Month: January 2023

Three Poems by Beth Oast Williams

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Confession

Tell me if holding
my breath counts
as silence. I admit
to not crying enough
at graves. And yet,
I suffer with this
aftertaste of eating
embers. What makes
sense at midnight
evaporates into dream.
Frost on the car blocks
my morning view.
I admit that loving
him is hard as January
dirt. Witness my knuckles,
bloody from boxing
with the earth. I confess
this is just another poem
struggling to miss him.

*

Split

You believe the earth
turns around your words.
But a poem is not space
to fill with stars. Let’s not argue
about rotation. Tonight’s sky
lights up with what
no longer exists. In anger,
you leave the room
like a candle fighting wind
that sneaks in from an open
door. You forget how it all slips
through cracks in the wall.

*

Eve Is Always The Day Before It Happens

Lost in a forest, our voices
share stories, as if reciting a poem
is evidence I exist. You taste
forgiveness each time you swallow

my name. This is the day mechanical
clocks would have stopped
but we are too in love
with the depths of longing. Admit

there is one way to keep this myth
from dying. Let the world
believe I made its first mistake.
Don’t call this poem a confession.

This stanza is a porch swing.
We sit here, allowing hair on the back
of my neck to bristle. You push us
with one foot, lift it, and we drift

forward. How easy it is to whisper.
A car turning down the road
signals this moment will soon be over.
Gravel like the clearing of a throat.

Listen as time breaks into twigs,
the tenor of tomorrow’s fog.

*

Beth Oast Williams’s poetry has been accepted for publication in Leon Literary Review, SWWIM Everyday, Wisconsin Review, Glass Mountain, GASHER, Fjords Review, and Rattle’s Poets Respond, among others. Her poems have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Riding Horses in the Harbor, was published in 2020.

Top 25 Most Read ONE ART Poets of 2022

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

#1 – Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
#2 – Rachel Custer
#3 – Ona Gritz
#4 – Betsy Mars
#5 – Sean Kelbley
#6 – Donna Hilbert
#7 – Daniel Simpson
#8 – Margaret Dornaus
#9 – Carla Sarett
#10 – Roseanne Freed
#11 – Donna Spruijt-Metz
#12 – Erin Murphy
#13 – Jacob DeVoogd
#14 – Kari Gunter-Seymour
#15 – Leanne Shirtliffe
#16 – Terri Kirby Erickson
#17 – J.C. Todd
#18 – Hayden Saunier
#19 – William Palmer
#20 – Anne Graue
#21 – Kip Knott
#22 – Julie Weiss
#23 – Karen Paul Holmes
#24 – Robin Turner
#25 – Gary Metras

Two Poems by Frances Klein

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Guide to Interpreting Dreams

The owl represents your mother.

The cypress in which the owl perches
also represents your mother.

The shadow-veiled snake laying
between the tree’s roots?
That, too, is your mother.

The owl snatching the snake
and bringing it to the branch
to devour is your mother turning
her back on own impending grief.

You are the half-moon, tepid light
settling on the tree’s branches.

You are the field mouse
shivering behind a fence-post,
guilt warring with gratitude
at having been passed over.

*

Estradiol the Mimic
Estradiol, like many fertility drugs, induces side effects that mimic the symptoms people often feel in early pregnancy.

Like the Milk Snake, robed
in lapping bands of sandstone, salt,
and sable to imitate its cousin Coral,
hiding in plain sight from the hawks
and skunks that would make of it a meal.

Like the Walking Stick, segmented
length blending with the detritus of the forest
floor to offer shelter from the curious birds
and rodents who might spy its movements
and know it to be more than wind.

Like the Robber Fly, camouflaged assassin,
robed in marigold and shade, coiled behind
the flower petals to catch anything
that moves, be it beetle, lacewing, butterfly
no mercy even for its own cousins.

Like the Death’s Head Hawkmoth,
which perfumes itself with the scent
of the bees it robs, waved on
by the hive-guards to the inner sanctum
where it feasts without reproach.

All of this mimicry a drive for survival,
for safety, for sustenance, for one
more moment on this earth. From what,
then, do the chemicals flooding my
body think they are saving me?

*

Frances Klein (she/her) is a poet and teacher writing at the intersection of disability and gender. She is the 2022 winner of the Robert Golden Poetry Prize, and the author of the chapbooks New and Permanent (Blanket Sea 2022) and The Best Secret (Bottlecap Press 2022). Klein currently serves as assistant editor of Southern Humanities Review. Readers can find more of her work at https://kleinpoetryblog.wordpress.com/.

Two Poems by Brandon Thein An Vu

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Love Language
Before her 2nd shift

She stretches out her arms
Sighs
Then
gets up from bed. Almost immediately

The kitchen is covered with a smoky haze
Filling the nostril with
Caramelized pork belly
And jasmine rice. Across the table are

Bean sprouts,
green onions, and
Sriracha
For Mi Quảng later. Softly,

She calls
Honey go eat.
Those were the same words
I heard. After

I failed my driver’s test
After my 1st heartbreak
And after small
Disagreements. I’ve been told

There are 5 love languages
But
she’s taught me
there are six.

*

Contents of the Curriculum

the educator steps back
carefully observing the room
scanning every student
a kaleidoscope of cultures

his classroom
a symposium of sound
where students celebrate inexperience
and persist with gossip overhear:

Today, we’ll be going over Vietnamese literature.
is what the educator wanted to say.
instead, he lets out a sigh:
Today, we’ll be going over Catcher in the Rye.

*

Brandon Thein An Vu is an educator who holds an MA in Education from UC Davis and a BA from San Francisco State. He currently teaches in the Bay Area and has a cat named Raymond.

Autumn Migration by Allen Helmstetter

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Autumn Migration

Every autumn, flocks of blackbirds sheltered
in the two elms at the corner of my street
until the wind finally blew them south.
When they migrated, I envied them.
They got to go to places I had never been—
and for free; it seemed unfair to me.
Aunt Laura died during last year’s migration.
She had never traveled far from home,
but I knew she traveled inwardly—
to places blackbirds never see.
Then she’d come back and seeing me,
would ask if I, too, had been traveling.

