Category: Poetry (Page 12 of 35)

And Yet This Life

1 February 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Lisa Low

Is still worth living;
even now the rain is falling, making
mud from dirt around the roots and filling
in the ragged spots where grass hardly
ever shows. Tomorrow, too, the sun
will bring its healing mix of heat and light,
and make the flowers grow, more firmly
capable, their fancy floral dresses
stiff, each new eye glazed with thick black stripe
of paint, each marigold more grandly
dressed, more rich with bright silk fabrics hung,
orange vests and epaulets . . .

Lisa Low’s essays, book reviews, and interviews have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Boston Review, The Tupelo Quarterly, and The Adroit Journal. Her poetry has appeared in many literary journals, among them Valparaiso Poetry Review, Phoebe, Pennsylvania English, American Journal of Poetry, Delmarva Review, and Tusculum Review.

On the Mend

1 February 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Andrew Shattuck McBride

Until we die our lives are on the mend.
Richard hugo

At the shoreline near the coffee shop,
someone has balanced shards of stone
tip to tip in ragged stacks, creating
a forest of stone above the water.

Under a bench, a pink pacifier, forgotten.
Further down the paved trail, a woman
gathers another woman who is weeping
into a fierce loving hug, murmurs comfort.

A curtain of rain cloud passes overhead,
and steady rain soaks us as I walk by.
Cherry trees are in bloom. Sodden
pink petals redeem pavement and lawn.

There are fewer discarded masks.
The rain, gentle, comforts like a hug.
I don’t hurry. I’m on my way home,
toward something resembling hope.

Andrew Shattuck McBride grew up in Volcano, Hawaiʻi, six miles from the summit of Kīlauea volcano. Based in Washington State, he is co-editor of For Love of Orcas (Wandering Aengus, 2019). His work appears in literary journals including Rattle, Clockhouse, and Crab Creek Review.

Breath

1 February 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Jeff Burt

In the shower from a hose
over tomato vines, an Anne’s hummingbird
entered and rinsed and hovered
a foot from my face, then landed
on my chest to catch a breath,
feet gripping my shirt like a newborn.

I thought of the forty beats
per second of its wings
that I could both hear and feel,
wondered if it slowed and felt the torpor
of stasis come over like sleep,
but in the moment my mind wandered
the hummingbird had flown.

To catch a breath, to enter the mist
and rest on the dusty, arid day–
I thought of the taxi driver
from Eritrea who said he drove
each day until he couldn’t stop,
then he’d stop, he laughed,
he had many mouths to feed,
and hustle is all he knew, cabbie, valet.
When I touched his shoulder,
I could feel his heartbeat slowing down,
body harbor below my hand.

So many months have passed
and he stayed in my thoughts
in the mass where I store
random things I cannot place,
but today I knew,
he was a hummingbird,
beating his wings all day
against the dead air
to stay alive for others,
clutching for a foothold
and turning his throat
skyward for a breath.

Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California. He has contributed to Williwaw Journal, Rabid Oak, and Willows Wept Review, and has a chapbook at Red Wolf Editions and a second chapbook available from Red Bird Chapbooks. Read earlier fiction and poetry in The Bluebird Word.

Tanka for the New Year

31 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by K.L. Johnston

cathedral of pines
capturing
light and silence
carpet of needles
shushing our footsteps
our breath
rising white
with songbird wings

K.L. Johnston is an award-winning haiku poet and author whose works have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines. She holds a degree in Literature and Communications from the University of South Carolina and is a retired antiques dealer. You can follow her on Facebook at A Written World.

Some Kinder Resolutions for a Better Year

31 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Cecil Morris

Learn from the cat. Settle in sunny spot and stretch
oblivious to obligation or cascading shoulds
or judgmental stares. Let the bones go loose,
all muscles relaxed and negligent.
Turn off notifications and ringers,
all beeps and trills and buzzing vibrations
that call the mind from its rightful work
of undirected cogitation.
Commit to silence for one hour
each morning and each night and, maybe,
each noon, too. Take those quiet hours
to notice the world at its business—
the pale shoot splitting the sunflower seed
to seek the sun, the unhurried humming
of a bee progressing from blossom
to blossom, the tulip’s reverent pose,
the way a bit of dust can levitate
in a slice of light. Do not make haste.
Every moment does not need to yield
a product or an accomplishment.
Laziness is a healthy pleasure
so make of its indulgence an art.
Make of indolence a new hobby.
Linger over a favorite song.
Let it play twice.
Enjoy.

Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English, and now he tries writing himself what he spent so many years teaching others to understand and (he hopes) to enjoy. Poems appear or are forthcoming in Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, Willawaw Journal, and other literary magazines.

Brixen in Winter

31 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Jeannette Tien-Wei Law

Frost flakes, Yule tide, blink lights glow

Dove haze, slab streets, wish for snow

Star child, sweep stacks, coal smudge face

Sky blush, Year dawns, white spot doe

Jeannette Tien-Wei Law grew up celebrating the holidays with her family in St. Louis, Missouri. Festive dinners often touted steamed rice and stir-fried broccoli alongside the roasted turkey and traditional trimmings. Jeannette now makes her own stuffing with apricots, wine and Italian sausage as an international educator living in Milan.

Christmas Dessert

31 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Inge Sorensen

Black, Blue, Raspberries

Topping Dollop, Fresh Whipped Cream

Festive Pavlova

Inge Sorensen is a poet and short story writer born and raised in California’s Bay Area. Her pieces have been featured in the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast, Wingless Dreamer, the Humans of the World blog, and Poet’s Choice Autumn Anthology.

bare trees — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

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.

Category: Poetry (Page 12 of 35)

And Yet This Life

On the Mend

Breath

Tanka for the New Year

Some Kinder Resolutions for a Better Year

Brixen in Winter

Christmas Dessert

Sing a Song of Midnight

Blue Snow Globe

January 1

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