# Table of Contents
### **Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies**
##### (formerly Kansas Quarterly)
*Arkansas Review*, Vol. 56, No. 2 (August 2025)
**Nightriding and the Law: An Arkansas Odyssey** ................................. **83**
by William H. Pruden III
[**So-So Grocery (poetry)**](https://kb.astate.edu/books/volume-55-issue-2-august-2024/page/so-so-grocery) ......................................................... **100**
by Michael Spence
**Cajuns Count (poetry)** .......................................................... **102**
by Carol Parris Krauss
**Ms Kirke of Hickory Canyon (fiction)** ........................................... **103**
by Peter Geier
**The Trade (poetry)** ............................................................. **107**
by Kevin Brown
**Patti & Sam (fiction)** .......................................................... **108**
by Justin McKee
**A Strange Dwelling (poetry)** .................................................... **113**
by Bridget Starnes
**Mesmerize (fiction)** ............................................................ **114**
by Dalton Sikes
**Survivor (poetry)** .............................................................. **122**
by Anne Richey
**Learning to Tell Time with Elvis (fiction)** ..................................... **124**
by Harvey Huddleston
**Poems (in memory of Richard Wooten)** ............................................ **133**
Richard Wooten: 1952-2024
The Beaten Track
The Reunion
by Floyd Collins
**The Buzzards Come Off the Road (fiction)** ....................................... **137**
by Peter L. Kapp
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## **Contributors**
**Kevin Brown** has had fiction and poetry published in multiple literary journals, magazines and anthologies. He has won numerous writing competitions and has been nominated for several prizes and awards, including three Pushcart Prizes.
**Floyd Collins** holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Twentieth-Century Literature from the University of Arkansas. He has authored several volumes of poetry, including *My Back Pages: The Teresa Poems* (2022). *The Living Artifact*, a selection of his essay-reviews, appeared in 2021. Most recently *Waking Past Midnight: Selected Poems*, a career retrospective, was published by Stephen F. Austin State UP in 2023.
**Malaika Favorite** is a visual artist and writer; her poetry publications include *Dreaming at the Manor* (2014) and *Illuminated Manuscript* (1991). Malaika also won the 2015 Broadside Lotus Press Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award for *Ascension* (2016) and the 2023 April Gloaming Publishing, Moon Meridian Novella Award for her novella *The Author Project* published in January 2024. She is also the winner of the 2005 Louisiana Literature Prize for Poetry and holds BA and MFA degrees in fine art from Louisiana State University. Her artwork has appeared in numerous exhibitions, outdoor murals, and books and is held in major collections throughout the United States.
**Peter Geier’s** doctor is across the street from Edgar Allan Poe’s grave. He has reported and written features for local, national, and international news publications. He reviews films for http://moompitchers.blogspot.com His published work includes a profile of a Baltimore neighbor in *LIGEIA*, and a speculative piece in *Lumina* about a plastic earring figurine that comes to life. He is completing a collection of two dozen short stories set in New York.
**Gregory Hansen** is Professor of Folklore and English at Arkansas State University, where he also teaches in the Heritage Studies PhD Program. He is the author of *A Florida Fiddler: The Life and Times of Richard Seaman*, and his publications focus on roots music, folklore and language, and public folklore.
**Harvey Huddleston** received his BA in English from The University of Memphis and his Masters in Playwriting from Columbia University in New York. His short fiction has been published in *The RavensPerch* and *Mystery Tribune* among many others.
**A. Jenson** is a trans/non-binary writer, artist, and farmer raised in Tennessee and educated in Kansas. Their most recent works can be found in 2024 issues of *Door Is A Jar, The B’K, NYU’s Caustic Frolic,* and *Roi Fainéant*. Between long days of cherry harvesting and correcting irrigation lines, they are hard at work on a full length poetry manuscript. You can find them writing and painting on Instagram at @adotjenson.
**Peter L. Kapp** was in the music business for many years. Working with young rock n roll bands, he was always more of the designated driver than a practitioner of the common vices of touring musicians. He lives in New York with his wife of thirty seven years. “The Buzzards Come Off the Road” is the first fictional story he’s had published.
