Month: June 2025

Love in People, Not Things by Laura Foley

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Love in People, Not Things

When my mother died, she left behind
few things in her one room
assisted living space.

Some clothes, of course,
and a worn black leather purse.
In it, I discovered,

wrapped in shiny silver paper,
a chocolate, with a message inside,
repeated in five languages,

a fortune candy,
Italian dark chocolate
crisped with hazelnuts, so

I ate it.
Alone in a room emptied of her,
holding almost nothing she owned,

I read and re-read
her last message to me.

*

Laura Foley is the author of, most recently, Sledding the Valley of the Shadow, and Ice Cream for Lunch. She has won a Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, Common Good Books Poetry Prize, Poetry Box Editor’s Choice Chapbook Award, Bisexual Book Award, and others. Her work has been widely published in such journals as Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, American Life in Poetry, ONE ART, and included in anthologies such as How to Love the World and Poetry of Presence. She holds graduate degrees in Literature from Columbia University, and lives with her wife on the steep banks of the Connecticut River in New Hampshire.

Magpie by Hope Rudebusch

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Magpie

Magpie on the metal rail,
black and white,
echoing the mountain behind—
black pine and white snow.

Wrapped in fleece,
I wait for the water
to boil—
morning tea.

You are gone—
the house feels empty.
There won’t be oranges for breakfast.
And the magpie
and the mountain—
who will share their beauty?

*

Hope Rudebusch lives in Northern Arizona and writes poems rooted in memory, ritual, and the natural world. Her work explores quiet moments of connection and loss. This is her first publication.

Beyond the Childhood Horizon by Chloe Yue Zhou

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Beyond the Childhood Horizon

A child ran across the damp field,
pushing open the half-shut door,
discovering silence in the hollowed house.
The sound of her footsteps, with the falling
raindrops in the wood, echoed in the space.

Living under someone else’s roof,
her chopsticks extended with timid care.
She got used to walking on tiptoes, trembling
with constant fear. Even when she grew into an adult, her heart
shivered still when she saw those faces with smiles.
The world seemed like stage of judgement,
every move, every word observed and measured.

And you were jammed
among a crowd of boys at the classroom table,
cursed and whipped, yet
blamed by the teacher as the instigator.
The bruises on your arms have long since faded. The pain
remains, like a sad old song
whose melody lingers on
while its lyrics have already been forgotten.

Hope was to wait at the community gate, staring
at the cars driving from the way from home,
searching for familiar faces.

Your mother finally came to visit.
At the end of the day, she
tempted you with your favorite snacks,
then left you sobbing on the street, screaming.
That day you learned independence, and came to believe that
bad things would happen when someone offers you kindness.

No more screaming. Only endless waiting, and reunion
for a few Spring Festival days.
Unreachable sky
woven into the void of a child’s dream.
The waiting seems like winter wind in a coastal city, the
fleeting moment of togetherness is a sip of
honey, sweet and brief, after all
the opportunity of having the taste, just to take it away.

Always at dusk, the color of love
shadowed the blazing horizon,
far, spinning, receding.

This is a page written
in a private language. Every stroke
the weight of shadows.
Each syllable the vibration of the unspoken words.

Gazing into memories is to peer into a stifling well,
trapped there, a child is lost,
eagerly staring still,
toward the direction
from which the cars are approaching.

*

Chloe Yue Zhou is a poet and a translator currently living in Shanghai. She is a member of the Zhuang ethnic group, a minority in southern China. Influenced by Zhuang culture, Chinese traditional and Western poets, her poetic contents and style are diverse and cross-cultural. Her work has appeared in Moonstone Press, Tin Can Poetry, Shot Glass Journal, the Henniker Review, and elsewhere.

At the Edge of the Ocean by Rick Swann

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At the Edge of the Ocean

Three days after my heart tissue inflamed
my brother died. The phone call came
on a cloudless day. I remember, because I hate
beautiful weather on days I’m sick. I thought
my sister had called to check on my health,
as my brother had done two nights before.
Then, like most times my brother and I talked
when one of us was sick, we’d joked about
who’d die first. That day, for the first time,
we talked about our near-death experiences—
my car accident, his coronary that made
the news because one of his students
performed the CPR that kept him alive—
the calmness we felt at the end, how we pictured
the people that mattered most, the letting go,
the gift of time only near-death can give.

Today, I began a poem about the weather,
how the steady drizzle reflected my mood.
I was going to ask if weather should reflect
our mood or change it. Weather carries extra
weight along the coast. I live on the shore
of Puget Sound. My brother lived on an island
in Maine. We shared views of water, but
different oceans. Right now, despite the rain,
there’s a touch of pale blue in the water’s surface.
Dull gray clouds hang overhead like drab sheets
in need of bleach and sunshine. Slate-colored
waves roll up the graveled shore one after
the other, the hiss of their retreat back
into the sea sounding just like the ventilator
the hospital used to keep my brother alive
until his children arrived to say their good-byes.

*

Rick Swann’s poems have been appeared in ONE ART, English Journal, Autumn Sky Poetry, Typehouse, Last Stanza, and other publications. He is a former Seattle Schools librarian whose children’s book of linked poems Our School Garden! was awarded the Growing Good Kids Book Award from the American Horticultural Society.

AGONAL by Bunny Goodjohn

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

AGONAL

After Matthew Dickman’s ‘Love’

Try as we might, we cannot help but die
in full view of the living: kissing brides,
choosing apples in the supermarket,
burying our fingers in the clothes
and folds of strangers. We die
when we are most alive: running
a marathon, braving Karaoke, choking
on a half-chewed piece of bread.
Twenty-somethings study
our wrecked hands over the edge
of their cell phones: they recommit
to skin care, renew their gym membership.
They too are dying. We die
in doctors’ waiting rooms watching
house renovation shows and navigating
online check-ins designed for the young
and good eyesight. We would sacrifice
to a god that skips the scales and tells us
how much time we have left. We go
to funerals like we used to go
to birthday parties and star in the dead’s
slideshow. We take more photographs.
At eight, I was struck mute at the slaughter
of Bambi’s mother, at how quickly she went
from here to not here with no regard
for what she left behind. A broken heap
of absence. How quickly our mothers leave us.
I’ve no time for churches with all their dead
saints and crypts. Even so, I’d like to light
a Roman candle for myself, ignite
until the matches run out. Each morning
I sit cross-legged on a cushion and imagine
my own death. I am quiet, intact, content.
Until I imagine myself kicked to death
by dwarves. My mother loved no one
but my father. Would not dance with the nurse
out of respect for a dead man. She imagined
him watching her from a celestial workbench
forever fixing the last thing she broke.
When Bolan died, the girls wore black
armbands, punctuated assembly that morning
with showy sobs. The boys were embarrassed
as boys often are. Death jumps categories:
my iPad dies every day, exhausted
by my need to know; on the counter,
lemons continue, incrementally, to die.
The boy who wrecked me died
when I was twelve. My mother bought me
a black dress, all velvet crush. I cried
with the best of them. I have paid good money
for death: the vets’ syringes, the patches of fur
shorn from the back legs. All slipped away smooth
save the three-legged cat who fought death
as if death were the neighbor’s German Shepherd
come to call him out through the fence. Yesterday,
I found a bee motionless on the deck rail.
I fed her sugar water and blew gently
across her wings. She drank and flew again
until the dog snapped her from the air.

*

Bunny Goodjohn is published in both poetry and prose. Her poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals including Connecticut Review, Zone 3, The Texas Review, Kestrel, and The Cortland Review. Her poetry collection Bone Song (Briery Creek Press, VA) was published in 2015. She has published two novels: The Beginning Things (Underground Voices, CA) and Sticklebacks and Snow Globes (Permanent Press). www.bunnygoodjohn.com

Two Poems by Scott Ferry

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[sometimes the kitchen cleans itself]

sometimes the kitchen cleans itself
the shower shines white as the prayers of clouds

i look around and there are no grievances
even god’s nametag is crisp

and i take a breath and wait
another breath and wait

i don’t trust the sky to
hold

*

[my son spends two hours at the beach]

my son spends two hours at the beach
collecting body parts of dead crabs
i let him drift down the coast
as long as i can still see him
and i become a thing that sits
and stares at the water

the wind stops and the puget sound
becomes a white mirror
people and birds flick along
like sputtering fuses
my heart an open conduit
of brine and lost time

my son comes and reports
all of his discoveries the sharp footed crab leg
the ancient jaw of an extinct shrimp
a guarding claw or a killing claw
the fossil of a sea scorpion
the mouth pieces that slice

i don’t usually let time go like this
so i slowly gather it pull him from the devonian age
place all the skeletons into a bigger skeleton
he is not yet a being of the clock
so he transverses the river
his feet dappled light in a stream

of light all going toward the sound
and refilling spilling refilling
us transporting our brittle bones
against a current for a flash of
silver through the roots and a hand to
hold on the way back home

*

Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. His most recent books are 500 Hidden Teeth (Meat For Tea), Sapphires on the Graves (Glass Lyre), and dear tiny flowers (Sheila-Na-Gig).

Two Poems by Jennifer Mills Kerr

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Why I Write

Because yesterday, I saw a flock of birds,
circling silver-white, wings a sparkling

platinum ring, a proposal that can’t be denied.
Because I want to thread their music into lines,

or at least try. Because today my mind’s a
cellar, dimly-lit, with piles of torn fabric, and

I need to knit all my unrequited pieces.
Because somehow I still believe words

can answer our distances, our broken
relationships, every cracked window

distorting sight. Why can’t words be fire?
Why can’t they cauterize? And why can’t

I stop the urge to write when our world
declares it a waste of time? And on bad

days, so do I? Because those soaring
birds! They’ll never crash or change

or die, unlike you or I. Because the
page can be our sky.

