Free Verse
Marsh River Editions

Catch and Release
Chasing Saturday Night
in search of "Green Dolphin Street"
Lines on Lake Winnebago
Loose Change
Mead
Saying Grace
Slightly Off Q
Something Near the Dance Floor
Waiting For Beethoven
Walnut from Waterloo

"Rubber Bands" by June Nirschl

Her world was bound by rubber bands,
binding canceled checks, grocery coupons,
careful questions for the doctor.

Her world stretched
to home and family, baking and cleaning, fretting and wishing,
sheepshead sometimes when she worked the family bar.

If there were joys, we never saw them,
only felt the sting of rubber bands snapping,
pent up anger released upon our heads.

Packages of rubber bands collected over years,
their number expanding,
moved from house to apartment and finally a single bed.

At the end all she had left to rubber band
was organized, squeezed into the drawer of a night stand,
sticks of gum and get well cards held immobile by a slender strand.

She kept a rubber band upon her wrist
Even as her life force ebbed, saying
I don't know when I'll need one.

Slightly Off Q is a gathering of three women poets who share a common locale and a passion for poetry. Individually and in community, they give us poems that are skillful and direct, rich with astonishing grace and generous detail. It is an offering of love, longing, loss, desire and memory. This is a collection that is both poignant and joyful. These women have a sensibility and a naturalist's eye for the world around them and have thus produced a book of deeply-felt poems. Slightly Off Q is a memorable reading experience. With a resounding expression of joy, I want to shout, Read this! Carry this book with you. It is beautiful. It is real.

-Ellen Kort
Wisconsin State Poet Laureate
and author of twelve books

In this lively collection of poems, Door County neighbors June Nirschl, Nancy Rafal, and Judy Roy take us into landscape and their lives. Nirschl joins the Buddha-breasted swimmers at the Y, Rafal travels Door County roads with a country singer, Roy evokes the fog and tamaracks of place, the dark rooms of history. We hear their different voices--lyric, humorous, stark--celebrate grandmothers, teachers, daughters; face aging, betrayal, and death; find love. Bound together in this chapbook, they include us in a deeper appreciation of place and people.

-Robin Chapman
author of The Way In (Tebot Bach) and The Only Everglades in the World (Parallel Press)

There's nothing off about this collection. With fine attention to detail, poets Nirschl, Rafal, and Roy write of Door County's changeable weather, individual griefs and joys, family histories and scenic beauty. They bring their corner of the world alive, and make it familiar even to those of us who live far from County Q.

-Judith Strasser
author of Black Eye: Escaping a Marriage, Writing a Life
by Terrace Books/University of Wisconsin Press