Category: Poetry (Page 3 of 41)

May We Still Sing?

26 October 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Anne Makeever

Winter blows in late, its inevitability until now unsure. What relief
to watch a pristine obliteration of snow nearly bury the summer chairs
and limn the bare oaks that frame the cold cove.

I want to sigh over the softness, the muffling depth that quiets the day,
to feast on the fineness of black and white that turns O so heartbreakingly,
lavishly purple at dusk. Look, my eyes say, here’s beauty. I want to forget

that life is erasing. Bees, darkness, glaciers, monarchs can’t carry our weight.
The seasons shift, from white to green to orange, each a gift undeserved,
a psalm to savor.

Yes, my mother’s face was beautiful when she died, but the rupture remains.
Consolation comes in what will continue, in the scab that forms at the edge
of the tear then gives over to eventual scar.

Anne Makeever’s work appears in the Eliot Review, Plant Human Quarterly, RavensPerch, and River Styx. She holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, where she also taught poetry and essay writing. She lives in Brunswick, Maine, with her partner and exuberant dog.

In a Mirror Clearly Now

23 October 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Judith Yarrow

for my sister

Sometimes, looking in a mirror,
I turn my head just so and
I’m brushing my sister’s hair.
Her same movement.

Conversations that started
when she was born keep on and on.
Antiphonal chorus. Me. Her.
Mine. Hers. I can sing all the parts.

We circled each other until at last
who chased, who fled, who followed,
who led, I don’t even know.
The mirror says, see how alike you are.

That long ago push her pull me?
Just the place we started—no more
separate than fingers on a hand.
connected at the source.

Judith Yarrow been published in two chapbooks and various literary journals, most recently in Hedgerow, RavensPerch, and Medusa’s Kitchen. She was the featured poet in Edge: An International Journal, and her poems have been included in the Washington State Poet Laureates’ collections. Find more of her work at jyarrow.com.

Charles Reznikoff Appraises the Zinnia

20 October 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Deborah H. Doolittle

These days the zinnias in the garden
awake at dawn and await the sun
to open up before them
like the one blossom they’d all like to become.

Let other flowers bloom as dreams
beneath other people’s windows
and rise up from their cultivated beds
in clumps of ordinary color.

These zinnias leap into the air
and broadcast their ambition across the lawn,
not a petal out of place
but has known the touch of dew.

Deborah H. Doolittle has lived in lots of different places, but now calls North Carolina home. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the author of Floribunda, and three chapbooks No Crazy Notions, That Echo, and Bogbound. When not editing BRILLIG: a micro lit mag, she is training for road races or practicing yoga.

Lessons from Sunflowers

17 October 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Nancy Kay Peterson

In thick morning fog,
tall, dark-eyed cyclops
with butter-colored faces
face eastward, patient,
sensing the unseen sun,
trusting in its rising.

We fear anything could emerge
from the earthbound cloud,
things undreamable.
We covet the one-eyes’
sun-bright faces that turn
confidently in the white unknown

with unwavering determination
and joy.

Nancy Kay Peterson’s poetry is in The Bluebird Word, Dash Literary Journal, Earth’s Daughters, Last Stanza, RavensPerch, Spank the Carp, Steam Ticket, and Tipton Poetry Journal. She co-published Main Channel Voices: A Dam Fine Literary Magazine (2004-2009) and has authored two chapbooks: Belated Remembrance (2010) and Selling the Family (2021) from Finishing Line Press. Visit www.nancykaypeterson.com.

Pulse

11 October 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Richard Levine

One morning alone, light came
and I understood everything
in the world belonged to itself.

The sky surrounded a heron,
and from a green curve in the creek
it rose on the broad majesty

of its loneliness and wings.
The noiseless blue paddling
of my pulse, timed it out of sight.

Above me, wind stirred trees
… is it any wonder stringed
instruments sing so sweetly?

Richard Levine, an Advisory Editor of BigCityLit.com, is author of the forthcoming Taming of the Hour: An Almanac with Marginalia from Fernwood Press.

Autumn

6 October 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Susan Zwingli

I can’t afford to miss
the autumn leaves this year;
my hands, so busy with mend and tear,
eyes blurred by loss
I could overlook
the changing tender veins, leafy points igniting
tangerine, vermillion, golden sparks
as they scatter, trembling,
joyful, even in free-fall
I must not miss their fire
because of my own steady burning;
unearthing ash where once
only vibrant color lived
Soon, frosty windows will frame
the turning, returning, to sacred ground
and I will feel the chlorophyl surrendering, oxygen releasing;
taste autumn’s tangy bitter sweetness;
behold the way falling leaves hold the light
even as they die

Susan Zwingli currently lives in Henrico, Virginia. She holds a BA in English, an MA in Spiritual Formation, and writes about nature, relationships, spirituality, and life beyond loss. Susan’s poems have been published by the One Page Poetry Anthology (2023/2024) and The Bluebird Word (2024).

