Category: Poetry (Page 2 of 35)

Only Windows See

4 February 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Rebecca Nacy

harvest hues hugging
pointed rows of houses,
horizon decorated with
shimmering skyscrapers.

roasted reds and golden grasses
settled to support sparkling shorelines.

sky and sea
separated
by soft stratospheric spectacles.
scene only visible through satellite-sight

rows of grey ovals closed shut,
darkness stales the cabin still.
airborne sleepers snore,
as windows and wings watch.

Rebecca Nacy is a ginger born and raised in Mexico, replanted in Southern Florida. When not researching in a lab, you can find her covered in mud, measuring oysters. While her brain thinks in STEM, her heart loves the arts like singing, tap-dancing, and of course, writing.

September 29

1 February 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Lorelei Feeny

for Dad

Today might be your last full day on earth
but know that I’ll think of you
every time I go to the Dollar Tree.

And whenever John Grisham writes a new book
I’ll put your name on the waiting list
even though you said he always tells the same story.

I still have your pocket avocados growing in my apartment,
windowsills lined with trinkets
given to me when I was a little girl.

and after
all these months
i can release
my grief
held hostage

From endings, new beginnings.

Lorelei Feeny was born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina. She loves words and learning foreign languages. Her dad inspired her to write poetry. Read his poem The Garden published in The Bluebird Word in July 2023.

Photo by Cristina Anne Costello on Unsplash

February Morning in Palm Springs

28 January 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Suzy Harris

Blue sky laced with clouds, chilly breeze.
Sometimes the sun breaks through to kiss

a cheek, a shoulder, then hides again.
Sandals and sun hat emerge from hibernation.

It is all about the light here,
how it sets the lemon tree aflame,

each lemon a small sun of tart brilliance.
Each cell dulled by winter stirs,

arises to greet the day. Day is still
getting used to these strangers,

prods the multi-celled being
we call human to watch

a hummingbird hovering the base of twin
palm trees, to notice the stalk

arising from the center of an agave,
its death bloom still tightly curled.

Suzy Harris lives in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, Willawaw Journal, and Wild Greens, among other journals and anthologies. Her chapbook Listening in the Dark, about hearing loss and learning to hear again with cochlear implants, was published by The Poetry Box in February 2023.

Pears

22 January 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Barbara Santucci

Remember those golden d’Anjou pears
that arrived every Christmas Eve in a wooden box,
each flirty orb nestled inside brown shredded paper.

On Christmas morning, their gold
brightened frosty windows panes,
like ornaments glittering on the tree.

You sliced down to the pear’s core,
spread warm Brie over firm flesh
while warming your toes by a fire.

Now, lips chapped by January frost,
hunger for their subtle sweetness.
Dry cracked hands long to cradle their soft skin.

What would you give
for those golden d’Anjou pears
that arrived last Christmas Eve in a wooden box?

Barbara Santucci is a literary and visual artist. She explores the themes of nature, family, and self-reflection. Her poetry has been published in several journals: Plants and Poetry Journal, The Bluebird Word, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and Macrame Literary Journal. Barbara has published three picture books. Visit her at barbarasantucci.com.

Maisie at Folsom Lake

19 January 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Cecil Morris

On this January day the sky opens wide and bright,
a dream of blue realized and guileless, and the lake,
thanks to a December of bountiful rain and snow,
looks again like a lake where a teenage boy might water ski
through the sear of August and right into the start of school.
My best friend and I take turns throwing a tennis ball
for his galloping Labrador retriever that chases
every arc and leaps into the risen water with a joy
inexhaustible as the sky. She hardly needs a name,
this year-old eagerness, this incarnation of galumphing.
I watch her mad rush and think of Sisyphus. Maybe he loved
the boulder, the reassuring weight of it, the thunder
of its roll. I see rapture in her eyes, her open mouth,
the pink expectation of her tongue, the whole body shake
and spray of water flung off: a little galaxy
of love, of canine glee, of heart in orbit tight,
around and around a simple repetition.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher and Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, has poems appearing or forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, New Verse News, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, Willawaw Journal, and elsewhere.