*

Allen Helmstetter lives in rural Minnesota. He loves the rivers, woods, and fields there, and after hiking the trails is often inspired to write about the relationships between nature, technology, and the human spirit. His poems have been published in North Coast Review, Willawaw Journal, Ariel Chart, and Bulb Culture Collective.

Sixteen at the Spa by Deborah Bacharach

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Sixteen at the Spa

In the hushed low
lit locked room, back when
no one but sailors and sluts
strutted with tattoos, I watch a butterfly shimmer
droplets above
the nipple of a stranger’s
pale smooth breast.

The cook sears
meat raw to ready.
Steam fills me before
I bite any flesh.

We all can strip.
From my treasure chest, a thousand
mourning cloaks and monarchs
lift and hum.

*

Deborah Bacharach is the author of Shake & Tremor (Grayson Books, 2021) and After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her poems, essays and book reviews have been published in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry Ireland Review, Vallum, Cimarron Review, New Letters and Poet Lore among many others. She is a college writing instructor, editor, and tutor and teaches poetry workshops for children. Find out more about her at DeborahBacharach.com.

Loft on 56th by J-T Kelly

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Loft on 56th

The way you’d say things—
Hey, for example—

Well, it makes me lonely
the way you don’t say it anymore.

*

J-T Kelly is an innkeeper in Indianapolis. He lives in a brick house with his wife and six children, his two parents, and a dog.

Credo in the Age of Facebook by Gloria Heffernan

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Credo in the Age of Facebook

I believe friend is a noun, not a verb—
          and unfriend is a contradiction in terms.

I believe it takes a volcanic eruption to unmountain a mountain
          and unfriending a friend should take no less seismic an event.

I believe in the utter beauty of the unuttered opinion
          that takes the time to marinate in the brine of thought
          instead of being served up instantly and indisputably as fact.

I believe a sumptuous meal is meant to be eaten, not uploaded
          so please don’t bring your smart-enough-to-know-better phone
          to my table. I have not set a place for Siri.

I believe the most social of media is still a knock on the door
          and shared laughter over a cup of coffee
          that 643 people do not have to read about in real time.

I believe my beliefs make me the anachronism
          I have always believed myself to be,
          and friend, that’s okay. It’s just who I am…

                    “Like” it or not.

*

Gloria Heffernan is the author of the poetry collection, What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List, (New York Quarterly Books), and Exploring Poetry of Presence: A Companion Guide for Readers, Writers and Workshop Facilitators (Back Porch Productions). She has written two chapbooks: Hail to the Symptom (Moonstone Press) and Some of Our Parts, (Finishing Line Press). Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including Columbia Review, Stone Canoe, and Yale University’s The Perch. For more information, please visit her website at www.gloriaheffernan.wordpress.com.

Origami of Shock by Brett Warren

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Origami of Shock

The first time was the worst: how graciously
he opened the door to welcome me in,

saying I had just missed them—the figurines
who like to run back and forth across the carpet.

How he made a little running motion
with his fingers, adding that if I’d come earlier,
I’d have seen a tiny version of myself

perched on the bookshelf among knick-knacks
and a fine layer of dust. How his eyes
kept darting over to see if I/she was still there.

How a life-sized version of me began to edge
toward the door, feeling my way along the wall
with my shoulder.

How I couldn’t take my eyes off him,
couldn’t break free from the terrible trance
of his smile. How the thing

that brought me back was my left hand,
which had been in my coat pocket

the whole time, folding a grocery list
into smaller and smaller squares.

*

Brett Warren is the author of The Map of Unseen Things (forthcoming from Pine Row Press). She is a long-time editor whose poetry has appeared in Canary, The Comstock Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Hole in the Head Review, Cape Cod Poetry Review, and many other publications. She lives in Massachusetts, in a house is surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees—nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of her writing attic as a runway. brettwarrenpoetry.com

A Sonnet in Recession by KHD

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

A Sonnet in Recession

Some metaphors are too obvious—we all fell off
a stationary bike. My daughters pop bubbles

and we read a book about bears—a canoe crashes off
a waterfall’s chart. The playgrounds are parents pushing

their phones on swings—conversations sink to a chorus of lyrics
lamenting the price of gas. Fortunes lost as fast as blowing out

birthday candles. We forget to be Banksy’s red balloons
instead of shredded paintings. There is no such thing

as a free lunch—not even a squiggly square of ramen noodles
stuffed into a wrinkled brown sack. But they still haven’t found

a way to tax us for our thoughts. The best brains are antifragile—
they’ll patch our cracked AI commodities with molten gold.

What first presents as plunging could be the biggest swing of all.

*

KHD’s love of poetry first bloomed as a child. She memorized Robert Frost sitting on a tree stump and bathed in Edgar Allan Poe as an adolescent. While studying words at Florida State University, she played with chips and became a professional poker player. She’s passionate about the immense potential NFTs present for poetry, and enjoys helping onboard traditional poets primarily through Twitter (@Katie_Dozier). Her poetry has recently been published by Rattle, Frontier, and The Tickle. She maintains TheNFTPoetryGallery.com as a vehicle for showing the potential of CryptoPoetry.

In the Breaking by Rebecca Doverspike

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

In the Breaking

A woman with shears contemplates the next cut.
Somewhere a satellite is recording
all of this—time and the time-keeper, bells
like a mouth, the darkening dusk inside.

Perhaps in old age we are like leaves, holes
bitten through by small hungers: watch it go
the tender-hearted afternoon I want
to hold onto. Now it is freezing rain.

Now it is memory. The buds begin
for so long I forget they are flowers
waiting to go home and please stop with the
cleverness: set down all the swords, our faces

do not look anything like we thought
they would. The startling beauty of any
voice, like the woman screaming in the hall:
Why won’t they let me go home. So I sit.

This is your home, I want to say. This hospital
hallway is your desert. People walk through.
They’re re-telling stories of exodus. This
is your sacred pilgrimage—

each you the only you of its kind— here—
where the clocks work differently, where people see right through.
Each one unveiling its mystery,

and no one turns to look. Saying goodbye,
a patient, a painter, a woman says: I was going
to get you flowers but they die. She hands me a card
in permanent marker, the scent still wet.

