Category: Poetry (Page 33 of 41)

Eagle Fantasy

Poetry by Michael Shepley

it was only just
an early morning dream

but for a time
I was an eagle

sharp hunter eye high
in a soft sunny sky

targeting a strange
shape shifting prey

running over the dun
furze of rounded hills

fast flitting slip of
snipped night sliding

quick as the wind
hugging ground like skin

when I woke knowing
it was only the hunt

for my own damn shadow


Michael Shepley is a writer who lives and works in Sacramento. His poetry has appeared in Vallum, CQ, Common Ground, The Kerf, Jonah, Blue Unicorn, Salt and a few others.

Six Months After Father’s Leave-Taking

Poetry by Nancy Kay Peterson

There is no word
for the weight of winter,
no number for the centuries
that press upon bone.

Alone in my father’s meadow,
drifted with moon-lit snow,
I count the Indian burial mounds
that lie at forest’s edge.

At 30 below,
everything is clarity,
the line of black trunk,
the curve of white land.

Everything is soundless
except my whispered leave-taking.
I make no promise
to come again.


Nancy Kay Peterson’s poetry has appeared in Dash Literary Journal, HerWords, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, RavensPerch, Steam Ticket, and Tipton Poetry Journal. From 2004-2009, she co-published Main Channel Voices: A Dam Fine Literary Magazine. She has two poetry chapbooks, Belated Remembrance (2010) and Selling the Family (2021). Visit www.nancykaypeterson.com.

Artifacts

Poetry by Kristin Chemis

Inside your house
you have pieces
that seem to have been there from
an ancient time, old relics of days
when you were happier
and could afford to gather adornments lightly—
when you took unwanted
furniture off others’ hands
or delighted in an unexpected find,
filling up your home and all the while laughing, planning
your future and moving forward, always moving forward,
until many years later
when you look back and a hazy amnesia has crept in—
where did I get this, who might have used it before me?
Why did I even bring this into my home,
and—how did I manage to forget?
The unrooted ties to an ever-changing past
float around you and seem to change
their color, their look. They are almost
no longer recognizable, except for a hint
of some pleasant memory, some remembered feeling
of lightheartedness and freedom.
The clock’s hands have journeyed
around and around a million times, and you
don’t even know now where the clock came from.


Kristin Chemis is the mother of twin boys and a baby girl. Her writing has been published in Press 53, Apple in the Dark, and San Diego Woman’s Magazine. Kristin is also the author (under pen name K.K. Tucker) of the children’s book The Parrots Next Door.

Distance

Poetry by Braden Hofeling

Nothing has distance,
I think as I stare skyward,
celestial blue connected to fluffy white,
stars, suns, planets, courses set.
Even the wind, my ruffled hair–the current connects.
Everything in my world touches
one another, branching into a singular something,
inescapable as the tides that turn
craggy shoreline into ocean floor.
I wonder if I flung myself into space, into
the furthest reaches of the black cosmos,
could anything touch me there?
Could people still wrap me into a word,
binding me to this claustrophobic sphere?


Braden Hofeling is an emerging poet located in Portland, Oregon. He has two self-published collections of poetry and is hoping to publish his third book through an independent small press.

Life at Large

Poetry by Judith Yarrow

I sail the little boat
of my consciousness
on the great sea
of the universe

tossed about
by waves invisible
to me and toward
a faint horizon

maybe a harbor
or maybe just a cloud
receding. Still I sail.


Judith Yarrow lives in Seattle, Washington. She’s been published in Women’s Words, Cicada, Bellowing Ark, Backbone, Aji, and others. She was the featured poet in Edge: An International Journal, and her poems have been included in the Washington State Poet Laureates’ 2014 and 2017 collections.

Autumn

Poetry by Kate McNairy

brings a screen
door to lock up—

my shadow flees
an open window,

twists & turns
in breezes—

each fallen leaf
passes.


Kate McNairy has published three chapbooks, June Bug (2014), Light to Light (2016) and My Wolf (2021). Journal and magazine credits include Third Wednesday, Misfits, and Raven’s Perch. She was on the editorial board of The Apple Tree and was a semi-finalist of the Blue Light Poetry Contest (2014).

Robins

Poetry by Margaret D. Stetz

Headlong into glass
two collisions
in rapid succession
after the crashes
wreckage outside the door
small bodies sprawl motionless
on a cold morning.
What compels me to push
beyond the door
to sit down on grass
in nightgown, slippers
to gather their corpses?
Cradling both in flannel-sheathed hollows
staring at membranes closed over eyes
at beaks gaping emptily
ignoring the chill through my legs
I see—movement.
Then pouring my heat and will
into the moment
watching as one
then the other
slowly
looks back.
(Is this how a surgeon feels
holding a heart as it beats?)
They owe me nothing—
the same miracle likely
to happen without me
their crimson breasts already skyward
harder to follow.
But if only they could
raise me too
high higher
never again
to enter that house
to stand hopeless
unrescued
from crashes collisions
behind the door


Margaret D. Stetz is the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware. She began writing poetry again after several decades away from it. Her new work has appeared in “Azure,” “Existere,” “Review Americana,” Kerning, and many other journals.

Flamingos

Poetry by Satish Pendharkar

We’ve never made passports or visas
Nor purchased air-tickets to fly;
We’ve entered and exited places at will
For ages and since times long gone by.

Every winter flying in from far-off
Onto Mumbai’s mudflats we descend;
To binge on blue-green algae
Before roosting to let our minds unbend.

However, this year (though even) has been odd
People have not flocked to see us;
No cameras clicking away, no tourist boats
Why have folks quarantined themselves thus?

Not that we’re missing the ruckus they create
Not that we’re missing their lasting stink;
For, flouting all social distancing norms
We’re preoccupied in painting the place pink.


Satish Pendharkar lives in Pune, India. His poems have appeared in Agave magazine, Parody, New Asian Writing, dotdotdash, and Indian Literature. He has published a book of poems titled “Nocturnal Nomad” and a novella titled “The Backrush of Memory”. He loves singing and hiking.

Joy of Chewing Gum

Poetry by Adnan Onart

Her name rhymed with inch;
“joy” in my mother tongue, Turkish:
Sevinç, o Sevinç!
Dark skin, black hair,
and I was told,
eyes blue-green.
All the boys in the neighborhood
between 11 and 15
were after her:
starting fights in front of her house,
sending poems to her,
bribing her baby brother
with his favorite
pistachio ice cream.
No avail:
Never smiling, always serious,
she carried an adult anger
around her as a shield.

What chance had this skinny boy
with good grades in math and sciences?
None, you would think.
This is how I learned
that kittenish life
is full of opportunities,
we don’t dare to grab:
on the day of our move,
she called me out of the truck
and gave me five tiny sticks
of chewing gum
without saying anything.


Adnan Onart lives in Cambridge, MA. His work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Colere Magazine, Red Wheel Barrow and The Massachusetts Review. His first poetry collection, The Passport You Asked For, was published by The Aeolos Press. He was one of the winners of 2011 Nazim Hikmet Poetry Competition.

Trucker Coffee

Poetry by Mark Jackley

the word ‘one’
contains an O
same shape as
a little black pill
I am talking
trucker coffee
talking Omaha
to Council Bluffs
no commas please this is
basic math
I mean
one highway and
one exit
one darkness
and one me


Mark Jackley is a poet living in northwestern Virginia. His poems have appeared in Fifth Wednesday, Talking River, Cagibi, Sugar House Review, and other journals.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2025 The Bluebird Word

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