Melissa Fondakowski is a freelance writer whose reviews, articles, poetry and fiction have been published in magazines and journals including Girlfriends Magazine, Curve Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, Lodestar Quarterly, and Many Mountains Moving. Her poetry chapbook, “Impatiens,” was the winner of the 2001 Sow’s Ear Review poetry chapbook competition and was published in 2002. She received her MFA from Mills College in 1997, and is currently a Master’s candidate at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. These poems are from her manuscript “My Vincent Warren.”