* 

Last Light of Winter’s Day

Flying crows fade within the oaks’ dark arms,
and the lake, flickering with what light remains,
like tinsel after a holiday.

Standing at my garden gate, I’m awakened to
loss again, how it shines with what’s missing,
with what’s missed.

Loss isn’t inside lab tests. It doesn’t live within
my will or all the doctors’ visits, but sparkles
inside its own darkness–

a coin peeking from wet dirt, water blinking
at the bottom of a well, and the oak branches,
blatantly stripped,

blatantly open, now hold the light of dusk,
a whispering silver, so soft, so brief,
so precious.

*

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 Sonoma County. Her poems are forthcoming in The Inflectionist Review and SWWIM. Say hello at https://jennifermillskerr.carrd.co/

Nothing Gold by Kim Addonizio

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Nothing Gold

          Nothing gold can stay.
                    — Robert Frost

And nothing else can stay, either–
not the pay phone or parking meter,
not the coo and keck of the passenger
pigeon or the ambivalent lover
returning to his wife. A banner
saying Everything Must Go sags over
the failed restaurant supply store.
A plane takes off with a living brother
and lands with a dead one. Another
black car arrives at the gates. Dear
anyone, tell me how to hear
the sea’s consoling murmur
as it withdraws, then savages the shore.
Tell me how to love the nevermore.

*

Kim Addonizio has published over a dozen books of poetry and prose. Her most recent poetry collection is Exit Opera (W.W. Norton). Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life was published by Penguin. Her poetry has been widely translated and anthologized. Tell Me was a National Book Award Finalist. She teaches Zoom poetry workshops in Oakland, CA. https://www.kimaddonizio.com

ONE ART’s End-of-Pride-Month But Not End of Pride Reading

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Join ONE ART’s EIC Mark Danowsky and poet Alison Lubar as they host queer poets from ONE ART’s archives and the Philly poetry scene for an end-of-pride-month, but not end of Pride celebration! Poets will begin their set with a poem by a LGBTQIA+ predecessor of their choosing, then read their own work. All proceeds from the event will be donated to the Trans Lifeline.

***

ONE ART’s End-of-Pride-Month But Not End of Pride Reading
Co-hosted by Alison Lubar
Monday, June 30
6:00-8:00pm Eastern
Featured Poets: Jennifer Espinoza, Sean Hanrahan, m. mick powell, Amy Beth Sisson, Louisa Schnaithmann, Nicole Tallman, Abby E. Murray

>>> Tickets Available <<< (Free! Donations appreciated.)
Please note: All proceeds from the event will be donated to the Trans Lifeline.

***

About Our Co-Host:

Alison Lubar (they/themme) teaches high school English by day and yoga by night. They are a queer, nonbinary, biracial Nikkei femme whose life work has evolved into bringing mindfulness practices to young people. They’re the author of two full-length poetry books, The Other Tree, winner of Harbor Editions’ Laureate Prize (forthcoming September 2025), and METAMOURPHOSIS (fifth wheel press, 2024), as well as four chapbooks. Find out more at http://www.alisonlubar.com/ or on Twitter @theoriginalison.

About Our Featured Poets:

Jennifer Espinoza (she/her) is a poet whose work has been featured in Poetry Magazine, the American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, Poem-a-day @poets.org, and elsewhere. She is the author of I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks), THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS (The Accomplices) and I Don’t Want To Be Understood (Alice James Books). She holds an MFA in poetry from UC Riverside and currently resides in California with her wife, poet/essayist Eileen Elizabeth, and their cat and dog.

Sean Hanrahan (he, him, his) is a Philadelphian poet originally hailing from Dale City, Virginia. He is the author of the full-length collections Safer Behind Popcorn (2019 Cajun Mutt) and Ghost Signs (2023 Alien Buddha), and the chapbooks Hardened Eyes on the Scan (2018 Moonstone) and Gay Cake (2020 Toho). His work has also been included in various anthologies and journals. He has taught classes titled A Chapbook in 49 Days, Ekphrastic Poetry, Poetry Embodied, and has hosted and read at poetry events throughout Philadelphia. He can be found on Instagram as gaycakepoet.

m. mick powell (they/she) is a poet, professor, artist, Aries, and the author of threesome in the last Toyota Celica and other circus tricks and DEAD GIRL CAMEO, forthcoming from One World Books this August. Find them on all social media platforms @mickmakesmagic.

Amy Beth Sisson (she/her) lives near the skunk cabbages in a town outside of Philly. She is a winner of the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia’s Joyful Abundance: Emerging Artist Commissioning Program, 2025. Amy Beth is a Special Projects Editorial Assistant for Fence Publishers and a former Associate Artist with the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice.

Louisa Schnaithmann (she/her) is a relentlessly bisexual poet who is the author of Plague Love (Moonstone Press, 2021). Her work has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, The Summerset Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. She is the consulting editor for ONE ART: a journal of poetry and lives in southeastern Pennsylvania. You can order a copy of Plague Love here.

Nicole Tallman (she/her) lives in Miami, where she serves as the official Poetry Ambassador. She is the author of four poetry books including her most recent, Dolce Vita/Let There Be a Little Light. She is also a Poetry and Interviews Editor for South Florida Poetry Journal and The Blue Mountain Review. Find her most recent poems in Poetry Magazine, Poet Lore, Pleiades, and ONLY POEMS. Find her on social media @natallman and at nicoletallman.com.

Abby E. Murray (they/them) is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. As a nonbinary pacifist married to a cis-gender active duty army officer, they’ve spent their adult life writing and researching the struggle for voice and listening between disparate communities. Their first book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, and their second book, Recovery Commands, won the Richard-Gabriel Rummonds Prize from Ex Ophidia Press and has been nominated for the National Book Award. Abby served as the 2019-2021 poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, and currently teaches writing to Army War College fellows at the University of Washington. 

Force Fed by Kimmy Chang

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Force Fed

I spoon pepper pork into plastic—not to save sauce,
but to stretch its warmth across the silence
where my reply should be.

Ma scoffs: the wok wasn’t hot enough.
“American pans,” she says, “only good for eggs and regret.”
Steam clings like doubt, stinging my eyes
like the job I never chased.

All week, interviews line up,
as if I never left this kitchen. I stir. I wait.
I mouth polite answers that fade
while your voice crackles above the sizzle.

“Tell me about a time you failed,” they ask.
“Inclined to decline,” I joke—
but it sticks in my throat like pepper and blame,
too rough to swallow.

“Eat more pork,” you urge, though allergic.
You recall Cutie, begging on her hind legs.
“Not the new pup,” you sigh.

And I drift to Cutie’s kidneys failing—
guilt flooding the memory.

You tell me to pack the rice.
The new puppy laps sauce from my leg.
I scrape the pot clean, grain by grain,
whispering, let it stay whole—

as if saving rice might save something else.

*

Kimmy Chang is working toward her first chapbook. She is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in trampset, Scapegoat Review, and Sky Island Journal. She studied poetry at Stanford and works as a Computer Vision Engineer. Originally from McKinney, TX, she enjoys spoiling her two tiny, rambunctious fluffs.

Into the Empty Hours by Subhaga Crystal Bacon

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Into the Empty Hours

Outside, the spring grasses
rise up in tiny blades
yet I do the cutting.
I walk and walk, back
and forth behind the mower
with its front wheel drive
that pulls me like a wave.
The alder snags sticks
in my hair and the dying red
pine its brown needles.
They both need to be cut—
cut back, cut down. If a tree
can be a friend, then these
keep their counsel. One
tugs off my hat, the other
spreads death onto my shoulders.
What have I made of my life
except this loneliness?

*

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them) is a poet from rural northcentral WA. Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Terrain, Alaska Women Speak, Collateral, Action/Spectacle, and Mom Egg Review. Subhaga is the author of Transitory, BOA Editions, and A Brief History of My Sex Life, forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review Books.

ONE ART’s July 2025 Reading

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ONE ART’s July 2025 Reading

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

>>> Tickets Available <<<

(Free! Donations appreciated.)

The reading will be held on Sunday, July 20 at 2pm Eastern.

The official event is expected to run approximately 2-hours.

After the reading, please consider sticking around for Q&A with Featured Poets & Community Time (general conversation).

About Our Featured Poets:

Alison Luterman has published four previous collections of poetry, most recently In the Time of Great Fires (Catamaran Press,) and Desire Zoo (Tia Chucha Press.) Her poems have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Sun, Rattle, and elsewhere. She writes and teaches in Oakland, California. www.alisonluterman.net

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.

Karen Paul Holmes won the 2023 Lascaux Poetry Prize and received a Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize Anthology. Her two books are: No Such Thing as Distance and Untying the Knot. Poetry credits include The Writer’s Almanac, The Slowdown, Verse Daily, Diode, and Plume. 

>>> Tickets Available <<<

(Free! Donations appreciated.)

Four Poems by Alex Stolis

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Phantom Threads

When I was five, Dad would leave a bag of bar
chips at the foot of my bed at 4AM.

Even then I knew it was an offering, an amends
for imagined sins; that took years to understand.

I felt fragile, responsible, as if I was the one who
needed to apologize; for existing, for not finding

the right words as if a kid could have a vocabulary
or understanding of how to end a perpetual cycle

of poisonous sabotage, a legacy built before being
born; a foundation laid before the Ace High,

US Steel, before the endless trek across an aloof
ocean to an adopted land. It began before English

was a second language; anger self-doubt guilt shame,
all that contraband smuggled in from the Old Country;

generational threads used to weave a tapestry,
one side warmth and fire

the other a cold, frozen ache passed down, down
down, an unintended inheritance until I decided

to bury that tainted treasure, without a map,
making it impossible for my kids to find.

