about something, berating the mall security guard about his crappy job performance. Yelling at him, while at the same time—yelling into her cell phone, obviously talking to the guard’s supervisor. I pass their argument on the way to the restroom. And sure enough, when I’m done, I pass by the Dead Sea Premier Beauty Store again, and she’s still at it. Still yelling. She’s wearing a short yellow dress with a puffy skirt—way too short for her 60+ body. And yellow boots to match the loud color of the sun she wraps her body in. Then, there’s the less-than-nuanced deep burgundy velvet jacket she wears over the yellow ensemble. She’s getting more angry by the second. Resembling a solar storm lost in a red-shift galactic cloud. What could have set this cosmic turbulence in motion? And why is the security guard so totally mute—as mute as the drab mall floor—as he’s being assaulted by the solar wind in yellow boots? I leave before the apocalypse ends.

Linda Nemec Foster

is the author of 14 published collections of poetry, including the critically acclaimed books Amber Necklace from Gdańsk (a finalist for the Ohio Book Award in Poetry; Louisiana State University Press, 2001), The Lake Michigan Mermaid with Anne-Marie Oomen (2019 Michigan Notable Book; Wayne State University Press, 2018), and two published by New Issues Press: Talking Diamonds (2009) and The Blue Divide (2021). In 2018, Cervena Barva Press published her book The Elusive Heroine: My Daughter Lost in Magritte.

Ms. Foster’s first full-length collection of prose poems, Bone Country (Cornerstone Press, 2023), has been nominated for 20 book awards including the Pulitzer Prize. Selections from the book have been honored in eleven competitions—including Fish Anthology’s Flash Fiction Contest in Ireland (2022) and Best Small Fictions 2022.

Her work has appeared in more than 350 magazines and journals such as The Georgia Review, New American Writing, Nimrod, North American Review, Quarterly West, Paterson Literary Review, Witness, and Verse Daily. Her poems have also been published in anthologies in the U.S. and Great Britain, and translated in Europe. Collaborations with visual artists, musicians, and composers have brought her poetry to new venues and audiences; her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries, set to music, and produced for the stage.

Ms. Foster has received more than 30 nominations for the Pushcart Prize and has been honored with awards from the Arts Foundation of Michigan, ArtServe Michigan, the National Writer’s Voice, and the Academy of American Poets. On multiple occasions, she has been awarded prizes in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest sponsored by Paterson Literary Review; in 2023, she won first prize in the prestigious competition. In 2015, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dyer-Ives Foundation for her poetry and advocacy of the literary arts in Michigan. She is co-founder of the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College, and was the first Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan (serving from 2003-2005).

Ms. Foster’s new book of poetry, The Lake Huron Mermaid, will be published by Wayne State University Press in October, 2024.

Author’s website: www.lindanemecfoster.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Bone Country by Linda Nemec Foster, reviewed by Michael Collins for North of Oxford (April 2023), which the journal named “One of the Most Read Book Reviews of 2023”

⚡ Linda Nemec Foster’s Bone Country, a micro-review by Clare MacQueen in Issue 18 of MacQueen’s Quinterly (April 2023); includes links to two prose poems from the book that were first published in Issue 15 of MacQ

⚡ Featured Guest: Linda Nemec Foster interviewed by Tim Green for Rattlecast 157 (29 August 2022)

⚡ Personal Diary: Same Day, Same Month, Different Year, microfiction by Ms. Foster in Coal Hill Review (Issue 29, Spring 2022)

⚡ The Talent of Knowing, a poem by Ms. Foster in homage to her dear friend Richard in Duende (Issue 2, Spring 2015)