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Two Poems by Claudia Gary

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Elegy for Our Own Words

Our words would tumble heavily onto the page
but get up, walk across and back, remembering
our days—unlike the words spelled out by an AI,

their artifice purporting to be human. Ours
contained deep memories of beauty, ugliness,
sensation of all kinds—however awkward—not

the pseudo-elegance proffered by the AI.
We were allowed to fail, revise, begin again,
elucidate, restate quirky humanity.

One day our words no longer dared to walk across
the page, since an AI could always dance around them.
It had soundly sabotaged, then conquered us.

Oh little words, large words, our own words spinning off
into the ether: let’s regenerate our words,
in memory of our selves fashioned out of words.

*

On Being Asked to Pray for You After Your Stroke

“Base 3 [as used in ternary computing] offers the most economical way of representing numbers.”

I told them I would. Will I follow through?
Maybe is not a brokenness
between Yes and No, you’ve said, but a blue

haze that surrounds them. No and Yes
emerge from it, float. So I’ll pray to Maybe,
ask it my questions, ask it to guess

where you are now, what you will see
when the prayer’s over. Leave it to you
to complicate things. Yes/No would agree.

*

Claudia Gary teaches workshops on the Villanelle, the Sonnet, Natural Meter, Freedom With Forms, Poetry vs. Trauma, etc., at The Writer’s Center and elsewhere. Author of Humor Me (David Robert Books, 2006) and several chapbooks—most recently Genetic Revisionism (2019)—her poems are internationally published and anthologized. She has been a semifinalist for the Anthony Hecht Prize (Waywiser), a Pushcart Prize nominee, an Honorable Mentionee in the Able Muse book contest, and a three-time finalist in the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Contest. Claudia has chaired panels on Poetry and Music, Poetry and Science, and The Sonnet in 2016, at the West Chester University (Pa.) poetry conference; and on Poetry and Music at the Frost Farm poetry conference. She is also a health journalist, visual artist, and composer of tonal songs and chamber music. Her 2022 article on setting poems to music, based on her presentation at the 2022 ALSCW conference. For more information, see Claudia’s P&W profile; you can follow her at @claudiagary or @claudiagarypoet.

The Heron by Michael Neal Morris

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The Heron

All the lakes
diminished
by an irrational summer
and even this made pond
its aorta a creek
that brings its blood
from somewhere under the highway
has shrunk, deceptive green
where perch swam,
ducks begged, and geese waited
to torture joggers.

A heron is hiding
in the yellowing grass,
at the bank. Her pale gray feathers
her thin, unsure neck,
her small eyes,
remind me of an old woman
alone in her assisted living room
too lonely for television
waiting for a dinner of cold fish.

*

Michael Neal Morris has published several stories, poems, and essays in print and online. His most recent books are Based on Imaginary Events (Faerie Treehouse Press), Haiku, Etc., and The Way of Weakness. He lives with his family just outside the Dallas area and teaches Composition and Creative Writing at Dallas College’s Eastfield campus.

The Music of the Line: Rhythm, Rhyme and Repetition in Poetry — A Workshop with Ellen Rowland

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The Music of the Line: Rhythm, Rhyme and Repetition in Poetry

Hosted by: Ellen Rowland
Day: Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Time: 11:00AM-1:00PM (Eastern)
Price: $25 (payment options)

To register: email Mark Danowsky at oneartpoetry@gmail.com 

Overview

Understanding and practicing the structure of formal poetry can often inform our free verse poems in beautiful and surprising ways. In this intimate, generative workshop, we’ll explore how the use of poetic devices relying on “the three Rs” can help us become better listeners when we read poetry and write our own. Through specific examples, we’ll learn to tune in to the music of the lines we create and the patterns and melodies of our word choices, while maintaining freedom of theme, expression and poetic voice. The second hour will be dedicated to discussion, prompt-based writing and optional sharing of our poems.

Limited to 15 participants

About The Workshop Leader

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, as well as the book Everything I Thought I Knew, essays on living, learning and parenting outside the status quo. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and in several anthologies, most recently The Wonder of Small Things, edited by James Crews and Facing Goodbye by The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press. Her debut collection of full-length poems, No Small Thing, was published by Fernwood Press in 2023. Her poem within, “When the World Was Whole,” was nominated for Best of Net by Braided Way Magazine. She lives off the grid with her family on an island in Greece. Connect with her on Instagram and Facebook.

Two Poems by Howie Good

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Night of the Following Day

The person I went to sleep
as wasn’t the same person
I woke up as, half-drowned
in sweat after traveling
on motherless roads all night,
seeing plants and animals
bombed into submission,
families forced to dig
their own graves at gunpoint,
tears evaporate on contact
with the air, only for me
to arrive some six hours later
back where I started
but feeling barely present,
like I was still miles and miles away
from the redwing blackbird
on the black branch.

*

A La Descartes

I felt the tightness in my chest that usually presaged a panic attack, and first thing in the morning, too. But that’s me, always anticipating something that might never happen or that perhaps already has. When I walked into the kitchen to make coffee, I was just this side of hell. The chalk outline of a body had been drawn on the floor. A sulfurous smell as of the damned lingered in the air. With the times on the clocks on various appliances in conflict, there was much I could doubt. Instead, looking out the window at the sky, I said to myself, “I think it’s going to rain, therefore I exist.”

*

Howie Good’s latest book, Frowny Face (Redhawk Publishing, 2023), is a synergistic mix of his prose poems and handmade collages. He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

Bad Luck Shirt by Dan Berick

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Bad Luck Shirt

I have a bad luck shirt.
It’s not the shirt’s fault, I
know.
I shouldn’t blame the shirt for
the very stupid thing
I said
the last time that I wore it.

It’s fine.
(The shirt, I mean.)

They made it in a factory
ten thousand miles away. They didn’t weave
the bad luck in.

It has stripes. And barrel cuffs.
And a straight point
collar.

It’s a nice shirt,
that one.

The bad luck part is mine.
I said the stupid thing,
the shirt
doesn’t talk.

It’s not the shirt’s fault, but
I can’t wear it again.

It’s sitting in a pile of clothes that I
will give away
for someone else to wear,

and maybe they will have
some good luck
wearing
my bad luck shirt.

*

Dan Berick is a writer based in Cleveland, Ohio, whose poetry and fiction have appeared in The Storms and The Interpreter’s House, among others. Dan is also a lawyer, a husband, a father, and a graduate of Columbia University and the University of Chicago.

You Who Arrived Late by Shama

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You Who Arrived Late

           After Rilke’s ‘You Who Never Arrived’

If I could compress Fifth Avenue
across all time—all the visitors of The Met
would fall onto each other, stacked like leaves
in fall—turn it into a flipbook without time,
where you’d look up at me and smile,
people fade out and we’d meet,
as a new universe would stem and rapture.

