Category: Poetry (Page 43 of 45)

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To Old Grass and Weeds

3 April 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Darrell Petska

Sap-shorn and light-forsaken,
quashed by winter’s boot

you wait, underground exiles
spending summer’s store
till earth’s cold armor chinks.

Old friends, lend us once more
dreams of sunny surfeit and green delight.
Rekindle our faith that spring winters
snugly in bone as in root:

though shoot and flesh till different fields,
life seeds one urge to rise and thrive.

Darrell Petska is a retired university editor. His poetry and fiction can be found in 3rd Wednesday Magazine, First Literary Review–East, Nixes Mate Review, Verse Virtual, Loch Raven Review and widely elsewhere (conservancies.wordpress.com). A father of five and grandfather of six, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife of more than 50 years.

Snowscape

2 April 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Frank William Finney

Sinking in the snow
after feeding my hens.

A light bulb peeks
through the coop’s icy mesh

Feathers feast
on frozen mash

as the flurry buries
a trail of my footprints.

Frank William Finney is a poet and former lecturer from Massachusetts. He lived in Thailand from 1995-2020, where he taught literature at Thammasat University. His work has appeared in Hedge Apple, Lemon Peel Press, The Raven’s Perch, and The Thieving Magpie; New work to appear in The Deronda Review, Freshwater Literary Journal, and Press Pause Press. His chapbook The Folding of the Wings is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Mud Season

30 March 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Emily Donaldson

A scrambled egg breakfast,
a pocket clementine, tea.

Heavy boots pulled over wool socks,
knowing each step will be unsteadied
by the hungry latch of mud season.

Resident red breasted robins dart in undergrowth.
Crows call to each other from the wood.
Steam rises from the tea, curls like frost smoke
above the last vestiges of snow.

A wrack line of melting ice gravid with topsoil, softening.

The mud-stirred rush, sharp and sweet.
The ovary of a former flower, pulled first from its branch,
and then from my pocket. Clementine peels dropped as eggshells,
as petals. Pulling spongy ribbons of pith from half-moons, as fine as root hairs,
jagged as lightening.

A striking vision of seasonal return, this jeweled orbit:
ruby-crowned kinglets, blue-headed vireos,
yellow-bellied sapsuckers reclaiming their home
amidst black capped chickadees and wheeling starlings.

Calling the promise of nests, of precious eggs cradled in
loose twigs, chaos ordered with care. Their nocturnal flights
under cover of darkness like glittering comets,
bringing new life to beloved ground.

Showing us to make home in the dead wood.

And I, having devoured the world in a morning,
wingless, nursing citrus sting on cracked lip,
whisper thanks.

Emily Donaldson writes as a way to connect with everything around her, and to explore the relationship between the natural and our inner worlds.

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My Eyes Are Small

29 March 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Walter Weinschenk

The portals of my eyes are small
But through them I see the Pleiades,
And when the atmosphere is clear
I see them staring back at me.

My ears are also small:
Narrow halls through which I heard,
One dismal afternoon,
The steady drum of Death,
His footsteps loud upon the stairs;
Steady at first, then tentative,
They slowly faded as Death retreated
For no apparent reason.

In the silence of the morning,
Some trifling sound – a chirping bird,
A broken twig, it doesn’t matter which –
Is loud enough to rouse
The mountain from his sleep;
He lets roll the snow
And it decimates a town
That took a thousand years to build.

And so it is that the enormity of love,
Too immense to understand,
Is born within the gentle press
Of pallid lips together,
And the touch of tiny fingertips
Across the boundless space
That lies between two sets of eyes.

Walter Weinschenk is an attorney, writer and musician. His writing has appeared in a number of literary publications including the Carolina Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, Cathexis Northwest Press, Beyond Words, Griffel, The Raw Art Review with work forthcoming in the Iris Literary Journal and Sand Hills Literary Magazine. Walter lives in a suburb just outside Washington, D.C.

