“The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on.”
— Emily Dickinson

SHARK REEF was launched in June of 2001 to give voice to emerging as well as established writers of the San Juan Islands of Washington State. Now, on the eve of its tenth anniversary and in collaboration with Heron Moon Press, SHARK REEF offers the same opportunity to all serious writers committed to producing original writing of high quality — regardless of where they live. Since future issues will focus much more on prose work, we are pleased to publish, in this last edition of the “old” SHARK REEF, a special issue of poetry only.

In this edition, you’ll find a woman reading Jung late at night; an answer to the question “why write?”; a poem about impermanence disguised as praise of skunk cabbage; an ode to Roget’s thesaurus; a paean to a father’s Zippo lighter; and more. All of the poems vividly — and imaginatively — tell a short story. The fact that poetry is shorter than prose doesn’t mean the writer hasn’t labored over every single word or imbued each piece with deep and rich meaning. To the contrary, because of poetry’s spareness, every single word must be the right word in the right place and the language chosen for sound, suggestive power and literary technique. We think these poems by Maya Borhani, Jill McCabe Johnson, Elizabeth Landrum, Kay Mullen, Kim Secunda and Paul Walsh more than fill the bill.

Our featured visual artist for this special issue is Susan Slapin, a painter, photographer and poet whose chapbook Island Passages is a collection of sepia photography and poetry and whose work has been published in magazines in Ojai, California, and Lake Oswego, Oregon.

We invite you to read about how SHARK REEF is changing and about Heron Moon Press by going to the “About” links on our website. Please review them and then send us your work. We can’t wait to read it.

Write on!