*

Rebecca Doverspike works as an Interfaith Chaplain in Boston, drawing from Zen Buddhist practice. She holds an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School, an MFA from West Virginia University, and BA from Beloit College. Her chapbook, Every Present Thing a Ghost, was published by Slapering Hol Press in 2019. Other works can be found in: Peripheries, Midwest Review, Valley Voices, 5×5 Literary Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, Diagram, Ruminate, and others. She loves hiking with her partner and dog.

Walking by Sid Gold

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

WALKING

Fortunately, you can go out walking.
You expect very little, only dusk
foreshadowing night, the murmur
of animal life at the ready, & a breeze,
its edge honed sharper than expected.
For now, solitude is desire without
fanfare. You can take stock, see things
for what they seem without the burden
of intellect or wit. You could explain
all this, make sense of it, if surrounded,
threatened, coaxed, enticed. Oh yes,
an audience—close friends or passersby,
lovers, perhaps—all suitably intrigued
enough to stick around. What could be
better? You might tell them the night
is yours alone & loneliness a form
of joy that doesn’t advertise. They may
chuckle & swear they understand.
Yo comprendo, says one, as Spanish
is a loving tongue. Do come with us,
they urge, walking toward the bright
lights, your protests, heard as little other
than the rustle of dry leaves, of no use.

*

Sid Gold is the author of four books of poetry, including “Crooked Speech” (Pond Road Press, ’18) and a twice recipient of an MSAC Individual Artist Award for Poetry. His work has appeared recently in the anthology “This Is What America Looks Like,” Backbone Mountain Review, Gargoyle and Loch Raven Review. He also has poems forthcoming in BMR, Gargoyle, Maryland Literary Review, and Schuylkill Valley Journal. His first book, “Working Vocabulary,” was reissued by the Washington Writers’ Publishing House in 2021.

Coming to Terms by Rhett Watts

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Coming to Terms

A pair of crows swoop down on a young rabbit.
Wings explode, furred hind legs kick high.
I throw a stone to disrupt the hunt, for now.

Local crows also dive bomb my husband.
They do not like his baseball cap.
Remember faces. Are not fans of masks.

What would they make of a Plague doctor’s
leather top hat, black robes and the beaked mask
filled with herbs against miasmas? Would they

recognize it as Corvid-like or might it merely
appear monstrous? More than a character in
Commedia dell Arte, plague doctors donned early
PPE, let blood, witnessed wills, counted dead bodies.

Later, we drive by crows pecking at roadkill—
a cottontail chased onto asphalt. I sigh. Breathing in,
imagine the savory scent of rosemary and juniper.
My husband tugs at his cap. We drive on.

*

Rhett Watts has poems in Sojourners Magazine, The Worcester Review, Canary, Naugatuck River Review, San Pedro River Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Lyric, and Sow’s Ear Poetry Review among others and in the book The Best Spiritual Writing 2000. She won the CT Poetry Award and the Rayne Arroyo Chapbook Award for No Innocent Eye. Her books of poems are: Willing Suspension (Antrim House Books) and The Braiding (Kelsay Books). Rhett facilitates writing workshops in CT and MA and lives feet from a brook with her husband and Maine Coon cat.

The Give & Take by Molly Fisk

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

The Give & Take

Sitting with my friend, each deep in our thoughts,
the timer set, pens in hand, the cacophony ebbing
& rising around us. Rumble of baritone & soprano

descant not in time but still their own music, the way
an ocean will greet its shore, off-rhythm, impossible
to replicate. Beyond the plate glass, a blue California

November sky. I think I’ll try to stay alive a little longer,
despite cars, Covid, wildfire, the black widow spider
laying her eggs under the lid of my turkey pan again.

Ill-designed kitchen cabinetry probably kills more people
than is reported. And the tripping over cats suddenly
stopped cold in a hallway. Private, quiet dangers

of a country pretending it’s not at war, pretending to address
looming disaster & the accumulated damage of unkindness
without admitting greed. I wince even at the 12-Step motto

Take what you like and leave the rest. However
well-meaning, it’s colonial thinking, and me a daughter
of colonizers from way back. Take care, instead.

Take it easy. Takes one to know one. Even Take a hike!
but other than that, stop taking, give generously, give it
everything you’ve got, your best shot, give it up,

give it your all, go on: give it away with both hands,
God give us strength to break trail as we head into a new
world of chaos, more equality, uncertainty.

*

Molly Fisk edited California Fire & Water, A Climate Crisis Anthology, with a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. She’s won grants from the NEA, the California Arts Council, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Her most recent poetry collection is The More Difficult Beauty; her latest book of radio commentary is Everything But the Kitchen Skunk. Fisk lives in the Sierra foothills. mollyfisk.com

Two Poems by Susan Barry-Schulz

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Elemental

I don’t know what I’m doing I need help
with physical things I can’t keep my son
from heartbreak I miss my blonde hair and I am
embarrassed about missing my blonde hair how shallow
that is I am both angry and afraid to be angry I can’t
get my breathing right when I try to swim freestyle
in the lake I’ve never read Ulysses although I picked
up a decent copy at the Newburgh Vintage Emporium
last weekend if you ever want to borrow it masked
& unmasked coughing babies everywhere and everything
ruined forever I don’t know the names of the Greek Gods
and what they are the god of I am disappointed in humanity
like the jumbled mess on the floor of a teenager’s room and tired
of pretending everything is fine I have a lot of accumulated
knowledge about candy at least would you like to share a package
of Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews with me I’ll tell you what it’s the molasses.

*

Poem with a Line from Lost & Found

I am shy in the presence of my own
watched breath. Unsure of the intentions

of the breather. Have we met. Does such close
attention not skew the arc of the universe?

In the photo I am five and dressed in daisies,
still haloed in soft curls. Barefoot on the front

lawn, holding hands with my cousin Peggy—
the sun so bright it’s washed away our faces.

The verb ‘to lose’ has its taproot in sorrow.
I can’t explain the way my five-year-old self

recognized the safety of her soul. When she
was lost I felt the absence although I hadn’t

kept her close. I am left here now, still wonder-
ing. Be in. Be out. Be on and on and on.

