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Release date: September 13
Popcorn Press is pleased to announce the release of the anthology
EMPTY SHOES ~ Poems on the Hungry and the Homeless
edited by Patrick T. Randolph.

From the book:

Lady of the Rising Steam
          Philadelphia, November 1976
By Mary Jo Balistreri

Into the ice-edged darkness, my husband
and I hurried in the weak light of jaundiced
lanterns, design of old Ben Franklin.
Chestnut vendors huddled into themselves,
their fiery coals hissing and sparking.
The wind howled as we came around the
corner on Walnut street, ripped off my hand-
loomed scarf and sent it flying behind me.
I didn’t know it was gone until I heard the voice,
a wailing cry in the night. Turning, I saw
the woman crouched over the grate, red silk
scarf wildly thrashing from a withered hand.
She was unkempt, her face pocked and ridged
with wrinkles. Garments of neglect hung
on the skeletal frame as she hovered in the warmth
of the manhole’s rising steam. We stopped,
uncertain. She grabbed the hem of my coat.
Fear met the madness of her roving eye.

In the shelter of our car, she spoke in the cultivated
language of art and architecture, insisted that Louis
Kahn, the great commercial architect, was her son.
We talked close to an hour before we scrunched
some bills into her hand, gave her our address
and drove away. She bent back into the black
starless night and we re-entered our comfortable life.

Months later, we were stunned when a police captain
called to tell us she was dead, our name in her pocket,
the only clue to her life. A life we had forgotten.
I began to mourn this lady of the rising steam,
replaying that night, pondering the disconnect
in her, in us.

Thirty years later, she is still the face I don’t know,
and the face I’d know anywhere. She was the sphinx
at the crossroads, and though I failed the questions
they changed my life. Sometimes on a foggy night,
or walking the cracked sidewalks of my small town,
I see the open hand so near, the bent body I want
to call back.

Empty Shoes:Poems on the Hungry and the Homeless
By Patrick T. Randolph, Ellen Kort, Linda Aschbrenner, Sharmagne Leland-St. John,
Ellaraine Lockie, Jeri McCormick, Lester Smith, Ed Galing, Caroline Gill, M. Lee Alexander,
Madeleine Beckman, Krikor Der Hohannesian, Bruce Dethlefsen, Naomi Fast, Ruth Sabath Rosenthal,
Susan F. Kirch-Thibado, Cecilia Woloch, Denise Amodeo Miller, Bill Zavatsky, J. J. Steinfeld

151 poems about hunger and homelessness, from 80 poets, many with direct experience,
such as: Dori Appel, a Red Cross disaster volunteer; Mary L. Downs, a volunteer at LEAVEN; Barbara Flaherty,
former treatment center supervisor; Nancy Gauquier, formerly homeless in NY; Randall Horton, a Ph.D.
candidate who advocates for the homeless and prison reform, having been homeless and in prison;
Michele Leavitt, a teenage runaway in the 1970s, who later worked as a public defender; John J. Quirk,
a member of Chicago's Homeless Action Committee; Nancy Scott, a social worker who helps find housing;
and Julian I. Taber, who treated homeless veterans in the V.A.

Also included: Ellen Kort, Wisconsin's first Poet Laureate; Linda Aschbrenner, publisher of the first 100 issues
of Free Verse; Pushcart nominees Sharmagne Leland-St. John, Ellaraine Lockie and Mary Jo Balistreri;
Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets past president Jeri McCormick and current president Lester Smith.

All profits from this book go to programs helping the hungry and homeless.

246 pages
Format: Paperback
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN-10: 144951779X
ISBN-13: 978-1449517793
Product code: EMPG4
Price: $18.95

Popcorn Press
P.O. Box 12
Elkhorn, WI 53121

http://popcornpress.com/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=14

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