Editor’s Note: This is both an announcement and a congratulations to editors Nancy Rafal and Henry Timm for launching N.E.W. VOICES, A Literary Platform for North East Wisconsin, published by Caravaggio Press. The county has been too long in dire need of a legitimate and handsome publication such as this to feature its many accomplished writers. A quick look at the table of contents reveals a number of local poets and writers featured in this first issue, and an acknowledgement and celebration as well, of our current Poet Laureate of Door County, Barbara Larsen.

“Little magazines” have a long and significant literary history in this country. Every major writer, Pound, Faulkner, Hemingway etc., began in this small way, a universal rite-of-passage for authors throughout the world. It is important to note that little mags are born and die every day— which is their nature, given the time and expense it takes to get a single issue in print. Given all that it demands in pure energy and devotion to keep everything going, though sales are mostly minimal, subscriptions chancy at best, patrons few and far between.

N.E.W. VOICES will face the same challenges I am certain. And needs our support. — Norbert Blei

ON A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER

After Barbara Larsen, especially Beach Road Year

On a day like any other
……..the poet might practice Yoga or Tai Chi
……………….Watch the fog lift from her window

hear a robin rustle on the forest floor
……..feel the sun against her eyelids
……………….see the moon driving her charioteers across the night sky

listen to Vivaldi or chamber works by Brahms
……..stand in the rain holding fast to a rainbow
………………wonder at the gull that stays airborne without moving a feather

remember a man’s hands holding her first grandchild
……..imagine death as the sun dropping into the bay
………………walk a country road singing Laudamus Te

cope with elemental winds and waves all day and flee into a sanctuary of sleep
……..return to the childhood orchard or sandpile where all things were possible
……………..play tag in memory or listen to grownups talking under the night sky

let stories flow like little streams that feed the wide Wisconsin
……..read Rilke, cummings, Yeats or the Upanishads
……………..never thinking that these moments might

add up to six books and gamer me laurel wreath
……..to honor the poet and the sanctity of ordinary things
……………..on a spring day like any other.

— Estella Lauter

MR. CHARNEY’S PLUMS

for Barbara

My neighbor, who is a poet
beat me to it. Last year
she wrote a plum poem
before I could, and wouldn’t you know it

even posted that poem above
the money box where I would see it
every time I stopped by
Mr. Charny’s red barn
for my weekly basket of plums.

What can I say in this poem today
that she didn’t already?
How many plum words are there?
How many ways can you say
exquisite?

I pick up my basket,
drop a dollar in the box,
nestle on my tongue
that first sweet, purple globe.
Suddenly the day is singing.

Savoring the juicy flesh,
I puzzle over Eve’s choice of an apple.
What could she have been thinking?
One of Mr. Charny’s plums
might have changed the world.

— Sharon Auberle

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: N.E.W. Voices is proud to announce an open call for manuscripts for its Winter Issue, Vol. I, No 2. Tentatively entitled: Poetry in the Cloud or Archetypes and Androids, we are interested in hearing reactions to the very far reaching, post-modern take on storytelling, research writing with Wikipedia, living with all of our intellectual properties stored up in the internet cloud and so forth. Can there ever be such a thing as intellectual property rights under such an open system? What about tradition? (Jane Austen with zombies?!) What about the ownership of intellectual property? About sanity? We want to see poetry and fiction about living in a completely open culture. What does it mean to have virtual liaisons? Whatever happened to plain old plagiarism? What the heck does “Post Modem” mean?!” Topic too open? Then just send us the best poem you’ve written this year, your pithiest short (or shorter) fiction, your best shot at an example of or essay about steampunk fiction, or William Gibson or China Mieville. Caveat: this issue is neither about traditional fantasy ala Narnia, Harry Potter and the like nor about traditional sci-fi. Virtual and alternative history, cyber or weird fiction is more to the point. What happens when Emily Dickinson looks out of her bedroom window to discover Walt Whitman bathing stark naked in her rain barrel? (See, Di Fillipo, Paul, The Steampunk Trilogy.)

TO SUBSCRIBE: For one year (two issues and all the broadsides we happen to publish) drop a line to Caravaggio Press, P. 0. Box 41, Ellison Bay, WI 54210, giving us your regular mail address, your email address, and a check for $10.00. We’ll pay the postage when we send the magazines. That’s a real deal. Broadsides come by email as pdf files.

DONATIONS: Once again, remember, we are a 501(c)(3) business and all donations are tax deductible to the full extent of the law. You’ll also get our eternal gratitude and your name will appear on every thank you list we make along the way. In coming issues we will be soliciting sponsorships which will be discreetly manifested on the inside of our covers. These sponsorships will help to underwrite the cost of printing the magazine.