Category: Poetry (Page 24 of 34)

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i have flown from my home

23 October 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Jonah Meyer

i have flown from my home
up into that carolina blue embrace which is the sky
past houses i have flown
past families in yards, past
automobiles quick on the way to somewhere else
past the factories, the outdoor picnics, the baseball games
heavy in extra innings

here i have grown, have spread two yellow wings
out over o.henry’s town, that tiny
dragon-tongue below,
over the births and the deaths and the
songs being sung inside radios

i climb, i climb, the hot thick clouds
are silk-white blankets, rugs by
my fox-trotting feet,

and still i soar into
a universe dream-eyed and naked …

O! that the night is a staircase rising,
pure piano-forte,
and i — thrown by harsh desire — i am
all-too-happy to hear such symphonic
orchestration first-hand

bending, climbing, stretching long pale arms
through such sky-dew, even the birds now

believe me
insane

Jonah Meyer is a poet, writer, and editor in North Carolina. His poetry and creative nonfiction has been published widely. Jonah plays guitar and piano, shoots photography, and studies neuroscience and Buddhist philosophy. He serves as Poetry Editor of Mud Season Review and Assistant Poetry Editor with Random Sample Review.

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Trace Fossils

22 October 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Carole Greenfield

Small children do not wait for pain
to make a lasting mark. They give fair warning;
we have time to wipe off tears, mop up trouble,
kiss a bruise, pronounce it healed.

But love leaves an impression that won’t be kissed
away. An imprint left in something soft hardens
and congeals. What passed through fire once
is tempered, then annealed.

Children trace their fingers over fossils, guess
at what’s revealed: evidence of ridges, indentations,
life long over, heart’s rush sealed.

Trace fossils: fossils in which evidence of organisms, rather than the organisms themselves, are preserved.

Carole Greenfield grew up in Colombia and lives in Massachusetts, where she teaches at a public elementary school. In the last century, her work appeared in Red Dancefloor, Gulfstream and The Sow’s Ear.

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Lydia Palmer: Redwing, 1888

18 October 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Katharyn Howd Machan

Old idea, a hope chest. Girls already
diligent wives in fond imagination.
No dreams of travel, friendship, books,
deep treasure of solitude.

My mother’s mother started mine:
wedding quilt, baby blanket,
dainty towels with crocheted edges,
tablecloth hemmed with her love.

Oh, I understand her gifts!
She wants her world to be mine.
And I’ll lay them all aside with care
as I repack that flowered trunk.

My future’s shaped by a wide hill
overlooking Cayuga Lake.
There I’ll study more than she
could ever think a girl should need–

but in my sleeve, to honor her,
I’ll tuck the handkerchief she’s stitched
with tiny violets, purple and bright,
small daisies opening into sun.

Katharyn Howd Machan has been writing and publishing poetry for half a century. She lives and teaches in Ithaca, New York with her beloved spouse and fellow poet Eric Machan Howd. She directed the Feminist Women’s Writing Workshops, Inc., and served as Tompkins County’s first poet laureate. She belly dances.

close up photography of green and brown bird flying over body of water with catch on its beak — Photo by Andrew Mckie on Pexels.com

Afternoon by the Brick Pond

16 October 2022 / Editor

Poetry by K.L. Johnston

The fisherman left his folding
chair under the oak in leafy
coolness where occasionally
it’s borrowed to mind the pond.

Content to view its mysteries,
passed by, to watch the young parents
with their daughter discovering
mud, laughing as she finds something

startling that splashes and flicks
away. They scoop her up, strolling
on unmindful of fingerprints
and red clay. They pass the dragon

elm that is far from home, but thrives,
happy to be surrounded by
the wild natives, cinnabar heart
visible through its shrinking bark

next to sycamores flaunting pale
green and white skins. At their dark roots
the bumblebee sits unmoving
on the swamp sunflower, so tired

by afternoon, with few blossoms
left unvisited, he sleeps on
in the acute angles of stem
and sun while pollen shimmers,

a dust of fantasies on the
waters of the pond where carp rise
up from green and purple shadows,
grazing in brilliance, uncaring.

Fierce, the kingfisher darts by blue
and shaded. Not the most brilliant
or the biggest or most deadly
of hunters unless you are small
and a fish! a fish, a fish.

K. L. Johnston‘s favorite subjects are whimsical, environmental and/or philosophical. Her poetry appears in journals ranging from Small Pond magazine in the 1980s to work recently appearing in Humana Obscura and Pangyrus. She is a contributor to the recently published anthology Botany of Gaia.

The Unboxing

13 October 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Jennifer Campbell

Recalling craftsmen
and cobblestone streets,
I may be the apprentice,
laying rice paper
between leather straps
in a protective shield.
I slide slips over leather pulls
and foam circles
over grommets
and buckles.

