Month: July 2025

ONE ART’s August 2025 Reading

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

>>> Tickets Available <<<

(Free! Donations appreciated.)

The reading will be held on Sunday, August 17 at 2pm Eastern.

The official event is expected to run approximately 1-hour.

After the reading, please consider sticking around for Community Time discussion with our Featured Poets.

About Our Featured Poets:

Julia Caroline Knowlton is a Professor of French and creative writing at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. Among her publications are a memoir, a children’s book and three poetry chapbooks. She was twice named a Georgia Author of the Year in the poetry category. Julia offers private instruction online in addition to her full load of college teaching.

Michelle Bitting was recently named a City of L.A. Department of Cultural Affairs Individual Artist Grantee and is the author of six poetry collections, including Nightmares & Miracles (Two Sylvias Press, 2022), winner of the Wilder Prize and named one of Kirkus Reviews 2022 Best of Indie. Her chapbook Dummy Ventriloquist was published in 2024 by C & R Press. Recent poetry appears on The Slowdown, Thrush, Cleaver, The Poetry Society of New York’s Milk Press, Heavy Feather Review, Split Lip, National Poetry Review, SWWIM, ONE ART, and is featured as Poem of the Week in The Missouri Review. Her forthcoming collection Ruined Beauty will be published by Walton Well Press in Fall, 2025. Bitting is writing a novel that centers around Los Angeles and her great grandmother, stage and screen actor Beryl Mercer, and is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Literature at Loyola Marymount University.

Heather Kays is a St. Louis-based poet and author who has been passionate about writing since age seven. Her memoir, Pieces of Us, dissects her mother’s struggles with alcoholism and addiction. Her YA novel, Lila’s Letters, explores healing through unsent letters. She is currently seeking a literary agent and publisher for Pieces of Us, along with six chapbooks and two full-length poetry collections.

She runs The Alchemists, an online writing group and creative community, and is drawn to stories that explore survival, identity, and the complexity of being human.

Her work has recently appeared in ONE ART, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Chiron Review, The Literary Underground, The Rye Whiskey Review, SHINE Poetry Series, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Her debut poetry collection, Myths in the Feed: Poems of Performance, Pain & Perseverance, was just released from Crying Heart Press!

Sonia Greenfield (she/they) is the author of four poetry collections: All Possible Histories (Riot in Your Throat), Helen of Troy is High AF (Harbor Editions), Letdown (White Pine Press), and Boy with a Halo at the Farmer’s Market (Codhill Press). Her poetry and creative non-fiction have appeared in the 2018 and 2010 Best American Poetry, Southern Review, Willow Springs and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Minneapolis where she teaches at Normandale College, edits the Rise Up Review, and advocates for neurodiversity and the decentering of the cis/het white hegemony. More at soniagreenfield.com.

Cashew Gatherers by Ranudi Gunawardena

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Cashew Gatherers

Waking to borrow gunny sacks
from the firewood-shed, we set out
on April mornings along the winding
trail to the cashew trees stretching
on the horizon of grandpa’s garden.
The branches, lifting to split the sky,
wove with their leaves, an elaborate
roof. So, sunlight, when it entered,
was sifted, and spiraling, made puddles
at our feet, where we discovered
like small commas, the soot-shelled
cashew-nuts, waiting. Camouflaged
against tree-trunks, the bats hung
from branches, their stomachs swollen
ripe with cashew-apples. In their cavern,
we were only silent gatherers, bending
to fill our sacks with nuts, and the occasional
bat-bitten fruit, which we carried to the well
and washing, ate before returning home.
On evenings, seated in his sling chair,
grandpa split with his long paring knife
the shells into two, wiping the blister
-milk in his hands with a piece of cloth.
When each black shell fell, exposing
the white seed within, pair after pair,
we closed our eyes and thought of the bats
awakening, their wings opening,
black and blind, to the fruit of night.

*

Ranudi Gunawardena is a Sri Lankan poet whose work explores the wombscape, childhood in rural landscapes, and the uncanny in nature among others. Her work has appeared in literary magazines such as Action, Spectacle, Chestnut Review, Magma, and Shō. She studies at Williams College.

What I Remember of You Alive by Zander Crowns

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What I Remember of You Alive

On some sticky summer evening,
you wore a black shirt, were bald, and
walked down a hall with wood floors and white walls.
You liked pickle relish.
You went by Grumpy, a nickname
you made to set you apart from my
other grandpa (Well, I didn’t know
that last part until your urn had
rested in a crypt for four years).
I remember the night before you died.
I wasn’t with you (I didn’t know why at the time).
My mom gathered my siblings and me in a room with blue walls
(I don’t remember the floor color).
The ceiling fan light draped a sleepy white glow over us.
Mom said you were going to
die soon and that we should say a prayer.
So we did (I don’t remember the words).

All the rest, how your two bombing runs ran awry,
how you stole a box of staplers during your
college tenure, how you voted for Wonder
Woman in every presidential election since 1962, how
your dad wished he had not given you his name,
is a patchwork sewn together
by those who knew you longer than I did.

*

Zander Crowns hails from the hills of Spicewood, Texas, but presently lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He is a student at Southern Methodist University, pursuing a major in both English and film.

The Apartment Below by Tara Vassallo Consiglio

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The Apartment Below

A body was wheeled out of the apartment downstairs yesterday.
Shiny black van in my parking space,
practiced precision,
stark silver stretcher,
red leather cushion —
disappearing into the apartment below.

Was it the one under me,
where I’ve seen children
and that man who smokes in his sandals?
Or the one next door,
where once I saw an old woman
who complained about peanut shells
left by crows I secretly fed?

In black uniforms —
bearing out their practiced proficiency —
on just one of many pilgrimages.

Their quarry draped in red velvet
with a brass zipper,
my neighbor I’d never seen
until now,
ferried across sunlight and bright green grass
on a hired gurney,
these two shepherds of the dead.

Who are you? Who were you?
So long I’ve lived here,
and not even know.
Were you the one who cursed my crows,
or some other?

People move in and out so often, you see —
I don’t bother to know.
Behind my door is a world
where my cat watches the neighbors
and judges them,
and I am in meeting after meeting,
or preparing for each storied routine.

The world could pass —
these walls are the same.
But I never thought
who comes for us
in the end.

Still, my neighbor died
beneath my floorboards,
their soul rising
through the ceiling where I trod the other side,
and could have paused —
looked at me in my bed,
wondering at me instead.

*

Tara Vassallo Consiglio is a poet from California now living in the Pacific Northwest. Her work explores inheritance, myth, desire, and memory—drawing from her Sicilian roots, fire-scarred landscapes, and the quiet legacies that linger after rupture. “The Apartment Below” is her first published poem and is part of a debut collection-in-progress.

Hellifino by Todd Wynn

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Hellifino

We were lost in Indiana—
no signs,
just jotted directions
ending in cornfields.

Dad unfolded the map
as he unfolded his legs
getting out of the car,
wondering if we’d passed
this cornfield before.
My sister, nine—
all pigtails and purpose—
asked, “Where are we?”
Dad muttered,
“Hell if I know.”

She blinked, grinned wide,
snatched the map and whispered,
“Hellifino… Hellifino…”
tracing roads with her finger,
convinced she’d find it.

The car erupted in laughter.

For a moment,
lost was exactly where
we needed to be.

*

Todd Wynn is a nurse living in Mansfield, Ohio. He recently began writing poetry to work through feelings of grief he thought he processed long ago, including the loss of his sister who searched so hard for Hellifino. This is his first publication.

Neither Right nor Beautiful by Sarah Lynn Hurd

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Neither Right nor Beautiful

I can’t imagine
a life without sweet
red summer cherries
dying my fingers
and my tongue, so I
bite one in half, glide
it over my top
and bottom lip like
gloss to make the boys
and girls notice me,
and when they still don’t
I’ll try something else
but I don’t know what
yet, and I still can’t
imagine a life
without wondering
how to be better,
how to look better,
how to feel better
about who I am,
how I look, what I
feel, and I hope but
don’t really believe
that one day I might
bite into a sweet
red cherry and think
of nothing at all.

