SLEEPYHEAD ASSASSINS by Mindy Nettifee Editors: Brendan Constantine, Lee Mallory, Ricki Mandeville, Michael Miller By turns raunchy, vulnerable, youthful and wise, Mindy Nettifee has been a mainstay of the Southern California poetry scene for the last decade, and she makes her full-length book debut with this edgy collection.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mindy Nettifee lives in Long Beach, California where she writes poetry, works with nonprofit arts and housing organizations, and is editor-in-chief of GetUnderground.com. Mindy sharpened her poetic claws at the National Poetry Slam Competition representing Orange County and Long Beach in 1999 and 2000, and went on to run the BIG DAMN POETRY SLAM at the Blue Cafe and coach teams in 2001 and 2002. She has toured with her work internationally, been published in various journals, and her poem "Metal Detectors and Other Important Thresholds" was a nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Mindy's heroes include Vaclav Havel, Patricia Smith, and all single mothers everywhere, busting their asses off to keep their kids in crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Learn more by visiting: TheCultofMindy.com & MySspace.com/TheCultofMindy

WHEN CHERRIES ARE $1.99/LB.

it's pretty much Christmas.

on the way home from work,
i buy enough for the whole neighborhood.

everyone smells me arrive, comes outside
with beach chairs and flashy walking sticks.

we gather around the stop signs, prop up broken box fans
around us like soldiers, Vince Guaraldi tinkering through

the closest window. we spit pits for distance, the young boys
showing off and the old boys letting them. we swear

with reckless abandon, building a naughty momentum,
bitching about the godless, blue-collar July sun,

still baking the asphalt into hell-cake after it has already
gone home to the other side of the world for the night.

we knot tart stems with our lecherous tongues.
we gorge shamelessly on cherry flesh

'til we look like vampires,
smiling in the dark.