Every night I pretended to be asleep, devoured
the Lay’s in bed as soon as I woke up.

The berating he received from Mom tempered
by her smile, reserved solely for me,

became the spark for another explosive day;
one more stitch to be tied, knotted. Unraveled.

*

1995 Morgan Park High School All-Class Reunion Part II

I remember transistor radios, eight-tracks and unfiltered cigarettes,
women in bouffants, high heeled and lip-sticked doing housework;
casseroles and televisions with three channels because PBS didn’t
count after you outgrew Sesame Street.

All-Star Wrestling: Baron Von Raschke, Iron Sheik, Verne Gagne;
we went digging for treasure in the cellar, playing mom’s old 45’s
and 78’s; Heartbreak Hotel, Wake up Little Susie, Long Tall Sally.
I remember Topps Baseball Cards, the inedible-hard-as-rock-gum

we trashed instantly; touch and tackle football behind St Elizabeth’s,
Father Dulcina shouting out to the altar boys to not be late for mass.
Every grandparent or parent an immigrant: Serbia, Greece, Albania,
Yugoslavia; all the fathers/brothers/uncles worked at the Steel Mill,

third shift waiting at the door for the bars to open, to cash paychecks,
drink the regret from their lives. I remember shouts and breaking glass,
name calling and cursing, smell of whiskey, beer, impatience, yearning.
I remember the sting of flat-handed slaps, the stiff pummel of fists.

Too-quiet evenings exploding into 2 am war-zone mornings, cries muffled
by the clap clap of trains running. I remember unrequited crushes, undying
loyalty and fleeting hatred, shifting alliances, running gags, cruelty born
from boredom. Speed, weed, Thunderbird and Mad Dog 20/20, lukewarm

Windsor Cokes and cold snaps of shame. We were the unloved, unwanted
unclaimed strays; holding hands, awkward first kisses, and copping a feel.
Laying in empty fields, some stranger’s bed praying for the world to stop
churning. Knowing we could live forever. It was only a matter of time.

*

The Wonder Years

My father took me hiking once; an ill conceived
picnic/trek combo behind our five-room apartment.

The trail loosely marked, we weren’t dressed
properly; Dad in lightweight khakis, shiny shoes.

Me, Batman t-shirt, shorts, tennies with holes
in the sole; my sister sun-dressed, learning to walk.

I don’t think he was drunk but at five-years old it’s hard
to tell; he was home so it must have been a weekday.

Benders were storms that gathered on cartoon Saturdays
or dress-up for church Sundays;

that swimming-hole July day was made for adventure.
Trains ran at night behind the house, not quite drowning

out their yelling-blaming, me believing it was my fault.
I knew those boxcars were headed to far-flung lands,

China, London, Africa, Italy, New York City. An escape
hatch into geography; every exotic country within reach.

Years later, my sister swore she had memories of that day.
Tears, she said; didn’t know whose, but surely not his.

I’ll never forget. Dad all slope-shouldered, wet with sweat,
silence and his permanent nothingwronghere smile;

me all bramble-scratched-dirty, feeling the low spark
and rumble of a binge in his footsteps.

*

If we knew how it felt to be free we could hold back rivers

On the swingset at Stowe Elementary we planned
our getaway; teen bodies awkwardly squeezed on
the small planks. You tried to shock me by taking
out a cigarette, gave me a canary swallowing smile,
asked for a light. You laughed when I flipped my
Zippo, fired you up, then lit my own Camel straight.
You recognized me from fourth period Spanish II;

wanted to move to Spain, raise horses, never get
married. I said Bien Catalina! You chewed your lip
told me you preferred Cat; French inhaled like a pro.
Wasn’t until later I noticed the burns on your arm,
later still, your scarred thighs when you wore short
-shorts. I wondered what it’d be like to kiss you, feel
the drum of your fingers on my chest. You exhaled

a stream of smoke, said you liked my name, sounded
like a poem or a fairytale hero; took my hand, pointed
to the sky, Alejandro, es luna de cosecha. The next day
at school, I tried too hard to be cool, pretended to not
know you. You pretended to not care. After I went off
to college I heard you were fired from Far West Market.
Frankie caught you spiking the milk jugs with vodka;

you shouted at him over your shoulder, Can’t anyone take
a joke in this joke of a town? I wonder if you ever made
it out of that one-horse life with five bars, two churches,
the poker-faced disapproval from self-anointed saints.
From my kitchen window, I watch kids in the playground
across the street; listen for the pounding of hooves, wait
for a Harvest Moon to rise.

*

Alex Stolis lives in upstate New York with his partner, poet Catherine Arra; he has had poems published in numerous journals. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, Ekphrastic Review, Louisiana Literature Review, Burningwood Literary Journal, and Star 82 Review. His chapbook, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower’s Wife, was released by Louisiana Literature Press in 2024, RIP Winston Smith from Alien Buddha Press 2024, and The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres, 2024 by Bottlecap Press.

Two Poems by Brooke Herter James

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

When Everything Everywhere Seems So Grim

along comes the tatted-up guy
who beckons me into bay 2 at Jiffy Lube,
waving rag flags in both hands,
sleeves rolled high, cap to the side,
grinning and whistling to the tunes
rising from the well below.
The way he asks which oil I prefer
and How your wipers doin’?
makes something turn over inside me
like a hard tug on the rototiller
that’s been rusting in the barn all winter
and suddenly, surprisingly, restarts.
Anyway, that’s how I feel
when he shouts to his crew
No extras in Bay 2,
let’s get this lady through!
And now there’s three of them
hovering over my engine with hoses
and dipsticks, banging and clanging,
like the pit stop crew at the Indy 500.
Ten minutes later, just like the sign says,
they clunk shut my hood, give the thumbs up
and wave me out into midday traffic
amidst the smell of burgers, hot tar, and lilacs.
It’s the first Saturday of summer.
I think I might just be feeling it.

*

How My Father Taught Me to Wade Across the River

The trick, he said,
is to be afraid—
first of moving forward,
then of turning back.

*

Brooke Herter James’s poetry has appeared in online and printed journals, including ONE ART, Rattle, Bloodroot Literary and Orbis. She is the author of several poetry chapbooks and one children’s picture book. She lives in Vermont.

Three Poems by Shawn Aveningo-Sanders

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

My Goldilocks Closet

There’s a place in the back of my closet,
where I hang my memory. I have this fear
that someday I’ll plummet again, that I
will forget how to be happy. Back there
is where I store the purple dress I wore
for my second wedding, just in case
I want to wear it for our anniversary. But
it’s three sizes too big. And that’s a good
thing—finally learning the art of self-care.
There’s that black velvet number, trimmed
with mink, I wore to a country club soiree.
Oh, to wear that dress again—such a classic—
alas, it’s two sizes too small. And let’s face it:
even if it did fit, it wouldn’t really “fit” this
body “of a certain age.” I try on the denim jumper,
the one appliqued with black kittens popping
out of pumpkins. The one I wore decades ago
trick-or-treating with my kids. Somehow, it fits
“just right.” I slip my hand inside the pocket,
find a wadded-up Skittles wrapper, and inhale
the rainbow of my children’s youth.
A happiness I will never forget.

*

A Second Life

Every time I toss an empty Country Crock
into the recycle bin, I feel a tinge of guilt.
But also, I smile.

MeMaw was known for her pantry
full of Trailer Park Tupperware, saving
containers that once offered up

cool whipped-cream dollops atop
strawberry shortcake. Or those packed
with that almost just-like-butter taste

to spread on biscuits. She granted
each plastic vessel a second life.
Some cradled batches

of snickerdoodles
on their journey to my dorm—
small packets of love

to soothe away my homesick blues.
My roommate asked me why
anyone would ship a tub

of margarine. I laughed.
Then I saw her brown saucer eyes
speak of loneliness.

I un-burped the lid,
to open the tub, offered her
a cinnamon-sugared treat,

so she, too, could know
the taste of home—
she, so far away from her own.

*

Labels

Have you ever noticed the women
who linger in the canned food aisle? How
they will stand there in their comfortable shoes,
wearing a modest shade of pink lipstick to
perk up an exhausted smile, scrutinizing and
scanning each label: cans of creamed corn,
stewed tomatoes, garbanzo beans, and soup.
Is it the calories? Allergies? Price?

After weeks in the ICU, he is finally coming home.
I pore over every prescription protocol; key-in
each doctors’ number into my phone; make copies
of his Patient Implant Card to tuck into my wallet.
I buy one of those easy-to-read neon pill caddies,
so he never misses a dose from the armada of pills
fighting for his failing heart.

I scan a list from my pocket. How long have I
been standing here holding this can, reading
this label? I get it now—what it means to join
the sorority of salt seekers. Our faithful mission:
rooting out sodium dangers at every possible turn.
I understand these tedious, loving acts
and the monumental task to save the hearts
that beat in unison with our own.

*

Shawn Aveningo-Sanders’ poetry has appeared in journals worldwide, including Calyx, ONE ART, Quartet, Timberline Review, About Place Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and many others. She is the author of What She Was Wearing and her manuscript, Pockets, was a finalist in the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest, which is forthcoming from MoonPath Press. 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.

Writing Through Illness: A Workshop with Karly Randolph Pitman

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Writing through Illness: A Workshop with Karly Randolph Pitman

“Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you. Your feelings need you. Go home and be there for all of these things.”  – Thich Nhat Hanh

Illness – of all shapes and forms – is a complex threshold. As we journey through her doors, we meet change, loss, fear, pain, grief, fatigue, gratitude, wonder, awe – the full mystery of what it means to be human and to live in a human body.

