Note from the Editor: Mike Bove

Let us give thanks to Bill Schulz.

I met Bill some years ago, where else, but at a poetry reading. By then Hole in the Head Review had already been going strong for a few years, and I was surprised our paths hadn’t crossed earlier. I liked him immediately, then read his poetry and saw his paintings, and liked him even more.

That Bill thought to ask if I’d join Hole in the Head’s editorial team in 2023 was a great compliment, and I’ve enjoyed working on the journal with him at the wheel. I’ve seen up close his dedication to the arts community, not just in Maine where we’re based, but across the country and around the world.

When he decided to step down as Editor last year, I told him I was interested in stepping up. So here we are. This issue will be our sole offering for 2025, but we’re just getting (re)started. One notable change is that we’ve moved to a biannual format, with a Spring Issue in mid-February and a Fall Issue in mid-August. We’re also pleased that we’re now able to offer payment to contributors.

If you’re a longtime reader, a few things may look and feel different. But rest assured the new Editorial Staff is committed to continuing Bill’s vision of publishing the strongest work from new and established voices. And don’t worry, he’s not far away.

I hope you find something joyful and worthwhile in this new issue. I think you will. I hope you enjoy Bill Schulz’s striking cover art and fine poems by Betsy Sholl, Dawn Potter, Carol Bachofner, and all our gifted contributors. As you read, I hope you’ll remember what can happen in the silent space a poem makes; there, we grow.

So, thank you to Bill Schulz. Thank you to the previous Editorial team and the current one. Thanks to our donors and contributors. Thanks to you, our readers.

Here is Hole in the Head Review.

Mike Bove, Editor

Carol Willette Bachofner

Half-Haunted

Old Pima came down with the wandering sickness. It edged in when he was digging for water out back. Took over, settled into his heart for four years. There is no warning. It stayed until Grandson came home from college. Ira Hayes got it at Iwo Jima, raising a flag that didn’t recognize him. That’s how it gets in sometimes. Comes and goes. Old Pima put a walking stick by the entrance to his house. In case it comes back. He wears a dream catcher on his shirt now. He heard from an elder that the sickness comes from crazy dreams getting in through the chest. He hasn’t slept in his bed since Old Woman walked away. Grandson builds a fence to keep it out. Granddaughter cooks outside to make it think there’s no house at all. Old Pima smudges. Heya, heya, heya-hey. Linda Little Dog stopped singing and wandered off after breakfast. She might be gone an hour. A week. She might be under the road. Old Pima notices his walking stick wandered off at about the same time.

Carol Willette Bachofner served as Poet Laureate of Rockland, Maine from 2012 to 2016. Carol is the author of seven books of poetry, including Test Pattern, a fantod of prose poems (Finishing Line Press, 2018). Every Place I look, Women With Embers at Their Feet is forthcoming from Main Street Rag. Bachofner’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, most recently, The Mackinaw: a journal of prose poetry, and the following anthologies: Dawnland Voices, An Anthology of Writings from Indigenous New England (University of Nebraska Press, 2013), Enough! (Littoral Books, 2020), and Wait (Littoral Books, 2021).

Claire Millikin

Winter Horses

In snow’s under-speech of lucid shadows,

horses spook in the field behind a motel

owned by emigrants who fear for their lives

and politely serve American motorcyclists

continental breakfasts, looking the other way.

This winter’s horses carry the injustice

of being set aside because they are afraid.

I show up most mornings with apples

from the only grocery store still in town,

where old women shop with carts they own;

I’m also becoming old, invisibly, my eyes the tender 

eyes of a natural thief, polite and still.

You cannot Google my winter horses, and Artificial

Intelligence knows nothing of them.

They’re real in the way of imaginary numbers, this

numb medicine of refuge I master and am mastered by,

riding them when I must, walking beside them

when I can, settling and unsettling the distances of vision.

I’ve always been a runner, but this winter it’s worse.

Only the winter horses understand my terror, a constant urge to sprint.

I feed them apples sweet and dormant,

shipped from Argentina, the seasons opposite ours,

but dictatorships we have in common, theirs gone, ours arriving. 

Ask the horses nothing, they answer as shadows

trace the material world in winter’s mind.

Soon enough, hawthorn and crab apple will open.

Language is never a horse to ride.

I feed my horses weather and sometimes sugar.

Claire Millikin is the author of ten books of poetry including Magicicada (Unicorn Press 2024), winner of the 2024 Foreword Indie Book Award for Poetry. Magicicada is about juvenile solitary confinement. An earlier book, Dolls (2Leaf Press 2021), an extended elegy for transwoman Sage Smith, was a semifinalist for the PSV Poetry Book Award for North American Publishers and Writers. Millikin lives in coastal Maine, enjoys long distance running, and teaches for the University of Maine system.