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Lost On The Mountain

27 March 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Brian Yapko

left knee buckling, hungry, thirsty, i fall
onto a carpet of sharp pine needles and
groan from the pain. lost among endless
brambles and branches, there is no clear
way back down and i know no one will
rescue me – not after the shouting, the
broken dishes, the explosive words that
are beyond forgiveness. truly lost. each
direction the same, endless trees the green

of envy, of tarnished bronze, of grimm
brothers witchery. i am haunted by sounds
that once enchanted but now threaten. i
lift a pine branch to serve as a crutch. i
check my dwindling water supply. i hold
my last bag of m&ms to my heart, thinking
the red-green-blue that melts in your mouth
not in your hand will be my last meal
on earth. hot tears. like a savage i pound

my chest and. rip my shirt. i drop onto the
dirt pondering every soul who has wounded
those he loves and then fled up to the
mountains. were any of them as regretful
as i? three long days, no cell reception,
no sign of humans. i think of lost friends
and find the fossil of a trilobite. it lived
right here eons ago. this mountain was
once at the bottom of the sea though it

now trespasses among the clouds. what
tectonic force raised it skywards? and why
do i shout, slam doors, climb mountains
and then weep away what little water i
have left? i put the fossil in my pocket.
if i want to live i must begin the hike down
to the plain below. it looks as far as the
craters of the moon. i will go back down
anyway. even though i’m not sure i want to.

Brian Yapko is a lawyer whose poems have appeared in multiple publications, including Prometheus Dreaming, Cagibi, Poetica, Grand Little Things, Hive Avenue, the Society of Classical Poets, Chained Muse, Tempered Runes, Garfield Lake Review, Sparks of Calliope, Abstract Elephant and others. His debut science fiction novel, El Nuevo Mundo, will be published in Summer 2022 by Rebel Satori Press. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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The Lovers: VI

24 March 2022 / Editor

Poetry by J.T. Whitehead

Superstition adversely possesses the peace of my mind

better judgment once occupied.

God knows it tried.

Others take an image, in fragments, through multiple eyes,

with which to do whatever they wish.

I think we’re simpler & bigger than this.

If you could start a slew of words with “If you could” –

& you can – then we can play & learn.

Are you with me?

I’ll know I am playing my role in color, better than Bela Lugosi,

hungry & fatal if not eternal.

Let’s make a scene.

Few things are equally over-riding & under-lying & over-arching –

few things are so . . . superlative.

These are our themes.

J.T. Whitehead studied social and political and Eastern philosophy at Purdue where he received an MA in philosophy. He spent time between, during, and after schools on a grounds crew, as a pub cook, a writing tutor, a teacher’s assistant, a delivery man, a book shop clerk, and a liquor store clerk, inspiring four years as a labor lawyer on the workers’ side. Whitehead lives in Indianapolis with his two sons, Daniel and Joseph.

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Astronomers Estimate That There Are at least Seven Letters in the Word “Romance”

23 March 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Rich Boucher

Maybe I could be a bird
that will always live outside your window
and just when you need inspiration
I’ll just start talking
but you won’t be scared,
even though you were expecting birdsong:
you’ll be so shocked and then
this shock will blossom cracklingly
into inspiration; I wish I could tell you
what was whispered in my ear
when I asked why I existed
in kindergarten and a teacher leaned down
and actually told me the reason;
you can laugh at my fear of mailmen
all you like but when was the last time
you got a letter that wasn’t lying
when it said you should be happy;
mock my faith in the primary colors
but tell me you’ve never felt the intensity
of red and chose instead to call it a kind of blush,
tell me your shivers don’t call to mind blue,
swear to me you’ve never seen a yellow ambulance
and found yourself in complete agreement.
I’d love to meet the person you need me to be
and tell him that I might not be much
but at least I don’t have a degree
in the study of room temperatures;
romance is a word that has just enough letters
to spell itself and put me into a weird headspace
where I’m the one person who never learned
how to take sticks and turn them
into the because of fire,
but if you ever need someone
who can genuinely be afraid of the dark,
well, that’s something I can certainly do for you.

