Category: Poetry (Page 8 of 33)

Photo by Vijayalakshmi Nidugondi on Unsplash

Her September Familiar

1 April 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Sharon Whitehill

Now is the season when hummingbirds vanish,
daylight dwindles, and the leaves fall,

a strange season of endings and losses,
colors fading to gray with a blackness behind.

A particular sorrow for her, this heartache,
even if shared by many, akin to the sky grief we feel

at losing the stars, even the brightest invisible now
everywhere but the most rural night skies.

Though more personal, too: a growing awareness
of how fragile her loved ones, family and friends,

this lingering grief for those absent, now or forever,
her people. As precious and ever-present as the invisible stars,

essential to her as signal fires in a storm,
yet everything seems, everything is, so precarious.

Each year it comes, this melancholy, her familiar,
not with the surprise of a window thrown suddenly open

to weather but as her September companion.
Until one day, down the road, it departs to the rattling call

of sandhill cranes overhead, a flurry of cedar waxwings,
and a pair of fawns still dressed in their white polka dots.

Sharon Whitehill is a retired English professor now living in Port Charlotte, Florida. In addition to poems published in various literary magazines, her publications include two scholarly biographies, two memoirs, two poetry chapbooks, and a full collection of poems. Her chapbook, THIS SAD AND TENDER TIME, is due winter 2024.

Another One Gone South

1 March 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Brian C. Billings

In the great Northeast,
I’ve soaked in rain;
I’ve chilled in snow.
I’ve had enough.
It’s time to go
to the water-strained Southwest,
where it’s best
to feel the kiss
of a dry metropolis
and bake to overdone
in the sun.

Abandoning myself to thirst,
I’ll brand myself the first
among the downward strays
who seek hot, vulnerable days.

Farewell to risk
when weather’s brisk
and tax that bites like a basilisk.

Farewell to rent
that puts a dent
in budgets that were all well-meant.

Farewell to bunkers.
No one hunkers
in the land of drills and junkers.

I’ll learn how to make do with less
in my arid new address.
Among the scrub I’ll decompress.

Sunscreen’s become my safest bet
for coping with the constant threat
of chaos where the climate’s wet.

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, The Bluebird Word, Confrontation, Evening Street Review, Glacial Hills Review, and Poems and Plays. Publishers for his scripts include Eldridge Publishing and Heuer Publishing. Read earlier poems from last March and December in The Bluebird Word.

March Weather

1 March 2024 / Editor

Poetry by DS Maolalai

the sun rolls like marbles;
makes passage down
georges st. the sun
looks in windows
at old hanging clothes,
aging to pale
bleached out
detail. I roll
with the sun
and against
in a pattern. move
between traffic
and dodge
around passing
pedestrians.
drink coffee
in this early
march weather.
this first
dusty day
of the year.

DS Maolalai‘s poetry has been nominated twelve times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and has been released in three collections, most recently Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022). The author’s poem The Lawsuit was one of The Bluebird Word‘s early selections in the inaugural February 2022 issue.

Birthplace

1 March 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Alexander Etheridge

—for W.S. Merwin

Out under clouds in the broad wheatfield
is a certain breed of silence
where only the perfectly hushed
give voice
Wind through the stalks
A sound of colors blending everywhere
in fine webs of shadow and light

After hours here you can start to sense
God’s breathing
like slow shifts in the clockwork
of ancient life
Then you may leave your body

as you lie in the delicate wheat
to return and find yourself
new once more
as you were long ago

your eyes wide
in the freshly formed world

Alexander Etheridge’s poems have been featured in The Potomac Review, Museum of Americana, Welter Journal, The Cafe Review, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize. He is the author of God Said Fire (2023) and Snowfire and Home (Belle Point Press, 2024).

suddenly the third day of spring

1 March 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Cecil Morris

laugh splashing
it is raining
but the sun is out and bright
and somewhere a rainbow
must be refracting missiles of light
must be fracturing tears
and the neighbor children
all three dark-haired slips in single digits
are outside and laughing
and squealing and opening their mouths
and pointing erupting glee
rain with sunshine
big juicy flashing drops
wetting their bare arms
darkening their dark heads
hearty fat drops smacking
sun-warmed concrete
with satisfying, cartoonish splats
the best of everything
how little it takes
to engender joy
laugh flashing

Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English and now tries writing himself what he spent so many years teaching others to understand and (maybe) enjoy. He has poems appearing in Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, Rust + Moth, Willawaw Journal, and other literary magazines. Read his earlier poem Some Kinder Resolutions for a Better Year in The Bluebird Word.

Despair

1 March 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Michael S. Glaser

I take refuge among the trees
the Maple, Cedar and Chestnut Oak

where the wind dances with the leaves
and the birds invite my spirit to sing their songs.

