It took me a long time to love online journals.

I'm not one of those "early adopters" — people who embrace innovation long before the shiny and new is mainstream and routine. I need a nudge.

In the case of online publishing, I got that nudge a few years ago at a party for a poet of great stature and respect. After thanking the crowd, he addressed the issue of print vs. digital journals. Because he was nearly 80, I was surprised when he praised online publishing, and singled Pif magazine as a literary leader. 

One of the oldest, continually published online literary zines, since 1995 Pif has published established authors such as Amy Hempel, Richard Yates and Thomas E. Kennedy, as well as unpublished writers who submit their unsolicited work.

Several years after the nudge that made me rethink paths to publication, I am grateful and honored to have this poem featured in the June 2011 issue of Pif magazine:

In this vocabulary

of place you can name
the earth: sandstone
granite, slate.

Sea hugs stone.
We are solid landscape, agile
as we climb rock shores.
I gather small memories,

pocket pebbles,
a bit of broken

shell, grains of sand
a collection of us,
all residue and proof.

- Drew Myron