Month: April 2025

Four Poems by Al Ortolani

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Eagles on Live Cam

My wife is watching an eagle camera
set above an Ozark aerie. The eaglets
are pecking escape from their shells.
They are ponderously slow, but my wife
watches the breaking
as if she can help the young crack free.
It’s the mother in her, identifying
with the helpless, as if enabling
them to emerge as downy tufts, hatchlings
in a decades old nest of driftwood weave,
two puffs of hunger in light snow.
An empty nest to her is the echo
in the kitchen, chairs shoved in,
children flown from the breakfast table.

*

Bird Feeders in the Next Life

Only the squirrels visit the handfuls
of birdseed I’ve broadcast across
the top of the snow. I break down

an Amazon box and smooth it flat
under the dogwood tree, one of the few
spots where the snow is shallow.

I pour a small mountain of seed
at the tip of the Amazon arrow. Only
the dog visits, sniffs the cardboard,

the scent of sunflower. For Christmas
my wife gave me a smart feeder, one
that when put together correctly and linked

to the internet, keeps surveillance on
the birds. Currently, it’s still in its box
and pushed under my desk. Buddhists

say that we continue to return to the world
like cicadas, until the suffering of all
sentient beings has been sung to its end.

I have time to link up the new feeder,
before it’s too late. The snow
turning to ice, the entire lawn concrete

to birds, their small chisel beaks
as hapless as best intentions. I have
become a hero to squirrels. They
dedicate their largest acorn to me.

*

Oyster Dressing

Boxes and ribbons still litter the living room
although we have scooted them into piles,
some for saving, some for the dumpster.

Now that Christmas is over and the family
has returned to their homes across the city
I retreat to my little office at the back of the house,

the dog curled on the one-man bed snoring.
It’s a quiet morning, except for the neighbor
trying out his new leaf blower. We could

have opened a bottle of red wine in front
of the fireplace, talked about the children
and the grandchildren they in turn are raising.

We might have wondered about our parents
and grandparents, the oyster dressing, the apple pies.
The recipes we thought we’d remember.

My wife opens the bifold doors to dump
a load of laundry into the washer. It is
the sound we share when moving on.

*

Harley Davidson

Even after his death, my father needed
to visit his children. It was a given
that he’d show up at unexpected moments

as a cardinal at the window, pecking on the glass,
moving around the house from pane to pane
or filling the backyard tree in a hooded red flock.

We’d come to expect him, to relish whatever
message he presumed to send. My niece dreamed
he rode a motorcycle, a Harley Davidson
into her sleep, which was odd, and humorous

since he’d been a fan of knock-off Vespas,
the cheaper the better. To comfort her grandmother,
she told the story of the dream, the scooter

turned muscle bike. Her grandmother paled,
and handed over a Harley Davidson key she’d found
in Dad’s coat pocket. There were explanations,

but no secret Harley tucked away under tarps
in the garage. My niece kept her story private,
the key in her jewelry box. Years later,

Dad rode again into her brother’s dream
on the same motorcycle after his dog passed,
the dog on his grandfather’s lap, tail wagging,

tongue lolling like it did for treats. My nephew,
an emergency room doctor, a man of heart monitors,
the science of code blue defibrillator paddles.

*

Al Ortolani is a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize and has been featured in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and George Bilgere’s Poetry Town. He was the recipient of the Bill Hickok Humor Award from I-70 Review. Currently, he’s a contributing poetry editor to the Chiron Review.

Spring Snow by Sally Nacker

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Spring Snow

Snow dusts the wood.
Peace resides in April snow.
Birdhouse roofs hold
tufts of snow, and bluebell
buds bow. Stilled,
stilled, the new
beginning of the world.

*

Sally Nacker lives in a small house in the woods of Redding, CT with her husband and two cats. Wild birds are her joy. Recent publishing credits include Canary, ONE ART, Third Wednesday, and The Sunlight Press. Kindness in Winter is her newest collection.

Separation by Ryan McCarty

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Separation

Sometimes I feel like fatherhood
is a matter of standing still,
holding the crack of light open,
listening for the rumpled sigh
of a child back in bed, the terror
leaking in through loose seals of night
thoughts, caulked up by kisses, curing
slow. And then the other matter:
the pulling closed. I’m the servant
of the lonely dark, the bringer
to my children of time, the curse
laid on the heart that hears itself
beating, a sure sign it can stop,
that every light can be put out.
And what to make of that, knowing
how opening and closing doors
is the work of loving hands?

*

Ryan McCarty is a teacher and writer, living in Ypsilanti, MI. His writing has appeared recently or will appear soonish in Collateral, Door is a Jar, Pinhole, Rattle: Poets Respond, and Trailer Park Quarterly. You can find more of his writing at Politics of the Kitchen Table with My Family Crafting Nearby.

Roll Call Please by John Arthur

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Roll Call Please

falling through the hole
in her pocket—
another violation

The barista says, “you have to buy something to use the bathroom.”

The librarian says, “without proof of residence, we cannot give you a card.”

The officer says, “you have the right to remain silent.”

left behind
the library—her
temporary structure

*

John Arthur is a writer and musician from New Jersey. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in ONE ART, Rattle, DIAGRAM, trampset, Failbetter, and elsewhere.

Metonymy by Robin Silbergleid

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Metonymy

It’s not like a love affair, it is a love affair.
         — Maggie Nelson

Scientists say that memory feels in the body
like reality; there is no neurochemical difference:

it has been three weeks since you put your hand
on that tender spot by my right ear

and at night, before I sleep
I call up the feeling of your thumb

on my nape, our breathing
together soft, a caress I take with me

into the cold for when I need it most—
which is to say, I miss you.

Which is to say, even in your absence
I feel adored, alive.

*

Robin Silbergleid is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently In the Cubiculum Nocturnum (Dancing Girl Press). With collaborators on The ART of Infertility, she is co-editor of Infertilities, A Curation (Wayne State). Born and raised in the Midwest, she currently lives in East Lansing, Michigan where she teaches at Michigan State University.

Hermit Crabs by Eric Nelson

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Hermit Crabs

Most of them now use plastic or metal
for their homes. I saw one online
wearing a coffee scoop. Another hoisted a pvc joint
like a telescope. A little one donned a fun-size
fruit cocktail can. Shells are heavier and cumbersome
to lug around. But our garbage provides a steady
supply of lightweight camouflage and flashy displays.
The rakish tilt of the red coffee scoop sends
an unmistakable crawl hither signal, not to mention
the appeal of its long, hard handle. And the elbow joint—
he enters one side, she the other…you know the rest.
It’s unfortunate that some slip in, get stuck, and die.
But we once lived dangerously in caves and trees
and fashioned talismans with bones and feathers.
Seashell necklaces protected us. And look at us now,
thriving in our microplastics. Millions of pounds
of bottle caps, medicine cups, and other trash
are washing up on the beaches of the world. Hermits
are crawling and choosing among the bright array.

*

Eric Nelson’s most recent book is Horse Not Zebra (Terrapin Books, 2022). He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Two Poems by John Amen

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Hide & Seek

I was the golden boy. I bolted for the woods, running through ferns, past the sycamores, hiding behind the well-shed. The birthday song faded, my parents boarded their boat, leaving for a new life across the ocean. When I emerged, I was no longer the golden boy & my friend, who was supposed to be looking for me, had given up, married, he had children, grandchildren, houses scattered across the globe. Our lawn had turned brown, the roof was heavy with moss, our driveway littered with mannequins & car parts. I watched the Uber driver as he hauled the roast into the cul de sac. I stabbed it with my Swiss army knife until it stopped howling. That red juice flowed across the pavement, neighborhood, the county. I waited for the moon to appear, but no one was working the strings, at least that day, & like a train that’s leapt its rails, the night just never arrived.

*

FMJ

It happened again by the diamond highway. A satyr wearing a Budweiser cap put a bullet through a windshield & disappeared into the sunlight. Police arrived, dogs sniffed the tarmac, detectives found a casing with an inscription that read love is salvation. The highway was barricaded, cars & trucks backed up to the Standalone Gulf. Someone said, we’re in a loop here & smiled a terrifying smile. The day of the funeral in Chicago / in Manhattan / in Omaha a million people flooded a Zoom call, chanting until the FBI wrapped a trailer in Musgrove, a kidnapped baby sobbing on the back porch. The satyr in the Budweiser cap sang “Amazing Grace” through a bullhorn, then turned himself in. At the trial, he waved his beautiful hooves, declaring he’d heard voices in the forsythia, his angels ordering him to spread the holy word. An hour later the judge lowered his gavel, a long sigh unrolled through the city. The satyr’s hind legs were chained, his horns pared to a nub. A bailiff dragged him from the courtroom, mane shimmering, teeth bared for the folks back home. Someone said that night & that night only, they could see every star in the universe.

*

John Amen is the author of five collections of poetry, including Illusion of an Overwhelm, finalist for the 2018 Brockman-Campbell Award, and work from which was chosen as a finalist for the 2018 Dana Award. He was the recipient of the 2021 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize and the 2024 Susan Laughter Myers Fellowship. His poems and prose have appeared recently in Rattle, Prairie Schooner, American Literary Review, and Tupelo Quarterly, and his poetry has been translated into Spanish, French, Hungarian, Korean, and Hebrew. He founded and is managing editor of Pedestal Magazine. His new collection, Dark Souvenirs, was released by NYQ Books in May 2024.

Two Poems by Dorian Kotsiopoulos

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Lynne

I remember your flinch
when your father
came home, his face red,
clinking a brown bag.

Who knew what laid ahead
was empties tumbling
from your locker, your
glazed eyes. I remember

the record we danced to,
it hit gold, Dizzy, 1969
by Tommy Roe. I know
all the lyrics. I can’t forget

how I shunned you in town
those times you waved,
your hand that shook,
shy half-smile,

how I pushed my cart
at the market, glided by,
as you sliced deli meats
to the tracks of Muzak.

* 

Missing Fathers

They visit while you sleep, pulling sheets to chins, brushing cheeks
with whiskers even if you didn’t see them much before they left.

They look over your school work and correct a math problem or two.

They tint the walls a shade darker and rearrange the furniture
so you know they were there.

Mothers get up first to fix the furniture back the way they like,
but they don’t say anything.

The Cherrios box might feel lighter if they needed a snack.

They are so considerate when they leave at night, closing the door
with the quietest sound, like the click that lives in my jaw now.

*

Dorian Kotsiopoulos’ work has appeared in various literary and medical journals, including Poet Lore, Salamander, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, On the Seawall, Rogue Agent, Smartish Pace, Thimble Literary Magazine, Third Wednesday, and The Westchester Review as well as in the All Poems Are Ghosts (Tiny Wren Lit) anthology. She is a reviewer for the Bellevue Literary Review.

Two Poems by Catherine Gonick

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How I Became a Zionist Without Really Trying

Born on the wrong side of the Jewish blanket,
all I knew of Israel growing up was not the Exodus
but my crush, on fellow half-Jew Paul Newman
as he played a full one in the movie.

My uncles were anti-Zionist Communists,
my grandparents supporters of Birobidzhan,
the Soviet version of a Jewish homeland.
My father played violin at their parties.

I fell in love with a dual-national Jew from Detroit
and then with his nine-year-old Israeli son.
Terrorists attacked schools near the kid’s,
and he told me he felt like a target.

During the Gulf War, the kid put on a mask
and, surprise, my husband was called up,
ordered by the IDF to report to Fort Dix
with his reserve unit, all old men over 40.

Later the kid learned how to drive a tank,
got sent to Lebanon. In the West Bank, he checked
IDs, told me how easy it was to slip
on a mask of power in that thankless job.

My husband and I were on treadmills, watching tv,
when Rabin got shot. My beloved froze, almost fell.
Fast forward to October 7th. For failure to denounce
Israel’s response, I became a Zionist to anti-Zionist pals.

Now I felt like a target myself. Short on ideology,
I was long on lived experience. Love and history
met, as I double-checked the box for chance,
wept like a Jew by the rivers of New York.

*

Long Ago in the Bay Area

I never knew our gardener’s name
and he didn’t speak as he worked
miracles with the rosebushes.
Our last backyard had been ok,
but this one was heaven,
with a flagstone patio just outside
our backdoor, and two more levels,
up small flights of flagstone stairs.
Next came the garden, and on top,
a tall flagstone barbecue. We ate
our charcoal burgers at a redwood
table, sat on redwood benches, drank
red wine from Napa. Two first-generation
Americans, a Pole and a Jew,
my parents, had made it in California.

Our gardener came once a week.
I didn’t know where he lived, or
that, before I was born, he’d been forced
to live in hell. It wasn’t until college
in Berkeley that I happened upon the truth.
Sorting through boxes of paper files
and photos, randomly stored on a shelf
in the library where I worked, I understood—
there had been an internment—
and why, when the cute Japanese
guy from Oakland who was dating
my Jewish roommate from L.A.,
mentioned he’d been born in Alabama,
and I’d asked in surprise, How did that
happen?—he didn’t answer.

*

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including ONE ART, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and Pedestal. Her work has also appeared in anthologies including in plein air, Grabbed, Support Ukraine, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. Her full-length collection, Split Daughter of Eve, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in the spring. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband, with whom she works in a company to slow the rate of global warming.

