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“I am thankful for a poet who can thrust the worry, the guilt and too much caring out—and let in some sun, new air, some frank clarity through the sealed-up windows we use to protect ourselves. Be generous to yourself as a reader and add these poems into your day, your life, too.”—Ellen Stone Read …

It begins: “One of the bright spots of small press publishing during the decade of the 2020s has been Roadside Press and its consistently impressive offerings. While in the Introduction to Roadside Assistance the editors insist that the anthology is not meant as a “best of” or “greatest hits” collection, the prose and poetry pieces included in …

This podcast is an extension of WNIJ’s Poetically Yours weekly segment. Richard Vargas is featured in this segment. Vargas’s Rockford-inspired poetry collection, “The Screw City Poems,” was released on July 11. In this episode, he talks about his writing style, his early years in Compton, California, and what led him to Rockford. TO LISTEN, VISIT: …

first published in Rat’s Ass Review https://ratsassreview.net/?page_id=4452 ON HAVING NO HEAD: JOHNNY CORDOVA’S THE BROKEN BUDDHA ( ROADSIDE PRESS, 2026 ). One of the best books on Buddhism I ever read is Douglas Harding’s On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious. I was reminded of this when reading Johnny Cordova’s forthcoming first book of poetry, …