Steel Toe Review: Volume 2 is now available.
Click here to buy it from Lulu.com
This anthology includes all of the poems and fiction that we published online last year. It also includes new never-before-published illustrations. The artists were asked to look over the selections and pick out pieces that inspired them. We thank all the illustrators who worked on this project: Scott Thigpen, Justin Wayne Butts, Stephen Smith, George Mostoller, and Jon Hooks. We would also like to thank the cover artist, Scott Thigpen, for all his help, not only for the cover itself but for allowing us to leverage that same work for our website redesign and for t-shirts and stickers used to seduce our Kickstarter backers. Of course, we’d like to thank the writers most of all, for we would be nowhere without them.
Table of Contents
Editor’s Note by M. David Hornbuckle
Fiction
“Blow Satchmo Blow” by Melissa Bobe
“Solomon Victorious” by Don Jennings
“Dogwood Dream” by Robert Walton
“A Nose for It” by Jan Wiezorek
“The Unsuccessful Biographer” by Dan Townsend
“Green Car Crash” by Lauren Eyler
“Snow Blind” by Terri Brown-Davidson
“Nurse Trina Comes to Call” by Frances Beck
“Texas Tiger Hunt” by Philip Sciranka
“Green Sandal Monologue” by JD Dehart
“Wild Horses” by Barry Basden
“Summer Hours at the P & O” by Jan Wiezorek
“Len Beastly Pauses” by Peter Fraser
“The Bone Picker” by Lindsey Walker
“Burn” by Daniel Davis
Hop the Pond (Excerpt) by Kerry Madden
“Abbott-O-Rabbit” by Bob Kalkreuter
“How to Rebuild” by David Rawding
“Half-Day Christmas” by James Madison Redd
Non-Fiction
“Don’t Tell” by Donna Thomas
“The Squidbillies: Continuing a Tradition of Othering Rural Americans” by William Matthew McCarter
“Wrestling with Jews” by Terry Barr
“Tributary” by Leah Alford
Doc (Excerpt) by Doc Adams and Burgin Matthews
Plays
“The Interruption” by Roy Endean
Poetry
“Off the Highway West of Birmingham” by Tobi Cogswell
“from pillar to post” by Johnny Coley
“Fate Forecast” by Changming Yuan
“A Dancer Named (Hurricane) Katrina” by Kenny Fame
“Straw and Swaddling” by Kenneth Gurney
“Attended Church that Day” by Kenneth Gurney
“Bendy Metal” by Jennifer Hollie Bowles
“Incoming Tide” by Jennifer Hollie Bowles
“Little Highs” by Jennifer Hollie Bowles
“A Fallacy of Comfort” by Ernest Williamson III
“Linda & the Lighter” by Ernest Williamson III
“Three Smokers” by Thomas N. Dennis
“Night on Bleak Mountain” by Howie Good
“Still Life with Grapes” by Howie Good
“Resigned to a Hungry Sonnet” by Karla Linn Merrifield
“Pauli’s at the End” by Allen Berry
“Coffin News” by Philip Theibert
“But Instead Has Gone Into Woods” by Lyn Lifshin
“I Was Four, in Dotted” by Lyn Lifshin
“Some Afternoons When Nobody was Fighting” by Lyn Lifshin
“The Bench Outside the Thrift Store” by Tobi Cogswell
“Day After Day on the Town” by Tobi Cogswell
“Before Cocktails” by Tobi Cogswell
“The Covenant” by Ken Poyner
“The Disappearance of the Beer Truck Driver” by Ken Poyner
“The Eighty Year Old Porn Star” by Ken Poyner
“A Love Poem to the Reaper” by Christopher Oie Keller
“You and I, No Accident” by John Grey
“The American South” by Danna Molly Weiss
“About the Bible Belt” by Danna Molly Weiss
“The Sister’s Supper Club” by Danna Molly Weiss
“Bottomless Ocean” by George Mostoller
“Radish (part one)” by George Mostoller
“Grandmother’s Attic” by George Mostoller
“The Book of Twilights” by Jéanpaul Ferro
“You Know Too Much About Flying Saucers” by Jéanpaul Ferro
“The Last University Students” by Jéanpaul Ferro
“The City’s Pediatric Emergency Room” by Bill Neumire
“Context” by Bill Neumire
“Saints” by P.S. Dean
“Gypsy Mary” by P.S. Dean
“Caps” by Thomas Alan Holmes
“Drawer” by Thomas Alan Holmes
“Riverwind, Magnolias” by Lyn Lifshin
“Porch/Night/Critters/Light” by J. N. Fishhawk
“Garbage Out” by J. N. Fishhawk
“Fall” by J. N. Fishhawk
Three Untitled Poems by Simon Perchik
“Sunday Walk” by Russell Evatt
“Cook au Gratin” by Russell Evatt
“Tourist Season” by Holly Day
“Dreaming” by Holly Day
“Cross Examination of Consciousness” by Jim Daniels
“Marine Life” by Mercedes Lawry
“Augur of Pendant” by Brent House
“Trilobites” by Matt Layne
We must express our immeasurable gratitude toward the donors who helped us raise the money to put this out: Crystal Dawn Baker , Glenny Brock, Allen Bunting, Jim Butler, Michele Carlo, Robin Castellanos, Bryn Chancellor, Amy Coenen, Kathy June Cotton, Cameron Enfinger, Nellie Eshleman, Kerry Freeman, Jason Hatfield, Sean Hogan, Ian Hoppe, Jon and Mary Anne Hornbuckle, Christopher Keller, Bryant Kingry, Sandra Kolankiewicz, Kenny Johnston, Richard LeComte, Craig Legg, Brett Levine, C.S. Lewis, Marty, Patricia J. Masterson, Trip Ogden, Kristina O’Quinn, Diane Annunziata Pigg, Elizabeth Pulos, Carl Sachs, Kristina Scott, Suzanne Sheridan, Bill Tanksersley, Kate Tankersley, Cheryl Ursin, Jaci Wells, Samuel Wilkes, and Jennifer Wolford.
Steel Toe Review: Volume 1 is also still available.
Click here to buy it from lulu.com.
We’d like to acknowledge the following individuals for their generous contributions to our Kickstarter campaign: L. Ward Abel, Katie Berger, Melissa Bobe, Jessie Carty, Amy Crosby, Angela DiPaolo, Madhu Ghosh, Jennifer Horne, Don Jennings, George Mostoller, Richard Peake, Ron Pullins, Shiela Snow-Croft, Jeff Spicer, and Lindsey Walker.
We would also like to thank Sean Hogan for his work on the cover, Stephen Smith and Justin Wayne Butts for their illustrations, and of course, all the authors.
