Poetry Corner
Section Editor: Mare Leonard
Mare Leonard lives and works in the Hudson Valley where she is an Associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking and the MAT programs at Bard College. Her latest chapbook, The Dark Inside My Hooded Coat, was published in 2018 at Finishing Line Press. Find reviews on her Facebook Page: Mare Leonard Poet and message Mare for a copy.
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"When was the last time you selected a book of poems to read or ordered one from the library? Poetry is dismissed in our culture. With Poetry Corner, we are hoping to share a taste of poems that will make you think, laugh or wonder. We will also post monthly readings, events, and classes in the Hudson Valley Region of New York and beyond."
~ Mare Leonard Attention Readers:
If you would like us to post a nonprofit or FREE community event in Poetry Corner, please send a note to: seniorstaff@sanctuary-magazine.com For-profit events will also be posted for a small fee. Please inquire. |
EVENTS
PLEASE STAY TUNED FOR VIRTUAL POETRY EVENTS or for IN-PERSON EVENTS ONCE THE PANDEMIC IS UNDER CONTROL. CAPS Calendar Hudson Valley, NY Bowery Poetry: Open Mic (see calendar listings) New York, NY Poetry Near You: Poets.org Poetry Events throughout US Poetry Open Mics Find virtual open mics poetry in your local area in the U.S. and Canada. |
MAY 2021: Selected Poetry
Poems this month by Peggy Turnbull and Victoria Twomey
Poems this month by Peggy Turnbull and Victoria Twomey
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The Fifth Graders' Rebellion, 1963
By Peggy Turnbull When we saw Mr. G. play foursquare with the boys, we stopped skipping rope, left blue-haired trolls in our pockets, joined the game. Slapping balls into corners, we began to best the boys. One day Tracy traded her limp skirt for a pair of slacks. At home for lunch, I modeled her. One by one, saying nothing among ourselves, girls swapped gingham dresses for corduroy pants. Told our puzzled mothers no skirt today. We awoke sizzling. We galloped to school. Two and a half days passed before Mr. G. announced that girls must always dress like ladies. The game at recess changed to boys chase girls. Boys shoved us hard, made our skirts flip up. Girls once glowed like beacons in the fog. Now we watched our new-found zeal flicker, low on fuel. We had to bank our fires. Peggy Turnbull lives in Wisconsin in the city of her birth, along with numerous seagulls, geese, squirrels, and groundhogs. She is on the Manitowoc-Calumet Library System and is the treasurer of St. James Episcopal Church. Her poems have recently appeared in Rats Ass Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, and are forthcoming in Your Daily Poem. Her chapbook, The Joy of Their Holiness, is forthcoming from Alabaster Leaves Publishing. (This poem was first published in Writing in a Woman’s Voice.)
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If Only, a Poem for Mother’s Day
By Victoria Twomey All I have is this flat, lifeless photograph of you, frozen in shades of black and white, imprisoned by this wooden frame, like a window looking out on the past. You, on the other side, behind the glass, 50 years ago, wearing a light gray dress, and a shy smile, in front of a garden gate. If only I could press a button, and unfreeze the frame, unlock the reel, so you would animate, like an old silent film. I could watch you tend the garden beyond the gate, smelling the gray roses, pruning, watering, happy. Perhaps at the end of the film, as the reel runs through to its end, you would catch me in the corner of your eye, turn and smile with delighted recognition, raising your gray arm, waving hello, waving goodbye. Victoria Twomey is an award-winning poet and fine art illustrator specializing in original colored pencil drawings. Victoria is the author of several chap books, including Autumn Music Box and The Feminine Voice. She has appeared as a featured poet at various venues in Long Island, NY, including “First Fridays” at the Hecksher Museum of Art, The Poetry Barn, Barnes & Noble, The Pisces Cafe, Borders Books and local radio. Her poems have been published in several anthologies, in newspapers and on the Web, including poetrybay.com, "For Better or For Worse" (PoetWorks Press), "Haiku One Breaths" (Allbook Books), “PPA Literary Review,” the Northport Observer, the North Shore Woman's Newspaper, and many others.
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APRIL 2021: Selected Poetry
In Celebration of National Poetry Month, the editors collected poems from emerging and published poets alike with the theme "Women's Empowerment." And the Editors' Pick is...
In Celebration of National Poetry Month, the editors collected poems from emerging and published poets alike with the theme "Women's Empowerment." And the Editors' Pick is...
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signposts and sole entities.
By Shannon Ellis for you my legs are signposts for your misplaced destination, for me my legs are sole entities, they sing to me at night. they accelerate for me amongst dark shadows when other legs come too close. my legs are gateways, steel doors, heavy vessels. they carry torso and torment, they grow crops harvested each day. they speak to mother nature in earth tones. i wish i understood them. my legs translate my joy in hard and softs, steps, movements, swaying languidity. |
Shannon Ellis is a poet from Scotland who focuses on writing about personal experience centering around love, loss, relationships, forgiveness and tackling mental health issues and trauma. Shannon’s poetry collection, Elements of an Adored Mind, illustrated by Rubin Ramires (Riza Press), explores the changing seasons of a love story, as told through the metaphorical language of elements.
