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Last Update: May 1, 2026
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Welcome to The Lost Bookshelf where all Cervena Barva Press books are sold.

We no longer sell books on consignment, used books or new books by other presses or authors.
Our space at the Armory in Somerville, MA closed in December 2021. After being there for almost 9 years, we decided to leave. The Lost Bookshelf is a part of Cervena Barva Press. It is safe to order our books.

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P.O. Box 53 / Union Square
Somerville, MA 02143

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New Release: The Blue Staircase & Other Poems

The Blue Staircase & Other Poems by Glenn Sheldon Červená Barva Press, 2026

Glenn Sheldon was Professor of Humanities in Honors at The University of Toledo. Currently he resides in Toledo, Ohio, with his many "Buddhas in fur." In addition to several chapbooks, Glenn has published two full-length poetry collections, Bird Scarer (Cervana Barva Press) and Angel of Anarchy (Ahadada Books, 2012). His individual poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including: Bombay Gin, Boston Literary Review, Café Review, Chiron Review, Field, James White Review, Janus Head, Limestone, Madison Review, Marquee, Mudfish, Pleiades, Puerto del Sol, Rio Grande Review, Santa Clara Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Whiskey Island and Xavier Review.

The Blue Staircase & other poems is a collection of thirty-six poems that examine the author's personal relationship with Salem, the historical and literary city in northern Massachusetts. Sheldon asks of himself, as well as his audience, "Is there a Salem still?" Tackling its historical, as well as literary heritage, Sheldon takes on the persona of Giles Corey in the title poem (a Puritan farmer and family man convicted and ultimately crushed to death during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692). Elsewhere Sheldon investigates his childhood as a Salem native and interrogates his own literary position to many Massachusetts' authors, from Hawthorne to Lowell, from Emerson to Frost, from his own contemporary position as a Midwestern transplant.

"Have I always known them this well?"
I ask myself. Strange, I do recognize voices
in the crowd around me and do not.

First stones are a shock,
a weight clumsy as strangers
shaking hands with dignity.
These sandy stones have borne
my footsteps through the field.

Press him, yells the crowd,
press him.

After a moment I come
to realize I am the him, to have
lived and loved for years but whose
deathbed is now boards.

A man can be a witch or
a wizard or both, depending on
one's trial, any tempest. This trial?

I am the him.

—Excerpt from "The Blue Staircase (Stones for Giles Corey-The Lord’s Year 1692)"

$18.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-02-4 | 57 Pages

New Release: WORRIES by Alexander Motyl

WORRIES by Alexander Motyl Červená Barva Press, 2026

Alexander Motyl is a writer, painter, translator, and professor. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2008 and 2013, he is the author of eleven novels, Whiskey Priest, Who Killed Andrei Warhol, Flippancy, The Jew Who Was Ukrainian, My Orchidia, Sweet Snow, Fall River, Vovochka, Ardor, Pitun's Last Stand, and Mazeppa Rides Again!

Alexander Motyl's second collection of poems combines odes to people—ranging from the B-movie star Sterling Hayden to Fred and Ginger to the Andy Warhol Superstar Ultra Violet to the great German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—with wry, ironic, and occasionally mordant observations about life, death, time, art, war, and other worrisome things. Throughout, Motyl verges between hope and despair, though ultimately coming down on the side of the former. Unsurprisingly, the poems are seriously unserious or unseriously serious: the author isn't quite sure which... WORRIES is a companion piece of his first poetry collection, Vanishing Points.

In these poems, there is a kind of maximum minimization of everything: both when Alexander Motyl says that he measures time with operas, and when he admires the dance of the butterfly, or when he reflects on lines. The poet is paradoxical, asking questions, and philosophical, when there is no answer to them. He wants to talk about life and its transience in simplified language, without special metaphors, so he builds a dialogue from his own worries. Appealing to Goethe, Joyce Kilmer or Jonas Mekas is like comparing his time with the time of his predecessors and their poetics with his own. That is why the universal time of this collection is filled with life's wisdom and a sense of inevitable transience paired with the desire to keep it, dressing it in poetic form.
—Vasyl Makhno, author of Paper Bridge

In his latest opus, Motyl's wry, urbane voice reflects on where centuries of progress have led us: "Blame it all/on Copernicus./When we were/in the center/of things,/what could possibly/go wrong?/Nothing." Despite their snappy tone, his jaunty verses, with their ready wit and probing questions, take on serious matters about time and trust and perception with the insight of a 21st century philosophe. Moving comfortably between conversations with heroes of the Enlightenment and Romanticism—think Condorcet, Goethe—to grade B noir actor Sterling Hayden and Warhol superstar Ultra Violet, Motyl lives up to Henry James' aspirations for a writer: "to be one of the people on whom nothing is wasted."
—Askold Melnyczuk, author of Venus of Odesa