                              (line from Lost & Found; A Memoir; Kathryn Schulz, 2022)

*

Susan Barry-Schulz grew up just outside of Buffalo, New York. She is a licensed physical therapist living with chronic illness. Her poetry has appeared in SWWIM, Barrelhouse online, Rogue Agent, New Verse News, Nightingale & Sparrow, Shooter Literary Magazine, The Wild Word, Bending Genres, B O D Y, Gyroscope Review, Quartet, West Trestle Review, and in other print and online journals and anthologies.

Three Poems by Tom C. Hunley

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

My Guardian Angle And Other Cosmic Typos

is the title of my unfinished poem about abandonment.

When Lou Reed and Johnny Ramone first met, Lou advised Johnny
to sell his favorite guitar to buy a better one, so Johnny
dismissed Lou as a snob.

In middle school, my future wife agreed to be secret friends
with a more popular girl whom she embarrassed.

My eldest son loves his cat, Sarah, who hides
under the bed whenever he enters the room.

I’m saying I love my wife and kids
but often hide from them in the basement.

I prefer sports movies to sports,
and what does that say about me?

I watch sports movies in my basement
while diffusing essential oils, which calm me down.

I’m saying lavender, sandalwood, frankincense,
and blends with names like mood boost and brain aid.

I wisecrack when nervous or upset.
I hate that about myself,
though on balance, I love myself,
or try to.

I’m saying I believe in God but doubt myself.

At church people pray for me.
At poetry conferences, poets mine my pain for images.
Not sure which is worse.

^An example of one of my wisecracks.

Lou Reed’s parents paid for electric shocks
to fry the gay out of him when he was a teen.

I’m saying my wife and I love our three sons.

That my wife and I love our adopted daughter
but turned her over to state guardianship
after she said she loves the man who hurt her
and that she hates us.

My fear of flying leapt off my fear of bridges
is another example of one of my wisecracks.

Basho wrote a haiku about an abandoned child
but didn’t rescue the child, so I wrote this haiku:

          Basho’s sad haiku
               About a child abandoned—
          Youtuber films a stickup.

I’m saying that we’ve all seen YouTube videos by bystanders who could have
been heroes but Basho got there first.

That I mourned when Norm McDonald died and when Lou Reed died.

“As a child, I laughed a lot…now it seems I cry a lot”
is a lyric by Marc Bolan, whom I revere
as much as I revere Lou Reed.

My eldest son stocks shelves for a living
and is the best there is at it.

My other sons work as a tennis instructor for Parks & Rec
and a shift leader at Little Caesar’s, respectively.

I’m saying I love all of my kids
but my daughter
is like the poem about abandonment
that I never finished.

*

In 2021, The Naked Baby From The Nirvana Album Cover, Now Thirty, Sues The Remaining Band Members & Courtney Love For Showing The Whole World His Baby Penis
          “Don’t Try.”
          ―inscription on Charles Bukowski’s tombstone

I wanted to be a drummer who wanted
to be a drum but I always felt more
like the broken string that ruined the song
& scared off the Sub Pop execs.
Wound up tight until I snapped.
Nostalgia, you dirty window.
Look, my first grunge show, Seattle 1991,
hairy head & skinny arms taking a dive
from the stage at The Off Ramp
deciding then & there not to try
any more lest I be called poser.

At University of Washington I wrote
essays, but I found that too trying.
Also tiring. My kids have never
heard the word poser but if one studies
too much the others call him a try-hard.
It would be a bummer to become a bum
& I wish I could go back and mosh
at the Moore Theater to live Nirvana
but first I’d shout into the mic that 2021 smells
like Teen Spirit mixed with the unwashable
funk of old age & sounds like the moment

after the encore & before the applause.
Time is a wind that will pick your pocket
especially if you’re a screaming tree
in a garden of sound, a peaceful battlefield
after the casualties on one side rise
from their bodies and help up the casualties
on the other side like sweaty moshers
clad in black concert tees lifting
fallen fellow moshers in the pit.
None can remember why they started
shooting & they’d hug if they still had bodies.

Naked baby in that pool, I’d trade places.
You too, thirty-year-old with your hand out.
And Kurt, twenty-seven years after
you joined the twenty-seven club,
wouldn’t you trade places with me?

*
Skinny Dipping
(after Ocean Vuong)

My god, my body
has changed as if my old place of business
has been shuttered.
Thank you, Lord, for my body,
how it resembles a car that resembles
a coffin with wheels,
dented but not yet totaled.
My body a drowned treasure chest
picked clean by pirates. Thank you,
Gravity, for keeping me grounded,
but just once I want to be a helium balloon.
To be naked with no shame
no matter how many people point.
There’s an American Association for Nude Recreation
but I’m not a joiner. I don’t have any friends
that would be into skinny dipping
and maybe that’s what’s missing.
But I won’t go skinny dipping alone.
I’ll be a stream that’s made peace with the ocean.

I want to sing into Van Gogh’s severed ear
and let him paint me nude and blue,
my face unfinished, my body a temporary address
in a town you never hear about except
when fugitive criminals get tracked down there.
I’ll learn to swim in the body I have.
I promise I was young once, but too self-conscious
to dance. I should have danced, music or no music.
Now I’m the lake I dog-paddle in.
Now my body is a doorway into a room on fire.
Now my body is a framed painting that my children colored over.
Sometimes I lie in my bed and dream that my body is new.
Sometimes I lie in my bed and dream of never waking.
Sometimes I write aubades that want to be gunshots.
Sometimes I think there should be more of me.
Someone in every group of skinny dippers thinks
it’s funny to hide other people’s clothes.
Someone always takes pictures.
The cops always arrive but never join in.

*

Tom C. Hunley has published poems in Oregon East, The Oracle, and previously in One Art. In 2023, one of his poems is slated to be reprinted in Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft (Pearson Education) ed. Janet Burroway, fifth edition.

Three Poems by Kate Sweeney

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Intangible

When our dog was in heat my mother would yell at us
about her blood getting all over the house, claiming
their hormones were synchronized. We would chase her
around & put her in my brother’s old Underoos. One
of us left to spot clean the green shag carpet. He always
seemed sad about this, not that we ruined his discarded
underwear, or cut a hole out of the back for her tail, or
that we put a bulky pad in the lining where his balls
once felt secure–but the tethering of him to her period
somehow, embarrassed him. No one ever talked to us
about our bodies. The summer she got pregnant
they took us to Woods Hole to adopt a whale.
That same year we purchased stars & named them after
ourselves. I remember thinking it a strange thing to buy
gifts we were never able to touch. The volunteer
who filled out my Certificate of Adoption told me
a blue whale’s heart weighs 400lbs when it’s not beating,
but everything is an approximation. We are unable
to weigh the human heart while it still works in our chest.

