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DONNA HILL Donna Hill lives in British Columbia, Canada with her three sons. She has been seriously writing poetry for a few years now, drawing much of her writing style for realism from life around her, her family, and her work as a child educator. She currently is poetry editor of Erosha, an online literary journal of the erotic. Donna's poems have appeared in print issues of One Dog Press, Poems Niederngrasse, Poetry Motel and Peshekee River and have also been published by numerous literary webzines. Her poem, "my hands write when I need them to," took first prize in Comrades first annual poetry contest, while "the moon is a sliver tonight" placed seventh. Both poems are slated to appear in Comrades' upcoming anthology, 2001. Donna's first book, Dimensional Dreams, is available through emailing her at [email protected] or Mt. Aukum Press in CA. at [email protected]t

meeting of the mind © donna hill was there ever enough time to celebrate her hair? long beach sand strands now left behind strewn with tears of dry ice on the beauty shop floor for lack of any other reason than eighteen weeks of chemo therapy, to begin on Tuesday a challenge to predestination this gradual approach to female baldness versus waking to a pillow overlaid with hair home again, a meeting of the minds like rounding a corner, stubbing your toe on the wooden leg of confrontation in the mirror she, the wise mature woman bows to a schoolgirl duckling gaping, unforgiving two invasive surgeries, and it's all about the hair she confides to me while I can only cradle her with the angle of my words as if to make a difference tear in your eye © donna hill as our skins dissolve layer by layer feathering between love and sorrow bidding one more goodbye not far from here © donna hill a lady in a pink jogging suit stands at the curb. under one arm, the blonde wooden crutch she leans on as if leaving something behind. the boss she's tired of training to be a leader, the ex husband, deported to England on charges of fraud, the pensive fears of her children being kidnapped. in her other hand, a hose and nozzle she sprays into the street. her brightly clad fleece legs speckled in mud, frigid as the tears from her fingertips that bounce the pavement in disarray. dark clouds crowd over her home like testy rush hour passengers, while inside family members huddle, await the news. determined, she clutches the running hose and as we drive by, my son can only ask, why - it's raining out. a receptionist called Hope © donna hill spring melts one silver droplet at a time, rolls down the single lime green daffodil stem rooted aside the urban cement door step, looking as tenaciously out of place as she feels. her hand on the shining glass door of the sperm bank, her meek entrance guised in a kind of wary confidence, like kneaded clay under the potter's hands. no man has yet to stroll her red carpet visions of the perfect father, maybe this finally, is the timely place for all her innately driven dreams. though still she wonders. just how much obscurity amid sterile tubes, is bound to fall landmark to danger. Fernando would rather be home © donna hill the phone calls seemed to go well all three and a half hours it's not as if he hadn't done this before dated women but in his younger days before life and death of a marriage and best friend resorting to newspaper ads had not been a working option now that carnal urge had all but perched itself on his shoulders mischievously whispering back and forth between ears he thought why not after all, her voice had a certain Lauren Hutton quality to it that ripe simplicity he was partial to hopes for love at first sight another hollywood fantasy crumbled like a roasted marshmallow caught on fire shortly after she walked through the door and their conversation began he knew knew he'd rather be home eating his favorite; grape popsicle with a knife and fork I still cannot write about it © donna hill find that warm tavern in my mind familiar place, lit by memories of your faded fluorescent pink hair smiles and red stained fingers when last I saw you in our kitchen helping to slice strawberries store our summer's yield still can't find the right words to fold like tissue paper around images of your dad's upturned car below on the tracks be opened like tattered goodbyes to a thirteen year old boy instead, what jars my mind tonight when thinking of you again, my friend, is how long those wheels might have spun like in the movies [email protected]

