Finishing Line Press

06/01/2026

TO ORDER: https://finishinglinepress.com/product/the-regulars-by-tracy-rice-weber/

Through the voice of a single public school teacher trying to make rent in a trendy urban neighborhood, The Regulars delivers late night poems that might feel like tuning your dial back to an impetuous time of sweet static, where nostalgia is savored cold from the box the morning after. Mic, , , ,VA, , Bartender, Poetry, CogansInstantArt, 1990s

Tracy Rice Weber is a poet and writing coach for Second Helping Studio who lives in Coastal VA with her husband, sons, two cats, and a dog. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Old Dominion University in 2021, has a full-length collection of poetry out with St. Julian’s Press [TOOLS & ORNAMENTS, 2023] and a chapbook with Finishing Line Press [ALL THAT KEEPS ME, 2021]. Rice Weber currently holds an adjunct position in the English Department at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, VA where she also facilitates a poetry workshop with their LifeLong Learning Society.

06/01/2026

FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Cassandra On The Spectrum Visions From A Neon Mind by Carole Johnston

On SALE: https://finishinglinepress.com/product/cassandra-on-the-spectrum-visions-from-a-neon-mind-by-carole-johnston/

Cassandra On The Spectrum is a celebration of neurodiversity, honoring the infinitely possible colors of the human mind. Like many adults who are diagnosed with autism, Carole Johnston experienced a rush of enlightenment, realizing the reasons for her life as an outsider, who loves being outside the norm, living inside her own, unique vision. These poems delve deep into the well of experience and image. They invite the reader to see as the poet sees, to understand what she, has often struggled to explain to others, and to see how angst and anger transform to joy. Like Cassandra, a seer in Ancient Greek Mythology, the poet shares pain of being misunderstood and she shares excitement of finally understanding herself, always writing poems in her own imagist style.
Carole Johnston is an imagist poet who writes, primarily, Japanese short form poetry, ( haiku and tanka.) She has published poems in numerous journals including the prestigious, Cattails, Ribbons, and Frog Pond. Her publications also include five books of poetry, Journeys: Getting Lost – Chapbook – Finishing Line Press, Manic Dawn – Wildflower Poetry Press, Purple Ink: A Childhood in Tanka – Finishing Line Press, Midnight Butterfly and Other Juxtapositions – Alien Buddha Press. Secret Words: A Philosophy In Crayon – Alien Buddha Press. Before retiring, Carole taught in the Literary Arts program at the School for The Creative and Performing Arts at Lafayette High School, in Lexington, Kentucky. Currently, she teaches poetry writing to children at the Carnegie Center for Literacy, in Lexington. Her poems can also be found on Facebook

PRAISE:

Cassandra on the Spectrum: Visions From a Neon Mind by Carole Johnston is a dazzling and brilliant exploration of the neurodivergent experience, a kaleidoscopic journey through perception, imagination, and the poetry of being. This collection does not speak only to the neurodivergent; it invites every reader to experience the extraordinary in the ordinary, to see through a prism of wonder, and to embrace the power of words as a lifeline, a map, and a celebration of the self. Johnston’s Cassandra on the Spectrum is a masterful ode to creativity, resilience, and the luminous beauty of difference.
–Cristina Crocker Escribano is a teacher and writer.

Carole Johnston’s Cassandra on the Spectrum is a radiant testament to what it means to live, perceive, and create with a “neon mind.” These poems shimmer with synesthesia, alchemy, and haunting beauty, unmasking both the brilliance and the vulnerability of a neurodivergent life. Johnston writes with fierce honesty and luminous imagery, guiding us through visions where language itself transforms into color, sound, and pulse. This is more than a collection of poems—it is a spectrum of experience, a prism refracting the raw intensity of being alive and being different. Johnston has given us a book that sees the world in hues we too often overlook, and in doing so, teaches us how to notice, to marvel, and to believe.
–Whitnee Coy, author of We Left Constellations in Each Other, this deep, wide, dark world, and A Limb Outgrowing a Weathered Tree