ENOUGH by Tony Gloeggler

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ENOUGH

Jesse’s been in joyous mode,
humming and breaking into belly
laughter, my whole after Christmas
3 day visit. Sometimes it can spill
into his insistent, somehow still
charming, never enough, insatiable
manner, where he makes mad dashes
down super market aisles to grab
another bag of Doritos or press
his face against the huge glass
refrigerator chanting for one more
blue drink while I’m handing
money to the cashier and other
customers stare at him, wonder
what’s going on with this big guy.
Right now I’m trying to keep him
in line, pay for Dr Seuss’ Hop
On Pop and wait for my change,
holding his sleeve and promising
we’ll go back to Crow Books
January 17, 2025, my next visit,
as he looks into my eyes begging
for another book. I guide him through
the door, onto Church Street, both
of us laughing. Walking past the lit
tree on our way to the bus station
to catch my 3 o’clock airport ride,
a woman approaches, hands out,
asking for help. The closer she gets,
the louder, more desperate she sounds.
I put my arm around Jesse, quicken
our pace as she veers nearer. Head
down, I say sorry. I can almost hear
myself whispering, telling myself
I’m already taking care of Jesse,
isn’t that enough for me to do?
The woman follows us, yells
you ain’t sorry, fuck you. I know
I should reach in my pocket, give
her the four dollars and change
from the book. I could be a hero
and she’d be halfway to a holiday
lunch. But I keep walking, flying
home, trying to forgive myself.

*

Tony Gloeggler is a life-long resident of NYC who managed group homes for the mentally challenged for over 40 years. His most recent collection, What Kind Of Man with NYQ Books, was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Prize and Here on Earth is forthcoming on NYQ Books.

A Mindful Lament by Gloria Heffernan

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A Mindful Lament

They say you can’t get it wrong.
But sometimes meditation
feels like an itchy sweater
on sunburned skin.

I want to peel it off,
free myself from the fibers
that brush and bristle
against the raw places.

Be in the moment, they say.
Feel the discomfort
and let it go.
If this is mindfulness,
let me be mindlessly busy.

Surely there must be a drawer
that needs tidying,
a shelf that needs dusting,
an empty space in my closet
where I can hang this sweater
and just let the sunburn
blister and fade.

You can’t get it wrong, they say.
So I sit. And breathe. I trust.
And I try so hard to empty my mind.
But oh, the burning itch.
Oh the blistering relentlessness
of thought.

*

Gloria Heffernan’s forthcoming book Fused will be published by Shanti Arts Books in Spring, 2025. Her craft book, Exploring Poetry of Presence (Back Porch Productions) won the 2021 CNY Book Award for Nonfiction. Gloria is the author of the collections Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica (Kelsay Books), and What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List (New York Quarterly Books). Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including Poetry of Presence (vol. 2). To learn more, visit: www.gloriaheffernan.wordpress.com.

Two Poems by Naila Francis

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For my friend weeping at the coffee shop

Because he is reading a poem about peonies
which is really not about peonies
but maybe about prayer, the truest kind,
or about grief and how we’re spared
a home in its depths, given just enough soil
to catch our knees, collapse in the dark,
stay until we remember some purpose
beyond pain, past uncertainty,
begin to uncurl under a faint light that insists
on pulling us up, breathing us
nursling green, tender bloom,
this unimaginable bravery to come undone
and still be summoned by trembling touch
to a life that wants us wholly, here,
a delicate beauty amid so much else
we call beautiful
— the wild pen,
these rivered lines,
the morning shaken open.

*

Briefly

As I check out Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth We’re
Briefly Gorgeous” at the library, the man
behind the counter eyes the cover, notes
he keeps waiting.
“For what?” I ask.
“To be briefly gorgeous.”
I laugh. His face, sunned pink under his baseball cap,
breaks into a grin.
“Every morning when I look in the mirror, I wait.
Is today the day?”
“That you’ll be briefly gorgeous?”
I smile wide, chest sugared,
body leafing, as it knows it can.
He is not unhandsome, tall, maybe late 50s,
light olive button-down shirt over loose jeans,
reddish-brown graze of a beard.
“Nope, still hasn’t happened, not even
briefly,” he says, cheeks bright-winged,
winking warmth in his eyes.
I insist there must be something to see
and — to myself — to love.
He refutes.
We keep chuckling.
“One day,” I offer as he hands me the book,
along with a tale of humpback whales. “One day, you’ll see
— forget briefly, you’ll be enduringly gorgeous.”
I leave, bounty in hands, cocooned by his mirth,
and watery, too, punctured by how it happens.
One moment we’re wrapped in our busy lives.
The next we look up,
a sudden intimacy
to scour everything clean.

*

Naila Francis is a poet from Philadelphia. Her poems have appeared in Reckoning: creative writing on environmental justice, the Healing Verse Poetry Line, Voicemail Poems, North of Oxford and Wild Greens. Her first poetry album, “Wonder Unsung,” a collaboration with guitarist and producer Paulito Muse, was released in 2024.

Cold Creep by Yvonne Morris

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Cold Creep

You said you got tired of waking up
on strange kitchen floors, cold tile,
gritty like chin stubble against your
sticky cheek. Of course, you played
guitar, but gave up life on the road
for love, for cigarette burns on your
sleeve, like every good Marxist.
And when I asked you why you left
the band, you admitted the fist fight
on stage—over a woman. But I knew
the answer before I asked the question,
didn’t I? You told me how you stood
outside your ex’s trailer at night, crept
among the trees to watch who arrived.
Something darker soon predicted I’d
grow tired, too, after that final January
drive to your apartment, the blistering
moon slicing through my windshield.

*

Yvonne Morris is the author of two chapbooks: Busy Being Eve (Bass Clef Books, 2022) and Mother Was a Sweater Girl (The Heartland Review Press, 2016). Her work has appeared in a variety of journals, including The Galway Review, The Swannanoa Review, The Santa Clara Review, The Main Street Rag, Wild Roof Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Kentucky.

Lorelai by Gavin Garza

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Lorelai

What I never told you leaving the hospital
was I got denied the extension,

how San Francisco rush hour
holds me by my jugulars

just thinking about it.
Because “procedure” is a far scarier word to hear

when before you’d said It’s just a burn. Which is
how I learned you’d downplayed your hand

for my sake. Because you knew I’d do such a thing
as drive 90 on a 60 from campus

just to go get you,
and the truth is: yes,

I’d do it again. In my car, you said you said your ex’s name
when the nurse popped your blister,

a crinkled white petal flapping
from where he took your ring finger—

I love you. What will make you believe me?

*

Gavin Garza was raised in the Institute of Basic Life Principles, a Christian cult. Today, he is a Best of the Net nominated Chicano poet studying English at the University of California, Berkeley. His work has appeared in Eucalyptus Lit, MudRoom, The Acentos Review, Bleach!, and several more. Garza stays rooted to Fresno, California. Find him on Instagram @gavinopoet.

Cracked by Susan Vespoli

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Cracked

Near the end of the lawsuit, I fell for him
when I hated every lawyer, even my own.
Christopher, public defender, who doesn’t
believe in god or religion or astrology or fate,
but collects Buddha heads, prayer beads,
lived in a commune in his 20s, reads Rumi,

Mary Oliver, loves Sexton. Stuck a magnetic
peace sign on the bumper of my car. Memorized
all the words to “Hallelujah.” Crooned them
to me over dinner. Believes in justice. How could
you stand it [the toxic legal wrestling pit]? Gentle
smile, says, everyone deserves representation. Case
after case, decades of finesse, respect; cracked
the enamel on his back teeth while he slept.

*

Susan Vespoli is a poet from Phoenix, AZ who believes in the power of writing to stay sane. Her poems have appeared in ONE ART, Anti-Heroin Chic, New Verse News, Rattle, Gyroscope Review, and other cool spots. She is the author of four poetry collections. Susan Vespoli – Author, Poet

On the One-Year Anniversary of When my Husband and I Separated by Stefanie Leigh

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On the One-Year Anniversary of When my Husband and I Separated

I slipped on the bottom step
at midnight, the wood corner
a jackknife, my wail thrown
as far from my abdomen as
my diamonds from my finger.

For two weeks, I shivered,
the ice packs numbing my ribs,
hip bones. My spine craving
the warmth, tenderness, I used to
dream about for twenty years.

As I laid in bed, stiff, sinking,
I stared at the door frame
imagining old lovers coming in,
the different ways their eyes, hands,
lips, once melted, or stiffened,

my limbs. I looked them up,
remembering dimples, voices. But,
avoided one. The one whose soft gaze
was seared into my cells, my throat
still wanting, always wondering—

I willed myself to sit up, dripped
pills onto my tongue before
wrapping my waist so tight, I
could finally breathe without wincing.
I drove my body to the studio,

my mind already in pointe shoes
as I gripped the barre, my soft tissue
still tender, but the ache gone
back to the spot behind my sternum,
where a scream cannot be heard.

*

Stefanie Leigh is a poet and ballet dancer based in Toronto. She holds a BA from Columbia University and was a dancer with American Ballet Theatre. Her work has been published in Rust & Moth, ONE ART, SWWIM, The Inflectionist Review and elsewhere. She can be found on Instagram @iamstefanieleigh

earth days by Tuni Deignan

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earth days

What if we had to pay for thunder
if lightning and wind and sunshine were taxed
what if tokens were required
to hear Redtails scream keeee
or we were made to drop coins
when worms rose from the rains
let’s subsidize damsels and dragons who mate
like heart shapes pulsing as they procreate
let’s pay the ants, black and red, army strong,
salary stink bugs, and deer ticks, horse flies and moths
let’s Tik Tok the white pines where they all live
let’s pitch in for oaks, and cypress, and gingkoes,
a pop for each cherry blossom, five for a twig,
tariff moss, and squirrels and sea urchins and
air.
let’s pay interest on beaches, the seagrass, the sweetgrass,
blue grass, and wheat and forests of acorns
let’s donate our souls for the stones we bring home
infuse every cent, manmade of course,
into the war torn, routed planet
we take for granted.

You see,
I’m trying to imagine an existence for us
nondependent of earth,
our paradise, our home
sleep, yes, I can absolutely do that on my own
in a bed built of wood laid with cotton sheets
and dyes well, from likely
petrochemicals – oil and gas
But okay, what if they’re “naturally colored” from these:
roots, berries, bark,
leaves, wood
lichens, bugs
OURS, am I right,
to transform into linens,
and flannels, and wools, and sateen
and then there’s the floor where my feet land at dawn
(wood, clay, synthetic tiles, plastic shag or berber)
we are always the predator, manufacturer, the owner
twenty-four hours ongoing seven days long
Okay
put your shoes on, buttercup, go for a walk
don’t get started on figuring out the carbon footprint
of your outfit
which bottom line affects only the following things:
water resources, energy consumption, pollution throughout
plus, all stages of waste
from the ground up
So…
you’re walking
lucky you if it’s on some dirt, like the
earth,
is it possible our consumption will never recede
try something,
anything
look carefully
at greed.

*

Tuni Deignan’s memoir Underwater Daughter – A Memoir of Survival and Healing was published in May 2023 with She Writes Press. It received the Bookfest Award First Place 2023 winner in memoir, a First Place award in the Journey category of the 2023 Chanticleer International Book Award, and a Gold Medal for memoir in the 2024 Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY). She has been an active member of The Grind since July 2024.

After My Brother Died in An Explosion by Terri Kirby Erickson

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After My Brother Died in An Explosion

Our mother took up smoking. She would sit
by a window cracked by the blast that killed
him, legs crossed at the ankles, her auburn hair

flowing down her back like a swollen creek.
Smoke rose from her lips and swirled around

the room like her son’s spirit leaving his body
to the sound of sirens, the hiss of busted pipes.
Days went by when she barely spoke to anyone,

kept to her bedroom when people came to call,
was comforted by nothing. And all the while, she
smoked and smoked, her grief raw as a wound,

constantly weeping. It seemed as though her
will to live disappeared like a child rounding
a busy street corner, his mother frantic to catch

him before he dashed into the street. And then,
at what cost we cannot know, she returned to us.

It was like she never left—the only proof of her
pain the sorrow peering through her eyes like a
prisoner, crumpled packs of smokes in the trash.

*

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry, including her latest collection, Night Talks: New & Selected Poems (Press 53), which was a finalist for (general) poetry in the International Book Awards and the Best Book Awards. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of literary journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, including “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, JAMA, Poetry Foundation, Rattle, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many more. Among her numerous awards are the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nautilus Silver Book Award, Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, and the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina.

Tariffs by Gary Soto

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Tariffs

Neruda, fill your ears with the sound of the sea
And stay home.

Chopin, close the lid of your piano—
Lay on the couch, hands on your playable ribs.

Koko, famed gorilla, eat your apple
And knuckle-walk yourself back to the jungle.

Rembrandt, enough of your self-portraits.

Tariffs are in place—
Cargo can’t unload
Or the sailors come ashore.

Wind, night stars, moon,
Don’t move your illustrious beauty
Into any of our three time zones.
The price of goods
According to the government?
30% before lunch, 157% after lunch.

Margaret Atwood, we’ve heard enough from you.
Lucien Freud, quit your scribbling.
Vicente Hernandez, your boleros went through one ear
Then out the other—let’s leave it at that.

The White House has gone dark—
No lightbulbs for the staffers.
Candles will lead the way
To a darker place.

Li Po, don’t bother crossing the Pacific—
Again, a tariff is in place.
Boil a small pot of rice,
Lick a knuckle for salt,
Place a mint under your tongue.

If you must come, old poet,
Remember that you’ll dock in the United States.
Speak English when you step off the boat.

*

Gary Soto is an independent writer who works in all genres. With two others, he recently produced an indie film based on his YA novel Buried Onions.