Instead, you brush away a feeling
in the spring air of the nineties
and walk down the steps, while I look up
at the sky of the new millennium not knowing why
it was more than azure and continue my sketch
of the couple at the hot dog stand;
a fig tree shudders somewhere
as we fall back onto these separate futures
along the branches of our lives which never
entwined until now,

when my roots have taken knots,
and you heave firewood readied for winter
as fog fills up our offing.

*

Shama has work published in ‘The Pierian’, ‘Gyroscope Review’, and elsewhere. She writes from an old dusty corner of the earth but like Diogenes identifies as Cosmopolitan, and unlike him can be found sometimes on X @EntangledRhyme and IG @entangledrhyme.

WHEN IT WAS FIVE O’CLOCK by Royal Rhodes

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WHEN IT WAS FIVE O’CLOCK

A cloud surveyor is what I became
as the tree line accumulates
darkness and merges.

The land north of here
is geometrically flat,
awaiting the tracking birds
but still seeing itself lovely.

Perhaps it is best not to end
a poem with a memory
or the gradual shift of light –
a space full of erasures.

But if you sit long enough,
something calculates these things
like an equilibrium of breaths.

And that may be the secret –
to wait at the crossroads
where we can watch for hours
seeing each other walk and
approach in the five o’clock light,

where love becomes only a single body,
a language largely untranslated
that keeps its distance, and
promises delight it cannot keep.

*

Royal Rhodes is a poet and retired educator who lives in a rural village amidst the rolling farmland of Ohio. His poems have appeared in: Last Stanza, Quaci, Grey Sparrow, Lighten-Up Online, Ekphrastic Review, The Montreal Review and a number of other journals and anthologies. He has been twice-nominated for a Pushcart prize.

The Rhythm of the Blues by Taylor Mallay

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The Rhythm of the Blues

She pushes a pink pin
across the table; it reads,
Groupies wanted,
no experience necessary.
I laugh, now knowing
she noticed me, my gaze
going soft over her body
against that steel-stringed guitar,
the bar’s blue lights blessing
the smooth precision
of her steady rhythm.
She smiles, says softly,
Aren’t you just aching
to be taken
by someone like me?
And perhaps it’s the gin
or the way my skin thrums
to the hum of her strumming,
but I breathe in
and open my hand, sighing
the moment her fingers slide
like a long-held note
into mine.

*

Taylor Mallay is a proud Michigander who enjoys tinkering away with poems here and there. Her work has previously appeared in Chestnut Review, The Dewdrop, and West Trade Review, among other publications.

Three Poems by E. Laura Golberg

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“The Terrible Man on the Plane”

My mother on the phone, complaining,
voice thick with cold, nasal passages thick,
resonating. “I should be in Hawaii,” she said.
“But I’m too ill. Flying back from Indiana,
last week, I sat next to this terrible man
on the plane who coughed and sneezed
all over me. He should not have been flying.
Now he’s ruined my holiday.”

I hung up, went to York Florist, ordered
a summer bouquet, signed it:
“Feel better soon, with many apologies,
The Terrible Man on the Plane.”

Two hours later, the phone rings.
She sounds like a young girl being courted,
coy, voice light and airy.
“I got flowers.” she said. “I looked at the note
and thought ‘How did he know?’”

*

Why I Didn’t Talk in the On-Line Class

The poetry class, sixteen of us,
was unusually silent–long pauses
where the teacher would ask
a question and no-one would answer.

I, myself, didn’t talk because out of one
of the little windows, peered the marriage
counselor I fired while my husband
and I were having terrible troubles.

That was ten years’ ago this summer.
We’d met with four different shrinks,
either he liked one or I did, but
we couldn’t agree. So, we stopped

looking. Now, still married and happy,
I was silent in class. I wonder
how many of the silent others
were former clients, too.

*

Stroke

Two different meanings, one: loving
caress over skin or fur; the other:

a blood clot somewhere in the brain.
Mine is in my occipital lobe. No soft

cuddle for me, just a harsh blind spot.
I thought I’d get used to it but three

weeks later, it’s just getting me down.
I tell myself ‘Getting used to it.’ will

take months, if not several years.
In my mind, I gently stroke my eyes.

*

E. Laura Golberg is a poet, originally from England, who has lived in Washington DC for over 50 years. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, Birmingham Poetry Review, Spillway, RHINO, and the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, among other places.

Redemption by Ken Poyner

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Redemption

I stepped into this Antique store
And was trapped.
A blue tag was hung on my sleeve.
It has since been modified now and again
With red or white marks. Occasionally
I shuffle around to a different part of the store,
Mix in with fresh traffic.
An elderly lady appearing
As though she were born
Into the gray coat she wears
Has been by twice to look me over.
A young couple twiddled the rough of my coat
And I protested I was not to be sold in pieces.

Why do I not just leave, you ask?

I have not been pondered over this much
In years, nor, no matter the mark down,
Have I been this valued in near memory.
And the young red-head in short-shorts
Who thinks I might be an interesting novelty
Leaning in a corner of her living room has given me
My first hope of purpose in a decade.

*

Ken Poyner’s four collections of brief fictions, four collections of speculative poetry, and one mixed media collection, can be found at most online booksellers. He spent 33 years in information systems management, is married to a world record holding female power lifter, and has a family of several cats and betta fish. Individual works have appeared in “Café Irreal”, “Analog”, “Danse Macabre”, “The Cincinnati Review”, and several hundred other places. Find out more at: www.kpoyner.com

Turning Seventy-five by W. D. Ehrhart

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Turning Seventy-five

It isn’t that I fear
growing older—such things as fear,
reluctance or desire
play no part at all
except as light and shadow sweep a hillside
on a Sunday afternoon,
astonishing the eye but passing on
at sunset with the land
still unchanged: the same rocks,
the same trees, tall grass gently drifting—
merely that I do not understand
how my age has come to me
or what it means.

It’s almost like some small
forest creature one might find
outside the door some frosty autumn morning,
tired, lame, uncomprehending,
almost calm.
You want to stroke its fur,
pick it up, mend the leg and send it
scampering away—but something
in its eyes says, “No,
this is how I live, and how I die.”
And so, a little sad, you let it be.
Later when you look,
the thing is gone.

And just like that these
seventy-five years
have come and gone,
and I do not understand at all
why I see an old gray-haired man
inside the mirror when a small
boy still lives inside this body
wondering
what causes laughter, why
nations go to war, who paints the startling
colors of the rainbow on a gray vaulted sky,
and when I will be old enough
to know.

*

W. D. Ehrhart is author of Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems (McFarland). His most recent collection is At Smedley Butler’s Grave (Moonstone).

