen than his 4 Pushcart nominations, with his spirit wandering in 599 literary outlets across 23 countries, including Asia Literary Review, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Exquisite Corpse, LiNQ, London Magazine, Poetry Kanto, SAND, and Taj Mahal Review.

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SHAMPOOArt by Lori Beckham