bill berry, CEO/publisher aaduna with mascot, "Cleopatra" (photo by Lisa Brennan) Cleopatra, a Sphynx feline, shared aaduna mascot status with her brother, Cairo, until he passed away last December due to congestive heart failure.  Whenever, I am working on aaduna (especially now as we do final edit and review on the next issue,) she routinely sits next to the laptop or on my lap and watches what I am doing, or she goes off into a cat trance.  This picture is worth 80 words because it conveys more than words do. * * * * * * Watch for aaduna's Summer 2017 issue - LAUNCHING SOON! _____________________________ aaduna   - a timeless exploration into words and images - is a globally read, multi-cultural, and diverse online literary and visual arts journal established in 2010.  Visit us at  www.aaduna.org  where we put measurable actions to our words. Help us build community!   Share with your fr...

Most of us in Auburn, NY, the surrounding regions and adjacent counties embrace the fact that poet and musician Ron Van Nostrand knows a lot about poetry and those folks who pen wonderful and enchanting verses.   When “ word, revisited ” started to line-up featured speakers for 2017, Ron enthusiastically and wisely recommended a colleague that he continues to be impressed with, and that assessment has lasted the length of time.    Elinor Cramer (photo provided) Elinor Cramer is a prolific poet who lives in Syracuse, NY where she also practices psychotherapy.   Ms. Cramer’s recent chapbook, Mayflower (published by Red Bird) is about an interlude of living in a cooperative apartment building with unlikely shipmates, and being part of the usual conflicts and extraordinary caring. Her full length collection, “She Is a Pupa, Soft and White” was published by WordTech Communications in 2011.   Her poems have appeared in “Stone Canoe,” “ Olive Tre...

"America United," via google images Another week is starting.  Possibly a new and different chapter in the USA’s pathway towards a more “perfect union.” Maybe. Chaya Bhuvaneswar shares, "Today: a hopeful conversation with a passing police officer, who was gracious and pale and stately in his well-pressed uniform, a "life-er" at least sixty years old, a fit sixty. I wished that there had been more cops like him in Charlottesville, to prevent violence. He said, "It's not a good time for the country right now, but you and me, we're going to make things better" even though I'd never seen him before. All he knew about me was that I'm here, American. "A citizen. Bringing to mind Claudia Rankine's magnificent poem, "Citizen", winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and joyously so.  "It's in that hope - that there is going to be a better time, that there will have to be a time we will look b...