Stoner & Soderling in The Rotary Dial
 

I have a poem, and Janice has two, in the November issue of The Rotary Dial. PDF comp copy available here (password ektoplazm, scroll down to Issue 21):

http://therotarydial.ca/compcopies

This is my first publication in several years--my last one was when I had a piece in Moira Egan's Hot Sonnets anthology in 2011. I've also had a recent acceptance from The Raintown Review for an upcoming issue. (And I've also had a whole buncha rejections recently, so it seems I've picked up exactly where I left off, heh.)

Anyway, yay me.

And yay Janice--I recognized one of her poems as having been workshopped here a while back. And yay Marcus Bales, whom I do not know, but I thoroughly enjoyed his hilarious parody of Poe's "The Bells" in this issue (and I noticed that he had two pieces in the current issue of Snakeskin, so maybe some of you know him).

Congrats, Julie. And Janice and Marcus.

Marcus Bales is familiar to me from Facebook, where he often publishes his work.

Congratulations Julie and Janice.
I've now got the November Dial on my Kindle. I peeped at the "Look Inside'' bit on Amazon and read your Purple Rain poem, Julie. It's wonderful. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the issue.

According to the Members List we have a MarcusBales (with no space between the names). He joined in 2001 and last posted in 2002. Perhaps you can persuade him to return to us, Bob?

Jayne

Thanks for sharing that, Julie. I loved your ballade, and I don't get to see many of them. I also enjoyed Janice's poems and those of Marcus.

Susan

Julie,

Thank you! And congrats, to you, Janice and Marcus. I took a quick look, enough to see that these are poems deserving of more time. I do have to do some work to do now, but will come back later for sure.

Charlotte

Congratulations, Julie and Janice.

I messaged Marcus about this thread and tried to interest him in returning to the Sphere. Now it's up to him. But you can always find him on Facebook.

Congrats, Julie and Janice! That's a great journal.

Nausheen

A poignant poem, Julie.

Thanks for posting this notice. Congratulations also to Marcus and thanks to all friends.

Congratulations, Julie and Janice. A good journal and fine poems.

Congratulations Julie, Janice, and Marcus -- a real pleasure to read these poems, which are so different from each other. I've a feeling I'm going to get some use from the phrase, "puppet-socky souls."

Best,

Ed

Thanks for the warm wishes.

I wrote the poem because I was so shocked by my vulture-like eagerness at this tragedy. I knew that each death meant that lots of other people would be experiencing the same horrible loss that I'd been dreading since my daughter's heart started to fail. And I knew that my hopes were stupid, anyway, because there was almost no chance that any viable organs could be made available from such a forensic situation, let alone that they would be the right blood type and size to save my kid. But I couldn't stop feeling excited about it. Yuck. The strictness of the ballade form helped me to feel more in control of my disturbingly out-of-control emotions.

I submitted this poem to The Rotary Dial because I had been so impressed by Catherine Chandler's poignant "Off-the-wall" sonnet in the May 2014 issue (Issue 15, p. 11), which shows a mother's perspective from the potential-donor side of the transplant experience. The emotions are almost identical, I think, in her narrator's rejection of the saintly selflessness we've always been taught is more appropriate: "I exercise my right to fall apart, / ask God's forgiveness for this venial sin..." Yup. Been there, done that. We all get a little tunnel-visioned where our loved ones' lives are concerned.

Thanks for your efforts to invite Marcus back, Roger. I hope he's tempted. Then again, if he comes back and turns out to be as annoying a jerk as the rest of us can be at times, everyone's going to blame you and me....

He works and plays well with others on Facebook, but I suppose we here at the Sphere can bring out the worst in him if we try hard enough.

Julie, your poem is stunning. Congratulations to you, Janice and Marcus.

Kudos, Julie, Janice, and Marcus!

Congratulations to all!