New Issue! Cholla Needles 114

 

Cover art by Bonnie Bostrom
New literature by:

John Dorroh

Judy K. Mosher

Edward L. Canavan

Arvilla Fee

David Chorlton

Marlene M. Tartaglione

Barry Kritzberg

Bonnie Bostrom

David Larsen

and J. Malcolm Garcia

Click here to purchase on-line ($8.00*)
*includes full color art by David Chorlton*

Available during the month of June at:

California Welcome Center
56711 29 Palms Hwy 

Yucca Valley, CA 92284

From J. Malcolm Garcia

Favorite items:

Arvilla - The Sound of Thunder--"it thunders like guttered bowling balls." Damn, I'd steal that line if I could.

David L. - The detail in Gossips was impeccable.

David C. - Hawk--Turns grace into mythology/cleans the flesh from its bones. 

spellbinding.

I'm still reading.

From Bonnie Bostrom:

Dear Rich,

Thought I would send comments on the writers in this volume.  I was very impressed.

John Dorroh:  His writing is fresh; the images are stunning and his voice is novel. He moves us into his perspective gently so we share his world.

Judy K. Mosher: i appreciate her obvious love of the natural world and how she creates intimate pictures of it.  Her take on being a crone resonates with me at a visceral level.

Edward l. Canavan: This suite of poems is like an avant garde play. The scenes pull you in, leave you changed. It is a very creative way to present poetry.

Arvilla Fee:  Her ability to take something commonplace and treat it as a rare commodity is fabulous.  The intricacy of her work is compelling and inspiring. I am a fan.

David Chorlton:  His poetry actually leaves me breathless.  The way he understands the processes of nature is unparalleled. He is, in my estimation, one of the finest poets alive today.

Marlene M. Tartaglione: What she does is mind-boggling.  The way she uses color in this collection is masterful.  She draws the reader in, holds us there, and does not let us go until we have surrendered to her vision.  So good.

Barry Kritzberg: His stories! Enchanting and a delight.  Loved his two poets encounters and then the  newspaper clippings in support...genius.

Bonnie Bostrom:  I'm just happy to be in the company of such talented writers.

David Larsen: I was totally charmed by this story.  It is a wonderful portrait of two men in conversation, inviting us into the cafe and letting us feel as though we are right there at the table with them.  Very strong images and great dialog.

J. Malcolm Garcia:  This work floored me.  I was there with the writer through the marvelous intertwining of times, places, people.  It shines a very bright light on a chapter of our history that was dark. It is heart breaking and heart warming.  Kudos.

r soos:  He consistently curates the finest writing by the most talented poets and writers he can find. Those of us privileged to be included, are grateful for his guidance and for giving us such a wonderful venue.

Love,

Bonnie

From Maia:

On The Thermals - David Chorlton in Hawk, knows something most humans don’t—what it is like to be Hawk. You can see this in his series of airy luminous paintings, hear it in his vivid verses. He knows because he has witnessed again and again . He knows because he loves.

What is it like to be a wild creature? Winged predator, perpetually on the edge of starvation, missing more often than catching the warm blooded creatures he hunts to keep living. Yet David, the poet knows too, “it’s peaceful on the thermals...holding by a wingtip to the light.”

He knows beforehand what air never does: “what cut(s) it open” as the hawk dives, claws extended. He feels the descent the ground can’t detect yet. Simultaneously, he carries the terrible and the beautiful, the past and future of intelligent life—that he has been, he will be, the hunter and also the hunted, caught on the claw”. He is the contradictory spirit, knowing panic, and surrender, of the small furred-being, “inside the stomach’s darkness”.

Claw too embodies the hawk both as hapless? creature and also deity. Eloquent dynamic fierce. Hawk flown out of creation myth, the one who arranges with her claw, mountains and rivers, forests

and fields.

For Hawk (or mouse or human) the revelation here might be: “After each passing the air//flows back into the shape it was before.”

From Maia:

Turquoise

            is water, is stone, is a worn chenille robe...

 Bonnie Bostrom invites us into her world through her poems’ resonant, everyday yet extraordinary detail. Inside the “illusion” of rain-coming in “drought troubled lands”. an old woman walks. making friends with death. Her own. The world’s. These two cannot be separated.

