Maverick's Feature Poet for Issue #2 is National Endowment for the Arts Fellow Martha Modena Vertreace, who is Distinguished Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at Kennedy-King College, Chicago IL. Her several books include: Second House from the Corner, Under a Cat's-Eye Moon, Oracle Bones, Cinnabar, Smokeless Flame, Kelly in the Mirror, Maafa: When Night Becomes a Lion, Dragon Lady: Tsukimi, Glacier Fire, and Light Caught Bending and Second Mourning, published by Diehard Publishers, Edinburgh, through Scottish Arts Council grants.

Named the Glendora Review Poet, Lagos, Nigeria, she was twice a Fellow at the Hawthornden International Writers' Retreat in Scotland. Eastern Washington University chose her as Poetry Fellow in residence at the Writers Center, Dublin, Ireland. She was a Fellow at St. Deiniol's Library, Hawarden, Wales, on a bursary.

She has poems in Illinois Voices: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry (University of Illinois Press, 2001). Her most recent Pushcart nomination was for "When Pockets Held Dreams", published in After Hours: the Chicago Journal of Writing and Art. She lives in Chicago with her husband, Tim, and their cats, Bon-Bon, Fred, and Patrick Samuel.

    I've been flying right along
    since we last kissed,
    two tender birds in a cage.
    Tempestuous daddy,
    I put two daisies in a bowl
    and cover them with hissing.

This is the second issue of Maverick. So I want to take this time to make some final points concerning the first issue:

Ché Guevara is working for us

We only really hate clowns and Republicans

We want your book reviews and editoral thoughts, as well as your poems

    You won't know me, not at first, if
    in fact you show, it's late, I've changed, old
    greasy coat, no underwear, hair falling out
    while poem-spit dribbles
    down my chin: oh no you won't be sure, dead
    sure that what you see before you
    in the dreaming door is what you've sought,

    In the black forest
    ­­which existed before death
    and grows rampant among
    the transparencies of life­­
    there is no room for angels.

    What to call the soul, when it is only
    an empty space in flesh
    Explosion, scattering of nightly birds?
    In what night is the spirit simply
    air stirred up by eagles?

How do you know he cares?
Ray Wittgenstein, epithet musician, puts the stress on know.
As if we haven't stress enough.
Faith. Who's to fly in
and buttress my Chartres?

    Through the stars, the moon slips
    Unstoppable. A woman
    Somewhere in snow, somewhere
    Suddenly drunk, discovers she's covered
    By whiteness. A thousand stars

It has always been terrible. Insert text here.
Not because of them, not because he felt sorry.
He made his world, the sun staring
In. Insert text here. Paranoia has him,

When I left the trailer, when I left
The pantry filled with soup cans past their expiration date,
When I left the living room busy with paint
And laundry-some clean, some dirty shirts-