Chapbooks Year 2000 Series
Mountain Fireflies
by Jeff Mann

Music everywhere - the land, the wild - rich and beautifully written.
Strong and emotionally deep throughout. Jeff's poetry is both a
personal family history and a regional history in both word and the
musical language of Appalachia

Jeff grew up in southwest Virginia and southern West Virginia, receiving
degrees in English and forestry from West Virginia University.  He has
published in Kestrel,
The Laurel Review, Antietam Review, Christopher Street, Poet Lore, The
Hampden ?Sydney Poetry Review,
Spoon River Poetry Review and Prairie Schooner.  His collection of
poems Bliss won the 1997 Stonewall Chapbook Competition and was
published in 1998 by Brick House Books.  He teaches Appalachian
Studies and creative writing at Virginia Tech.

Selected in the previously published category,
25 pages, saddle stitch, offset print.
Price $4.00
DILLY BEANS
(for Amy)

On the last dog day, frantic
last-minute phone calls in search
of dillweed.  Violently red co-op
cayenne pepper. Smelly hot
vinegar, the imported generosity of garlic.

I return from a walk to find them
already canned, the Blue Lakes
I helped plant and pick: green
columns in brine, sunken cities,
crunchy fingerbones I will snap
delightedly between my teeth

on those lucky winter evenings
I am home and my sister chooses
to dole them out. This August
afternoon we sit about the kitchen
smiling, lifting gin and tonics
to abundance, to Bell jar autonomy,
waiting for the seals to pop.















New Territory

Part of word entered
the way a swimmer enters cold water
an inch at a time when the sun at 11 am
laminates leaves to sliver coins -
the same tinsel feel, water ringing up her legs
a band at a time. Toes spread gripping each
grain of sand slipping away from the pressure
of her weight dropping into float the deeper
her body enters water. Sky tilts over her,
trees on the far shore hold on Earth as
she lays her body back water holds
her up under the sky























Glue

As I lie on granite
shelf, butterfly dusts by

whitebark needles swinging
in breeze, I look up

to see the mountain

climbers shimmying up cracks
in wall. Past their shoulders is

all blue,
sky blue, nothing

but blue.









waterline

i stop and look up to a amazing view
of a cloud line high up on yosemite's
granite cliffs

it was startling
like looking up at the surface of a lake
like water had been magically held back

it was all very simple and peaceful
and easy somehow
ZERO
by Grace Marie Grafton

This has the sound and the space, the relaxing of language
to let something important come through.  The writing
is just a tool for the other to make an appearance.


Grace is a third-generation native Californian, grew up
in Fresno County and is a grandmother.  She has been published widely
including receiving first prize in The Bellingham Review?s competition,
nominated twice for The Pushcart Prize, published in Poetry Flash, The
Americans Reviews, Third Coast, Convolvulus, Coracle, Crab Creek
Review and others.  She teaches in the California Poets in the
Schools program.

Selected in the previously unpublished category,
27 pages, saddle stitch, offset printed.
Price $6.00
Out of Print
Where Manzanita
by James Downs

This is poetry of the mountains done at
times with a slight smirk and always with
deep questions and subtle answers.

James lives, works, and writes in
Yosemite National Park.  He hosts WORDS
a program for writers in Yosemite
and has previously published
three hand written chapbooks.

Editor's selection, 29 pages, saddle stitch, offset printed.
Price $6.00
Out of Print
uzumite
by john peterson

Poems of Yosemite, its wild forces and
its quiet spectacles, its grandeur for sure
but also its inner revelations.

John has been a visitor to Yosemite for many
years and worked for 5 years in Yosemite Valley
and the Wawona section of the Park.  He is also
the publisher and editor of Poetic Matrix.

24 pages, saddle stitch, offset printed.
Price $4.00
If poets and lovers of poetry don't
write, publish, read, and purchase
poetry books then we will have
no say in the quality of our
contemporary culture and no
excuse for the abuses of language,
ideas, truth, beauty, and love
in our cultural life.
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