Category: Poetry (Page 6 of 46)

What we give at Christmas

13 December 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Chantal Travers

Without fail, every Christmas Eve
her cracked winter fingers
would peel chestnuts for the stuffing
No matter how much soaking before the roasting
the hard rind of this festive victim would splinter into tiny sharp slivers
making their way inside thinning nailbeds
turning from pink to angry crimson
Without any attachment to this seasonal side
he would tell her it wasn’t worth it
But she refused his suggestion to forget about them
their hearthy scent, this fiery holiday flavour
Salted buttery slugs steeped in her body since childhood
and in mine

Chantal Travers, originally from London, has lived in Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, and currently Sydney. She is studying a Master of Arts in Writing and Literature at Deakin University, and she was recently published in Visible Ink. Chantal enjoys Qi Gong, Cacao and travelling but misses English Christmas.

Two Little Jews on Christmas Morning 1971, with

9 December 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Lana Hechtman Ayers

breath of ginger, cardamom, peppermint,
a special holiday blend of ice cream we spoon up
for breakfast, watching Saturday morning cartoons
and movies where fire-mouthed Godzilla tramples Tokyo,
then foils three-headed winged Ghidorah, his fiercest
opponent, and being Jewish, I don’t know what Christmas
means, or the word grace, or which monsters are real.
For years, brother, you instruct me in the fantastical
ways of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica,
Buck Rogers and Doctor Who, and it’s all such fun,
good guys winning in the end, but when you introduce me
to reruns of Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone we grow
up in a world where the space shuttle explodes before our eyes
and the twin towers go up in flames with no aliens to blame—
only human hubris and brutality. This week, I rode in a hot air
balloon and witnessed the curvature of earth, the edge of all we are,
and nearly tumbled out over the realization of how beautiful
life could be if only we would cease battling one other, brother.

[Author Note: This poem begins with a line from Patricia Fargnoli’s “Winter Sky Over Cheshire County, New Hampshire” and is dedicated to my brother Alan.]

Lana Hechtman Ayers shepherded over 150 poetry collections into print in her role as managing editor for three small presses. She lives in Oregon on the unceded lands of the Yaqo’n people, where on clear, quiet nights she can hear the Pacific ocean whispering to the moon.

Antipodes

7 December 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Laura Hannett

for Fiona

She has the fanciful idea
that the flowers that have vanished
for the winter have migrated,
not unlike the birds,
and are spending these cold days
in the antipodes.

They have packed their buds and leaves
and gone to balmy climes
to turn their faces to the sun
and reminisce about their times
in other gardens, far away—
to spread their leaves and petals
in a different summer’s day.

A native of Central New York, Laura Hannett relishes the distinct seasons in this beautiful part of the world. Other work has appeared in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, Amethyst Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Mania Magazine and Verse-Virtual.

Winter

3 December 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Jeffrey Sommer

As trees go bare
As days grow dark
I look toward winter
When the snow will start

Soon the grass stops growing
Roses bow their heads
Stray cats are sleeping
In the flower beds

Then the snow clouds form
The sun goes to sleep
Farmers cover their crops
And shelter their sheep

When at last the snow comes
I rummage through the shed
Where I keep the shovel
And my rusty old sled

Before the sun breaks though
Until the snow begins to melt
I go sledding down the hill
To remember how it felt

Jeffrey Sommer enjoys writing poetry on social issues as well as relationships between people and the environment.

December’s Eve

1 December 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Kersten Christianson

I dream of dark crow
night, stars or snowflakes shimmer
their wan-lit path down,

down, down to wave-tossed
sea. Three weeks yet ‘til Solstice
when we turn a left

on a pitted road,
put ear to the ground, listen
for returning light’s

arrival. My skull
rattles from so much darkness,
echoes a tuneless

song. Split the wood, add
the tinder, build the bonfire
to welcome the sun.

Kersten Christianson derives inspiration from wild, wanderings, and road trips. Her newest poetry collection, The Ordering of Stars, will publish with Sheila-Na-Gig in 2025. Kersten lives in Sitka, Alaska. She eyeballs tides, shops Old Harbor Books, and hoards smooth ink pens.

Perfect Day

1 November 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Susan Wolbarst

The day unfolds
in its own sweet way:
sunny, highs
in the mid-seventies,
light breeze. Zero
chance of rain.

Its slow perfection
savored
by coastal retirees
breathing deeply
exhaling thanks.

The most ambitious
get some steps in,
or re-pot baby
tomato plants from
the greenhouse.
The rest of us

sip coffee on
the deck and,
due to bad habits
we cannot shake,
read newspapers
on our phones.