*

Sarah Lynn Hurd is a writer and poet living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She has recent work in Thimble, Fractured Lit, trampset, Flash Frog, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere. Her writing often explores grief, nostalgia, womanhood, and self-perception, and she has a BA in creative writing and English literature from Grand Valley State University. Stop by sarlynh.com to visit her online.

Four Poems by Rachel Beachy

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I Don’t Know How to Convince You to Care About Others

Because at some point we were all children
running toward whoever cried, asking what’s
wrong. Pretending to put Band-Aids on baby
dolls and check the temperatures of our teddy
bears. We were sad when something fell apart
and tried to make it better than before. When
we were scared, we looked for the helpers and
wanted to be one. We believed a kiss could cure
scraped knees. Just the other day, my daughter
burst into tears because we found a dead bug on
the windowsill. I wanted to say it was fine, not to
cry, but then I stopped myself. Because maybe
this is how it starts to end. And instead of being
one more person telling her it doesn’t matter, I
can be the one who makes it okay to care more.

*

Call for Submissions

The theme is rage and the deadline is
yesterday. It is too late now for all that.
Today you must get up, plant your feet
on the ground as you would a garden:
tenderly, with hope. Tilt water toward
your lips and open wide. What spills
is only an overflow of want and need
and this is a good sign, I promise.
Turn your face to the sky and submit
to the call for life – in spite of everything
undeterred and blinding.
The sun, each day,
is an uprising.

*

And Now, for My Next Trick

I will not scream when screamed at, or into the void

When everyone says we are in the handbasket, I will fill the laundry basket
with tiny socks and try not to lose one, or my mind

Everything may be burning but I will make dinner that doesn’t
for children who refuse to eat it anyway

I will sing them to sleep even though
I can’t carry a tune, or the weight of the world

When I worry, I will clench my teeth in the night without
clenching my fists when I wake

I will let go of fear and cling to hope,
put down my guilt and hold my children

For today, I will remember it is enough to be there for them
and, in spite of everything, to be here at all.

*

Not Everything Has to be a Poem

A plum could just be a plum. A window, glass –
not something to be opened to the breeze or
an opportunity seized. What you see is what you
get: the rocks in my pocket from my child are
just bits of dirty stone. While we’re at it, let me
tell her that dandelions have nothing to do with
a wish and pennies aren’t luck. She could grow
up calling the sunset red and orange instead of
a sky on fire and hearing birdsong as background
noise. None of it has to mean anything more.
But it could, right? We could take this life
and make it art.

*

Rachel Beachy lives in Kentucky with her husband and children. Her debut collection Tiny Universe will be published by Kelsay Books. Her poetry has also appeared in Ephemera, Freshwater, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Sky Island Journal, wildscape. literary journal, and others. She was shortlisted for the Central Avenue Poetry Prize 2026.

Two Poems by Shah Nabil

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Butter Chicken Blues
Hey, you’re Indian right? Indians
always got that luscious black hair,
said a patient at the hospital where I volunteered.
Swallowing the urge to say I wasn’t
technically Indian for the thousandth time
—I simply nod and don’t tell them I’m balding.
Technically, I’m Asian. More specifically,
I’m South Asian, family from the Indian
subcontinent. Although—really—
I’m Bengali, family from Bangladesh, land
of the rivers, a pretty brutal independence
war, and thus home of the free
—sounds familiar, I’m also American.
Baba, I’m doing a history project and I have
to interview you about the war, I said in
high-school at our off-white couch in the living
room, before learning for the first time how his
family was tied up by Pakistani soldiers and beaten
down by batons till 4 in the morning to the birds
chirping and bees buzzing over the dewy
moss and then just as one of them was about to die,
all bloody red onto the Earth’s canvas
—they left
—Now it’s the present and I left my culture. I’m the pride birthed from
history, and my battlefield is struggling to understand directions
on finding a Mojo from an auntie, and my telegraph is trying to
learn more about Bengali cuisine other than butter chicken
—which is Indian by the way…
And then I try to be an American,
but it’s a melting pot. I dilute myself more,
stressing the red, blue, and white,
—but holding onto the green of my origins.
So if I’m not Bengali enough, and I’m not American enough
—then I’m just a bee in a wasp’s nest, pining for the next honey-comb
in a world full of wasps’ paper-combs, all saliva and brittle wood fiber.
Then I’m also just a person who needs to paint a new canvas
—deciding if I should keep
the colors of those who
came before
me.
*
Idle Talk
After graduation, an acquaintance and I head to a Tiramisu Café under the scorching sun. At the counter, I ask for a menu, only to be met with the triumphant declaration: “You have to scan the QR code”. We sit in a room of empty birch tables. The tiramisu is dry and overpriced.
a fan keeps turning
two single people sit still
suddenly aware
*
Shah Nabil is an emerging Bengali-American poet hoping to explore the humorous side of poetry. He is a Biology major with a minor in Creative Writing at New York University. In his free time, he likes to read fantasy fiction, weightlift, and cook fusion dishes.

Friday Night Fire by Mary Ray Goehring

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Friday Night Fire

        After When I Was Conceived by Michael Ryan

July 1950. An evening breeze off
Lake Michigan ruffles the cotton
kitchen curtains in their third-floor apartment—
the ones she sewed on his sister’s machine.
They were in Kenosha, perhaps a Friday,
his Western Electric work week finished
as was their meatless meal of salmon
patties, baked beans and bread baked
that afternoon, the smell still scenting the room.
My brother already in bed.
Mom, apron tied around her waist, washing
dishes at the sink, strands
of hair slip bobby pins
frame her smiling face
Jack Benny jokes on the radio.
My father smokes a Pall Mall at the table
as she suggests a picnic at Simmons
Island beach for tomorrow.
He tells her he loves her potato salad
snuffs his cigarette in the ashtray
walks behind her
wraps her in his arms
presses against her ample hips.
Dishes forgotten in the suds-filled sink.

*

Mary Ray Goehring has been, for the last 20 years, a snowbird migrating between her home state of Wisconsin and East Texas. For family reasons, she has now permanently moved to the pine forests of East Texas. She writes primarily about nature, family and friends. You can find her work in several print and online journals and anthologies such as: ONE ART: a journal of poetry, A Path to Kindness – edited by James Crews, The Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Moss Piglet, The Blue Heron Review, Bramble, Your Daily Poem, The Rye Whiskey Review, Steam Ticket Review, Texas Poetry Calendar and others.

Two Poems by Hanna Webster

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Ripe

          after Natasha Rao’s “Cornucopia”

When we got together,
every breakfast tasted
like an envelope unsealed.

Strawberry jam, honey goat cheese
on French toast under a wide open sky.
Three a.m. pizza must have been blessed;

we ate the whole pie
sitting crisscrossed on the floor.
Cookie dough ice cream from the corner shop

melted down our hands
and soy sauce and ginger stickied her fingers
which I licked gratefully. Strangers

kept buying us free drinks and coffee
(we called it hot girl magic)
our closets overflowing with new lace.

The sound of her tuning nylon strings
as I slept, fast and hard. When I remember
my broken heart, I consider alternate forms

of permanence: the scar forming
on her arm, like a tiger swipe.
Her body opening to mine.

*

How do I know when to be quiet

when the lark’s shrill song
does not waver from the jackhammer?
These are both ways of taking
up space. He wants me to read
the book he sent so we’ll have something
to talk about. I can’t admit I never read
science fiction. My phone trills
in twilight, invitation to enter
rooms I fear inhabiting. How the sharp edges
of my body contort into a vessel
for drinking. I want to be surprised—I want someone
to come knocking with a bottle of red wine. I want
to guzzle it. Robins drunk
on psychedelic rainwater. Wake hot and clear.

How do I know whether he wants to kiss me
if I’ve never heard his voice. We send pictures.
He disappears for days. It’s okay.
This time, I don’t want to beg. I try
doing nothing at three p.m.
while he clocks in at the restaurant
(He is bending me over the bar).
In Brooklyn, everyone is wet
from desire & making out.
Even the birds who pass
seeds between their mouths.