The SFPD Said It Would No Longer Release Mug Shots b/c They Reinforce Racial Biases by Shifra Shaman Sky

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The SFPD Said It Would No Longer Release
Mug Shots b/c They Reinforce Racial Biases

It wasn’t indoctrination
but a lesson in perpetuation
offered to my younger self,
how they try to teach us that
a black face is a bad face,
paging through that morning’s paper,
pointing out the stacked reports of
robbery and mayhem, murder, some
partnered with small dark squares,
the smudge of a black man’s face.

“When there’s no picture,” he told me,
“you know a white man did it.”

That was my Jewish father, long dead.
And what would he make of our century,
to which he looked ahead with hope;
would he stoop to construct
a life based on ancient wisdom,
imagine accounts of mercy and
truth meeting together, accompanied
by harp, a bright space created by
the kiss of peace and righteousness?

“If it’s not easy,” he’d tell me,
“you’ll know that God is in it.”

Or is that a dream, a false memory?
My father was, or claimed to be, an atheist
but, truth be told, if he were here,
he’d be shaking his fist at the sky.

*

Shifra Shaman Sky is a poet living in Kew Gardens NY. She holds an MFA from New York University, but her experience spans many disciplines, from textile design to website administration. Shifra has contributed to publications as varied as Voices Found: Women in the Church’s Song (Church Publishing) and Letters to J.D. Salinger (University of Wisconsin Press); her chapbook, Touching the Nooksack, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021.

Two Poems by Laura Ann Reed

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The Unfolding

— For Emir Alajbegovic̈

With only the ocean
And a mere stretch of continent

To divide us, this brief eyelessness
Of time

The seven roses of your voice
Once more open in the vase

And on the mantelpiece the menorah
No longer candleless.

*

And Now, Your Silence

canted at an angle to the archives of our past.
         Like the wall in old Jerusalem
that leans against an air so dense
         with the white, six-sided particulate
of human woe that one can’t tell
         where the stone begins, where
the salt-stiffened fingers end. And no way
         of knowing which holds
the other up. The seven roses
         bend and darken on their stems.

*

Laura Ann Reed, a San Francisco Bay Area native whose work has been published in the UK, Ireland, Canada and the USA, taught dance at the University of California prior to her role as Leadership Development trainer at the Environmental Protection Agency. Now retired, she lives with her husband in the Pacific Northwest. Her poems have been included in seven anthologies. Shadows Thrown, her debut chapbook, was published in February, 2023. lauraannreed.net

Where It’s Going, and Where It’s Been by Andi Stout

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Where It’s Going, and Where It’s Been

Blackwater sits torn, divided—
between the Ohio and Potomac,
no room to grow,
no boundaries to call its own,
so it pushes north, then west,
winding recklessly, rejecting gravity
only to swan dive 57 feet,
fighting frozen to form the Falls.

It’s a long way down to the canyon,
but water keeps moving—no regrets,
because change is always messy.

Steady echoes softly erode stone—
reclaiming Canaan Valley, resisting
solid even in the harsh bite of winter.

Soon, it will join the Mississippi,
leave pieces of itself in humidity,
spill into the Gulf of Mexico.
Even now it remembers the urge to leap,
twisting the body to climb five salt box stories,
fractures ingrained,
like soot stains on a seasoned miner’s skin.

Miles away, it knows the mountain spring is home,
a necessary part of identity, which fills the cracks.
Rising up into the atmosphere, its journey begins again.

*

Andi Stout is an Appalachian writer and author of Pushcart-nominated, Tiny Horses Don’t Get A Choice. Her work has appeared in Mulberry Literary, Variant Literature, The Aerial Perspective, Northern Appalachian Review, Fire Poetry, Still: The Journal, among others. Andi earned her MFA at West Virginia University and lives in Pennsylvania.

Four Poems by Harriet Levin Millan

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An Updated Definition of Rape

I am the girl who trusted her math tutor
when we sat side-by-side. Picture

the equation, up until this point,
I was not strong enough to prove.

I am the girl who thrusted forward negligible answers
on paper, a calculator wedged between my thumbs.

I acted on all the right answers. Girl who heard no singing
from upstairs. No landlady to offer tea or biscuits.

Girl who trusted math, whose father is a math whiz,
blackboards overrun with formulas in his downtown office.

I am the girl who once asked her father how gravity works
and why we don’t fall off the tilted side of the earth.

What keeps us here? I still need to know
how the earth holds me when I want to go.

Girl getting up from her seat. Girl facing wall,
tutor, his questions not having to do with math.

There are stars that have less and less to do with light
strewn across the sky in the shape of bears, belts, horseshoes.

She drove to his apartment with her new license.
Edging sixty mph on the Schuylkill.

Passing trucks with their headlights blinking.
Girl sitting on a pillow for her feet to reach the pedals.

Girl wearing braces on her teeth.
Morning girl who climbs up on the sink to clean the food

trapped beneath the silver. Evening girl whose boyfriend is waiting
for her to come over in her blue Toyota after this lesson. Girl

who is attracted to her tutor, but would not park
her Toyota outside his house for an indefinite amount of time,

distance or speed. Clearly getting up to leave. Pushed
down in her seat. Math tutor who knows the answers,

throwing her heavy textbooks off the table, slicking his black hair
back, wrinkling the clean white paper

where she scribbled her beautiful equations. Math tutor
wrestling her logic, his mind on numbers, the formulas

he reverses to apply to this situation: Loyal to your boyfriend, he says,
what are you, his dog? Girl who is attracted to tutor,

but that doesn’t mean she wants to fuck him,
plus, his breath smells,

too many cigarettes, too much coffee.
Girl who misses the cues when handed

a little clay pipe. Girl whose lungs fill with smoke, who at first
laughs when he chases her around the dining room table.

Are you kidding? But he’s not.
Stubs her toe. He pushes her down onto the shag carpet,

his hand too heavy on her back to rise.
This is when all the trouble with that toe began,

the nail detached from the skin
under her sock where she’s hidden it,

troubled this many years. Now that she’s exposed it,
what will happen? Will it heal?

*

In a Spider Web’s
Last Remaining Thread

Your forever touch,
thrumming in wind,
edging the circumference
of my purplish-brownish areolas
inherited from my Ladino line
fleeing the Inquisition,
the wick of the eternal
flame still taut in my blood.
This creepy dimensionless grip
hanging off the rain gutter
is not chiseled from stone
like the monuments in Tikal
set against the horizon
but is charged with the prophecies
you uttered and will ramble on
diffused in shreds
until I meet you
once again at the world’s end.

* 

All Real Communication is Vascular

We were once zooxanthellae living inside coral.
Love was a branching, leaning over sideways,

spilling out, sexy and sloppy—
hair in my eyes, my bra straps loosened in a spiraling breeze.

We spawned. The currents carried us.
We drifted away and surfaced on land

where we uttered vulgarities in our throaty dialect.
Uneasy on our feet, we became

filaments of our dreams.
We brought fruit to our god

instead of a blood-offering from our flocks.
We who were once sugared in rocky seabeds,

our eyes a bristling. No, it was never anger
smashing through us, calcifying our skin.

