Category: Poetry (Page 2 of 41)

Cheerful Misery

1 December 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Alexandria Wyckoff

Sweet cookies dip into milk, crumbs fall;
a soft clink, small sounds

that must not grow louder.
Expertly placed footsteps upon

plush carpet mark the way
as presents adorn the trees

underside; a new satin skirt.
One last glance and up the chimney;

once again prone to the elements.
Warm breath lodged in his lungs

releases itself to the bitter wind.
Snow crunches beneath his feet; not

even wool gloves protect against the
bite of metal sleigh railings. Reigns

creak against practiced hands, before
a swift snap leads eight pairs of antlers

back into inky, starlight skies.

Alexandria Wyckoff has a BA in Creative Writing from SUNY Oswego. She has one book of poetry titled The Pain Cycle, with work also appearing in BarBar, Kennings Literary Journal, The Bookends Review, and others. Find more of her work at https://www.alexandriawyckoff.com/.

Poinsettias

1 December 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Kathy Pon

You wait three days on a pallet
for our return. I panic
about frost and your need
for a drink of water.
But when we open each box
red bracts burst and blaze
our home with your magic,
elegance draping each corner festive.
Our holiday breathes before us.

Years past, we drowned in excess,
gold garland and strings of blinking lights
crammed our Christmas house.
Sensory overload from rooms littered
with glittery noise that seemed
to muffle our seasonal joy.

When we found greenhouses bearing
your stalks, you brought us delight
in fields of matted crimson, candy cane
pinks and whipped-cream whites.
Your yellow-button flowers
seemed to smile at us.

Now, no need to shine up
these simple lives. Surrounded by quiet,
our orchard stitched in winter stillness,
we drink black coffee in the dark
of our winter bedroom, dogs dug in
blankets beside us — and you dance
in the hallway, poinsettia-children
lifting our spirits like a secret promise.
Each potted star radiates enough,
all the holiday we need.

Kathy Pon lives with her husband, a third-generation farmer, on an almond orchard in Central California. Her work has been featured in Passengers Journal, Canary, RockPaperPoem, The Closed Eye Open, and other places. Her chapbook, Orchard Language (Finishing Line Press) was published in October 2025.

First Snow, Final Page

1 December 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Amber Lethe

The year ends quietly –
a book settling into its spine.
Snow falls in soft punctuation marks,
periods on windowsills, commas on evergreens,
ellipses hanging in the hush of afternoon.

Inside, the kettle clicks a familiar prayer,
a small applause for warmth still here.
We hold our hands to the steam and remember:
the burns, the blessings, the almosts,
the moments we meant to speak but didn’t.

Outside, the world turns blank, crystalline, kind –
as if offering us a clean margin,
urging try again, try softer, try braver.
We turn the page with mittened fingers,
ink still drying on our names.

Amber Lethe is an emerging writer whose work blends intimacy, atmosphere, and quiet surrealism. She writes about memory, seasons, and the small rituals that shape us. When not writing, she plays Vivaldi on piano, knits imperfect scarves, and reads classic books with her pug, Sir Merlin, snoring at her feet.

Perfect Day

1 November 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Susan Wolbarst

The day unfolds
in its own sweet way:
sunny, highs
in the mid-seventies,
light breeze. Zero
chance of rain.

Its slow perfection
savored
by coastal retirees
breathing deeply
exhaling thanks.

The most ambitious
get some steps in,
or re-pot baby
tomato plants from
the greenhouse.
The rest of us

sip coffee on
the deck and,
due to bad habits
we cannot shake,
read newspapers
on our phones.

Susan Wolbarst is a newspaper reporter in rural Gualala, California. Her poetry has been published in Plainsongs, pioneertown (pioneertownlit.com), Naugatuck River Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthology Alchemy and Miracles: Nature Woven Into Words. A chapbook of her poems, It’s Over, published in August 2025 (Finishing Line Press).

Reflection

1 November 2025 / Editor

Poetry by AJ Saur

When the 7 a.m. sun suddenly
beams your windshield, you may discover

yourself in the back window of a city bus
a great deal more serious than you knew.

Perhaps it’s not surprising considering
how you flew out of the house without

your morning coffee, without a goodbye
kiss, without a single word shifting the new air.

Now, thanks to traffic, you’re inching
toward yourself, cautious, uncertain

of this one who acts in opposite
at every turn. Enlightened, block after

block, by the set chin, high cheekbones,
those steely eyes spanning

the distance from a someone so thoroughly
other you catch yourself, for a moment, wondering

where he’s headed on this average Wednesday
and, if you flash a smile, will he follow?

AJ Saur is the author of five books of poetry from Murmuration Press including, most recently, Of Bone and Pinion (2022). AJ’s poems have also appeared (or will soon appear) in Abandoned Mine, Front Range Review, Glimpse, The Midwest Quarterly, Muse, Third Wednesday, Willow Review, and other journals.