*

*

Post-Post Script

No one is talking about the Mississippi flowing
backward, the swell of delta and what will be left

of the graves below sea-level, buried above ground.
In the pine barrens boys load machetes on their backs

and set-off each morning to hunt the rabbit that infest
the high cane of industrial sugar plantations. For food.

Their mother, still pregnant for no other reason than urge
not her own. And beneath an underpass on Cahuenga a man

sweeps a carpet that reads WELCOME in frilly script, the same
mat on my mother’s door-step. It breaches an invisible doorway

a mattress on a wooden frame, an orderly hutch filled
with porcelain figures of children playing cards.

There are no barriers to contort our viewing. Just pictures
of families hanging off the cement. In the latest series

of repeating nightmares, I watch as women from all corners
of my past raise my daughter, shuffle her from place

to place. In each near miss, I feel the smooth skin of her palm
and the small callus on her fourth finger where she rests

her pencil. Her delighted laughter repeats like the bleat
of sheep awaiting slaughter in the slow heat of a metal silo

in May. My mind chases her hollow sound through tunnels
tubed in late sun, washed out into blinding unutterable god-light.

*

The Children Throw A Funeral

Out back by the pool, the children throw a funeral
for Grandmother. They set up chairs in neat rows
with an aisle cut clear through the center. My daughter
wears a black veil, a vampire queen costume she saves
for birthday parties, my beige patent heels, gaudy
gold hoops, and a plush crystal ball around her neck.
I can’t remember buying it. They are solemn, but not
sad, as if they understand the gravity of this kind
of event. Neither has ever been to a funeral. My son
carries our dead cat ashes in two smooth wooden boxes,
both palms up, like an offering. Down, down the long
aisle he marches until he reaches an altar of sticks,
dusty leaves, a sixteen-inch LEGO figure of baby Yoda
that took a week to make, is missing his feet, and has
a dream catcher strung around his neck which they
light on fire and wave over the boxes like a censer.
I watch from the window, they laugh hysterically,
a bead melts onto one of Yoda’s fingers. Later,
we talk about spreading the cat’s ashes before we
leave California. Everyone starts to cry. We’ve now
had the ashes longer than we had the cats. How
many ways can we be made to say goodbye.

*

Kate Sweeney is pursuing an MFA at Bennington College. She has poems most recently appearing or forthcoming from Northwest Review, Muzzle Magazine, Birdcoat Quarterly & other places. Kate has a chapbook, The Oranges Will Still Grow Without Us [Ethel 2022]. She lives in New York.

Difficult Times by Meg Freer

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Difficult Times

“No! NO! Absolutely not!” the older man in front of me
yells at the grocery clerk when she asks him
if he wants to donate $2 to our local Food Bank,

such anger first thing in the morning,
and he’s just infused the clerk’s day and mine
with whatever bitter sauce his life has sunk into,

he doesn’t know that another man the day before
had told the clerk she wasn’t worth her hourly wage,
and she had to tell him, “The door is right over there,”

he doesn’t know she might have to make use
of the Food Bank herself, with her husband off work
long-term from an injury, and food prices rising,

with her elderly parents over a thousand miles away
who might need her to take time off work
to travel there to help them.

Would it make a difference if he knew?

*

Meg Freer grew up in Montana and now teaches piano in Kingston, Ontario, where she enjoys the outdoors year-round. Her prose, photos, and poems have won awards in North America and overseas and have been published in journals such as Ruminate, Juniper Poetry, Vallum Contemporary Poetry, Arc Poetry, Eastern Iowa Review, and Borrowed Solace.

Two Poems by J.R. Solonche

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

HAIRCUT

“He was the best president
in our history,” I heard him
say, the elderly man I thought
was talking about Lincoln, or
Washington, or FDR. As a boy,
he could have remembered FDR.
He could have heard him on the
radio giving a Fireside Chat. He
could have remembered the funeral
train. But when he said, “He’s a
self-made millionaire,” I knew
he was talking about Trump, and
all I wanted to do was grab a towel
and shove it down his throat. Shit,
I wish I had. I’ve always wanted
to write a poem sitting in jail.

*

I HAD ROSES

I had roses.
I have no roses now.
I did not take care of my roses.
My roses were red.
My roses looked spectacular by the yellow lilies.
My roses looked spectacular by the front door.
Of my roses visitors would say, “Your roses look spectacular.”
This was years ago.
This was about the time my wife got sick.

*

Professor Emeritus of English at SUNY Orange, J.R. Solonche has published poetry in more than 500 magazines, journals, and anthologies since the early 70s, including The New Criterion, The New York Times, The American Scholar, The Progressive, Poetry Northwest, Salmagundi, The Literary Review, The Sun, The American Journal of Poetry, Poet Lore, Poetry East, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and Free Verse. He is the author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), Won’t Be Long (Deerbrook Editions), Heart’s Content (Five Oaks Press), Invisible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Five Oaks Press), The Black Birch (Kelsay Books), I, Emily Dickinson & Other Found Poems (Deerbrook Editions), In Short Order (Kelsay Books), Tomorrow, Today and Yesterday (Deerbrook Editions), True Enough (Dos Madres Press), The Jewish Dancing Master (Ravenna Press), If You Should See Me Walking on the Road (Kelsay Books), In a Public Place (Dos Madres Press), To Say the Least (Dos Madres Press), The Time of Your Life (Adelaide Books), The Porch Poems (Deerbrook Editions , 2020 Shelf Unbound Notable Indie Book), Enjoy Yourself (Serving House Books), Piano Music (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Serving House Books), For All I Know (Kelsay Books), A Guide of the Perplexed (Serving House Books), The Moon Is the Capital of the World (WordTech Communications), Years Later (Adelaide Books), The Dust (Dos Madres Press), Selected Poems 2002-2021 (nominated for the National Book Award by Serving House Books), and coauthor with his wife Joan I. Siegel of Peach Girl:Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in the Hudson Valley.