It was our tissue-like softness,
always our fragility that protected us.

* 

An Apology

It’s called making up, as if to say I’m
sorry is only imaginary, plucked

from an inner lining, silt-like
immersing this planet. And yet

making up dwells in solid constructions,
It’s what the slant in roofs do in snowstorms.

Piled-up insults slip to the ground
and melt, leaving another

raw winter gust to the eaves. It’s how
a trellis buffs up a rose bush. Yesterday,

as the gardener planted these roses,
he bent down low to inhale their scent. Not

a strong scent, he whispered.
Someone offers a thimbleful,

as the wind chime spins
from a hook a little higher up

to make a space.
I open my eyes, take the first step.

*

Harriet Levin Millan is the author of three books of poetry, The Christmas Show, which Eavan Boland chose for the Barnard New Women Poets Prize and also won the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, Girl in Cap and Gown, a National Poetry Series finalist, and My Oceanography. Her debut novel, How Fast Can You Run, was excerpted in The Kenyon Review. She holds a MFA from the University of Iowa and teaches writing at Drexel University.

Two Poems by Al Ortolani

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Confetti Cannons

My favorite television anchor
takes cover below the media stage,
arms protectively over his colleagues,
the camera on its swivel,
the fountain, the hill to Liberty Memorial.
My phone begins to fill with texts
until I can account for my family, all
except for my oldest grandson. He’s sixteen
with a girlfriend at his side. I hope
to catch them jaywalking Pershing Avenue
towards Crown Center. Both
are athletes and can run without tiring.
They have drilled for active shooters
since grade school.

When my grandson learned to walk,
I let him climb the stadium wall
at the university. I kept my hands
around his waist like a belay.
I gave him a boost over the lip
so he could sit and see the field,
empty in November, a cotillion of colors:
green turf, white hash marks,
red and gold endzone paint.
Game papa, he said,
a bluejay, a crow, a late autumn bee.
I kept my grip on his legs,
his small gravity of muscle.

Today, in front of the television,
there is nothing to hang onto
except parade coverage, audience
running east, police running west
with guns drawn. My arms are not
long enough to reach him.
My hands hold a smartphone
without answers.

*

Cuban Missiles for Children

My grandfather frightens me,
building a concrete bunker in his backyard.
He fills 5-gallon cans with water.
My father donated a first-aid kit.

Yankee, my hyper-active dog,
is hit by a car. At the new school,
I walk myself to the playground,
and try to blend with other children.

They all have missile stories.
We make a game of hiding. One boy
learns to open his mouth so wide
that he can swallow himself.

Soon, he is just a mouth
on the blacktop. We kick him around
like a rubber ball. One day he lands
in the bushes and no one can find him.

The teacher is frantic. The boy
has been coloring brilliant rockets.
She carries his portfolio to the counselor
and they telephone his parents.

When the mouth is brought back
into the classroom, the teacher tells us
it is impolite to stare. Tight-lipped,
he colors flames on his missiles.

*

Al Ortolani’s newest collection of poems, The Taco Boat, was recently released by NYQ Books. His first novel, Bull in the Ring, was just published by Meadowlark Press. Ortolani, a husband, father, and grandfather, is currently entertaining the idea of becoming a hermit. However, his wife prefers the company of the neighborhood feminists, and his dog Stanley refuses to live without treats.

Two Poems by Victoria Nordlund

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment
Wh_ _l of Fortun_
Back in ‘81, you viewed Wheel
devoutly with Grandma
in her in-law suite
attached to your living
room, on a couch that smelled
like cabbage.
The remote clicked
when she changed
the channel.
Back when Vanna
was 24 & still turned
the letter tiles. Back when Pat
was 35 & you thought everyone
was ancient.
You lost interest
somewhere in your 20’s,
but Mom and Dad continued
tuning in at top volume,
solving puzzles
for two decades more in their condo.
& Pat & Vanna were forever
smiling widely at 7:00 pm
& you swore they’d never get old.
& Mom never turned
the Game Show Network off after
she moved to her assisted
facility & started sleeping
in her gray La-Z-Boy recliner.
Pat Sajak taped his last
episode on Friday.
You’re also retiring soon,
comforted Vanna’s staying
for a bit longer. You still call
your remote a clicker.
*
Questions while weeding through wedding albums at Brimfield Antique Flea Market
Why would you want to put strangers on your coffee table?
Did my parents have a wedding album?
When was the last time I watched my wedding tape?
Owned a working VCR?
How have I been married for thirty-four years?
What are the last names of my bridesmaids?
My great-grandparents first names?
Will anyone sell the stacks of black and whites in my basement after I go?
How come these albums all smell the same?
Why did Grandma Kitty marry my Grandpa Walter twice?
Why don’t we talk about Grandpa’s other family?
What is my Dad’s sister’s name?
Does she know my Dad passed?
Did she?
Does anyone notice I am crying?
How many other husbands did Grandma Sandra have? 3? 4?
What happened to them?
Did Mom attend those weddings?
Why have I never seen those photos?
Maybe they are somewhere here in this pile—
*
Victoria Nordlund’s poetry collections Wine-Dark Sea and Binge Watching Winter on Mute are published by Main Street Rag. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize Nominee, whose work has appeared in PANK Magazine, Rust+Moth, Chestnut Review, trampset, and elsewhere. Visit her at VictoriaNordlund.com

Self-love Letter by Kit Willett

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Self-love Letter

I love the way you laugh
when nobody is looking.
I love your voice, that rich
and mellow timbre
as it searches
for the right note.
I love your voice,
                  that melodic,
handwritten style that,
at times, can be both
casual and profound.

I am proud of your creativity;
I know you work for it.
                  I am proud of you
for not giving up on so many things,
and I am proud of you for giving up
on just as many. I am proud of you
for reading so much this year.

                  I love your hands:
piano fingers with alternating
pink and starry blue nail polish;
I never thought I would see
painted nails on myself—
or pierced ears—or a tattoo.

God, I love your tattoo.
                  I love every star
in every constellation
                  on your back,
even if I seldom see them.

I love being you,
even when it is hard.
I love closing my eyes
with you, and having you
with me when I open
                  them again.

*

Kit Willett is a bisexual poet, English teacher, and executive editor of the Aotearoa poetry journal Tarot. His debut poetry collection, Dying of the Light, was published by Wipf and Stock imprint Resource Publications in 2022.

Nature and Ecopoetry Workshop with Grant Clauser

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Nature and Ecopoetry Workshop
Instructor: Grant Clauser
Day: Wednesday, July 10
Time: 6:00-8:00pm (Eastern)
Price: $25

>>> Buy Tickets <<<

Nature and Ecopoetry Workshop
Nature has long been used as setting and inspiration for poems, and as metaphors for exploring the personal and social issues. This workshop will explore how the non-human world can provide language, metaphors, and models for examining our place in the universe. We’ll look at classic and contemporary models, discuss theories and poetic practices for using nature as a subject in poetry, and work together on some strategies for writing new poems.

