Month: April 2026

Spring Fundraiser: Results, Thanks, Next Steps

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Spring Fundraiser: Results, Thanks, Next Steps

First, so much gratitude to everyone who donated to support ONE ART during the Spring 2026 fundraiser!!

We reached 2/3 of our primary goal and 58% of our overall goal. And that’s great!

Sadly, we did not reach the higher tier goal ($4,000) designed to provide funds that would allow for print publication of IN A NUTSHELL: An Anthology of Micropoems. That being said, I’m leaving the door open to possibilities for publishing a print version.

Previously, I was planning on seasonal fundraisers with a goal of raising $3,000 each quarter. Moving forward, I think the strategy will be biannual fundraisers in Spring and Fall; plus, as previously mentioned, targeted fundraisers for specific projects.

In future, ONE ART will likely have targeted fundraisers that are exclusively for something like a print anthology.

Thank you again to all who have donated— either during or outside the fundraising windows— I am immensely grateful for your support!

I’m always seeking ways to grow ONE ART and enhance our community. Please feel free to share suggestions for future ONE ART endeavors.

With Gratitude,

Mark Danowsky
Editor
ONE ART

That’s When I Gave Her My Copy of The Moon by Ruth Bavetta

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That’s When I Gave Her My Copy of The Moon

After the hibiscus shriveled in the sun,
after the gerbils were silent in their cage,

after August lay stunned on the page.
After the postman tripped on the rock,

after the light went out in the kitchen,
after she sat on the porch in the dark.

After the church burned down in the night
after the flight was inscribed and filed.

Before he changed his shoes,
before he believed the lies.

Before he hung up the phone,
before he died on the stairs, alone.

*

Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in North American Review, Nimrod, Rattle, Slant, Atlanta Review, Tar River Poetry and many other journals and anthologies. Her published books are Fugitive Pigments, What’s Left Over, Embers on the Stairs, Selected Poems, and Flour, Water, Salt. She likes the light on November afternoons, the music of Stravinsky, the smell of the ocean. She hates pretense, prejudice, and sauerkraut.

ONE ART’s 2026 Haiku Anthology Reading

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ONE ART’s 2026 Haiku Anthology Reading

Date: Sunday, April 26
Time: 2pm Eastern
Duration: 1-1.5 hours
Hosts: Katie Dozier & Mark Danowsky

Tickets are FREE!
(donations appreciated)

>> Register Here <<

~ Event Details ~

Poets in the anthology, who are in attendance, will read their haiku.

Katie will talk about her experience curating the anthology.

If you haven’t had a chance to listen yet, Part 1 of The Poetry Space_ on ONE ART’s 2026 Haiku Anthology is out now! Part 2 will be released next week.

Two Poems by Susan Vespoli

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Bitch

               “Better Bitch Than Mouse”
               ~ Ruth Bader Ginsberg

The Cancer Care Center is on the third floor
of a four-story rectangular prism on 3rd Street
whose overflow parking lot faces a food pantry
where we often see a line of the Phoenix hungry
and Christopher holds my hand as we walk toward
the building I have grown to loathe even though
the receptionist, Mike, is nice, slightly droll,
as he snaps another plastic I.D. bracelet around my wrist,
even though we tagged my young blond doctor Boy Genius
on the first meeting, even though the nurses flutter around
the big-windowed mini-gymnasium of pleather chairs
like angels, even though there are photos of dogs
in party hats dangling from strings and a wide basket
of packaged snacks like Chips Ahoy and Rice
Crispy Treats and they offer us cold water bottles
and warm blankets and there are big screens
blathering home decorating shows from the wall
and a glass display case of wigs and hats and bras
for sale in the entry and a view from our chairs
of flat rooftops surrounded by a panorama of desert
mountains.           It is 2025, in the fire-hot summer
month of the sturgeon full moon, and I hate it more
every time I swim in to strike another bargain
with death; all of us have. We never knew we’d end
up here together: the young woman sleeping fetal
position in a chair, old man in a hillbilly beard
and baggy jeans, dude in a basketball uniform.
We are bald, patchy haired, or capped in turbans.
We are nauseous or munching on free processed crap.
Or we (i.e. me) are bitchy, questioning each shot,
each treatment and the garbage pail of side effects,
my partner growing weary of my boat rocking,
asking, can’t you just trust the doctors? to which I snap NO.
My therapist affirms anger as a necessary grief stage
and I say fury and I say I know I can be a bitch
and I say it’s hard to be one’s highest self when things
are hard and she says our higher self doesn’t mean sweet
and she says BITCH is an acronym for Babe In Total Charge
of Herself                      and I breathe.

*

Self Portrait as Patient

I pop half a Xanax before my appointment,
but it doesn’t really help. I am not a drug person

and my oncologist wears bright orange Nikes
as he makes his rounds, smiles and waves
at me in my corner chair next to the exit

where I can be invisible, yet scope the room
while clear chemicals enter my veins through tangled tubes

and they call this drip an infusion and the rules
post-chemo are no kissing or exchanging bodily fluids

for three days and to launder all linens and clothes in hot water.
I      pop      half      a      Xanax      before      my      appointments

so I can be invisible, close my eyes and disappear.
My one-positive-affirmation-a-day calendar
recently read: “I can do hard things,”

to which I replied, “fuck you.” I don’t want to do any more
hard things. I want peace and ease and to eat dessert after every meal.

*

Susan Vespoli is a poet from Arizona who believes in the power of writing to heal. Her poems have appeared in ONE ART: a journal of poetry, The New Verse News, Rattle, and other cool spots. She is the author of four books of poetry and teaches Wild Writing for 27 Powers and writers.com. Susan Vespoli – Author, Poet

In October, You Leave Rehab Before the Miracle Happens by Jane Ann Fuller

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In October, You Leave Rehab Before the Miracle Happens

Say the leaves surrender
and it’s beautiful.

Say the yard is strewn
with the brilliance of the defeated

their brittle bodies scratching their music
on your front lawn.

This time, maybe
you got what you need

like this dervish of leaves,
their wildness freed.

If I pay attention
even I can find the sacred

playing footsie on the grass
as the wind picks up

the dead and lays them
at my feet while I wait

on the front porch
for your arrival.

*

Jane Ann Fuller is a poet from south eastern Ohio whose book Half-Life (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions) was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Awards. A Best of the Net nominee, Fuller is a recipient of the James Boatwright III Poetry Prize. You can find her poems in Anacapa Review, Bear Review, BODY, Calyx, Ekphrastic Review, Hunger Mountain, Main Street Rag, Shenandoah, ONE ART, and many other literary journals. Her new manuscript Darkened Window was a semi-finalist for the Washington Prize and is still looking for a home.

BETTER DAYS by Kevin Ridgeway

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BETTER DAYS

My childhood best friend lives
in Colorado now, and I haven’t
seen him since we were both fourteen.
I haven’t seen any of the few friends
I had from the old seedy little
Southern California bedroom
community I grew up in and the sad,
paint chipped walls of its one story houses—
windows lined with bars and overgrown
lawns yellowed by the relentless sun.
Among scattered detritus in the gutters
were lemons and oranges reduced to pulp,
littering the street after we picked them
off of trees and chucked them
as our sporting, prepubescent sacrifice
at the asphalt altar of the 1990s wasteland
we roamed through, the concrete
hot enough to have us dance up
and down in our bare feet, away
from the domestic miseries we
all sought to one day escape.
Most of us were school yard rejects,
bullied by the worst of the worst—
but my friends and I enjoyed our own
moments of delinquency, like the time
we broke into what we had thought
was an abandoned haunted house
and the owner caught us—
when he asked us for our names
and our parents’ phone numbers,
in the age before cell phones,
intent on letting our parents know
what we thought we could get away with,
I was the first to lie, giving him a phoney
name and telephone number. My friends
all followed suit and we laughed about
that old fool for years. Until I stopped
seeing my friends, not just because
some of them moved away, but because
we no longer had anything in common.
I have no idea what happened to them
other than my best friend, Simon,
who I’m no longer close to but who
I matter enough to for him to have sent
the largest floral arrangement on display
at my mother’s funeral, the chapel
as quiet as what we once thought had
been a haunted house in our old suburb,
but was a life abandoned instead,
in a once promising world that had already
seen better days before we all got there.

*

Kevin Ridgeway’s books include Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press), Invasion of the Shadow People (Luchador Press) and Death of the Coppertone Girl (Luchador Press). His work has been published in Hiram Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Slipstream Magazine, Paterson Literary Review, Gargoyle, Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, Trailer Park Quarterly and Talking River Review, among others. He lives and writes in Long Beach, California.

Carrying Kevin to the Grave by Dick Westheimer

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Carrying Kevin to the Grave

I told Kevin that we’re all moving
at the speed of light in space-time.

He replied that I was likely right
but that wouldn’t help me haul

the Gravely sickle bar attachment
out into the tractor yard. I’d asked him

for help. What would help, he said
was if I just decided I could do it.

You’re strong as I am. You just think
too much. And he’s right,

it was like all of time dilated
into that one year he lived here.