Obits by Jayne Benjulian

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Obits

My first job was an internship
At the New Rochelle Standard Star.

I called the bereaved and asked
About the deceased. Intruding

On grief was terrifying,
But I was good at it.

I interviewed Gloria Steinem
& Andy Warhol.

I heard how someone’s father
Turned to the wall,

Someone’s mother said,
Take care of—

A lover blew bubbles
With his last breath.

I began my own obit,
She interned in death.

*

Jayne Benjulian is the author of Five Sextillion Atoms (Saddle Road Press, 2016). Her poems, widely published, have been shortlisted for the James Hearst Poetry Prize, the Fish Poetry Prize and the Bridport Prize. She served as chief speechwriter for Apple and investigator for the Public Defender in King County, WA . She lives in the Berkshire Hills and coaches a speech and debate team in Western Massachusetts. www.jaynebenjulian.com

Two Poems by Nicole Yurcaba

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Ode to a US Army Special Forces Soldier Educating Me about My Homeland’s Literature

Tell me again how you want to fight
Zabuzhko’s sentences into philosophies
bound by proper punctuation. You don’t know
what it is like spending your life lost
in translation, how one language wrestles
a second or third face-down into mud
& forces it to swallow handful after handful–
dirt, grass, gravel, piss, shit, & blood
until you no longer remember
how to say bird or sky or death,
so you could wake up one day to learn
your pregnant cousin who stayed behind
in your family’s homeland burned alive
in a car bombed by occupiers who clip
phone wires & mail them home believing
the internet’s entirety exists within. Tell me
again my homeland’s history, how our nation’s
bard lived in exile, how when my family escaped
we had no home yet home is a mosaic
6,000 miles from where I stand, squinting
in wonder that you think Lemko
is merely a former team mate’s surname.

*

Ode to Drinking at QXT’s in Newark with Franz Kafka

A friend advises I stay wary
of the Existentialists. He knows
damn well I am in too deep
with Kafka, who sits beside
me on a Saturday night,
sipping a cosmopolitan.
Franz, I say. We were born
beautifully dead inside.
Kafka weighs our insignificance
in his right hand.
Your heart weighs an ounce
too little, Franz says. You
are awarded the precipice’s edge.
The DJ spins Blutengel’s
“Forever Young.” My phone
Buzzes–a message from my friend:
Nikola, I wish you didn’t think
of yourself as other. Kafka’s drink
trembles in his hand. He leans
into me, his lips hot on my ear.
His finger’s cold sinks through
my fishnets. We spend too much
time together, Franz states.
Another night, and I may not
be able to keep myself
from pushing you. I take
Kafka’s hand, lead him
to the dancefloor, place his hands
on my chest. His fingers
tap      tap      tap     
the bass rhythm
the policy of truth
known only by the darkness
thrumming beneath my bodice’s ties.

*

Nicole Yurcaba (Ukrainian: Нікола Юрцаба–Nikola Yurtsaba) is a Ukrainian American poet and essayist. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Lindenwood Review, Whiskey Island, Raven Chronicles, West Trade Review, Appalachian Heritage, North of Oxford, and many other online and print journals. Nicole holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University. Nicole teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University and is a guest book reviewer for Sage Cigarettes, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, and The Southern Review of Books.

Communal Erosion by Michael Garrigan

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Communal Erosion
          Prince Edward Island

We live on an island shaped by sea;
our edges crumble with every wave
that reaches us. Wind is our currency.

We plant potatoes hoping their tubular
roots grow long enough to keep our red
clay together. Every season there is mud.

We watch the ocean’s slow hunger and build
our houses among the gnarled spruce slowing
our communal erosion; we siphon lobsters.

What we do with the earth we are born
on is a matter of understanding the time
it needs to tell us the answers we seek.

*

Michael Garrigan writes and teaches along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania and believes that every watershed should have a Poet Laureate. He is the author of Robbing the Pillars and his next book — River, Amen — will be published in April 2023. His writing has appeared in Orion Magazine, River Teeth, and North American Review. He was the 2021 Artist in Residence for The Bob Marshall Wilderness Area and you can find more of his work at www.mgarrigan.com.

Three Poems by Hilary King

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Meeting the Woman Who Saved Donkeys

We meet late. She’s been so busy
being my mother. Now, there is no
husband to wipe up after, no children
to turn an ear to, no horizon sunny enough
to lure her from her three-roomed world.
Appetite opens windows long-nailed shut.
Key lime pie for breakfast, tubs of chocolate frosting
in the fridge, a whip-sharp tirade when I remove
from the grocery cart cinnamon rolls, cookies, more frosting.
She savors the junk mail, carefully reading each slick letter
begging her to help the environment, the veterans,
the long-eared donkeys. I hide her checkbook.
After breakfast, she returns to bed, lays herself
on the pendulum between sleep and dreaming,
a book in one hand, memories in the other.
Waking one day, she smiles when she sees me.
I thought you were my mother, this woman says to me,
smiling. I smile back and I don’t say, Same.

*

Edgestitch

First you were the thread.
Now you are the needle, easing
your mother’s arms into her jacket
as she stands in the doctor’s office,
docile as a child.
Once you chafed in her grip,
mornings she combed out your wildness,
seasons she harvested your flaws,
years you gave her only silence.
She trimmed your hair to above your ears,
you learned how to return her call,
but it took her slow unspooling
to weaken the knots between you.
When she trails off over lunch,
staring silently at her soup, your turn
to talk up the weather, friends, the waitress.
Never huggers or proclaimers of affection,
there was between you, only this fabric.

*

The Cutting

What’s the difference between a tree
and a bush and a happy life
or a wasted one?
I take little credit for this growth except
that I when I saw the opportunity
sitting at the end of a driveway,
I grabbed it to my chest and ran,
the yucca’s spiky leaves pricking my hands,
its thick root a fist banging against my heart.
At home I gauged the sun, the way
we made a list of pros and cons, stay or go.
Planted, the yucca stood upright, alone.
When we arrived here, we were strangers
to everyone but each other.
Was this the trimming we needed?
New dirt and every few years
the pain of sharp shears?

