marilyn taylor
Of the three poems of mine that appear in this issue, the one most emphatically and specifically influenced by a particular "place" is "The Blue Water Buffalo." It came out of a 2004 visit to Cambodia– a country so lush and beautiful, it's hard to believe that it had ever been a setting for unspeakable evil– and harder still to imagine that grave danger still lurks just beneath its surface, both literally and figuratively.