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MARCH 2021: Selected Poetry
Poem this month by Ingrid Bruck
Wildfire Blues
By Ingrid Bruck
I sing insider blues
Blues dark and pressing
Cali-smoke choking the sun
In layers of Colorado ash
Blues for my kids
Blues for their kids
Blues for the virus
Blues for the fires
I cough outsider blues
Got gray-blues from no hiking
Got smoky mountain blues
And no views of the Rockies
Blues for no work
Blues for no money
Blues for no rent
Blues out of gas
Got deep blue hues
Burying mountain ranges
I sing closed in blues
Missing my mountains
Blues in a shiver
Blues in a shake
Blues in jambalaya
Blues on my table
By Ingrid Bruck
I sing insider blues
Blues dark and pressing
Cali-smoke choking the sun
In layers of Colorado ash
Blues for my kids
Blues for their kids
Blues for the virus
Blues for the fires
I cough outsider blues
Got gray-blues from no hiking
Got smoky mountain blues
And no views of the Rockies
Blues for no work
Blues for no money
Blues for no rent
Blues out of gas
Got deep blue hues
Burying mountain ranges
I sing closed in blues
Missing my mountains
Blues in a shiver
Blues in a shake
Blues in jambalaya
Blues on my table
Ingrid Bruck, a Pennsylvania-based poet, grows wildflowers and makes jam when she's not writing poetry. In 2019, one of her poems was nominated for Best of the Net and two were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Ingrid has one chapbook titled Finding Stella Maris (Flutter Press) and is a monthly columnist for Between These Shores Books. Some of her current work appears in Otata, Failed Haiku, Halcyon Days, Red Fez, Quatrain.Fish, Communicator’s League and Leaves of Ink.
FEBRUARY 2021: Selected Poetry
Poem and Visual Poetry Film Production this month by Christine Sloan Stoddard
Poem and Visual Poetry Film Production this month by Christine Sloan Stoddard
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The Dead Girl Artist's Scientific Method
By Christine Sloan Stoddard have you ever read an artist statement written by a cadaver? imagine the photographer typing in her coffin. oh, you thought it was a man? no, this dead artist is a woman. some might call her a girl. she is still willowy. not yet 30. never pregnant, free from the scars that “make” a “woman.” actually, was. past tense. she’s just a buried body now. camera mechanics do not intoxicate me but they enable me to paint with light. here in the darkness, I crave light. in life, I ate too many worms, too much dirt. all because he didn’t love me. i shouldn’t have cared. who was he but a ghostly distraction? a skeletal character too mysterious for me to add flesh. you must know a soul to love it. i photographed my sallow self before sunset. these were not expressionistic portraits. these were scientific documents, photos for the lab and the archives. maybe a microscope could tell me why he did not love me. I would crack the lens to find out. was it my curly hair? did he long for straight? was it my mayan nose? did he want a ski slope? was it my ripe olive tone? did he prefer peaches and cream? obsession does not make for clear thinking and my mind had always been crystal. i should’ve abandoned my lab coat. there are softer things to wear. why live with coarse fabrics? life is coarse enough. i probed too hard with my camera. he doesn’t love you. i stabbed myself with my tripod. he doesn’t love you. i knocked myself out with studio lights. he doesn’t love you. an encouraging friend might say: at least these unrequited affections taught you photography. and now you can write grant proposals from the grave. is that a nobler use of eternity than pushing up daisies? turning rejection and loneliness into art? now that I am dead, my paranoia has died, too. he never loved me because he never knew me. no lab results necessary. |
Visual Poetry: ButterfliesClick above video to view Butterflies, Directed by Christine Sloan Stoddard
Poet: Teri Elam Christine Sloan Stoddard is a Salvadoran-American artist creating books, films, plays, paintings, installations, and more. She founded Quail Bell Magazine and runs Quail Bell Press & Productions. Her single author books include Heaven is a Photograph, Naomi & The Reckoning, Desert Fox by the Sea, Belladonna Magic, and other titles. Christine is a member of The Authors Guild and the Dramatists Guild of America
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JANUARY 2021: Selected Poetry
Poem this month by Robin Wright
Poem this month by Robin Wright
50th Wedding Anniversary
By Robin Wright
Arm skin hangs low enough
to sweep the floor,
stomach stretches, as if to visit
the neighbor next door.
Still, you lie next to me,
soft snores before the roar.
I kiss your cheek,
when you wake,
invite you inside my ruins.
By Robin Wright
Arm skin hangs low enough
to sweep the floor,
stomach stretches, as if to visit
the neighbor next door.
Still, you lie next to me,
soft snores before the roar.
I kiss your cheek,
when you wake,
invite you inside my ruins.
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Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in Ariel Chart, Minnow Literary Magazine, Ekphrastic Review, Re-side, Black Bough Poetry, Spank the Carp, Muddy River Poetry Review, Rat’s Ass Review and others. One of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Panoply, and her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was recently published by Finishing Line Press.
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DECEMBER 2020: Selected Poetry
Poem this month by Karalyn Collazo
Poem this month by Karalyn Collazo
The Distance
For Olivia
By Karalyn Collazo
My flight is at 5 am
Not quite a Red Eye,
But don’t worry, I’ve got two in my head
She makes me promise to wake her
Ma makes me promise I won’t
“For her sake”
I lay awake at night feeling guilty
Guilty for being happy,
Eager to leave
Hating the air mattress that’s underneath
My heavy heart
Dad’s footsteps invade my dreams
He’s out the door before I have time to wipe
The Sandman’s dust away
I wake her with a whisper
And a nudge, a shake
Until her sleeping child’s smile disappears
I catch her tears with my thumbs but let mine run
In the airport I shake the peninsula’s sand out of my shoes
Just like digging the dust from my red eyes
And forgetting the memory of small hands clutching tight
On the blue line from O’Hare the woman next to me watches me scroll
Through our pictures
She asks me “How old?”
“Four, no five”
“You two close?”
I do not smile when I say, “Yes.”
For Olivia
By Karalyn Collazo
My flight is at 5 am
Not quite a Red Eye,
But don’t worry, I’ve got two in my head
She makes me promise to wake her
Ma makes me promise I won’t
“For her sake”
I lay awake at night feeling guilty
Guilty for being happy,
Eager to leave
Hating the air mattress that’s underneath
My heavy heart
Dad’s footsteps invade my dreams
He’s out the door before I have time to wipe
The Sandman’s dust away
I wake her with a whisper
And a nudge, a shake
Until her sleeping child’s smile disappears
I catch her tears with my thumbs but let mine run
In the airport I shake the peninsula’s sand out of my shoes
Just like digging the dust from my red eyes
And forgetting the memory of small hands clutching tight
On the blue line from O’Hare the woman next to me watches me scroll
Through our pictures
She asks me “How old?”