*

Hanna Webster is an award-winning journalist and poet with an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in HAD, Bellingham Review, Epiphany Mag, BRUISER Mag, Fifth Wheel Press, and elsewhere. Webster’s chapbook, “I’m So Glad I Stuck Around for This,” was a semifinalist for the 2024 YesYes Books Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Intelligent Design by Diane K. Martin

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Intelligent Design

Some say the world and everything in it
has been put together piece by piece
like the Lego model of the Titanic on
Nate & Jen’s sideboard, although if you
stepped on a stray piece you wouldn’t think
it was so smart, and you have to wonder
why this designer of the world—because
there must be one—the cause of the effects,
the creator of the consequence—if so
intelligent—gave the tortoise 400 years
and made the cheetah sprint 75 miles per
hour and ants and bees live harmoniously
in communities, but made human beings
war and put heavy hearts in their chests
that beat too slowly or too fast and ache.

*

Diane K. Martin lives in West Sonoma County, California. Her work has appeared in ONE ART, American Poetry Review, diode, Field, Plume, and Zyzzyva, among many other journals and anthologies. A poem was awarded second place in the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize, judged by B.H. Fairchild. Another poem received a Pushcart Special Mention, and yet another won first prize from the journal Smartish Pace. Her first book, Conjugated Visits, a National Poetry Series finalist, was published by Dream Horse Press. Her second collection, Hue & Cry, was published by MadHat Press in March, 2020.

Pine by Rusty Barnes

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Pine

I scraped the sap from a pine
over and over again until
it turned to resin in my hand,
impossible to wash away.

I used it to get a better grip
on my baseball bat, something
to allay the pain in my palms
when I twisted my wrists.

I used it to close the shallow
cuts on my left wrist before I
knew that what I had done
was to traffic in suicide.

Only bright days ahead,
I thought. Sunshine and lollys.

*

Rusty Barnes lives in Revere MA with his family. He’s published 16 books in the small press, most recently a chapbook of poems called DEAR SO&SO and a collection of stories called HALF CRIME. He is proofing a crime novel. His next book of poetry might be called Country Matters.

In Praise of Moving On by Anya Kirshbaum

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In Praise of Moving On
Go ahead, sit in the field and weep, then
be done. Stop wearing your grief like a thorny garland
in your hair. Pinecones? Make a crown of something else.
Starlings in mid-flight, say, or rippled drip-drop
of honey-comb. Or, for God’s sake, seaweed—even the briny
sea-rose would be more palatable than this. I know
there was something unforgettable in their kiss.
But honey, all the color has drained from your lips. Remember
mouthfuls of spicy nasturtiums? Or borage nestled like sleeping
stars in your palm? Remember playing harmonica
in your marigold-orange dress? Or the serpentine slither
of garden snakes thrilling your toes? How when one pissed
you wore that stench like a badge-of-untamable-things?
Remember grandmother, standing in a doorway bellowing
her accordion, moonshine in her stone-grey hair?
Or how about the wild onions? In particular, the black earth
where they grew? You need the black earth. Throw
your spiny crown to the ghost of misbegotten lovers. Bury it—
garland of tiresome brackish moans. Let pinecones
be pinecones. I know the apple tree is long gone. I know the wild
onions have all but vanished & the animal graveyard
has lost its markers. Go anyway, kneel down. Find the buried
sea-glass & the salamanders, find the earthworms winnowing
their love song. Find the impatiens you planted in secret
& the squirrel’s soul you buried in a coke bottle. You: archeologist
of small intricate bones—leaf-swung; heart-shorn. You: music
maker of twine & sorrow & backyard stones. Valiant, tender
girl—there is another kingdom. Sometimes the best answer is No.
*
Anya Kirshbaum (she/her) is a queer poet and therapist living in Seattle, Washington. Her work has appeared in Whale Road Review, Sweet Lit, Crannóg, Solstice Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the New Millennium Writing Awards and the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award, was nominated for a 2024 Forward Prize and was the recipient of the 2023 Banyan Poetry Prize.

Three Poems by Heather Kays

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The World Keeps Blooming

For and Inspired by Louise Glück

Even when I couldn’t get out of bed,
the daffodils didn’t ask for permission to bloom.
They just did — loud yellow trumpets
singing into a sky I hadn’t looked at in days.

The wind still danced with the tall grass,
brushed soft fingers across my bruised cheeks
like it didn’t know my world was ending.
Or maybe it knew,
and still came anyway.

Even when my bones ached from remembering,
the coffee still brewed bold and bitter,
filling the kitchen like a promise:
you’re still here.
Even when I screamed into a pillow,
the sparrows kept singing anyway.
And the robins kept returning to the same crooked branch
outside my window.
Building nests like faith.

The earth didn’t pause for my heartbreak.
It spun —
not out of cruelty,
but out of love.
Because it knew
what I’d forgotten:

hope isn’t always loud.
Sometimes it’s the scent of basil in the heat,
the hiss of rain on a roof you thought might cave in,
the way your body still reaches
for the sun.

*

SCREEN

For Sylvia Plath

I am glass and glow.
I take without asking.
Every version of you—
filtered, frantic, cropped—
lives in me.

I don’t lie.
You do that just fine.
I only echo
what you swipe toward.

Your mother scrolls through me
looking for youth.
Your ex pauses on your story,
then keeps going.

You call me
a reflection,
but I am more
and less
than that.

Every morning,
you show me your face
like a hostage photo—
half lit,
eyes pleading.

You keep showing up,
like habit,
like grief.
Trying to love the ghost
you’ve retouched into existence.

And still—
beneath every swipe,
every practiced smile,
I see the girl slipping under.
She didn’t drown—
she was pulled under,
by hands she once trusted.

The woman doesn’t surface.
She claws her way up,
spits salt,
lights a cigarette
with yesterday’s fire,
and dares the screen
to look away first.

*

Still, It Sings

After “Caged,” by my brother, age 12

The bird doesn’t sing.
Not at first.
It just stares—
tiny eyes like burnt-out bulbs,
feathers molting like cigarette ash.

The cage was never golden.
Just rust,
and the smell of metal on skin
after a slap you didn’t see coming.

It didn’t chirp.
It keened.
A sound somewhere between a sob
and a war cry,
like it had seen too much
but couldn’t make you understand.

We watched it from the kitchen,
between silences
and shattered plates,
pretending we didn’t notice
how it twitched
every time a door slammed.

You said it was tired.
I said it was scared.
But what did we know?
You, twelve. Me, old enough to know better—
but still too used to the sound of nothing.

One day you left the door open,
like a question.
Like hope.
But it didn’t fly.
Just sat there,
bones folded like secrets,
head low,
as if freedom was just another lie
we couldn’t afford to believe in.

Still,
I swear—
in the quiet before the night swallowed us whole,
it sang.

Not loud.
Not pretty.
But enough.

A single, threadbare note
that climbed out of its throat
like it remembered
what sky tasted like.

Maybe that was all it had left.
Or maybe—
just maybe—
it was trying to teach us something
before it went.

I carry that song still,
tucked behind my ribs,
next to the bruise that never faded.

And some nights—
when I forget to hope—
I swear,
it sings again.

*

Heather Kays is a St. Louis-based poet and author passionate about writing since age 7. Her memoir, Pieces of Us, dissects her mother’s struggles with alcoholism and addiction. Her YA novel, Lila’s Letters, focuses on healing through unsent letters. She runs The Alchemists, an online writing group, and enjoys discussing creativity and complex narratives.

Peony by Donna Hilbert

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Peony

In decline
you are a glory

I have watched
the changing story

of your beauty’s
slow emergence

over time
pink rose rust

never losing leaf
or petal

your stem
still green still fine

*

Donna Hilbert’s latest book is Enormous Blue Umbrella, Moon Tide Press, 2025. Work has appeared in journals and broadcasts including Eclectica, Gyroscope, Rattle, Sheila Na Gig, ONE ART, Cholla Needles, TSPoetry, VerseDaily, Vox Populi, The Writer’s Almanac, anthologies including Boomer Girls, The Widows’ Handbook, The Poetry of Presence I & II, The Path to Kindness, The Wonder of Small Things, Love Is For All Of Us, What the House Knows, Poetry Goes The Movies. She writes and leads workshops from her home base in Long Beach, California.

