Cool breezes dance among the katydids’ notes in a waning August serenade, mingling with moonlight and darkness’s whispered breath. Some ancient perfume wafts on the fabric of night. Above, arching branches frame this perfect fullness stamped on the heavens for the briefest of songs.

Paused 

immobile, 
a nighttime engraving 

belies the movement 
in breeze and song 
and moon. 

Enveloped in the gleaming quiet, old dreams and friends and horizons unfold backwards before me, nesting dolls illuminated by this moment of moonlight and musk and melody. Yesterday, only a heartbeat ago, tomorrow, only a heartbeat away.

Summer 

slips, 
fades in a whisper 

leaving ghostly impressions 
of the permanence 
of light. 

—Long-Listed Finalist in MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge #2

Julie A. Sellers

was born and raised in the Flint Hills near the small town of Florence, Kansas. Those great expanses of tallgrass prairie and reading fueled her imagination, and Julie began writing at an early age. Her debut novel, Ann of Sunflower Lane (Meadowlark Press, 2022), was selected as a Recommended Title by the Kansas National Education Association’s Reading Circle Commission, and it was a finalist for the 2023 High Plains Book Award in Young Adult. Her collection Kindred Verse: Poems Inspired by Anne of Green Gables (Blue Cedar Press) was released in 2021.

Julie is the author of three academic books on Dominican popular music and identity (McFarland, 2004, 2014, 2017), and her creative prose and poetry have appeared in publications such as 105 Meadowlark Reader (#7, 2024; #6, 2023; #4, 2022; #2 and #1, 2021); Kansas Time + Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Little Balkans Press, 2017); The Very Edge: Poems (Flying Ketchup Press, 2020); and Cagibi.

Julie was the Kansas Author’s Club Prose Writer of the year in 2020, 2022, and 2023, and the Overall Winner in the Kansas Voices Writing Contest in Prose (2017, 2019, 2024) and in Poetry (2022). After living in several states and countries, she is happy to make her home in Atchison, Kansas.

Author’s website: https://julieasellers.com