Category: Poetry (Page 8 of 41)

Midnight Music

10 April 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Tracy Duffy

Like a…rat-a-tap-tap
from the drummers—drum
goes the night-time, in the forest
like the crickets—hum
Chiming in, the hooting
of the owl at night

set the tempo, set the tempo
to the music, midnight

Neon shiny stars
grant the stage, its light
the rattle—ssh, – rattle – ssh
of a sliding snake
and the dripdrop, dripdrop
of fish into the lake

set the tempo, set the tempo
like the drummers-drum
Hum…hum…hoo
Ssh…ssh…shey
Drip…drop…doo
Tempo Set

Tracy Duffy writes poetry while taking a gap year from a lifetime of work in medical cosmetology. Earned BS in Organizational Management while raising a family. Published in Bacopa, Writers Alliance Gainesville; P’AN KU, BCC Student Literary/Arts Magazine; Tiny Seed Literary Journal; Open Door Magazine Labyrinth; Anti-Herion Chic; Passage: The River.

Not Mary Oliver’s Linden

4 April 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Diane M. Williams

Mary Oliver drove through Linden,
Alabama, and wrote about hulking birds
of prey in a field outside of town.
I wonder what led her to that southern
town that I forsook years ago.
Now, years after her death,
it’s much too late to ask.

Yes, I remember black vultures
descending on rotting carcasses,
shiny summer grasses of field and roadside.
But my Linden, Alabama, is not
the detached visual image of Mary Oliver.

Girl, age twelve, brother and two sisters,
Damn Yankees from up north,
Dad trying to make a go
as a dairy farmer in the Alabama Black Belt,
Mom a hospital nurse.
We didn’t know to say yes ma’am no ma’am.

Summer whipped the sultry farmhouse,
tarantula mother birthed her babies on my bedroom wall,
black widows nested in abandoned buckets,
our home a tired reminder of neglect—
peeling paint and broken shutters,
our lawn a field of weeds,
Lombardy poplars loftily ringing the crescent driveway.

We sang wild dewberries into our pails
uncaring of copperheads and scorpions,
danced across meadows bringing cows in
for evening milking,
trudged gleefully two miles in sticky knee-high grass
brushing off ticks, sweat bees, grasshoppers
to the town swimming pool,
splashed away our poverty
with kids who didn’t know.

Girl, age twelve, I dreamed
the “Wayward Wind” with Gogi Grant
got kissed by a snot-nosed boy in a haystack
rocked with Elvis in the jailhouse on late-night radio
wept finding my dog dead in a roadside ditch
practiced French words with my Jersey heifer.

Passing through Linden, Mary did not know
that in that field where vultures
hovered and gorged themselves
lay the remains of my childhood,
the tattered fantasies
and memories of Girl, age twelve.

The forlorn house and tumble-down barn
long ago torn from the landscape,
now the ghosts of the Lombardy poplars
sing to the restless wind.

Diane M. Williams taught college French for many years, then joined the creative team at UT Knoxville as an editorial manager. Her poetry has appeared in One Trick Pony, Bluestem Magazine, Monterey Poetry Review, Black Moon Magazine, and The Avocet. Her poetry collection, Night in the Garden, appeared in 2020.

Memory, a Satellite

1 April 2025 / Editor

Poetry by KB Ballentine

Oh, my grandmother’s hibiscus!
Her begonias were bright and beautiful,
but her hibiscus was magic. Sunbaked
and salt-sprayed, filaments and anthers
waving wild in Florida rain brewed an elixir
that made the hummingbirds chirp.
An instant brightness, that shocking red
(matching my skin one summer),
where bees hummed praises and nuzzled
into the honeyed hearts. Forget the oranges
bulging behind blossoms, hibiscus let me know
I was home—wherever I happened to be.

KB Ballentine’s latest collection All the Way Through was published in November 2024 from Sheila-Na-Gig Inc. Other books are published with Blue Light Press, Iris Press, Middle Creek Publishing, and Celtic Cat Publishing. Additional writing has been published in North Dakota Quarterly, Atlanta Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal. Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.

While Walking Down the Twilit Road

29 March 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Brian C. Billings

While walking down the twilit road
that flows along my neighborhood,
I cast aside my daily load
and thought of comfort as I could
until a limping insect crossed
upon my way. So small. So lost.

It labored toward a leeward hedge
along an inconsistent line
that ended in the rounded edge
where bricking holds a crossing sign.
Six legs marched forth to meet the goal,
their push propelled by sturdy soul.

A line of molt had split the shell.
Two claws were badly worn and bent.
The bulbous head bobbed in a spell
while on the creature weakly went.
I felt a stir of comradeship
as I beheld this forlorn trip.

Too often have I dwelled these days
on thorny word and bitter thought
and given reign to black malaise
convinced depression was my lot.
Cicada nymph, your simple drive
reminds me how to be alive.

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, Antietam Review, Confrontation, Evening Street Review, Glacial Hills Review, and Poems and Plays. Publishers for his scripts include Eldridge Publishing and Heuer Publishing.

Robin Bathing in Puddle

26 March 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Russell Rowland

The puddle was available, because
it rained last night. Drought means a long time
between birdbaths.