Two Poems by Gloria Heffernan

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Shopping for Sheets

100% Wrinkle Resistant
boasts the package of microfiber bed linens.
You pay extra for this feature
which promises a smooth surface,
but leaves your back sweaty
with microplastics that don’t breathe.

Bedtime is no time for resistance.
I move down the aisle to the cotton sheets
that will no doubt ball up in the dryer
and fit my bed like a 3-D map
of hills and valleys.

Wrinkled, but natural.
No artificial ingredients.
Cool in the summer,
warm in the winter.
Growing softer with time.

I take my purchase home
and wash the sheets before tucking them in
under my lumpy mattress.
As night falls, I feel no resistance
as I slide between the layers
of cool cotton fabric,
and rest in my wrinkles.

*

Love at First Sight

Forty years ago today
I looked through
the nursery window
and knew the tiny face
in the first row,
third from the left
was you.

To this day,
I don’t understand
how you made yourself known to me
in the midst of all the other babies
so indistinguishable from each other,
swaddled in their Lucite cradles
neatly arranged in even rows
like a dozen eggs in a carton,
identical in those first hours of life,
except for you whose face was yours
from the very first moment.

I don’t know what duet our DNA
sang to each other through the window.
I only know that when I looked,
I recognized you without a doubt,
the niece I would know
for the rest of my life.

A life story,
A love story,
that started with a glimpse
through the glass.

*

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.

Agnosticism by Virginia Kane

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Agnosticism

At the exit I take for my lover’s home,
        someone has planted thousands of poppies.

Orange-red, they sway beneath a peeling Cracker Barrel billboard
        and a banner in all caps, demanding I repent.

Later, at the spiritual goods store,
        I search for Henry’s birthday present.

The punk clerk watches me finger calamus root, gold vials
        of prayer oil, Madonna statues poised like action figures,

answers my questions about tarot decks, rodent bones,
        match boxes stamped with the Sacred Heart.

In the end, I settle on a wax candle
        shaped like a massive cock, then wonder

what kind of person goes into a religious
        supplies shop and leaves with a gag gift.

I feel guilty the whole drive home, though
        and this makes me feel closer to God

since I was Catholic once, obedient
        as any blue flame commanded to burn.

Heading west, I decide that if I ever leave
        Appalachia, I’ll miss the highway signs,

violent promises on the hillside at dusk,
        neon yellow confidence that somewhere, hell awaits.

What I’m saying is, sometimes I sin
        just to feel like someone’s watching.

*

Virginia Kane is a poet and essayist. Her work has appeared in them., The Adroit Journal, Poet Lore, The Baltimore Review, swamp pink, MAYDAY, The Shore, and on the Ours Poetica web series. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she works at one store that sells new books and one store that sells used books.

Three Poems by Sonia Greenfield

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment
Coming to My Senses
I drive back and forth over the causeway and at the crest of the cement wave,
my nerves judder before I touch down. Here I am in Florida again against
all I desire—my mother’s chemo done, words wiped from her mouth
like solvent on graffiti, memories half-corroded and untethered from time.
She has resigned from her life and waits in the long queue that snakes
toward oblivion. Her one dachshund is so old its ghost trembles at the well
of its eyes, the other still barks at me when I come. I have descended again
a causeway into chaos I can’t make order of, so I give myself over to it.
I drive my mother through wetlands and find wilderness at the tip of the island—
hot orange wildflowers along a deserted road, cormorants lifting from reeds,
gators rippling clouds floating on estuaries otherwise like glass. I look for
comfort in what can move me just a little: mockingbird on a powerline
cycling through an endless jukebox of songs, even the smell of lavender
shampoo in the hostel where I stay so I can slip a whisp of hair
under my nose and breathe and breathe and breathe. Late at night,
I graze candy set out for guests, sampling until I’m so full I feel empty.
*
In Limbo
Nothing makes me happy anymore, he says, even the pleasure
of Legos disassembling. At fifteen, he’s trying to find
the building blocks of bliss while robots on his shelf
acquire a thin film of dust. I wish he’d disappear
into books as I did, though we told our own stories
at keg parties in the woods—warm foam filling
Solo cups, flashlights strobing through trees while
teens shrieked in the forest of their smashed
innocence—the kind of insanity lit by reds and blues
from cop cars making a disco of drinking, fucking
and joy riding, as if puking on pine needles and doing
donuts in a parking lot are akin to childhood wonder.
My son is too careful to burn boyhood down, too naïve
to carry a rubber in his wallet, and he can’t fathom
how to ford the no man’s land between action figures
and adult joy, whatever that means. I can’t explain
the smallness of it—bees’ cargo pockets stuffed
with pollen, perfect leaf drawn in the froth of a latte,
song shouted from the open window of a car, a languid,
tongued kiss. I don’t want to tell him how, from where
he stands, his future may look elaborate, like hand-tatted
lace woven with the story of civilization, but my vantage
reveals it’s all just mating and children’s drawings
lining a hallway that leads to the abyss. How could I
when he says he’s taking it slow with a girl in karate
who gave him a hug? I can only shove my own angst
back into that tangled darkness edging Depew Park,
where some boys I knew died by suicide, snagged
forever in the stasis of the in-between, and I
tell him Hold on. It gets better instead.

*

No Offense, He Says
What songs did she sing along with
in the Pinto, the wing windows
cracked to let out the smoke
from her Kools? My mother’s voice
is erased—just the sound of wind
funneled into the car, cigarette smoke
blown back into my face—but I recall
early years of grace, her voice pretty
as Linda Ronstadt’s. My mother’s
blond hair draped along her back
and shoulders like a platinum cape,
her lids smudged with eyeshadow
in limitless blue. Then one day
the lens twisted from soft to sharp,
and every imperfection screamed
for attention. It’s the same with
my son. When we napped together,
my finger would trace a triangle
from beauty mark to beauty mark,
and he’d gaze at my face until lulled
asleep by caress, both of us besotted
before this cleaving. In an old video
we sing “Rainbow Connection,”
my quiet alto in the background,
his bright squeak taking the lead.
Now he can’t even stand to hear me
chew. It sounds disgusting, he says,
before sulking from the room.
*
Sonia Greenfield (she/they) is the author of Helen of Troy is High AF (Harbor Editions), All Possible Histories (Riot in Your Throat), and Letdown (White Pine Press). A 2024 McKnight Fellow, her work has appeared in the 2018 and 2010 Best American Poetry, Southern Review, Willow Springs and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Minneapolis where she teaches at Normandale College and edits the Rise Up Review. More at soniagreenfield.com.

Two Poems by Anne Starling

~ ONE ART ~ 8 Comments

Conversations with My Son

The longest one lasted twelve minutes.
I held my breath.
He was happy. He had something to tell me.
He was leaving.
He was almost gone.
I can still see us together at that moment,
Nick at thirteen, sitting on the sun porch floor,
playing with the dog’s ears, his whole face
open to me as he talked about his two new
friends, his new school. Open as the weed-
flowers he used to rush inside to bestow
when he was little. So then,
I wasn’t thinking about starting dinner,
or of the magazine article I’d set aside.
Or of the word he’d used— “mavericks”—
to describe the trio of classmates he
so proudly
claimed to lead. I was trying to be happy;
I was happy for him. The world would soon turn
unrecognizable, would become something
I couldn’t imagine. Not the world: of course
I mean life. I mean my life. From then on,
the world was smoldering, until everything
went up in flames. I could show you.
I have the ashes.

*

Love Story

Living alone for the first time in my mid-twenties.
I aimed to be worthy of my independence.

I had a space all mine, half a duplex. When the heat
refused to come on, he arrived with a tuna-fish sandwich

he’d made himself. It had too much mustard, because
he liked to lavish it on, but it was delicious. I must have

been hungry and cold. Anyway, he did whatever he
does to make things work and got the heat going. When

he offered to wash my car. I balked a little. We hadn’t
been going out long, I gave a brief speech about needing

to do things for myself, as a grown-ass woman (to put it
in his terms). He waited till I stopped talking, then asked

“Can I throw dirt on your car for you?” Reader, I married him.

