Category: Poetry (Page 10 of 33)

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Sing a Song of Midnight

31 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Bonnie Demerjian

Step through the door into the new-hatched year.
There’s promise of a light ahead,
the balance tipped, the finger points toward spring
but not just yet.

For now, we’re in that spacious room of dark —
no floor, no walls, no roof above.
In amniotic space, we’ll first unfold
then wait to be unsealed.

In this hour the frost world is our home
so sink into its artful wealth.
Fluff your feathers like the roosting hen,
and settle safely in.

Outside the porcupine and deer will roam,
so wary in the light of day,
tonight in silky freedom nose your gate,
befriended by the shade.

Oh birds, the city lights scream certain death,
a warning never known and yet
somber incantation chants a highway for
your journey lit by dark.

Unlatch the door to constellations and
the fickle waltzing moon.
A shooting star may plunge and bring you promise
of a world renewed.

Curtains drawn and door against the night,
turn again to your true love.
The candle of affection brighter for the
season’s windblown gloom.

So welcome Mother Dark, she nourishes,
sustains us with her mystery.
And though our hearts quail with diminished light,
her secrets feed our journey.

Bonnie Demerjian lives in Southeast Alaska and writes from her oceanside home which inspires much of her writing. She is a birder, a gardener and a cellist. Her work has been published in The Bluebird Word, Tidal Echoes, Blue Heron Review, Pure Slush, and Alaska Women Speak, among others.

Blue Snow Globe

31 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Jennifer Smith

My winter is ice, but its depth is of my choosing.
Not a sharp, piercing icicle to stab my soul,
but slender glistens of frozen branches on bare trees along our Smoky Mountain trails.

My December ice is not the weak spot on a frozen Tennessee lake.
It is twilight snowflakes with sapphire and silver sparkles,
brushing our faces and street lamps on a Winter Solstice walk downtown.

This seasonal ice is not the danger of a polar path I slip on.
I select shelter in warmth of a southern snow castle,
illuminated in pink pearl tones of protection from darkness and harsh mountain winds.

The blue of the season is not desolate steel grey from a palette of mourning.
My shade is Atlantic Ocean turquoise,
washing ashore your message in a bottle at wintertide on Orange Beach.

Any frost of mid-winter blues is soothed by tunes from a playlist of our Maui shore memories.
My coldest days are layered with island glory,
in songs and swirls of ultramarine and sea, of cobalt and sky.

On a night designed for confetti and celebration, the clock counts down hours, minutes, seconds.
I wrap myself in luxurious, rich velvet of indigo midnight,
and see our friendship amid the stars of a New Year.

Jennifer Smith is a retired speech-language pathologist, residing in Northwest Georgia. She is published in Fictionette and Fifty Word Stories. Jennifer holds an Educational Specialist Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Lincoln Memorial University and a Creative Writing Certificate from Kennesaw State University.

January 1

31 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Alexandra Newton Rios

This is a new year I rise to meet
to run to the sun rising red
amidst eucalyptus and slender-leafed tarcos
running the track of black earth softened
by the rains in a province of deep heat.
I run to the rhythms of a life
found in the doing
the raising of five children
transformed into leading five adults
into their next steps without me.
All is well say the birds as I run
this leaving one place for another
this removing myself suddenly with gratitude
for all that a tree over two hundred and fifty years old,
a mountain and the birds give.
We are rising to meet the new year,
the new day, the new possibility
which is beginning.
Yellow-bellied quetupí know this every day.

Alexandra Newton Rios is a University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop graduate. Madeleine L’Engle spoke highly of her poems in 1995, and she received poetic praise from W.S. Merwin in 2011. She is a bi-hemispherical mother of five. Read an earlier poem in The Bluebird Word from July 2023.