We built a barn, dug the foundation
for our house in 100° heat, quit smoking dope,

started again, listened to a shit-ton
of Grateful Dead and I learned

to play the guitar. And he just up and left,
headed out west—to work sales

for his brother’s natural hairbrush
business. I didn’t hear from him

till the late-night calls began. He’d ring
at 3AM. Deb and I slept on a pull out

couch and that first call woke the baby
and Kevin harangued about me owing him

big money for all the work he did
and that his brother’s business wasn’t

worth a damn and later I heard from his sister
that he started using smack and they found

his body in a ditch halfway up Cone Peak
off Route 22S and he’d be seventy now,

helping me out and teaching me
how to carry things too heavy to hold.

*

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

Four Poems by Dolo Diaz

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Father at the Stove

Father was a picky eater.
Mother would fuss over the stove,
a different pot for each of us.
It was her undoing.
She would make cod for me.
Brother, sister, other dishes.
But Father was exotic:
razor clams, conger fish
goose barnacles—
all fine, till the egg.
The fried egg.
It was her Everest.
Her culinary summit
unconquered.
Arguments would flare,
the yolk was cold.
Father would demonstrate
with another egg.
Mother, humiliated,
Father at the stove
pouring hot oil
over the yolk.
The family meal
disrupted.
Irretrievably.

*

The Morning After the Storm

I walk into the fresh battlefield
to inspect the fallen limbs.
Which tree do they belong to?

The shapes they take—
landing and settling,
a second planting.

The missing sound
of the open wound.

The creek rages,
chocolate-thick,
oxidized venous blood
carrying limbs lost upstream.

There is a hush in destruction,
pregnant with sound.
It fades slowly,
like folding eggs into batter.

If you listen carefully,
you can hear the hum.

After the storm,
what needed to break
has broken,
and stilled.

*

Forcing Last Rites on My Father

Calling the priest never crossed our minds.
Religion was not your cup of tea.
But your sister insisted, called him anyway
behind our backs. And when he arrived—
black robes cloaking a flawed man—
he insisted too and barged into your room.
You sat there, puzzled by the vials of oil
and paraphernalia. We were kids, peering through
the cracked door, tears of helplessness.
When he was done, we cursed him down the stairs.
He claimed God was on his side.
We knew better.

* 

The Chestnut Grove

You took us to the mountains
to show us the forestland
we would inherit—
the three of us.

I don’t remember what
my two siblings were promised,
but mine was the old chestnut grove.

Ancient, contorted trees
offering green, spiky parcels
cradling leathery fruit.

Trees native to the land,
unlike the eucalyptus
crowding all around us.

I think about that grove—
seen only once
four decades ago,
three of those you’ve been gone.

Your will, still unsettled,
the land still waiting,
the trees still bearing chestnuts
every fall.

*

Dolo Diaz is a scientist / poet with roots in Spain, currently residing in California. Her work has appeared/forthcoming in ONE ART, The Summerset Review, Third Wednesday, The Lake, among others. Website: dolodiaz.com.

Four Poems by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

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On the Street in Lancaster, Ohio

I like your costume,
the woman said, and I said,
Thank you. Thing was,
I wasn’t wearing a costume.
I was dressed as me,
a middle-aged woman
in tall black boots,
black yoga pants,
a long gray sweater
and my dad’s gray hat.

It wasn’t till after she left
I laughed, delighted
to be called out
for dressing up as myself,
a person I’ve been
trying to be my whole life.

And where, I wondered,
does the costume end?
Does it include my hair?
My skin? My name?
My stories? My resume?
My voice? All of it,
a costume of self
worn by whatever
is most alive inside.

I’m thinking this human frame
is just some get-up the infinite
has slipped into for a time,
even as it slips into other
costumes, including one
that looks exactly like you.
And hey, I like your costume.

*

Fact Checking

When a gator is chasing you,
he said, you run away,
but zig zag. They can scent you,
and they’re fast, but they aren’t
agile enough to turn well. And
this is how I might have become
a gator bite. His advice sounded good,
and it was echoed by others I met,
but fact is, the best bet to survive
a gator attack is to back up slow
with the hands in the air to look big.
If it charges, then run. Fast.
In a straight line. No zagging.
They’re quick, but tire easily on land.
How many other stories do I trust
every day, not thinking to look them up?
How many people have I fed to the gators?
The world has never been swampier.
The need to check what we’re told is great.
Look friend, here comes a gator even now.
Face him. Raise your arms. Back away slow.
Don’t turn your back if you can help it.
They look more like people than you’d think.

*

Today’s Headline

And then one day, while I read
aloud to my husband the news
and felt the widening hole in my heart,
he raised his hand to quiet me.
I followed his gaze out the window
to see in the yard a small fluffy thing
with black and white eyespots on its head.
A northern pygmy owl beside our door,
stout body slightly smaller than my fist.
It turned its neck a full half circle
to look at me with bright yellow eyes.
In an instant, I shifted from disgust
with the world to awe. Awe for this
fierce bespeckled miracle, this wonder
of feather and beak and claw, this
small being in the grass looking back
at me as if to say, Here is also the news.
How surprising the world can be.
How quickly, when I let it, amazement
overwrites my fear and makes
of the hole in my heart a home.

*

When They Asked Me, “What Is Your Current Hyperfixation”

I could have said potato chips. Always true. Plain ones. No flavors. Potato. Oil. Salt. I could have said black licorice from Finland, also always true. Or long flowy pants with no front pockets. That’s new. Tending my eight aloe babies still recovering from their transplant. Counting orchid buds about to bloom. How many grams of protein in a serving of anything. The insane softness of my daughter’s inner arm. How baby swifts can fly ten months without stopping. Imagining Rodin and Rilke watching sunsets together. But I said the only words I could—I am starved for all stories of kindness. The young man delivering diapers to immigrant families in Maine. The woman sending socks to my friend with cancer. The stranger who walked a labyrinth with me. My husband offering me the last egg in the carton. Anyone who smiles and says hello in the grocery store aisles. Anyone who says hello back.

*

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet, teacher, speaker and writing facilitator who co-hosts Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. Her poems have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, Washington Post’s Book Club, and Carnegie Hall stage. Her recent collections are All the Honey and The Unfolding. In 2024, she became poet laureate for Evermore, helping others explore grief and love through poetry. Since 2006, she’s written a poem a day, sharing them on her blog, A Hundred Falling Veils. One-word mantra: Adjust.

ONE ART’s 2026 Haiku Anthology

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ONE ART’s 2026 Haiku Anthology

Editor’s Note:

As I pause to think about all that went into our third annual anthology, I’m overcome. I don’t mean in terms of our curational efforts—though Mark Danowsky always impresses me—I’m overcome by the abundance of attention to the world that is reflected in these startling haiku.

It is a decision to commit to writing a poem, in much the same way that one can commit to noticing what unfolds around us every day. In such a way, the practice of writing haiku has the power to rewire us. Especially in the age of the attention economy, every iteration of observation is a form of gratitude.

That doesn’t mean that gratitude is always joyful, as is reflected in many of the haiku that are curated in our anthology. Gratitude is an effort to love our world unconditionally.

This year, we were sent more powerful haiku than ever before, which speaks to how we are continually growing better at achieving oneness with the world. So thank you to every person that spends their days noticing, to the poets that take the time to write it down, and especially to the haiku poets represented in this year’s tribute to gratitude.

Warmly,

Katie Dozier

P.S. Please join us on April 26th for our live reading on Zoom, as well as listen in to episodes #136 and #137 of my podcast, The Poetry Space, where Mark joined Timothy Green and I to celebrate this anthology.

~ ~ ~

the spring he died
I wanted everyone
to

—Sherry Abaldo

§

elephant balanced
on a beach ball—
         haiku

—Lana Hechtman Ayers

§

damping down the tantrum snow swirl

—Roberta Beary

§

pinholes
in a firefly jar
Americanism

—Doug Belleville

§

determined
to touch the sky
I kneel

—Jaundré van Breda

§

ok kid
your turn
tilt-a-world

—Chuck Brickley

§

deep in the woods
the fallen log
lucky break

—Randy Brooks

§

baby pacifier you can suck it

—susan burch

§

schoolboys need
something to aim for
urinal cake

—Jared M. Campbell

§

spring clouds
the farther I wander
the lighter my pack

—Sandip Chauhan

§

how I long for you wisteria

—Sue Courtney

§

let’s pretend
we can start over
snowfall

—Cherie Hunter Day

§

finger painting       pink petals       across the lawn

—Christiana Doucette

§

boardwalk sunset . . .
the ant on my popsicle
gets the last lick

—Anna Eklund-Cheong

§

polar vortex
more left than right-
handed mittens

—Judson Evans

§

before I give up anything       Lenten rose

—Terri French

§

red wine on the stove
together we mull

—Doug Fritock

§

daylight saving time
I wake up
of natural causes

—Nicole Caruso Garcia

§

wedding ring
right hand
because

—Jo Anne Moser Gibbons

§

only with honey
learning to love
teatime

—Rachel Greve

§

crescent moon
curve of the fallen robin
cradled in my hand

—Cindy Guentherman

§

nature or nurture second draft

—Jennifer Hambrick

§

syllable
by syllable
blooming lilacs

—Kathryn P. Haydon

§

the time it takes a village

—Jeff Hoagland

§

even after I close my eyes blue lilacs

—Jackleen Holton

§

a half-eaten muffin
on the hospital tray
father falling asleep

—Ruth Holzer

§

pause in mid air
the curve
of hour glass sands

—Sangita Kalarickal

§

seatbelt—
the sudden click
of new friendship

—Julie Bloss Kelsey

§

crescent moon
proof the fullness
once existed

—Lynne Kemen

§

the little girl says
she wants a different name
end of the fairy tale

—Peter Kovalik

§

latchkey sun breaking through the window

—Kat Lehmann

§

choosing a condolence card silence

—John Levy

§

concert intermission—
the adagio
of the bathroom line

—Robert Lowes

§

blood
moon

my
child

hood
dream

of
space

travel

—paul m.