Grant Clauser is a Pennsylvanian. His sixth book, Temporary Shelters, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Greensboro Review, Kenyon Review and other journals. He’s an editor for a large media company and teaches poetry at Rosemont College.

Two Poems by Michael Simms

~ ONE ART ~ 16 Comments

Ecstasy

Someone offered me Ecstasy
And I wondered what they had in mind.
Perhaps lying on a beach on the island
of Antigua, the sun on my skin, a red sail
in the distance soon to arrive?
Cooking a marinara sauce while listening
To Pavarotti reach the high notes?
Waking in bed next to you, light
Slanting across the bed, our love
Awake again after sleeping too long?
Watching you push our daughter
Into the midwife’s hands, the tiny face
squinched against the new day,
an old soul among us again? Sledding
with our son down the long hill
Of his childhood, and years later
Holding him in my arms after
He emerged from the darkness
Still alive? My falling on my knees
After the years of worry, thanking
What-is for delivering this miracle?
What is Ecstasy, but a blue pill
Of gratitude, a recognition
all I love is an undeserved gift
slipping away even now?

*

Envy

I hear on NPR an interview
with my friend from grad school
who won a Presidential Medal
and stood on the White House lawn
with other luminaries of our age.
My friend is appropriately
modest about her accomplishment
so I say to my wife Good for her
no one deserves fame more
but an ugly little corner of my soul
hates my friend’s success
because it makes me feel small
untalented and undeserving. I spend
the rest of the day brooding about
my trifling pathetic life, writing for
a handful of indulgent friends and
former students. After a day of staring
at the white screen of my failure
I hear you come through the door
home at last from the trauma workshop
you teach. You tell me of a young man
who held his dying brother in his arms
after a drive by and how the family
is still grieving years later and how
the workshop has given the young man
a few tools to help his family recover
and then we read an email from a friend
who now lives with her two children
in a refugee shelter in Poland
while her husband is fighting
somewhere near the Russian border
and I think of my own brave brother
in Houston who discovered the provost
of his university has been lying
and stealing and Jack went
on television to speak truth to power
and lost his job… And even my dog Josie
faces each day with the thrill of play,
the joy of long walks through the alleys
and faith I’ll place a bowl of her favorite foods
on the floor. And then you pull pasta
out of the pantry, I dress a green salad
with care and my self-pity fades
into the evening ritual of loving gestures
and I feel joy and gratitude for the gifts
I’ve been given in this one small life

*

Michael Simms is the founder of Vox Populi and Autumn House Press. His poetry collections include American Ash, Nightjar and Strange Meadowlark. His speculative fiction novels include Bicycles of the Gods and The Talon Trilogy. His poems have appeared in Poetry (Chicago), Poem-a-Day published by The Academy of American Poets, ONE ART and Plume Poetry. In 2011, Simms was awarded a Certificate of Recognition from the Pennsylvania State Legislature for his service to the arts.

Two Poems by J.R. Solonche

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT WHAT I DON’T KNOW

I want to write about what I don’t know.
I want to write a sequence of sonnets, for instance,
on the mysteries of the mind, one for each mystery or so.

I want to write about what I don’t know.
On botany, macroeconomics, quantum gravity,
I want to compose elaborately complex odes.

I want to write about what I don’t know.
The secret language of deaf Babylonians, let’s say,
or how nocturnal plants use moonlight to grow.

I want to write about what I don’t know.
An epic about my heroic great ancestral father
and how he found my great ancestral mother in the Russian snow.

I want to write about what I’ll never know.
What will the world be like in a thousand years?
Will there still be birds called eagle, puffin, hawk, flamingo?

*

SHORTCUTS

“Remember, there are no shortcuts,”
he used to say. He was my father,
and he used to say that a lot. I think
he said that more than he said anything.
I knew what he meant. He didn’t need
to spell it out. So, of course, I took all
the shortcuts I could find. The shortcut
to the ball field. The shortcut to the
candy store. The shortcut to the deli.
The shortcut to the pizza place. The
shortcut to the junior high school.
The shortcut to the high school. The
shortcut to the B average in high
school. The shortcut to the college
across town. The shortcut to dropping
out. The shortcut to the woman I
married. The shortcut to becoming
a poet. I never told him he was right.

*

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

The Portal of the Page by Daniel Seifert

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The Portal of the Page

We are all time
travelers,
though most of us don’t know it.
We place one day before the next
like the footsteps of a drunkard.
Strapped into the future while now
sneaks past, unseen.

Something must be done, and can:
a journal is an anchor.
Its function, to bend
your neck to yesterday and ask
what needs setting down.

Do this.
1. To feel ink flow and leave a screen untapped,
if only for a moment.
2. To interrogate what matters and
let it feel the texture
of a waiting page.
3. To look back (how could you
forget that night,
that storm,
that drink that killed its bubbles,
that thought you thought
you’d never think again).

This thought matters:
let your history be
graffiti on a wall
and not a black hole.
Get your pen.

*

Daniel Seifert’s writing is published or forthcoming in The New York Times, Consequence, The Poetry Society of New York, and Chiron Review. In 2023 he was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and longlisted for the Letter Review Prize. He is currently undertaking a Masters in Creative Writing at Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore. He tweets @DanSeifwrites

After class by Elizabeth Joy Levinson

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After class

Cleaning the science classroom,
I came across a bin of stethoscopes.
I never have before, so I slipped one
over my head and was immediately struck
by how loud the world became.
I placed it over my heart,
imagined my mother, a nurse, listening
to so many heart stories and then, coming home
and listening again. How little room
there was for thought
while my blood rushed in and out,
the way a wave knocks you down,
the sound you hear
when you are trying to right your body,
bring your head above the water,
how rarely we stop to hear it
even though it is a song always playing.

*

Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a high school biology teacher in Chicago. Her work has been published in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, Anti-Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, and others. The author of two chapbooks, As Wild Animals (Dancing Girl Press) and Running Aground (Finishing Line Press), her first full length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies, is available from Unsolicited Press.

Span by Jeff McRae

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Span

She was there, silent as a rag doll.
I unpinned her calendar from the wall.
A busy year until early May—
a hair appointment the very day
someone took her out in a bag.
Years were crumbs, absence sound.
She didn’t say a word. I heard her
everywhere. You watched
from the window but she
didn’t appear. When we arrived
and opened the door
for a second I believed
she’d just run to the store.
She wasn’t coming back.
Or hadn’t completely gone,
I couldn’t tell. With my finger
I upset the little bells on the porch,
expecting to hear her call my name.
Instead, the kids wanted to know—
Dad, can we watch a show?
and scattered to the blue corners
of her couch. I occupied
an empty chair, surveyed the room:
wool blankets she threw
over the bannister, the quiet
Baldwin upright in the corner.
Her collection of keys
in a basket on the piano bench.
She never told me what they meant.