In this online playshop, we’ll explore, write and share our way into a more generous, deeper connection with the complexity that arises when we host an illness in our body’s ‘guest house.’ We’ll use writing practices, presence, and poetry to meet these guests and nurture a more regenerative, curious, and compassionate relationship with our bodies, hearts, and minds. 

What might illness have to share with us? How might it meet us? How might we meet it?

This workshop is open to anyone who’s been touched by illness – their own, a loved one’s, a friend’s – and all kinds of illness – physical illness, mental illness, chronic illness, sudden illness. All levels of writing experience are welcome.

If you can’t join us live, we’ll record our time together so you can explore it later at your own pace. 

***

An image, like a poem, powerfully conveys where we’re headed.

Let Your Grief Wash You to Another Shore 

Used with the kind permission of the artist, Eddy Sara.

Find more about Eddy Sara on his website.

***

Writing Through Illness
Instructor: Karly Randolph Pitman
Date: Thursday, July 17, 2025
Time: 6:00-8:00pm Eastern
Price: Sliding Scale
Event will be recorded

>>> Register for Karly’s workshop <<<

***

~ About The Workshop Leader ~

Karly Randolph Pitman is a writer, teacher, poet, presenter, and mental health facilitator who helps people nurture a more compassionate relationship with their struggles. She’s the founder of Growing Humankindness, a gentle approach towards overeating, writes a reader supported poetry newsletter, O Nobly Born, and offers writing and mindfulness workshops to nurture self awareness and self compassion. She lives in Austin, Texas where she’s cared for the underbelly of long covid and autoimmune illness for the past five years. Her journeys through depression and illness continue to soften, teach and open her. In all she remains in awe of the human heart.

Two Poems by Michael Simms

~ ONE ART ~ 9 Comments

The Old Neighborhood

Frankie was working with a crew
replacing a roof in the old
neighborhood when two women

passed on the sidewalk below.
Frankie wolf-whistled, put
his hands behind his head

and gyrated his hips while
the other guys laughed. It was
a long day under a brutal sun

and harassing women was
one of the few perks of the job.
But it was a mistake

to target two women who
had grown up in the neighborhood
and knew a thing or two about

men. Annie, who was ten years
older than Frankie but looked
half her age, was a prison guard

and Maria, a teacher at
Southside High, had grown up
with four brothers. Annie

squinted at Frankie, pointed
and shouted I know who you are.
You’re Mario’s little brother.

Your mother Anastasia Zaveni
scrubbed floors every night of her life
after your pig of a father

left her with seven kids to raise
by herself. It would break
her heart to hear her son

yell at women on the
street, women who have sons
of their own. And Maria

joined in, shouting I’m going
over to Ruth Street right now
to tell Anastasia

you’re a pig just like your
father. And
Big Man Frankie shrank

to a small boy and pleaded
in a voice Annie and Maria
could barely hear

Oh please don’t tell my mother.
Please don’t. Annie could hear
the pain in his voice

and remembered Anastasia’s
shame at her poverty
and pride in her boys

and she knew she and Maria
would never tell Anastasia.
But the guys on the crew

roared with laughter
at Frankie getting schooled
by two tough broads,

and the rest of the day
the foreman gave Frankie
the roughest jobs on

the hottest part of the roof
and when Frankie complained
the other guys who now

remembered their own mothers,
sisters, wives and daughters
told him to shut his trap

or they would tell his mother
what a miserable excuse of a man
she’d raised.

*

Summers

Klaus and I painted
my house waiting
for my son to be born
Mac and I delivered
gravel all summer

The summer I taught
fourteen year old boys
unsteady in their desks
the summer the cop
arrested me in pity

The summer my first wife
fled from me and I woke
in the back of a truck
with men speaking Spanish

But that was long before
I woke every dawn
to swim two miles
beside the old man
who loved everyone

My son was born blue
in summer my daughter
pink in summer I remember
The summer of our delinquency
The summer of our deliverance

The summer I stole a surfboard
and spent the whole day
riding waves to shore

*

Michael Simms lives in the old Mount Washington neighborhood of Pittsburgh. His poetry collections include Jubal Rising (Ragged Sky, 2025.) His poems have appeared in Poetry (Chicago), Plume, Scientific American and Poem a Day (Academy of American Poetry). He is the founding editor of Autumn House Press and Vox Populi. In 2011, the Pennsylvania legislature awarded Simms a Certificate of Recognition for his service to the arts.

The Question by Sonya Rose Hartfield

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The Question

As my fertile years
fall away like
milk teeth, my
dentist asks me
again if I have kids.
“Only a fur baby,” I reply
for the second time,
promptly canceling my
next visit. My dog lies
against my womb, warm.
I photoshop his image into
ultrasound photos I show when
people ask if I have children.
“Here is my baby,” I tell them
rather than joke about
infertility, like a sociopath. In truth,
we just aren’t ready yet. I once did
a reiki session on my
sister’s womb, felt her baby
bright inside, like a nursery
nebula, felt wonder at the
kicks, as the baby became
more active, like a little
alien pushing to be
exorcised, but
still so beautiful.

*

Sonya Rose Hartfield is a poet and creative nonfiction writer who explores the intersection of femininity, chronic illness, somatic healing, poverty, and grief. She believes writing is a powerful vehicle for resilience and the radical act of reclaiming joy.

When You Live Alone with a Chronic Illness by Derek Eugene Daniels

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

When You Live Alone with a Chronic Illness

Holidays are the worst. Nothing open, no one
to call if the dizziness worsens. I prefer weekdays
so I can leave the office door open or stay near

the copier, where I’m visible. Weekends –
it depends. I walk around the condo questioning
every time I feel like I’m teetering. No one around

to say this might be normal, maybe okay, perhaps a side effect
of the medicine. Late Friday, almost midnight. I can’t stop
vomiting. I call the nurse hotline, respond to her irrelevant

questions, my phone in one hand, the other clutching
my stomach, my face in the toilet. Would you like me
to just send a vehicle, sir? Her shift must be ending

soon. I make way downstairs to the lobby, inform
the desk attendant to watch for the EMS truck,
his legs sprawled over the counter, watching a portable

television. Two strong men in uniform find me, carry me gently
to the vehicle, the way my father used to hold me close
to his chest when I complained of a stomach ache. As I lie sideways

on the bench, they ask what I do for a living. That must really be
rewarding. After being admitted, I lay in bed, the thin curtain
separating me from coughs, sneezes, conversations I can’t help

but overhear. No one knows I’m here. I fight to stay awake
protecting my wallet this time. Discharged the next morning,
I wonder about my way home. When the nurse replies,

No, none of our service shuttles are available, I walk out alone
on a Saturday morning, crossing empty sidewalks and streets,
the clouds kind enough to hold back the rain.

*

Derek Eugene Daniels is a speech-language pathologist and an associate professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders (speech-language pathology) at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He is a member of Springfed Arts creative writing organization and regularly participates in creative writing workshops. Derek has been a finalist multiple times in the annual Springfed Arts Poetry Contest. His poems have appeared in Call+Response Journal. Derek is passionate about self-expression, intersectionality, and his work with marginalized communities. In 2023, Derek received the Professional of the Year Scholar and Service Award from the National Stuttering Association for his scholarly and community service contributions to the stuttering community. In 2025, he received the William T. Simpkins, Jr., Service Award from the National Black Association for Speech-Language and Hearing for his notable contributions to the organization. Derek enjoys country music, 80s music, 80s and 90s television shows, and handwritten notes.

Atlas by Claudia Gary

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Atlas

The world begins to wear
a flat spot into my shoulder.

I carry it by turns with my
writing and nonwriting hand.

Oceans lap at my temples.
Submarine and whale songs

confuse my ear so I
change sides again and shake

a cramp out of one forearm.
My fingers seek mountaintops

to stay away from city traffic,
seek coasts to avoid immersion

except for this one coast
that began to burn my palm.

Closing my eyes and bowing
my head I wonder what

is happening in this story
but can’t yet put it down.

*

Claudia Gary lives near Washington DC and teaches workshops on Villanelle, Sonnet, Meter, Poetry vs. Trauma, etc., at The Writer’s Center (writer.org) and privately, currently via Zoom. Author of Humor Me (2006) and chapbooks including Genetic Revisionism (2019), she is also a health/science writer, visual artist, composer of tonal songs and chamber music, and an advisory editor of New Verse Review. Her 2022 article on setting poems to music, and some of her settings, can be found online at https://straightlabyrinth.info/conference.html. See also pw.org/content/claudia_gary

I Can’t Find My Gender by Abby E. Murray

~ ONE ART ~ 9 Comments

I Can’t Find My Gender

I must have set my gender down on the bus
and left it there for anyone to find.

Somewhere, a stranger turns my gender over
in his hands, holds it up to his ear, hears nothing.

I never thought to write my name on my gender,
or my phone number. For months, I thought

that I had swallowed my gender, somehow
absorbed it into my bones or my beautiful fat,

but I’ve had x-rays, MRIs, and mammograms
and the results showed no sign of my gender—

just dense breast tissue, an ulcer, some arthritis.
A colleague told me he assumed I was a woman

because of my earrings, the gold hoops, a gift
I was sad to smash in search of my gender:

Nothing. Just busted swirls of metal, genderless.
I’ve been told I talk like a man, so I recorded

my voice, played it backward and forward,
slowed down and sped up, and all I heard

was sound and language any human could use,
no matter their gender. Sometimes I wonder

if there are organizations with facilities where
my gender can find shelter, where it can be safe

until I come to claim it, and my gender
will know me when I walk in, will run to me

before the string of tin bells above the door
have stopped jingling their one-of-a-kind jingle,

so many ways for new songs to be sung
by the same instruments each day, each hour,

and my gender will jump into my arms
and a volunteer will say no doubt about it,

that’s your gender. But I also wonder—usually
at parties or before big work presentations

when I am lonely for my gender or given
a gender that isn’t mine to hold—whether

my gender is having the time of its life
wherever it is, whether it is thriving

on the kindness of those who notice it
and let it be, because sometimes I can’t find

my gender and yet I know it is there,
unable to be parted from me, its soft tongue

licking and licking the palm of my hand.