§

patterns on his aloha shirt our awkward hug

—Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

§

mountain pass—
the single mom leans
on a guardrail

—Michael Meyerhofer

§

pop songs
on my radio
almost singing

—Jenny Middleton

§

every word out bracing itself ants

—Biswajit Mishra

§

pointing a lens
at everything white
snow day

—Gareth Nurden

§

newborn
a destiny linked
plantain tree

—Uchechukwu Onyedikam

§

second marriage,
our basement of boxes
unpacked together

—Al Ortolani

§

cave painting
stegosaurus
bathroom plaster

—Brian O’Sullivan

§

used car lot
the ripple and flap of
exclamation marks

—John Pappas

§

false spring
tidying up before
the cleaner arrives

—Shruti Patel

§

we all start
somewhere
maggots

—Rick Pongratz

§

Sun dogs
my shadow and I
playing fetch

—Scott Reid

§

dandelion fluff
my control
over nothing

—Bryan Rickert

§

confessing
only to the stars
my dark matter

—Ce Rosenow

§

nuclear family—
the empty nest
when they glow

—Shawn Aveningo Sanders

§

third marriage
wallpapering the family room
with the same pattern

—Kelly Sargent

§

listening for birdsong sirens

—Carla Schwartz

§

burying the lede—
an ice-encrusted bag
in the bottom of the freezer

—Julie Schwerin

§

family tree
the roots I never
put down

—Shloka Shankar

§

pre-monsoon sky—
spider veins ensnare
my legs

—Kashiana Singh

§

slipping tongue black ice

—James Spencer

§

winter depths
the no-herons
of the Susquehanna

—Joshua St. Claire

§

hand plunges once twice different river

—JeFF Stumpo

§

scare tactics
no longer duped
by fake owls

—Scott Wiggerman

§

~ Editor Notes ~

Katie Dozier is the author of All That Glitter (winner of the Poetry Box’s 2025 Chapbook Prize), and Watering Can. She’s the co-author of two haibun crowns with her husband, Timothy Green. Katie created the podcast The Poetry Space, is the Haiku Editor for ONE ART, and an editor at Rattle. She loves long conversations about short poems.

~ Contributor Notes ~

Sherry Abaldo’s poems have appeared in Rattle, ONE ART, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net. A native Mainer, she currently lives in Las Vegas with her husband. More at sherryabaldo.com.

Lana Hechtman Ayers shepherded over 150 poetry collections into print as managing editor for three small presses. She lives in Oregon on the unceded lands of the Yaqo’n people, where on clear, quiet nights she can hear the Pacific ocean whispering to the moon.

Roberta Beary they/she, winner of the Bridport Poetry Prize, was born and raised in Jamaica Estates, New York and resides in Bethesda, Maryland. Their work appears in Tiny Love Stories (Modern Love/New York Times), Rattle, HAD, and other publications. Crazy Bitches (MacQ, 2025) is their fifth poetry collection.

Doug Belleville writes both short and long-form poetry, with work published in a variety of journals. Based in Ohio, he is a mental health professional who enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, hiking, and playing chess.

Jaundré van Breda is a haiku poet from South Africa. Among other publications, his haiku has appeared in the last two One Art Poetry Haiku Anthologies. Visit swallowingpaint.com for more information about the author.

Chuck Brickley has been writing free-verse haiku for over 60 years. Chuck’s multi-award-winning book, earthshine (Snapshot Press, 2017), is in its 5th printing; his second collection, downhill home (Snapshot Press, 2025), its second printing. http://www.chuckbrickley.com

Dr. Randy Brooks is Professor of English Emeritus at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, where he teaches courses on haiku, tanka, and Japanese poetics. He and his wife, Shirley Brooks, are publishers of Brooks Books and co-editors of Mayfly haiku magazine. His most recent books include Walking the Fence: Selected Tanka, The Art of Reading and Writing Haiku: A Reader Response Approach, and HAIKU DECK: A collection of playing cards.

susan burch is a good egg.

Jared M. Campbell is a corporate lawyer living in Kansas.

Sandip Chauhan is a poet based in Northern Virginia. Her work draws from a haikai sensibility, where few words open into vast silences. She explores migration, memory, and the quiet pull of home,

Sue Courtney lives by the estuary in Orewa, New Zealand. She writes poetry and haiku for mindfulness and creative well-being, and finds inspiration from nature and the changing seasons.

Cherie Hunter Day has published haikai since 1993. She is the author of seven books and six chapbooks. Her most recent full-length collection is A House Meant Only for Summer (Red Moon Press, 2023). She lives in Auburn, New Hampshire.

Christiana Doucette gardens because poetry & flowers grow best with space. Her poetry has been set to music and performed on NPR. She received the Kay Yoder Scholarship for American History and judges poetry for the San Diego Writer’s Festival. Find recent/forthcoming poetry in Rattle, Connecticut River Review, & StorySouth.

Anna Eklund-Cheong has been publishing haiku since 2015. A Minnesota native, dividing her retirement years between the US and France, she teaches haiku classes and offers tours in the Paris area. Her first collection of haiku, “From Little Acorns: 101 Modern Haiku,” was published in 2025.

Judson Evans is a haiku poet who also works in multiple genres. He published a collaborative book of poems inspired by cave painting– “Chalk Song” (Lily Poetry Press, Boston, 2022), and also a book-length long poem “Gear” (Meshwork Press, 2023). He teaches at Berklee College of Music.

Haiku poet, Terri L. French, resides in Huntsville, Alabama. She is former editor of Prune Juice journal of senryu & kyoka, and on the editorial team of Contemporary Haibun Online.

Doug Fritock is a writer, husband, and father of 4 residing in Redondo Beach, California. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has previously appeared in Rattle, Whale Road Review, and Maya C. Popa’s ‘Poems for your Weekend.’

Nicole Caruso Garcia’s OXBLOOD (Able Muse Press) won the International Book Award for narrative poetry. Her work appears in Best New Poets, Plume, Rattle, and elsewhere. She is associate poetry editor at Able Muse and served on the board of the Poetry by the Sea conference. Visit her at nicolecarusogarcia.com.

Rachel Greve is hydrogeologist, book lover, and sometimes-writer from Madison, Wisconsin. She has past or upcoming poetry included in Rattle, Wales Haiku Journal, and Frogpond.

Cindy Guentherman has been writing haiku for about 50 years. Her first published one was in Dragonfly in 1982. She currently has three poems in the latest copy of The Rockford Review.

Seven-time Pushcart nominee Jennifer Hambrick authored a silence or two, Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award; In the High Weeds, Stevens Manuscript Award; Joyride, Marianne Bluger Book Award; Unscathed. Poems: American Life in Poetry, Rattle, The Columbia Review. Awards: Martin Lucas Haiku Award, Haiku Society of America Haibun Award.

Kathryn P. Haydon is a Midwest poet who loves noticing small moments and writing small poems.

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

Ruth Holzer’s poetry has appeared in journals including Modern Haiku, Frogpond, The Heron’s Nest, bottle rockets, Hedgerow and Ribbons. A multiple Pushcart, Touchstone, and Best of the Net nominee, she has won the Tanka Splendor Award and the Ito En Art of Haiku Contest Grand Prize.

Dr. Sangita Kalarickal is an award winning, Touchstone and Pushcart Prize nominated poet. She is a widely published wordsmith, with her poetry and fiction appearing in journals and anthologies. Her chapbook Mamina showcases free-verse poetry and haikai form. Sangita is the Editor in Chief of Drifting Sands Haibun Journal.

Lynne Kemen is the author of Shoes for Lucy (SCE Press, 2023) and More Than a Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020). Her work has appeared in One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and elsewhere. A 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee, she serves as Editor/Interviewer for The Blue Mountain Review. https://lynnekemen.com/

Julie Bloss Kelsey writes short-form poetry from her home in suburban Maryland. She is currently on the board of The Haiku Foundation, where she pens a bi-monthly column, New to Haiku. Connect with her on Instagram (@julieblosskelsey).

Peter Kovalik is a poet from Slovakia. He is the author of one book of poetry – Sýkorník. His haiku and senryu have appeared or is forthcoming in List, Host, Romboid, Cold Moon Journal, Only Human, ONE ART and several anthologies.

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

John Levy lives in Tucson with his wife, the painter Leslie Buchanan. His most recent book of poems is 54 poems: selected & new (Shearsman Books, 2023).

Robert Lowes is the author of two poetry collections: Shocking the Dark (Kelsay Books, 2024), and An Honest Hunger (Resource Publications, 2020). His poems have appeared in journals such as The New Republic, Southern Poetry Review, and Modern Haiku. When he’s not writing, he’s probably playing a guitar.

paul m. (AKA Paul Miller), is an internationally awarded and anthologized short-form poet. He is the editor of Modern Haiku and author of six haiku collections, several of which have won book awards. His latest collection, Magnolia Diary, is at http://www.modernhaiku.org. A California native who lives in Florida’s panhandle.

Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California’s Central Valley and works as a librarian at UC Merced. She co-edits First Frost and One Sentence Poems, and her poetry has appeared in various print and online journals, in addition to several chapbooks.

Michael Meyerhofer’s latest book of poetry, What To Do If You’re Buried Alive, is free from Doubleback Books. His work has appeared in Modern Haiku, The Sun, Southern Review, Brevity, Rattle and other journals. For more info and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit troublewithhammers.com.

Jenny Middleton is a working mum and writes amid the fun and chaos of family life. She lives in London with her husband, two children and two very lovely, crazy cats. You can read more of her poems at her website https://www.jmiddletonpoems.com

Born in India and having lived in Kenya, Biswajit Mishra and his wife Bharati currently live in Calgary, Canada. His poems have been published in magazines including Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Heron’s Nest, Canada Haiku Review, Presence, The Other Bunny, Cattails, Asahi Haiku Network and Katha.

Gareth Nurden is a haikuist from Newport, Wales and has had several hundred pieces of haiku and senryu appear in journals and magazines worldwide. Gareth has also had numerous pieces nominated for Haiku Foundation Touchstone Award for individual poem in 2024 and 2025.

Brian O’Sullivan teaches English at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. His poems have been published at ONE ART, Rattle, HOWL New Irish Writing, Modern Haiku and other journals.

Jo Anne Moser Gibbons is a published writer, poet, and photographer whose work has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, Persimmon Tree, Silver Birch Press, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, AvantAppalachia, Common Threads, Tributaria, Women Speak, and elsewhere. She has received several Ohio Poetry Association poetry awards.

Jeff Hoagland is a lifelong naturalist and environmental educator with a passion for the wild. His first book, scent of juniper, captures his intimate and unique relationship with nature. His haiku can be found in journals, anthologies and on riverstones in his town. Jeff is an Associate Editor with The Heron’s Nest.

Uchechukwu Onyedikam is a haiku innovator fusing Igbó and Yorùbá linguistic textures and oral traditions with short-form poetry. His work appears in Presence (UK), Wales Haiku Journal, Asahi Shimbun (Japan), Prairie-Schooner (forthcoming), and is archived at Japan’s Museum of Haiku Literature. A forthcoming critical essay in Presence explores interlingual haiku.

Al Ortolani is a contributing editor to the Chiron Review. His poems have appeared in Rattle, One Art, and the Pithead Chapel. New York Quarterly Books plans to release his most recent poetry collection, American Watercolor, in early 2027.

Shruti Patel is a Kenyan-Indian writer whose work is shaped by a career in the aid sector, and the particulars of her heritage. Her poems have been published in Frogpond, Acorn, the Wales Haiku Journal, and several others. She lives in Zurich, Switzerland.

John Pappas is a poet and teacher whose work has appeared in many poetry journals and anthologies. His haiku have garnered a Touchstone Award from The Haiku Foundation, a 2023 Trailblazer award, a silver medal in the 2023 Ito En New Haiku Grand Prix, Best in the United States in the 2023 Vancouver Invitational, a Sakura Award in the 2024 Vancouver Invitational, honorable mention in the 2024 Heliosparrow Haiku Frontier Awards, and three New Science Awards in the 2025 Heliosparrow Haiku Frontier Awards, among others. His first chapbook dimes of light was published in 2024 by Yavanika Press. His work is featured in the recently published haiku anthologies off the main road: six contemporary haiku poets (Alba Publishing, 2024) and New Resonance 14 (Red Noon Press, 2025). His longer poetry has twice been selected for the Mayor of Boston’s Poetry Contest (2016 and 2020). As drummer and lyricist of the punk rock band Heather Hates You, he has recorded two albums and toured extensively. John lives in Boston, MA with his wife and two daughters, and has taught literature and general semantics in the Boston area for over 25 years.

Rick Pongratz is an emerging writer. His haiku have appeared in Rattle, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, and Whiptail. Rick is a mental health clinician and studies creative writing at Idaho State University. He currently resides in Idaho where he enjoys getting lost in the woods with his family and dog.

Scott Reid lives in Northern California. Recent publications include “Modern Haiku” and “Jackdaw Haiku.” As poet in residence in Sonoma County, he has taught poetry writing to children. He currently teaches memoir writing at Santa Rosa Junior College. In 2025, he attended the Haiku North America Conference in San Francisco.

Bryan Rickert, President of the Haiku Society of America (2023-2024), has been published in many fine journals. He was the Editor of Failed Haiku Journal of Senryu (2022-2024). Bryan’s haiku/senryu book is: Fish Kite (Cyberwit Publishing). He was also the recipient of the Touchstone award for individual poems in 2023.

Ce Rosenow is the author of six poetry collections and Lenard D. Moore and African American Haiku: Merging Traditions, editor of Japanese Forms in American Poetry: Beyond Haiku, and senior editor of Juxtapositions: Research and Scholarship in Haiku. She is the former president of the Haiku Society of America.

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

Shawn Aveningo Sanders’ newest book, Pockets, was a finalist in Concrete Wolf’s Chapbook Contest. Shawn’s poetry has appeared in Rattle (forthcoming), CALYX, Contemporary Haibun Online, Cloudbank, Sheila-Na-Gig and others. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she shares the creative life with her husband in Oregon. (redshoepoet.com)

A poet and editor, Kelly Sargent is the author of a haiku/ senryu collection entitled Bookmarks (2023), and a second collection, The Honeybee’s Waggle, is forthcoming. She has placed in a number of haiku/senryu competitions, and served as a co-judge for the HSA Harold G. Henderson Haiku Contest last year.

Prize-winning poet Carla Schwartz, of https://carlapoet.com and @cb99videos on all social media, lives and writes in New England.

Julie Schwerin (she/her) is an associate editor at The Heron’s Nest (www.theheronsnest.com) and a member of the Red Moon Anthology Editorial team. Her first full-length collection of haiku, fencing with the moon, is now available through Finishing Line Press.

Kashiana Singh has authored five poetry collections and embodies the essence of her TEDx talk – Work as Worship into her every day. Her last full length collection Witching Hour was released in Dec 2024 with Glass Lyre Press, Dualities of Alberio released with The Poetry Box in June 2025. http://www.kashianasingh.com/

Shloka Shankar is an editor and visual artist from India. A Best of the Net nominee and widely published haiku poet, she is the Founding Editor of Sonic Boom and its imprint Yavanika Press. Shloka is the author of the haiku collections The Field of Why and within our somehows.

James Spencer, of Detroit, lives with his family in Switzerland. Currently, teaches public speaking, Université de Lausanne, Exec MBA. ; his work can be found @ Sonic Boom and La Piccioletta Barca. Previously: actor, MFA, American Rep Theatre / Moscow Art Theatre School.

JeFF Stumpo is the author of these are the waterfalls in my head, winner of the 2026 Granite State Poetry Prize. He has a (poor) website at http://www.JeFFStumpo.com.

Poet, teacher, editor, artist, haikuist, and publisher Scott Wiggerman is the author of four books of poetry, Beginning and Ending with Emily, Leaf and Beak: Sonnets, Presence, and Vegetables and Other Relationships; and the co-editor of two volumes, Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga (2013), and Earthsigns (2017).

Poem to the Future by Kelli Russell Agodon

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Poem to the Future

Future, if you stop by, I promise to open the door.
I know sometimes you arrive in combat boots,
laces braided with bombs and drones, even the way
you cuff your jeans feels like a subtle threat. Future,
if you come inside, I’ll offer you jasmine tea, but know
I have champagne chilling in the fridge as I keep hoping
we’ll get to celebrate you. And my neighbor will come by
with tortilla soup. She makes a hell of a martini. Maybe
we’ll get you a little tipsy so you can calm the fuck down.
Wait, sorry—that’s my anxiety, Future, you don’t even exist
yet, like one of those midnight panics that wakes me when
I’m certain the world has ended (has it ended?) Future,
I promise to treat you well. I’ll show you the faith I had
last fall when I planted daffodils, those van Gogh tulips
I ordered in a frenzy of hope. Future, I believe in spring.
I believe in you too. Come in—but take your shoes off,
leave the dirty parts in the mudroom. I keep telling
everyone you’re coming. Don’t make me a liar.
Sit with me. Show me how we survived this.

*

Kelli Russell Agodon’s most recent book is Accidental Devotions (Copper Canyon Press, 2026). She is the author of five poetry collections. Her work has received numerous honors, including the Dorothy Rosenberg Poetry Prize, a Poetry Society of America Prize, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in Poetry, and three Washington State Book Award finalist selections. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press, teaches in Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program, and cohosts the poetry series Poems You Need with Melissa Studdard. She lives in a sleepy seaside town in Washington State. www.agodon.com

Making Sushi by Miriam Manglani

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Making Sushi

You are my bed of sticky rice,
the one I’ve pressed into a sheet of ocean.
Pieces of you cling to me—
even those I would rather live without.

I lay my vulnerable parts on you,
my avocado flesh,
the fish that swim in me.

