Category: Poetry (Page 1 of 46)

Faded Picks and Broken Strings for Eric

10 May 2026 / Editor

Poetry by James Fleet Underwood

My gait aches, Kwan says I’m stooping,
and the nose I broke brawling with your cousin
wheezes in the winter, but more times than not
I’m staring at my toes and laughing
as if I just found the man I was looking for
standing sunburned in the grass.

You chat easy with us here, old friend,
our table cleared of plate and cloth,
smoking Drum and pushing coffee round a saucer
with your thumb, that waggish smile
tucked in several years of beard, and if I
don’t recognize the manifestation of your intent,
I know it’s love you always bring me.

We’re taking longer walks these days,
Kwan and I, going back to Strummer’s Hollow,
to that shed where you holed up with your Gibson,
where you wrote that tune of gals and gin,
a raunchy 12 bar riffed off with a grin,
and we kick up faded picks & broken strings – I
think she found that charm of yours,
the one you swore the barmaid stole in Reno.

Your spirit’s strong and flies here with October,
a stormy Michigan wet wood thing, though I
know you bang your can amongst the living,
and I wake those nights, hear a strumming,
get honey from the bed, and we walk the trails
swinging lanterns, asking wisdom from the bears.

James Fleet Underwood writes poems rooted in place, season, and daily life. His work explores quiet relationships with the natural world and the small rituals that shape human presence within it. Find him on X: @jamesfleetpoems and Substack: jamesfleetpoems.substack.com

Like Neighborhood Kids

7 May 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Jeffrey Sommer

Behind the house an Italian Cypress shares the yard
With a Japanese maple and a Mexican Palm

Like neighborhood kids they grew up together,
Drinking the same water, fed by the same sun

The evergreen Cypress guards the fence
Star-shaped leaves decorate the Maple tree
Palm fans dance in the wind

In their glory, in their permanence
They bring joy to the morning
Calm to the evening

In their blessed co-existence
They bring hope to our own

Jeffrey Sommer enjoys writing poetry on social issues as well as relationships between people and the environment.

Puddle

1 May 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Haily Gagliardo

A puddle lies still
stale from a morning’s rain
Once crisp with crystal hues
now brown and dull
giving way to dirt

Only the day before
she was one with silent waves
taken suddenly
through the Sun’s blazing heat
To become one with gentle mist
fluffy and white

Until a darkness overcame her
Thundering light flashed
as drops of water fell
like stone to the earth

Now she lies in wait
for the day
to once again
become one with the heavens

Haily Gagliardo is freelance writer and singer, majoring in commercial music at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Growing up in a mixed family, with her mom Jamaican Indian and her dad Italian, she developed a deep appreciation for different views on a familiar subject, which she enjoys expressing through her art.

Grounded

1 May 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Linda K. Allison

I was never a girl who could fly
Never one who could leap
A maple seed pirouetting in the breeze
I was not one to tumble
Head over feet
As if caught
In the frothy curl of a wave
Me, I was affixed to terra firma from the start
Planted securely with my first indignant bellow

I envied those girls
The ones who could leap and twirl
As if gravity did not exist for them
As if the rules of Newton applied to someone else

But eventually, I turned my gaze
Discovering a kaleidoscope of life
Unfolding below me
Flushes of mushrooms
Where none had stood the evening before
Appearing as if by nature’s sleight of hand
A bale of turtles
Collapsing like dominoes into a dark pond
Me, witness to their choreography
As I bend close

And so, while other girls flew,
I hovered
And now, many years later
While most who once soared have lost flight
I’ve only grown closer to the earth

Linda K. Allison is a recovering banker who lives with the love of her life among the trees in the The Woodlands, Texas. Her writing has been published in The Milk House, MoonPark Review, Pile Press, and others. Her photography has appeared in The Sun, Burningword Literary Journal and elsewhere.

Endurance

1 May 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Joli Huelskamp

We exchange annoyed glances
as the noisy school groups jostle us
on their rush through the Shackleton exhibit.

We read the signage; they don’t.
We’re interested; they’re bored.
Except one little boy, standing rapt before a video on ice.

He’s not distracted by the tiny James Caird,
or by the haunting photo of Crean with the ill-fated sled dogs.
No, he’s fascinated by ice, how it forms, flows, breaks apart.

We exchange approving smiles, gratified that at least he—
“C’mon, Ernie,” barks the teacher, pulling him away,
“it’s time to go see the dinosaurs.”

Joli Huelskamp lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She won second place in the Knoxville Writers Guild 2025 Short Fiction Contest. Her work has been published in Bewildering Stories.

This morning

28 April 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Elizabeth L. Merrick

I wake up early for no reason,
sit down to breakfast
just as one moment it’s dark,
the next it’s not.