The soft blue of the endless sky
knows that everything on earth is small

– even despair –

and reminds me that I am a part of something
wonderous – this sanctuary of mystery,

of sunlight, shadows and this breeze
that ruffles my hair

like my father did each time
he felt proud of his only son.

Michael S. Glaser has published eight collections of his own work and served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2004–2009. He now co-leads workshops which embrace poetry as a means of self-reflection. He co-edited The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton (BOA 2012). Read more at http://www.michaelsglaser.com.

French Broad River

1 March 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Douglas Cooper

The hum of traffic on the bridge overhead, blends
with the gurgle of the river as it swirls around
the dock at the kayak ramp. A man wearing a bicycle helmet
sits on the bank watching a teacup Yorkie explore.

The bank is covered with huge catalpa trees, thickets
of sunflowers, Japanese knotweed, blackberry canes,
Asiatic lilies, and sweet pea flowers, making me
a world traveler standing in one place.

My friend Mick, with a twinkle in his eye,
asks the cyclist how many CCs his
electric bike could do. The cyclist answers
straight-faced, “Up to 30 miles per hour.”
“How many miles per gallon?”
“I can ride to work and back on one charge.”

About then, the Yorkie scampers across
the sidewalk toward an 80-pound husky
straining on his owner’s leash – a tiny hurricane hunter
flying straight into the storm. The cyclist
picks up the small dog and puts him in his cloth shoulder bag,
riding to safer places to explore the wonders of this world.

Douglas Cooper lives in the mountains north of Asheville, NC, with his wife and three pets. He has a BA in English from the University of West Florida, and attended many workshops with poet Francis Quinn. His work has appeared in Crosswinds Poetry Journal and The RavensPerch.

Early Spring

1 March 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Sharon Scholl

When everything portends,
clings to the edge of not quite yet,
teeters on perhaps.

Just a hint of green
pokes from wilted stalks,
risking little, wary of reversal.

Nothing signals go ahead!
Nothing gestures all safe now
to a land still hovering.

I sit with my seed catalog
deep in petunia fantasies
despite its warning, sow after frost.

Sharon Scholl is an ancient poet (91) still very active as convener of a poetry critique group and poetry editor of a local women’s journal. Her poems currently published are in Front Range Review and Third Wednesday.

Photo by NASA Hubble Space Telescope on Unsplash

The Pillars of Creation*

1 March 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Arthur Ginsberg

The pillars of creation fill my sight,
in ways I cannot fathom make me pray
and revel in the origin of light.

Though Galileo knew the stars were bright,
he could not know red dwarfs, light years away.
The pillars of creation fill my sight.

The James Webb telescope has taken flight
with golden panels opened wide today
to gather in the origin of light.

Men who’ve slipped earth’s bonds can ignite
the rapture mortals see in cosmic clay.
The pillars of creation fill my sight.

We peer now into space beyond the height
where angels fly and clarion trumpets play
and revel in the origin of light.

Beloveds who passed through tunnels, brilliant white,
came from the stuff of stars at which we gaze.
The pillars of creation fill my sight,
I revel in the origin of light.

*molten rock and dust in the shape
of pillars seen through the Webb
telescope, glowing in deep space

Arthur Ginsberg is a poet based in Seattle. Past work appears in the anthologies, Blood and Bone, and Primary Care. He received the William Stafford prize in 2003. He holds an MFA degree from Pacific University in Oregon. His most recent book, Holy the Body was published by Kelsay Books.

Aviary

1 February 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Konrad Ehresman

In the dark I hear the owl in my attic,
three beating thrums and a woosh,
screeching,
the sound of wings confined.

In the light,
I collect stray feathers
and celebrate silence.

Every day I think it gone,
but
every night,
the gift,
of being wrong.

I tell my family
but they can’t hear it,
say my mind is playing tricks,
I wonder where my brain mastered illusion,
how it chose
owl over
dove.

I could just show them,
pull on dangling cord,
turn shut door to yawning mouth,
bathe in the vindicating warmth of trapped air,
watch an owl erupt
from the parted lips of our house.

But I worry,

when I ask the attic to speak,
that it will refuse an audience,

that it will share only,
quiet settled into dust.

And I worry,

they will pity me as
I write pleas in the grime,
beg stale air to let them hear,
to teach them the music
of flying into walls,
the song of soaring
while starving.

But mostly,

I worry that if we look,
I might come to find,

there was no owl,

and the noise
is
mine.

Konrad Ehresman is a creative living on the central coast of California. His work has been featured by Ariel Chart, Awakened Voices, You Might Need to Hear This, and he has work upcoming in Mocking Owl Roost. When not writing Konrad can be found baking bread and being a nuisance.

Category: Poetry (Page 8 of 33)

Her September Familiar

Another One Gone South

March Weather

Birthplace

suddenly the third day of spring

Despair

French Broad River

Early Spring

The Pillars of Creation*

Aviary

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