*

Abby E. Murray (they/them) is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. Their first book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, while their second book, Recovery Commands, recently won the Richard-Gabriel Rummonds Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Ex Ophidia Press. Abby served as the 2019-2021 poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, and currently teaches rhetoric in military strategy to Army War College fellows at the University of Washington.

Perhaps by Jo Taylor

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Perhaps

        The future is called ‘perhaps,’ which is the only possible thing
        to call the future.
                —Tennessee Williams

I see tomorrow dimly, some spots
on the canvas smudged. Like

a painting with too much water
on the lilies, bleeding unwanted

textures, dark patches at the edge.
Perhaps there’s a house, trees and

shrubs in the background. Or
is that children on the horizon,

playing catch or red rover,
tug-of-war or tag? Perhaps a single

figure along the shadowy line? Maybe
it’s two, one holding up the other.

*

Jo Taylor is a retired, 35-year English teacher from Georgia. In 2021, she published her first collection of poems, Strange Fire, and in 2025, she published her second book, Come before Winter (Kelsay Books). She has been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net. Connect with her on Facebook or at https://www.jotaylorwrites.com/

On Plagiarism by Nicole Caruso Garcia

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

On Plagiarism

You do what harm? I’d call it literary
masturbation, but let’s not knock an earnest
art: self-love—your own artillery
or sniper’s trigger. Fellow poets sneer at

not so much the theft but molestation
of the Muse. Your touch perverts the words,
left cheapened on a satinet loom.
Yet no one ought to put you to the sword.

Some silky day, you may find your flow,
the village cold, your poems crying wolf.

*

Nicole Caruso Garcia’s full-length debut OXBLOOD (Able Muse Press) recently received the International Book Award for narrative poetry. Her work appears in Best New Poets, Light, Mezzo Cammin, 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.

Re: Frank O’Hara, Cameron Awkward-Rich by Anna Gilmour

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Re: Frank O’Hara, Cameron Awkward-Rich

I’m up on fluoxetine
medication in an emergency
meditating on an insurgency
it’s 59 degrees
our garden’s sprouting jasmine green
AOC & Bernie hit the streets
I’m rereading Ross Gay
and relearning how to dream
golden hour finches dot the trees

the half-life of fear is hatred or fatigue
I’m sleeping deep
more interested in joy than grief
or, at least, the place they meet
Emmett’s taking his first steps
William’s swaddled to Sam’s chest
rabbits watch over their nest
ears flat against their heads

he’s not dead yet
but nothing here is permanent

*

Anna Gilmour is a psychologist revisiting non-academic writing after a long hiatus. She is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the University of Colorado Boulder. She lives, laughs, and loves in Colorado with her partner and their menagerie of pets.

After All These Years by Gloria Heffernan

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

After All These Years

In another room,
at the other end of the house,
my husband talks on the phone
for an hour with his ex-wife
discussing the joys and sorrows,
wonders and worries of their children,
the oldest of whom is fifty-four.

A frequent enough occurrence,
I have grown so accustomed
to their conversations
that I sometimes forget to marvel
at the way they navigate
the geography of family.

Even now, thirty years after they ceased
being husband and wife,
they have never stopped being curators
of what they co-created,
parents, separate but together,
like the coiled strands of DNA
that course through
the generations.

“Your divorce is better
than most marriages,” I tease,
when the three of us find ourselves
together at the holiday dinner table.
They laugh good-naturedly at the quip,
but it’s really not a joke.

It’s a testament to harmony,
to the way voices blend different notes
to create a more complex music.
I listen and am quietly awestruck as I think,
This is what peace sounds like.

*

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.

This by Laura Garfinkel

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This

        after Marianne Moore

My father used to say, This too shall pass
to anyone who would listen. My friends
repeat it back to me like some kind of balm
when needed. But everything passes—
days, months, years. Youth. When
did growing up turn to growing old?
Opportunities have passed or were taken.
Photos save chosen moments;
writing captures observations, thoughts—
our attempts to stop time, to taste it twice.
And the things we pass down, what remains?
My father used to say, This too shall pass
and now that he has passed, I wonder
when does this become that?

*

Laura Garfinkel retired from a career as a medical and psychiatric social worker. Her poems have appeared in Feral: A Journal of Poetry & Art, Moss Piglet, Tule Review, Last Stanza, and elsewhere. On weekends, she loves to hike and bike with her husband who makes her laugh and who she affectionately calls her muse. She is currently pursuing an MFA at Pacific University.

When Did My Evenings Return to the Shortest Routes by Olga Maslova

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

When Did My Evenings Return to the Shortest Routes

skipping your street—my vespers—
where, ten yards away,
I’d catch your silhouette
at 8 p.m. exactly:

soft table light. A plate.
a glass of wine,
some flowers, a sage-green wall.
Oh, Salve, my Regina.

It is a shock to see you by the window
in daylight, gazing out:
a quiet smile, a teacup, something blue,
smudged by receding darkness.

You’re not looking at me—
but at the dogwood.
You wouldn’t know my car—
I totaled the Subaru.

Have the hummingbirds returned,
or is it our old friend,
the robin from that first summer?
You kept its blue eggshells.

Our Bible was full of birds:
the swallows, owls, ravens.
We loved like cardinals,
and fought like magpies.

I don’t remember your body
ever this soft, this quiet, unfolded,
unfamiliar—as if you are waiting
for annunciation.

You draw the curtains.
I turn, head home,
toward the rising red full moon
in the hollowed evening.
The tunnel of scattered green April light—
my only consolation.

*

Olga Maslova is a Ukrainian-American writer and theater designer, born and raised in Kharkiv, Ukraine. She is a MacDowell Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar. Maslova is the winner of LitMag’s 2025 Emily Dickinson Award for Poetry, and her work appears or is forthcoming in “Beloit Poetry Journal,” “New Ohio Review” (nominated for the 2024 Best of the Net), “New American Writing,” “Plume Poetry,” “Frontier Poetry” (second place, 2023 Ekphrastic Poetry Prize), “RHINO Poetry,” “Strange Horizons,” “Naugatuck River Review” (semi-finalist for the Naugatuck Prize), and elsewhere. Her manuscript “Light Travels” is a semifinalist for the 2024 St. Lawrence Book Award. She is also the librettist for several large-scale vocal works composed by Ilya Demutsky, including the oratorio “The Last Day of the Eternal City,” the opera “Black Square,” and the art song cycle “Venetian Cycle.” These works have been performed in Moscow, Russia, and in the U.S. Maslova is an associate professor of theatre at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. More information can be found at https://www.olgapoetry.com.

Two Poems by Laura Ann Reed

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Photograph

His back to the camera
my father stands at the ocean’s edge.
Hands in his pockets, the flannel lining
thin as the hospital-issue robe
his own father wore over his pajamas.
“Go out to the hallway,”
he was told, “if you’re going to cry.”
Today, a moth stirs the air
near the dogwood. Circling and reversing.
Searching for more than is there.
The unopened leaf buds like half-said things.
At what edge does my father now stand?

*

On Suffering

Studying my reflection in the blossoming plums
I stumbled and fell.
My mother, who could never forgive my beauty
leaned over the examination table.
“Now you know how it feels,” she said.
It meaning life, I supposed.
The nurse gave me a tender look, her face radiant
with the world’s pain. A shoulder blade
was eased back into place.
Gravel removed with a surgical blade.
I imagined myself as the rock before it was crushed
and made into pavement. This was consolation.
I sensed all my troubles dropping away.

*

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 Christina Daub

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

People are Dying, But

I’m in my fifties when the officer informs me,
houses are for kissing, not parks and especially
not parks after dark, never mind that’s where
the moonlight and the stars hang out. She bores
her blinding headlights into us and barks,
are you clothed, why are your seats reclined,
what are you doing–we terrible criminals trying
to steal a little romance under Orion and Mars.
She demands to know where we live and why
we don’t go home, because houses are for kissing,
she repeats, as if I’d never thought I might kiss
you over the sink, or while paused in the doorway
handing you a book. Never mind the loveseat,
the corners, or the infamous nooks. As if I’d never
imagined the whole house being one big kisseria,
because that’s how it is when you’re in love
and want to kiss everywhere. But it’s a rough
night for the thin-lipped park policewoman
who looks like she hasn’t kissed in years, she
with the deadest beat, her short arm of the law
stretching only from her high beams to random
parked cars, as she makes her rounds in Rock Creek
Park, driving from playground to playground after dark.

*

Grief is like that

the plovers ticking this way and that, threading
the shore with their disappearing tracks,
the waves relentless, lulling, the wake
as temporary as our own wakes will be.

When they took your body away, the quarters
that weighed your eyes shut dropped
to the floor. No one wanted to touch them.

Cards stacked up by the hothouse flowers.
We’d held it together all day. Then the sky broke
open, and we were gutted like fish. Someone
brought over ice cream. I don’t remember who.

*

Christina Daub is a poet from Maryland. Her poems have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Stone Circle Review and others. She has been a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee.