My firm, earthy parts—
slivers of carrot standing tall and sure,
spiny slices of red pepper
with their curly tops shorn,
stand at attention like soldiers,
yield loud, bold crunches.

I roll myself up in you tightly,
the way we spoon together
in bed with sheets of dreams.

Cut us into small, neat pieces
we pick up with wooden sticks,
dip in our essence—salty-sweet sauce.

We savor bites,
with wide eyes,
wrapped up in each other.

*

Miriam Manglani lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and three children. She graduated with a degree in English from Brandeis University and works full-time as a Technical Training Manager. She is the author of the poetry book Invisible Lines published by Kelsay Books and the poetry chapbook Ordinary Wonders published by Prolific Press. Her poems have been published in various magazines and journals including Sparks of Calliope, ONE ART, Glacial Hills Review, and Paterson Literary Review. Read her published work on her website: miriammanglani.com

My Father’s Lottery by Anne Panning

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My Father’s Lottery

He sits in the Buick under buggy
streetlights. Scratch-offs shed
silver dust onto his jeans as if
they’re molting. Later, he’ll stuff
dollar winners in his underwear
drawer where they settle like
an insect’s folded wings. Power

ball tickets curve inside his wallet,
warm and pink as the shrimp he
wishes he could afford for dinner.
Each night they accumulate in fragile
piles thin as the soft moth that flutters
against his battered porch light.

*

Anne Panning’s debut poetry collection, Spit & Glitter, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. She has published a memoir, Dragonfly Notes: On Distance and Loss, as well as a novel, Butter. Her short story collection, Super America, won The Flannery O’Connor Award and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. She has also published short work in places such as Brevity, Prairie Schooner, Passages North, Craft Literary Magazine, Quarterly West, Kenyon Review, and River Teeth. Her essays have received notable citations in The Best American Essays series. She teaches creative writing at SUNY-Brockport and is working on her next book, Bootleg Barber: A Daughter’s Memoir.

ONE ART’s May 2026 Reading

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ONE ART’s May 2026 Reading

Date: Sunday, May 3
Time: 2pm Eastern
Featured Poets: Phyllis Cole-Dai, Karly Randolph Pitman, Ellen Rowland
Duration: 1.5 hours

Tickets are FREE!
(donations appreciated)

>> Register Here <<

~ About The Featured Readers ~

Phyllis Cole-Dai resides in Maryland. She’s the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the popular Poetry of Presence volumes of mindfulness poems. She invites you to hop aboard The Raft, her online community.

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.

Ellen Rowland is a writer and editor who leads small, generative poetry workshops on craft and form. She is the author of two collections of haiku: Light, Come Gather Me and Blue Seasons, and most recently The Echo of Silence/L’écho du Silence, a bi-lingual book of haiku and tanka. Her full-length poetry collection, No Small Thing, was published by Fernwood Press in 2023. You can find her writing in ONE ART, Sheila-Na-Gig, Braided Way, Humana Obscura, and several anthologies, including “The Path to Kindness” and “The Wonder of Small Things” edited by James Crews. Her chapbook of after poems, In Search of Lost Birds is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. She lives off the grid with her family on a small farm in Greece. Connect with her on Instagram , Facebook and Substack.

pretending & vodka cranberries by Haley DiRenzo

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pretending & vodka cranberries

by 21, i’d been drinking for years, but suddenly felt childish in the dim lights of the bars i could now get into. a vodka cranberry seemed like the drink you ordered when you did not know how to be an adult. how to wear sophistication like long lace gloves. red lipstick like a signature on purpose. too pink and prim and sweet. it mattered so much then. skipping through the becoming and arriving fully formed. to know how to kiss and fuck and hang the names of the right cocktails off your lips without any practice. i didn’t yet know about french 75s or how the word gimlet could be a sour candy sucked sweet against the right tongue. back then, outside the bar with the purple glow light that’s now closed, i handed my id to the doorman, who stood blocking the passage like a little god. he put it in his pocket. this isn’t you. get out of here. move along. my friends were inside, and i was standing in a skirt, glossed legs in the cold, trying to explain who i was. he must have seen a child, as so many did for so long. it would take me years to grow into my face. look like someone who could bear the weight of the world. in the same time, i’d realize, i didn’t like drinking all that much anymore. or being out past eleven. i’d learn how this world could crack you open with ache and all at once make you new. which is to say he saw what i didn’t yet know. that i was pretending. like a prophecy, the path unfolding before i was ready to walk. still i fought it. pulled out my credit cards, school id. look! look here! i exist. finally, he split from the doorway, anointed me myself. i was telling the truth. but i’ll never forget how he demanded i prove it. how i stood there. mouth open. hands rummaging through pockets, searching for a sign i was real.

*

Haley DiRenzo is a Colorado writer and attorney specializing in eviction defense. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barely South Review, Thimble, and Bending Genres, among others, and has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @haleydirenzo

Fear of a House Fire by Sara Letourneau

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Fear of a House Fire

you never wanted to be acquainted with / its slow slithering / its sulfur stench / the thin molten orange tearing across a room / the existential threat / the destruction of what you hold dear / a neighbor heard the bang / in the apartment below hers / moments later / incessant beeping / do you hear that? she texts you / you do / and you smell it / you know you should not go looking / should not open the locked door / no one answers when you knock / the owner texts you her door lock’s passcode / you wonder whether your neighbors would do this / if they heard your smoke alarm screaming / you open that door / your body tenses / black smoke / tendrils rising down the hall / you wonder whether curiosity and stupidity are cousins / in the boy’s bedroom / flames swallow carpet / later you’ll learn / a battery in a charging nightlight / overheated / exploded / catching the closest stuffed animal / but right now / you turn around / order everyone out / out / out of the building / your fingers flurry / against smartphone screen / 9-1-1 / your mouth moves / tells the operator / there’s a fire / where it is / how you know / as memory engulfs you / you were eleven / at a sleepover / you played Nightmare with your friends / on the VHS tape / the Gatekeeper ordered / what is your greatest fear? / write it now on this slip of paper / thirty years later / your answer is taunting you / licking its lips at you / as you run out of the building / pocketbook and laptop in your arms / phone cradled against your ear / wailing sirens down the street / do not calm you / do not reassure you / that you have saved lives / that you have saved your home / that you are safe

*

Sara Letourneau is the author of Wild Gardens (Kelsay Books, 2024). She is also a book editor and writing coach at Heart of the Story Editorial & Coaching Services; the cofounder and cohost of the Pour Me a Poem open mic in Mansfield, Massachusetts; and the co-editor of the Pour Me a Poem anthology. Her poetry has won the 2023 Beals Prize for Poetry. Her latest work can be found in The Ekphrastic Review, Ibbetson Street, Moss Puppy Magazine, Silver Birch Press, and WAVES: A Confluence of Women’s Voices. Sara is also the author of the Substack column The Wild Garden of Poetry (and Life), which you can read at https://saraheartofthestory.substack.com/. Visit Sara online at her website, on Facebook @heartofthestoryeditorial, on Instagram @sara_heartofthestory, and on LinkedIn @sara-letourneau.

Between 0 and 1 by Sharon Tung

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Between 0 and 1

For Savannah Guthrie

Somewhere, a field holds the hollow shape of a grave
with no body.

I dug it in my mind the day masked men tore
my brother-in-law from his storefront and dragged him into a waiting car—
the sky unwoken, streets folding tight around him.

Then the silence—thick as swamp mud, closing over my breath.

Why does the mind refuse an empty room?
It furnishes the dark: a mattress thin as paper,
a rope knotted to a chair, bruises blooming
across his thinning body, a single bulb swinging its tired moon.

In the shadows, Schrödinger’s cat curls beside him, both alive and dead.

My phone remains on full volume; each ring clicks against my skull,
a cylinder spinning—one bullet in its chamber, one fragile chance whirling in the dark.

Hope whittles down
to one percent—
the rest swallowed by shadows.

But between 0 and 1 lies infinity—
0.1,
0.01,
0.001…
each decimal holds endless probabilities
between two realities.

So I wait in the space between 0 and 1,
until the field yields:
        a grave returned to earth,
        or a body to fill it.

*

Sharon Tung is originally from South Africa and now lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and two children. Her poetry has appeared in Literary Mama.

Popsicle by Jennifer L. Freed

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Popsicle

When my mother in her hospital bed began moving,
mumbling, when it seemed she might live
after all, the nurses reattached her tubes and lines,
and the doctors returned, gave orders, made notes,
and my mother, eyes closed, whispered, Thirst.

A nurse offered a popsicle, but warned us
to be vigilant: she could choke any moment.
My mother, cheeks sunken, weak from long stillness
of not-dying, was able to hold it herself, the marvel
of its bright, improbable red. Her lips colored at its touch.

We stood by her bed, wordless, watching her lick
and not choke, lick and not choke, watching as though
she were a newborn bird, or a toddler, wide-eyed
at her first taste of snow, or a woman in her eighties
who did not die from a hemorrhage in her brain.

She brimmed with pleasure, fully-absorbed
by the sweet cherry ice on her tongue. When she was done,
she looked up at us, at the room, the blue window
full of sky, then carefully licked the stick, her fingers, her wrist,
and smiled and smiled, and said, More.