Overheard, an offering

3 October 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Michelle Hasty

The line of us waits silently for the audiologist
Leaf green chairs face closed white doors
We seem ordered according to age and startle
When a mechanical voice shouts at us
From someone’s purse saying that she has reached
Her destination and the owner of the phone
Stops the sound, shakes her head, and says
She’s asked her son to quit with the technology
But he tells her she must join the 21st century
I’m here, she says, giggling, I just don’t know
What to do here. The line of us giggles with her.
Silence broken, a pair to my left discusses ailments.
It’s always something, one says.
I can’t hear the specifics—this is why I’m here–
But I catch a phrase from the other: I can’t really complain,
She says. The phrase catches me up short: I can complain.
I don’t want pink plastic devices attached to my ears
When I’m barely fifty. The possibility of a piercing
Shriek emanating, of my body beeping, I’m here!
Seems like a good reason to complain. Wasn’t I just
In middle school forever scrambling on the grass
Searching for lost contact lenses, or praying in ballet class
That the sound of music would cover my knees cracking?
A white door opens and a wobbly woman emerges,
Sinks into an empty chair at the end of our line.
Dizzy, she mutters. Getting crackers, the technician calls
Bustling past us, using her badge to exit the corridor.
The woman who can’t complain digs something
Out of her purse, holds a cupped hand to
The one who is dizzy, and asks, would you like a peppermint?
I am grateful to have heard this offering.

Michelle Hasty is a professor of education living in Nashville, Tennessee. Her academic writing has been published in literacy journals, such as Voices from the Middle and The Reading Teacher, and her short story, “Prone to Wander,” was published in the Dillydoun Daily Review. She is new to poetry writing.

A Half-Decent Guy

1 October 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Brian C. Billings

He always went off half-cocked—

left every party halfway through
because he only half knew anybody,

half convinced himself he was a genius
(but half forgot how to prove it),

took the better half of a day to go anywhere
and the worse half of a night to leave,

drank his morning coffee half ready
and his evening drinks half mixed,

never took more than half a chance
when acting on his own behalf,

bought about half of the small lies
while halfheartedly believing the big truth,

tossed away his relationships half done
whenever his love had half begun,

acted like a halfwit more than he should
(while maybe half understanding why),

stayed half on track when the job mattered
and went half astray whenever it didn’t,

ran over half the world to find himself
and half killed himself when he couldn’t,

gave the people who tried half a chance
about half the time he worked with them . . .

They say he was a decent guy,
but they don’t know the half of it.

Brian C. Billings is a professor of drama and English at Texas A&M University-Texarkana. His work has appeared in such journals as Ancient Paths, The Bluebird Word, Confrontation, Evening Street Review, Glacial Hills Review, and Poems and Plays. Publishers for his scripts include Eldridge Publishing and Heuer Publishing.

In Praise of the Apple

27 September 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Sheri Flowers Anderson

Even those tasteless ones that taste like water,
those ones with the soft texture

of out-of-season defeat, can be composted,
fed back to nature, reclaimed into the earth.

I prefer the cleansing scent and sweetness, the mild
tart-tingle-crunch of fresh taste in my mouth,

biting into the unpeeled whole of an apple, the
whole of life, just as it is,

delighting in nature’s freshness, in the inspired,
intimate relationship with an apple a day

Surely, I’d fail a blind taste test, these tastebuds
unskilled in differentiating between a Fuji and a Gala,

or a Red Delicious and a Mcintosh. But still,
I’d savor the varying flavors, the firm texture,

my teeth and tongue enmeshed with this simple
thrill, the magnificence, bite after bite.

Sheri Flowers Anderson writes and lives in San Antonio, Texas. Her work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Unbroken Journal, Pensive Journal and others. She’s the author of a poetry collection entitled House and Home (Broadside Lotus Press). When she’s not writing or reading, she’s watching YouTube. Visit: https://linktr.ee/sheriflowersanderson.

This Morning

1 September 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Kate McNairy

I’ve been longing for you,
minutes dog my hours—

a prism splits
early morning light.

There’s so much chatter
among colors

that I am not alone—
there is so much to feel

& in a clump of orange
tiger lilies by the road

petal touches petal.

Kate McNairy has a forthcoming chapbook from Finishing Line Press. Her work appears in Third Wednesday, Raven’s Perch and The Bluebird Word, among other journals. Kate lives in upstate New York.