“Four, no five”
“You two close?”
I do not smile when I say, “Yes.”
Karalyn Collazo is an Indiana-based poet and an Experience Facilitator at Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library. She is passionate about connecting with library patrons and shaping the public's perception of libraries as inspiring, community-centered spaces. She delights in hosting a monthly Poetry Open Mic night and looks forward to resuming as soon as it is safe to do so. She misses her time at Illinois State University as a student in the Department of English where she first developed a love for poetry. This poem is dedicated to her youngest sister, Olivia.
NOVEMBER 2020: Selected Poetry
Poems this month by Amy Elsie Parkes and Munira Sayyid
Poems this month by Amy Elsie Parkes and Munira Sayyid
To My Predators
by Amy Parkes
I am keeping
a secret. I swallowed all
my milk teeth
long ago. I
am still biting my tongue
bloody. I am
still turning
to face my predators. Pale
& sleek
& abundant. (Them,
in the corner of my eye, always.)
A human
leaves the most
infectious bite—those mouths
make wounds
within wounds.
I collected every tooth
they left
in my skin.
A hidden part of me festers.
How often a man
is a man
like you. Maybe I shouldn’t
have been a girl
of that age.
Maybe I shouldn’t have
been a girl
alone. Now
am coaxing out all
the teeth
that swim in
my belly. I am spitting back all
the gore & bones.
I am poisonous.
Other strange men have taken me
into their mouths & died.
by Amy Parkes
I am keeping
a secret. I swallowed all
my milk teeth
long ago. I
am still biting my tongue
bloody. I am
still turning
to face my predators. Pale
& sleek
& abundant. (Them,
in the corner of my eye, always.)
A human
leaves the most
infectious bite—those mouths
make wounds
within wounds.
I collected every tooth
they left
in my skin.
A hidden part of me festers.
How often a man
is a man
like you. Maybe I shouldn’t
have been a girl
of that age.
Maybe I shouldn’t have
been a girl
alone. Now
am coaxing out all
the teeth
that swim in
my belly. I am spitting back all
the gore & bones.
I am poisonous.
Other strange men have taken me
into their mouths & died.
Amy Parkes is a Nova Scotia-based poet. Amy holds an MFA in poetry from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and has been published in many journals and magazines, including Estuary, Umbel & Panicle, Bacopa Literary Review and Barrelhouse Magazine, among others.
She in a French Movie
by Munira Sayyid
Discover me in june petal pleasant and
poise fluorescent kneecaps guide
you home i wasn’t meant to sing
gridlocked hymns dragonfly lassoed
on someone’s whim i tell him
there’s a venus flytrap between
my legs he thinks we are done with
that & this indifference to flesh that
droops and eyes that kill my favourite
lover solitary prince demure at
first then juggernaut tongue my
favourite lover hover here where
silence is boredom and sleep is slit
between flesh that weeps.
by Munira Sayyid
Discover me in june petal pleasant and
poise fluorescent kneecaps guide
you home i wasn’t meant to sing
gridlocked hymns dragonfly lassoed
on someone’s whim i tell him
there’s a venus flytrap between
my legs he thinks we are done with
that & this indifference to flesh that
droops and eyes that kill my favourite
lover solitary prince demure at
first then juggernaut tongue my
favourite lover hover here where
silence is boredom and sleep is slit
between flesh that weeps.
Munira Sayyid writes flash fiction along with poetry. She has work published in various online literary journals and magazines, including Rat’s Ass Review, Spelk and detritus. Think of her with a smile if you find her work elsewhere.
OCTOBER 2020: Selected Poetry
Poems this month by Irene Papoulis and Peggy Turnbull
Poems this month by Irene Papoulis and Peggy Turnbull
"I will write you a poem," I said
by Irene Papoulis
So I’m trying.
Remember back when cars had chokes that got flooded?
You had to be patient.
You had to wait.
If you tried again too soon the engine would balk.
I’m trying again.
It’s too soon.
The poem in me balks, the choke floods.
I wait.
I can’t write a poem. Nothing comes to me.
No no no! Can’t tell myself that, shouldn’t say it, I know better, I’ve learned!
You can’t wait for someone, you have to love yourself.
You can’t wait for a poem, you have to write it yourself.
I know that, I do.
But the sweetness of longing seduces me.
I long for longing: If only he, if only she, if only he would love me, would come to me, would envelope me, PLEASE!
Please come to me—it would be so nice not to have to do it myself, not to have to try to fix or change a single comma.
Come to me, I’m longing,
I don’t want to have to do it myself.
Come to me, please.
by Irene Papoulis
So I’m trying.
Remember back when cars had chokes that got flooded?
You had to be patient.
You had to wait.
If you tried again too soon the engine would balk.
I’m trying again.
It’s too soon.
The poem in me balks, the choke floods.
I wait.
I can’t write a poem. Nothing comes to me.
No no no! Can’t tell myself that, shouldn’t say it, I know better, I’ve learned!
You can’t wait for someone, you have to love yourself.
You can’t wait for a poem, you have to write it yourself.
I know that, I do.
But the sweetness of longing seduces me.
I long for longing: If only he, if only she, if only he would love me, would come to me, would envelope me, PLEASE!
Please come to me—it would be so nice not to have to do it myself, not to have to try to fix or change a single comma.
Come to me, I’m longing,
I don’t want to have to do it myself.
Come to me, please.
Irene Papoulis teaches writing in the AK Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. She writes essays and op-eds, and she appears as a commentator on Connecticut’s National Public Radio.
