Category: Poetry (Page 4 of 41)

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Voices

1 September 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Marsha Howland

A solo artist sings in the
woods close by. Four notes,
a pause, then two and six
(three times). For several
minutes this bird loudly
performs. Then comes a
soft echo from deeper in
the woods. They sing a
duet, back and forth, his
voice growing more faint
each time he flies further
into the thickening trees.
By stages, song and
response move closer and
closer, until it almost seems
there is one voice, one song,
one small triumph in the
eternal progressions of
life. The nature of things:
You find your voice and, if
blessed, find another.

Marsha Howland‘s poems have been published in The Moon issue of The Black and White series, the American Journal of Nursing, and Waves (AROHO). As a senior at Wellesley, Marsha won the college’s Academy of American Poets prize. She had the privilege of studying with poets David Ferry and Frank Bidart.

Fairytale in Six Voices

1 September 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Norbert Hirschhorn

The Prologue

Once upon a time, a young woman—beautiful, good, true—lived in a forest hut with her poor but honest parents. One day, a Prince came by on horseback & looking out for a bit of mischief, began to court her. Her parents, knowing what could come, tried to talk sense: We’re beneath his station, he’ll break your heart, we need you here, & so forth. But she was ecstatic; it had never happened before, probably would never again. You see, although she was lovely, virtuous, etc., she had a deformity, tuberculosis of the spine from childhood. But she was too happy to think clearly, & the Prince, perhaps a little in love, appeared not to notice. One day he rode up to the little hut saying, Get yourself ready, I want to introduce you to the King and Queen. Her parents, wanting only her happiness, sold their cow, pawned their dishes, mortgaged their little plot so she could wear something decorous, lovely for the meeting. But only one thing, said the Prince. Yes, darling, anything, she replied. When we enter the Royal Court, try to stand up straight.

The Voices

The Young Woman’s Parents (a duet): We were idiots to think this could even be. All that time we deliberately stayed in the forest, away from people, so our daughter would never have cause to be unhappy.

The King: Reginald disappoints. A gadabout, he has never buckled down to study statecraft and the arts of war. So, when he announced he had been taken in by this opportunist with her mincing gait, I was ready to disinherit the fool, send him out of the Kingdom.

The Queen: He is a good son. Headstrong like his father, but a romantic like me. Perhaps it was something about the zephyrs, the honeysuckle, forest trails surprising at each turn. When the King courted me, I too was cloistered, shy, worshipful. I would have liked to have met this young innocent.

The Prince: So imagine how I felt! Well, she was sweet. I thought she was just being humble, not a hunchback. I’d never hear the end of it from my mates, never mind all the goosey gossip. I had some gold coins sent over.

The Young Woman: It was a dream, and so it sweetened my life. I know no one lives happily ever after, especially not in a castle. But if the King had condemned him to exile, I would have gone with him. My parents and I are moving deeper into the forest.

Norbert Hirschhorn is a public health physician, commended by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health Hero,” proud to follow in the tradition of physician-poets. Hirschhorn has published seven previous collections; recently Over the Edge from Holland Park Press, London. Visit https://bertzpoet.com.

Bright Prospects

1 September 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Andy Oram

Free from guile or prejudice, snow
Casts a rarified grace.

It fills the land with crisp equity,
Assured monument to the Earth’s greatest artifice,
The tip in axis that brings us appointed seasons.

Crystal, by breeze-sculpted crystal, fasten atoms
Poised to bestow the promise of
Our existence.

Each waterous orb, spritz of the universe’s most fertile molecule,
Hugs its drop until the Earth’s bias turns once again
So that the crocus and hyacinth wake to its flow.

If you take the snow to you,
If you survey its bright prospects,
Stride into its treasured potential,
Run hands through its sharp intensity,
Taste its porcelain presence,
You can glory in the working of the world.

Andy Oram is a writer and editor in the computer field. His editorial projects have ranged from a legal guide covering intellectual property to a graphic novel about teenage hackers. Print publications where his writings have appeared include The Economist, The Journal of Information Technology & Politics, and Vanguardia Dossier.

Planting Wildflowers by Lake Champlain

1 September 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Christine Andersen

My daughter and her husband
renovated a house on Lake Champlain.
She sent pictures of the expansive view
from their living room,
how the magenta sunset tinged the water,
the way grass was filling in on the slope leading down to the dock.

A few doors down, her mother-in-law is disappearing.
She can’t remember where the silverware drawer is
or how the pocket door slides open.
She tells the same stories over and over
as if delivering new news.
Stares at the lake trying to recall its name.

My son-in-law bought several packages of wildflower
seeds and tilled the ground close to the shore.
He had visions of daisies and Queen Anne’s lace
and an assortment of yellow, purple, and red blossoms
leaning on green stems with bees and butterflies feeding,
the ground firmly set against heavy rain by the tangle of roots.

Wildflowers can bring the outside indoors.
Would perhaps help his mother remember
daisies were always her favorite flower.
How she would set them on the breakfast table
when he picked them for her as a young boy.
They would pluck the petals one by one,
say, “I love you, I love you not,”
always magically ending on “I love you.”