 The old woman walks with care...imagines herself a “tortoise, flipped, unable to rise.”  But as she finds herself on the ground, she wonders at the lingering intuition that somehow, even here “real rain is coming.”

 She is elemental, sensing “readiness to die.”  Almost an embrace. Even as, within the subtle or sudden displacement of aging, layers of time and changing points of view render her/our familiars strange and what is close, distant. All she/we can do is learn to savor changes, find out their secrets. Come to make meaning of and to treasure the strangeness. “My walls are starting to smooth/where I use them to navigate…into silence and shadow.”  And so it seems we too might find ways to translate the vertigo of aging, its sudden incapacities, fading of senses, which for so long were our sture guides.

  In the last poem, Adapting to Change, the poet imagines a time after dying, when she would be devoured by fire, wearing  her “favorite garment”, her long lived-in turquoise robe, “a last defense. The flames will be no match/for her fierce spirit.” And “she will abide newly adrift” as ash, sand, wind, water…Living as music lives, in some ancient paradoxical mode, “without the world.”

Maia, June 3, 2026

New Book! HOWL's Legacy edited by Greg Gilbert

 

edited by Greg Gilbert

in association with Mojave Sage Writers

Cover & inner art by L. I. Henley

Additional inner art by Chloe Allred

Literary contributions by:

Nathan McClain

J.J. Starr

Greg Gilbert

L.I. Henley

Jenna Baillargeon

Michael Green

Michael G. Vail

Kent Wilson

Renee Gurley

Brenda Littleton

Wendy Costello

& lalo kikiriki

Click here to purchase full color edition ($14.15)

Click here to purchase black & white edition ($5.50)

Book Release Party! Feb 27!

 

Sunday, February 27, 2-4 PM. 

We are celebrating three local writers with new books to share! Susan Rukeyser, Susan Abbott, and Rose Baldwin will read from and sign copies of their new work at the Retreat Book Store, located at The Joshua Tree Retreat Center. We are entering through the main gate and following the signs to the office (bookstore is close to the office). Plenty of space to social distance, and plenty of parking. Do bring a mask and your own lawn chair for your personal comfort. Also note: The Retreat Center Cafe is 1 minute away and is open from 7 AM to 2 PM. So, a fun plan is to go to lunch & then head on over to the reading. There is a restroom available at the bookstore. Bring a friend and some of your material to read! If you have questions, message us, or send rich an email - editor@chollaneedles.com. Good times!!! 

You can pre-read your copy 

& bring it along with you to the reading 

for author autograph!
Check at Space Cowboy!

$12.00                                      $7.99                                     $7.00

Review of Tramping Solo by Fred Rosenblum

Tramping Solo by Fred Rosenblum
Fomite Press, 108 Pages

Tramping Solo tells the story of a war vet being released from the military in the insane year of 1969, when popular culture everywhere was against the military. Interestingly, Fred Rosenblum is able to manage these experiences without attempting to moralize or teach. As a writer, he prefers to simply paint a picture and allow the reader to feel the experience of one man through language. 

His images present strongly without the use of common jargon, i.e. ‘flashbacks' and ‘ptsd’: silver satanic angels with their ravaging Phantom strikes, to this very day still strafe me. Events are presented clearly and without comment or prejudice: The city snarled and bored its fangs when I came out into the street with my honorable discharge and my purple fucking heart — to be wrestled to the ground on the San Diego downtown sidewalk concrete pavement. . . or encrypted words/mantras seeping out/from the soft sponge of earth.

The story follows the vet through his travels along the Pacific Coast. The voice of the poet comes through clearly with specifically chosen imagery denoting a sense of place: a placid evening's radiant veil of embers appearing to respire on the lighted bluffs above Monterey Bay. We follow him through several years of physical duress and psychic turmoil: Unable to acquire a prosthetic psyche in Seventy-two, my pathetic character came unglued and I ramped-up my tolerance for goofballs and booze. 

Nature provides the release for both yet and reader during important transitions: the mating call of a horned owl growling at silhouettes framed on the face of a vanishing moon. . .