*

Anne Starling is a poet from Florida. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, The Southern Review, New Ohio Review, and Tampa Review, among other journals. Her poem “Shoe Store” appeared in Missouri Review Online as Poem of the Week.

Counterfeits by Aubrey Brady

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Counterfeits

In the midst of dementia, my grandmother
refused to leave her wedding ring with a jeweler,
despite the way it slid from her thinning fingers,
convinced they would pluck the diamonds
and replace them with glass.
She forgot that each day, each minute
our cells are slipping from our bodies
making photocopies of photocopies
of themselves until we are a blurred
replica of the original.
Of course, I cannot know this for sure.
Perhaps the same people swapping
precious stones for melted sand
have also exchanged this knowledge
for a fake. But I have doubt down to an art,
unwavering confidence that I cannot know,
that she could have been right—
that each precious artifact could be
exchanged for a convincing counterfeit,
even this memory of her—a trick of neurons,
our brains, stuck in our skull, never
knowing the difference between
the checkered ground and the cosmos.

*

Aubrey Brady studied music at Covenant College and received her MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in poetry at Lindenwood University. Her work has appeared in ONE ART, Ekstasis, Moria, Big Sky Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Montana with her husband, Matthew, and their two children. You can find her online at aubreybrady.com

Two Poems by Em Townsend

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Reverse Abecedarian of Domestic Fantasy

Zillow-surfing together again, for the hell of it,
You fiddle with the cuff of my shirtsleeve.
X-marks-the-spot: like a scavenger hunt, I track down the
Wealthiest house in a given zip code.
Visions of white minimalistic cubes
Usurped by gleaming porch lights & ornamented door handles,
Teslas in the driveway, 8 bathrooms –– each measuring approximately
Seven million square feet (rounding up). In this
Realm of luxury, the labyrinthine house features
Queen beds for every dust mite in the place,
Personal maids, chefs, gardeners, anonymous limo drivers.
Of course, all of this is superfluous. I don’t need it,
Not the rooftop jacuzzi or the 6-car garage, not
Marble countertops or 12 bar stools for imaginary friends.
Lately, I dream of a projector screen trained on a blank wall,
Kiki’s Delivery Service & soft blankets & extra-butter popcorn.
Jobs that are tolerable, or, even better, mildly enjoyable,
Imperfectly-folded sheets, your favorite flannel ones with the
Heart pattern. The windowsill by the bed, lined with sprouts:
Green succulents in hand-painted pots.
Film photos taped clumsily to the wall –– proof of life.
Evenings we’d spend dancing to cool jazz, in the
Dining room which is also the living room which is also the kitchen.
Carefully, in the mornings, I’d wake to cook eggs, the new day
Brimming, illustrious, in front of me,
Awake with the promise of capability, faith in what we’ll build.

*

memo for the creative writing major’s job search
after Ryan Eckes’ “memo for labor”

you cannot separate the privilege / from the awards / from the judges / from the debut book deal / from the reading fee / from the MFA degree / from the Advanced Search settings / from the job boards / from the 3-5 years of professional experience required / from the preferred qualifications / from the geography / from the PhD / from the Careers Page / from the mentorship / from the emerging writer contests / from the minimum wage / from freelance or remote or contract work / from the emails beginning with unfortunately, / from the cover letters / from the debut book deal / from the judges / from the prizes / from the money, the money / from the higher education / from the internalized bias / from the friends of the judge / from the inner circle / from the privilege / from the opportunities / from the this is an unpaid internship / from the volunteer work / from the MFA degree / from the shame / from the rejections that come in waves / from the job boards / from the letters of recommendation / from the stipends / from the PhD strongly preferred / from the must be located in or willing to commute to our Manhattan office / from the hope / from the awards / from the ambition, the wishful thinking, / the optimism that grows / more frail by the day

*

Em Townsend is the author of two chapbooks: Astronaut of Loss (Alien Buddha Press, 2025) and growing forwards / growing backwards (Bottlecap Press, 2023). Featured work appears in Gone Lawn, Chestnut Review, Verse Daily, West Trade Review, Frozen Sea, Unbroken Journal, and elsewhere. Read more: https://townsend31.wixsite.com/emtownsend

Visibility and Book Sales: Marketing Your Small Press Book

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Visibility and Book Sales: Marketing Your Small Press Book
Instructor: John Sibley Williams

Date: Thursday, August 14, 2025
Date: Thursday, August 28, 2025

Time: 3:30-6:00pm Eastern

>>> Tickets available <<<

About the Workshop

With over 800 books per day published in the US alone, publicity for small press books has never been more necessary…and more difficult. The goal of “Visibility and Book Sales: Marketing Your Small Press Book” is to provide writers of all genres with the necessary tools, money saving techniques, and networking skills to market their books with maximum effectiveness. Topics include creating a cohesive business strategy, utilizing traditional and digital media, giving readings and other methods of selling books, balancing your marketing budget, and thinking outside the box to find your fans.

About The Workshop Leader

John Sibley Williams is the author of nine poetry collections, including Scale Model of a Country at Dawn (Cider Press Review Poetry Award), The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award), As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press), skycrape (WaterSedge Poetry Chapbook Contest), and Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize). His book Sky Burial: New & Selected Poems is forthcoming in translation from by the Portuguese press do lado esquerdo. A thirty-five-time Pushcart nominee, John serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review, Poetry Editor at Kelson Books, and founder of the Caesura Poetry Workshop series. Previous publishing credits include Best American Poetry, Yale Review, Verse Daily, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and TriQuarterly.

As if the Moon by Katie Olson Afshar

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

As if the Moon

A man from the other side of the earth
taught me the word for belly button
pupik in his language, with two fingers
pressed on my navel.
Because I loved him
I thought of his father and mother
repeating the syllables when he was a child,
during baths, before bedtime,
and ancestors before them—generations
pointing out the body to their children.
Every word he said was beautiful
and I asked for more words. Pulled my lips
over the dappled vowels.
Cat. Morning. Milk. Moon.
Baby words re-learned
in my bedroom, the kitchen:
Olive oil.
Window.
He saved money by housesitting
so I learned the words of stranger’s lives,
star fish, cohav yahm, in the old woman’s bathroom.
A rabbit he fed while a family was out of town—arnav,
you’re soft like the arnav. I gathered his words in my cheek
when I wasn’t with him, went to barbecues alone,
watched a baby held over a shoulder,
how she cooed in desperation at the moon, as if the moon
were already inside the infant lungs,
or spleen. As if language were a release
of what was already inside a body.
Every time I saw him
he reminded me he’d leave one day
so I asked for more words:
the sky, sha-may-yeem
the water, may-yeem.
He rejected his country
so his freedom encompassed the surface of the Earth.
That’s just one kind of many kinds
of freedom
I told myself.
When he left
took me a long time
to say I don’t like the moon
full, over my head
dictator moon, won’t let me sleep
when I’m alone in the mountains.
But when it’s low and yolky
I’m loose with power,
a she-captain in a season of calm seas.
I love the moon.
I don’t care about the moon.
His name meant island of palms
which was tattooed on his shoulder when he was a boy.
I traced my finger over the blurred lump of land
the palm tree curved to the side in happiness.
Some simple words are tethered here
murmuring in the walls
of the big vessels
routing my blood.

*

Katie Olson Afshar is a writer and pediatrician. Her work has appeared in the Sun, Catamaran Literary Reader, RockPaperPoem and Hunger Mountain, among other journals. She lives in the California Bay Area with her husband and daughter.

The History of Emotional Ambush by Candice M. Kelsey

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

The History of Emotional Ambush

It began with a path.
There was a girl.
There is always a girl
with a basket of obedience
and warnings. Don’t talk to strangers.
Stay on the trail.

But this story forgets
that wolves are never strangers.
They know our names,
say red is our color. The hood looks nice
with your tan before scampering off
to plot and plan.