See how vivid colors mingle and merge and create wondrous visions, listen as ancient artists chant holy mantras and draw figures onto dark walls, feel the penetrating, lonely ache when no one understands, and experience all of this and more through the vision of a brilliant poet whose language and artistry lead us into a world where we can enter the extraordinary diversity and creativity of the human mind. Most importantly, in the end, we realize that we have seen ourselves and our connectedness with myriad worlds that are, in truth, our own. Such is the magic of Johnston’s poetry.
–Jonel Sallee is a teacher and poet. Her published works include academic papers and collections of poetry, including In Such Wonder.

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06/01/2026

FLP BOOK OF THE DAY: Of Angels: Poems & Translations by Wally Swist

On SALE: https://finishinglinepress.com/product/of-angels-poems-translations-by-wally-swist/

Angels used to appear in literary works with at least moderate frequency. However, in our modern, often immoderately jaded society, angels aren’t considered at all. In a sublime presentation, and a balance of original work and translations carefully considered by the author, Of Angels is evidence that these heavenly creatures, who are not born and do not die, exist. However, different from UFOs, angels are of both the real stuff and divine nature. Leonard Cohen wrote: “When we don’t pray to the angels/ the angels don’t pray for us.” Perhaps just reading these poems at least resemble acts of prayer. Certainly they are ritualized devotions that exhort the divine in real ways in which the everyday offers an opportunity to find the numinous in the commonplace, and before we realize that we might chance to see one, “they disappear, and in our astonishment,/ in as much as when they appear,/ they vanish, and instill within us their/ magnitude.”

Author of more than forty collections of poetry and prose, Wally Swist’s new books include Aperture (Kelsay Books), poems regarding caregiving his spouse through Alzheimer’s, and If You’re the Dreamer, I’m the Dream: Selected Translations from Rilke’s Book of Hours (Finishing Line Press). Poems, essays, and translations have appeared in Anomaly, Chicago Quarterly Review, Commonweal, Healing Muse, Image Journal, Montreal Review, North American Review, Pensive, Poetry London, Rattle, and Your Impossible Voice. Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012) was selected by Yuseff Komunyakaa as co-winner of the 2011 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition. He was also the winner of the Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize in 2018 for A Bird Who Seems to Know Me. Readings of Swist’s poems are archived on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac and NPR. Books of nonfiction include Singing for Nothing: Selected Nonfiction as Literary Memoir (Brooklyn, NY: The Operating System, 2018) and On Beauty: Essays, Reviews, Fiction, and Plays (New York & Lisbon: Adelaide Books, 2018). Wild Rose Bush: The Life of Mary and Other Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke was selected as an honorable mention in the 2025 Stephen Mitchell Prize for Excellence in Translation sponsored by Green Linden Press. Bainbridge Island Press published his most recent collection of his poetry, Discovering What to Say (2025).

PRAISE:

This gem of a book is replete with angelic sightings and soundings. Wally Swist’s perceptive and lyrical phrasing allows these poems to shine with vision and insight – at times in puzzlement and surprise, at other times, comfort and contemplation. Personal angelic encounters mix with angels of particular place and period; additionally Swist’s poetic voice generously hosts translated work by poets such as Hesse, Lorca, and especially Rilke. Throughout, angels serve as touchstones for our human experiences: ‘angels are the enablers’ of spiritual and creative flourishing (‘of angels’), and as readers, we come to understand how an angel’s ‘light within/ also rises inside you’ (‘Baccarat Angel’).
–Sarah Law, Editor of The Amethyst Review (U.K.), and the author of the historical novel Sketches from Heaven, a 2023 Illuminations Silver Medal Award winner.

