After receiving her master’s degree, she taught English composition, creative writing, and English as a Second Language at Chapman College, San Diego State University Extension, and Southwestern College.

While at SDSU, she studied with the poets Glover Davis and Carolyn Forche and completed a thesis of her own poetry. Sally Albiso earned a BA in Spanish from UCLA and an MA in English with a creative writing emphasis from San Diego State University. Sally Albiso‘s art is always chiaroscuro, wonder and pain together: “So trying, this act of faith, /this bearing witness.” She’ll show you how to swallow swords, why the magician’s daughter may float away, and why a man in the audience could secretly love the spider lady. From the escaped giraffe to the eponymous happy couple, to the lion “whose roar contains a darkness,” none are innocent and none are spared the poet’s light, perceptive twist. These delicious, haunting poems take you inside the circus-really inside, to the inner worlds of performers and audience.

–Patrick Loafman, author of Somewhere Upriver A tight collection of poetry that is also entertaining. Sally Albiso puts sword-swallowers and lion-tamers in the center stage, but the spotlight actually focuses on the reader, on basic human desires and needs, which should be the meat of any good poem. “The circus exposes us all,” the Ringmaster warns in the introductory poem, and this is exactly what happens. From roustabout to elephant, lion tamer to clown, the circus exposes us all. Each poem is in the persona and voice of various circus performers, both human and animal, employees, and spectators-who are also complicit in the acts they see. In the poetry chapbook, The Fire Eater and the Bearded Lady, the reader is invited into the world of an old-time circus/sideshow.

Somewhere Upriver by Patrick Loafman