If Not Glitter, If Not Gold

17 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Kersten Christianson

This early Sunday morning
my coffee mug steams.
A miniature Mauna Loa,
it resides within an archipelago

of trunk-top clutter: Solstice gifts,
dog-eared chapbooks, sun-bright
Satsumas. In this indigo light,
I scour Etsy for glitter-crusted

New Year banners, lunar calendars,
their moons of the year stamped
in bright gold, not just on paper,
but parchment. I can’t explain

this fiery December need for
glimmer & glam, twinkle & flash,
but I am ever the believer, searcher
for the harbinger of fortune & joy.

Kersten Christianson is a poet and English teacher from Sitka, Alaska. She is the author of Curating the House of Nostalgia (Sheila-Na-Gig 2020) and Something Yet to Be Named (Kelsay Books, 2017). She serves as poetry editor of Alaska Women Speak. Kersten savors road trips, bookstores, and smooth ink pens.

Christmas 2000

17 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Nancy Kay Peterson

A red grapefruit sunrise hugs the horizon
and stark sycamore limbs lance the lunar landscape.
Chimney smoke signals an unreadable message.
Snow creaks in protest at every step.
Cold pierces even the heaviest coats.
It is a handful of days till winter solstice,
then Christmas, then nearly half a year till
the bare branches vanish in greenery, chimneys quiet.

II.

Christmas lights glow like jewels in the dark room
where, Norwegian traditions passed on to me,
an unrelenting weight, will pass to no one.
My Jewish ex-husband tolerated the annual pine invasion.
My Hong Kong husband eschews the antique ornaments
in favor of a minimalist approach — less work.
Scarred globes of my childhood remain boxed
like the Christmas pasts sleeping in my heart.

III.

The few remaining family have happy hour,
call the one uncle left, his days now numbered.
My brother-in-law has brought his mother
from the Aase Haugen Home where an old man
sat in his wheelchair by the door
asking “Can I come, too?” I can’t erase
the thought of one of us there as he is now
waiting for a Christmas that will never come.

The moon’s grin is ever cold, never changing.

Nancy Kay Peterson’s poetry has appeared in The Bluebird Word, Dash Literary Journal, HerWords, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, One Sentence Poems, RavensPerch, Spank the Carp, Steam Ticke, Three Line Poetry and Tipton Poetry Journal. She’s published two chapbooks, “Belated Remembrance” (2010) and “Selling the Family” (2021). For more information, see www.nancykaypeterson.com.

San Marcos Christmas

17 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Steve Wilson

No snow for Christmas in Texas, where nevertheless
the inflatable snowman across the street seems jovial

enough. In place of new-fallen snow, we’ve
a freshly mown lawn and, in our front garden,

five yellow flowers confused into blooming
by warm afternoons and clear skies. Still,

the neighbors’ twinkling lights manage to coax us all
toward something approaching goodwill with the world

that’s stubbornly churning along upon its complaints
and recriminations, its internet trolls, its rising rages.

Candles glow in windows here and there. Someone
has tethered a Santa to their chimney; it totters drunkenly

upon the breeze. We’re weary of this weariness, the lot
of us. Bumbling through. Mumbling. Humming

ragged fragments of carols as we worry our way
through the evening’s always breaking news.

Steve Wilson‘s poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies nationwide; as well as in six collections, the most recent entitled Complicity. He lives in San Marcos, TX.

Shadows and Silhouettes

17 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by C. DeForest Switzer

She stood her ground beside
the blue tarp, looking up at me in the window
from the new and unknown below.
I stared down, hoping to convey
that everything was okay;
But, of course, it was not.

My family hated the “pests”—
their destructive habits;
the drab, dirty-gray rabbits that lurked
constantly wary but secure,
indifferent,
bolting free with lightning speed…
No problem for Dad;
his pellet gun at the ready.
The offense?
Eating garden plants to nubs —
creatures older than us,
forever in the dark:
now a kit under my deck,
quiet and free of predator’s eyes
Silhouetted in the dusk.
A paper cutout, unconcerned,
nibbling birdseed on the flagstone,
feet away from her ground-level haven.
And me, in the gray twilight,
atop the shelter of her life,
My rustic deck.