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Kristallnacht, Again
by Peggy Turnbull In Indiana, empty-headed cornstalks wave at the interstate. Peeling wooden crosses lurk among the goldenrod, forgotten. Deployed decades ago with evangelical zeal, they decorated Appalachian highways when my friend Daniel still lived in West Virginia. They unleashed his crystal nightmares of Vienna. He knocked at our screen door, asked, If they come again, will you hide me? |
The Tenderness of an Airport
by Peggy Turnbull An old man struggles out of the transport van, finds the ledge too narrow, the gap too steep. I place my hand under the stranger’s arm, then his elbow, the way I touch my aged mother. Intimately. Like a nurse. The man pauses at the airline entrance, says, “thank you,” and smiles with such warmth I think about it for days as I trek to pyramids underneath Mexico’s blue skies. Pilgrims dressed in white walk cobblestoned streets with me, lift their palms to the sun in Teotihuacan to receive its energy. How places absorb emotion—departures, arrivals. Within the concrete, love waits like a crocus in March. |
Peggy Turnbull lives in Wisconsin in the city of her birth, along with numerous seagulls, geese, squirrels, and groundhogs. She is on the Manitowoc-Calumet Library System and is the treasurer of St. James Episcopal Church. Her poems have recently appeared in Rats Ass Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, and are forthcoming in Your Daily Poem. Her chapbook, The Joy of Their Holiness, is forthcoming from Alabaster Leaves Publishing.
SEPTEMBER 2020: Selected Poetry
Poems this month by Sharon Marshall and Crystal Snoddon
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Blues India
by Sharon Marshall Viewing Petah Coyne’s Everything That Rises Must Converge and other works 1 Plumage eyes Flight interrupted A peacock stares I am its shadow Out of the ash, iridescent trains, black coal dust A woman’s laughter Beneath the blue/green of the peacock’s spiky comb An old man pauses, leaning on a cane 2 Message on the interior of a fan: Your iridescence reflects my essence Masses of feathers tumble in flight The red-rimmed eye closes Death rushes up like pavement to break the fall 3 Bramble bouquet Blackened rose Waxen petals Cirrus of feathers Twigs that sprout tender tentacles 4 Amid the rubble, the ramble The tangle, the beady glory The flat open frankness Of a cosmos without a stem Hot wax gone cold 5 In the wake of a waxen rose The bruised and ruffled detritus of blindness 6 On this day the turkey’s head burst Into bloom again. Whoever knew that a flightless bird Could possess such gorgeous feathers? Or that peonies are the product of spontaneous combustion? 7 If I didn’t know better, I would believe That the cloth covering the periodic table of the elements is velvet That lava is a Ripley’s trick (believe it, or not) That Harold’s purpose crayon is a discourse on Descartes That coal is a rose, that a rose is a pinecone, that feathers Are scrolls And that death is the name of a liquefying virgin Possessed of many pairs of wings, many strands of pearls 8 If you were alive, would we notice the streaks of scarlet In your plumage? The bumblebee pattern of black and yellow in the collar of short feathers Around your neck, spread out like a fan of tarot cards that predict your Doom? Your eye is an ebony bead, your beak a yellow pincer How vivid the colors! How showy your death! 9 Lightless candelabra, Pendulum of avian bodies and abodes This is the paradox: the tethered are flying Massed en masse Their wings articulate They speak with feathered tongues 10 See saw see saw Up and down, dark and light The wild éclat, the hilarity of weightless puffery The galloping tonality of a rising sun See saw see saw see 11 It will not be necessary to consult the gypsy, Lay out the cards, or decipher the pattern Of muddy leaves at the bottom of a teacup. The folds of this hem are creases in the brain And they alone predict destiny. Soot pixels collect on the smooth still feathers of doves. The dark cave at the fold’s apex is not so Much an omen as a given. Night is downy. Dawn is rosy. Time passes. In the interval, We learn the difference Between marriage and a wedding. |
What Worry Is
by Sharon Marshall After Philip Levine’s “What Work Is” It’s 2:45 a.m. and you lie in bed, cradling your pillow like the newborn infant your troubled teenage son used to be. You’re waiting for the phone to ring, or to hear the faint metallic scratching, amplified by your heart’s sub-woofer, of a key slipping into the gash and rotating the pins below the part of the lock that’s called the bible. You know that if he does come home he will not re-lock the door, or possibly even close it. And you know that if you fall asleep, you will miss the relief of his homecoming, or be snatched from the Lethe of your dreams by the shrill scream of the telephone, your nerves vibrating like an oscilloscope, as you quickly herd the sheep of your slumber back into their daytime pens. You go over in your mind the many times He has come back alive, albeit fucked up, reeking, paranoid and wild-eyed, his words of explanation fading in and out of coherence like a distant signal on a shortwave radio. Worry, doesn’t even begin to describe the emotions that possess you. Every breath is a prayer and you can’t stop praying And even though you no longer put your faith in Bible stories, You still take comfort in the parable of a son who goes out into the world, Squanders his gifts, breaks his father’s heart, but finally returns home to claim his inheritance of love. |
Sharon Marshall studied fiction, poetry and screenwriting at Columbia University, The New School, and NYU. She coordinates the First-Year Writing Program at St. John’s University in Queens, NY and has taught English Composition for over 25 years. She is an Associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College. She is the author of the novels Water Child and the soon to be published Deep Rivers and is currently writing a teaching memoir and autoethnography: Pedagogy as Poetry, or How Teaching First-Year Writing Became My Life’s Poem.
