Category: Poetry (Page 36 of 45)

The Heart Unfurled

Poetry by Karen Luke Jackson

                           for Juniper

Her skirt billows as she skips the graveled lane,
        chases a squirrel across the lawn

               and up a flaming maple, tumbles
into a hammock which swallows her curls,

        swaddles her legs, this fawn-eyed child
               with a page-boy cut who bubbles song.

                                   Somehow her heart knows
        that she, too, belongs         here

               with the redwing blackbird
                                 whose call she returns,

               with the wooly worm
                                 she cheers across the road.


Karen Luke Jackson draws inspiration for her writing from oral history, nature, and clowning. Her poems have appeared in Ruminate, Broad River Review (Ron Rash Poetry Award), Ruminate, One, Atlanta Review, and Channel Magazine. The author of two poetry collections, Karen resides in the Blue Ridge Mountains. www.karenlukejackson.com

Grandpa Taught Me to Garden

Poetry by Sharon Scholl

how to measure the black bed,
count out seeds resembling small
splinters shedding torn coats.
I watched as he poked a finger
into soil dense as chocolate cake,
dropped one seed in each moist well.

He taught me to plot my planting
into harmonies of pattern, leave
room for my sprouts to breathe
so every leaf has space to stretch.

I noticed how he flicked moisture
from his fingers so all could drink
but none would drown,
how he set the watering can swaying
like a pendulum toward his open palm.

Every spring I renew his lesson,
measuring, counting, planting,
watering, taking my turn to care
for this young and fragile life.

(Author Note: Inspired by the poem by Shutta Crum, My Mother Taught Me to Quilt)


Sharon Scholl is a retired college professor who convenes a poetry critique group and maintains a website of free original music. Her poetry chapbooks, Remains, Seasons, Timescape, are available via Amazon Books. Current poems are in Switchgrass Review and Green Ink Poetry.

Choreography

Poetry by David Curry

First there’s that exhilarating “Haste thee, nymph” segment
of Mark Morris’s l’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, a dance
seen live some years ago and, gratefully, again tonight
in a camera-smart clip posted on Facebook.

And then, this afternoon, there’s this bent woman leaning on a walker
with a broad smile for — what? — the uncommonly fair December day?
She’s by herself, oh so slow, takes two changes of the lights
to cross the street. At least one driver is impatient
and thoughtless enough to hit the horn. When
the woman gets to the other side of the street, she pauses
and looks back over her shoulder and then moves on
with her serviceable old blue coat and her intention.


David Curry‘s second collection of poetry, Contending to be the Dream, received “Special Distinction” in the Elliston Book Awards. He has been a writing fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts. For 10 years, he edited and published the poetry magazine Apple.

First & Last

Poetry by Travis Stephens

I am the first brother,
the worst brother,
first to go to college
a little college, Tier 3, maybe.
The first to think it possible
to work with my brain
instead of my hands &
almost do it.
I am the worst at
staying in touch,
moving west,
then north,
then south & staying
west until the salt tasted fine.
I am brother divorced with no children.
Last to mortgage. Broke.
I was the first to go gray & to
write poems about our family.
Brother drunk.
I stood by the graveside of
one brother,
standing with the others.
Somebody cried.
Somebody said say something.
Say something.


Travis Stephens is a writer and tugboat skipper who lives in California with a muse and her extended family. His book of poetry, “skeeter bit & still drunk” is available on Amazon or at Finishing Line Press.

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).

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