*

Hilary King is a poet originally from Virginia and now living in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Salamander, TAB, Door Is a Jar, and other publications. She is the author of the book of poems, The Maid’s Car and is currently studying for her MFA degree at San Jose State University.

Two Poems by Amy Small-McKinney

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

A Widow Opens Her Window

Crepe Myrtle leaps out from behind the fence.
Red lips. Wide open, wet from rain.

A revolt of hues refuses to turn away.
Antonyms of refuse: allow, accept, meet.

I see my new lover walking the path to my house.
Where we’ll meet, not a pristine fence. The blood

oranges inside. The wild luggage of our hearts.

*

By Laurel Lake

Tell me again—

The shape of the wave
is like a half-tube on top of the water
concentrating light into the shape you see.

You see at the bottom of the lake, that curvy line,
as the wave moves, the line of light
moves with it.

Oh, the lines of light, that concentration along the wave—

Look now, the lines of light no longer short
against the floor of the lake but diagonal
changing as the wind changes.

Look, now the lines have become nesting eggs—
Like us, half-moon inside half-moon.

*

Amy Small-McKinney’s third chapbook, One Day I Am A Field, was written during COVID and her husband’s death (Glass Lyre Press, 2022). Her second full-length book, Walking Toward Cranes, won The Kithara Book Prize (Glass Lyre, 2016). Small-McKinney has been published in numerous journals, for example, American Poetry Review, Pedestal Magazine, Baltimore Review, Connotation Press, and Comstock Review, among others. Several of her poems are also forthcoming in the December issue of Banyan Review. Most recently, she is a contributor to Anhinga Press’s new anthology Rumors, Secrets, & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion, & Choice. Her poems have also been translated into Romanian and Korean. Her book reviews have appeared in journals, such as Prairie Schooner and Matter. Her current manuscript, still looking for a home, was a finalist with Trio House Press, White Pine Press, and Barrow Street Press. Small-McKinney was the 2011 Montgomery County (PA) Poet Laureate, judged by poet Chris Bursk. She has a degree in Clinical Neuropsychology from Drexel and an MFA in Poetry from Drew University. Small-McKinney resides in Philadelphia.

Two Poems by Martin Willitts Jr

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

The Story of Absence

In watercolors, it is helpful to leave blank spaces
for the viewer to fill in, splash in their own colors.

An empty net needs filling, says the fisherman,
to the silent reflective lake. Grandma says, leave
one imperfect stitch, and an eye will balance it.
The hint of absence is important in jazz.
My father tangled in deaf silence,
pieced together meaning.

In watercolors, it is helpful to move fast,
let colors collide, let dry, hope the impression lasts.

A hummingbird
left behind the impression of here-and-gone,
emptiness and filling.

Mother says my imagination is bedeviling,
Sometimes, in life, it is better leaving some blanks.

*

Rain and Afterwards

The sound of rain — the hammering of roofing nails.
The cold, purple sky shivers
and broods,
prowls over us, blocking sunlight.
Rain’s haggard face tells both a new and old story,
as tender as first love
entering the brick house of our hearts,
making us sing for no reason,
singing loudly, not caring
if our song disturbs complete strangers.
My soul eats up this music, can’t get enough of it.

*

Martin Willitts Jr, edits the Comstock Review, judges New York State Fair Poetry Contest. Nominated for 17 Pushcart and 13 Best of the Net awards. Winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, 2015, Editor’s Choice; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, Artist’s Choice, 2016, Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, 2020. His 25 chapbooks include the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 21 full-length collections including Blue Light Award “The Temporary World.” His new book is “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022).

Three Poems by Michelle Hendrixson-Miller

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

As If I Could Warn You, As If It Would Change Things

After 50, like before, you worry
about your body, but more

about its disappearance. You swear,
at some point, you hear

the vibration of the male gaze choke
and shut off like a fan in the night.

You think I’ll get used to that. Besides
every negative mammogram feels

like a winning ticket. A near-miss
you commemorate with sex.

Sex won’t feel the same, but you
suck it up. Every pressure, pull, slip, release

might be the last. Up late,
in the mirror, in moonlight,

you’ll catch your mother’s face.
Remember, you thought her silly.

In her hospital bed, barely able to sip water,
how she gestured and whispered,

insistent that you
draw her eyebrows, find her lipstick.

*

What I Understood About Being a Milk-Carton Kid, Before there were Milk-Carton Kids

I slept in a pink bedroom
in a princess bed,
with my cousin Juanita I’d only just met.

An older girl. Her body a mountain range
with the setting sun
of the nightlight behind it.

I thought living in the south meant
learning to be okay
with cockroaches — everywhere.

Medjool dates with legs.
I’d watch some, the size of beads
make a serrated line up the wall beside the toilet.

Dad said it was child-napping, not kidnapping
because he was our father, and we went willingly.

My brother left me alone. Our other cousin,
a blond boy his age became his friend.

I owned two pairs of jeans. I liked
the way my butt looked in my Mavericks—
M’s stitched on the back pockets like my name.

There were plenty of books to read.
And I was warm.

No one hurt me there, or tried to
wish me away.

Gladly, I bowed my head to offer thanks
when all the meals were served.

*

October Eclipse

Blackbirds, like shiny boxes, peck the grass.
Sun falls through the kitchen glass and makes fog.

Yesterday, you said the azalea leaves are dry as crisps,
fish bones rattling in the wind.

The squirrels are frantic in wet trees now. Their mouths full
of walnuts fat as hearts turned hard and brown.

Tonight, you’ll be Father Time. I’ll be Mother Earth,
a wreath of plastic flowers in my hair.

November will round the corner soon enough,
like a dark carnival or flood.

For now, though, wet leaves and sun mango the light.
And we are still part young.