CHARLOTTE GAI MAIR Charlotte Gai Mair is one of David Jackson's editors at Artvilla, and has designed and maintained Web pages for Elisha Porat, Charlotte's Web, Shoptillyadrop Virtual Mall, BarNone Coffeehouse. She is a former singer-musician ; born of Irish decent family named Coughlan , February 14/49, presently residing on the lower mainland of British Columbia, Canada. Always a fighter and very passionate by nature, she has never allowed her life's circumstances to pull her down. It is in fact lifes journeys and episodes that have inspired this writer not to give up and to make known her love of life through her writing and poetic endeavors. In a period of three years she has written over 200 poems with almost 100 of them being published in various Antholigies, Newsletters, Newpapers and many websites in Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland and across the United States. ANTHOLOGIES: Poetic Voices of America - Sparrowgrass Poetry Forum W. Virginia, USA - 1999 *ISBN 0-923242-64-3 Crossroads - Iliad Press Sterling Heights - MI, USA - 1999 Feelings - Cader Publishing Sterling Heights - MI, USA - 1999 *ISBN 1-885206-69-0 President's Recognition for Literary Excellence, MI, USA - 2000 No Love Lost - Hidden Brook Press Toronto, Ontario, CD - 1999 No Love Lost II - Hidden Brook Press Toronto, Ontario CD - 2000 The Open Window - Hidden Brook Press Toronto, Ontario, CD - 1999 *ISBN 0-9699598-4-2 The Open Window II - Hidden Brook Press Toronto, Ontario, CD - 2000 Illuminations lll - Hidden Brook Press Toronto, Ontario, CD - 1999 Cherished Poems of the Western World - Famous Poets Hollywood, Ca, USA - /99 * ISBN 0-96414989 NEWSLETTERS: Wildlife Rescue Association of British Columbia Burnaby, BC, CD - 1999 * ISSN 1188-5106 Poemata - The Canadian Poetry Association Toronto, Ontario - 1999 * ISSN 1203-6595 NEWSPAPER: Choices Toronto, Ontario - 1999 * 107-3295-11 WEBSITES - Published on multilpe Websites including Canada & United States, Britain & Ireland - 1999 & 2000: Dublin Writer's Workshop, - Ireland Deep Underground - Alternative Poetry Site, U.K Miss Nubean Queen - United States Lady In The Lake - Los Angelos, U.S.A. Above Ground Testing - Trenton, Ontario, Canada Survivor's Poetry Site SELF-PUBLISHED CHAPBOOK: The First Fifty Years. Authored and illustrated by Charlotte Gai Mair, Published by Charlotte Mair @ Hidden Brook Press, 412 - 701 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada - 1999 HONORABLE MENTIONS: The Reflection - The Spring 1998 Iliad Literary Awards Program Peace - The 1998 Nature Awards Program Message in the Sand - The 1998 Browning Awards Program Forget Me Not - The 1998 Longfellow Awards Program The First Fifty Years - Chapbook Competition 1998 BOOK REVIEWS: David Ingram - Channel 4 Talk Show Host, Book Reviewer *1999 Ward Kelley - Writer - Indianapolis , USA *2000 People's Poetry Newsletter - Toronto, Canada *2000 Recently-written Book review for Elisha Porat: http://www.artvilla.com/mair/poratrvw.htm TELEVISION INTERVIEW: Mike McCardell - Newsreporter, BCTV News, Channel 8, Burnaby, BC *1999

Drink © Charlotte Gai Mair Even if I see no road I will walk and if I cannot feel the road I will talk and when the tongue has ceased I will think again I say ... when thought is gone I will ever drink from the cup of life My Daughter, My Life © Charlotte Gai Mair Thorns dig deeply at your side Vinegar seeps into open wounds Waves smash rocks . in persistence For now, my daughter Become the sand, Allow cool water to shape you . in the artistry of life Know life On the wake, I'll ride for you Take the blow and Cradle your child within, Who has fallen and scraped her knee Flow and grow Let calm of mournful skies Comfort . crystal pearled eyes And know there is peace to be found Blow, blow feel the wind Breathe the air . know you still have life And that You are as always My own little girl Closing Flight © Charlotte Gai Mair As sand is to ocean washing on its shores Love is to this heart an idle threat Rushing, pulsing, waves reveal Gibraltar across vast waters the might of rock is set to ease a solo gull from flight - no more Here within this wreck of ship in torrent foam and brine of night No treasures hide themselves in crested shoals Sands are picked pristine unmoved clear down to the bone alighted gull concedes restitution calming heart in song Riviera Paradise Drive © Charlotte Gai Mair *This is the poem that got me into the Stevie Ray compilation book to begin with .. his awe inspiring music piece .. Riviera Paradise .. Yes! There's something magical about Stevie Ray while flyin' down River Road summer afternoon -- top down to the tune of Riviera Paradise brings out a wanderlust enhances scent of sea visions of cranes in flight -- lifts -- softens harshness of day scanning marshlands of green cottonwood fairies in thousands drifting in slow mo over lines of colour purple rows of golden wildflowers -- bulrushes surrounding boat skeletons lingering on the shore to house families of swallows Then -- one quick pluck - - guitar strings lift -- then bend and cry to even higher grounds of sedation as fingers ease in play sparking hope in the rush of smooth music *The Real Deal - - Stevie Ray Vaughan [email protected]

MARY ANGELA NANGINI Mary Angela Nangini is the author of "Woman in Exile" (1991) and "My Ontario Beautiful" (1995), published by Mellen Poetry Press. She is also co-author of the play/musical ~With a Bang or a Whimper, which she directed and choreographed for the Tenth World Congress on Gifted and Talented Education. It was performed during the conference "Gifted Globe" at the Royal York Hotel, Toronto, in 1993. She has written a theory on The Four Phases of Being called "Being Metaphor" - A Transformative Learning Theory on Human Poetential and Its Shadow: The Phenomenon of Abundance and Its Antithesis - Entropy (unpublished 1992). The development of the metacognitive strategy called "Being Metaphor" (1989) evolved through her poetry, and which is, at its best, the language of the metaphysical: "My poetry has helped me develop this strategy through the transformation of negative energy into positive forces of learning for the celebration and renewal of personal energy. Its usefulness is to develop human potential and harness the human shadow. I have since discovered that the technique utilizes The Cosmogenetic Principle (Swimme & Barry, 1992) consisting of the three powers in the universe: auotopoeisis, differentiation and communion." Awards Mary Angela has recently completed an MTS(Masters in Theological Studies) at St. Augustine's Seminary of Toronto (2000); Doctoral Studies, completed at OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) 1995; M.A. (1989) University of Connecticut - Storrs; B.Ed. (1985) and B.A. (1971) York University; B.Ed. (1978) University of Toronto. She is the past co-president of EdGO and TAGO, the organizations for educators of the gifted in Ontario and is a member of COG (Consortium of Ontario Gifted organizations). She is an artist and her artwork "Oscar and Jake" was chosen for the Brampton Arts Calendar 1997, and has won a "Juror's choice award for her pastel drawing "Memories", 1995. Included in the "International Who's Who in Poetry and Poets Encyclopedia" (1997), Brampton, ON. Additional Information Mary Angela has participated in these recent events: *Poetry reading at Gage Park in Brampton during the Summer Concerts in the Park, August 14, 2001. *Feautred in the Great Lakes Logia anthology as a member of A Collective Exhibition of Art, Poetry and Writing on the Great Lakes. *Poetry reading on July 12, 2001 at Harbourfront, Toronto. Associate member and Open Mic reader with the League of Canadian Poets.