Two Poems by Matthew Isaac Sobin

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Long Drive Home

      For some reason that I do not know,
      his old power isn’t there… He is meeting the ball,
      time after time, and it isn’t going anywhere.

            – Reporter James Kahn, writing about Lou Gehrig,
            April 1939

I ask after your diagnosis, when do you
go back to the doctor? What a strange
answer: you’ve been referred
to a physical therapist. Like you have
a broken foot, or vertigo. Also here’s a pill
to prolong suffering, maybe
a month.

I read the doctor’s bio
on the prestigious hospital’s website:
A top specialist, they received
many awards that commend them
for compassion. Words in absence: treated, cured, lives
saved.

It’s obscene, pornographic, the way backs
get slapped. Specializing in identification: they test
a thousand tests to detect a chance
you’ve got something bad, because bad isn’t (always)
terminal. Patients arrive with hope/dread, anxious for the process
of elimination.

Eighty-five years since the Iron Horse
faltered, the invincible vanquished. Men walked
on the moon & didn’t go back for fifty years—
smallpox, measles, mumps, polio
eradicated. A long list of historical accomplishments
riddles the internet.

Maybe what’s required is an abundance
of research scientists, fewer diagnosticians,
our priorities scrambled by polarity. Or perhaps
what I’m offering (or trying to)
is long overdue: thank you
for picking up & telling me
truthfully, they’d run out of tests
to run.

*

My Wife Is A Loaded Shopping Cart

According to our salsa instructor
I must shorten my steps
To be a leader. To allow her
To spin around me in a wide arc–
Let the cart do the work
On its wheels. Its weight
Gives momentum or turns
Into an anchor if you pull
Perpendicular to the focus–
I raise my wristwatch
And watch as she spins
Away in time. The beat
Quickens until my feet
Barely move at all

*

Matthew Isaac Sobin’s (he/him) first book was the science fiction novella, The Last Machine in the Solar System. Poems are forthcoming or have recently appeared in Stanchion, ballast, Ghost City Review, MAYDAY Magazine, The Hooghly Review, Stone Circle Review, and Hog River Press. He received an MFA from California College of the Arts. When he’s not teaching middle school, you may find him selling books at Books on B in Hayward, California. He is on Twitter @WriterMattIsaac, Instagram @matthewisaacsobin, and Bluesky @matthewisaacsobin.bsky.social. His Linktree is linktr.ee/matthewisaacsobin.

Four Poems by Jennifer Franklin

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

THE VOICE

A woman like me should not have children.
Surrounded by books, oblivious to seasons.

Sitting with the dog, reading. A woman
like me doesn’t know how to live

in the present. When I got pregnant,
it was the first time I understood

I had a body but not how it could be
turned against me. Just because I

speak to my dog in a lilting voice
doesn’t mean I am maternal.

It means I prefer the simplicity of animals.
A woman like me should not have children.

Hour after hour, I arrange fragments of truth—
words on paper that cannot love me back.

*

BROKEN & UNALIVE

How horrible the sound, and how loud,
as the doe searches the woods for her felled fawn
who thrashes below us as if she can outrun
death. How alone each of us is in that moment—
the bereft doe, retreating up the mountain,
the dog smelling the deck, as the fawn flails
below her. You, waiting until she is still to drag
her stiff body up the mountain, away from the house.

And most alone—our daughter, singing to herself,
spinning through the cabin—locked in her damaged
mind. And me, watching. Always watching—
waiting for more terrible news. If it were just
the beautiful body of the fawn that was broken
and unalive, why are our limbs suddenly so cold?

*

PARABLE OF THE SICK CHILD BY THE WATER

My life with you these two decades
has been like sitting in the corner
of this deck on the salt marsh,
watching the inlet and seeing,
from time to time, without
warning, two swans flying
low over the water—
flapping their wings,
sounding their loud cry
into the afternoon. Communion
without words—something
between them—one always
ahead of the other. The same way
you lead, showing me how to follow.

*

PARABLE OF THE SICK CHILD IN THE CITY

The apartment is never quiet. Construction
workers bang on the parapets, endlessly.
My daughter’s therapist repeats simple
directions as my daughter, dazed, scripts
and smiles, moves her awkward body
back and forth through the four rooms.
I am never alone with the dog—no time
to know my own thoughts until everyone
finally falls into fitful sleep. All around me,
people plan as if there were a future to walk into.
I believed that too, once. All morning,
my daughter burns as she struggles to brush
her teeth and hair. Sometimes, I can’t look
at her—her face radiates too much light.

*

Jennifer Franklin is the author of three full-length poetry collections, most recently If Some God Shakes Your House (Four Way Books, March 2023), finalist for the Paterson Prize in Poetry and finalist for the Julie Suk Award. Poems from her manuscript in progress, A FIRE IN HER BRAIN, have been published in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, The Common, “poem-a-day” on poets.org, Poetry Northwest, and the Montreal International Poetry Prize Anthology. Her work has been commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, published in The Bedford Guide to Literature (Macmillan, 2024), The Paris Review, The Nation, “poem-a-day” on poets.org, and Poetry Society of America’s Poetry in Motion. She is the recipient of a 2024 Pushcart Prize, the 2024 Jon Tribble Editing Fellowship from Poetry by the Sea, a 2021 NYFA/City Artist Corps grant for poetry, and a 2021 Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation Literature Award. She is Poetry Reviews coeditor of The Rumpus and coeditor, with Nicole Callihan & Pichchenda Bao, of the anthology Braving The Body (Harbor Editions, 2024). Jennifer teaches in the Manhattanville MFA Program, 24Pearl Street/Provincetown Fine Arts Center, and has been teaching manuscript revision workshops for over a decade.

Dithers and Bothers by Lynn Levin

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Dithers and Bothers

As I was walking to the house, thinking of all the tasks
ahead of me and how prone I was to dawdle, I heard
a sound like a motor running or traffic on a distant highway.
If you could describe the sound of industry,
it was that: one-noted, yet harmonious.
This was the first warm day of spring.
The pale pink blossoms of the weeping cherry had opened
all at once, and all at once the bees winged in.
Each bee had her flower, each flower her bee.
There was gold enough for everyone.
None did quarrel as far as I could see.
They had the power to sting, but instead they worked.
The tree welcomed them like a hostess in a big hoop skirt.
In one day, the gold was gone, and the bees,
knowing time was honey, flew to newer flowers
while I buzzed about my dithers and bothers
for their perfume attracted me and their sameness too,
even as my song grew shorter and my hours.

*

Lynn Levin is a poet and writer. She lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and teaches English and creative writing at Drexel University. Her poems have appeared in Boulevard, Ploughshares, Smartish Pace, Plume, Rattle, on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, and other places. Her most recent books are the short story collection House Parties (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023) and the poetry collection The Minor Virtues (Ragged Sky, 2020). Her website is lynnlevinpoet.com.

Spare the Details by Nathaniel Gutman

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Spare the Details

Their faces.
Twelve blank faces caught in the flashbulb.

I ask you:
Did they feel the walls closing in,
hear the drums beating?
The last one, number thirteen,
left Berlin three weeks before.
Her face,
locked inside a photo-within-a-photo,
placed on the lavish dinner table, the lace cloth,
her radiant shine.

She had the power—the power to shine.

Happy birthday,
champagne glasses raised.
I recognize some faces–
my own family.

Around the corner,
at Humboldt University,
students rejoice in Book Burning Day,
Einstein, Freud, Brecht, Helen Keller,
“cleansed” by massive fires.
Did they see the flames,
on their way to the elegant party,
did they smell the smoke?

There she is—my mother.
Her face,
the thirteenth,
against twelve grim faces.
Her radiant shine.

She knew.
Forced them to flee too,
her parents, my grandparents.
Here they are:
Your father is looking at you, Mother.
Your mother, at him.

Behind your parents, in the back,
is a man—uncle Ivan.
It is his house.
Didn’t much like him, Mother says,
don’t care, who the woman hugging him was,
who some of the other guests were.
Uncle Ivan.
What happened to him? I ask.
We know enough, she says.
We can spare the details.

My letter to Berlin
receives an immediate reply,
formal, polite—
attached, his Third Reich ID card:

Born: October 22, 1878
Berlin, Charlottenburg
Profession: Attorney
Religion: Moses
Address: Budapester Strasse 17
Deported: January 20, 1944, Auschwitz.
We know enough, she says.
We can spare the details.

*

Nathaniel Gutman, a filmmaker, produced, directed and/or written over 30 theatrical/TV movies and documentaries internationally, including award-winning Children’s Island (BBC, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel), Deadline (with Christopher Walken), Linda (from the novella by John D. MacDonald; with Virginia Madsen).

Born in Israel, Nathaniel’s creative work often tries to come to grips with his bitter-sweet, overly sheltered German-speaking early childhood, of books, art and good (too good) manners, before being thrown, first in school, then, in the army, into the explosive reality outside.

Woman on Kitchen Chair Sunning Herself Behind the Dumpster at the Back of the Bakery by Dotty LeMieux

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Woman on Kitchen Chair Sunning Herself Behind the Dumpster at the Back of the Bakery

She ignores the smells
to get the best light.
Reading a paperback, her long legs bare,
baseball cap tilted on her blonde head.

I know this woman, know that the sunny town home
on a shaded street she shared
with a guy who ran off with all the equity
and her beloved French bulldog
is now in the market.

Her new home an upstairs apartment,
no patio or back deck.
So this is where she comes to relax.
To read and to tan, undeterred
by odors from rotting vegetables,
left-overs from the most delicious tuna
and veggie sandwiches.
Smells I usually cross the street to avoid.

Maybe she wears Vicks under her nose
like detectives entering a room
where someone bled and died.
I’m not close enough to see and besides
her head is turned away, like she
doesn’t want to embarrass casual viewers,
ashamed of her partnerless, dogless status.

And maybe she, like the detectives,
needs to ignore the smell to do her job:
Forget the boyfriend,
the house, the privacy.
Pretend this is her choice, her way
of getting the job done,
burnishing arms & legs, losing herself
in the well-thumbed paperback romance
She must read this
to keep her hopes up.

*

Dotty LeMieux has published five poetry chapbooks, two during the pandemic: Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune from Finishing Line Press and Viruses, Guns and War from Main Street Rag Press in 2023. She formerly edited the eclectic literary and art journal, The Turkey Buzzard Review. Her work has appeared in numerous publications such as Rise Up Review, Loch Raven Review, Painted Bride, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Gyroscope and others. She lives with her husband and accidental husky Mijah in Fairfax California.

The ONE ART 2025 Haiku Anthology

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

The ONE ART 2025 Haiku Anthology

A Note from the Editor:

While some are most concerned with filling the first page, I’m more daunted by the second iteration of anything. The first sets an expectation that the second must exceed. With how well our inaugural ONE ART Haiku Anthology was received (including Kat Lehmann’s monoku, which was shortlisted for a Touchstone Award), the pressure was on for this year’s. We exceeded my hopes!

The poems in this anthology capture the breadth of English haiku—from the lighthearted to the heartbreaking. The use of negative space and iterations within the haiku showcases the immense attention to detail that is a necessity for excellent haiku. This anthology also represents the first ever curation for a handful of poets, published right alongside award-winning poets. We are a community.

Contemporary haiku is an exploration of gratitude. As such, I ask you to share this anthology with someone who asks why the haiku aren’t seventeen syllables. Be bold, for as we know, the truth is far more interesting.

Best,

Katie Dozier

*

scrambled eggs
I’ve had my fill
of wasted potential 

~ John Arthur

*

monarch   butterfly     migration
my mother dies in her sleep

~ Lana Hechtman Ayers

*

old hands repot flowers
they live for one another

~ Tom Barlow

*

freeing the umbrella      first kiss

~ Roberta Beary

*

bowed head
the prayer of a snowbound
sunflower

~ Jaundré van Breda

*

park flasher now I’ve seen it all


 ~ Susan Burch 

*

lark flying
into the sparkling
glass

~ Melanie Ehler Collopy

*

nightfall
we all lose
our shadows

~ Corey D. Cook

*

six years sober
i watch winter
frost its glass

~ Amanda Nicole Corbin

*

empty space
a voiding
former stars

~ Christiana Doucette

*

unguarded street crossing
         ants commute

 ~ Charlotta Elmgren

*

daydreaming 
the place no-one knows 
pine cones fall 

~ Sharon Ferrante

*

how quickly
the pages turn
sepia

~ Laurie Flanigan

*

blackout…
   yard by yard
      fireflies

~ Joshua Gage

*

the sky between two pairs of wild geese: deleted text

~ Nicole Caruso Garcia

*

bloomless paperwhites
     broken promises

~ Jo Anne Moser Gibbons

*

surfboard
rides crowded elevator : : Honolulu

~ Cindy Gore

*

bright summer day
my notebook
still blank

~ Michael Buckingham Gray

*

knotweed I tailgate a student driver

~ David Green

*

with every wave
against the shore
less and less me

~ Denisa Hanšutová 

*

monopoly
i let her win
every time

~ Quamrul Hassan

*

tornado alley 
learning to expect 
the unexpected

~ Mark Hendrickson

*

house     of      mirrors     all   the     lives       I     could         have             had

