From the Editor’s Desk  Kate Bernadette Benedict

Welcome back, amusable readers, to the Bumbershoot annual!  This is the first time our ’shoot appears as a stand-alone edition rather than publishing simultaneously with Umbrella.  Your editor trusts that this both gives Umbrella’s Lighter Offshoot her due and enhances its readability.  Those double issues were admittedly rather daunting!

So come on in and get ready to enjoy a trove of fantastic light verse including two special features:  Poetical Mathemeticals by the ever-clever J. Patrick Lewis and Web Feet, verses about life in the age of the internet.

Our cover art for 2010 is by Mary Reilly who lives in New York City. She regularly contributes writing and illustrations to Deep Leap (Lasercave Publications) and The Mom Egg Literary Journal. Her poems are included in the anthology, Bowery Women (Bowery Books, 2006) and also appear in issues #62 and the forthcoming #66 of The New York Quarterly.