*

Jeff McRae’s poems have appeared in The Maynard, Massachusetts Review, Antioch Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Salamander, The Briar Cliff Review, Mudfish, Rattle, and elsewhere. He lives in Vermont.

Two Poems by Donna Hilbert

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

This Boat
            for TE

Were you two or three?
Strapped to my lap in the kayak
I paddled into the wetlands
past the sign that read “Go Back.”

Herons, pelicans, cormorants
flew close enough to touch,
and sun dazzled the murk below.

“In this boat, we can go anywhere,”
you said, then pressed your cheek
to my breast, and slept.

You were almost grown,
when you chose the unknown water.
If there were signs ahead,
I failed to heed, or even see, them.

*

New

That time in the park
at the end of the street

our dogs off leash
and we are off leash too

our love so new
we kiss and kiss

not caring for once
who sees us

what might be said
or be construed.

*

Donna Hilbert’s latest book is Threnody, from Moon Tide Press. Earlier books include Gravity: New & Selected Poems, Tebot Bach, 2018. She is a monthly contributing writer to the on-line journal Verse-Virtual. Work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Braided Way, Chiron Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Rattle, Zocalo Public Square, ONE ART, and numerous anthologies. Poems have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac and on Lyric Life. She writes and leads private workshops in Southern California, where she makes her home, and during residencies at Write On Door County. Learn more at donnahilbert.com

Of Havens by Tricia Knoll

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Of Havens

            …the wide open door/Means nothing if it cannot be closed.
            – May Sarton

Rock caves vent
smoke, baby cries
and boasts, but

my love’s home has windows
to see ins and outs –
stops for barefoot still-point.
Sun bounces on glass,
fingers follow rain trails.

Doors crack for walk-aways
from chores and overhearing
hard stories not my own.
This leaving-for-living
until I come back
to shed my shoes.

Within open and closed,
I know where you are,
what you need.

Sometimes
where you go when
your dreams touch a blue door
until the softest click,
(not a lock twist) lets it
hang and you find home
here. With me, reading
whispers on the ceiling.

*

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet who in 2024 welcome two new collections into publication: Wild Apples (poems of downsizing and moving 3,003 miles) and The Unknown Daughter (a chapbook exploring the voices of people who interact with the Tomb of the Unknown Daughter). She is a Contributing Editor to Verse Virtual. Website: triciaknoll.com

Skylight by Marc Alan Di Martino

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Skylight

Everything you do, I did
at your age: the tousled
bangs draped over your
eyes shielding you from
scrutiny, the oversize
sweatshirts, the baggy
jeans, the unassailable
scowl, the quiet allure
of darkness & the stark
conviction that life
is royally unfair
to all—but mainly you.
I get it. I do. We too
had indecipherable
slang and snickered
at others’ inability to read
our thoughts, emitted
through cryptic tics
of the nervous system,
black holes of significance
behind the iron event
horizon of each mono-
syllabic moan, each groan
of disapproval. I’m here
to tell you all of this
is normal, fine, okay,
copacetic, kosher, chill.
It will run its course
like a cold, so common
is it to the species. Life
is precious (yes, I know
you’ll laugh at this
so be my guest), an old
saying that never loses
its sting. Nothing
matters to me more
than you and I really
think you need to hear
this now, as it’s been
hit-or-miss lately
between us. Maybe if
I can manage to crack
your skylight open
a bit I’ll let some sun
in. Just don’t forget
to look up
or you’ll miss it.

*

Marc Alan Di Martino is the author of Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City Press, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Autumn Sky, Orange Blossom Review, Rattle and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His translation Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco will be published by World Poetry Books in 2024. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.

After Watching World News by Louisa Muniz

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

After Watching World News

Some days my body carries less of the holy
more of the grief it can’t help but hold.

On days I don’t know how to take
one more of the world’s sorrows

I make of myself a light, needle-colored
under a moon threaded in funeral cloth.

When my fifteen year old granddaughter tells me,
I’m working on becoming a kinder, better person,

last night’s news lingers in my head: hostages,
bodies, guns, the thistle & thrum of all we’ve done.

Why do we hold back our good will?
The one thing we could give of ourselves.

Who knew despair could be a palpable thing?
Yet, the heart allows both light & dark to enter it

as it commits & contracts to the ocean of its wants.
On any given bankrupt morning I might finally stop asking,

where’s my stuff to the universe.
Do I really think I’m owed something?

But, if it’s still a thing, I’m in the marketplace for gratitude.
Isn’t the enough I have, more than enough?

As for hope, I position it mid-height on my tongue,
mid-day in my body, mid-prayer in my burning hands.

*

Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared in SWWIM, ONE ART, Palette Poetry, Gyroscope, Tinderbox Journal, PANK Magazine, Shark Reef and elsewhere. She won the Sheila-Na-Gig 2019 Spring Contest for her poem Stone Turned Sand. Her work has been nominated a few times for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook, After Heavy Rains by Finishing Line Press was released in December, 2020. She is presently working on her second chapbook.

Four Poems by Karen Friedland

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

This Gracious Planet

Try to align yourself
with the brilliance of the morning.
Take in the new green leaves
and delve deeply into this day.

Say your own kind of prayer
every morning
to the life force
that animates this gracious planet—
to beauty,
to freshness.

This languid morning,
with its blown-about wind-chimes,
will never come your way again.

So savor the sunlight,
dappling trees,
and let cool breezes wash you clean—

glory in being on this side
of the sod.

*

Another Woman Down

Another woman down—
another Jewish woman—
the second in as many days—
this one with my same rare cancer subtype—
damn.

I ate an edible
to help quell the panic
rising from my tender gut
like bile.

“It’s like a slasher movie,”
I tell my husband,
with ovarian cancer
the killer.

Another woman down—
who not long ago
was vibrant and alive.

* 

Watching Animal Rescue Videos Has Become My Bag

Vicariously,
I’m the tiny, pink pig
fallen through the slates of the slaughterhouse-bound truck,
nursed back to life
by a loving young couple;

I’m the abused dog, the donkey,
the impossibly small baby bird
miraculously healed
through great love and care.

I’m the whole world right now,
bombed, massacred, waiting for cease-fire,
waiting for spring,
for the grass to grow back.

Enraptured by the universe, the dog’s heavy sigh,
I lay abed,
dying while hoping.

Despite everything,
I like it right here.

*

The Lady in the Wicker Basket

I will be buried
in the Garden of Faith
at the Gardens of Gethsemane,

buried in a wicker casket
under a lush green field,
in a green burial—
and to the soil I’ll go,
rich and loamy,
feeding the trees I love.

I’ll snuggle up to the earth—
fleet deer and foxes will amble over me.

