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CPR Best of Volume 16 Now Available

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CPR Volume 16 Front CoverAfter more than a week of stuffing envelopes, the hard-copy “Best of Volume 16” Cider Press Review is on its way to contributors, subscribers, and former Book Award contest entrants.

The “Best of” issue features poems by Rebecca Baggett, Carol Berg, Jennifer Jackson Berry, Maggie Blake, Ace Boggess, John Bradley, Christine Butterworth-McDermott, Sharon Chmielarz, Lisa J. Cihlar, Joan Colby, Michael Collins, Gemma Cooper-Novack, Jimmie Cumbie, Carol V. Davis, Paul Dickey, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Carol Ellis, Sarah Estes, David Eye, Evelyn Clark Farbman, Shawn Fawson, Janice Greenwood, David Hathwell, Gary Hawkins, Sara Henning, Brian Patrick Heston, Louisa Howerow, Ann Hudson, Amie Keddy, Heather Lang, Susanna Lang, Mercedes Lawry, Bernadette McBride, Amy Meckler, Colleen Michaels, Nancy Carol Moody, Carolyn Moore, Mary Moore, Susannah Nevison, Amy Newday, Autumn Newman, Sharon Olson, Mary Elizabeth Parker, Lynn Pedersen, Kevin Phan, Katherine Rauk, Geri Rosenzweig, Michael G. Smith, Heather Sommer, Sarah Sousa, Joannie Stangeland, Kelly Terwilliger, Lisken Van Pelt Dus, Ryan Vine, Donna Vorreyer, Chelsea Wagenaar, Mark Wagenaar, Marq Wilson, Laura Madeline Wiseman, Anne Harding Woodworth, Matthew Zingg. Book reviews by Ken Hada and Gary Leising.

To order your own or extra copies, please visit the CPR Bookstore.

CPR Volume 16, Issue 4

This, animal
by Heather Sommer

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Autumn again and we’re both in our own corners of elsewhere. I wonder if you sit by the window, too. I wonder, of all your former lovers, who you’re thinking of. This is that time, after all, when the heart plays sudden death with nostalgia. I know from my window I can see mountaintops even though it’s too dark to see them now. How I felt when you wrote after so long. When the leaves start to turn, I undress. Animals can sense a storm. I wonder if you sit by the window, too. I wonder how much of what I left can you taste. Like omen. Like refract, lovely, portend. I’m accused of fragmenting and it’s likely so. This, what I’m worst at. This, animal.

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 16, Issue 4.

Heather SommerHeather Sommer earned her MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in decomP magazinE, H.O.W. Journal, Columbia Poetry Review and [PANK]. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, Zak, and cat, Jade.

See all items about Heather Sommer

Visit Heather Sommer’s contributors page.

CPR Volume 16, Issue 1

Farmer’s Almanac
by Heather Sommer

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Somewhere a crossroads at night,
the devil, that old blues song.

Like every season, I’m best at leaving.

I dowse for water. When I said
You are my everything

I meant else.

Somewhere coffin nails, dirt.
You’ll say I’m being morbid

but that’s the spell.

Like a good storm, a train rumbles
in your bones before. I wish when I’d said

I’ll miss you I’d meant it.

Somewhere, every other woman I’ve been:
the mistress, the arsonist, the water-witch.

I burnt all my bridges without striking match.

I thought you smelled of pine
until I learned gin.

It’s every o’clock somewhere.

 

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 16, Issue 1.

Heather SommerHeather Sommer earned her MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in decomP magazinE, H.O.W. Journal, Columbia Poetry Review and [PANK]. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, Zak, and cat, Jade.

See all items about Heather Sommer

Visit Heather Sommer’s contributors page.