*

Michelle Hendrixson-Miller received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, where she served as poetry editor of Qu Literary Magazine. Her poems have appeared in Thrush, One, Josephine Quarterly, Poems and Plays, The Moth, Adirondack Review, Still, The Fourth River, Harbor Review, Mudfish, The Museum of Americana,2River View, and others. https://mraehendrixsonmill.wixsite.com/mhmpoems

Two Poems by Karen A VandenBos

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Even Loss Can Be Beautiful

Loss comes quietly.
It surprises us as we look in the mirror, turn on the news,
answer the phone, open an email, look out the window
or spin around.
What was once a forest of golden leaves has faded into a
grove of muted browns and empty cathedrals.
The pure white of snow has been stained by the mud of
spring, no longer inviting.
Some lost things are found to have taken on new shapes:
a mitten without a thumb, a feather with a broken spine,
ashes with no fire.
They ask us to see the beauty in being broken, messy. Let
them surprise you with what they have to offer.
Let once shining blue eyes, now dulled by all they have
witnessed reopen in wonder.
Loss becomes rivers accepting the melting ice, forests
resurrecting into sanctuaries of green light and new life
awakening from a long winter nap.
In the way of the seasons, there is no word for loss, only
a continuous ebb and flow, a cycle of death and rebirth
where beauty can be found in the tiniest flaws.

*

Autumn in the Rear View Mirror

Our small lives rise and fall as
another November recedes in the
rear view mirror.

It has been a season of few mercies.
Bones worn down to the marrow and
hope vanishing like smoke from an
extinguished match.

The sun’s light grows softer as
the days grow shorter and shadows
lengthen. There is a new chill in
the air.

Night drapes us in her black robe
before the chime of the evening
church bells ring a call to vespers.

The trees are bare and the north
wind carries us inside.
Inside where we sit by the fire
dreaming of things that cannot last.

*

Karen A VandenBos was born on a warm July morn in Kalamazoo, MI. She can be found unleashing her imagination in three online writing groups and her writing has been published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Blue Heron Review and others.

‘Aubade For My 18-Year-Old Son As I Wonder What He Will Do With His Life Besides Playing Video Games’ by Susan Michele Coronel

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Aubade For My 18-Year-Old Son As I Wonder What He Will Do With His Life Besides Playing Video Games

He says college is a waste of time,
& maybe it’s true if it takes ten hours
to write a paragraph about why college
is valuable. The irony. But he stays up
all night to make a hundred bucks helping
others level up on Destiny. I want him to
level up in life, but the keyboard is glued
to his fingers, mouse clicking like termites
scratching under the floor. Brain pulses
confine him to his room, warmed not by
electricity or the moon’s afterglow, but
by dopamine hits every game bestows. The sun
streams in, but can’t interrupt the divine blue
that soothes, that affirms I know, I know.

*

Susan Michele Coronel was nominated twice for a Pushcart. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications including Spillway 29, TAB Journal, Inflectionist Review, Gyroscope Review, Prometheus Dreaming, and Thimble. Her first full-length manuscript was a finalist in Harbor Editions’ 2021 Laureate Prize. She lives in New York City with her children.

Detour by Lori D’Angelo

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Detour

Nothing has gone as planned,
but I’m not dead, so I guess,
there’s that. Afternoon, after
the kids have left for school,
haven’t yet returned, it’s middle
of everything. Middle of the day,
middle of my life, middle of no
-where. We live out here with
the rabbits and the possums
and the tombstones, see more
animals than people who come
up this way, most days. It’s weird
up here, when we hear a knock
at the door, think who goes there,
and why? Couldn’t they just leave
us alone, living by the creek. Quiet.
I like watching the fish sometimes
more than I like the sight of people.

*

Lori D’Angelo earned her MFA in creative writing fiction from West Virginia University in 2009, the same year she had her oldest son. She is a grant recipient from the Elizabeth George Foundation, a fellow at the Hambidge Center for Creative arts, and an alumna of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Recent publications include stories in Black Moon Magazine, Bright Flash Literary Magazine, JAKE, and Suburban Witchcraft.

ruins of war by Ayòdéjì Israel

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

ruins of war

i sat still. my soul on the run, my heart,
hung on a burning stick. i kept my mind
in the beginning of my body & swallowed
everything that comes around into my
brain. a boy sat with his mother, half-
burnt; himself, half-baked in the fiery sun
that kept on bellowing. i was also
a victim. i lost one of my arms while trying
to figure out where my mother died, or
where she was fried. i lost an eye also–
i am a ruin of war. i am the remnant
of a deflowered city. it is the boy, again,
calling on me. beckoning, at my dangling hand.
i sat there, and stared at him. what does a boy
deserve in a moment of disarray? what
chisels the soul of a boy when everything human
goes astray? this boy called me hope. he
called me help. he called me believe. he
said i am everything good that comes from
the west! again, i asked myself: why are boys
so ignorant? when i am everything that comes
from the west! i saw him. he grabbed his pale mother
& searched her eye sockets, as if hope had
a way of hiding itself inside them.

*

Ayòdéjì Israel is a student at the University of Ibadan, Ibadan. He is a Nigerian and he writes from there. He is known for being a poet, writer, a political activist, and many other things. His works have appeared/forthcoming on Livina Press, Kreative Diadem Magazine, and Arts Lounge Magazine. You can find him on Twitter @Ayo_einstein.

Sonnet Upon What I Am Not by Rita Quillen

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Sonnet Upon What I Am Not

I am not winged or gilded or graceful
or a decoupaged box of childhood happy.
I hold no keys to heaviest doors,
no maps to caves or graves or pathways.
My invitation to sing long lost,
I am no scaly siren on the cliffs,
luring admirers with hypnotic trills.
No one calls on the white courtesy phone.
My name’s nowhere in parade confetti.
No chariot stops to offer a ride.
I tell myself I’m not a ghost or smoke
alone in woods or traffic, trapped by words.
I almost write I am no one’s mother
but for another thing I am not: liar.

*
Rita Quillen’s new novel WAYLAND, a sequel to HIDING EZRA, published by Iris Press in 2019, is the March 2022 Bonus Book of the Month for the International Pulpwood Queens and Timber Kings Book Club. She also has a new and selected poetry collection, SOME NOTES YOU HOLD, (Madville Press) published in 2020.. Her full-length poetry collection, The Mad Farmer’s Wife, published in 2016 by Texas Review Press, a Texas A & M affiliation, was a finalist for the Weatherford Award in Appalachian Literature from Berea College. One of six semi- finalists for the 2012-14 Poet Laureate of Virginia, she has received three Pushcart nominations, and a Best of the Net nomination in 2012. She lives, farms, writes songs, and takes photographs at Early Autumn Farm in southwestern Virginia. Read more at www.ritasimsquillen.com.