The Hundred-Line Poem: A Workshop with Harriet Levin

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The Hundred-Line Poem

Instructor: Harriet Levin

Please Note: This is a four-week workshop
Virtual workshop meetings via Zoom

Dates: August 5, 12, 19, and 26 (Tuesdays)

Time: 6:00-8:00pm Eastern

Standard Price: $100
Economic Hardship: $75

Please note: This workshop is being rescheduled. Most likely for Winter 2025/26

Workshop Description:

Jump to the next level in your writing! Often we stop ourselves from exploring our material before we even confront it. Some of us may hold misconceptions about resolutions and endings or how to lean into narrative leaps. Together, we will practice slowing down our pace, spreading out, sustaining our concentration as we carpet our poems to fill the space of an entire room. We’ll read examples of hundred-line poems, including poem cycles, sequences, centos, and narratives, written by poets such as Walt Whitman, Octavio Paz, Larry Levis, Frank O’Hara, Diane Suess, Marilyn Chin, Martha Silano, Terrance Hayes, Peter Gizzi, Erin Murphy, and Jorie Graham. We will try out techniques such as accordion-style writing, parallel constructions, chiasmus, and repetition in the work of the poems we’ve discussed. The takeaway is your creation of a hundred-line draft. Those who are willing will have the opportunity to share these drafts in a nurturing environment.

About The Workshop Instructor:

Prize winning poet and writer Harriet Levin is the author of three poetry collections, The Christmas Show (Beacon Press, 1997), Girl in Cap and Gown (Mammoth Books, 2010), and My Oceanography (CavanKerry, 2018). Eavan Boland selected her debut book for the Barnard New Women Poets Prize. She is also the winner of The Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, a PEW Fellowship in the Arts Discipline Award, The Grolier’s Ellen LaForge Memorial Poetry Prize and Nimrod International’s Pablo Neruda Award. Her writing has appeared widely in journals such as The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Narrative Magazine, Ploughshares, The Forward, Prairie Schooner, The Smart Set, The Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, Denver Quarterly Review, Plume, ONE ART, and The Kenyon Review. She’s held poetry residencies at Yaddo, The Virginia Center for the Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. Levin is also the author of a novel, How Fast Can You Run, a novel based on the life of “Lost Boy” of Sudan Michael Majok Kuch (Harvard Square Editions, 2016), which came out of a project she founded with her students at Drexel University to reunite Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan with their mothers living abroad. How Fast Can You Run was excerpted in The Kenyon Review and profiled on NPR. Charter for Compassion chose How Fast Can You Run for its 2016 Global Read. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and has taught creative writing in both the undergraduate and MFA Program at Drexel University. In collaboration with PEN Haiti, she led a Drexel study abroad creative writing intensive to Port-au-Prince, from 2013-2018 for which the Philadelphia Haitian Coalition honored her with a Haiti Cultural Ambassador Award.

untitled by john compton

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

untitled

the vulture eats the deer;
the head is already gone.

the red beak & black wings
flash by my peripheral.

it swoops around in a circle—
a death kite:

wearing intestines like a medallion—
blood binding them to its chest.

it perches on my shoulders
& imbeds talons

to make us a singular objective;
to give me knowledge;

to teach me how to eat
the rot from this world;

to assist
in cleansing the decay.

*

john compton (b. 1987) is a gay poet who lives in kentucky with his husband josh and their dogs, cats and mice. his latest full length book is “my husband holds my hand because i may drift away & be lost forever in the vortex of a crowded store” published with Flowersong Press (dec 2024); his latest chapbook is “melancholy arcadia” published with Harbor Editions (april 2024). you can find his books, some poems and other things here: https://linktr.ee/poetjohncompton

Two Poems by Susan Vespoli

~ ONE ART ~ 7 Comments

“Horoscope”

         ~ for Kate

You will wake
from the dream
of fentanyl, diagnosis,
homelessness, rise above
the clouds gurgled from a vape pen,

wear white clothes
and pink running shoes,
though still commune
with the invisible,
hear and see what others don’t.

Minimart store clerks
will loan you their phones,
call you “a sweetheart,”
you who travel light,
float in guitar licks
and piano notes
plinked as a child: Für Elise.

You who the Dollar Tree
cashier scorns with her held
breath, her averted
eyes, her lack
of response to your thank
you after ringing
up your Wet Wipes
and trail mix,

she who failed
to see the glow
of your aura,
you who smile
and heal and rise
above all who judge
you as dust.
You are moon.

*

Everything

is rolled between my palms:
brown sugar, peanut butter, unbleached
flour, and salt. Balls form on the creased
map of my hands. Travel line, heart
line, family line, fate line.

On the morning of my daughter’s
37th birthday, I lay it all out
on my kitchen counter, stir
and spoon, press a dozen
planets onto a metal tray. Criss-

cross each one with a wet fork.
Bake. Place in a clear bag.
Drive to the designated meeting
spot. Me and my sack of flat
orbs. Unless you make other choices,

I say (again and again and again),
this is your life. And then, Look
at my eyes. Her, a bird perched
on the passenger seat of my car
pulled by sky out the window.

And so she turns, her green eyes
touch my blue for a second
until she laughs, Your pupils
are so tiny! Me, I love you;
her, I love you, too,

and then goodbye.
Peanut butter cookies.
Intersect of life lines,
tight rope, high wire, thread
of connect. Energetic pinprick of light.

*

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

Where to Submit Your Poetry (besides ONE ART)

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

~ Meeting Day/Time ~  

Tuesday, June 24, 2025

1:00 PM (Eastern Time)

Please note: This meeting will not be recorded.

*

Register for the meeting: Here.

*

~ Meeting Description / Agenda ~

The plan is to use this space to discuss where ONE ART contributors and readers are submitting and publishing their work.

Further, this is an opportunity to discuss “comps”, that is, lit mags doing something at least somewhat similar to ONE ART, lit mags that may be good places to submit your work if your work tends to be a good fit for ONE ART.

We’ll also discuss general recommendations for lit mags that are doing good work, worth reading and supporting.

*

Mrs. T’s by Jeanine Walker

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Mrs. T’s

Middle-of-the-night pierogies is not my norm,
but it once was. I came home late after a shift
at the AMC Theatres or Wendy’s
and started the water to boil. So many of the foods
I love are a conduit for butter, and this was no
exception: buttered sautéed onions, fresh
broccoli if we had it, and the once-frozen, now-
boiled pierogies moved to sizzle with the butter in the pan.
I could fry them to their perfect crisp, their dough
browned, ready to slice, then bite, the warm
mix of potato and cheddar replacing whatever
hunger I might’ve felt, what hunger for a missing
parent, the necessity of two teenaged jobs,
the bare loneliness of that house. Father
gone. Brother gone, brother out.
When I ate the pierogies I must’ve known someone
cared I didn’t eat only the stale popcorn
I brought home. Me at the counter those summer
Thursday nights, sautéing, slicing, savoring.

*

Jeanine Walker is the author of The Two of Them Might Outlast Me (Groundhog Poetry Press, 2022) and the recipient of a 2025 microgrant for Korean poetry translation from Seattle City of Literature. She holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston, and her poems and translations have found homes in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Jeanine teaches poetry and publishing in Seattle, where she runs a comedy-infused poetry event called It Goes On.

PALL MALL by Doug Fritock

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

PALL MALL

Whenever my father would give up
smoking—usually once a year
or so when I was a boy
and they showed us pictures
of blackened lungs in school—

he would first hold the half-smoked
pack under running water,
as if rinsing a piece of fruit,
before throwing them in the trash.

The reason for this was so he wouldn’t
go digging for one later
to puff on with a cup of coffee
after I had gone to sleep.

But cigarettes are easier to drown
than habits, and before long,
a fresh dry pack would appear
on the counter, and the cycle
would begin anew.

I remembered this last month,
when, after flying to Pittsburgh
to clean out his house, I found
a pack of his trademark PALL MALL
tucked under some papers
in a drawer in his kitchen.

And unsure what else to do,
I drenched them under the faucet
until they were sopping wet,
then tossed them into the garbage
with the rest of his life’s detritus.

*

Doug Fritock is a writer and father of 4 living in Redondo Beach, California. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, The Black Fork Review, and Hunger Mountain among other literary journals. He is an active member of Maya C. Popa’s Conscious Writers Collective.

15 by Clint Margrave

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

15

Your death is a teenager now.
Your death has acne,
is insecure,
has possibly even kissed someone.

In another year, your death
can get its driver’s license.
And after that,
your death will graduate high school
and I’ll have to ask it
if it ever plans to move out
and find a place to live.

But your death knows
it isn’t going anywhere.
Your death knows it’ll
stay here no matter
how much I try to kick it out.

Your death has mostly
been a good guest,
quiet, respectful,
staying out of my way
especially now that it’s older,
to the point where sometimes
I almost forget it’s there,
unlike the infant who used
to kick and scream
and keep me up all night.

Your death stays in its room
with the door shut
most of the time now,
like I used to do to you
when I was a teenager,

when I’d threaten to kill myself,
and light candles in my room,
sit on the floor,
thinking about how lonely I was,
your death, I’m sure,
is lonely too.

*

Clint Margrave is the author of several books of fiction and poetry, including the poetry collections Salute the Wreckage, The Early Death of Men, and Visitor, all from NYQ Books. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, The Sun, Rattle, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. He is currently a 2024-2025 U.S. Fulbright Scholar living in Sofia, Bulgaria. When not abroad, he lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Torii Gate, Knobs Haven Cemetery, Retreat, Day Two by Betsy Mars

~ ONE ART ~ 9 Comments

Torii Gate,
Knobs Haven Cemetery,
Retreat, Day Two

       — for my mother, Marien

Among so many markers anchored in Kentucky
grass, this one newly carved, my mother’s twin
in death.

