Main Channel Voices. Spring 2006. ( POBOX 492) Winona, MN. 55987-0492 Winona, MN. $7.50 mcvsubmissions@mainchannelvoices.com

This is a solid small press poetry magazine with unpretentious production values, put out by Nancy K. Peterson and Carol Borzyskowski. There is a lot of very good poetry on these pages, with poets like: Richard Fein, Karla Houston, Paul Hostovsky, Charles Ries, and Patricia Wellingham-Jones gracing the magazine.

Here is a small gem of a poem by Carol Carpenter “Pushed by Passion,” that equates of all things: dirt with sex:

“Aunt Violet loved the smell of dirt,
the way it felt, the way
it crumbled in her hand.
She said it reminded her of sex…

Aunt Violet knew how those leaves had burst from bulbs,
How they licked nutrients from dirt. Those leaves
Wiggled upward, pushed by passion to reach the light.

Aunt Violet rose from the ground, her knees brown
With dirt, her flesh hot and sweaty. She had waited
Months for the vernal equinox, for that musky smell of love.”

In Charles P. Ries poem: “Below the Floor,” the poet tells how it is live in an “underground,” state of mind, with flights of vivid imagination:


“My ex-wife lives one floor above.
10,000 miles away.
My daughters with wings
Sail between heaven and earth.
Getting honey from the clouds
And iron from the brown soil.

This journal is well-represented by skillful, accessible, and sometimes visionary small press poets. Highly Recommended.

Doug Holder/Ibbetson Update/Somerville, Mass. /April2006.


My possessions are ideas.
My lovers names all rhyme.
My conquests are fictionalized.

The shadow side of home sweet home,
Where a giant prowls naked
Beneath the floor and ideas
Grow during intercourse.