~ Jackleen Holton

*

morning chill
putting away
the silver menorah

~ Ruth Holzer

*

locker room
we compare our
cancer gowns

~ Roberta Beach Jacobson

*

my heart 
split in half 
silver locket

~ Bethany Jarmul

*

angel devil shoulder season

~ kjmunro

*

digital blank page
my reflection
in the water

~ Zachary T. Kalinoski

*

getting closer …
the box of sakura mochi
slowly empties

~ Deborah Karl-Brandt

*

wishing I could
save you from yourself—
rising thunderhead

~ Julie Bloss Kelsey

*

migrating cranes
they say mountains
can’t be conquered

~ Ravi Kiran

*

what I don’t know grows daily fireflies at noon

~ Kat Lehmann

*

the weight
of slate-gray clouds
no message

~ Chen-ou Liu

*

opening the door
my hand forgets
letting go 

~ Hemat Malak

*

breathtaking 
inconvenience
camping

~ Jenny Mattern

*

mattress deflated awkward nude dance

~ Zachariah Matteson

*

spring shadows
the old woman rising
from a wheelchair

~ Michael Meyerhofer

*

ghost pipe flowers
stealing jewelry
from mom’s closet

~ Chelsea McClellan  

*

computer news
streaming on my phone…
snow

~ Lenard D. Moore

*

tall cedars
all around
the kindness of strangers

~ Isabella Mori

*

gas lamp
light
verse

~ Brian O’Sullivan

*

whatever it takes
night college

~ Ginel Basiga Ople

*

summer afternoon
the soft hoot
of a loon

~ Nancy Orr

*

shower steam
I pretend I don’t
exist

~ John Pappas

*

elections over
still finding roads
in potholes 

~ Vandana Parashar

*

picnic
in
her gingham dress

~ Jon Petruschke

*

early frost 
so little
we agree on

~ Sharon Pretti

*

diaper bag
carrying
everything but myself

~ Caiti Quatmann

*

our children gone
this jar of shells
so far from the sea

~ Bryan Rickert

*

doomscrolling
all the storm clouds
I can’t see

~ Tracy Royce

*

through the fog
a rooster crows …
late breakfast

~ Rick Runner

*

sea wind …
a distant glacier
in her eyes

~ Jacob D. Salzer

*

midnight pancakes
empty syrup bottle
honey will do

~ Shawn Aveningo Sanders

*

walking heel to toe
on the railroad tie—
my pros and cons list 

~ Kelly Sargent

*

beach walk
deep in my chest
ocean’s breath 

~ Tere Sievers 

*

night sky
searching for roots
and their roots

~ Kashiana Singh

*

late bonfire
he jabs the poker
at a dying star

~ Joshua St. Claire

*

forcing bulbs
girls who have learned
the hard way

~ Debbie Strange

*

grandchildren arriving
persistent saplings
encircle the tree

~ Nancy Tinnell

*

it fits too tight
said eternity
to Tuesday

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

*

while writing email
I leave my kids
to their own devices

~ Michael Dylan Welch

*

under the full moon
new fallen snow
angels

~ Dick Westheimer

*

pollen cloud
the longing
now falling

~ Joshua Eric Williams

*

false spring
I wave to neighbours
who aren’t my neighbours

~ Tony Williams

*

empty shells below
abandoned nest
two possibilities

~ Michele Worthington

*

old bookstore
dustmotes dancing
between two languages

~ Li Zhuang

*

~ Editor Bios ~

Katie Dozier is a former professional poker player,  the author of Watering Can, and co-author of Hot Pink Moon with her husband Timothy Green. She loves long conversations about short poems. Katie is the creator of  the podcast The Poetry Space_,  the Haiku Editor for ONE ART: a journal of poetry, and an editor for Rattle. 

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry.

Louisa Schnaithmann is Consulting Editor for ONE ART: a journal of poetry. She is the author of Plague Love (Moonstone Press).

*

~ Contributor Bios ~

John Arthur is a writer and musician from New Jersey. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, DIAGRAM, trampset, ONE ART, Failbetter, Frogpond, and many other places.

Lana Hechtman Ayers has shepherded over a hundred forty poetry volumes into print in her role as managing editor for three small presses. Her work appears in Rattle, The London Reader, Peregrine, and elsewhere. Lana’s favorite color is the swirl of van Gogh’s The Starry Night.

According to an article in the journal Cell, as little as thirty percent of the cells that comprise Tom Barlow are human. The rest are primarily bacteria, fungi, protozoa and archaea, all playing their part in keeping the colony called Tom functioning. They all deserve a share of the credit for these poems.

Roberta Beary, (they/she) identifies as genderfluid and lives in Washington DC/County Mayo, Ireland. Beary is the longtime haibun editor for Modern Haiku. They are the author of two award-winning haiku collections, The Unworn Necklace and Carousel. Herselected haibuncollection, Crazy Bitches, was published March, 2025 by MacQ, an imprint of MacQueen’s Quinterly.

Jaundré van Breda is a poet from South Africa. One of his haiku appears in the 2024 ONE ART Poetry Haiku Anthology. Jaundré is the author of When Letting Go Is Just Another Way to Hold On: Haiku (2024). Visit swallowingpaint.com for more information about the author.

Susan Burch is a good egg.

Corey D. Cook’s eighth chapbook, heads held low, contains 24 haiku and senryu and was published by Bottlecap Press in 2024. His three-lined poems have appeared in Akitsu Quarterly, the Aurorean, Brevities, Cold Moon Journal, Fireflies’ Light, Fresh Out, haikuNetra, Haikuniverse, Scarlet Dragonfly Journal, tsuri-doro, and Wales Haiku Journal. Corey lives in East Thetford, Vermont. 

Melanie Ehler Collopy is an Australian-American writer and dancer currently living in Sweden. In essence, a tumbleweed.

Amanda Nicole Corbin is an Ohio-based poet who has had her work published or forthcoming in The Notre Dame Review, The London Magazine, Door is a Jar, Palette Poetry, and more. She is the winner of the 2025 Mississippi Review Poetry contest. Her work was nominated for Best Microfiction 2024 & 2025. Her debut full-length collection, addiction is a sweet dark room, (Another New Calligraphy, 2024) focuses largely on her journey and struggles with mental health and addiction. She is currently working on a collection of poetry regarding the topics of bodily autonomy, loss, and early motherhood. Find her on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram at @ancpoet.

During the winter Christiana Doucette builds miniatures. The smallest details create fascinating stories. She is the 2024 Kay Yoder Scholarship for History recipient and a judge for San Diego Writer’s Festival. She is represented by Leslie Zampetti. Find her recent poetry in Rattle, County Lines, ONE ART, and Wild Peach.

Charlotta Elmgren is an emerging poet drawn to explorations of nature, belonging and the soul. She holds a PhD in English literature and has published variously on the poetics of childhood and the (ir)responsibilities of literary creation. She lives with her family outside Stockholm, Sweden, where she increasingly finds herself looking up at the crow surveying her garden. 

Sharon Ferrante has recently been seen fooling around with Jack Kerouac, somewhere in Daytona Beach Florida. Her work is rooted in fancy and whimsy. Her poems have appeared in many online journals and magazines, with love for the short form. 

Laurie Flanigan is a New Englander who enjoys nature and connecting with people. She’d like to thank you for reading her work.

Joshua Gage is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland. He is the editor of The Ohio Haiku Anthology, the first collection of haiku by Ohio poets in over twenty years. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University. He has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, Ethiopian coffee, and any poem strong enough to yank the breath out of his lungs.

Nicole Caruso Garcia’s full-length debut OXBLOOD (Able Muse Press) received the International Book Award for narrative poetry. Her work appears in Best New Poets, Frogpond, Light, Mezzo Cammin, Modern Haiku, Plume, Rattle, RHINO, and elsewhere. She serves as associate poetry editor at Able Muse and as an executive board member at Poetry by the Sea, an annual poetry conference in Madison, CT. Visit her at nicolecarusogarcia.com.

Jo Anne Moser Gibbons is a published writer, poet, and photographer whose work recently has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, Persimmon Tree, AvantAppalachia, Otoroshi Journal, Common Threads, and several anthologies.In 2024, she received Ohio Poetry Association first and third place awards.

Cindy Gore lives in Texarkana, Texas. Her poems have appeared in Rattle and ONE ART.

Michael Buckingham Gray is a poet, writer and creative writing mentor. His haiku recently appeared in Frogpond, cattails and Asahi Haikuist Network.

David Green has had haiku published in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, The Heron’s Nest, Mayfly, Confluence and other journals. One of his senryu won third place in the Haiku Society of America Gerald Brady Senryu Awards. A haiku of his has been displayed in the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Another poem was selected to be part of the Midwest Haiku Traveling Rock Garden. David is a teacher and poet in Chicago.

Denisa Hanšutová is a poet from Slovakia. Her poems have not appeared in any journals yet as she started experimenting with haiku only recently. 

Quamrul Hassan is an MFA Candidate at the University of Arkansas’s Program in Creative Writing and Translation. His haiku and other poems and translations have been published or forthcoming in Agni, Copper Nickel, The Malahat Review, Columbia Journal, Mantis, World Literature Today, The Los Angeles Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Usawa Literary Review, Asahi Shimbun, The Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku, Blithe Spirit, Failed Haiku and Narrow Road. 

Mark Hendrickson (he/him/his) is a poet and writer in the Des Moines area. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Variant Lit, Vestal Review, Modern Haiku, Spellbinder, and others. Mark worked for many years as a Mental Health Technician in a locked psychiatric unit. He has advanced degrees in music, health information management, and marriage & family therapy. Follow him @MarkHPoetry or on his website: www.markhendricksonpoetry.com 

Jackleen Holton’s poems have been published in the anthologies The Giant Book of Poetry, California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology, and Steve Kowit: This Unspeakably Marvelous Life. Honors include Bellingham Review’s 49th Parallel Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, Poet Lore, Rattle, The Sun and others.

Ruth Holzer’s haiku and other short form Japanese style poems have appeared in journals including Acorn, bottle rockets, cattails, First Frost, Frogpond, Hedgerow, Kingfisher, Modern Haiku, and Ribbons. She lives in Virginia.

Roberta Beach Jacobson is the editor of Five Fleas Itchy Poetry. She lives in Iowa, USA.

Bethany Jarmul is an Appalachian writer, poet, writing coach, and workshop instructor. She’s the author of a poetry collection, Lightning Is a Mother and a mini-memoir, Take Me Home. Her work has been published in many magazines including Rattle, Brevity, and Salamander. Her writing was selected for Best Spiritual Literature 2023 and Best Small Fictions 2024, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. Born and raised in West Virginia, Bethany lives in Pittsburgh with her family. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on social media: @BethanyJarmul

kjmunro lives in the Yukon Territory, Canada, on the traditional territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation & the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council. She is the recipient of the 2023 Borealis Prize – The Commissioner of Yukon Award for Literary Contribution. She facilitates ‘solstice haiku’, a monthly haiku discussion group in Whitehorse, & she manages a weekly blog feature for The Haiku Foundation called Haiku Dialogue. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, & her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019).

Zachary T. Kalinoski is a writer, born and bred in Ohio, based in Columbus. When not scratching lines on paper or pecking a keyboard, you can find him wrangling data for corporations, watching Rattlecast while washing dishes, and adoring time with his wife, daughter, and cavapoo. Some of his work appears in The Fib Review and The Columbus Dispatch. 

Deborah Karl-Brandt lives in Bonn, Germany, with her husband, two rabbits and and a decent selection of books. After her PhD studies in Scandinavian languages and literatures, she works as a freelance author and poet. Her poems have earned her some honorable mentions and the 2nd place in the 2021 Pula Film Festival Haiku Contest.

Julie Bloss Kelsey’s haiku have been published worldwide. She is the author of three collections of haiku and related forms: The Call of Wildflowers (Title IX Press, 2020), the award-winning Grasping the Fading Light: A Journey Through PTSD (Sable Books, 2023), and After Curfew (Cuttlefish Books, 2023). Julie writes a column for beginning haiku poets, New to Haiku, for The Haiku Foundation, where she is on the Board of Directors. Connect with her on Bluesky: @mamajoules.bsky.social 

Ravi Kiran is an Electronics Engineer and is a working professional. Ravi’s haiku have won international contests and are featured in journals like The Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku & Frogpond. Ravi is a web-editor with the leading journal haikuKATHA and is an editor with Leaf – the journal of The Daily Haiku.

Kat Lehmann is a founding co-chief editor of whiptail: journal of the single-line poem. Her fourth collection no matter how it ends a bluebird’s song (Rattle, 2025) is a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize. Kat’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net. https://katlehmann.weebly.com

Chen-ou Liu is the author of five books, including Following the Moon to the Maple Land (First Prize, 2011 Haiku Pix Chapbook Contest) and A Life in Transition and Translation (Honorable Mention, 2014 Turtle Light Press Biennial Haiku Chapbook Competition).

Hemat Malak is a poet and accountant from Sydney, Australia, who has crawled back to poetry after over forty-five years away. She mainly writes on themes which irritate her, hoping to run out of them one day.  Her writing has appeared in Rattle, Rochford Street Review, Catchment Literary Journal, Short Stories Unlimited, and anthologies from WestWords and WA Poets.

Jenny Mattern is a poet, a crafter of stories, and a cake-for-breakfast enthusiast living in Montana with her husband and children. She has had poetry published in The Poetry Pea Anthology, Cold Moon Journal, and The Dirigible Balloon. She also writes middle-grade novels and is represented by Nicole Eisenbraun at Ginger Clark Literary Agency.

Zachariah Matteson is a violinist living and performing in Austin, TX. His poetry has appeared in the Texas Poetry Calendar and the FailedHaiku Journal. 

