Category: Poetry (Page 35 of 43)

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Distance

6 September 2022 / Editor

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.

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Life at Large

3 September 2022 / Editor

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.

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Autumn

30 August 2022 / Editor

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

22 August 2022 / Editor

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.

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Flamingos

19 August 2022 / Editor

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.

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Joy of Chewing Gum

15 August 2022 / Editor

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.

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Trucker Coffee

12 August 2022 / Editor

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.

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Luck

6 August 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Fredric Koeppel

I’m pretending that finding an owl’s feather
brings good fortune. When I dip the pointed end
into the inkwell of the moon’s dark side,
I’ll write the shrieks of fieldmice and the dumb
terror of the velvet-gloved mole. As for me,
I’m sewing the feather to one of my shoulder-
blades, so, like the village idiot, I’ll half-stumble,
half-fly through the rest of my life, looking
for another feather until my luck runs out.

Fredric Koeppel is a writer and editor living in Memphis. He has had stories, poems and novel excerpts published in a variety of print and online journals. He and his wife, who has a real job, rescue and foster dogs, maintaining a pack of nine.

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A Victorious Tilting

4 August 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Sharon Whitehill

Laughter involves a “victorious tilting of uncontrol against control.”
Mary Douglas

You were there in my dream
for the first time last night,
its power derived from my laughter
at something so comic
I couldn’t find breath to explain it to you,
though you waited, expectant.
Twice I attempted to speak,
twice grew so tickled all over again
I couldn’t move air to make words.
You stood close, leaning in but bemused
as I tried, and failed, to get through.

What remains of the dream is the bliss
of those spasms of mirth:
how they left me as helpless, in my delight,
as a Laughing Buddha.

What remains with me still
is that visceral tickle
that left me still smiling when I awoke.
As if to pay tribute to laughter itself.

Sharon Whitehill is a retired English professor from West Michigan now living in Port Charlotte, Florida. In addition to poems published in various literary magazines, her publications include two biographies, two memoirs, two poetry chapbooks, and a full collection of poems.

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Between My Toes

28 July 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Ann Ingalls

I walked along a sandy shore
And watched a curling wave.
It rolled right up between my toes,
And this is what it gave…

A small pink shell that curled up tight,
Was right in front of me.
I closed my eyes and then I heard
The whispers of the sea.

Ann Ingalls is a children’s writer with over sixty books in print or forthcoming. She writes both fiction and nonfiction, picture books, leveled readers, and teaches classes for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, The Writing Barn, local libraries, and universities in Kansas City area where she lives (http://anningalls.com).