The image that leaps out to me on reading Wally Swist’s Of Angels: Poems & Translations is that of an angel “gliding into a seam of the air.” These poems and translations render angelic manifestation as something that close—not merely a sacred symbol, but a living point of communion and revelation. Through a range of voices, languages, and registers, we listen for those moments of transmission and transfixion that become for author and reader alike “touchstones to our better, or best, selves.”
–Michael Centore, Editor, Today’s American Catholic

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06/01/2026

TO ORDER: https://finishinglinepress.com/product/love-breaks-by-lynn-ciesielski/

Love Breaks is not just about heartbreak. It is also about healing, growth and tenderness as it confirms why we risk it all sometimes when nothing surpasses the gifts we receive through love. It chronicles the love life of a woman who attaches herself too quickly sometimes and without abandon to puppies, first dates, friends, and on occasion, even strangers. All the while, her most important relationship is with her beautiful, brilliant child who claws fiercely at love and normalcy, stepping off ledges literally and figuratively on a daily basis then makes accusations that someone should have caught her. Lynn Ciesielski takes you on a dark journey through Buffalo’s grittiest alleys but offers a guiding arm to lead you back to sunshine when you’ve decided you’ve seen enough. health growth beauty sadness motherhood

Lynn Ciesielski’s work has been published in Nerve Cowboy, Slipstream, The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, Main Street Rag, BlazeVox, and a variety of other periodicals. Her first chapbook titled, I Speak in Tongues was published by Foothills (2012) and her first collection titled Two Legs Toward Liverpool was published by Main Street Rag (2015). Lynn also has a new chapbook titled My Spanglish Es Impecable with Kelsay Books (2025). .ciesielski

06/01/2026

A Poem by Lynn Ciesielski

https://paddockreview.com/2026/06/01/a-poem-by-lynn-ciesielski/
.ciesielski

…. This poem is from the chapbook Love Breaks by LYNN CIESIELSKI, and can be found at ……. Lynn Ciesielski’s work has been published in Nerve Cowboy, Slipstream, The Yale Journal for Humanities…

06/01/2026

Ashland author Barry Vitcov explores reality and imagination in new story collection

Story here: https://ashland.news/ashland-author-barry-vitcov-explores-reality-and-imagination-in-new-story-collection/

05/31/2026

TO ORDER: https://finishinglinepress.com/product/moon-over-the-cross-bronx-expressway-by-n-g-haiduck/

The themes of The Moon Over the Cross Bronx Expressway, N.G. Haiduck’s first poetry collection, are hardship and heartache, love and beauty found in the Bronx—under “the same bright moon that surveys lovers’ lanes in Indiana.” The Cross Bronx Expressway cuts across the Bronx like a scar. It is the main artery, congested, clamorous, connecting neighborhoods and people to each other, to the rest of the city, to the rest of the nation—and beyond. “I have met people from the Bronx in an elevator in Paris, in a ramen restaurant in Tokyo, in a jazz club in Lima, and in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, says Haiduck. “These poems are about people.” Moon FLP

N.G. Haiduck published her first book, Cabbie, with Finishing Line Press, in 2025. That collection of short stories recounts her adventures as a yellow cab driver in New York City in the early 1970s. She is the recipient of the BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) Award from the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Janice Farrell Poetry Prize from the National League of American Pen Women, and the Jerome Lowell DeJur Award in Creative Writing from The City College of New York, where she taught for many years and was honored with the Teacher of the Year Award. Publications include Aeolian Harp Anthology, Flying South, Hanging Loose, The Naugatuck Literary Review, Paterson Literary Review, and The Prairie Home Companion, and her self-published mini-chapbook, Selling the Classifieds: 12 Sonnets. She now lives in Burlington, Vermont.

