Middle West Press

 “Every poet,” warns journalist and poet  Randy Brown , “has a heart filled / with shrapnel.” In his new chapbook  SO FRAG & SO BOLD , the former U.S. Army “brigade staff jester” takes aim at endless wars, parent traps, social media, and stodgy religious beliefs. It’s an iconoclastic cluster-munition that’s bursting with more hundreds of haiku, aphorisms, philosophical puzzles, and other experiments in pithy and pulpy poetry. Brown’s careful constructions of line-breaks and language are intended to variously provoke chuckles, empathy, and thought. “Any poem is a device,” he writes, “improvised to explode with meaning [...] ignited by a trigger / word.” In addition to other accolades, Brown is a three-time poetry finalist in the  Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Awards , administered annually by the Chicago-based literary journal  Line of Advance . His debut collection, Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire , was awarded a 2016 Gold Medal distinction from the Military W

Inspired by great works of visual art, writing, and sculpture, as well as small insights alongside her child and dog, a seasoned poet and spouse of a U.S. Marine explores through poetry the invisible forces and frictions at work in our lives. “In her word-experiments with the unseen forces at work in our lives—the pushes-and-pulls of parenting, the moments of quiet natures observed, the energies stored and released by objects of art both great and small—Lisa Stice captures an essential and modern magic,” says Middle West Press editor-publisher Randy Brown. “If you’ve ever been a military kid, parent, or spouse—regardless of age or era—you’ll find a welcome home in her words,” says Brown. Lisa Stice is the author of the previously published poetry collections Uniform (Aldrich Press, 2016), Permanent Change of Station (Middle West Press, 2018), and the poetry chapbook Desert (Prolific Press, 2018). Her work appears in print and on-line journals worldwide. She is a poetry editor for I