Orange rays land on the pine table,
catching the round loaf,
lighting up its fresh crust.

A small crockery pot of strawberry jam
is bathed in apricot.

The polished bread knife reflects
celestial sparks.

Silently I give thanks for this light
from unimaginably far away,
this bread provided by unknown hands,
this dawning moment.

Elizabeth L. Merrick’s poems have appeared in journals including Gramercy Review, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Rue Scribe, and Muddy River Poetry Review. She has also authored scientific research publications and a guidebook on Boston’s historic house museums. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. Read more at ElizabethLMerrickPoetry.com

Ghost crew

22 April 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Christopher Laird Dornin

My late father and brother
watch me sail alone
with my eyes closed in light

wind on a burning afternoon.
Ephemeral zephyrs
and ghostly shifts of air

fall and come and rise.
I feel their pulse in the tug
of the tiller, the angle of heel,

the pull of the mainsheet and the gurgle
of my bow and stern waves.
My father’s cemetery is missing

its ancient gates and stones.
He kept its address a secret
the time we sailed the Chesapeake

among the traveling molecules
of my brother, lost at sea
a long way from there.

Christopher Laird Dornin has won a NH Arts Council fellowship and placed runner-up in the Swan Scythe Press chapbook contest, semi-finalist in the Finishing Line Press book contest and semi-finalist in the Wolfson Press chapbook contest. His verse has appeared in The Lake, Oberon, Blue Unicorn, Nimrod and others.

Ivory and Enamel

16 April 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Lydia Kuerth

My mother revives ivory:
milking songs from ebony keys
stroked in 88 stripes
each finger sculpts valleys
dipping,
rippling
high as hills
a fugitive melody,
a forgotten fugue

Windows shudder;
A- thunder
sunders a daughter’s closed door,
unlocking enamel
behind closed lips

Lydia Kuerth is a freelance writer from South Florida, where she edits the Living Waters Review and serves as a peer mentor at her university’s Writing Central. As a lover of reptiles, rainy days, and role-playing games, when not burrowing into books, she enjoys hiking and observing small creatures.

The Farm, Three Months After Dad’s Death

13 April 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Claudia Kessel

Paint chips off the deck
Bare feet smear sun across wood
A melting of hours

Orange, nameless barn cat
slinks between blue hydrangeas
Day drifts to evening

Something splinter-sharp
slices August’s humid breath:
Cicada vibration

Trucks speed the backroads
Launching from lily to lily
bees zip across faces

Black walnut fingers
release twittering sparrows
Limbs curtsy in wind

My son collects eggs
from the white-rimmed chicken coop
His life has not changed

Abandoned silo
Mourning dove’s alto lament
Swallow’s coloratura

Mulberries scatter
Stain the gravel indigo
Wasps inspect new jewels

My fingers trace keys
of his Baldwin piano
Ivory absent of his broad thumbs

Only when I sing
alone by his piano
do I un-trap myself from myself

Sunset’s greasy smudge
Not necessarily happiness
Neither unhappiness

Green dappled stillness
No one in particular
loves me today

In his gray armchair
at dawn, with coffee and cat
Scent lingers in cloth

Slippers empty of feet
A cane leans against the chair
How much of him in me

My body breathes here
in the home of pine and glass
he dreamed, built, and died in

Claudia Kessel works as a grant writer and musician in Williamsburg, Virginia. Her poetry has been published in Richmond Magazine as a finalist in the 2021 Shann Palmer Poetry Contest, awarded by James River Writers, in the 2024 Poetry Society of Virginia anthology, and in various literary journals.

For the Eastern Bluebird

10 April 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Danita Dodson

She cleaves the quivering air,
her wings spun from prismed light,
feathered at the meadow’s hem.
We script her joy as weightless,
crown her myth against the dark,
watch her wake the sleeping sky.
What we forget in our dreaming—
her days are edged with struggle,
with hunger, with starlings’ theft.

A mother seeking a hallow home,
she nestles where rot gives room,
cradling life in shifting shadows.

Still she returns, undiminished—
fledgling-feeder, hope-bringer,
tracing rites on warming winds.

She finds her way home at dusk,
tastes the thaw on the earth’s breath,
sounding the spring’s first song.

Danita Dodson is the author of three poetry collections: Trailing the Azimuth, The Medicine Woods, and Between Gone and Everlasting. Her poems appear in Salvation South and elsewhere. She is the 2024 winner of the Poetry Society of Tennessee’s Best of Fest. She lives in Sneedville, Tennessee. More at danitadodson.com.

Category: Poetry (Page 1 of 46)

Faded Picks and Broken Strings for Eric

Like Neighborhood Kids

Puddle

Grounded

Endurance

This morning

Ghost crew

Ivory and Enamel

The Farm, Three Months After Dad’s Death

For the Eastern Bluebird

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