Only a quick dip and flutter. Overindulgence
takes time away from foraging.

I relate to the hygienics
of a backyard bird, for after all, we too are songs
bird-caged in bodies for a while—

though we have bathed in the Jordan
with some others, to wash away shortcomings;

restore our voices. The robin
meanwhile simply rises, refreshed and cleansed,
to a nest with its three promises.

Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire. Recent work appears in Red Eft Review, Wilderness House, Bookends Review, and The Windhover. His latest poetry books, Wooden Nutmegs and Magnificat, are available from Encircle Publications. He is a trail maintainer for the Lakes Region (NH) Conservation Trust.

Whaleshark

20 March 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Arthur Ginsberg

for Miriam, La Paz 2024

Of all the treasures hidden in the sea,
creation sprinkled them with luminous dots,
and none more magisterial than thee.
They range from far to migrate to this spot.

For months they feast on ocean’s sumptuous broth
of plankton, krill and small fish through fine gills.
Stunned by their beauty we hover like moths,
recalling with horror how Ahab killed.

We come as strangers to this holy place,
as do pilgrims travel to a shrine,
to feel these spirits through our eyes’ embrace,
to revel in their eloquent design.

From fin to head they’ve not a single bone,
a scaffold upon which to drape their flesh,
solely from cartilage these giants have grown
to swim for years through oceans without rest.

Our guide beckons that it’s time to go
back to the solid earth we love and know.

Arthur Ginsberg is a neurologist and poet from Seattle who has studied with Galway Kinnell, Marvin Bell, Dorianne Laux, and Sandra Alcosser. He holds an MFA from Pacific University. He teaches poetry in the Honors program at the University of Washington. His books are Brain Works and Holy the Body.

Sister Beams

14 March 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Anne Bower

We look to words for paths forward
beyond complaints, self-pity, nostalgia
long for new seeing
new rhythms, surprise
like a gong in midnight’s silence
or reassuring sister beams
nailed to old timbers
to shore up this old house,
like a tent of sapling trunks
giving purchase to beans’ urging tendrils

Anne Bower‘s poems have appeared in multiple literary journals and anthologies as well as three chapbooks. She lives in rural Vermont, teaches tai chi, trains instructors, gardens, and is currently working on a novel set in Appalachia with a protagonist who becomes a famous quilter.

Tracking the Fox

11 March 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Terra Miller

sticks and stones
encased in ice
shine in the eye
of the hidden sun.
her

pawprints hide beneath
fallen birch tree
and between broken
boulders.
she will not escape me.
but

while snowflakes fall into
the wind
making white mounds
of rubble
out of autumn

a voice creeps into my ear:
rest.
what have i
to lose
or gain?

i stand
ankle deep in snow
on a wet stone,
ready to sharpen my mind
with silence.

i’ll let the vixen tread another trail
for me to find tomorrow.

Terra Miller is a tired senior at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida. Her poetry has been published in Living Waters Review and Westmarch Literary Journal. Even though she’s had the opportunity to live in many states, she would call Hawaii her home, leaving half her heart behind after moving.

Family Flock

23 February 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Danita Dodson

Daily I count turkeys on my land—
one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine—
willing this family unit
to stay together forever, wishing
to goodness that not one of them
will ever be lost from the circle
when winds blow or rifles rise,
hoping they’ll keep close to home
in the unknowns of shifting storms.

At twilight, they nest in the trees,
finding refuge in the folds of earth,
the sky a quilt of fading autumn light
that draws them near as one,
like a cabin’s warmth at day’s end,
kinship a shield against the cold.
And I pray for them as a brood—
one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine—
what I’ve prayed for my own family.

Danita Dodson is the author of three poetry collections: Trailing the Azimuth, The Medicine Woods, and Between Gone and Everlasting. Her poems appear in Salvation South and elsewhere. She is the 2024 winner of the Poetry Society of Tennessee’s Best of Fest. She lives in Sneedville, Tennessee. More at danitadodson.com.

Plumage

20 February 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Sam Barbee

The red cardinal, whose head-feathers
have fallen out, sits on the wooden fence.

He notices our yard full of movement, shapes
big and small imparting various shades –

blue sky with white clouds, zinnias.
Dogwood wavers with breeze he does not see.

Motionless, one coarse and knotted branch
cradles the nest he feeds. The birdbath

bends a murky prism, a reflection of scruff
on his grey-red tuft. Unlike full-feathered

finches, and pileated cousins pecking a maple’s trunk,
he can only imagine a proper bonnet of feathers –

not molt or baldness from mites. Not scar
of low-branch wound. Perches content without

storybook color or crest. His grandeur resets
the order. A quest for tranquil, preening wings

on the wooden fence. Sanctified to guard
against squirrels or Cooper Hawk carnage,

he flaps to the nest of hatchlings,
content with reimagined beauty.

Sam Barbee’s newest collection is Apertures of Voluptuous Force (Redhawk Publishing, 2022). He has three previous poetry collections, including That Rain We Needed (Press 53, 2016), a nominee for the Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best poetry collections of 2016; he is a two-time Pushcart nominee.