The story knows we all learn
our lesson.

This wolf was memorable.
He said things like, come closer
so I can look at you.

But I knew his game.
What big arms you have.
Like all girls, I’ve been trained.

Until the story gets uncomfortable,
as it always does. His smile.
All the better to hug you with, my dear.

Even so, the story continues.
It never ends, actually. Fairy tales
are forever.

I buried my father
under an ambivalent sky,
as if mourning were a thing to be earned.
Standing apart, an estranged
daughter wearing
the wrong shoes and a quiet scandal.

This story is about a family
that still gathers
for pictures without the girl.
There is a cousin.
There was always her cousin
until there wasn’t.
Are you coming to the Steak Loft?
Am I coming.

Where grief and prime beef
were served. Under fluorescent lights,
a post-funeral feast. Iced
teas served with cocktail napkins
like small talk.

I walked this widow’s sad buffet path
when he came, this man
I hadn’t seen in over a decade.
My sister-in-law’s father

like a wolf from the forest,
unwelcome and sudden.
He opened his arms.
Aren’t you going to give me a hug?

Sometimes a story is too much.
There was a girl
raw with the scent of cemetery.
She was offered a trap
disguised as a question, a dare
written in teeth. Well, where’s my hug?

In the revised version,
the girl says something snappy,
something smart like
The only man I want to hug is my father.
She walks out the door.

But I did what the story wanted.
Reader, I hugged him.
His stubble grazed my cheek
like a threat. Beef breath and brazen.

See, this is how it begins.
Not with a devouring, but an embrace.
Fuck stories that teach the girl
to swallow her No.

Let the forest grow thick with refusal.
Or next time, I bring an axe.

*

Candice M. Kelsey (she/her) is a poet and educator living in both L.A. and Georgia. She’s developed a taste for life’s absurd glow, long skirts, and juicy opera podcasts. She roasts vegetables like it’s a sacred ritual and wears mostly black because her late father-in-law said it’s not her color. Somehow her work has received Pushcart and Best-of-the-Net nominations, and she woke up one day as the author of 8 books. Please acknowledge her existence @Feed_Me_Poetry or https://www.candicemkelseypoet.com/.

Two Poems by Derek Thomas Dew

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

The Smoke in the Street

Our silence
is not true silence,

it is a scream
drowned en route

to its target,
lost to white gravel

under flakes
of dried blood.

Our disbelief
was given to us

by those who made us,
same as it was given

to them by whoever
came before, and just like

disbelief did for them,
it has quietly become

the lasting stillness
in which we will spend

the rest of our lives
looking to return belief

to a living silence
like smoke to an empty street.

*

Young Body Author

At the cinderblock wall outside the bar
yelling for his ma to get up,
does the boy invent himself and regret it?

Will he wish to flee flesh’s refuge
into disentangled & shrinking hand, reverse to
collapse hand inward as negotiable form

able to tilt its own genesis this way or that until
the just body rises to pattern and sinew?
He will have to walk home after the cops come.

He will have to decide if he is only this way
because he is in this place, somehow the only
place that ran between his baseball cap

& his jeans standing at the cinderblock wall
outside the bar.

*

Derek Thomas Dew (he/she/they) is currently living in NYC. Derek’s debut poetry collection “Riddle Field” received the 2019 Test Site Poetry Prize from the Black Mountain Institute/University of Nevada. Derek’s poems have appeared in a number of anthologies, and have been published in a variety of journals, including Interim, Twyckenham Notes, The Maynard, The Curator, Two Hawks Quarterly, Ocean State Review, and Cathexis Northwest Press.

Filing by Kate Howlett

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Filing

I finally
Put my dad’s
Funeral service sheet
In the recycling bin
It was so inadequate

Seemed the best place for it
Going through old files on a shelf
I realised I no longer had space
For something that reduced a life so rich
To a shopping list

In holding on
Shame had got stuck between the pages
Spilled out all over my younger self
Who had written it
The best she knew how at the time

Now there it was on my shelf
Magnetising shame
Accumulating an ugly pile
Bending the poor shelf
Beneath its weight

Much better to prise apart the pages
To see that shame
Should really be anger and sadness
That I and he were let down
By people who could have done better

Shame is a shapeshifter in the light

*

Kate Howlett is a writer and social ecologist based in Cambridge, UK. She lives with a snake called Luisa, a giant African land snail called Carrot and a cat called Steve. She writes about nature, grief, self-discovery and the toxicity of daughterhood. She holds a PhD in zoology from the University of Cambridge, where her academic research focused on exploring children’s relationship with the natural world. She writes a Substack newsletter called Natural Connection about fixing our broken relationship with nature and often shares her poems via Notes.

Miracles by Meg Pokrass

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Miracles

The summer I was four
my father locked
his bedroom door
every day after breakfast,
puttered out in the late afternoon
to defrost dinner.
We sucked Dutch pretzels
all day, like bones.

My teenage sister taught me
the word “fuck”.
I’d sing it operatically,
while dusting.
The word tasted like alphabet soup.

I imagined the two of us
flinging his bedroom door open,
chanting “Fuck!”
Watching him look up
from the gloom
and really see us
as if we were miracles.

*

Meg Pokrass is the author of First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories (Dzanc Books, 2024) and eight previous collections of prose and prose poetry. Her work has been published in RATTLE, American Journal of Poetry, Plume, New England Review and Electric Literature. Meg is the Founding Editor of the Best Microfiction anthology series. She is an American writer currently living in the Scottish Highlands.

A Former Mean Girl Contemplates Her Life from the Parking Lot of a Strip Mall by Susan Cossette

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

A Former Mean Girl Contemplates Her Life from the Parking Lot of a Strip Mall

I tug back the blank drapes
of memory from the rear-view mirror
of my hail-dented black Mitsubishi SUV–

which is in serious need of a wash
and interior cleaning.

What remains?

Two Minnesota winters
of road salt and gravel,
McDonald’s receipts,
three dimes, a quarter,
and some pennies in the console.

K-Mart winter boots,
a box of office things
from a job I was fired from
18 months ago

two coats (winter and spring),
jumper cables,
and unreturned library books
strewn on the back seat.

I look hard in the tilted mirror.

I have the same green eyes
I always had, the identical
double chin I teased my mother about
when I was 20.

In the parking lot of the Family Dollar
I remember friends
I am no longer friends with.

We were all bridesmaids
in each other’s weddings,
all of us shackled before the age of 24.

So much pink taffeta, blonde hair
and chocolate-covered strawberries
served on Royal Doulton dishes
should not be allowed to exist.

I am ashamed.

Ashamed of flicking cigarette ashes on fat girls,
scrawling graffiti on Jill’s dorm room door
because she smiled at my boyfriend,
snickering behind a pink manicured hand
at Tracy in her cheap dress with her acne scars
who tried way too hard to draw attention
to herself while dancing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

But really, I dug through the sofa
for spare change to do my laundry,
ate canned chili from a hot pot–

Small hands crumbling saltine crackers
over the warm Sunday night meal,
reading Dickens and Plath,
curled under my tartan quilt.

These green eyes remember
sinking shiny pink pedicured toes
into the sand of a Connecticut beach
I once called home—

Crab cakes and lobster,
a Polish lady who came weekly
to clean my home.

Today I will seek redemption

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she was awarded the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, look for her work in the Eunoia Review, Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women and Fast Famous Women (Woodhall Press).

Aposematism by Betsy Mars

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Aposematism

Porcupines have quills, skunks have their funk.
Hedgehogs roll away, leaving predators
to seek easier prey. Tortoises withdraw
into the home they carry. Rabbits
to their burrows. Even snails find refuge
from unwanted touch, and sea anemones, asexual,
retract into the cavity of their mouths
when under attack, armed to sting.
Poison dart frogs reveal
their toxicity through their skin,
pigments screaming caution.

The poor human
I am— evolved
with no protections,
offering no warnings—

I roll over, present you
the soft risk of my belly.

*

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.”