As the winter wind blows the snow,
the blue tarp flaps
atop the sheltered haven.
“It’s okay,” I mouth, looking down
from my window above,
motioning with hands and body
as best I can.
“It’s still safe,” I say
to the rabbit looking up at me
Thumping her foot in reply.

C. DeForest Switzer lives in western Iowa’s Loess Hills. He loves the outdoors and studied at Cal State, Chico, competing in a South Lake Tahoe park design contest. He published a poem in the college literary magazine, “Watershed,” and has been writing since. Currently, he’s editing his first novel.

Target, at Christmas

17 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Allison Baldwin

All it takes is the laughter of children,
the screech of shopping carts
to remind me of love.

In the aisle on my left,
red shirts in straight lines
waiting to be purchased
one by one.

Several feet away,
my best friend, walking, in an opposite direction
toward Starbursts, Sweet-Tarts, Goobers.

I know her: a sugar queen,
even as she asks me not to let her be.

I know me: last minute shopper, buying gifts for family
even when the task is far from easy.

In a basket:
Two small notebooks
A Yoshi hat my brother will never wear
A pair of Mario socks he will.
Some dog toys.

Love is not always easy, either.
But it holds its weight.

At the register, my friend gives into temptation,
buys the candy anyway
yet I follow through, tell her not to.

(The secret: I’ve already bought her
the sweets she seeks)

When she wonders why,
I say, “I am just doing my job.”

We laugh,
and the clerk joins in.

Allison Baldwin is a poet who combines authenticity with sass. Her work has been published in print and online, with an essay forthcoming in Folkway Press’s Right to Life anthology. She holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetic Medicine from Dominican University of California.

Another Christmas

17 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Rohan Buettel

That time of year has come again.
We brave the crowds in shopping malls
and search the shelves but look in vain,
the perfect gift not on these walls.
The hours we spend in kitchens hot
preparing food that tastes so good.
A Christmas meal will hit the spot,
enough to feast the neighbourhood.

The cheer of hearing from old friends,
the family gathers round at last,
repair the breaks and make amends,
a time to put away the past.
The effort worth it all to place
a smile upon a little face.

Rohan Buettel lives in Canberra, Australia. His haiku appear in various Australian and international journals (including Presence, Cattails and The Heron’s Nest). His longer poetry appears in more than fifty journals, including The Goodlife Review, Rappahannock Review, Penumbra Literary and Art Journal, Passengers Journal, Reed Magazine, Meniscus and Quadrant.

This peculiar work

17 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by J.T. Homesley

This peculiar work. For this
lowest legal wage. Paid to
help people play. In the snow.
Tempting gravity. Nowhere to go.
But down hills high speed.
Not for me. Though I will
gladly take pay to keep it on
open all be it precarious
possibility for them. Others
buried in layered flannels
and rainbow goggles. I like
to imagine behind them, they see the world
like a horsefly gushing by trees
bristled hairs in loose tail
whipping. Ears twitching and
brittle as ice. Hit the landing
just right. Broken wings and six
shattered legs lie crumpled in a pile.
Rise from the white ashes,
laughing.
Clearly this whole thing is a peculiarity.
It’s just. They keep on insisting I call it work.

J.T. Homesley is an English teacher, writer, actor and farmer currently based in the Piedmont of North Carolina. He holds a Master of Arts in writing and has been published with collections including Ghost City Review and GreenPrints Magazine. Follow his journey at www.writeractorfarmer.com.

Category: Poetry (Page 10 of 33)

Sing a Song of Midnight

Blue Snow Globe

January 1

If Not Glitter, If Not Gold

Christmas 2000

San Marcos Christmas

Shadows and Silhouettes

Target, at Christmas

Another Christmas

This peculiar work

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