Judith Skillman is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. She holds a masters in English literature from the University of Maryland and is the author of twenty collections of poetry and a "how to": Broken Lines-The Art & Craft of Poetry (Lummox Press). The recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust, Skillman's work has appeared in LitMag, Poetry, Sewanee Review, The Iowa Review, Threepenny Review, Zyzzyva, We Refugees, and other journals and [...]. Skillman has been a Writer in Residence at the Centrum Foundation in Port Townsend, Washington, and the Hedgebrook Foundation on Whidbey Island. She is the editor, with Linera Lucas, of When Home Is Not Safe: Writings on Domestic Verbal, Emotional, and Physical Abuse, from Exposit Books, and a faculty member at Hugo House in [...] a visual artist, Ms. Skillman paints expressionist works in oil on canvas. She is interested in feelings engendered by the natural world. Her art has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Artemis, The Penn Review, and other journals. -[...]

Table of Contents

Preface by Judith Skillman and Linera Lucas

Introduction by Judith Skillman and Linera Lucas

I-Home

Heidi Seaborn

Weather

Drafting a Flight Plan

Jennifer Jenkins

Hit Me

Susan April

The Ballet

Howie Good

Anger Is an Arrow

Stick Figure Family

The Secret Goldfish

Emma Brousseau

What's True of the Garden Pea

Wren Tuatha

Fissure

Chelsea Clammer

Balcony, 3 a.m.

Nina Fosati

Her Father's Daughter

RK Taylor

holy / days

Lynn Magill

You Smiled

Michael

Cynthia Steele

Words "Too Dark" for the Father's Day Edition

Kurt Olsson

Packs

Drowned

The Best of a Bad Year

J. Flynn Doncaster

Ever Closer

II-Trauma

Lindsay Erdman

Abroad

LeeAnn Olivier

Kintsugi

Aimee Parkison

Girl in Rape Kit

Victoria Elizabeth Ruwi

A Slice of Summer

Mary Ellen Talley

Wine Song

How to Survive Abuse

A Steady Whip

Ogu Chukwuebuka Kizito

Voices from the Streets

Carolyne Wright

Mandamientos: Lover to Beloved

I Forgive

Paul Rousseau

Kitchen Table

Jonaki

It Wasn't the First Time He Hit Me

Darlene Goetzman

Reading the Lines

Anne Spollen

From Where I Live Now

Izzy Wilson

Why Are They Fighting?

Christina Hoag

When His Words Became a Drug

Amelia Goldman

The Fixer

Sally Quon

Beginnings

Gayelene Carbis

His face Right in My Face

The Weight of Words in Our Hands Like Water

This is What Happened

Kelsey Brown

A Game of Cat and Mouse

Polly Buckingham

Excerpt-The Queen in the Mirror

III-PTSD

Tina Barry

Pine

Roxanne James

Counting Raindrops

Lillo

Pearls Before Swine

Sally Showalter

Stone Lies

H.M. Clark

Fire Line

Danielle Hark

I Keep Secrets Stashed in a Lock Box

Abandoned Doll

Cold Sheets

Secrets Stashed in Tiny Orange Pill Bottles

Lexy Courneya

Memoir Excerpts

Memoir Excerpts II

Joyce Hayden

The Out of Body Girl

Marjorie Maddox

Eiffel Tower

On a Hot Summer Night for Revenge

The Truth of Lies, The Lies of Truth

Sharp.

IV-In Retrospect

Susan Landgraf

The Woman Who Held Her Tongue

Carol Smallwood

House of Cards

A Picnic

Rosanne Ehrlich

­Two-Year Slide in Brooklyn Heights

Linera Lucas

Saddle Up

Signal

Lindsey Heatherly

Weaving Rope

Robert Kingett

My First Online Love

Alice Ting

Tug of War

Judith Skillman

Trellis

Years Later

Jeff Burd

Lost in Transmission

Mary Zelinka

Last Supper

Sailor Holladay

Red Flag

Alison Stone

Heretic

Tina Kelley

Pushed Out of the Chevy, She Adjusts Her Miniskirt

Meggie Royer

Twenty Years of Rain

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments of Previously Published Work

Notes

About the Contributors

Index