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It’s out! The summer issue of “inch.” Didn’t overlook it, did you? Yeah, it is on the small side, 5.5 by 4.25. That’s inches. It’ll fit in a shirt pocket easily, if you crimp up one side. Actually, “inch” has been out since July, but I didn’t run across it until recently. Look, it’s easy to misplace.

“inch” is the eight-page, quarterly magazine of tiny poems and tiny fiction published by Bull City Press, a small outfit in Durham. The company specializes in poetry chapbooks.

The strongest poem in the issue is by Betty Adcock, a luminary of contemporary poetry who lives in the Triangle. The author of six books of poetry, Betty Adcock is a recipient of the North Carolina Medal for Literature and a Guggenheim. She was writer in residence at Meredith College until 2006 and now teaches in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa. Her most recent book is “Slantwise,” published by LSU Press. Here is her “inch” poem:

Skinny Poem

Let things be spare
and words for things be thin
as the slice of moon
the loon’s cry snips;
as the cape of dusk
that clothes the swift;
as the brief shim
that rims eclipse.

There’s fiction, too, by Michael McFee, another heavyweight in contemporary poetry. A native of Ashville, he’s the author of at least seven collections of poetry. He’s on the faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he teaches poetry and English literature. The piece goes like this:

Beware of God
He bought a flimsy plastic yard sign at the
dime store, and razor-bladed out the D and G so neatly
it was impossible to tell they’d been switched till you
were knocking on his front door, shaking your head.
The next week, his mother died, struck down
by a stroke. He switched the letters back before driving
home and burying the sign deep in the woods, beyond
the family pet cemetery, where no living dog would
dig.

Other contributing poets are Jasmine V. Bailey, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, Victoria Bosch Murray, Robert M. Wallace, and Donna Glee Williams.

This is “inch” No. 11. It has been published since 2006. It sells for a buck and has a run of 250 copies. People, with numbers like that, these are collectors’ items. “inch” is available by subscription only: inch.bullcitypress.com