Also by Fred Rosenblum: Vietnumb, 2018: Fomite Press

 

April Virtual "Open Readings" for Poetry Month 2021

Welcome to our April 2021 Shelter-In-Place Video "Open Readings". A huge thanks is due to all the folks who have participated either as audience or as featured readers in our Cholla Needles Zoom Shelter-In-Place readings. I am pleased that we are able to continue these video experiences to share with each other until we can meet again in person. I can honestly say hearing your voices is keeping me sane. 

If you are browsing our pages, we consider YOU a part of our family and you are welcome to become part of our Shelter-In-Place video pages. Simply contact us at editor@chollaneedles.com & ask how to get your videos posted on our pages. You can also use this address to send us your poetry, short stories, essays, and art for publication in our monthly magazine. 

I am both amazed and thankful to discover that of the thirty-one poets represented below for Poetry Month 2021, nineteen of them have books available from Cholla Needles, and a few have more than one book available. 

Good Times!!! Click here for information on watching our Sunday Zoom Show live at 3 - 3:30 PM each week. In the meantime, enjoy the videos:

Welcome To The Cholla Needles Zoom Party

Heather Morgan reads The Iron Man And His Puddle

Miriam Sagan reads Two Poems and Three Haiku

Steve Braff reads from Exodus Remix

Pamela Peery reads Old Roads And Empty Corrals

Peter Jastermsky reads five one line Haiku

Jean Paul L. Garnier reads Two Poems

Allyson Jeffredo reads from Even Gods

David Chorlton reads

Three Poems from Speech Scroll

Mike Vail reads Two Poems

Gracie Wilson reads Bukowski

Kent Wilson reads Four Poems

Caryn Davidson reads Storyteller

John Sierpinski reads Three Poems

Cindy Rinne reads Poems

George Howell reads Two Poems

Cynthia Anderson reads Two Poems

Francene Kaplan reads Two Poems

Dave Benson reads Ten Short Poems

Ruth Nolan reads Poems

Mark Evans reads My Skin Is Not A Tattoo

Kurt Schauppner reads Two Poems

Greg Wyss reads Two Poems

Susan Abbott reads Two Villanelle and Mirage

John Brantingham reads Two Poems

Kelsey Bryan-Zwick reads Three Poems

Kendall Johnson reads Two Poems

Lauren Henley reads Wonder

Jonathan Maule reads Language

Noreen Lawlor reads Two Poems

Steve Perry reads Three Poems

Romaine Washington reads Two Poems

Billy F. Gibbons reads Desert High

Good Times!!! Thanks for watching!!!

Click here to check out all our "Shelter-In-Place" videos

Click here to check out all our "Big Read 2020" videos

March Virtual "Open Readings"

Welcome to our March 2021 Shelter-In-Place Video "Open Reading". A huge thanks is due to all the folks who have participated either as audience or as featured readers in our Cholla Needles Zoom Shelter-In-Place readings. I am pleased that we are able to continue these video experiences to share with each other until we can meet again in person. I can honestly say hearing your voices is keeping me sane. 

If you have a video you'd like to share, please - send me a note & let me know. We consider this a community page, and is not limited to only our "featured readers". This spot is here to help us experience the love of great writing until we can meet together in one spot again.

If you are browsing our pages, we consider YOU a part of our family and you are welcome to become part of our Shelter-In-Place video pages. Simply contact us at editor@chollaneedles.com & ask how to get your videos posted on our pages. You can also use this address to send us your poetry, short stories, essays, and art for publication in our monthly magazine. 

Good Times!!! Click here for information on watching our Sunday Zoom Show live at 3 - 3:30 PM each week. In the meantime, enjoy the videos:

Poets told at last minute to "grab a poem" to read.

Caryn Davidson reads 

Meeting At The Indian Place

Mike Vail reads

Jesus Walks The Earth

Susan Abbott reads Beloved: A Love Sonnet

Francene Kaplan reads Added Lines

Kelsey Bryan-Swick reads Street Talk Sassafras Jazz

Kent Wilson reads My Mother's Machine

John Sierpinski reads Bruges, Belgium

Cynthia Anderson reads Two Super Short Poems

Ruth Nolan reads Of The Mojave

Dwayne Alicie reads
Confession of An Unworthy Man

Kelsey Bryan-Swick reads Letter To Ansel

Heather Morgan reads The Baby

John Sierpinski reads Budapest

Noreen Lawlor reads Desert Tortoise Tussle

Ruth Nolan reads
Teaching My Daughter To Put Out Fire

George Howell reads Mary Grace

Kelsey Bryan-Zwick reads In The City Girl

Greg Wyss reads
How To Become A Useful Member Of Society

Ruth Nolan reads
We Could Be Doing This (Instead)

