JEFFERY BEAM's (lament and song & shadow & music & essences) fourth book, Visions of Dame Kind,appeared in Fall 1995. A history of The Jargon Society and a testimony to his mentor, Jargon's founder, Jonathan Williams, is in press at theNorth Carolina Literary Review. Two manuscripts, The Beautiful Tendons (Queer Poems), and What We Have Lost, seek generous and skillful publishers. With a poetic cosmos inhabited by the likes of Leonard Cohen, Tuscany, William Carlos Williams, Bar-B-Que, and Edith Sitwell, he waits for a sign.

DENISE DUHAMEL's (elvis's twin & all the outcasts from fourth grade) Girl Soldier was published this year by Garden Street Press. Her chapbook, How the Sky Fell, won the Pearl Editions contest. Ms. Duhamel's work has been included in such magazines as The American Poetry Review, Wormwood Review,Sheila-Na-Gig, and OBR3.

IZZY GAGE (when i look in the mirror i see veronica lake & a biology lesson on a.m. radio & there's always a note being played somewhere & i should tell you) is a second year graduate student in the Masters in English Creative Writing program at the University of New Hampshire.

KEVIN MCGOWIN (choral warnings & thylacines on film), formerly of Gainesville, Florida, is currently the Assistant Fiction Editor at Black Belt Press in Alabama. Mr. McGowin's work has appeared in over 100 magazines, including OBR, in which, he says, he's proudly appeared three times.

C. EARL NELSON (rust & the not yet famous poet) resides in Gainesville, Florida, and edits Godhead is Dead, an electronic poetry magazine. Mr. Nelson's poems have appeared in numerous small reviews, including subUrban Terrain, Happy Kitty,Mea Culpa, and the electronic magazines Zero City, Cross Connect, and SoITGoes, in which the poem"the not yet famous poet" was first published. Despite the rumors, Mr. Nelson has never been implicated in either of the Kennedy assassinations.

JEFFREY JOE NELSON (snakes among the children & beatrice at the cliffs) and his dog spent much of the previous year travelling among the States. On occasion, they stumbled through Chapel Hill. Why? "The dog likes the bars."

JENNIFER M. PIERSON (letters from the evaporated city & lessons) was born in New York City in a Times Square hotel. Raised by nuns and old vaudevillians, she takes a seriously comic view of religion. Moondog was her first mentor, and she secretly wishes to return to that sidewalk in front of Carnegie Hall. Ms. Pierson's poems have appeared in Half Tones to Jubilee, Metropolitan,Voices, and OBR. She has recently finished her Masters Thesis, a book of poems entitled Ancient with Waiting.

C. C. RUSSELL's (i'm & deidra and the hard sudden snow) poetry has appeared throughout the U.S. and Canada in magazines such as The Black Fly Review, Hiram Poetry Review, Mobius, The Plastic Tower, and Cotton Gin. Mr. Russell's work, his first short story publication, will appear in OBR5.

EVAN SMITH's (crossing lee st. & voice & revival) poetry has appeared in a few publications,including DotDotDot, Kiosk, and Mudfish. He also has produced audio recordings of his work with musician Chris Clodfelter. Mr.Smith is a native of North Carolina and currently lives in Syracuse, NY.

TERRY SPOHN's (the postcard & the death of trees & decatur & near the norwood station) work has appeared in Ascent, North American Review, Mississippi Review, Grub Street and other literary magazines, the anthologies Espresso Poetry, Secrets and Dreams, and most recently, The Party Train: An Anthology of North American Prose Poetry.

CHRIS STAFFORD (virginia and crazy & steady downpour & wing tips), well, you know, puts together the Cotton Gin magazine in Greensboro, North Carolina. Meanwhile, he draws his pay from the local YMCA, all the while working on songs and poems and a crazy story about a band of musicians in South Carolina (but its not Hootie). To paraphrase Chip McKenzie, his hero and brother, "I stumble with my pen." Whats the word? Free bird. Hold on.

C. E. WHITEHEAD (preparing for armageddon & judith, taking leave) has studied with poets John Peck, Richard Pevear, Donald Justice, and with the fiction writer Padgett Powell. Ms. Whitehead was Poetry Editor of Pegasus at Mount Holyoke College. Her poem, "The Hitchhikers," appeared in OBR3.