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PTSD song
by Crystal Snoddon From my split hippocampus escapes a disordered craving for salt; dripping mouth stuffed by sticky guilt sprays Sorry with each quick breath I heard myself say in chorus, depression resembles an inky well Stygian Os splay onto temporal walls, the scent of rust on a downwind breeze, shades drawn over silence, but I was mistaken -- depression is in tempo with the flash of a swinging axe, singing in rhythmic stresses its glare splits the mind homeless, I gnaw the crumpled halves hungrily, these discarded bread crusts their gray-mold exhalations and poisonous revelations sting the tongue like a disordered craving for salt. |
Wrapped in a Quilt of Protest Signs
by Crystal Snoddon my child awoke to clouds in clamour, an atomic crash crumbling glacier walls tremble in avalanche my child, behold a constellation of gray plaster patch clouds slapped into holey azure ice; this poem is not a fable starring wolves awash in tears, my child breathe seas into atmospheres freed from justice my child, scream radio frequencies ghosting a boreal sky lime green, a twine of auras bind my child’s throat coated in beads of plastic drink without consent my child engulfs North Atlantic right whales with creviced glass glimmering between baleen teeth; & in the morning the monsters remain unnamed my child swallows hard swallows chalk & lines swallows coins thrown into fountains & wells, wishing always & forever recede the shores abloom in salt my child fishing for fairy godmothers whose fins spatter magical redemption with a wave wrapped in the protest of trees, an eddy of leaves, my child dreams. |
Crystal Snoddon is a Northern Ontarian artist who is a member of the White Water Gallery, writer of poetry and fiction, lover of nature, and keeper of dreams both joyous and dark. Contributions of previous poetry can be found in various Canadian, American, UK and African magazines and e-zines. She is in the midst of compiling an artist portfolio on fineartamerica.com.
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AUGUST 2020: Selected Poetry
(As part of our "Focus on Youth" special issue) Poetry this month by: Shannon DeGrave & Billie Morrison |
Proudly sponsored by Ulster Community College Foundation:
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Gendered Teeth
by Shannon DeGrave pulling out my teeth one-by-one, I am casting them as lots for the garments of androgyny, a stolen sweatshirt from all the boyfriends I never had, all the ineligible bachelors I loved, to keep me safe. This sweatshirt is an armor, studded with teeth like a bulldog’s collar, studded so as to keep me safe, studded with teeth pulled from my own lying mouth, my own mouth formed to profess the creed it was born into, professing “male and female, he created them.” those teeth cry out: if the Creator says both/and who am I to be either/or? |
Midwestern Gothic
by Shannon DeGrave Ranks of soldier-straight cornstalks are bedded down, half-eaten by the black dirt, these empty fields a post-battleground. Jammed forgotten into the earth are skeleton arms sprawled at odd angles, cradling a few golden teeth in a jaw. A gaunt scarecrow towers like a sphinx, lidless as ever-observer of that which is yet to come. The woods bordering looks on and knows things. Pre-taxidermized deer huff steam like parking-lot teenagers in the wee hours, their leaf-brown eyes calm, too calm, for a lifetime of running from autumn-fated stars in sky and scattered in seeds of bait-pile pumpkins, their stringy, white organs spilling like drawn-up bucks. Turkeys gossip like locals, gelatinous necks jiggling like the fat of last summer’s second-place pig prized in a Tupperware container marked two months ago. Geese fly back towards the Aurora Borealis, their formation spelling “L” as in “lost.” Apples thud the ground, a heart murmur. Dry, cracked highways pass by lone mom-and-pop shops, their bone-white shelves picked over, naked under caustic fluorescent lights. Vultures with dark hoods pulled up, carry brown-paper packages, wounded, leaving a blood-trail. Crickets harp, never-seen, ever-near. Silence, an omen. Leaves the color of a corn-roast bonfire chase each other like squirrels in the rusted-out ribcage of a truck on blocks, totaled after a 2:00 AM run-in with an animal unfamiliar that left nothing in the ditch. Gravel roads of glass fragments and broken vertebrae lead to nowhere, empty bottles lining them like streetlamps. A billboard reads: God is Watching. |
Shannon DeGrave, a native of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, recently received a bachelor’s degree in theology and English from Silver Lake College of the Holy Family in Manitowoc, WI. They* enjoy hiking, raising chickens, and unleashing their Yooper accent. They have been published with Engage the Culture, The Novice, and America Magazine.
*Usage: gender-neutral pronoun
*Usage: gender-neutral pronoun
Bin-love
by Billie Morrison
ours is a clean out the bin kind of love
maggots washed out with Dettol and commitment
its pain and fear
fear of pain,
you’ll stay safe, won’t you?
its mundane
not running through the rain
for an airport or a train; no, not that
it’s WD40 on the friction
and it sings Van Morrison in the kitchen
with Marigolds on
it brings you cups of tea in bed
as you lay your head
on my shoulder
and as we get older
I’ll savour this bin-love of ours
by Billie Morrison
ours is a clean out the bin kind of love
maggots washed out with Dettol and commitment
its pain and fear
fear of pain,
you’ll stay safe, won’t you?
its mundane
not running through the rain
for an airport or a train; no, not that
it’s WD40 on the friction
and it sings Van Morrison in the kitchen
with Marigolds on
it brings you cups of tea in bed
as you lay your head
on my shoulder
and as we get older
I’ll savour this bin-love of ours
Billie Morrison is a London-based poet who, after studying physics and math for five years, figured out that her true passion lies in manipulating words, not numbers. She is currently pursuing a degree in English literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia, honing her skills as a writer. She hopes to pursue a career writing poetry and stories for children.