She, too, would now be 91, gone
these 24 years. I still have her birding
guide in Portuguese, I remember, listening
to these songs I can’t identify. So many
stones, dates erased by time, wind, lichen
growing, the ledger slowly disappearing.
In another two years I will be older
than my mother lived to be.

Will my lungs fail me as yours did? Is there something
seeded in my anatomy, too, that will creep up, take me
down? O suffering Jesus. O sorrowful Marien—
your death wish finally caught up with you
when you no longer sought it. Sixty-seven
candles on your last birthday cake, no breath
to blow them out.

This afternoon I walked
through this pointless gate that keeps
nothing out and wondered at its purpose—
carved with pineapples, a sign of welcome,
with no fence on either side. At dusk, I passed
back through, followed my shadow
to the waiting room.

*

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.”

Three Poems by Dana Henry Martin

~ ONE ART ~ 16 Comments

Window Strike at Highlands Behavioral Health

While we were talking about death, bullet-like,
a crow struck the floor-to-ceiling window and landed
on his back two stories below. I checked on him
during a patio break. He was still alive. I placed him
in a shrub. He grabbed a branch with his talons
but flipped upside down when I let his body go.
He was too cold, his nictitating membranes
clouding his eyes as he lay on the shrub’s moat
of dank mulch. I rolled him onto his stomach
so he could breathe, but he flipped on his back
again and again. Is he dead, the patients asked,
most of them young men who were certain
everything was an omen. They lived from sign
to sign, deciphering what things really meant,
the secrets speaking all around them. I think
he’s dying, I said. There’s nothing we can do.
At our next patio break, the crow was gone.
What does that mean, the patients asked me.
I wanted to believe what I told them. The crow
was just stunned and needed time to fly away.
But I think a staff member went around the side
of the building and tossed the bird, alive or dead,
into a bag and then into the trash, a truth I could
barely confront, my mind lashed by sadness
and fear. Maybe that bird was a sign, an omen.
Maybe we were all the bird and the staff member
was the entire staff and the bag was our cure
and the trashcan was the hospital and we were
either alive or dead, all us patients and maybe
the nurses and techs, too. It was impossible
to confront that they were in our world like that
or that we were in their world like this, that we
were each other’s worlds. Our faces in their eyes,
theirs in ours appear. Bird gone to glass. Bird gone
to ground. Bird gone to trash. Patient gone to knees.
Patient gone to floor. Patient gone to needle. How
could I say that? I had to say, The crow survived.

*

Lost

The town I live in became a fun-house
version of itself when I slipped into psychosis
two summers ago. Or was it fall? Seasons turned
inside out, and time, and place. People I knew
looked like each other. The men like my father.
The women like my mother. I walked down streets
in the dark waiting for the LDS version of God
to take me or send me to perdition with his sons.
His call. He did neither. Every road ended in a field
or a turnabout, rows of cows or dark houses.
I was missing the signs, the ones I needed to see
in this rural puzzle game of piety. I called the police.
Maybe they’d book me for not being wanted, even
by God. Surely, that was a capital offense. They said
to go home, where I didn’t belong. I needed to be
forgiven once and for all or punished for eternity
for being his daughter. For being of him. For being his.
Heavenly father, on behalf of my father, wipe me off
this map, wrap me in your gown, lift me from this bed
and burn me until I’m clean or extinguish me before
I manage to burn down this whole damn town.

*

Bonnet About a Demurring Theme, I Mean

sonnet about a recurring dream, no world
outside this restroom with its busted squalls and
leashing skinks, I mean rusted stalls and leaking
sinks, a mingled blight nickering of love, I mean
single light flickering above. Unkind
prayers aren’t even falls, I mean sometimes there aren’t
even stalls, just one wrong stash in the drawer, I mean
one long gash in the floor. Or the best groom has no
whore. I mean the restroom has no door. There’s
never any wrath issued, I mean there’s
never any bath tissue, and I want to
clot over the stench, I mean squat over the
trench, but my eggs are breaking, I mean my legs are
shaking like I’m awake, I mean like I am a wake.

*

Dana Henry Martin’s work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Barrow Street, Chiron Review, Cider Press Review, FRiGG, Meat for Tea, Muzzle, New Letters, Rogue Agent, Sheila-Na-Gig, SWWIM, Trampoline, and other literary journals. Martin’s poetry collections include the chapbooks No Sea Here (Moon in the Rye Press, forthcoming), Toward What Is Awful (YesYes Books), In the Space Where I Was (Hyacinth Girl Press), and The Spare Room (Blood Pudding Press).

Four Poems by Moudi Sbeity

~ ONE ART ~ 10 Comments

All Things Bloom

You cannot crack open a heart.
No more than you can bend steel
or pry open a still pursed blossom.
No more than you can peel back
the sky or force a seed to sprout
by hammering its shell.
Some things aren’t ready to stand
exposed and naked in the light.
Some cannot bear the violence
of knowing, the insistence of change.
All you can do is shine ever-on with
indiscriminate hope in trust that
all things bloom, with determined
patience that they will.

*

Gulf of My Body

water does not
concern itself
with what name
you give its
shaped body.
Water remains
what it is,
so long traveling,
passing through
our palmed attempt
at claiming it.

*

Whale Shark

A whale shark, according to the five year old at
the climbing gym, is what happens when a whale
eats a shark. Just like that. It’s simple. Everything
is separate and when two things join they just
add to another. The shark doesn’t die in this story.
Nothing changes. The world is still safe, predictable.
The whale shark was his favorite tattoo, but now it’s
erased. My full sleeve tattoos don’t erase though,
and they’re the biggest ones he’s seen. Like really big.
Like really really big. I thought of how when sorrow
consumes joy they don’t simply add to each other,
but become poignant. And when gratitude spills
into grief together they create the conditions for
surrender. Or even how water and flour make bread,
not Water Flour. Some things get lost along the way.
But I didn’t tell him this; that a whale shark is actually
a shark, just a really big one. I wanted more to believe
in the simplicity of his world, in the authenticity of
how things join, then come apart, and in the process
nothing is changed, no one dies. We just continue to
appear and disappear into each other’s lives unaffected,
our innocence not yet capable of breaking.

*

Vote For Dancing
        Cast all your votes for dancing – Hafiz

Send me a ballot that comes with a list of
public art installments and a referendum for
city funded meditation halls, and a closely
watched race for the elected vegetable of the
year – Italian squash. A ballot with a list of
dates for a day of non action, a month, a year.
Some stretch of time we agree to inhabit with
complete silence, in solitude, in stillness.
I want to choose between the many ways to
collectively practice prayer for the next while;
kneeling in front of the same tree at dawn,
submerging our feet in the creek reciting
loving-kindness mantras; may you flow freely,
unobstructed. May you never dry. And if you
do, may you still sing. I want to vote for some
body who, on more days than not, picks up a
poem, eats it, looks inside, loudly grieves.
Somebody who will pardon immigrating
geese, appoint a composer general, sign into
law a tax credit for books purchased by local
authors, farmer’s markets, sustainable meals.
I want a ballot that asks me to vote for harvest.
For dancing. For rain. In just the way a bridge
might vote for connection, and the sun for a
new day. And your hand on my shoulder
for steady, and the sky for welcome, for air.

*

Moudi Sbeity is a first-generation Lebanese-American currently enrolled in the Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling masters program at Naropa University. Prior to attending Naropa, they co-owned and operated a Lebanese restaurant in Salt Lake City, which served as a queer safe space. Moudi was also a named plaintiff in Kitchen v. Herbert, the landmark case that brought marriage equality to Utah in 2014. As a person who stutters, they are passionate about writing and poetry as transpersonal practices in self-expression.

Moudi’s poems have appeared in the following anthologies; Irreplaceable by Nan Seymour and Terry Tempest Williams (Moon In The Rye Press, 2025), Love Is For All Of Us by James Crews (Storey Publishing, May 2025), The Nature Of Our Times by Luisa A. Igloria (Paloma Press, Fall 2025). Moudi’s first book, Habibi Means Beloved, a memoir on growing up queer and stuttering in Lebanon, is expected to be published in late 2026 by University of Utah Press.

Three Poems by Joseph Fasano

~ ONE ART ~ 13 Comments

To the Insurance Executive Who Denied My Heart Procedure

You may not think it is worth it
but at night, in the dark
before morning,
my son lays his ear on my gnarled heart
and tells me it is beautiful music.
He doesn’t fathom
what you did to me,
that you’ve traded our days of playing
for a few small pieces of silver.
All he thinks
is my father’s heart is music.
I hear. I hear. I knew.
Ruler, the children
will outlive you.
I wish you
a long, long life of silences
while dreamers hear the living world is singing.
The one you have denied a life is you.

*

The Reckoning

All your life you’ve tried to prove
your beauty. You have handed over
the locked harp of your darkened heart,
believing love a shelter from immensity.
Alone, in the clothes of old ghosts,
you have touched the face
of the mirrors of childhood
like lakes that hold the gold rings
of the wronged.

Listen. It is time. It is time now.
You cannot live in two worlds forever.
Rise up
and walk the way of changes,
deep through the wilds
of childhood, deep
through the cities of the living,
and tap your hand on the great weight
of love’s door
and say it, say the proof
is useless.
Fall into the arms that hear your song.

*

Lazarus

You ask what death was like.
It was like falling into water
as water.
My father was a dark ship
falling through me,
loaded with plum-wine and honey.
My mother moved the sea of me,
its stars.

I tell you
the new life is permitted.
A hand comes
and lifts you by the fingers,
and there you are,
blinking in the morning light,
the graveclothes falling from your shoulders,
a soft touch saying
start again, start again.
This time be the miracle you are.

*

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.