In Worries, Motyl charts the cosmic and the mundane in poems that loop, list, and linger-capturing metaphysical unease with a lightly ironic shrug. "The fragility / of the universe/ worries me," the speaker confesses, as stars explode and wormholes beckon. "All flesh is straw," we’re reminded-and Aquinas sighs, met not with dismissal, but with a tired kind of reverence. From war trenches to dusty bedsides, these poems ask unanswerable questions with clarity and dark wit. The universe may not make sense, but black peasant bread, "“doused with time/and downed/with homemade / pepper moonshine" might still help.
—Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest and Those Absences Now Closest

Cover art: "Holodomor" by Alexander Motyl

$18.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-55-0 | 63 Pages

Our Imperfect Bodies by Karen Friedland

Our Imperfect Bodies by Karen Friedland Červená Barva Press, 2026

Once a nonprofit grant writer by trade, Karen had poems published in the Lily Poetry Review, Nixes Mate Review, One Art, and others. She was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her previous books were Places That Are Gone (Nixes Mate Books) and Tales from the Teacup Palace (Červená Barva Press). Karen lived in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston with her husband, two dogs and a cat. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in November 2021, and died on April 14, 2024.

"I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in November 2021, two days before my 58th birthday. I recurred only a month or two after 'frontline,' about a year later, rendering me incurable and inoperable, and have been in continuous chemo treatment ever since. Having terminal cancer has been a daily exercise in searching for and finding meaning, beauty, kindness and even hope amidst the brutality of a deadly diagnosis. Poetry helps me reflect on, process and share this experience."
—Karen Friedland

"With grace and courage and style, Karen Friedland brings us along on her cancer journey; urging us to look at the world as she does, through eyes that see the joyful sparkling of life in every gratitude-wrapped moment. Whether she's walking her beloved dogs, or sitting in bed with pen and paper, she glories in being on this side of the sod. Indeed, these poems about dying are really poems about living. I miss her, but I am happier for having read them."
—Robin Stratton, author of Some Have Gone and Some Remain

"Some days, / the warmth- / every sensation- / is so beautiful . . . . I can hear Karen Friedland saying these words. We're driving in my car on a hot July day. The sun is strong and the road glimmers. I can see her, in my rearview mirror, as we chat about our cats and politics. As I read Karen's posthumous collection, Our Imperfect Bodies, I think of the grace and honesty she displayed, allowing us all on her journey, through her constellations of cancers. And though she rendered this to us in her poetry, she also traveled on the knife-edge of hope and terror. Her poems are wild and kind and funny; all words I'd used to describe this amazing poet. I don't want to get cocky / in my aliveness- she writes, and who can't relate to this? I will miss Karen Friedland, and feel so honored to have called her my friend, for my moments with her trapped in amber. I am grateful for Karen's poetry, for her words she left behind, too. / Little brightly colored shards, / breadcrumbs. We can follow her voice, with our imperfect bodies, we can hear her poetry."
—Jennifer Martelli, author of The Queen of Queens

Cover photo: "A Wilting Flower with a Black Background" by Ksenia Chernaya

$18.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-53-6 | 94 Pages

GODS of UNFINISHED BUSINESS by Nina Kossman

GODS of UNFINISHED BUSINESS Poems on History Transformed into Myth by Nina Kossman Červená Barva Press, 2025

Nina Kossman's ten books include three volumes of poetry, two volumes of short prose in Russian and one in English, an anthology she edited for Oxford University Press, two volumes of translations of Marina Tsvetaeva's poetry, and a novel. Her English-language work has appeared in over ninety magazines and anthologies and has been translated into twelve languages. Her plays have been produced in the US, the UK, and Australia. Her work in her native language, Russian, was published in Russian-language literary magazines. She received grants from the Onassis Foundation, the Foundation for Hellenic Culture, a NEA fellowship, and the UNESCO/PEN Short Story Award. She lives in New York where she edits EastWest Literary Forum, a bilingual literary journal.