JULY 2020: Selected Poetry
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Letter of Appreciation
by Cathryn Shea I am no small giver to small charities. In spite of “A mind is a terrible thing to waste” on this ornate letter with its flowery “thank you” for something someone has imagined I’ve done or am about to do, I am sending no money today. Not even the reply I’m thinking: “Ink, paper, and postage are terrible things to waste.” And on behalf of every bright child, I am crumpling up and discarding this misplaced praise with its machined deckle edge and cliché in gold laser-printed lettering, but I’ll keep the address labels that came with it. My own children dropped out of college. One, after he broke an ulna and had mono and questioned the reason for living, the other after she told me on the phone she hated her roommate, her classes, and teachers. Essentially, hated the whole world. I went to college and worried I wasted my mind but got a degree anyway. I must have failed to teach my children not to be afraid to waste their minds. Or maybe they saved their minds for some other time. |
Where Stars Go Dim
by Cathryn Shea Waiting-lists for veterans’ homes, not for him no matter how much his brothers worry he’ll drive into a ditch or crash head-on into an innocent carload. Cooped up in some cell of a room in Chula Vista with curmudgeons blathering on about the past and grandkids who don’t visit, last thing he needs. His neck stiff as if welded in place he sits at the helm of his ’79 Ford Econoline, the powder blue van fitted with solar and air. Perfect for Burning Man he’s never planning to attend. He can’t give it up (even though the engine seizes, shocks are shot). Retrofitted with third party after-market parts. His home not away from home. Social Security and a small pension from years teaching business law ebb and flow with the stock market, keep him afloat. Final destination: Borrego Springs via Walmart parking lots. Seeking endless night sky with its glow of galaxy light, his one good eye cataract-clouded. |
Cathryn Shea is the author of four chapbooks, including most recently “Backpack Full of Leaves” (Cyberwit, 2019), “Secrets Hidden in a Pear Tree” (dancing girl press, 2019), and “It’s Raining Lullabies” (dancing girl press, 2017). Her first full-length poetry book, Genealogy Lesson for the Laity, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in September 2020. Cathryn’s poetry has been nominated for Sundress Publication’s 'Best of the Net' and appears in Typehouse, Tar River Poetry, Gargoyle, Permafrost, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. Cathryn is a fourth-generation northern Californian and lives with her husband in Fairfax, CA. She served as editor for Marin Poetry Center Anthology. Follow her on Twitter.
JUNE 2020: Selected Poetry (As part of our "Celebrating the Men in Our Lives" special issue)
Relationship
by James Fowler
She wants to do a jigsaw puzzle. He doesn’t, not wanting to assemble anything else today: two-by-fours, plywood, linoleum. He thinks they should play Yahtzee. She doesn’t, not wanting anything else to do with numbers today: 2 for 3 dollars, 4 for a buck, 50c each. He tries the puzzle, but she tells him he’s trying to put ocean in the sky. She tries the game, but he tells her she’s shooting for fours when her fours are filled. He goes out to the garage, cleans and greases the snow thrower. She showers, puts on her pajamas and watches tv.
kitchen table
two ‘Be My Valentine’ cards
back to back
by James Fowler
She wants to do a jigsaw puzzle. He doesn’t, not wanting to assemble anything else today: two-by-fours, plywood, linoleum. He thinks they should play Yahtzee. She doesn’t, not wanting anything else to do with numbers today: 2 for 3 dollars, 4 for a buck, 50c each. He tries the puzzle, but she tells him he’s trying to put ocean in the sky. She tries the game, but he tells her she’s shooting for fours when her fours are filled. He goes out to the garage, cleans and greases the snow thrower. She showers, puts on her pajamas and watches tv.
kitchen table
two ‘Be My Valentine’ cards
back to back
For 20 of the 25 years that James Fowler was in the U.S. Navy, he was stationed in or on ships homeported out of Japan. Many newspapers in Japan, including those in English, publish haiku weekly or daily, so Jim tried his hand at haiku writing. Jim privately taught poetry writing for 13 years. Over 250 of his poems have been published in journals, including Bitter Oleander, Worcester Review, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, RatsAss Review and many others.
MAY 2020: Selected Poetry
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The Music of These Worn Down Ozark Mountains
by Sheri Gabbert The Music of These Worn Down Ozark Mountains Summer nights we sat in a lawn chair circle, the pickers together, the rest of us on either side. We sang inherited harmonies as we told the stories of generations lived in the Ozark Mountains. I could hear those voices singing as she bid farewell to me Far across the fields of cotton my old hopes I could see As the moon rose in its glory, then I told my oldest story Of that girl I left in sunny Tennessee and songs from the War Between the States, but never damned Yankee tunes, and songs the old folks grew up with or danced to while they fell in love and the music stories of the Big War and the one that followed which was even bigger and more terrible. The old folks told once again how their brother, Tom, was awarded a silver star for taking charge of his platoon on one of Normandy’s beaches when his commander panicked at the carnage, weeping over what remained of a soldier’s torso. We sang history as August heat lingered long after Missouri breeze had gone to bed, cicadas and lightening bugs and an army of crickets repeated every note, each summer’s symphony performed by that night’s orchestral insects as if Fall and Winter did not exist, as if the music belonged to them, not us, genetic coding of an ancestral past, the unconscious collective memory of bugs and mountain families. How many August evenings I have sat alone listening to the past and wishing just one more time to be in that circle, the chairs all filled. |
What I Did Last Summer
by Sheri Gabbert I watch the old woman next door, her sheets flying kites tethered to a wire clothes line. She leans against a rusty pole, single clothespin in her mouth, pauses to consider linens hung to dry on summer afternoons. Dripping air in dry skies, sweat, iced watermelon, banjo and fiddles on a front porch, old men in overalls, kids with no shoes, the growl of a lawn mower. I never hang sheets out to dry they smell like dirt dirt smells like a fresh-dug grave. |
Sheri Gabbert is a substitute teacher living and writing in Southwest Missouri. Her work has been published in several literary journals, including Serving House, Nature Writing, Communicators League, Rat's Ass Review, and Moon City Review. Other works have been published in 417 Magazine and The Lawrence County Record. Sheri seeks sanctuary within the soothing atmosphere of her home which is filled with loving memories of family and of her son, Joseph Roderick Brennan, deceased.
APRIL 2020: Selected Poetry: It's National Poetry Month!