05/31/2026

A Poem by N.G. Haiduck
https://paddockreview.com/2026/05/31/a-poem-by-n-g-haiduck/

……. This is the title poem of the book MOON OVER THE CROSS BRONX EXPRESSWAY by N.G. Haiduck (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at N.G. Haiduck published her first book, Cabbie, with…

05/31/2026

FLP BOOK OF THE DAY: small… poetry of a certain amount of faith by S. Hazen Guthrie

On SALE:

https://finishinglinepress.com/product/small-poetry-of-a-certain-amount-of-faith-by-s-hazen-guthrie/

Argument and astonishment in free verse over this world we’ve created – inspiration, intention, and purpose, when feeling too small to matter. .hazenguthrie

S. Hazen Guthrie is a stage director and choreographer. She is a Master Teacher of Voice and Speech, specializing in the study and performance of Shakespeare. Directing and voice/verse credits include Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Victory Gardens, Chicago Shakespeare, Whirlwind Performance Company, Sundog Theater, and Stage One – Louisville Children’s Theatre. Faculty appointments include DePaul, Roosevelt, and Creighton Universities, the Universities of Nebraska, Alabama, and Ohio University, where she served with tenure. S. Hazen Guthrie is a poet. Her most recent work is the collection, we held our breath, the birds and I, Finishing Line Press, 2024. She can be heard on WLRH, Alabama’s NPR station. Nationally recognized as a curriculum specialist in Arts Integration, Guthrie has authored Shakespeare in the Classroom, The City Shakespeare Projects,The Teacher’s Poetry Companion, and The Schoolchildren’s Blizzard. She has served as a lecturer for New York State Alliance for Arts Education, and as the New York City Regional Coordinator for Poetry Out Loud, National Poetry Recitation Competition. In May 2024 Guthrie was named a Queens/Belmont University, Belfast/Nashville Fellow. She is a Teaching Artist for the Tennessee Arts Commission, the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and the North Alabama Artist Collaborative. She has served throughout the country as an Artist-in Residence for the New York, Illinois, and Nebraska Arts Councils, a Humanities Scholar for the Nebraska Humanities Council, and for POL – The National Endowment for the Arts and The Poetry Foundation.

PRAISE:

small… is a rich, extended spiritual meditation that will reward repeated consultation. It reminds us that the voice in the whirlwind which speaks The Sacred is not the roar, but the small, still whisper at the storm’s calm, quiet eye – brief respite from the rages we have endured to attain to the moment of revelation, and courage for such tempest as may yet surely come. (“Burning reveals trinity / Current carves worlds” – “Omniscience.”) The poems are finely crafted, lapidary, portable, each one a gem, a token, a memento. Read one in the morning – you’ll find yourself reaching for it in your mind’s pocket throughout the day, mulling and treasuring its insights, vexed and challenged by the queries it poses.
–-Tony Crunk, author of Coal Man’s Son and Living in the Resurrection

“The world is alive apart from us,” writes S. Hazen Guthrie in this new collection of poems that seeks to bring that world’s life close enough to touch. With a hint of Zen and a keen awareness of the strains and possibilities of this exact moment, Guthrie fashions a new language to capture what is fleeting, if not small at all: our words, our faith, and our hope for our future.
–Linda Frost, Ph.D., Dean of the Honors College, The U. of Tennessee at Chattanooga

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05/31/2026

TO ORDER: https://finishinglinepress.com/product/that-wild-knocking-by-cynthia-r-pratt/

Cynthia Pratt’s provocative poems are about the complexities of the body, in all of it’s multiplicities. So often, women particularly, are defined as either this or that, but the body’s structure, physiology, senses, hormones, one’s desire and love, spirituality and capriciousness over a lifetime are as intricate as a whole ecosystem.

Cynthia R. Pratt’s poems appear in numerous anthologies and journals, including 3rd Wednesday Magazine’s annual poetry contest addition. “An Egg Almost Called Death” was designated as a poem “of special merit.” Willows Wept Review nominated her poem, “Body Parts” for a 2025 Pushcart Prize. She was Poet Laureate of Lacey, Washington (2022-2026) and is the author of Celestial Drift (2016). .bsky.social cynthia.r.pratt