"When the mythological and personal meet, something transforms for this reader; perhaps that very "semblance of meaning in a meaningless world" comes to the surface. What is that meaning, you might ask. Perhaps it is awareness of how one isn't alone, after all, and has never been alone on this planet, despite what humanity’s so-called "progress" seems so intent to insist on."
—Ilya Kaminsky

$18.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-64-2 | 121 Pages

My Way Home by Mary Bonina (Fiction)

My Way Home a novel by Mary Bonina Červená Barva Press, 2025

Mary Bonina is both poet and prose writer. My Way Home is her debut novel. She is the author of My Father's Eyes: A Memoir, and three published poetry collections: Living Proof, Clear Eye Tea, and Lunch in Chinatown. Her poem "Drift," won the UrbanArts "Boston Contemporary Authors" prize, and is engraved on a granite monolith, a permanent public art installation in the City. She has been honored as a fellow and awarded several residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, including at the VCCA retreat in Auvillar, France. Her collaborative art experiments with composers, visual artists, and sculptors, have expanded poetry's vocabulary and reach. A longtime member of the Writers Room of Boston, where she served on the Board of Directors for more than a decade, Bonina is a graduate of the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

"Mary Bonina's captivating debut deftly explores themes we all must wrestle with during our short stay on planet Earth. How do we live meaningful lives while harboring dark secrets and gaping loss? What do we settle for when we cannot get what we want? What does family really mean? Written with great wisdom and acuity, My Way Home is a beautiful novel, full of truths about the human condition, the ways we delight and disappoint one another, the ways we save each other with our generosity and love."
—Mary E. Mitchell, author of Starting Out Sideways and Love in Complete Sentences

"—A cautionary story all too relevant to a time when a woman's right to control her body is somehow still—infuriatingly—unsettled."
—Gish Jen, author of Bad Bad Girl

"My Way Home is an often unsettling, always engaging novel full of honesty, heart, and grace. It is both seductive and disturbing, and it will remind you of why you started reading stories in the first place—to be carried away to a more vivid and compelling world."
—John Dufresne, author of My Darling Boy

"—A potent, provocative, and important novel."
—Anne Elezabeth Pluto, author of How Many Miles to Babylon?

"—Bonina’s novel is a haunting look at first love, teen pregnancy and the dangerous secrets about to erupt in a family. Magnificent."
—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Days of Wonder and Pictures of You

"...My Way Home delves into a world of secrets, forgiveness, and 'a new idea of family.' Beautifully written...I loved it."
—Rosie Sultan, author of Helen Keller in Love and winner of the PEN Discovery Award

Cover Artist: Teresa Lagrange

$19.95 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-91-8 | 302 Pages

Ash by Gloria Mindock from Glass Lyre Press

Ash by Gloria Mindock Glass Lyre Press, 2021

Gloria Mindock is the author of I Wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me (Nixes Mate Books), Whiteness of Bone (Glass Lyre Press), La Portile Raiului (Ars Longa Press, Romania) translated into the Romanian by Flavia Cosma, Nothing Divine Here, (U Šoku Štampa), and Blood Soaked Dresses (Ibbetson). Widely published in the USA and abroad, her poetry has been translated and published into the Romanian, Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Spanish, Estonian, Albanian, bulgarian, Turkish, and French. Gloria has been published in numerous literary journals including Gargoyle, Web Del Sol, spoKe, Constellations: A Journal of Poetry and Fiction, Ibbetson, The Rye Whiskey Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Unlikely Stories, Pratik: A Magazine of Contemporary Writing and Nixes Mate Review and anthology. Gloria has been awarded the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award and was the recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award for Community Service by the Newton Writing and Publishing Center. She received the fifth and fortieth Moon Prize from Writing in a Woman's Voice. Gloria was the Poet Laureate in Somerville, MA in 2017 & 2018.

In Gloria Mindock's powerful new book, the flames of love die out and the ashes linger until they dissolve into air. The body is hostage, in charred relics of failed intimacies—The burnt-out ends of smoky days (T.S. Eliot). There's beauty in the truth of Mindock's words and images: Things got smokier, battling the embers with//false waters. And there's hope: Not everyone believes in destruction.// All the heart wants is to beat. Above all, these poems radiate feeling, compassionately aware, attuned to a world of broken love that is burned beyond recognition, the ashes drifting and settling: how much sorrow can this heart take?// There is never an answer. Ash sears and sings.
—Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest

In Ash, Gloria Mindock writes a gritty, beautifully haunting collection of poetry. Ash is what remains behind after destruction, ruin, death, and burning. Similarly, the poems in this collection are what will remain. Fight the shadows and wade through the darkness on a path paved by Mindock's vivid imagery, stark language, and dynamic voice, all of which, make for a most memorable experience. Now more than ever, we need these poems. With the utmost economy of words, skillful syntax, and emotional connections, each poem reverberates into the depths of your consciousness. Dark, intense, and wholly unique, Ash, by Gloria Mindock is what you've been waiting for—a collection of poetry that consumes and smolders. Are you ready?
—Renuka Raghavan, author of Out of the Blue and The Face I Desire

Gloria Mindock is a poet with singular vision: in Ash, a human heart is rolled out, then baked, then thrown to the birds; broken crucifixes are shoved into junk drawers and gather dust; a spurned/murdered woman turns into a beautiful plant that gives her ex-lover a rash. With mordant, Pinter-esque wit, Mindock explores just how far love, and even human decency, can unravel—to the point of arson, to the point of war.