Poetry this month by: Bettina "Gold" Wilkerson, Ingrid Bruck & Meg Freer
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WHERE I GREW uP
by Bettina "Gold" Wilkerson I grew up with the clack clack of dominoes landing on make shift table tops that sat upon milk crates bodegas filled with the sweet smell of white cheese and salchichon...who knew a fifty cents piece please the corner icy man shouting "piragua piragua" Yeshiva University and yarmulkes I loved it just because I knew I belonged to something greater than myself I was living amongst historical giants like George Washington and Malcolm X whose lives were resurrected from the concrete beneath my feet bridges and buildings built to honor their name so when I stood next to the four tall buildings that seemed to touch the sky I imagined I could leap them in a single bound because my mind was never bound they were the bridge to connect me to the rainbow and I would grow up and tell stories of these days… there were no white picket fences, but there were plenty of dreams my friends were like fat albert’s and bebe’s kids, little rascals, charlie brown and peanuts all rolled up into one, but we were called “The Bridge Kids” we were being flavored by salsa, merengue, afro centric Cubano groove, good soul music, cadillacs, gangsta leans and all that- the Heights, this is where I grew up In my hood most folks gave a damn about someone else’s child because they gave a damn about their own child the word ‘village’ was more than a seven letter word or a catch phrase and poor meant that you were born rich with a sense of ethics… we were strong back then--built with courage & fists fights never turned into guns fight that turned into pact fights viewed on you tube Saturday nights- we were never somebody else’s fool and our assets were not where our ass set we were taught it was where our mind set amongst art deco buildings with a view this was the neighborhood where I grew Between two currents, the East river and the Hudson my thoughts flowed like a stream into an ocean entrepreneurs, I was influenced by drug dealers kept the streets clean of robbers, rapists & thugs cops made deals to catch kingpins and I and I I became a little hustler my product, my imagination I grew to become a distributor of dreams because I lived amongst fathers hanging at the number hole, with the library and the church all residing on the same block so you can learn math, read, and pray that your number hits this is where I grew up my experience, my life en un lugar pequeno que se llama Washington Heights! The above poem is part of the poetry collection in Poet Gold's book When My Soul Speaks, I Scribe...Poetry. |
Click Book Cover for More Information on Bettina's Book or to Purchase
September 13, 2013 ~ Live at The Falcon
Video Recorded By: Betty Gennarelli |
Bettina "Gold" Wilkerson (a.k.a. Poet Gold) is a poet, author, performer, songwriter, community “Artivist” and speaker who is pushing the boundaries of poetry and the spoken word. Appointed the 2017 and 2018 NYS Dutchess County Poet Laureate, Poet Gold is the recipient of numerous awards. With countless recitations, she has opened for Grammy-nominated artists and has spoken at renowned organizations, such as Omega Institute and Self Employment in the Arts. Currently, she is the co-host for the iHeart Radio podcast “Finding Out with Pete and The Poet Gold.” Her distinct voice will be heard, playing the role of God, in the upcoming animated short film “The Creation,” poem by James Weldon Johnson, directed by award-winning, animated filmmaker, Steve Leeper. Find an interview with Poet Gold HERE.
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Red Moon
by Ingrid Bruck Jersey shore kids play a game called first one to see the moon, I never played it until tonight at Stella Maris. “There,” a woman cries, and points to the eleven o’clock position. All around me, the cry is repeated, followed by the silence of a lightning bolt without thunder. The full moon rises out of the great mixing bowl. A red sliver of light etches the horizon, emerges to giant fullness, then pauses, reluctant to leave the sea and go alone into the sky. Tide’s tug holds it in a watery embrace. A ribbon of light shimmers on the surface, the moon ascends, shrinks, fades from bright to branding iron white, climbs higher and casts a river of beams. That’s the only time I ever saw the moon rise from the ocean. In the woods where I live, you see the moon after it clears the trees. I long to see the back of the moon, wonder if will be blue. Sometimes it takes one woman’s eyes to open another’s. |
Before Night Comes
by Ingrid Bruck It happened on a hillside in Pequea, we retired and burned the moving boxes, the ones done traveling between jobs and houses. We sit here and wait for inevitable night, refit the house, try to tame the land, unpack books and mementos of holidays, jobs and the children’s lives. We set out few treasures to keep us company, attack land tangled with thorns and vines, establish a garden, plant perennials and fruit trees. Each night before dark comes, I stop whatever I’m doing rush outside and look east where deep shadows march towards night, check for yellow light caught in tree branches, on sides of houses and barns. Then I turn west for the light show of dusk, a brilliant crone’s scarf that collects the rich colors and words of the passing day and put on my scarf before night comes. |
Ingrid Bruck, a Pennsylvania-based poet, grows wildflowers and makes jam when she's not writing poetry. In 2019, one of her poems was nominated for Best of the Net and two were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Ingrid has one chapbook titled Finding Stella Maris (Flutter Press) and is a monthly columnist for Between These Shores Books. Some of her current work appears in Otata, Failed Haiku, Halcyon Days, Red Fez, Quatrain.Fish, Communicator’s League and Leaves of Ink.
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The Significance of Snowdrops
by Meg Freer My excitement upon seeing snowdrops rapidly deflates when you respond, “Snowdrops? What are snowdrops?” and I bite my tongue, order hot cross buns, while sadness wells up as if I have just unlit a candle by using its flame to light a match, for I announce my first sighting of snowdrops every spring, taste grace in their blessing, and I consider whether you should look where they grow beside the deck, or whether I should retire my harps of joy, agree with cosmologists who say the earth gets more insignificant over time, or whether my tongue has clung too long to my palate and not made it clear that, during Lenten lengthening of days, when fragments of ice still skitter across glass, snowdrops will never be insignificant. (Honourable Mention, Brooklyn Poetry Society |
Small Story of Calm Space
by Meg Freer I envision them in Victorian costume, she in a silk gown and dainty shoes, he in waistcoat and top-boots. With poise and a certain diffidence, she plays the complicated novella of their lives on the grand piano as he listens beside her, the scene far from the outside world, unspoiled as black coffee on a moonless night. |
Meg Freer grew up in Montana and later worked in book publishing in New Jersey. She now teaches piano, takes photos and enjoys the outdoors year-round in Ontario. Her photos, poems and prose have been published in journals such as Ruminate, Vallum Contemporary Poetry, Young Ravens Literary Review, Eastern Iowa Review, and Rat’s Ass Review. In 2017, she attended the Summer Literary Seminars in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. Her poems have won awards and have been shortlisted for several contests in both the U.S. and Canada.