*

Jennifer L. Freedʹs collection, When Light Shifts (Kelsay, 2022), was a finalist for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize and the Medal Provocateur for poetry, and won second place for the Eric Hoffer Legacy Prize. Her poems appear in Atlanta Review, One Art, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, Vox Populi, What the House Knows, and elsewhere. She writes and teaches in Massachusetts. Please visit Jfreed.weebly.com

Farewell with Potato Blight and Moose by Kathy Nelson

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Farewell with Potato Blight and Moose

I’m no good at saying goodbye.
Not to the water aerobics ladies bobbing
in that cool blue—I give a vague wave
to no one in particular, hoisting myself

up the ladder. Not to the boss
who told me he wished he had five more
like me. Not to my aunt the last time
I saw her alive. I chirped See you later

as she cried, knowing I lied. My father
grew cold on the bathroom floor,
behind the locked door,
while my fingers fumbled the rotary dial,

the ambulance already too late,
the setting sun’s angles stretching
across a blank wall.
I was seventeen. It was December.

The low winter sun is what I recall.
My mother’s last hours, the other end
of my life, I thought I’d finally
learned how to say goodbye.

I even practiced the words
in that overheated room,
where her bones were already lifting
from her flesh, and on the sill

an electric fan whirred.
I droned on just like that fan,
thanking her for all she’d done for me,
promising I would always miss her.

It wasn’t Goodbye, all those words
I said. It was I’m innocent.
Maybe the first loss, the worst,
the biggest grief of all is innocence.

Truth is, when her breath ceased,
I was a helium balloon released.
When my friend, over an untouched lunch,
whispered her news, two kinds

of cancer, the diagnoses arriving
like twins. I felt it then—
the straining for escape, the wish
for a magic trick, like Teller’s

or Houdini’s, to overcome death.
Moving west at 70, explaining
the need to be closer to family,
I pretended I’m not dying too.

Doesn’t moving always have its appeal?
My Irish ancestors fled potato blight,
their sights on milk and honey.
Who, I wonder, did they leave behind?

A heart can grow wooden with loss,
like a creaky old wind-up clock
grinding its gears, a machine, chiming
on schedule and ticking, ticking.

I knew a man once whose daughter
would no longer see him
after he told her he was dying.
She’s not angry he told me.

She loves me. She’s young.
It’s too hard to bear.
I too tried forgetting my father.
Twenty years after the day

I didn’t save him, my life by then
a small room of locked doors,
I crept back, unraveled and
empty-handed, to the cemetery.

Among the green mounds,
I scoured the headstones for his name.
Will I leave this world with nothing
and no one left to lose, or will I

leave it the way I leave one room,
arrive in the next with no idea
what I came there for? My friend,
her cancer three months in remission,

climbed a stepstool, lost her balance,
fell. Three days later, she was dead.
Is that how I’ll leave? Or like
a thirteen-pound terrier mix,

witless and resolute, churning
his short legs up a mountainside,
chasing a half-ton moose, heeding
only instinct and the body’s will?

Or will I leave the way I left
that job, regretting almost
everything, wishing for someone
to call me back, beg me to stay?

*

Kathy Nelson lives on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains. She is a James Dickey Prize winner, a finalist for the Orison Best Spiritual Literature Prize in Poetry, an MFA graduate of the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, and a Nevada Arts Council grant recipient. She is author of The Ledger of Mistakes (Terrapin Books). Her work appears in About Place Journal; Atlanta Review; Five Points: A Journal of Literature and Art; New Ohio Review; Pedestal Magazine; Tar River Poetry, Valparaiso Poetry Review; Verse Daily, and elsewhere.

Ghosts of the American East by Jerry Wemple

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Ghosts of the American East

Market Street’s broad and unbothered sidewalks were meant for those who traversed here long ago. Not now. The A&P closed decades back. Jeweler, corner drugstore, and the other drugstore with the soda fountain all absent. And the cobbler man whose skinny storefront window displayed a silver machine with a rotating drum from which he’d dispense hot peanuts in a paper sack. All now spectral presences only some can see. I was a specter back then. I believed only some could see me. Most animals could: The stray dog wandering the alley. Thick-furred winter rabbits scavenging beneath the backyard bird feeder or huddled under the pines along the fence. The guinea pigs, scuttling amongst the wood shavings in their glass containers at the Woolworth store downtown, could see me as I pressed my face close, looked into their dark metallic eyes. I thought the lady who worked in the sewing and notions section could not see me as she shuffled past, but once she said excuse me as she pushed a wobble-wheeled cart down a cramped aisle.

Two dark-eyed brothers, teenagers, were able to see me and did not like it. I was returning from the candy store where the candy store man only saw me when I was with others, usually a cousin or some other kid. When I was by myself, he’d appear from behind the backroom curtain and disappear behind it again, like he was mistaken, the bell above the door hadn’t rung, I wasn’t fixed before the candy case, a coin clasped in anticipation. I knew then I contained ghost magic because I made sound silent, became invisible in lighted rooms. But those brothers saw me, and chunked sharp words and rocks at me. Some of the words I’d not heard before but understood their meanings. The boys’ faces contorted with jeers. They looked like the television news. I gathered a ripe handful of those rocks and put them in my pocket.

Sometimes I saw others who most did not. I saw a shadow man trail the son of the next-door neighbors six months after he’d returned from war. The shadow man followed him as he walked toward downtown, as he walked toward the bridge, as he walked toward the mill employment office. The shadow man said nothing, said to say nothing. Down at the south end of town where the dam goes across the river, the faint image of a boy bobbed about in the choppy current. His body washed up near the Fishers Ferry landing the summer before. An older cousin died in a motorcycle wreck. I saw him only once, thin as mist, walking at the edge of the woods near the state highway, his head twisted as though he was looking for something.

Mostly that has passed. More people can see me now, can hear me. That’s okay. I talk to them and they to me. The world is different these days. Or so it seems and doesn’t seem, oddly both at once. Still my renegade spirit sees more: my great-grandfather, dead over sixty years, waits in a chair on his porch for me to return from the corner store with a paper sack of red licorice whips. He speaks grumbly German to his wife through an open kitchen window, and they both laugh a little. My mother, passed on before my son turned two, makes her way to bingo at Saint Luke’s parish hall remembering aloud that she was one call away from last week’s jackpot. I try to reconcile these disparate worlds: the one we are in and the one we will join. Now and then I talk things over with Dempsey, my great-grandfather times many. Mostly I do it on walks down by the river with one of the dogs. Dempsey navigates a world where his White father gives him freedom yet sells away his Black mother, where he works to buy his wife, a Congo woman, property of a Huguenot planter who factors the loss of offspring into the price which costs Dempsey months, years. Dempsey tells me not to fret. That I know how the story ends. He eventually bought a mill and died in his sleep with credits in his accounts. I should tend to my own time, he tells me. I understand. Some days I reach in my pocket, then chuck a stone into the rolling water, watch the stone and then its ripples disappear. For now, small gestures like this are the best I can do.

*

Jerry Wemple is the author of four poetry collections, most recently We Always Wondered What Become of You from Broadstone Books. He co-edited, with Marjorie Maddox, the poetry anthologies Common Wealth and Keystone Poetry, both from Penn State Press. He also co-edited, with AD Stuart, Rivers, Ridges, and Valleys: Essays on Rural Pennsylvania from Catamount Press.

Two Poems by Stephen K. Kim

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

First Time

That summer, I convinced my parents
I was old enough to stay in the city
with some friends I ditched to sneak
through an unmarked door and descend
a flight of stairs where each footfall
echoed and faint whiffs of Irish Spring
reminded me of men whose thighs
strained their jeans.

My heartbeat stuttered,
as I walked into a lowlit room
where I saw the bathhouse’s
skinny attendant turn his bored face
to mine. Clocking fear in my eyes
despite my feigned nonchalance, he softened
his gaze. Squinting as if to gauge
my mettle, his hands
brushed mine as he took
my license and credit card,
passed back a locker key and three condoms
in bright blue wrappers.
I stammered thank you as he shooed me
with a flick of his wrist,
towards the door
I dreamed all year of opening,
and soon I would, the polished metal push bar
cool against my forearm.

Yet for a moment, I wondered
should I turn back because
what lay beyond that door
was something
irrevocable: a reckoning,
a ruination,
a deliverance.

*

You declare your emancipation in Hell’s Kitchen

after Kinsale Drake

at Boxers gay sports bar with your ex-boyfriend. The shirtless
bartender delivers two pornstar martinis. Today, you must

be joyful as you watch the gyrating go-go boy fondle himself
and wonder if he wears a cock ring to keep himself hard

as lonely men like you stuff dollar bills into his jockstrap. Your ex
reaches his hand behind your neck, and you let his tongue slide

into your mouth because today must be joyous. Later, as he snores
in your bed, you open TikTok and a dapper man in a tux asks

Am I the drama? Am I the villain? You ponder this about yourself.
Your ex rouses and tells you to go to sleep. His gruff rasp

reminds you of your father, and you admit that’s probably why
you dated the guy. And the way he cooks like your mother,

using so little oil that takeout feels like it leaves residue
on your teeth. You think about calling them when you remember

you can no longer protect them from your desires which
they couldn’t comprehend because they cocooned themselves

in the fiction that the world did not change since they immigrated.
Earlier that day, thanks to some gossiping uncle, they discovered

all of who you were and slammed the door in your face
when you dropped by. You stood stunned despite rehearsing

a hundred times over how you’d take a deep breath, count to ten,
and knock firmly again. Instead, you found your arms riveted

to your ribcage as you wondered if they could hear
how you gasped for air as if you were starting to drown.