Calling Out for Color

16 January 2025 / Editor

Prose Poetry by Kathryn Ganfield

Through the dirty, double-paned windows, screens blackened by a box fan that perches there five months of the year, I see snow poured out blue as gas station slushees or abandoned bottles of glacial electrolytic drinks. But when I open the back door, call out hoarsely to the dog, the snow is not blue after all. Not a bit blue, not even a little. Snow is mauve by the seasoned cedar fence, the fence we always meant to stain, but now seven years have gone by, and the weather beat us to it. Snow is black from puppy paws. Snow is divots and sand traps and even a mangrove back by the barbecue grill and the shade garden where, slicked green, the hosta leaves are a fitted sheet under a snowy duvet. And finally, eyes adjusted to winter’s light, I see the snow for what it is. Not white or blue or any of these colors, but, of course, a color sent south from Canada. The color of goose down—sharp, curling and cold.

Kathryn Ganfield is a Minnesota-based nature writer and essayist. She was a Loft Literary Center Mentor Series Fellow, 2023 Paul Gruchow Essay Contest winner, and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her words have been published in Water~Stone Review and Creative Nonfiction, among other journals. Find her at kathrynganfield.com.

Tsuga of the Pine Family (Haiku Sonnet)

13 January 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Kersten Christianson

Soft-needled hemlock,
sculpted by edged breeze, you are
both branched, bare-barked, your

evergreen voice notes
a wooden, wild chime chanting
against trunked neighbor.

Tonal clopping, wood
on wood on wood, whispering
needle, shuffling dried

pages of gale, tea-
tossed fluttering paper, winged
winter hummingbirds.

Twinkled spell of fête, nip, rime,
you are welcome in our home.

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.

Tabula Rasa

10 January 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Jennie Meyer

The beach a sheet
of untouched morning snow—
the sweeping tide a distant rumble.

My scuffing footprints
as I draft this new poem in steaming breaths—
the first and only brushstrokes.

Not a soul on the beach— no bird, no human,
no dog, not even a fowl’s fork-print embossed.

An empty canvas, free of life’s clamber.

Only one white car parked on Atlantic Ave.
One song sparrow singing like its spring
from some snow-filled limb.

One black mussel reaching out
from beneath the white sheet.

One seagull lifting off from tidal stream,
landing on the blanketed beach, mirroring
its purity with her white sloping belly,

painting it, Pollok-like, with one blast of scat.
Each of us engaged in her craft.

Jennie Meyer’s poetry has appeared in two print anthologies and numerous print and online publications. She is a 2024 finalist for Cathexis Northwest Press: Unpublished Author Chapbook contest, a 2023 winner of Beyond Words: The End of the World Creative Writing Challenge and a 2022 grant recipient from Discover Gloucester.

January Walk

6 January 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Laura Hannett

Trudging in my brilliant scarf
my coat, my hat, my gloves
I see that
as much as any other creature
I am an adornment to the world
The cardinal
so lavishly and recklessly red
in the black-and-white tracery of snowy branches
is not more bracing to the eye

Shaking not a little
from the pitiless wind
I fear that
as much as any other creature
I am a trifle to the world
The rabbit
huddled with ruffled fur
beneath the spirea’s bones
is not more exposed to the cold

Returning home
to warmth that bathes my icy face
I own that
I am some fortune’s darling
The cats
so thoroughly and sensuously lost in sleep
on this freezing afternoon
are not more spoiled than me

Laura Hannett lives in Central New York with her marvelous family. She is a graduate of Hamilton College and the College of William and Mary.

The Calendar Ritual

1 January 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Melanie Harless

It is the end of one year
the beginning of another
I take out all the calendars
sent by charities pursuing
donations

and choose one with lovely pictures
and the largest day blocks
with enough space to write many
upcoming events on a busy day

the calendar is smooth and new
holds the promise of a smooth new year
I hope that lunches and parties
will be filling the spaces, not doctor
appointments or boring meetings

I am already filling up the days
of January and will go through
each month and write in birthdays
and regular scheduled meetings

many people have online calendars
but I have launched a new calendar
with high hopes for the coming year
for as long as I can remember

I take my cup of coffee and walk
to the calendar each morning
and am greeted with a beautiful scene
as I check what awaits the new day

Melanie Harless began writing after retirement as a school librarian in 2006. She is an award-winning writer with poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and photography published in anthologies, journals, and magazines. She is a board member of Tennessee Mountain Writers and leads excursions for the Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Learning.