Susan Wolbarst is a newspaper reporter in rural Gualala, California. Her poetry has been published in Plainsongs, pioneertown (pioneertownlit.com), Naugatuck River Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthology Alchemy and Miracles: Nature Woven Into Words. A chapbook of her poems, It’s Over, published in August 2025 (Finishing Line Press).

Reflection

1 November 2025 / Editor

Poetry by AJ Saur

When the 7 a.m. sun suddenly
beams your windshield, you may discover

yourself in the back window of a city bus
a great deal more serious than you knew.

Perhaps it’s not surprising considering
how you flew out of the house without

your morning coffee, without a goodbye
kiss, without a single word shifting the new air.

Now, thanks to traffic, you’re inching
toward yourself, cautious, uncertain

of this one who acts in opposite
at every turn. Enlightened, block after

block, by the set chin, high cheekbones,
those steely eyes spanning

the distance from a someone so thoroughly
other you catch yourself, for a moment, wondering

where he’s headed on this average Wednesday
and, if you flash a smile, will he follow?

AJ Saur is the author of five books of poetry from Murmuration Press including, most recently, Of Bone and Pinion (2022). AJ’s poems have also appeared (or will soon appear) in Abandoned Mine, Front Range Review, Glimpse, The Midwest Quarterly, Muse, Third Wednesday, Willow Review, and other journals.

Blue June, Slight Breeze

1 November 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Brian Builta

At the Stapleton concert I become
one clap after another, a whooo,
a dervish of hollers and whups,
a disembodied scream. This happens
on occasion. As the fatherless son
and the sonless father, Father’s Day
is a trigger, my poor poor daughter.
Sometimes her father goes missing
right in front of her, missing his chair
and sprawling on the arena floor.
So far, I’ve always come back, so far.
Truth: incarnation is overrated,
yammering emotions running amuck,
saltwater on the cheek, thunderclap
weighing down the chest. My little
private tornado feels so good, so
delightfully destructive and harmless.
Of course, next day I’m a truck-flattened
squirrel. Energy has its consequences.
Stapleton can only get you so far
before the gravity of the empty letter jacket
in the hall returns, reminding your life
is now angry bees rising from bitter honey,
where the best therapies are leaves
murmuring free from any standard-issue tree
as long as there’s a breeze.

Brian Builta lives in Arlington, Texas, and works at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. His poetry has been published most recently in Freshwater Literary Journal, Meridian, and Red Ogre Review. More of his poetry can be found at brianbuilta.com.

How the Poems Land

1 November 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Kersten Christianson

We share the wind in this early morning hour,
the new leaves of the Japanese Maple, crimson,
skin-soft, fibrillate in genial breeze, fluctuate
in tandem with fish kite, murmuring wind chime,

and to the south, a poet friend meanders her rocky
shore, her dogs advance and retreat, loop to follow
each new scent revealed by tide and temperature,
while she gathers words among popweed, shell

debris. Poetry exists in breath, without formula.
Its thoughts gather like sea foam, words emerge
with the surface and bob of harbor seal’s head,
its eyes scanning shoreline, until poetic lines

land in a whisper-whoosh of baby waves shuffling
into the space between. The spring has been a dark
October, rain repeated by rain, yet the leaves green,
red-breasted robins frolic, the poems need writing.

Kersten Christianson derives inspiration from wild, wanderings, and road trips. Her newest poetry collection, The Ordering of Stars, will publish with Sheila-Na-Gig in fall 2025. Kersten lives in Sitka, Alaska. She eyeballs tides, shops Old Harbor Books, and hoards smooth ink pens.

Hood

1 November 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Shaymaa Mahmoud and John Brantingham

My people immigrated here
from a little town near Nottingham Forest
and in the high romance

of childhood, I decided
that I must have Robin Hood’s
blood inside me

whether Robin Hood existed or not.
And if he did, I suppose I do
and probably the sheriff

of Nottingham and Little John
and whatever heroes and villains
and royalty and peasants,

and I suppose none of this matters.
This was just a boy dreaming
that he could be heroic,

and I don’t want to be a hero
anymore. My dead whisper to me
that to be quiet and kind is enough.

Shaymaa Mahmoud and John Brantingham are a father/ daughter writing team with hundreds of publications and over twenty books between them.

Category: Poetry (Page 6 of 46)

What we give at Christmas

Two Little Jews on Christmas Morning 1971, with

Antipodes

Winter

December’s Eve

Perfect Day

Reflection

Blue June, Slight Breeze

How the Poems Land

Hood

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