Michael Meyerhofer is the author of five books of poetry – including What To Do If You’re Buried Alive (free from Doubleback Books) – as well as a fantasy series. His eclectic work has appeared in Modern Haiku, The Sun, Brevity, Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, Rattle, and other journals. For more info and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit troublewithhammers.com.

Chelsea McClellan is a poet writing from a small homestead in NW Ohio, where she also spends much time re-reading Rhina Espaillat and Charlotte Mason, tending to her children and the family orchard, and mucking out the horse stalls.

Lenard D. Moore is a poet, essayist, fiction writer, book reviewer, photographer, playwright, and educator. He is the author of several books, including A Million Shadows at Noon; Long Rain; and The Geography of Jazz. He also is the editor and/or co-editor of several books, including All The Songs We Sing: Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective; and One Window’s Light: A Collection of Haiku. He is the recipient of several honors and awards, including Induction into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, the North Carolina Award for Literature, the Margaret Walker Creative Writing Award, and the Haiku Museum of Tokyo Award (thrice). He is former president of the Haiku Society of America (2 terms); longtime Executive Chairman of the North Carolina Haiku Society; Founder and Executive Director of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective. In addition, he is the Co-founder of the Washington Street Writers Group.

Isabella Mori lives on the unceded, traditional, ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh aka Vancouver, BC, is the founder of Muriel’s Journey Poetry Prize, and the author of three books of and about poetry, including Not So Pretty Haiku. They write pretty much everything that’s not nailed down.

Brian O’Sullivan teaches English at St. mary’s College of Maryland. His poems have been published in ONE ART, Rattle, Contemporary Haibun Online and other journals. He is a poetry reader at Chestnut Review and a squad member at ThePoetrySpace_.

Ginel Basiga Ople is from Cavite, Philippines. He works in the engineering industry and discusses poems on Discord. His poetry also appears in Rattle’s Tribute to the Haibun.

Nancy Orr discovered the joys of writing haiku after she retired. She had written poetry off and on for much of her life, but her time and energy was spent working in and around municipal government. She has published haiku and senryu in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, The Heron’s Nest, bottle rockets, Wales Haiku Journal, Pan Haiku Review, tsuri-doro, Akitsu Quarterly, and Failed Haiku, among others.

John Pappas is a poet and teacher whose work has appeared in many poetry journals and anthologies. His haiku have garnered a Touchstone Award from The Haiku Foundation, a 2023 Trailblazer award, a silver medal in the 2023 Ito En New Haiku Grand Prix, Best in the United States in the 2023 Vancouver Invitational, a Sakura Award in the 2024 Vancouver Invitational, and honorable mention in the 2024 Heliosparrow Frontier Awards, among others. His first chapbook dimes of light was published in 2024 by Yavanika Press. His work is featured in the recently published haiku anthology off the main road: six contemporary haiku poets (Alba Publishing, 2024) and his longer poetry has twice been selected for the Mayor of Boston’s Poetry Contest (2016 and 2020). As drummer and lyricist of the punk rock band Heather Hates You, he has recorded two albums and toured extensively. John lives in Boston, MA with his wife and two daughters, and has taught literature and general semantics in the Boston area for over 25 years. 

Vandana Parashar is an associate editor of haikuKATHA and one of the editors of Poetry Pea and #FemkuMag. Her debut e-chapbook, “I Am”, was published by Title IX Press (Moth Orchid Press) in 2019 and her second chapbook “Alone, I Am Not”, was published by Velvet Dusk Publishing in 2022.

Jon Petruschke resides in Portland, Maine where he practices psychotherapy in addition to writing. He has two books — Dream Haiku: Poems from Nights and Naps, and Cherry Blossom: Erotic Haiku. 

Sharon Pretti’s work has appeared in Calyx, The MacGuffin, The Bellevue Literary Review and other journals. She’s received Pushcart Prize nominations and was selected for the Best New Poets 2024 anthology. She is also an award-winning haiku poet and has been a frequent contributor to haiku journals including Modern Haiku and Frogpond. Sharon is a retired medical social worker and has taught poetry workshops in long-term care facilities in San Francisco.

Caiti Quatmann (she/they) is a disabled and queer writer residing in St. Louis. She is the author of Yoke (MyrtleHaus, 2024) and the forthcoming poetry collections Meditations (on Cheese) (Alien Buddha Press, 2025) and M(other)hood (Big Thinking Publishing, 2025). She is the Editor-in-Chief of HNDL Mag, and her work appears or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Rattle, Neologism Poetry Journal, Eunoia Review, Little Old Lady Comedy, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Thread, and more. Find her on social media @CaitiTalks.

Bryan Rickert, President of the Haiku Society of America (2023-2024), has been published in many fine journals. He was the Editor of Failed Haiku Journal of Senryu (2022-2024) and edits The Living Senryu Anthology. Bryan has two books: Fish Kite (Cyberwit Publishing) and Just Dust and Stone, co-written with Peter Jastermsky (Velvet Dusk Publishing). His work was selected for inclusion in A New Resonance, Volume 12. He was also the recipient of the Touchstone award for individual poems in 2023. 

Tracy Royce’s haiku or haibun have recently appeared in contemporary haibun online, failed haiku, Frogpond, The Heron’s Nest, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Under the Bashō, whiptail: journal of the single line poem, and elsewhere. 

An author and contributor to hiking websites, Rick Runner started writing haiku as an extension of practicing shinrin-yoku and journaling his frequent hiking adventures. In a very short time, his haiku have appeared in online journals, including Sense & Sensibility. After a 30-year career as a U.S. Army officer, as well as five years as a high school history teacher, Rick is now fully retired and living in Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay.

Jacob D. Salzer is a Pacific Northwest poet and editor who primarily writes haiku and tanka in English. He is the past managing editor of Frogpond: The Journal of the Haiku Society of America (2023-2024), and the founding editor of the Haiku Poet Interviews blog and Mayfly Editing. He also serves as a commentator for the Haiku Commentary blog with Nicholas Klacsanzky and Hifsa Ashraf. In his spare time, Jacob enjoys hiking, reading, and spending time with friends and family. His poetry website is: https://jsalzer.wixsite.com/mareliberumhaiku

Shawn Aveningo-Sanders’ poetry has appeared in journals worldwide, including Calyx, OneArt, Quartet, About Place Journal, Timberline Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, McQueen’s Quinterly, and many others. Author of What She Was Wearing (2019), her manuscript, Pockets, was a finalist in the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest (2024) and is forthcoming from MoonPath Press in Fall 2025. Shawn is two-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. A proud mom and Nana, she shares the creative life with her husband in Oregon.

A significantly hearing impaired writer and artist adopted in Luxembourg, Kelly Sargent is the author of two memoirs in verse (Kelsay Books) and a collection of haiku and senryu entitled Bookmarks (Red Moon Press, 2023). Her short form poetry appears regularly in haiku and senryu journals online and in print. She is a six-time Touchstone Award for Individual Poems nominee, and has won or placed in a number of international haiku and senryu competitions. She resides in Vermont, where the picturesque beauty and four distinct seasons often serve as her inspiration.

When Kashiana Singh is not writing, she lives to embody her TEDx talk theme of Work as Worship into her every day. Her newest full-length collection, Witching Hour, was released in December 2024 with Glass Lyre Press. She lives in North Carolina and proudly serves as Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News, as well as President of the North Carolina Poetry Society. 

Joshua St. Claire is an accountant from a small town in Pennsylvania who works as a financial director for a non-profit. His haiku and related poetry have been published broadly including in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, and Mayfly. His favorite subject is the sky.

Debbie Strange (Canada) is a chronically ill short-form poet and artist whose work connects her more closely to the world and to herself. Her haiku collection, Random Blue Sparks, received the 2020 Snapshot Press Book Award, and was recently published by the press.

Tere Sievers lives and teaches in Long Beach California. She says,” Writing poetry helps me see clearly the joys of a long life and teaches me how to survive its losses.”  Her poems have appeared in ONE ART, Pearl, Nerve Cowboy, Silver Birch Press Anthologies and others.

Nancy Tinnell is from Louisville, KY. Her work has appeared in several online and print journals, for which she is grateful. She enjoys writing in both formal and free verse and frequently organizes events that feature both readings and music. Writing poetry is her favorite means of self-expression.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet, teacher, speaker, writing facilitator, and poet laureate of Evermore. Her poems have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, American Life in Poetry, Washington Post’s Book Club, andCarnegie Hall stage. Her newest book is The Unfolding. One-word mantra: Adjust.

Michael Dylan Welch has been writing haiku for nearly fifty years, and has had his haiku, tanka, longer poems, essays, and reviews published in hundreds of journals and anthologies in more than twenty languages. He has been keynote speaker for the Haiku International Association conference in Tokyo, and one of his translations from the Japanese has appeared on the back of 150 million U.S. postage stamps. Michael runs National Haiku Writing Month every February (www.nahaiwrimo.com) and documents his writing life at www.graceguts.com.

Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio with his wife and writing companion, Debbie. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have appeared in Only Poems, Whale Road Review, Rattle, Abandon Journal, and Minyan. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by SheilaNaGig. More at www.dickwestheimer.com

Joshua Eric Williams is a poet, essayist, and artist from Carrollton, GA. His work has appeared in various publications, including Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, and Rattle. Visit thesmallestwords.com for more information about his work.

Tony Williams lives quietly in a village near Glasgow in Bonnie Scotland where he enjoys nature, science, gardening, food, sci-fi TV, rain or sun, and reading inspiring short-form poetry. He is not unhappily retired.

Michele Worthington lives in Tucson, AZ where the Sonoran Desert, urban sprawl and our unacknowledged apocalypse inspires her writing. She has had poems published in Sandscript, Sandcutter, and Sabino Poets; an online chapbook at unlostJournal.com; and photography and poetry in Harpy Hybrid Review. She was a Tucson Haiku Hike and Arizona Matsuri contest winner, and a finalist for the 2023 Tucson Festival of Books literary awards.

Li Zhuang is a PhD candidate of Creative Writing at Florida State University. In 2019, Li graduated with an MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia University. Her works have been featured and are forthcoming in Pleiades, the Common, Denver Quarterly, the Madison Review, Southeast Review, the Collapsar etc. Her Chapbook “But Octopi Don’t Sing” is a runner-up for Purple Ink Press’s Chapbook Contest selected by Chen Chen. Li is the nonfiction editor for the Southeast Review.

Three Poems by Jennifer Michael Hecht

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Love Is the Only Way to Be Found

I know what I’m
running from but
not what I’m after.

Lost first is the only
way to be found,
it is still a disaster.

*

Metaphors As Chains

Metaphors and similes
control our thoughts
like a baker shaping
dough into loaves.
They can’t be avoided,
language is metaphor,
so I make sure no single
one is eating my prose
like rust. Mixed metaphors
are the only ones I trust.

*

Against the Memory

I was holding my baby when on television
the water started rushing in. Everyone else
was moving us out, everything in boxes
and on its way to the truck except for
the couch I was holding my baby on
and the television we were watching
and I didn’t understand what I was seeing.
I tried to tell the people who were helping
us move, there’s been a wave, but I
almost didn’t believe what I was seeing.
They didn’t understand. I went back
to watching. I stayed on that couch
forever, long after the move was over,
even now, even today. Me holding the baby
watching people not able to hold on
to anything, even each other, torn away
despite all conceivable intention, it made
a radical impression. The baby is twenty
now, we’ve moved twice since then,
sixteen years in one place and I miss it.
Sometimes you think or dream, the water
rising, the enormous wave, darkness
made visible and then the jolt slam
of it taking you. What’s the strategy?
How do we defend against the memory?
Always, at first, the ocean pulling back far,
leaving fish flopping and crabs scurrying,
always those moments of quiet, time
to run; and then the monster comes.

*

Jennifer Michael Hecht is a poet, historian, and commentator. Her most recent book is The Wonder Paradox: Awe, Poetry, and the Meaningful Life (2023) a guide to using poetry to find meaning, invoke awe, and rest in some clarity of mind. She is the author of the bestseller Doubt: A History, a history of religious and philosophical doubt all over the world, throughout history. In Stay: A History of Suicide and the Arguments Against It (Yale University Press, 2013) she scrutinizes the moral status of suicide. Her book The Happiness Myth (HarperOne, 2007), brings a historical eye to modern wisdom about how to lead a good life. Hecht’s The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology won Phi Beta Kappa’s 2004 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award “For scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity.” Her books have been translated into many languages.

Publisher’s Weekly called her poetry book, Funny, “One of the most original and entertaining books of the year.” Her first book of poetry, The Next Ancient World, won three national awards, including the Poetry Society of America’s First Book award for 2001. Her most recent poetry book is Who Said (Copper Canyon, 2013). Hecht has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Politico, Vox, Poetry, and The New Yorker. She holds a Ph.D. in the history of science/European cultural history from Columbia University (1995) and has taught in the MFA program at Columbia University and the New School in New York City.

Hecht has also published in peer-reviewed journals, including: The Journal of the History of Ideas, Isis: Journal of the History of Science Society, French Historical Studies, The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, and has delivered lectures at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Cal Tech, Columbia University as well as The Zen Mountain Monastery, Temple Israel, Saint Bart’s Episcopal Church, and other institutions of learning and introspection. Hecht has been featured on many radio programs, including On Being with Krista Tippett, Leonard Lopate Show, the BBC, Speaking of Faith, Talk of the Nation, and Brian Lehrer. She has appeared on Hardball on MSNBC, the Discovery Channel, and The Morning Show. She lectures widely.

ONE ART’s May 2025 Reading

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

We’re pleased to announce ONE ART’s May 2025 Reading!