*

Stephen K. Kim (he/him) is a queer Korean American writer and educator in New Jersey. He enjoys spending time with his husband and his cat. His poems appear in Ghost City Review, Neologism, Thimble, and elsewhere. He is a Best of the Net nominee, a student and teacher at the Writers Studio, and a reader for Only Poems. He can be found online @skimperil.

Two Poems by Amy Riddell

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

The Atom Remembers Oppenheimer

I swear. His advances were no seduction.
In fact, I felt hunted, at first,

his breath so close, I could smell his need
and the nicotine on his prying fingers.

Of course, he had his scientific process,
that cudgel meant to subdue me.

His equations calculating the best way
to take me apart.

If I’m honest, he terrified me,
his relentless tugging at the buttons

on my blouse, the shameless way
he unbuckled his belt.

When he split me,
I thought of elemental things—

oxygen in breath, carbon in bone,
iron in blood, sodium in tears.

*

Feast of the Patriarchy

The men lift their forks and smack their lips,
all fifty of them and their lawyers, seated

in row upon row of chairs directly opposite
the woman who confronts them now, alone

but awake, clear-eyed, and willing to show
her face in court because she has done

nothing wrong. Their feast table
was her marriage bed,

unmade by her husband and the drugs he used,
unmade by the hands of all these men

he invited in to consume her like a Sunday picnic
while she lay unconscious.

The party wasn’t hers. Instead, she endured
the rough touch and the thrust

to open her wide and ever wider still
to fill what should have been her screams

with their claims of consent
and their thick, remorseless entitlement.

*

Amy Riddell has three poetry collections, Prayer of Scalpel & Ash, Bullets in the Jewelry Box, and Narcissistic Injury. Her poems have recently appeared in The Philly Poetry Chapbook Review, The Inflectionist Review, Rust & Moth, SoFloPoJo, Misfit Magazine, and Rat’s Ass Review.

New Views by Audrey Hackett

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New Views

Red willow
like licorice whips
at my window.

Dried hydrangeas
nodding and shaking
yes, no.

A yard of snow
satin-topped
and sloping.

Big focal-point maple
armed with
openness.

And beyond
pine and hemlock hills
and beyond.

*

Audrey Hackett lives in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts with her husband and dog. A returnee after 12 years in Ohio, she is reacquainting herself with the poetry of the northern woods. Her poems can be found online at ONE ART, Alba, Green Ink Poetry, and elsewhere.

Two Poems by Ethan Mershon

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the stars

at the drive-in we were playing with decades, not like playing with fire,
but with what fire leaves behind. but there, in that tan van, we three
sat in the trunk with the door flung open over our heads, and fire played with me,
i wanted to kiss both of the girls i was with, although one had a long-distance boyfriend,
and the other was so christian it made my teeth hurt. i didn’t want a beer
i wanted eight beers and to turn back the clock. business as usual.
when the movie ended the christian girl drove us back to Grand Rapids
along a highway with no other cars on it. then she turned off the headlights.
we couldn’t see the road in front of us. we were alone in the world.
i was going to tell her to stop being crazy, to turn the lights back on,
suddenly i had a lot to live for, but then i looked out my window
and there they were.

*

seeker

i am standing in the back of a small church in Wichita,
son of a pastor, lapsed worship leader, holding
a styrofoam cup of coffee with the steam rising up
like i do when i go my anonymous meetings, and
the congregation is singing Amazing Grace, which
i haven’t heard in five years, which i once sung for
the inauguration of the president of my university,
who i didn’t like. the sum of the congregation’s voices
fills the chapel, pressing up against the stained glass
windows and the bread and grape juice at the front,
music getting in the body and the blood like a virus
or a crush, and i remember when me and my sisters
would sneak the communion bread away from the altar
after the service and eat it in the parking lot, children
who were so blessed they didn’t know they were blessed,
and as the song ends i feel like i should be crying,
but i’m not, i sit down among all these people i don’t
want to be friends with, and hope they have found
what they are looking for, because i will have to look
again.

*

Ethan Mershon is a poet living in Wichita, Kansas. His work has appeared in: Meridian, Fourth River, The Paris-American, and other journals.

INSOMNIA by Mary Donnelly

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INSOMNIA

As a child, I was
not strong enough
to be kind.
Fear made me
cruel. Made me lazy.

And so I said
things—not often,
though frequent
enough—that now
keep me up at night

as I slowly age
on a long blue couch.
Things I can’t
take back. Un-
breakable things.

*

Mary Donnelly is a Brooklyn-based educator and video producer whose poems have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Hanging Loose, Prairie Schooner, The Literary Review, and The Yale Review, and in the chapbook Mad World Colored Oil (Dancing Girl Press). She teaches through Gotham Writers Workshop and is a senior editor for DMQ Review.

How to Reconstitute Your Grandmother by Barbara Krasner

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

How to Reconstitute Your Grandmother

Set out your biggest soup pot. Preferably one you inherited.
Line the pot with photographs of your grandmother throughout her life.
Add a carton of chicken broth. A parsnip, dill, celery, and carrot.
Add the wick from a Yahrzeit candle and your father’s ripped lapel from her funeral.
Fold in stories, including the rumors, the insults she gave and received.
Sprinkle with salt for the hard times.
Only a pinch of sugar for the good times, because things could always be worse.
Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer overnight.
Skim the fat from the top and let cool. Pour into ice cube trays and freeze.
Serve up Grandma anytime.

*

Barbara Krasner is a New Jersey-based poet of ten collections, including the ekphrastic Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press, 2025), The Night Watch (Kelsay Books, 2025), Insomnia: Poems after Lee Krasner (Dancing Girl Press, 2026), and the forthcoming The Wanderers (Shanti Arts, 2026), and Memory Collector (Kelsay Books, 2027).

BUMPER STICKER by Michael Meyerhofer

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

BUMPER STICKER

Glad she’s not here to see that
says my uncle to the oversized font
ahead of us at the stoplight –
I love crack whores, bold letters
awash in Iowa sun-glare just as we’re
circling back from the hospice,
my grandmother’s clothes in a bag
in the trunk, and I’m not sure
if he gets that it’s a joke,
a slash of crude humor the day
before Thanksgiving, and I know
not half an hour earlier we
were hugging in the parking lot
and weeping like orphans but now
we’re on our way to buy
a body’s weight in birdseed
since we already drove all this way
past ditches and farmhouses
and there’s the store right down
the street from the hospital, sign lit,
broad glass doors ready to open.

*

Michael Meyerhofer is the author of five books of poetry – including What To Do If You’re Buried Alive (free from Doubleback Books). His work has appeared in The Sun, Missouri Review, Southern Review, Brevity, Rattle and other journals. He’s also the author of a fantasy series and six poetry chapbooks. For more info and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit troublewithhammers.com.

Someone Saved My Life by Magin LaSov Gregg

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Someone Saved My Life

Nightfall, Cori and I drove from Maryland
to Mississippi, listening the whole way
to Elton John, past yawning Virginia farmland
& Georgia’s red clay hills
headlong into Alabama,
where I thought I saw Jesus
trailing us at a gas station,
altar-bound, hypnotized.
At 23, I was surviving. I was waking up.
Fly away, Elton sang, as if leaving
could be simple & we could all be butterflies
fleeing the lure of our chosen cocoons.
I didn’t yet know the difference
between running away and running toward,
but I needed to unstrap
from an electric chair disguised
as first love, pale substitute
for the mother I lost too soon,
whose ashes I hauled around in a black box,
and refused to scatter,
evidence of the wreck
I was making with my life.
Elton, risen from his own cruel crosses,
glimmered like a god
lighting those dark forests of my twenties
with sequins and starshine,
the fellowship song offers,
another kind of faith.
His lullaby voice sparkled like moonlight
on a velvet curtain & put my illusions to bed.
In suffering, I was neither unique nor alone.
Saviors came in many forms ––
prophets, roadside Samaritans,
Cori, an undertaker’s daughter
who refused to let me sink into the grave.
We coasted into Jackson on Easter morning,
daylight breaking through slate clouds,
no need for church, freedom a hymn
I’d just begun to hum.

*

Magin LaSov Gregg is a neurodivergent mother and poet living in Frederick, Maryland. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, National Public Radio, Gettysburg Review and other venues. Poetry appears in The Ekphrastic Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Offerings: A Spiritual Poetry Anthology from Tiferet Journal.

SELF-PORTRAIT AS THE EASTER BUNNY by Amie Whittemore

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

SELF-PORTRAIT AS THE EASTER BUNNY

Snug as a denned rabbit, my sweet niece
       asleep in my bed, I woke

to hide eggs in our small apartment.
       Husband dreaming on the futon

in the skimmed light of 5am, I slid eggs
       into shoes, behind picture frames,

under her sweater shed last night
       after we chased each other

round and round the tiny rooms:
       monsters, full of ticklish terror.

She woke and we watched
       her seek treasure—hot, I’d say

sometimes. Cold. She thought it strange
       the eggs were real, not plastic stuffed

with candy or coins. We should hide them
       again when sister gets here—

she knew then, age five, anyone
       can gift someone a mystery.