I don’t believe in heaven,
while my neighbors seem to,
but I do believe in the cosmos—
that maybe I’ll be out there.

And my words—
I’ll leave them behind, too.
Little brightly colored shards,
breadcrumbs.

*

Once a nonprofit grant writer by trade, Karen Friedland had poems published in the Lily Poetry Review, Nixes Mate Review, Constellations, and others. She was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her books include Places That Are Gone, Tales from the Teacup Palace, and a posthumous third volume to be published in 2024. Karen lived in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston with her husband, two dogs and a cat. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in November 2021, two days before her 58th birthday, and died on April 14, 2024.

*

Please note: Karen was a previous contributor to ONE ART. Her poem, The Boy, appeared in ONE ART on March 15, 2023.

Three Poems by Martin Willitts Jr

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Emptying Time

While I was asleep, my father died,
slipped into that great coda, when memory passes
from one person to another person,
and I became a gatekeeper of his life.

And since there were gaps in his history,
I began filling them.

On my way to my father’s funeral,
a large whooping crane wafts across the bay
where a lavender light floats on water.

Before the dead releases,
breath becomes one door closing,

another one opening.
That strange lyric
of a life that continues
when someone starts sharing a memory.

I wasn’t there when he died,
but I have witnessed others at their last sigh
as a field medic in Vietnam. I remember
each of them like a slick country road
I must maneuver/drive in the dark.

The crane lifts its impossible weight,
its head matching crimson morning-break,
its whoop-whoop trumpets my loss.

How heavy a crane looks, large wingspan
almost tipping both edges of the sky,

endlessly suspended in air,
an aimless cloud, always present,
untouchable as thought.

*

I Had Been Expecting This Phone Call Since January

I hoped I was wrong.
Unfortunately, his voice on the other end
confirmed what I knew had to be true.

“Mom died in her sleep.”

I felt sorry for my son
passing on this information.

At least she died in her sleep,
someone would say, eventually. This
kind of news I expected.

Some would say
it was a relief she died;
painless, in her sleep.

People always say this
when they do not know what else to say.

I do not know what to say to my son
to ease his pain,
when often I lack the necessary words.
Some experiences in life
are not explained easily.

Life’s hardest lessons
leave no rational justifications.

We muddle through trauma
hoping sadness eventually fades away.
And it’s hard work;
often memory-pain returns at the worst moments.

Yes, she died in her sleep.
It was expected, and then
it happened, quietly.

Unfortunately, my son witnessed her death.
It will hover in his heart for a long time.

I cannot tell him how long his sadness will last,
or how sadness ebbs and flows,
boomerangs back,
because each person enters grief differently,
and it has no set time limit
how long suffering will last.

There’s no manual to explain how grief works.
Loss is experiential.

I held onto the silence in the telephone call
like a lifeline to my son.
I knew he was drowning
and there are no words
to soothe this kind of pain.

Silence lasted for a long time.

*

Lastness of Silence

This world does not know true meaning of silence:
it disturbs, tears hearts. My son, my son,
where are you in this orange-red world? You left

         unsettling news. What could I do differently
         to change this terrible mockingbird song?

How could I have placed my thumb on these scales?
I find a distance between snapped hearts and no maps.
I walk as silent as this night, searching, searching,

         and you are not there. My son, my lost son,

lost within his own explanations. Answers are not here,
or in blank places in this sad jazz. My world empties.

You have not spoken to me since, my son, my son
of awful distances. This world cannot explain
true meaning of this silence, its haunting melody.

*

Martin Willitts Jr is an editor of Comstock Review. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. His 21 full-length collections include the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Harvest Time” (Deerbrook Editions, 2021); “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022); “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World (Flowstone Press, 2022); “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Arts Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023); “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” including all 36 color pictures (Shanti Arts Press, 2024); and “All Beautiful Things Need Not Fly” (Silver Bowl Press, 2024).

Ceremony After the Ceremony by Lisa Morin Carcia

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Ceremony After the Ceremony

               — Miramar National Cemetery

Young woman striding over the grass
down the newest row of graves,
bearing a gold-flecked urn. Left hand
underneath, right hand on top. Sober
green coat and slacks, sturdy black shoes.
Two workmen waiting for her.
Turf peeled back, ground opened.
Family not permitted. After the service
at the committal shelter, after “Taps,”
after the mourners have driven away—
this ceremony after the ceremony.
How she holds the urn close to her body.
How it feels to carry that weight.

*

Lisa Morin Carcia’s poems have appeared in Whale Road Review, Eunoia Review, Sheila-Na-Gig online, SWWIM Every Day, Talking River Review, North American Review, Floating Bridge Review, and elsewhere. She lives near Seattle, Washington.

Sanctuary by Ann Boaden

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Sanctuary

Blue-skinned with tattoos over
packed muscles twisting under
tee sweat-stained black as
3 a.m., shouting “Pastor! Pastor! Pastor!”
he crashes into the church
just as the sermon’s ending.
He’s one of ours. A fragile giant, and now
he’s using again.
Thirsty so thirsty.
Tip water to my mouth,
I can’t reach the cup and
my bones are fire.
The minister,
black-robed, stretches arms to him,
places fingers strong as light on the
shaved and scarred head he bows over
her lectern, murmurs words
like cool water. She is tall, slender,
her hair the color of morning. People
rise, come forward from pews, surround the
not-yet-pieta.
They circle me the wolves the lions to tear to devour.
No, child, the minister says. These are the faces of love.
How the story turns back again and again
asking to be rewritten.

*

Ann Boaden lives and writes in MidAmerica, where she received master’s and doctoral degrees in English from The University of Chicago and taught literature and writing at her undergraduate school, Augustana (Illinois). Her work appears/is forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, Big Muddy, Blue Unicorn, From SAC, Ginosko, litbreak, Penwood Review, Persimmon Tree, Sediments, South Dakota Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, and The Windhover, among many other journals.

A Unique Opportunity Courtesy of Faith Shearin

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Faith Shearin has been amazingly generous and given us a packet of 30 Writing Exercises to sell as part of ONE ART’s fundraising campaign. This 39-page document (PDF) offers a wide range of inspiration! The packet is being sold for $50.

But wait, there’s more! As an added bonus, those who buy the packet have an opportunity to work 1-on-1 with Faith in the coming weeks and months ahead. How does this work? If you buy the packet, you can share 3-4 poems with Faith via email or snail mail for the price of $15 per poem. This is a rare opportunity to receive personalized feedback from a prominent contemporary poet.

Faith Shearin’s seven books of poetry include: The Owl Question (May Swenson Award), Telling the Bees (SFA University Press), Orpheus, Turning (Dogfish Poetry Prize), Darwin’s Daughter (SFA University Press), and Lost Language (Press 53). Her poems have been read aloud on The Writer’s Almanac and included in American Life in Poetry. She has received awards from Yaddo, The National Endowment for the Arts, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her essays and short stories have won awards from New Ohio Review, The Missouri Review, The Florida Review, and Literal Latte, among others. Two YA novels — Lost River, 1918 and My Sister Lives in the Sea — won The Global Fiction Prize, judged by Anthony McGowan, and have been published by Leapfrog Press.