Rich Boucher resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rich’s poems have appeared in Bending Genres, Menacing Hedge and Stink Eye, among others, and he has work forthcoming in Boats Against The Current and Amethyst Review. Rich is BOMBFIRE Magazine’s Associate Editor, and he is the author of All Of This Candy Belongs To Me.

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Some Evidence

20 March 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Jen Prince

There’s a little church in my hands—
supplicant fingers that petition the kitchen table, fracture,
find broken only the bones that matter.

Hound the relics of god’s own garbage that thrum under my skin, gentle and wicked,
blinkering as through a veil.

What I find I pull close, press in, tuck under my chin. Now
this is the dark-eyed child who takes after her mother.
This is the daughter who speaks softer.

Down the hall the dog is barking, marking the wail of a plane through wafer-thin walls—
there’s a certain pitch at which my brain just breaks.

My voracious father, a dog lover, has been known to lose his appetite from time to time.
Has been known to gorge instead on godly ferocity, the muscles in his jaw flickering
like the first light of the world.

I know you better than you know yourself, he said: when I met your mother,
I warned her I could yell.

In my own home moonlight passes over like a benign plague or stranger’s favor,
and an owl calls me alone from sleep.
The iron words lie hot on my tongue, drowned and hissing.

Jen Prince is a writer and editor based in Memphis, TN. Her poetic work centers on ideas of separation, memory, and myth. Her poem “Brittle Mirror” has been accepted for publication at the Scapegoat Review.

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This should’ve been an Urdu ghazal instead

19 March 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Uday Khanna

While being buried I thought why spare me space for breathing,
I should’ve been wound in white and cremated instead.

Waking has taken up the place of life,
I should’ve been nostalgic for a time which passed me by instead.

Living has come disarmingly too fast lately,
I would like a stern word instead.

Someone asked me how I write so beautifully of terrible things,
I should’ve been a keeper of chopped meat instead.

I was named ignorant far too many times,
I should’ve been left blissfully unaware instead.

I keep meeting myself on different horizons for novelty,
The mystery of time is repetition instead.

This circle tells me I’m merely a handful of mistakes,
I should’ve been a fistful of wasted sperm instead.

Soon poetry will become unattainable,
I should’ve gone back to plucking flower buds instead.

O poet, you’ve spent all your life seeking to write about an ungrateful ant,
You should’ve stepped on it instead.

Uday Khanna is a research scholar currently pursuing his MPhil from the University of Delhi. His research interests lie in the fields of postmodernism, media theory, cyber-culture, and 20th century short-story genre.

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Paradise on High

15 March 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Jon Wilder

heaven is forever i get that / but doesn’t the idea of forever scare anyone else / won’t we get bored / is it like church / cause i don’t like church / i spend most of it drawing on welcome cards and looking at the clock / it’s not like i have anything else to do / it’s knowing i’ll spend the morning listening to a message i’ve heard a thousand times / something about disciples and learning from your mistakes / hands during prayer time / hymns in triplicate / McDonalds on the drive home / hey Dad is salt good for anxiety / cause the basic beauty of a clouded eden isn’t doing it for me / i feel i’d wanna move eventually / like a small town to escape / it’s either get out or never leave / but if i don’t want heaven will i be chained to a rock for eternity / lashed with a flaming whip while demons dance around me / will the devil do the work or will his flunkies handle the real pain / do you go numb or is the hurt for good / are these the only options / can i get a third / look at the clock Dad you’re running kinda long

Jon Wilder is a poet and musician living in Portland, OR. He writes, records and releases music under the name Boom Years and his poetry has been featured in Levee Magazine, Duck Lake Books, Sonder Midwest & Salem State. His first book “Bullpen no. 1” was released in 2016 and his second collection of poetry “Original Fear” comes out on May 13.