The reading will be held on Sunday, May 4 at 2pm Eastern. 

We expect the event to run approximately 2 hours.

Featured Poets: Jennifer Mills Kerr, Terri Kirby Erickson, Dick Westheimer, Ann E. Michael, Kai Coggin

>>> Tickets available <<< (Free! Donations appreciated.)

+++++

~ About Our Featured Readers ~

Jennifer Mills Kerr is an educator, poet, and writer who lives in Northern California. An East Coast native, she loves mild winters, anything Jane Austen, and the raucous coast of Northern California.​ After twenty years writing & publishing fiction, Jennifer has recently “come out” as a poet, thanks to supportive editors, teachers, & friends. You can connect with Jennifer & read her work at her website.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry, including her latest collection, Night Talks: New & Selected Poems (Press 53), which was a finalist for (general) poetry in the International Book Awards and the Best Book Awards. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of literary journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, including “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, JAMA, Poetry Foundation, Rattle, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many more. Among her numerous awards are the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nautilus Silver Book Award, Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, and the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina.

Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio with his wife and writing companion, Debbie. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have appeared in Only Poems, Whale Road Review, Rattle, Gasmius, and Minyan. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by SheilaNaGig. More at www.dickwestheimer.com

Ann E. Michael lives in eastern Pennsylvania. Her latest poetry collection is Abundance/Diminishment. Her book The Red Queen Hypothesis won the 2022 Prairie State Poetry Prize; she’s the author of Water-Rites (2012) and six chapbooks. She is a hospice volunteer, writing tutor, and chronicler of her own backyard who maintains a long-running blog at https://annemichael.blog/

Kai Coggin (she/her) is the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, AR, and a recipient of a 2024 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship for her project Sharing Tree Space. She is the author of five collections, most recently Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024). Coggin is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, an Interchange Grant Fellow from the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry.

Coggin was awarded the 2023 Don Munro Leadership in the Arts Award for Visionary Service, and the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award for Arts in Education. She was twice named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, and nominated for Arkansas State Poet Laureate and Hot Springs Woman of the Year. Her fierce and tender poetry has been nominated nine times for The Pushcart Prize, and awarded Best of the Net in 2022. Ten of Kai’s poems are going to the moon with the Lunar Codex project, and on earth they have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Poets(.)org, Prairie Schooner, Best of the Net, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, About Place Journal, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, and elsewhere. Coggin is Editor-at-Large at both SWWIM and Terrain(.)org, Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. She lives with her wife in a peaceful valley, where they tend to wild ones and each other. www.kaicoggin.com

Harvesting the Lavender by Karly Randolph Pitman

~ ONE ART ~ 6 Comments

Harvesting the Lavender

When the lavender dies in the winter storm
you strip the dried leaves from their stems.
The pall of their aroma stains your fingers
as you open a drawer, looking for
an envelope. You think you’ll mail them
to a friend. But you smile when you see
the address written across the front:
Montana Department of Revenue. You
dream of sending scented leaves
with your tax return, picture the look
on the face of the clerk who opens the flap,
reading your note: I’m sending you
my portion of the income I grew on Texas soil.
You like to imagine that the lavender leaves
can do as much for Montana as the dollars
and cents printed on your check. You see
a new mountain road in her future, poured
pavement to a rural school, a bike path
where children ride their bikes in
the early morning light. There’s fresh
concrete and alongside, lavender fronds
waving their hands in the summer wind.

*

Karly Randolph Pitman is a writer, teacher, facilitator and mental health trainer who brings understanding to sugar addiction, overeating and other ways we care for trauma. You can find her poetry at O Nobly Born, a reader supported newsletter, and her healing work with food at her substack, When Food is Your Mother. She lives in Austin, Texas where she does as much as possible with her hands and is writing a book on overcoming food suffering.

Exhortation for any Innocence that Remains by Rachel Custer

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Exhortation for any Innocence that Remains

            Warning bell of a child, still, unwrung
as yet by what a tongue can hold, or what
            can hold a tongue: let yourself be small.

            Spent match, fire in another man’s belly,
word-weight in a dead language, rise up!
            O exhale-born, o hymn-child, humming home

            bearing your own song, held word (life
meaning what’s said, what’s said meaning
            what’s heard), rise quietly, like heat

            in a cheek burned first by turning. Warning
bell rung, unring yourself, become the truth
            that binds another’s tongue, enter first

            into any room as the haunt in a quarry’s eyes,
as a threat felt from behind. Dark child, planet
            eclipsed, waiting like a star waits out the day,

            let nightfall swallow all the drowning light.
Come forth, and when you come, come as you are,
            small and deadly, thrust Godward like a fist.

*

Rachel Custer is the author of Flatback Sally Country (Terrapin Books, 2003) and The Temple She Became (Five Oaks Press, 2017). She was a 2019 NEA fellow. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals, including Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, OSU: The Journal, B O D Y, ONE ART, and The American Journal of Poetry, among others. She currently resides online at rachelcuster.wordpress.com and songsonthewaytogod.substack.com.

Four Poems by Kimberly Ann Priest

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

In the News, December 31, 1980

The final day of the year before my sister is born,
two people die in a local gas station explosion that no one
can explain, as winter warms up her roar from the Ohio Valley
to overpower all the Northeast, and five Connecticut men,
employees of City Printing Co., go missing in a small plane
over Lake Michigan. Governor Milliken has signed new bills
into law to restructure Blue Cross Blue Shield,
a massive tax-exempt, non-profit health insurer created
forty-one years prior. “We made more progress in six days,”
says the Governor, “than we did in the past six years,”
addressing employee complaints concerning injured and laid-off
workers who weren’t receiving benefits, as well as employer
complaints of system abuse and expense. Still,
the sun will be shinning tomorrow morning, temperatures mild
even as energy audits roll out for home dwellers to cut
heating costs. Which is good because tonight we are getting
two to four inches of snow as bright Jupiter and Saturn cozy up,
appearing merely two moon-widths apart by pre-dawn
when you can view them if you want to. Next month,
Reagan will be our nation’s president, and I think my parents
are happy. A volcano has erupted in Vancouver, Washington,
and the Communist Party has announced to the Polish
that this new year will not be prosperous as the country
continues its path toward socialist development. There are deaths
on the streets of California again due to the introduction
of a new illicit drug that is not “White China,” but almost the same,
while X-rated gingerbread women and men are sold
at a shop in Maryland featuring prominent sex organs
as well as big smiles. They aren’t illegal so the Moral Majority
can’t do a damn thing to stop them being sold. What is it
my mother keeps saying? There’s nothing new under the sun.
The Beach Boys have a star in Hollywood now—been a band
twenty years. Bright Jupiter and Saturn won’t be this close again
until 2020 when I’ll miss them again. Dad’s part-time job
pays some of the bills and gifts us Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Our home is barely warm enough to insulate bodies from winter,
but I’ve got a hot water bottle and Pooh Bear in bed.

*

Recession [early 80s]

          Birch Run, Michigan

Childhood
was good.

I didn’t know my parent’s poverty. Didn’t know
we rationed food because

I was out buzzing with bees—
white bursts of pollen floating

and the farmhouse
a yellow brushstroke against the corn-pierced sky.

Mother put the baby on the floor
before the car careened and spun. Summer

swooped like a starling around heads
protecting, the grasses bowing to breeze

like old Moses in Genesis leaning against his cane,
surrendering causes to a new generation.

I remember wild eyes and lore,
before seatbelts were lawful,

mother panting with miracle after arriving home safe,
no car or human damage, the baby

quieted and falling asleep.
She pointed to heaven, to Jesus,

when a rash of needle pricks covered my back—allergies
demanding so much medication. Cattails

grew thick and tall in the ditches, their inches
of stalk below the plateau

assuring I was just the same height. These days,
one must like apples

or applesauce,
or mustard shag carpet—something yellow

such as forsook corn hardened for crows,
or Queen Bee bushy all over pollinating red clover,

hovering the spiney pink globes,
deciding, asserting you, you, you,

you must like applesauce,
eat every last bite, to not taste the bitter white sprinkles

un-capsuled and tossed
into the sweetest luxury food stamps allowed.

I wished it could have been ice cream. It wasn’t.
Yellow ball of daytime sun gone down

as I ate the coveted portion, with spoon,
that no one else got, bees

all tired and sleeping, the baby
bundled for night.

*

After My Father Losses His Job, My Medicine Runs Out

And we lose our healthcare
          like most unemployed families do,
so my mother lifts the empty bottle
          of allergy medication
that keeps me breathing during the greener seasons
          toward heaven (toward
our farmhouse kitchen ceiling) one late
          Wednesday evening after mid-week church
and after the last pill is broke open
          into my applesauce where I, a four-year-old child,
am willing to consume it. She has
          no other option and a little girl
who loves to go outside: it’s Jesus
          or nothing. Oh Lord, she intones, be good to me
throwing the bottle away. She will still
          give me applesauce each evening without
the white medicinal sprinkles, still
          pray nervously, still wake each morning
to feed me breakfast and watch me rush
          out our front door
like an anxious little bee difficult
          to contain. Some kids, I have learned,
grow out of seasonal allergies. Who knows?
          Maybe that was me. Oh Lord
be good my mother prayed
          as I rolled in the summer grass like a skinny cat
fighting off its fleas. As I marched
          into the woodland’s verdant trees.
As I ate my applesauce; in return, offering my mother
          sticks, pretty stones, dead leaves.

*

Locusts

          1981

We searched for wild honey and found it late March
          oozing from maple trees, declaring our woodlands
miraculous. Miracles! Miracles! we hollered,
          demanding the wind turn north or south
at our command. My little brother lifts a stick and strikes a rock.
          Water! he proclaims, hitting the rock
harder, promising a gusher and sputtering noises to mimic
          its fake flow. We drank
from that rock and the wind and the trees. We imagined
          meaty bugs and ate them, pretending their winged bodies
wriggled in our teeth. We listened for the forest,
          pausing along a well-worn path to stand very still
and discern its murmur. Follow, follow, it said.
          So we followed the inspirited tickle of leaves
in gentle breeze above us, limbs swaying and guiding west
          then east. We were such good pantheists
wandering a wilderness like John the Baptist on transcendental
          mission, stalking our Bible’s feral God.

*

Kimberly Ann Priest (she/her) is a neurodivergent writer and the winner of the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press for her book Wolves in Shells. She is the author of tether & lung (Texas Review Press 2025) and Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress Publications 2021, finalist for the American Best Book Awards. A professor of first-year writing at Michigan State University, she lives with her husband in Maine.

Call for Submissions: Poems About Work

~ ONE ART ~ 6 Comments

Call for Submissions: Poems About Work

The Book of Jobs: An Anthology of Poems About Work (Online) 

How to Submit: Email up to three poems of (up to 150 lines each) in the body of an email to:

oneartworkpoems [at] gmail [dot] com

Please also include a 3rd-person bio of up to 50 words.

Submission Window: April 13—July 12, 2025

Anticipated anthology publication date: Fall 2025

Fee/payment: No submission fee. Contributors to receive a $10 honorarium per accepted poem (thanks to a donation from an anonymous donor). The anthology will be available online at no cost to readers.

Requirements: Previously unpublished poems are preferred (though it’s fine if you have shared them on personal sites, including social media). We will consider poems that have been published in literary journals if the rights have reverted to the poet; please indicate this in your submission. Simultaneous submissions are permitted; please reply to your own emailed submission to let us know if your work has been accepted elsewhere.

What We’re Looking For: 

• Poems about all types of labor (industrial, agricultural, corporate, healthcare, domestic, creative, hospitality, caregiving, education, sports, and other fields of work).

• A variety of styles: narrative, persona, documentary, formal, experimental, erasure, cento, abecedarian, prose poems, etc.

• Serious poems, funny poems, seriously funny poems

• While we welcome poems about your own work experiences, we hope you’ll also consider submitting poems about the work of others, including family members, historical figures, or people you’ve observed, interviewed, or researched.

Sample work poems we admire:

“What Work Is” by Philip Levine

“Invisible Work” by Kwoya Fagin Maples

“Taking It Home to Jerome” by David Kirby

“Night Waitress” by Linda Hull

“Shirt” by Robert Pinsky

We’re looking forward to reading your work about work!

With all best wishes,

Erin Murphy

Editor, The Book of Jobs: An Anthology of Poems About Work

www.erin-murphy.com

Publisher: ONE ART: a journal of poetry

Forsythia by Angie Blake-Moore

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Forsythia

Driving with the sunroof open
and feeling spring pour in
onto my neck and shoulders,
I notice all the forsythia
in the neighborhood
have woken up.

Like a kindergartener’s overeager
drawing, all wild and woolly
with too much yellow—
these scraggly tentacles of sunshine
won’t be tamed.

You can come at them
with your pruning shears
but you will be rebuffed.
The forsythia bows to no man’s notion
of how a neat yard should look.
You will back away,
hands raised in surrender.

It will have its say
and it will be loud about it.
Yellow, yellow, and then some!
Spring is not a shy season–

forsythia denounces
winter days as if they will
never come again.

*

Angie Blake-Moore has been a teacher of 3- and 4-year-olds in Washington, DC for 30 years. She’s had work published in Potomac Review, Green Mountains Review, ONE ART, and like a field among others, including the anthology Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin Miller’s Cabin 1984-2001. She recently had a poem chosen for Moving Words in Arlington, VA where her poem was displayed in county buses.