Father Hopkins by Sally Nacker

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Father Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889

I’d like to walk with you today.
The bluebells hold the rain.
Spring rain holds sounds of bells
you rang in Wales, as rain
holds sounds. I see you
saunter through my wild
yard in your dark robe, pure
as water down a bluebell
leaf. All holy. All good.
I walk with you.

*

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.

Having a Gay Awakening at the Elm Grove Public Pool by Sean Glatch

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Having a Gay Awakening at the Elm Grove Public Pool

They carried their bodies like they had none,
the men I watched at the public pool
when no one was watching me—

Not even God,
whose body I imagined
while sitting erect in the crooked church pews
as gleaming, hefty, cloudy, wide.

My church: a pool of shirtless men.

What stirred under the water
I couldn’t name, wouldn’t tame.

O had I known
the animal want I wanted
to name and tame me.

Thank God I slept with God.
Thank God He ghosted me.
Thank chlorine water and summer heat
and the blood flower blooming
wild, yes, this beating want,

those bodies disastered
into doorways, the body made
enjambment, this Godhood I found

when I was too sacred and too scared
to be both prey and prayer,

hands cupped
on holy bushfire.

*

Sean Glatch is a queer poet, storyteller, and screenwriter in New York City. His work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Milk Press, 8Poems, The Poetry Annals, on local TV, and elsewhere. Sean currently runs Writers.com, the oldest writing school on the internet. When he’s not writing, which is often, he thinks he should be writing.

The Mantra of a Teratoma by Carolynn Kingyens

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

The Mantra of a Teratoma

“Emptiness and boredom:
what a complete understatement.
What I felt was complete desolation.
Desolation, despair and boredom.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

I knew a woman once
who had absorbed
her embryonic, parasitic twin
while in utero
to show up decades later
masquerading as a brain tumor
on a brain scan
before revealing its true
albeit grotesque identity
to a gaggle of neurosurgeons
who’d gathered round
her open, egg-like skull
as they peered down
in total awe
at this little, shiny ball of fetal flesh
covered in random sprouts
of human hair, teeth,
and bone.

They call this thing,
this medical monstrosity,
a teratoma,
some mystical malady
ending in the scary suffix— “oma,”
joining the ranks
among the other omas:
melanoma, lymphoma, glaucoma,
sarcoma, carcinoma — oma
meaning abnormal growths.

Those of us who are
either too damaged
by life, by love,
or the lack thereof
morph into relational
“omas” of our own;
these walking,
human-husk monsters
eating the essence
of twin flames,
filling the internal,
howling void.

A Gen-Z philosopher
on YouTube
points to the power
of detachment —
the way of the stoic,
and every morning
I stare at the stranger
in the mirror
reciting a mantra
like some childish game
of Bloody Mary:

Observe, don’t absorb.

Master the pause.

Starve the drama.

*

Carolynn Kingyens was born and raised in Northeast Philadelphia, where the red brick row houses were prone to chronic leaks. She has authored two books of poetry, Before The Big Bang Makes A Sound, and Coupling. In addition to poetry, Carolynn writes essays, reviews, and short fiction. She writes on a myriad of topics ranging from pop culture to true crime on Medium.

Carolynn’s third book of poetry, Lost In The Bardo, is due out in 2025. American Poet, Peter Campion, writes:

“I don’t know of another book of poetry that portrays middle age with the blend of humor and deep emotion that distinguishes Carloynn Kingyens’ Lost in the Bardo. In vivid high res, these poems combine spiky wit and acute observation with the vulnerable openness of a voice “forever searching.” Contemporary poetry is larger and more alive for this superb collection.”

Two Poems by Steph Sundermann-Zinger

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Above Elizabeth, New Jersey

The bridge between Staten Island and Elizabeth
hangs so high above the water, I can’t tell
if the drab, grey boomerang below me is a bird
or its reflection. As I stutter toward New Jersey,

the Arthur Kill a stew of oil tankers, cormorants
whipstitching jagged seams across the sky,
I am my own fogged mirror, woman-girl,
my eyes turned inward. It will be dark

before I get to Plymouth; already, clouds ravel
to pastel threads, denuding the horizon, early moon
a vulgar eye. Arrival will be chaos, the night
fracturing into shards of discordant sound —

nephews bare-calved in the sharpness of mid-March,
shouting across the frozen yard in soccer shorts,
dog salting the air with shallow barks. My sister
in the window, waiting, her face an underwater echo

of my own. I’ll navigate the winter-yellowed hill,
step inside and find my mother angry, always
angry, and my father, treading water
in a sea of fish-slick thoughts, forgetting

and remembering, the living room a familiar
mystery. I wonder about Elizabeth, men fishing
in the Kill with their jacketed children, picture
their homes torch-bright in the middle distance

past enigmatic factories whispering smoke,
beyond the crackling Eiffel towers
of the power lines. Inside, marshmallow couches,
laminate tables, too many chairs, small fire

snapping behind its dusk-black grate. Everything soft,
easy. Fathers shed boots, glide sock-footed
to their seats, small children in their wake like paper
boats, adrift in a river I don’t want to cross.

*

To the Chimpanzee Mother who Carries an Ironwood Branch in Remembrance of Her Infant

I see the way you cradle
that blooming bough
against the blunt sorrow
of your stomach, having lost
even the small, still body, grief
upon grief. The way mourning wears you
like a pair of gloves, demanding
you do something
with your hands. When my unborn child
stopped growing, someone left me
a potted rosebush – I planted it
in peat and loam and watched it
wither anyway, loss
upon loss. The way we just can’t
keep a body alive, the way we reach
for something green to hold
when our ghosts pass through.

*

Steph Sundermann-Zinger is a queer poet living and writing in the Baltimore area. Her work explores themes of identity, relationship, and connection with the natural world and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Avenue, Blue Unicorn, Little Patuxent Review, Lines + Stars, Literary Mama, Split Rock Review, Writers Resist, and other journals. She was the 2023 recipient of the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize and a fall 2024 Writer in Residence for Yellow Arrow Publishing.

Two Poems by Kelli Russell Agodon

~ ONE ART ~ 6 Comments
Leki Ruse Tonight, the mango is a beautiful gay moon and how I adored the men during the Pride parade who said, Pretty girl coming through, no matter the age. My brothers, the men I love, and when the world told them they were being punished and “gay cancer” was what they deserved, I held Joseph’s hand and said—You did everything right. A year later getting an HIV test at Planned Parenthood the nurse told me, You can do this anonymously, I said, No, I’m not ashamed. I said, In solidarity. She pushed, Live quietly. Said, We don’t want your insurance to worry you took this test, said, Don’t be you. So, at twenty, for a moment I became Leki Ruse, a misspeak, misspell of my name—Kelli Russell—to keep me safe, to say—No one will come for you. To say—My god, we all deserve not to be blamed.

*

Even the Rain Has a Side Hustle

Every tenth piece of wood on the woodpile
holds a spider. A miracle beetle or bitsy ants.
It’s first light, and robins have their coffeetalk
in a fir tree that looks exhausted. Without
one cloud in the sky, the sun decides
if it’s going to rise—you don’t believe
the rising is certain, right? The sun wakes
each day and then chooses to go to work.
There is a chipmunk that shrieks its demands
at 6:30 a.m. every morning. First shift.
A banana slug slogs across the bumpy path
—an hour later, it’s arrived to the corporation
of grass. The hummingbirds have been whirring
for hours, over the blossoms of poppies, who
finally raise their heads like sleepy rich girls
with nowhere to go.

*

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 Morrow Dowdle

~ ONE ART ~ 5 Comments

I Decline the Order of Protection

I knew I had landed in Oregon because the airport speakers
were playing 80s goth rock and there were lots of people dressed
like skater punks or lumberjacks retrieving their luggage.
And the bathroom was all-gender, white and bright-lit
as a futuristic chapel, each stall with a door fully flush
with the floor. I stepped up to the bank of sinks
beside a buttoned-up cop. I admit I’m still scared of men
sometimes, and my mother-in-law’s crime dramas don’t help.
But not there, the officer and I just trying to eliminate
our bodies’ waste. He wasn’t pretending to be a man—
he was a man. Nor was the woman in the church bathroom
back home pretending to be a woman. Nor was she afraid
to wear a leather jacket and skirt to the service—that requires
real courage. She was taking her two little girls to pee,
each whining on the toilet. I was washing my son’s hands
as he resisted the soap. The woman and her kids came out,
and she and I rolled our eyes at each other, no longer
strangers as we sympathized about how our children
drive us nuts. She was just any other mother except
for the small lump at her throat that can never go away.
As if she carries some small sadness. And goes on anyway.

*

And Then, We Hear It

That is, I hear it, and then
she enters my bedroom.
Face stricken.

I heard it, she says. Something
booming. I don’t correct her,
don’t say shooting.

The book of essays stays
open on my lap. I’m reading
the scholar’s message

to the would-be confessional poet.
Their recommendation? Your verse
should be more gospel

than gossip. The only hymn
at present a ringing in my ears.
Aren’t you scared?

she asks. I tell again the saddest
lie—No, I reply. I cut her
loose in her fear, make

my face maddeningly flat.
And what could I say about
the stray bullet that found me

in Chicago. Or the ones
that fly by no accident
into a brother’s or sister’s

chest or head. Men do kill,
whether it’s bird or deer
or a queer who’s been known

to hold a red card, sitting
out here in the country
with my daughter,

where the KKK still lurks
in corners. Then there’s
the adrenaline of executive
orders, the line not far
from Klan to militia.
It’s probably someone

hammering, she says.
Yes, I say. I like that
explanation. I like us

to think that someone’s
out there in the dark
on a silver ladder, nails

sprouting from their mouth.
So eager to build a house
they could not wait for morning.

*

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.