Darkness follows us.
Car tires sneak
through these streets.
Above, headlights
smile and rumble
in on-coming traffic.
Below we keep our lives
hidden like graves.
We shoot out the sun
and day vanishes
into concrete as we
listen to the apostrophes
of tired blind men
click their canes
down unnumbered
alleys. The dust
under this bridge
never settles.
We look
into the muddy sky
where the gray light
of night pulls us
away. Always
the traffic to remind
us we breathe.
Suzanne Strempek Shea is the author of twelve books, the first four of which were novels set in her native Polish America that led to her being featured in national and international media, including twice on NBC’s Today; on The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder, NPR and Voice of America; and in major newspapers and magazines in both the United States and Poland.
Awards for her books include the New England Book Award and the Oskar Halecki Prize. Her journalism was shortlisted for the Penney-Missouri Awards, and her creative writing was recognized in Best American Fiction. Her freelance journalism and fiction has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Yankee, The Bark, Golf World, The Boston Globe, The Irish Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Brevity, Down East, Organic Style and ESPN the Magazine.
Suzanne co-directs the annual Dingle Writers’ Workshop in Dingle, Ireland, and the annual Iota Short Forms Writing Conference on the easternmost coast of Maine. She’s taught in MFA programs at the University of Southern Maine, Emerson College and the University of South Florida, and at conferences through the United States and in Ireland. She lives in Howth, Ireland.
Karen Sherk Chio (she/her) earned an MFA in poetry from the University of New Orleans, where she was the winner of the 2025 Andrea Saunders Gereighty/ Academy of American Poets Award, the 2025 Maxine and Joseph Cassin Prize for Poetry Thesis, and the 2023 Vassar Miller Poetry Award. She brings 25 years of professional experience leading and managing projects for non-profit organizations to the role of Editor-in-Chief, as well as experience as an associate poetry editor for Bayou Magazine and West Trade Review. Her creative work has appeared in swamp pink, Salamander, CALYX Journal, and SmokeLong Quarterly, among others, and her critical work has been published by or is forthcoming from Colorado Review, The Adroit Journal, and West Trade Review. Chio holds two Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of Connecticut and a Master of Public Health from Boston University.
Monica Jimenez is the senior culture & trends editor for Tufts University news and features and assistant editor of Tufts Magazine, and a community ed acting and playwriting instructor. Her work has appeared in publications including Ruminate Magazine and the Mini Plays Review, and her plays have been produced in festivals including the Boston Theater Marathon, Boston Slam Theater, and Short ’N Sweet Hollywood. She is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program and former co-editor-in-chief, fiction editor, and designer of the Stonecoast Review. She was an honorable mention for Ruminate Magazine’s William Van Dyke Short Story Prize and winner of the flash fiction contest at the Boskone sci-fi and fantasy convention.