Ash begin with a series of poems about lethal house fires that may be literal or metaphorical ("my skin was burned by your compulsion to be famous"), then expands to pinpoint the similar essence of human cruelty that enables soldiers to kill. As the narrator of "Doomed by the Numbers" explains: "the fact is people will still go on brutally/killing each other./Who will take my place and write about it?"

Ash concludes with an engaging, Rabelaisian roundelay of voices—mini-plays, summed up in just two stanzas, about complicated relationships between two people.

Once again, with Ash, Mindock proves herself to be unafraid of the dark. She is truly a leading, contemporary master of the edgy.
—Karen Friedland, author of Places That Are Gone and Tales from the Teacup Palace

Passionate and observant, Gloria Mindock is a tragic poet. Her books are wounds revisited. She knows that nothing, never heals.

"With a rolling pin in my hand, I roll your heart out flat... stop it from beating. The redness of blood turns to wax, sticky while wet." (Baked)

She senses the pain of the world in her being.

"The void looms deep, scorched like the desert blowing aimlessly." (Exit)

As her latest book Ash attests without doubt, Gloria is both a warrior and a martyr. Her words are swords that slowly transform into tears.

Her anger at life's injustice is mighty, but mighty is her generosity and her openness towards repair, harmony and universal peace. A must-read Ash conducts the reader through thorny labyrinths of pain and despair, allowing now and then a glimpse of ultimate resolve and liberation in verses of a rare beauty:

"...but gravity is about to free me into space... People will look at me day and night and ask, "what is it?" There is no control over what happens. The cathedral is high and my freckles fell on the floor as I left. Paleness now, that no one sees, but in the universe, I will be a prism." (Gravity)

"...A hunger surrounds us, dust gathers, and is wiped off, space evading all this as songs of the wind come through the window and we all hum." (Room)
—Flavia Cosma, author of In the Arms of the Father, Val-David, QC

$16.00 | ISBN: 978-1-941783-75-7 | 71 Pages

Our first children's book! Little Brown Mouse
by Jack Mindock, Gloria Mindock, and Kellis Mindock Dryer

Little Brown Mouse (Children) by Jack Mindock, Gloria Mindock, and Kellis Mindock Dryer Illustrations by William J. Kelle Červená Barva Press, 2020

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jack Mindock (b. 1926), author of Little Brown Mouse, spent sixty years of his life as an educator. He was a junior high language arts teacher and K-12 principal in Illinois. He is a World War II Navy veteran and historian who frequently has speaking engagements about his knowledge and experiences. He started telling Little Brown Mouse stories to his children when they were young. They were oral stories, made up as he went along. It was Jack's desire to have some new Little Brown Mouse adventures in print and published for future generations of children to enjoy.

Kellis Mindock Dryer, daughter of author Jack Mindock, is a pianist and piano teacher in Cary, NC. She enjoyed composing the two Little Brown Mouse songs in the book. They can be sung with or without the piano accompaniment. If the children and parents reading this book cannot read music, they are welcome to recite the lyrics as poetry or make up their own melodies.

Gloria Mindock is the author of five books of poetry, most recently, I wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me (Nixes Mate books, 2018). She is the founding editor of Cervena Barva Press and one of the USA editors for Levure Litteraire (France). Widely published in the USA and abroad, her poetry has been translated and published into eight languages. Gloria has been awarded the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award and was the recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award for Community Service by the Newton Writing and Publishing Center. She also has been awarded the fifth and fortieth Moon Prize by Writing in a Woman's Voice. She was the Poet Laureate in Somerville, MA in 2017 & 2018.

NOTE
When I was three, four, and five years old, my Dad, "Daddy Jack," would make up bedtime stories every night about the adventures of “Little Brown Mouse.” He would leave me in suspense nightly. I couldn’t wait to hear what happened next to Little Brown Mouse. Why Little Brown Mouse? Because Little Brown Mouse did come to my house! This book, Little Brown Mouse, was written for mothers, fathers, and others to read to young children at bedtime.
-Gloria Mindock

PREFACE
Welcome to the land of curiosity and adventure! Little Brown Mouse is a bedtime story to make you think, be curious, and ask questions. Here are a few questions to get you started: Have you ever seen a mouse? What color are mice? What do they eat? Where do they live?

$13.95 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-35-2 | 28 Pages