Everything Should Be a Love Poem by Steven Concert

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Everything Should Be a Love Poem

Awash in the warmth
of a morning sun’s sky,

row-on-row bloom
of white daffodils,

crunchy Cheerios
splashed with almond milk,

you inside a well-worn pair
of faded Levis,

deep inhaled scent
of sweet and sensuous lavender,

soft glow of a lighthouse
through coastal fog,

frivolity of a bubble wand
waved in summer sunshine,

open highway cruise
at 70 miles per hour,

pulse-through-my-chest beat
of rock -n- roll,

closeness
of a skin-to-skin hug,

glint of sand dollars half-buried
in dampened earth after high tide,

left-over lasagna
gently warmed in the oven,

orange kayak afloat on lake
hidden deep in Penn’s woods,

inhalation
of your manly sweat,

snow-covered everything
undisturbed the morning after,

smash-crash of glass
shattered on concrete,

each warm spoonful
of home-made sausage and lentil soup,

sensory deprivation immersion
into a Dali canvas,

paralysis of never-ending fear
of high places,

steamy mug of coffee
on a rainy afternoon,

gentle scratch of your facial hair
on my naked torso,

poetic verse
read before bedtime,

melatonin induced
relaxation,

cherished memories
of a life together,

revelry of truth
when it blindsides fiction,

silence of shared space
between soul mates,

the last rays of sun
in the evening sky.

*

Queer American poet, Steven Concert has lived in the same small town for most of his life. He is a long-time member of the Pennsylvania Poetry Society as well as other state poetry organizations (OH, MN). His work has been published by Agates, Fixed & Free Quarterly, and the River Poets. Steven can be found on multiple social platforms: Facebook @ Paperless Poets, Blue Sky @PaperlessPoets.bsky.social, and Mastodon @PaperlessPoet

Steven is the author of three chapbooks—Too Blind to See (1996, reissued 2024), Standing in the Chaos (2006), No Mortar Required (2013)—and the full-length collection, Steer into the Skid (2022)

Late Again by Julie Weiss

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Late Again
           — after Danusha Laméris

I ignore the meteorologist´s warning,
surge out of the house hoodless,
umbrella propped in the farthest corner
of my home, like a perspective
I´ve outgrown. I stride to work,
each cement block a sinkhole,
black coffee sloshing over the rim
of my Starbucks Venti. Clouds silver,
then gray, then shed their final white
wisps, yet the only threat I sense
overhead is my deadline, screeching
like some clawed creature on the brink
of extinction. The rain comes yards before
I reach my office, comes down in ribbons—
there are no overhangs on this street.
Through the blur, I swear I catch
the fractured pieces of my career
but it´s only a smashed bottle, each shard
as sharp as my boss´s daily tirades.
In a different poem, the tap tap tap
on my shoulder might be collapsed
scaffolding, portending the end. I might
kneel on the street, grind my knees
in someone else´s stupor, pray for sirens.
Or, I might call in sick, crackling my voice
for good measure, scan the neighborhood
for a trail out of the day´s grasp. But I turn,
see a crossing guard with an umbrella,
saying “Here honey, take mine. I have a hood.”

*

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection published by Kelsay Books and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II, published by Bottlecap Press. Her second collection, Rooming with Elephants, is forthcoming in 2025 with Kelsay Books. “Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children” was selected as a 2023 finalist for Best of the Net, she won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for “Cumbre Vieja,” and she was a finalist for the Saguaro Prize. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Burningword Journal, Gyroscope Review, ONE ART, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and others. She lives with her wife and children in Spain. You can find her at https://www.julieweisspoet.com/.

Seasons Affected, Disorder by Betsy Mars

~ ONE ART ~ 8 Comments

Seasons Affected, Disorder

It’s spring but I’m stuck
in fall, roasting vegetables,
stocking savory seasonings,
drinking cider and spiced tea,
looking forward to holidays
that never were,
to a new year, different
from the one we’re in. I write
the wrong date on checks,
wait for the sky to get dark
earlier. The gloom blankets me
with autumn as I walk the dog.
The world is in a fog, thick
enough to drown.
Bundled in synthetic down,
the jacket’s insulated baffles
keep me warm, blind
to the flowers’ bloom.

*

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Recent poems can be found in Minyan, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her photos have appeared online and in print, including one which served as the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge prompt in 2019. She has two books, Alinea, and her most recent, co-written with Alan Walowitz, In the Muddle of the Night. In addition, she also frequently collaborates with San Diego artist Judith Christensen, most recently on an installation entitled “Mapping Our Future Selves.”

Please by Kristie Frederick Daugherty

~ ONE ART ~ 5 Comments

Please
            (to my grandmother)

Put the number 40 on my back.
Let me run. Race away.

Cold tears on the paddock.
I’ve been weeping since June.

Stumbling around, no flashlight.
Seeing your face in every

unlit place, I’ve been
underneath cave after cave

trickles of water, formations
pushing up from the earth.

Tombstone. Graveyard.
Cemetery.

You were there
all of the times

I was in the back of the pack,
whipped to go faster.

You, my warm stable,
and my stable feedings.

How I bit into the spoon.
Feasts, apples, endless,

and your hand, patting my hand:
“You’re my good girl.”

I know you are at my end
of all of this,

whatever all of this
turns out to be:

when only a back porch light
remains flaming in my brain.

When more measures
would have been unkind,

we did not allow more tubes,
or let them break your legs.

Find a way to turn back.
The track is a circle.

Head toward the starting gate.
Come home.

*

Kristie Frederick Daugherty is a poet and a professor at the University of Evansville. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is also a PhD candidate in Literature/Criticism at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is the editor of “Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift” which was published in December 2024 from Random House. Find her online at www.kristiefrederickdaugherty.com

Two Poems by Morrow Dowdle

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Sleight

I have no idea how he does it, this man
with his braids like pretzel twists,
polo shirt red, color of his profession.

He’s ready with two lovely assistants.
One to distract with the promise
of stickers. The other to step forward
if there’s any resistance.

The magician draws back the tiny arrow.
His fingers flick. The needle leaps
into my son’s small wrist. The boy

doesn’t feel it. His blood slides
smooth into one vial, then two.
The magician slips out the needle quick
as he sank it, and there’s a bandage

over the puncture. He never smiles.
The children that come here need more
than magic. He’s just a passing trick.

*

Bones

If we’d had Appalachian grannies,
         they might have shown us how

to throw those bones, inspect
         angle, shape, and crack,

connect with ancestral knowing.
         Instead, this was New Jersey,

and the most friendless girl I knew
         was digging up her dead cat

for the fifteenth time, though this
         was the first I’d seen of it.

No shaman, no peddler of relics,
         she just wanted to see her again,

so she laid out the bones one by one
         from the softening shoebox,

putting the skeleton in order:
         Hyoid, clavicle, carpal and radius.

Gibbous scapula and matchstick ribs.
         Pelvis ring that sprung one litter.

Each lonely vertebra. The tail’s spindly chain.
         The skull she did not set

on dark March soil, but cuddled it
         to her left breast bud.

I was afraid of the two gaping craters
         where green orbits had lived,

the ghastly fangs. The girl asked,
         Wasn’t she beautiful?

I was trying to be more to her
         than witness, but this sealed it—

yes, our mothers sad dumbly
         in their kitchens while our fathers

drank themselves numb—but we would
         never be connected.

I could never dig up a dead cat.
         I could never love something that much.

*

Morrow Dowdle is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of the micro-chapbook Hardly (Bottlecap Press, 2024). Their work can be found in New York Quarterly, The Baltimore Review, Pedestal Magazine, and other publications. They run a performance series which features BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ voices. They are an MFA candidate at Pacific University and live in Durham, NC.

Ars Poetica by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Ars Poetica

Burning sun
gilding autumn grass.

Fingerprints
on window panes.

Pink lipstick
on a glass.

Sting of a kiss or fist.

Ink bruise
on the skin of the page.

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton is a Professor of French and Creative Writing at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. She has won two separate Georgia Author of the Year awards for her poetry. Her latest volume of poetry is a children’s book. She lives in Atlanta and Paris.

Birds of a Feather by Lori Widmer

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Birds of a Feather

Female cardinal
dashes against the living room window
beats her wings at her reflection
shrill chirped warnings and clicking beak against the glass
flailing wildly to beat back the image she sees.

She returns each day that week to
repeat the hysterical, irrational dance.

Lawn chemicals my husband says.

How do I tell him?
The bird and her fight with
her mirror image are
all too familiar.

*

Lori Widmer is a freelance writer and poet based in Valley Forge, PA. Her poems have been published in TAB: The Journal of Poetry and Poetics, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Philadelphia Stories.

Two Poems by Joseph Fasano

~ ONE ART ~ 7 Comments

For My Friends Whose Hearts Are Breaking

This is how it is: we live again.
We rise up
from the love-bed in our wreckage
and we walk again
and we open
every window,
and we live again, though living
is the cost.

Yes, my friends, I have a thing to tell you:

My story
is your story, on this wild earth:

I loved once, I was broken,
and I rose again—

and although I closed my arms
around my body,
although I said that darkened harp
was ruined,
the nights have filled my life with brutal music
that has taught me that we’re only here
to listen,
to hold each other awhile
and to listen,

and to carry each other
with the song of songs inside us
that is wiser, and is greater than our changes,
and that sings the way most wholly when we’re lost.

*

Love Poems for Our Friends

Where are the poems for those who know us?

Not for star-crossed loves,
for agonies of longing,
but words for those who go with us
the whole road.

How would they start, I wonder?
You let me crash
when I was new to ruin.
You came to me
though visiting hours were over.
You held me when my loves
were done, were flames.

Yes, we will lose a few
in the changes.
But these are the ones
who save us:
not the charmers,
not the comets of wild passion,
not the ups-and-downs of love’s unlucky hungers,

but the ones who stand
by our shoulder at the funeral
and lead us back to the city of the living
and put our favorite record on the player
and go away, and come back,
always come back,

with bread and wine
and one word, one word: stay.

*

Joseph Fasano is the author of ten books, including The Last Song of the World (BOA Editions). His work has been widely anthologized and translated into more than a dozen languages. His honors include The Cider Press Review Book Award, The Wordview Prize from the Poetry Archive, and a nomination by Linda Pastan for the Poets’ Prize, “awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living poet years prior to the award year.” He is the Founder of Fasano Academy, which offers instruction in several fields of study, including poetry, philosophy, and theology.

Three Poems by James Crews

~ ONE ART ~ 10 Comments

Peace Offering

I don’t know what love is, but I
know how to peel a blood orange,
how to unravel the dimpled outer skin
then pick the pith from its pink flesh
and hand it off to the man I love.
Is love the need to give all we have
to someone else, this feeling that
if I don’t share the abundance, I’ll suffer
alone for the rest of my life? Earlier,
my husband sat in the living room,
silent because I had said something
that hurt him. Call this trucked-in orange
my make-up gift, my peace offering
still cold from the fridge, as solid
as a promise in the hand. I don’t know
how to stop failing at love, only that
failure’s the way to keep loving
as imperfectly as we all must, pressing
my lips against his clean, wet hair
and holding out the sections I have
peeled for him as if I grew them myself.

*

Joy

after Michael Simms

Joy is the stranger who won’t
take no for an answer, who
keeps knocking at the back door
no one uses, who doesn’t care
about the mud he tracks in
across pine floorboards
when you let him inside. Joy is
a slice of fresh-baked sourdough
slathered with salted butter
when you should be doing
your taxes, gathering receipts,
sipping herbal tea. Joy is
the laughter of a coffeepot
sputtering on the counter,
and a carton of cream tipped
into each cup. Joy is the friend
you haven’t seen in months,
perhaps even years, and he
presses his stubbled cheek hard
against yours when he says hello
so your whole body remembers.

*

Love What Comes

Add this to my list of small ecstasies:
the scent of pencils made from cedar,
wafting up as soon as I open the box
given to me by friends, the feel of real
graphite imprinting a notebook page.
And the crimson stubs of new peonies
I watered this morning, beginnings
of leaves and ruffled blooms all stored
inside a stem no larger than my thumb.
So much of what we imagine turns out
differently, swerves off-course. Why not
learn to love what comes as deeply as
the idea first held in our minds, like
a poem traced lightly in pencil, or a star-
shaped crocus pushing up through mulch,
both leaning toward a source of light
they can’t quite see, but know is there.

*

James Crews is the author of Unlocking the Heart: Writing for Mindfulness, Courage & Self-Compassion, and editor of several bestselling poetry anthologies, including Love Is for All of Us, a collection of LGBTQ+ love poems. He is also the author of four poetry collections and lives in Southern Vermont with his husband. For more info: www.jamescrews.net

An Abbreviated Glosa with Lines from Bishop’s Waiting Room by Kimiko Hahn

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

An Abbreviated Glosa with Lines from Bishop’s Waiting Room

… What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Not mother or choral teacher.
Maybe my younger sister
though she was only three
in a crib in the corner
near the wall father jerryrigged
like the washing machine
that would gag and screech.
What took me
finally (into my seventies)
beyond that sharp gasp
and maybe animal cries
(a squeak or mewl)
was remembering my throat
as if attached to my eyes. Eyes
completely by surprise
as if make-do–like
the hose out the bathroom window
so the pipes wouldn’t freeze
(we bathed in a bucket).
Then like a rabbit bit by a cat
my lungs and tongue agreed
… that it was me:

though I cannot recall
if the stair hissed
or the sofa growled
or the blender brayed.
I now know that the noise
was an alarm, a bowwow–
my voice, in my mouth.

