The Steiny Road Poet (a.k.a. Karren Alenier) usually doesn’t submit work to publications where she has been published before. However, she finds herself drawn to Doug Stuber’s Heron Clan anthologies and has been published annually there since 2020 in volumes VII, VIII, IX and recently X. The books, numbering over 200 pages of poetry by mostly poets she has never read before, are handsomely produced. They are promoted by Stuber on his weekly Sunday afternoon Zoom readings.
In a way, these volumes, in English, which often include poets who are not United States citizens, seem oasis often for unexpected poetic gems. Poets of all levels are represented. Stuber, Ed Lyons and librarian Richard Smyth developed the project in Rochester, NY in 1998 and has included such luminaries as Ilya Kaminsky.
Here’s one poem published in Heron Clan X
a mother in selma
by Karren L. Alenier
there’s a mother
in Selma Alabama
I reached her
during a phone bank
an eleventh hour
action to flip
a Republican seat
in Congress she said
no one cares
about my vote
in one ear I spoke
I do they do in the other
ear her baby fussed
later I thought your
child will thank you
for joining the
community to elect
a better human being
but then I said
god bless you
and I could feel
her hanging on
with her life
The collection is published by Katherine James Books, but does not appear regularly in Amazon listings. For more information contact KatherineJamesBooks@gmail.com.
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