When the daisies grew in clumps,
he carried a bouquet of memory to her doorstep
and handed her a flower.
She haltingly plucked the white petals one by one,
placed them in his outstretched hand.
Whispered in a child’s voice, “I love you.”

Christine Andersen is a retired dyslexia specialist who lives in Connecticut with five hounds. She has published over 100 poems. Her poetry book “To Maggie Wherever You’ve Gone” won the 2025 Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest sponsored by Choeofpleirn Press.

Orb

1 September 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Ed Meek

If you too could extrude silk
From your body to weave
A net of fragile filaments
Like gossamer wings
Arranged in a pattern
Of encircled squares,
Strong enough to entrap
Your prey with the aid
Of goo. Would you sacrifice
Your two legs for eight
To hang your clever work of art
like a hammock
between the plants,
Immersed in a world
foreign to man?

Ed Meek‘s book of poems “Great Pond” comes out in 2026 with Kelsay Books. He has had poems recently in Amethyst, Humana Obscura, and The Baltimore Review.

Annual Accounting

1 August 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Sharon Scholl

I wake to find a ray of light
was stolen from the bank of night,
filched in some dark, furtive way
and added to the bank of day.

In due time, day will repent
and by December will have sent
every ray of pilfered light
back into the bank of night.

Sharon Scholl is a retired college teacher who convenes a poetry critique group and maintains a website of original music compositions free for small, liberal churches. Her poetry collections Seasons, Remains, Evensong, and Classifieds are available via Amazon Books. Poems are current in Rattle and RedRoseThorns.

Tree Song: Redwood

1 August 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Joanne Harris Allred

This giant has held its yogi-gaze
for over three-thousand years.
A spiral gash scores the two-foot thick

bark where lightning blazed
through the feathered tiers.
One would need five yard-sticks

to measure its memory’s ring-span,
its top too tall to be seen
from the base where one must stand

humbled. This monolith of deep green
silence began as a dark pinhead, coded
magnificence in profound concentration.

Then, like a black hole, the seed exploded
into a galaxy. For centuries its attention
has stayed one-pointed, each bough

and twig focused right here, right now.

Joanne Harris Allred has three full length poetry collections: Particulate (Bear Star Press, 2002), The Evolutionary Purpose of Heartbreak (Turning Point, 2013), and Outside Paradise (Word Poetry, 2024). She taught at California State University, Chico for many years and lives in northern California.

Like a Tree Planted by the River

1 August 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Rochelle Shapiro

As if summoned by a dream to this bench
along the Mohawk where cherry trees weep
pink and white blossoms that spill into the river,
I hear a congregation of birds:
an oriole whistles and chatters,
a blue jay performs its whispery song.
Hidden among the reeds, a bittern
thrums its low heartbeat like words
that take shape as if spoken before.

This is my cathedral:
a roof of sky, a river edged with sedge,
the swordlike veined leaves of Sweet
Flag, the white bell-shaped flowers
that dangle from the arcing vines
of King Solomon’s Seal,
and the Fiddlehead Fern
that curls like my granddaughter’s hair.

[Author Note: Poem title from Psalm 1:3]

Rochelle Jewel Shapiro has published in The New York Times (Lives). Nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, her short stories and poetry have been published in Prism, The MacGuffin, Euphony, The Iowa Review, The Atlanta Review, and more. Find her at http://rochellejshapiro.com, @rjshapiro, and @rochelle.j.shapiro.

I Sing the Poem “Nantucket”

1 August 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Michael Carrino

Flowers through the window
lavender and yellow
William Carlos williams

I sing the poem “Nantucket” to myself as if in a waking sleep
and the children far out on the slight hillside sing along

Through the high windows of my classroom I can see them
rush in circles free and content as some might ever be

One night soon it will snow blanket the brown grass deep
become true winter and they will cherish it

My students are reading silently about anything they are willing
to read turtle bird wagon doll

rock bell shard of glass pocket watch found in the attic
how long birchwood will keep you warm

Now I see her the teacher the one who guides her children
outside every morning The teacher

I want to speak with about anything breathe the wood smoke
on her wool coat her long curling hair

In a moment I will beyond any fevered dream delight
my students with a startling recess

They will all imagine me gone sweetly crazy

Michael Carrino is a retired English lecturer at SUNY Plattsburgh, New York, where he was co-editor and poetry editor of the Saranac Review. His publications include ten books of poetry, the most recent Natural Light (Kelsay Books), and The Scent of Some Lost Pleasure (Conestoga Zen 3 Anthology).

In My Octopus Village

1 August 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Brian C. Billings

When I first moved here, I thought my
neighbors were alarming. They jetted through the village
on furious missions for meals and mates. Changes
came fast, bewildering my twitchy eyes with color
that spiraled and streamed. I would hide whenever
waterways flashed. I wore shells and allowed tides
to stroke my mantle . . . but now each ripple
makes me flush when brilliant consortiums rush by.

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.

Category: Poetry (Page 4 of 41)

Voices

Fairytale in Six Voices

Bright Prospects

Planting Wildflowers by Lake Champlain

Orb

Annual Accounting

Tree Song: Redwood

Like a Tree Planted by the River

I Sing the Poem “Nantucket”

In My Octopus Village

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