Blue June, Slight Breeze

1 November 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Brian Builta

At the Stapleton concert I become
one clap after another, a whooo,
a dervish of hollers and whups,
a disembodied scream. This happens
on occasion. As the fatherless son
and the sonless father, Father’s Day
is a trigger, my poor poor daughter.
Sometimes her father goes missing
right in front of her, missing his chair
and sprawling on the arena floor.
So far, I’ve always come back, so far.
Truth: incarnation is overrated,
yammering emotions running amuck,
saltwater on the cheek, thunderclap
weighing down the chest. My little
private tornado feels so good, so
delightfully destructive and harmless.
Of course, next day I’m a truck-flattened
squirrel. Energy has its consequences.
Stapleton can only get you so far
before the gravity of the empty letter jacket
in the hall returns, reminding your life
is now angry bees rising from bitter honey,
where the best therapies are leaves
murmuring free from any standard-issue tree
as long as there’s a breeze.

Brian Builta lives in Arlington, Texas, and works at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. His poetry has been published most recently in Freshwater Literary Journal, Meridian, and Red Ogre Review. More of his poetry can be found at brianbuilta.com.

How the Poems Land

1 November 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Kersten Christianson

We share the wind in this early morning hour,
the new leaves of the Japanese Maple, crimson,
skin-soft, fibrillate in genial breeze, fluctuate
in tandem with fish kite, murmuring wind chime,

and to the south, a poet friend meanders her rocky
shore, her dogs advance and retreat, loop to follow
each new scent revealed by tide and temperature,
while she gathers words among popweed, shell

debris. Poetry exists in breath, without formula.
Its thoughts gather like sea foam, words emerge
with the surface and bob of harbor seal’s head,
its eyes scanning shoreline, until poetic lines

land in a whisper-whoosh of baby waves shuffling
into the space between. The spring has been a dark
October, rain repeated by rain, yet the leaves green,
red-breasted robins frolic, the poems need writing.

Kersten Christianson derives inspiration from wild, wanderings, and road trips. Her newest poetry collection, The Ordering of Stars, will publish with Sheila-Na-Gig in fall 2025. Kersten lives in Sitka, Alaska. She eyeballs tides, shops Old Harbor Books, and hoards smooth ink pens.

Hood

1 November 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Shaymaa Mahmoud and John Brantingham

My people immigrated here
from a little town near Nottingham Forest
and in the high romance

of childhood, I decided
that I must have Robin Hood’s
blood inside me

whether Robin Hood existed or not.
And if he did, I suppose I do
and probably the sheriff

of Nottingham and Little John
and whatever heroes and villains
and royalty and peasants,

and I suppose none of this matters.
This was just a boy dreaming
that he could be heroic,

and I don’t want to be a hero
anymore. My dead whisper to me
that to be quiet and kind is enough.

Shaymaa Mahmoud and John Brantingham are a father/ daughter writing team with hundreds of publications and over twenty books between them.

The River God’s Daughter

1 November 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Angela Patten

Here I am on the river again
gliding my kayak past a row of turtles

their shells gleaming in the sun
like freshly washed dinner plates.

I turn to see a muskrat’s muzzle
parting the water like a butterknife.

Around a bend a heron stands
knee-deep in weeds and water

like my father in black rubber
boots fishing on the River Boyne.

Although he loved rivers and streams,
he hated the sea with equal fervor

distrusting its relentless waves
its monotonous unremitting motion.

But back to the heron and the mystery
of that bony beak, that frozen pose

that alien cranium with its opaque eye
the shriek and fluster of its wings

as it takes off creaking into the air
like an early flying machine.

Unlike my father, I loved the sea
and the cold consecration of salt water.

But now I am a convert to the river
that flows through marsh and mudflat

town and village, state and country
the wayward weather its only god.

Angela Patten is an award-winning Irish poet, author of five poetry collections and a prose memoir. Her work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in the U.S. and abroad. A native of Dublin, Ireland, she is a Senior Lecturer Emerita in English at the University of Vermont. Read more at www.carraigbinn.com.

A Walk Through Burchfield’s “Haunted Twilight”

29 October 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Theresa Wyatt

Who would not tremble here at the sight
of bat wings shrouding window eyes
where alien spirits traipse between
the charred and gobbled trees?

Stop, be still my tripping heart,
there is no subtlety to darkness when tarred
with heavy brush, my skin shades blue
and crawls with insect chatter.

Who can I trust to guide me through this field’s maze
unharmed? Surely not this twilight’s dripping web
and cackle. I need more time to cipher paths
and motives through these brooding indications.

Who waits behind those inky cave clouds?
Could there be a safer destination
where solitudes untouched bed down
below the yellow light?

Look up at that top window!
A small creature, an owl or cat –
is telegraphing auras –
Go slow.

[Editor’s Note: For an October treat, take a look at Charles Burchfield’s Haunted Twilight.]

Theresa Wyatt is the author of “The Beautiful Transport” (Moonstone Press) and “Hurled Into Gettysburg” (BlazeVox Books). Her writing follows the tug of history, nature, and art. Her poems have appeared in the Elm Leaves Journal, Norton’s New Micro, Spillway, and the Press 53 anthology, “What Dwells Between the Lines.”

Category: Poetry (Page 2 of 41)

Cheerful Misery

Poinsettias

First Snow, Final Page

Perfect Day

Reflection

Blue June, Slight Breeze

How the Poems Land

Hood

The River God’s Daughter

A Walk Through Burchfield’s “Haunted Twilight”

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