*

Kimiko Hahn’s latest collection is The Ghost Forest: New and Selected Poems. She is the 2023 recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement and teaches in the MFA Program for Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, The City University of New York.

Two Poems by Lauren Camp

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Dear Instant,

I have never thought to arrive on an indigo motorcycle,
racing for a view. All summer I bathed
between punishment and fury
and took many photos that in winter
will seem flowered with ghosts.
No soft voices comforted. Only down stars.
I could sing but I didn’t. When I walked the beach
I missed all the seals, and instead squinted
at the lost sneakers demanding a meaning.
Blue and red. I didn’t more than wash
and stack my dream that dove repeatedly into the water.
I call time little names and let its head roost
in my palm. Every path wild skeletons emerge
picked clean and silent, they remind me
to solve back to claws and perpetual distance.
Show me my face as a tintype. Make it shine
in a parlor. Show me more than none of
this is a glitter. Of course
my rubber boots make me slip
closer to the clouds and their pink underbelly.
That’s it, I’ve decided:
I will get there. I’ve gone.

*

Lapses

A ferry took us. Slow ship that moved through
water like a full city and landed

upon an open-edged building.
We were carrying some part of how much we’d each known

of exhaustion, which we’d packed in full and half
bags and lifted, pushed taut against the rail.

On arrival, all the gestures of split wet
wood and distance—and someone

put out a bowl of figs with their drowsing magic.
When left alone, I found and held
the limbs of the twisting mother tree.

Now into the black stove, I place logs and time here
is made as they greet and part, snapping the air.

I blow on the smoldering coals.
Here is what is fragile.

Here is what repair is. The mind I can use

to confront a lesser question. The boat will return.
I’ll once say I left for wetter places.

*

Lauren Camp serves as New Mexico Poet Laureate. She is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently In Old Sky (Grand Canyon Conservancy, 2024), which grew out of her experience as Astronomer-in-Residence at Grand Canyon National Park. Camp has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and Black Earth Institute, the Dorset Prize, a Glenna Luschei Award from Prairie Schooner, and finalist citations for the Arab American Book Award and Adrienne Rich Award. www.laurencamp.com

After You Left by Lisa Low

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

After You Left

I have lived my life alone since then.
Raising our children alone. Waving them
onto the bus alone. Facing them nights
and mornings alone. I wish I could say
how happily we played, cold to your loss.
How we ran to the snow when you left
to roll another man with black raisin eyes
and a carrot nose, but six-year-old Sam
hid his face when you left and lay like
a plank on his bed and four-year-old Julia
spilled a mountain of pills on me where
I lay on the carpet, crying, and ever since
then we have plucked our backyard daisies
clean, saying we love him, we love him not.

*

Lisa Low’s essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Boston Review, and The Adroit Journal. Her poetry has been shortlisted for Ploughshares and is published or forthcoming in many literary journals, among them Hopkins Review, Pleiades, One Art, Conduit, Louisiana Literature, Pennsylvania English, and Southern Indiana Review. Her chapbook, Late in the Day, is forthcoming in July 2025 from Seven Kitchens Press.

The Returning Or Circling Of Perception by Laura Ann Reed

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

The Returning Or Circling Of Perception

“This is still Eden, alright”, I remind myself.
But today seems to call for some recalibration.
Or maybe it’s only me that needs it.
I can hear my father saying, “Just be yourself,
dear.” Making everything better and worse.
He’d hijack this poem if I let him. Instead,
I attend to the sounds foregrounding
the morning: the washing machine whining
into its final spin; my husband crunching
his cereal, impeding my breakfast reading.
A vicious stab in my upper back recalls
the therapist who said, “shoulder-blade pain
can signal the wish to punch the hell
out of something.” This is husband number
two, the Keeper, mind you. Tomorrow,
I’ll be taking my earplugs to the table.

*

Laura Ann Reed is a Contributing Editor with The Montréal Review. She holds master’s degrees in clinical psychology as well as in the performing arts. Her poems have appeared in seven anthologies, including Poetry of Presence II, as well as in numerous journals. Her most recent work is forthcoming in ONE ART, Illuminations, The Ekphrastic Review, SWWIM, and Main Street Rag. Her forthcoming chapbook, Homage to Kafka, will be published in July 2025. https://lauraannreed.net/

Two Poems by Kelli Russell Agodon

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Spell to Find Meaning in Life

Stand on a cliff
until a redtail hawk mistakes you
as a friend, but don’t look down.

Trust the sense of heaven
even if you don’t
believe in heaven.

You may die skinny
dipping in the Mediterranean
or be hit in the head

by a loose screw sailing to earth
from above. You might drop dead
doing yoga. Done. Whatever

way, your future corpse awaits you.
Smile at the idea of your skull outside
your skin. Your bones like drumsticks

banging on a tympany. I saw a sweatshirt
that read, I just want my funeral
to sell out—to be that loved.

You are actually standing
on the cliff right now. Look down,
look down, look around.

*

Where I’m from: GenX Version

         after George Ella Lyon

I am from a folded note from a friend
passed beneath desks, evenings of talking
on a rotary phone. I am from eating
butter out of the container and always wanting
the cookies to be raw. I am from a paint-by-
number Last Supper in the hallway and
a Harvey Wallbanger god. From sitting
on the mustard-colored couch waiting
for love to drive by. I am from a mercury-
in-the-sink-broken-thermometer childhood,
watching Lawrence Welk with my Nana
while she knits everyone a scarf. I am
from payphones on the sunny side of a road
and the downpour of a neighborhood,
from kickball in the cul-de-sac until 10 pm
and no streetlights except the moon. I am from
children with no curfew, from go-out-and-play,
and popsicles cure split lips. I am from melting
crayons on the sidewalk for fun, ice cream truck
afternoons, skateboard down a hill, banana
bike with a basket and no one in a helmet.
I’m from scarred legs and burying the dead
rabbit we found by the creek of waterbugs.
I am the love letter of a generation who
had parents but weren’t parented, I am
the song who learned who to write herself.

*

Kelli Russell Agodon is a bi/queer poet from the Seattle area. Her book Accidental Devotions will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2026. Her previous collection, Dialogues with Rising Tides, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards. Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and teaches in Pacific Lutheran University’s low-res MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. She is also the cohost of the poetry series Poems You Need with Melissa Studdard.
www.agodon.com / www.twosylviaspress.com / www.youtube.com/@PoemsYouNeed

Two Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments
Dear Bobcats
We gather together now as true family instead of regular family
because we are far flung brave creatures and these are wild days.
I know people don’t see us very often.
We will not curl on your feet to sleep but
will accompany all your dreams.
Even if you see only one of us
in your whole lifetime.
Like the foxes, or single sleek coyote you witnessed
running up a major thoroughfare in your city,
then blink! Gone. We, the armadillos and snakes,
in the Year of the Snake, will be recognized.
We root and rumble, curl in a hollow.
We find our quiet ways.
Our numbers shrink, but we don’t do math.
We persist. You too must live like this.
*
Email Gift from Israeli Poet
          For Naomi from Naomi
People in Israel are reading the names
of dead children and babies.
Speaking them slowly, each syllable a tuft of hair.
Pronouncing ages in holy succession.
Eight months, seven years. Hebrew speaker
shaping Arabic rolled from the throat,
rich with respect. Why can’t this be
our only way? Two years, eleven months.
Hendia Janan Bilal. Rafik Mahmoud Darwish Abdullah.
Blanket wrapped bodies, crushed,
mutilated, torn. The perfect ear ripped
from the perfect head. What did the mothers do next?
Catholic ex-president on beach
staring east. May he imagine you every day.
May you be the wind ruffling him.
Don’t stop. He didn’t stop. Onward.
His own dead daughter had my same name,
same as the Israeli poet who sent this video.
His granddaughter, recently a mother, too. Our name is
HUMAN (Holy Mary Mother of God).
The video lasts eleven hours plus.
*
Naomi Shihab Nye’s most recent books are Grace Notes – Poems About Families, Everything Comes Next, and The Tiny Journalist. She is a Palestinian-American writer on faculty at Texas State University.

Letter to My Son, Over Three Years Since He’s Gone by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

~ ONE ART ~ 18 Comments

Letter to My Son, Over Three Years Since He’s Gone

You would be jealous, I think,
of how your sister is learning trig,
speaking Spanish, playing bridge.
You’d probably tease her, but really,
what you’d be thinking is, She is so cool.
And she is, sweetheart. She’s fun
and silly. Like you. Only like her.
We talk about you, of course.
Just this weekend, we remembered
how once you said if a 99-pound person
ate a one-pound burger, they
would be one percent burger.
I wonder what percent of your sister
is grief? And what percentage love?
Tonight a girl asked her if she had any siblings.
She said, yes, a brother. When the girl
asked her how old you were, she told her
the truth. That you were seventeen
when you died. What a terrible gift
to learn how to say the hardest things straight.
I can’t help but think if you are watching her,
you, too, must be in awe of who she’s becoming.
Oh, how we learn to grow from whatever soil
we’ve been given. I do not pretend to know
how this works. I only know she
is learning to transform ache into beauty,
nightmare into dream. I only know
I long for her to know love from you
the way a garden feels loved by sun, by rain.

*

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is poet laureate for Evermore. She co-hosts the Emerging Form podcast. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. Her poems have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, American Life in Poetry, and Carnegie Hall stage. Her newest collection is The Unfolding. One-word mantra: Adjust.

Interrobang by Donna Hilbert

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Interrobang

I love the word.
Not in the way I love blossom,
which contains both bosom and bloom
signifying beauty, nourishment,
and pleasure within.

Interrobang, with just two marks,
shouts What The F without ever
spelling anything out.

*

Donna Hilbert’s latest book is Enormous Blue Umbrella from Moon Tide Press, following Threnody, Moon Tide, 2022. A second edition of Gravity: New & Selected Poems is forthcoming from Moon Tide in early 2025. Work has appeared in numerous journals and broadcasts including Cultural Daily, Gyroscope, Rattle, Sheila Na Gig, ONE ART, Vox Populi, The Writer’s Almanac, Lyric Life, and anthologies including The Poetry of Presence volumes I & II, The Path to Kindness, The Wonder of Small Things, I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing. www.donnahilbert.com

Three Poems by Alexandra Umlas

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments
Rules for Revision
Decide how long your lines and stanzas
will be, then stick to it, you can move them around
later. Break each one with beauty, falling
snow or something else that’s clever
or makes sense, but not too clever,
clever looks like cleaver, and that is what you need
to take to your poem. Chop the excess sinews, the thes,
those creepy adjectives that detract from the poem.
Be specific, write, no scrawl, Braeburns or Red Delicious
over apple, Poodle not dog, puddle not water,
fill your poem with p’s or toads or gardens, or wait…
didn’t I read that somewhere? Read! Then focus
on the real, but only if it seems real— like I believe
that Williams had a wheelbarrow, and that it was red
and glazed with rain – just don’t look up
What not to do in a plem, and misspell poem
Because the o and l are so darn close together –
you’ll only get articles on mucus-killing foods
and how to clear your throat. Stay on task, don’t let the poem drift
to places you can’t come back from.
Hold the wheel and drive, wait, that’s an Incubus
lyric. Move lyric to the previous line so two don’t end
with Incubus. Try not to say Incubus three times
in your poem. Instead, get stuck, take a walk,
walk the dog, oh no, not the dog again…walk
your grandma, wait… how did she get here? Know
that no matter how much you try to avoid writing
about your grandma, she will show up. Use imagery.
Include her orange tic-tac grandma-breath or some bells,
bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells—use similes too,
but not if they are about the moon. If the moon does fall
into your poem, smash it to shards, then edit out shards –
please don’t make me explain why… reverse! reverse!
riding a poem is like writing a bike. Write it!
Be sure to leave everything open at the end, like wonder,
like windows, like wound, but keep the poem
on one page, concise, so as not to drone on
and on. Writing a poem is like going to war, but the poem
is your enemy… kill your darlings… when in doubt,
put down the pen and shoot your poem in the heart.
*
This is a Poem Whose Hand Holds a Leash
in the early morning, before the sun ruins
the sky’s brilliance, when the grass, too, is filled
with stars, and the world waits to be swallowed.
The poem doesn’t want to walk, although
it knows it will be better by it. Sometimes
it reluctantly takes the mile around the school,
or hits the pedestrian push button to ask
to cross Goldenwest into the park’s brightening
lagoons. The poem walks like a wave rolling
onto shore, like it has somewhere inevitable
and ordinary to land. It feels the morning’s cold
sincerity, its closed-flower gardens.
The poem is almost home when the sky wakes
half numinous night, half pink light yawning
and marvelous. The poem, still holding the leash, marvels—
*
Passport Office
The poem walks into the passport office.
He sits down next to a particularly well-
put-together villanelle. Even with
an appointment, the bench is hard,
his lines begin to fall asleep. He thinks
he needs a revision and can hear the sestina
on the other side of the room whisper
to her young couplet, they’ll let anything
be a sonnet these days. When he finally
gets called, they double check his paperwork:
title (too on-the-nose), place of publication
(substandard), line-length (not consistent),
and send him to the camera, where they snap
a photo of him that he is not happy with
and send him on his way. For six-weeks
he’ll wonder if the passport will come
in time. He tries to better himself before
his trip by cutting down on adverbs
and wishing Frost had been his father.
When the passport finally arrives,
he holds it in his end-words and similes.
*
Alexandra Umlas is from Long Beach, CA and currently lives in Huntington Beach, CA. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection At the Table of the Unknown (Moon Tide Press).