CMW Journal

Emerging Writers
Vol. 5, No. 2

In this issue we are pleased to introduce eight distinctive new writers to our readers. Seven of these writers appear in our journal for the first time. The issue opens with award-winning poems by two Goshen College students, Kate Stoltzfus and Mary Roth. (Kate’s story “The Bunny Murders” appeared ...

  • Oracle
    Oracle
    by Kate Stoltzfus

    "Oracle" won first prize in the best free verse poem category from the Indiana Collegiate Press Association's Literary Magazine Competition in April 2013. The poem was published in Red Cents, 2012, the award-winning creative arts journal of the Goshen College English Department.

  • Elder Song
    Elder Song
    by Mary Roth

    "Elder Song" won second prize in the best free verse poem category from the Indiana Collegiate Press Association's Literary Magazine Competition in April 2013. The poem was published in Red Cents, 2012, the award-winning creative arts journal of the Goshen College English Department.

  • Five Poems on Travel
    Five Poems on Travel
    by Sarah Kortemeier

    From Ground Zero to Hiroshima, these poems create a network of perceptions, gently holding the globe as a whole while honoring silent spaces.

  • Two Poems on the Past
    Two Poems on the Past
    by Jennifer Jantz Estes

    These two poems draw on the author's recognition of her heritage within the farming and Mennonite communities of central Kansas.

  • Three Poems on Place
    Three Poems on Place
    by Julie Swarstad Johnson

    The first two poems below come from Pennsylvania Furnace, a manuscript which explores the history of the iron industry in central Pennsylvania.

  • The Club
    The Club
    by Lucy Bryan Green

    Cally studies the rack of free weights and notes that someone has swapped the twenty and twenty-five pound dumbbells. She rearranges them, then picks up the forty-pounders sitting beneath the weight bench and returns them to the rack. On her way back to the counter, she sees a gold thread ...

  • Surviving
    Surviving
    by Greta Holt

    After Leslie was killed, I walked the streets of Gaborone until the Botswana Bandanna caught my eye. Having nothing better to do, I went in to have my hair ‘tonged, frozen, wrapped, pineappled, ponied, braided or cockscrewed’ as the sign outside advertised. I asked the proprietress, a large woman wrapped ...

  • Up in the Air,  Junior Birdmen
    Up in the Air, Junior Birdmen
    by Nathan Malenke

    Buck’s biggest disappointment in his son’s ninth birthday wasn’t Jimmy’s lackluster response to his gift, but instead Jimmy’s decision to name his new hamster Armstrong.

    “Buzz. Buzz is a good name,” Buck had insisted until he had felt the pressure of Mary’s hand on ...