Category: Poetry (Page 2 of 47)

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.

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.

It’s the Kind of Thing

7 April 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Melanie Faith

if I wrote it you might
not believe me, but I’ll
write it anyway.

For a second, I mistook
riffs of an electric guitar
on the radio
of a passing car

for a stray cat or kitten
and looked up
from my book
for a tail and a lean cat needing care.

The breeze held ice and calm
and September hope in it,
though still plenty of August
in the sun, in the hot pink
of potted deck geraniums. It wasn’t

the velvety electric blue,
nor the soft ebony
of a dress, nor the yellow almost green
said to bring happiness,

but it did: the root-beer brown butterfly
with buff and dun and a patch of white
like a paintbrush smudge
on its one wing, as if made with

too-wide bristles and wrong for the job—
with flowers not a foot away, he landed
on my right kneecap
of my soft green velour pants—even when

I moved just slightly and uncrossed
my crossed legs, he kept his perch
astride my kneecap. Antennae, black
buggy eyes scanning sideways

as I studied him
wings at rest, he stayed at rest on me.
It is no small thing to be chosen
by a child or a gown person as a confidant,
as a particularly close friend, is no small thing.

To breathe out, to breathe in
watching a brown butterfly
with a white smudge like perfectly imperfect
paint and the music floating over and
the morning radio as a song ends,

another song begins. Was it five minutes
or twenty or a touch of eternity
until the butterfly
lifts up and away again?

Melanie Faith is a poet, writer, educator, photographer, and frequent doodler. Learn more at melaniedfaith.com. Her craft books for authors through Vine Leaves Press offer tips on numerous genres. Her latest poetry collection, Does It Look Like Her?, follows Alix, a forty-something artist and the famous painting of her.

Spent Water Balloons

4 April 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Antonia Albany

scattered
across

the lawn,

splotches of water dry on the super-heated driveway,
laughter lingers as kids head inside
to Mom’s call,
“Dinner. C’mon in.”

He turns once more to gather what’s left:
the bike on its side,
the baseball bat and wiffle ball,
a jump rope with bright pink handles.

Sunday evening settles.
Work and school wait
just beyond the night.

Antonia Albany is a retiree and author who lives in Northern California with her tripod kitty, Kali.