I give myself permission.

I leave no fingerprints
on silver. The scent
of earth lets go
with each fold and tuck,
wrap and smooth.

The finished product
grows incrementally smaller,
an act of love
expressed one too many times.

Jennifer Campbell is an English professor in Buffalo, NY, and a co-editor of Earth’s Daughters. She has published two full-length poetry books and a chapbook of reconstituted fairytale poems. Jennifer’s work appears in The Healing Muse, San Pedro River Review, The Sixty-Four Best Poets of 2019, and Paterson Review.

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Cradling

11 October 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Andy Oram

I stand in a room without walls. Strips of hung paper from the
Past seventy years quiver from the joists.
In the center, a rough oak table is pressed by grinning friends and relations.
The table is scattered with treats
Carried from a scarred porcelain stove.

I feel the bundle’s warmth gradually intertwine with mine,
My forearm greets the churning of small legs,
And I accept them as my own.

Through the streaked pane of a solid double-hung window,
Recently bared of its weary paint,
I envision the eleven paces one year ago from the car to the house,
and my urgent grip on the papers embossed by a lawyer.
I race against the downpour with bent head and sole-squeals.

More precious than my grizzly head were these papers,
More worthy of a legacy than the leather shoes I dredged from the closing.
Arrived finally in my new home, raindrops from my coat still pommeling the pine floor,
I uncradled the packet to make sure nothing was smudged.

One is drawn to gaze at what one cradles.
I retrieve the child from some well-wisher,
Slip a palm beneath his head and become the whole universe of this unfamiliar creature,
Become a presence to the wide pupils that sweep me into their field of vision.

Now we share points on a simple harmonic scale,
The overtones traveling through my chest and arms and lips.
And the baby responds to my resonance.

Andy Oram is a writer and editor in the computer field. Print publications where his writings have appeared include The Economist, the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, and Vanguardia Dossier. He has lived in the Boston, Massachusetts area for almost 50 years.

Lines

9 October 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Christine Andersen

I don’t want to be the person
who colors outside the lines.

I want to be the one who lifts them from the page

scallops and twists and folds

until there is a butterfly
perched on my outstretched palm.

Be the one who blows the parting kiss.

Christine Andersen is a retired dyslexia specialist who hikes daily through the CT woods with her hounds. The changing New England seasons inspire her poems. Publications include Comstock, Octillo, American Writers and Awakenings Reviews, Glimpse, Dash, Months to Years and upcoming in Glassworks and Evening Street Press.

Pain Management

6 October 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Carol L. Gloor

A generic woman smiles
from the poster in the exam room,
her body wired with red nerves.
Mine’s the one running
down the right leg,
the one that’s caught fire.
A plastic spine stands
at attention on the shelf,
bristling with vertebrae.
The white coat points
to the bottom two,
this is where I will
insert the needle,
with very small risk
of spinal fluid release
or paralysis.
While I sign the release
I have no time to read
he’s still talking.

Carol L. Gloor has been writing poetry since she was sixteen. Her work has been published in many journals, most recently in Abandoned Mine. Her poetry chapbook, “Assisted Living,” was published by Finishing Line Press in 2013, and her full-length poetry collection, “Falling Back,” was published by WordPoetry in 2018.

Mysteries

3 October 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Rebecca Ward

Mysteries of bewilderment
trace night into darkness,
light casts reflection on keys
melody mirrors our souls:
entangled notes in creative freedom.

Rain kisses the window,
stories echo in musician’s fingers.
Sorrow-filled notes exude love, joy
full interludes escape into night.

Mirror captures moment, memories.
Wilderness of creativity
spins in random caution,
as unknowns shadow our thoughts,
our beautiful music.

Rebecca Ward is an adventurous, free-spirited woman. She is a full time member of the Mississippi Air National Guard. Writing poetry while immersed in music has once again found a home in her free time. This is her first published poem.

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To Thoreau

1 October 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Robert McParland

In your steps this day I look
Over this field, this flower spray
On sand I walk out toward the beach
Taking shells up with my hand
Here you stood that fateful June
Under this lighthouse, rhythmic sea
Like us you walked not knowing where
An ocean wave on light would turn
I see you now, standing here
Desolate, barefoot, on the shore
Your sad eyes scan the lonely sea
Remembering her, how they went down
Like a love sonnet in the waves
A sandbar claims the roughened tide
These summers now, journal in hand
My love too seems to have foundered on
Some waves that wash up toward a beach
Wood-creak crash, how we collapsed
The water broke upon our cries
Like you I walk in thought absorbed
Like water in sand between my toes.

Robert McParland teaches college English, writes songs, and has published several books on American culture and literary history.