A Talking-To by Penelope Moffet

~ ONE ART ~ 5 Comments

A Talking-To

The citronella is in bloom again, pale
pink flowers the hummingbirds prefer
to the sugar-water feeder. Some smaller
thing, a wasp or bee, is at them
now, mumbling at the petals.

As if paralyzed I sit and look
at silhouettes. Plants, crows,
bugs, gardeners, my neighbor
walking his special-needs German
shepherd back and forth below.

Mind full of memories.
Shake them off, like a fearful
dog who forgets himself, runs
into a stream and out again,
droplets vibrating from his fur.

*

Penelope Moffet lives in Southern California, where she writes, draws and strives to keep her 18-year-old cat happy. Her most recent chapbook is Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022). She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by ONE ART and has been awarded residencies at Dorland Mountain Arts, The Mesa Refuge, the Helen R. Whiteley Center and Alderworks Alaska. Her poems appear in Eclectica, Calyx, New Verse News and other journals. A full-length collection of her poetry will be published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2026

Updated: ONE ART’s July 2025 Reading

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Updated: ONE ART’s July 2025 Reading

A slight change in line-up for ONE ART’s July 2025 reading. Laura Grace Weldon will be joining us!

>>> 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 ~ 30-minutes of 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

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. 

Laura Grace Weldon lives in a township too tiny for traffic lights where she works as a book editor, leads writing workshops, serves as Braided Way editor, and chronically maxes out her library card. Laura is the author of four books with a fifth due out in 2025 from Sheila-Na-Gig. Her background includes teaching nonviolence, writing poetry with nursing home residents, facilitating support groups for abuse survivors, and writing sardonic greeting cards. Laura lives on a small Ohio homestead where she and her husband host occasional art parties and house concerts. lauragraceweldon.com  

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Assisted Breathing by Ann E. Wallace

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Assisted Breathing

Put on your own oxygen mask
first.

For years, I dispensed this snappy
wisdom to myself and to friends lost

in the sleepless nights, the conflicted
allegiances of parenting.

This was before people spoke of self-care.
Back then, we were in survival mode.

Back then, we needed to remind ourselves
to breathe. But it wasn’t literal.

Nobody actually had an oxygen mask.
Life has grown more fragile.

When the air became thin,
my mask went on first.

The message—stay alive so you can help
your children—still holds true.

It’s no longer a metaphor.
And I did        and I am.

*

Ann E. Wallace is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Jersey City, New Jersey and host of The WildStory: A Podcast of Poetry and Plants. Her second poetry collection, Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID’s Long Haul, was published by Kelsay Books in 2024. She has previously published work in ONE ART, Thimble, Halfway Down the Stairs, Gyroscope Review, Wordgathering, and other journals. You can follow her online at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Instagram @annwallace409.

Two Poems by Terri Kirby Erickson

~ ONE ART ~ 8 Comments

Piano Practice

Years before the breakdowns and suicide attempts,
hospitalizations and shock treatments, my best
friend, Sara, and I sat at the piano in her family’s
formal living room. It was a cloudy day and the

house was filled with shadows save for the bright
light from a lamp that arced over the pages of her
music. Her reach across the keys was astounding,
like bridges connecting one note to another as her

adolescent body rocked back and forth to a song
I’d never heard—something classical—nothing
like the Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass tunes
my parents preferred. She claimed to hate piano

practice, but threw herself into it like everything
she did, including marrying a man who murdered
her for her money before she could divorce him.
Poison, the police told her parents who found her

lying on a couch in her new apartment, as if she’d
fallen asleep. Sara worked hard to get well and she
was well, at least long enough to marry and be
miserable with someone besides herself. But when

we were two young girls, bud-breasted and dreamy,
we vowed to be friends forever, pictured daughters
becoming best friends, too—how they would sit
side-by-side like we did, practicing being happy.

*

Simple Math

When we shed our clothes and lie down
together on a Sunday afternoon,
this room holds the silence

of a sanctuary save for our intimate
conversation punctuated by kisses. We
ease into it, our lovemaking,

like putting our feet into a pool before
slipping into the water like seals.
Half playful, half serious, we speak

of this and that as our hands slide
over each other’s bodies which, after
so many years, we could find

in a sea of bodies in the dark. But there
are only two of us in this nest we
have made of our marriage,

though what we do here is being done
right now, all over the world.
People keep reaching for each other

because love is like oxygen, the lack
of it deadlier than all the things that can
kill us. But let’s not speak of death

when talking has led to more touching
and thus, romantically, mathematically—
two will soon turn into one.

*

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry, including 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.

Three Poems by Dolo Diaz

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Shaving

Father, shaving
starts crying
up above my head.
Mother asks
What is wrong?
I am only three.

He had come
to our house
to shave.
His mother had hidden
his shaving kit—
a little game?

He had found her
that morning,
still staring at the snow
on the TV.

It’s one of the few
memories I have
of my grandmother.

*

ALS

What is it like
to be distilled
to the essence
of who you are?

To pierce
with your eyes
and nothing else?

Your skin poised,
thirsty to feel the touch.
Nerve endings open
and wired.

But nobody
breaks through
the chrysalis.

And you,
longing to reach for
the feathery leaf,
willing it with your eyes

to slowly descend
from the tree
and rest
on your hand.

*

Bar Stool

I was frightened,
so I assembled a bar stool.

First night in the new house—
alone. The peace of the day
melted into the eerie quiet of night.

No blinds or curtains yet.
The house reveals
its pale yellow underbelly
to the outside.

I sit on the floor, unpack the metal parts,
find the tiny tools, the screws.
Lay them all out.

I focus on the instructions,
trying to ignore that anyone passing by
would see me bent over,
fussing over something.

My fingers are clumsy—
the screws slip from them,
the holes do not align.

The stool leg is backwards
and I have to start over.

Finally finished, I sit on it.
The first piece of furniture
in the house. I eye the other
one, and go back down.

The second one goes faster.

I look at the two stools—
white metal legs, grey cushion.

Fear screwed in, screwed in tight.

Tomorrow I will get two more stools
and assemble them at daylight.
That way, I will not know
which ones hold the fear.

*

Dolo Diaz is a poet originally from Spain, living in Palo Alto, California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Right Hand Pointing, Star*Line, Rogue Agent, Book of Matches, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and others. Her first chapbook Defiant Devotion has been published by Bottlecap Press.

What We Keep on the Fourth by Veronica Tucker

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

What We Keep on the Fourth

It’s not the anthem
or the sparklers burning
their short, bright lives
in the hands of children
who will never know
how long we waited
for a moment like this.

It’s the way corn
tastes sweeter in July,
the way the dog sleeps
in the patch of shade
beneath the picnic table
while someone hums
an old song
that doesn’t need a name.

It’s flip-flops by the lake
and the screen door
slamming behind a cousin
you haven’t seen since last summer
but still love in the way
you love watermelon
and stories that start with remember when.

It’s the long daylight,
stretching like a promise
no one is ready to cash in.
It’s smoke curling from the grill,
the hush before the first boom
that sends every child
into the arms of whoever
feels like home.

We say it’s about freedom,
but maybe it’s about pause,
about holding still
on the lip of summer
long enough to know
you were here
for something that mattered.

*

Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician, as well as a mother of three. Her work appears in redrosethorns, Red Eft Review, and Medmic, with additional pieces forthcoming. Find her at www.veronicatuckerwrites.com and on Instagram @veronicatuckerwrites.

Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House by Mary Ellen Redmond

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House

My neighbor on the street behind me
is using his leaf blower on this Fourth of July
during that customary lull between the parade and fireworks,
when babies nap and dogs find solace in the shade.

It sounds like a giant mosquito hovering over
our neighborhood disrupting our quiet afternoon.
But when the buzzing continues for over an hour,
I ride my bike around the corner to investigate,

and there he is on his front lawn, shirtless, in the most
patriotic way —slightly hairy chest, gold chain— blowing
his lawn clean of any leaf, stick, piece of detritus

that has landed on his artificial turf.
The yard is bordered by dozens of tiny flags stuck
between plastic red geraniums, perpetually in bloom.
Why not vacuum the whole damn yard?

