Steve Brisendine lives, works and remains unbeaten against the New York Times crosswords in Mission, KS. A 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee and three-time nominee for the Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award, he has appeared in Modern Haiku, Flint Hills Review, I-70 Review and other publications and anthologies. His other collections from Spartan Press are The Words We Do Not Have (2021) and Salt Holds No Secret But This (2022). He doesn’t pay submission fees and doesn’t think you should, either. He has no degrees, one tattoo and an unironic fondness for strip-mall Chinese restaurants.