**Carol Parris Krauss** relocated to Virginia after 24 years in Fort Lauderdale. Some venues where she has publications are *Louisiana Lit, One Art, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Story South,* and *Highland Park Poetry*. She was selected for Ghost City Press’s 2023 Micro-Chap Summer Series. The Poetry Box released her chapbook, *The Old Folks Call It God’s Country* (April 2024). Her next book, *Mountain. Memory. Marsh.*, will be released by Fernwood Press in the summer of 2025.
**Justin McKee** was born and raised in San Mateo, CA, and is currently based in various locations throughout the Western Hemisphere. He previously served as co-Founder/Publisher/Editor-in-Chief/Errand Boy for *The Raffish*, an offbeat literary journal based in New Orleans, LA, as well as lead ditchdigger, bellhop, farmhand, et al. for assorted ventures in disparate locales. For more information, please visit justinmckee.com.
**William H. Pruden III** teaches History and Government at Ravenscroft School in Raleigh, North Carolina. He earned an AB in History from Princeton University, a JD from Case Western Reserve University, and master’s degrees from Wesleyan and Indiana Universities. His career teaching American history and government has spanned over four decades and has been complemented by stints as a legislative assistant at the state and Congressional levels. He has contributed hundreds of articles to encyclopedias and other reference works, as well as chapters to such books as *To Can the Kaiser: Arkansas and the Great War* (2015), *Bullets and Fire: Lynching and Authority in Arkansas, 1840–1950* (2017), *The Elaine Massacre and Arkansas: A Century of Atrocity and Resistance, 1819–1919* (2018), and *Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta: Essays to Mark the Centennial of the Elaine Massacre* (2022).
**Matthew P. Rooney** received a PhD in anthropology from the University of Florida in 2021 and is one of ten research station archeologists working for the Arkansas Archeological Survey. He has conducted fieldwork in Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. His research projects tell the stories of Indigenous people and African Americans who lived in the American South, combining archeology with history and cultural anthropology by collaborating with descendant populations. Dr. Rooney is currently the Vice President of Education and President-Elect for Preserve Arkansas, a member of the Board of Trustees for the Arkansas Historical Association, and Associate Editor for the Southeastern Archaeological Conference.
**Jacob Reecher** earned his MFA from the University of New Orleans in 2018. His work has appeared in *Tampa Review, Relief,* and elsewhere. He lives with his wife in New York City.
**Anne Richey**, a North Carolina native, recently returned to the South after many years of living and teaching in New York City and upstate NY. Much of her first book, *Church of the Robin’s Ha-Ha! John Burroughs’ “Natural Religion,” and Other Poems* (2017), is derived from her special interest in the Catskills naturalist Burroughs, and in the region itself. Now living in Memphis, TN, she is currently assembling a second book of poems and hoping for her first sighting of an indigo bunting.
**Dalton Sikes** is a West Coast writer, poet, essayist, and former Managing Editor of *Silk Road Review*. His work has appeared in *Shift: A Journal of Literary Oddities, Inscape, Chaotic Merge,* and *The Heartland Review*, among others. Dalton is an Honorable Mention for the 2024 Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize. His work ranges from dark to delightful through poetry and prose.
**Michael Spence** drove public-transit buses in the Seattle area for thirty years, retiring from that job on Valentine’s Day, 2014. His poems have appeared recently in *Alabama Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Catamaran, Louisiana Literature, The New Criterion, North American Review,* and *The Southern Review*. New work is forthcoming in *The Hudson Review, Tampa Review, Tar River Poetry,* and *Terrain*. His most recent book, *Umbilical* (2016), won *The New Criterion* Poetry Prize.
**Bridget Starnes** is a writer and textile artist who has made northwest Arkansas her home for the past ten years. Originally from northeast Kansas, she attended both Kansas State University and the University of Kansas Medical Center. Her previous work has appeared in *303 Magazine* and *Reductress*.
**Joe Watson** is an Arkansas native and holds a BA from UALR in English. He lives in Little Rock with his wife Lori.