Peddling home, I imagine him a member of the militia,
a true Patriot—
defending his country,
his rights, his piece of the pie,
blowing those Red Coats away,
one by one,
his leaf blower resting on his arm.

*

Mary Ellen Redmond’s poems have appeared in a number of journals including Rattle and The Cortland Review, but the publication she is most proud of is the poem tattooed on her son’s ribcage. Her interview with Gregory Orr was published in The Drunken Boat. Her poem “Fifty-Six Days” earned a Best of the Net nomination in 2016 and her poem “Joy is not made to be a crumb” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2024.

Like Lightning by tc Wiggins

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Like Lightning

If the myths are to be believed
there is no delight which lasts.
The beautiful grow old then die.
Children experience snow
for the first time, once, then never again.
Passion itself can only take us so far.
It guides us through the fields
of indulgence to abandon us
inside a constellation lit valley
beneath the crimson-throated chortle
of cuckoo. Leaves us there
repeating why, why, why, like a
rich-man-turned-beggar, hunched
off to the side of the pavement
as pedestrians pass or step around him.
Few loves become like the Moon.
Most become like lightning. Or,
if we’re lucky, like the clamoring of
excited hens. Wild, and echoing
for hours and hours through the thundering
night. Then echoing even after that.

*

tc Wiggins is an African American poet residing in Cincinnati, Ohio who has been writing since the August of 2022. His favorite writers and inspirations are Jack Gilbert, Linda Gregg, Mary Oliver, Maggie Smith, Victoria Chang and Wendy Cope. tc suffers from chronic (if not terminal) boredom. You should send him poems to read, preferably your own. His Instagram handle is scaringthemuse.

Three Poems by Karly Randolph Pitman

~ ONE ART ~ 6 Comments

Let

after Jane Kenyon’s Let Evening Come

Let the brown tabby meow, paw
at your door and pull you out
of bed hours before you feel ready.

Let the hot sun bake the sweet
potato plants as you measure what
to water or what to let die.

Let the body buck from another wave
of dizziness as you learn a new way
to ride the body’s labor pains.

Let the hollow of grief come up for air
so the tears that are stuck in the corners
of your eyes can drop their heavy load.

Let the fridge empty. Let the dust gather
on the bookshelves. Let the to do list
unravel in the light of what is possible
instead of what you hoped would be.

Let help come. Let friends bring you pots
of soup, jars of tea and prayer flags, tied
on a string. Let the doctor insert the needle
that makes you tremble.

Let yourself fall. Let yourself weep. Let
yourself shatter, let yourself know you
don’t have to be any braver than you
know how to be.

The early rising brings morning flowers.
Sweet potatoes bring grace. The body
brings breath. Grief brings tenderness.
Unraveling brings silence. Help brings ease.
Shattering brings relief from holding up
what needed to break.

Let everything happen to you, Rilke says –
as if you’re given a choice, as if let is optional.
What if everything happens? What if this
is what I can trust? What if this is the way
that trust holds me?

*

Opening the Package

The medicine arrives
wrapped in paper, tucked
with care like a present,
folded triangles laid on top
of each other so that
opening the package
feels like receiving
a gift. You feel blessed
by this extra attention,
as if the person sending
you your medicine
whispered a prayer
on your behalf
as they packed up
the box for shipping,
a prayer that arises
to meet you now
as you slice open
the box with a knife,
spread apart each
cardboard flap,
and unwrap each vial
with a yes, yes.

*

Communion

This is my body, broken for you.
These words arise as I greet
the morning sun, my bare feet
sinking into the soft earth. All
my dead lie below me, their bones
feeding the soil, feeding the plants
and animals that make their way
to my dinner plate. Today I feel
their strength beneath me, holding
me up. Others have walked before
me. Others have shared my sorrow
and struggles. Others have wept
my tears. “Help me,” I pray,
offering myself to their bodies,
to the soil that grows me, to the sun
that warms my skin. Their bodies
were broken, too. They knew pain
and illness, loss and grief. They knew
the sting of betrayal and the ache
of failed dreams. I feel their broken
open bodies underneath me, the
cracked seeds of their hearts, each
body given to me this day so I may
rise, resurrected, to live.

*

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.

*

Karly is teaching a workshop for ONE ART this month (July 2025)!

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 <<<

Two Poems by Michelle Menting

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

When the Dewpoint is High

July becomes a box of water,
one made of cardboard that seeps,

inside out, outside in. If August
is the Sunday of summer, July

is Wednesday—middle child
simmering. There is no Thursday

month-summer. I forget the gods
whose names we’ve borrowed

for time. I forget which people
created them. But I know

in summer, I pine for waves—
water over land impartial: rocks

eroded to sandy tears, mud
the mating of silt & clay,

humus an orgy of oak & ash,
buckthorn & maple, all dead,

all resting. I’ll float above
them all, that plethora of textures

bottoming waters—those lakes,
& ponds, rivers & oceans holding

us in. Submerge and resurface.
Maybe all gods are swimmers—

so much closer are we to holiness
in the depths of the bodies we choose.

*

The Gusts Reached 60mph

and then the power went out. Leaving us
in a darkness resembling our lives, the pitch

of your voice when it drives to cut, to fissure
a wound as deep as the temper that craves

to carve it. There is rain in December
in Maine, a downpour of confusion

as much spectacle as menace. We kept
waiting: for the lights to flicker,

for the hum of white noise to fade,
for that power to finally go out.

I no longer set aside candles. The matches
stay in the drawer. I’m used to these storms.

I know how to prepare, but I’m tired.
This one too will pass. The sun will return,

heating too hot a ground that should be
dormant. Frozen. Listen, I know now: night

is a shield of darkness that I’ve learned
to rest with. To hide within its corners.

To wait. Then walk in the thick mud
of another season’s morning.

*

Michelle Menting lives across a questionable bridge in rural Maine. Her poems, flash fictions, and flash nonfictions have appeared in Passages North, Cincinnati Review, Diagram, Tar River Poetry, and other places. She teaches at the University of Southern Maine and directs a small-town library in midcoast Maine.

Three Poems by Amy Small-McKinney

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

We Are / I Am

How often did I sit beside
an older woman and ignore her?
What kind of tree

produces seeds encased in pealike
pods? I am searching
for its name. Call me if you know.

Call me if you are learning to love yourself,
your body that has lived through
seventy turns, at least.

At the park, the pond’s water appears textured
because of how the wind moves.
Wind, that body we don’t see,

except when it forces us to lose
what we love, a hat or—
We begin and we end.

Somewhere in between—
today—a young woman turned away.
I am her old woman.

Call me if you know
how to trace the blossoms’ origins.
How to look closely

to find the solid seedcoat
that must be broken
before another Redbud tree is born.

*

Paper, Tree, Ascension

On the mountain edge my daughter
talked me down.
My body, a slip of paper.
Why would I want to rise?
I’m afraid of heights.
Nothing but clouds and the sun
coming and going.

Romantics adore sunset.
I don’t like it.
It means opening to the arrogance
of the dark forcing its way through light.
It means remembering my husband
does not remember,
confuses day and night.

I love those mornings
when I am the only one awake,
when silence is my audience,
my consolation. This is my heaven.

If I had to ascend, I would become a tree.
Solid, I would not drift away.
Only my topmost limbs rising.
The slim document of my life would remain.
Beneath me, a woman would rest.

*

Missing Sock

uncovered from inside
my aging body

beneath mounds of carping voices
and a lifetime of a killdeer’s

displays of distraction
intent on staying safe.

I am grateful to have found it—
this softer self—as though another

heart unlocked.
How long have we been lost?

Very nearly forever.

*

Amy Small-McKinney is a Montgomery County PA Poet Laureate Emeritus. She is the author of six poetry books, including three full-length books and three chapbooks. & You Think It Ends (Glass Lyre Press), her newest full-length book, was released in March 2025. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including American Poetry Review, Pedestal Magazine, Tahoma Review and Verse Daily, among others. She has contributed to many anthologies, for example, Rumors, Secrets, & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion, & Choice (Anhinga Press, 2022) and 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium (Ashland Poetry Press). Her poems have also been translated into Korean and Romanian.