No more Free Lunch

As I mentioned, I have been in the zone, writing on a project. And because of my preoccupation, I have neglected to mention a sad event.

When I opened my latest issue of Free Lunch, number 42, I found tucked inside a note that reads

The Board of Directors of Free Lunch Arts Alliance regrets to inform you that Number 42 of Free Lunch will be its final issue. Ron Offen, the editor and founder of Free Lunch, has health issues that prevent him from continuing the magazine.

Ron Offen was one of the first magazine editors to publish my work. He took my poem “Sometimes She Forgets What She Wants” back in 2001, and I’ve been getting my Free Lunch ever since.

Sometimes I would send a contribution at the end of the year and sometimes I would mean to and forget. Whichever way it was, I always got my copy. Free Lunch was free to serious poets and I was bona fide.

I enjoyed reading Offen’s editorials, though I didn’t always agree with them, and I always found good poems in the magazine.

That’s true of this last issue that has memorable poems by Louis McKee, Gilbert Allen, A. D. Winans, and 32 pages of others.

Now there’s no more Free Lunch. I’ll lmiss it.