His Shadow © Mary Angela Nangini The shadow Of his body Thrills my senses I slip silently Into its depths I expand My breath Draws in His countenance His essence I dance Inside The immensity Of his presence His person Without bodies Our minds Are one Feeling Through the eyes Of our souls Erasing borders Of skin and bones Into the centre Of his being Being mine. On abuse... © Mary Angela Nangini from Voices of Victims Abuse lingers and lingers the memory is slim deep rises quickly to the surface and sucks up energy used up to fend off buried hurt carved in letters called my name and i flail my sharpened nails at nothing a cavernous air-hole because its not out there but in here with me Wiseacre © Mary Angela Nangini If only we knew what we know when we would We wouldn't. But.... we don't So we do. Then .... we know And wish we didn't. Instead © Mary Angela Nangini Being cast the blind line makes the eye see the lie. Instead We turn a blind eye to the lie. Sabbath © Mary Angela Nangini I let myself drop Into the heart of trust Wounded I lay still and wait to be replenished Anchored even as I let go Tethered even as I am free [email protected]

CONNIE MARCUM WONG Aloha, My name is Connie Marcum Wong. I have always had a love for poetry, especially after age 35. I have been a flight attendand for 31 years. I live in Hawaii with my husband Michael and our 15 year old daughter Michelle. I am inspired to write by my family and the beauty of just looking out my bedroom window in the morning. One of my favorite poets is Lord Byron. The Aura Photo (small version shown above) was taken three years ago when I started my Aura Photography business. The green color denotes teaching, healing, and a lifestyle change, all of which I am involved in. Each color has a different meaning and tells about the physical, emotional, and spiritual well being of an individual. I find the Aura camera to be very accurate and I enjoy my second career very much, for it affords me time to write and read poetry. I have been sharing my poetry with others' since I started my own poetry club in November 1999: Poetry for Thought. Poetry For Thought can be found at my website, A Poet's Haven.

Myrrha's Tears © Connie Marcum Wong Oh Adonis, How brightly shines your pride. Whence your shame you keep from view, Hidden deep inside. Though you were born not of the womb But through your mothers blessed bloom. Myrrha, once a goddess, now a lovely tree. She stands so tall in sunlight and cries so silently. Your mothers golden tears From all her tortured pain, Fall slowly from her limbs, Like heavy laden drops of rain. For her arms, now limbs, Unable to hold her child, Because of Cinyras' vengeance Upon his child he had defiled.. All is not lost for Myrrha, Although in her sorrow she must remain. For her tears provide us with health and happiness, And laughter once again. *Folklore: Well over 2,000 years before the baby Jesus received Myrrh as a gift, it was one of the most desired and most expensive items in the world. According to Roberta Wilson: "In Greek mythology, Aphrodite forced the goddess Myrrha into an incestuous relationship with her father, Cinyras. Cinyras avenged the act by turning his daughter into a myrrh tree. When the tree sprouted its blooms, their child Adonis was born. The resinous drops that exude from cuts in the trees bark were said to be Myrrha's tears." Pele, Goddess of Fire © Connie Marcum Wong Pele's volcanic lava glows In the evenings twilight hour. A passion filled desire, Surging with her power. She triumphs over man As she adds unto the land. Apathetic, she reaches out to claim, Those who dare to touch her hand. Gracefully she moves as quietly she creeps, On her burning path toward the sea. Wanting, all she covers she keeps.... Her steamy kisses she saves for the sea. Sorrow has followed Pele All throughout her years. She leaves behind her sadness In her tiny ebony tears. Her majesty and wonder Leave me breathless in her sight. I am drawn toward her beauty, And consumed by her delight! Moon Maiden © Connie Marcum Wong Oh lovely Maiden of the Moon What strange powers do you posses? For in your different phases, you surrender, Or may steal away my happiness. Dearest Lunar Lady... When you are dark and new, I feel your grief has it's grip on me, And I am filled with darkness too. Then gradually You wax into the light. And I again, Enjoy your beauty bright. When you fill the evening sky With your loving light, You may draw shy lovers into a kiss, Or cause two foes to fight! [email protected]