David Chorlton reads On Hold

John Sierpinski reads Second To Last Stop

Mark Soden reads Underserved Tonal Systems

Francene Kaplan reads I Am Not A Robot

Heather Morgan reads Monsters

Caryn Davidson reads
A Poem For The Vernal Equinox

Bye Everybody!!

Click here to check out all our "Shelter-In-Place" videos

Click here to check out all our "Big Read 2020" videos

February Virtual "Open Readings"

 Welcome to our February 2021 Shelter-In-Place Video "Open Reading". A huge thanks is due to all the folks who have participated either as audience or as featured readers in our Cholla Needles Zoom Shelter-In-Place readings. I am pleased that we are able to continue these video experiences to share with each other until we can meet again in person. I can honestly say hearing your voices is keeping me sane. 

If you have a video you'd like to share, please - send me a note & let me know. We consider this a community page, and is not limited to only our "featured readers". This spot is here to help us experience the love of great writing until we can meet together in one spot again.

If you are browsing our pages, we consider YOU a part of our family and you are welcome to become part of our Shelter-In-Place video pages. Simply contact us at editor@chollaneedles.com & ask how to get your videos posted on our pages. You can also use this address to send us your poetry, short stories, essays, and art for publication in our monthly magazine. 

Good Times!!! Click here for information on watching our Sunday Zoom Show live at 3 - 3:30 PM each week. In the meantime, enjoy the videos:

Kelsey Bryan-Swick reads In The Wild

Caryn Davidson reads Conjugation

Ernest Alois reads Desert Saloon

John Sierpinski reads Floppy Hats

Ruth Nolan reads from Cholla Needles 51

Heather Morgan reads Promises

Dave Benson reads Soul Soup

Jeff Alfier reads New Iberia

Tobi Alfier reads Cape Blitz

Michael G. Vail reads Desert Elegy

Mark Evans reads Bonesaw

Enid Osborn reads Three Poems 

from When The Big Wind Comes

Ginny Short reads Landscape of Drought

George Howell reads The Hole In The Night

Cindy Rinne reads Open Eyes

Noreen Lawlor Reads Two Poems

Kelsey Bryan-Zwick reads Dark Star

Caryn Davidson reads Spike

Ernest Alois reads Freedom Road

John Sierpinski reads Gypsies In Bulgaria

Ruth Nolan reads Firestorm, Southern California

Heather Morgan reads Green In The Dead Part

Dave Benson reads Re-Evolution

Jeff Alfier reads A Map of Vaughn, New Mexico

Tobi Alfier reads A Lifetime Ago

Michael G. Vail reads My Old Man

Kurt Schauppner reads from Mary's Confession

Enid Osborn reads Dirt

Ginny Short reads
two poems about her mother

George Howell reads
Dreaming About The Dead

Cindy Rinne reads Climb Tumble Dance

Noreen Lawlor reads Equinoccio

Allen Ginsberg reads Hum Bom!

Raymond Antrobus reads Happy Birthday Moon

Kelsey Bryan-Zwick reads My Name

Caryn Davidson reads Intermission

Ernest Alois reads Lost Lenses

John Sierpinski reads Prague, The Palace Hotel

Ruth Nolan reads Three Poems

Heather Morgan reads My Last Surgeon Told Me

Dave Benson reads Two Poems

Jeff Alfier reads Mojave County

Tobi Alfier reads from
Symmetry - Earth and Sky

Michael G. Vail discusses Writing

Jean-Paul L. Garnier reads Betelgeuse Dimming

Kim Moore reads And the Soul

Ginny Short reads Only Dust

George Howell reads The Scientist

Cindy Rinne reads Cycle of Incarceration

Noreen Lawlor reads Morongo Preserve

Allen Ginsberg reads Elegy for Neal Cassady

Click here to check out all our "Shelter-In-Place" videos

Click here to check out all our "Big Read 2020" videos

See you again in March!!!!