I haven’t seen her since that Easter
       when I gathered with her family

for the last time before the divorce.
       Somehow, she’s fourteen.

I thought my mythical heart would mend.
       I thought I wouldn’t miss her

now that she’s a stranger. This year, I’ve been
       recruited to hide colored eggs

for my nephew. I feed him hints,
       draw matching whiskers on our cheeks—

both of us animals, feeling brand new.

*

Amie Whittemore (she/her) is the author of four poetry collections, most recently the chapbook Hesitation Waltz (Midwest Writing Center). She was the 2020-2021 Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Her poems have won multiple awards, including a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, and her writing has appeared in Blackbird, Colorado Review, Terrain.org, Pleiades, and elsewhere.

Three Poems by William Palmer

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

One, Please

“Just one, please,” I tell the hostess
who is new.

At the side José, the owner, says:
“Just one? No—you are ONE!”

The word pops into red and green confetti.
“Remember this, my friend.”

I try to smile: “One, please.”

Then I ask for a booth and watch
cars on Front Street head home.

When Vera says hello, I ask
if her son is doing better.

She nods, her smile shy
like early twilight.

I order a shrimp chimichanga
and a side of mole—with its spirit

sounds: the o of soul
and the a of angel.

Vera brings me a pint of Modelo
with its blessed o’s.

I squeeze the lime.
I sip and take my time.

*

Waking Early for the Long Drive Home

There is a round red glow
on a power line
over the parking lot

as if a world globe
balances there
aflame

where tapered sunlight holds it.

I wait:
a cardinal.

It stays there
as if content.

Why did I open the curtain
at just that moment?

*

Joy Be With You All

“I love unbearably sad moments,”
Robert tells Anne, his therapist.

Her eyebrows lower like a bridge.

“Like in Olive Kitteridge
a wife pulls away from her husband

in bed and says ‘I think I’m just done
with that stuff.’”

Robert shakes his head. “I shared that
with my wife and she laughed.”

“She did?”

He nods.
“But I’ve been wanting to tell you

I’m learning a new song on my guitar.
I keep singing the refrain:

‘So fill to me the parting glass,
Good night and joy be with you all.’”

“I know that song,” Anne says.
“Are you thinking of saying good bye?”

“Oh, no,” he says. “I just love singing
‘joy be with you all.’”

*

William Palmer’s poetry has appeared in American Literary Review, Ecotone, JAMA, ONE ART, The Summerset Review and elsewhere. He has published two chapbooks: A String of Blue Lights and Humble. A retired professor of English at Alma College, he lives in Traverse City, Michigan.

[I’m still trying] by Eva Eliav

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

[I’m still trying]

I’m still trying
to nourish myself
with words

elusive prey

once I was as well-fed
as a bear

words leapt like salmon
into my waiting mouth

*

Eva Eliav received her BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Toronto. The daughter of Holocaust Survivors, she grew up in Canada and now lives in Israel. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in numerous literary journals, including The St. Ann’s Review, Room, Emrys Journal, Ilanot Review, Flashquake, The Apple Valley Review, Horizon Review, The Fairy Tale Magazine, Stand, Constellations, Minyan Magazine, ONE ART, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Gyroscope Review, Panoplyzine, Ginosko Literary Journal, and Fictive Dream. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks: Eve (Red Bird Chapbooks, May 2019), One Summer Day (Kelsay Books, March 2021), and October (Kelsay Books, 2026).

Corinthian Blue Wind Chimes by Joseph Chelius

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Corinthian Blue Wind Chimes

When a wind from the west
blew through the yard
like a neighborhood bully,
tormenting the delicate chimes
that only moments ago
had tinkled and swayed
in the April breeze,
I went out in a robe
to whisk them inside—
in the doting cup of my hand
quieted their sniffles
as I lifted them down
from the metal hook.

But carried through the house
their gentle music brought cheer
to the spoons and bowls
that soaked in water
in the yellow dish pan;
to the leftover oatmeal
grown stiff and cold
in a pot on the stove.

In the drafty mud room, where
they would wait out the wind,
they gave a lilt
to the plain and functional
in their humble corners:
dust bin and broom;
pebble-gray litter box;
the trash-picked locker
we’d spray painted a custodial green
and repurposed for storage
of soup and beans.

*

Joseph Chelius is the author of three full-length collections of poems, the most recent being Playing Fields, published by Kelsay Books in 2025. His work has appeared in Cider Press Review, Commonweal, ONE ART, Poet Lore, Rattle, THINK, and other journals.

Two Poems by Kevin Boyce

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Another Reason

The flowers I moved
from your garden
after you died
are now in bloom.

Purple bearded irises
in blousy pirate shirts,
pansies with pinched faces
like that painting by Munch,
and daylilies that tilt to
listen to the sun’s aria.

Their beauty was close to your heart
and now it colors mine.

I love them just as you did.
But the reason is not the same.

*

There Are Always Two

Ansel Adams said that “there are always
two people in every picture: the photographer
and the viewer.”

Looking at the photo my father took
of a brown 1953 Ford, his first car, or a snowy
white swan frozen in time like an iceberg,
from a date with my mother at the Bronx Zoo,

I try to imagine what it was like for him:
adjusting the exposure, the shutter speed,
the aperture, looking through the viewfinder,
and before pressing the small chrome shutter button
on his Zeiss Ikon, he slowly exhaled.

A trick he taught me, and one he learned
as a photographer during the Korean War—
how to remain calm and gently squeeze off a shot.

What he saw with his eyes, I see now with mine.
I feel the same sense of pride that he must have felt—
a young man and his new car, his entrance into adulthood.

Ten years after his death and fifty years after the original image,
we can continue our conversation.

I think about my children with every photo I take.

*

Kevin Boyce is a poet, photographer, children’s book author, and lifelong resident of New England. He volunteers in his hometown, leading a community-sponsored contest and publication for emerging authors.

The Gift of Analog Time by Carol Dorf

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The Gift of Analog Time

In the time of greater losses and lesser losses
I felt driven to possess an atomic clock –

my own machine to mark molecular motion
and to allow for time outside time.

If you put all the what-ifs in a giant trash bag
say the kind that’s filled with dried leaves

it still wouldn’t be big enough to hold
the alternatives to an ordinary life –

let alone one marked by an eclectic
approach to danger and greed.

Regret makes for a terrible soup
all dried herbs and nothing to wake up the broth

All I can think about now is sleep and my hope
to wake in another station of the multiverse.

*

Carol Dorf has received fellowships from the Hawthornden Foundation, Zoeglossia, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Their writing appears on the Poetry Foundation website, in several chapbooks, and in journals that include “Pleiades,” “About Place,” “Cutthroat,” “Five South,” and “Scientific American.” Founding poetry editor of Talking Writing, they taught math and writing in Berkeley USD, as well as at museums and conferences.

Hunger by Valerie Bacharach

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Hunger

Years ago, shortly after our younger son died, my husband and I, on a trip to D.C., visited the National Gallery. Caravaggio and Monet vied for wall space with Klimt and O’Keefe while other rooms held marble statues and religious icons. We pretended to look, to scan the commentaries,
pretended we set aside sadness, left grief on the hotel’s unmade bed. My eyes wandered to families with bored teenagers, with toddlers sliding on tiled floors, tugging a parent’s hand, standing too close to a painting. Our son was neither toddler nor teenager, but a man of 26. Once upon a time, before we moved into darkness, we brought our sons here, ran after them, bribed them with treats, tried to speak with them about old masterpieces. I stared at those families surrounding us, fencing us in with their happiness, followed them from room to room, hollowed with a hunger so huge it could swallow the heavens.

*

Valerie Bacharach lives in Pittsburgh, PA and is a proud member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic Workshops. She received her MFA from Carlow University in 2020. Her book, Last Glimpse, was published by Broadstone Books in August 2024. She has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the Net.

Are You a Writer or Just a Person Who Owns Too Many Notebooks? A Quiz for the Perplexed by Merrill Oliver Douglas

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Are You a Writer or Just a Person Who Owns Too Many Notebooks? A Quiz for the Perplexed

1. How many of those notebooks have you filled past page 15?
2. Who is your audience, and what have you done for them lately?
3. In 25 words or less, explain the distinction between “write” and “revise.”
4. Should you need to evacuate ahead of a wildfire, what provisions have you made to transport your notebooks?
5. What’s the difference between writing and raising tomatoes?
6. Where did Deirdre leave her glasses?
7. If they arrive simultaneously at an intersection, which has right of way, the pen or the keyboard? Please show your work.
8. Explain your relationship with the blank page.
9. Last time you rushed to the ER, did you grab a notebook on the way out?
10. Who wrote the Book of Love? Did you score a signed copy?
11. Which came first, the metaphor or the sting of the word on the tongue?
12. When telling the truth slant, what is the optimal angle?

Title adapted from an essay by Sabyasachi Roy posted on the Authors Publish web site, May 8, 2025.

*

Merrill Oliver Douglas’s first full length collection, Persephone Heads For the Gate, won the 2022 Gerald Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook Parking Meters into Mermaids (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Baltimore Review, Barrow Street, Tar River Poetry, Stone Canoe, SWWIM Every Day, Verse Daily and Whale Road Review, among others. She lives near Binghamton, New York.