MARCH 2020: Selected Poetry
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Moving
by Robin Wright Winter lifts the hem of her dress, exposing yellow roses, pink azaleas as we deliver old life into new. We set up beds, chairs, tables, stack boxes with thirty years worth of memories and marriage vows in this solid house with a leaky roof, broken siding. Sirens slay the air. From the yard we watch fire trucks scream from the station toward trouble. When clouds cuss and threaten, we scamper to patch the roof, but the rain forces its way in. Its tenure given over to us. |
Secret Life
by Robin Wright Two weeks after my friend’s death, her husband calls, wants to get together and talk about her secret life. I know what he’s doing. He’s searching through belongings, studying pictures of her with large glasses, big hair, and a young son tethered to her neck. He’s reading letters from her life-long pen-pal, wondering what words are painted on the other side of the canvas. He wants to know the her before their five years together, wants me to share twenty-five years of tender gifts unwrapped in my brain. I can’t think of anything secret. He already knows about the stripper I hired for her thirty-fifth birthday. Best birthday ever, she always said. A night of steak, wine, a muscular man gyrating to a boom box and the squeals of several women. Maybe it’s realization that the shape of new memories has dissolved into sand or that the power of addition, five years plus another twenty-five, equals a life, that’s made him call. My secret: I want spring to bring more than sweet-smelling blossoms to my tulip tree, and deep-red berries to the holly. I want my friend to jump up, leave her cancer in damp dirt, wave her arms, and shout. |
Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in Black Bough Poetry, Spank the Carp, Ariel Chart, Bindweed Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, and others. Her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Panoply, and her first chapbook, Ready or Not, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
FEBRUARY 2020: Selected Poetry
Skate Me a River
by Darcy Smith
"I would teach my feet to fly." ~ Joni Mitchell, River
River ice holds most anything
Ma’s station wagon, Dad’s tractor, the nasty
vacuum, your bed, a barge bound to break
mountains of their sheen. You know it
only takes one thaw to end everything –
blue jeans, double layered and damp
they work like triple socks. Don’t ask why
Dad comes home late most nights. You trust
knotted laces, used skates.
Ice boats are dragon shimmer,
a skitter you can trace
like your breath pushing itself
a white plum floating over –
everyone is laughing like the sun
splashing a sweet-milk flurry. If he
doesn’t upend the coffee table,
don’t complain when you see
his gritting teeth, Ma’s clenched hands.
You know the winds will switchback sting
like an errant ice ball, clean shot to the thigh.
You shouldn’t, but you have to –
ask, it’s six o’clock. She hands you
the phone. Call the bar again. Set the table.
He didn't see you half asleep, shivering.
You felt his eyes, his raised suitcase,
as if to say I can. I will. Just watch.
Just watch. You already know
you’ll go to the river you’re ready.
You can. You will. Just watch.
It’s not so hard to learn
a one-leg lift. Find a smooth patch
and push.
Rivets pop if you pull worn laces too tight.
Truss them just so. He packed his bag once.
When you skate on the river, you trust
you won't fall in because ice boats
mean cracked white leather is safe
even when your toes go numb.
by Darcy Smith
"I would teach my feet to fly." ~ Joni Mitchell, River
River ice holds most anything
Ma’s station wagon, Dad’s tractor, the nasty
vacuum, your bed, a barge bound to break
mountains of their sheen. You know it
only takes one thaw to end everything –
blue jeans, double layered and damp
they work like triple socks. Don’t ask why
Dad comes home late most nights. You trust
knotted laces, used skates.
Ice boats are dragon shimmer,
a skitter you can trace
like your breath pushing itself
a white plum floating over –
everyone is laughing like the sun
splashing a sweet-milk flurry. If he
doesn’t upend the coffee table,
don’t complain when you see
his gritting teeth, Ma’s clenched hands.
You know the winds will switchback sting
like an errant ice ball, clean shot to the thigh.
You shouldn’t, but you have to –
ask, it’s six o’clock. She hands you
the phone. Call the bar again. Set the table.
He didn't see you half asleep, shivering.
You felt his eyes, his raised suitcase,
as if to say I can. I will. Just watch.
Just watch. You already know
you’ll go to the river you’re ready.
You can. You will. Just watch.
It’s not so hard to learn
a one-leg lift. Find a smooth patch
and push.
Rivets pop if you pull worn laces too tight.
Truss them just so. He packed his bag once.
When you skate on the river, you trust
you won't fall in because ice boats
mean cracked white leather is safe
even when your toes go numb.
Darcy Smith works as a sign language interpreter. Recent poems have appeared and are forthcoming in New Reader Magazine, Sequestrum, Coe Review, Two Thirds North, January Review and River Heron Review. A Buddhist and a kickboxer, her current obsession is executing a six punch three kick combination with perfect form.
JANUARY 2020: Selected Poetry
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Dismissing the Blues
by Mare Leonard In yin yoga, we lie on our backs legs up the wall, arms stretched out Someone shouts “Get the backhoe for my tush!" We laugh, shimmy closer, let go of doubts Legs up the wall, arms stretched out The teacher says, Find your edge I wonder, Is this too far out? Hold release into the stretch My mind says do it Let it all hangout The teacher says, Find your edge dabs mint on our wrists Hold release into the stretch Breathe in and trust I lift my wrists smell mint watch it growing Chopfortea chopchop forsaladFatoush The teacher drops mint on my third eye Let go of loving the good, hating the evil Press and push do not be attached Breathe in and trust Mymindswingsback NannaNonni All refugees running thiswayandthat The teacher says, Let go Let go of the present and the past My legs slide down into fields of mint. She says, Press and push, do not be attached . My mind says Stretch stretchyourarmsout Accept I breathe in, let go, Trust thiswaythat |
Proposal
by G.D. Burns None other, I declare it Affirming as negating With words the wordless under- tone Of ever before, another lovely Sweetheart, make sermons profane Friends and family strangers Afford this river crossing From one life, to the next From one life – to the next G.D. Burns is a Western American poet and educator who currently resides in the village of Catskill.
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