Payment Options.

Reach out to us directly at oneartpoetry@gmail.com with questions or to be added to the list of those who wish to work 1-on-1 with Faith later this summer.

[last updated _ 8.7.24

Two Poems by Judith Sornberger

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

What Is Essential

I fell for him even before he called me
his flower the first time we made love.
But how little we knew of each other
when we married at eighteen. Not long after,
I learned he didn’t believe in squandering
our earnings—mine from the accounting
job I hated, his from the mattress factory—
on anything inessential.

Our second February, someone at work
was selling five-dollar daffodil
bouquets for the Heart Association.
Without asking his permission, I bought one,
and all the way home I hardly noticed
the black slush I trudged through
for the brightness I carried. Sprinting
up the steps to our tiny apartment,
I hoped the tight buds, as they opened,
might melt what had frozen between us
that ice-bound winter. Silly, I suppose,
as splurging on something so unnecessary.

The next morning, we awoke to a wide swathe
of sunlight spread across the kitchen table
and one brave bud splayed open. Given his
disapproval, my husband refused to see
how the frilly gold center resembled
a gramophone speaker—the kind of contraption
I imagined always playing love songs.
All day, into the elegiac light of late afternoon,
it broadcasted the scent of an awakening,
the blaring silence of an ending.

*

The Return of the Upside-down Bird

I lay myself out on the chaise longue,
inviting sunshine to ease my shoulders.
My treat this first warm day is reading outside,
but the pain in my crumbling right knee
Shrieks so loudly I can’t concentrate.
Deep sigh. Close your eyes.

When we first moved here, I loved how the woods
kept creeping ever closer to the deck. Pines, juniper,
and honeysuckle still approach, but the ashes
are a dead and dying tribe, stumbling down,
one by one, like so many I’ve loved.

Any day one may crash through the roof.
But damn, I didn’t come out here to muse
on one more thing falling apart. Opening again,
my eyes flit to the petite red-breasted nuthatch
I’ve watched for all winter among the birds
braving the hawk’s keen eye to partake
at my feeder. The one my long-dead love
called the upside-down bird.

Who knows how it survived the winter?
But here it is, spiraling, head first,
down the dead trunk, pecking at insects
in the shredding bark. And in the next second—
I can hardly believe it—another appears
on the trunk next door. Maybe its mate?
Maybe they’re grateful for the death
that so abundantly feeds them. Maybe
they’ll weave a nest from its peeling strands,
lay a handful of hope for the rest of us.

*

Judith Sornberger’s most recent poetry collection is The Book of Muses (Finishing Line Press). Her full-length poetry collections are I Call to You from Time (Wipf & Stock), Angel Chimes: Poems of Advent and Christmas (Shanti Arts), Practicing the World (Shanti Arts), and Open Heart (Calyx Books). She is also the author of five other chapbooks, including the award-winning Wal-Mart Orchid. Sornberger is professor emerita of Mansfield University of Pennsylvania where she taught English and, many years ago, created the Women’s Studies Program. She is involved in community theater in Wellsboro, PA—producing, writing, and acting regularly in productions. Living on the side of a mountain in the northernmost tier of the Appalachians is a constant source of inspiration for her. www.judithsornberger.net

Two Poems by Shannon K. Winston

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments
The Maidenhair Fern On Her Own Endangerment
          -Inspired by the Maidenhair Fern entry on the United Plant Savers website.
The maidenhair reads her endangerment score is 52.
She checks to see if her fingers are all there. Yes,
but there is less and less land for her in Appalachia. Feeling
useless, she closes her eyes. Half in shade,
darkness shallows her. She slips her fingers into loam
and whispers more. The maidenhair knows her
endangerment score is 52, but she ignores it. Best
to pretend she doesn’t know what she’s known
for a long time. Water drips off of her: she’s unwetted.
That is, she sheds water but never gets wet. Her magic
trick still leaves even her breathless. There’s no one around—
just a silky silence she could slip on like a dress.
The maidenhair can’t believe her endangerment score is 52.
She slinks around limestone, rubs her green-black
against the mouths of caves. The other ferns might call
this indulgence, giving up. Abdication is sexier so she likes
it better, but that’s not what she’s doing: she’s easing into
the past tense. How bad will the end be? 52,
a number she whispers to the tiny spores under her leaves.
She hopes they’re tough. She promises them a moist, soft landing.
*
Flip Flops
Forget the runway, I strut up and down
library aisles in the loudest flip flops I can find.
One might think big, thick wedges would do the trick,
but the thin drug store ones are best.
They suck my heel and let out the sweetest
Thack. Thack. Flip. Flop. That usually does it:
Emily Dickinson wakes from her slumber
and I ask her about the weather. No doubt, she thinks
it’s too hot. Proust is more verbose, so I shuffle past.
Thack, thack. In summer, my feet turn black from the dye.
I stare at my heels’ impression against the rubber.
In the library, I prefer works by people I’ve never heard of.
I flip through the pages of their books.
We all try to leave our mark.
*
Shannon K. Winston’s book, The Girl Who Talked to Paintings (Glass Lyre Press), was published in 2021. Her individual poems have appeared in Bracken, Cider Press Review, On the Seawall, RHINO Poetry, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. Find her here: shannonkwinston.com.

Spider’s Love by Achilles Villwock

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Spider’s Love

Despite the connotations
in flower language
when it comes to spider lilies,
I love you like one.
You’re not dead
but something delicate.
Spindly and soft,
something that survives
through all else.
And if we were in love
then I’d be the sun,
excited to see your face.
And even if you were death incarnate
I’d leave my heart and soul in your hands.
I’d let you poison me
while I nurture you,
for in the end
it’s love.

*

Achilles Villwock is a senior in high school at Coral Academy of Science. They participated in a poetry contest in 2023. They also enjoy reading classical literature like Dostoevsky.

STEP 1: SAND, CLAY, FIRE by Allison Wall

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STEP 1: SAND, CLAY, FIRE

I used to think faith
was built on heavy things
that could not be moved

but everything can be moved

lay your palm
on this sun-warmed boulder
feel the atoms shifting

one day it will be sand

I clung to The Cornerstone
it fell through
my fingers

I dug out the pieces
hard, sweaty work
each pebble a weight
these clay hands
measured, bore,
and cast away
into primordial fire

*

Allison Wall is a queer, neurodivergent writer. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University, and she has published short speculative fiction, personal essays, and book and film reviews. Her poetry is forthcoming in Thimble Literary Magazine. Connect with Allison on her website, allison-wall.com.

Age Before Beauty by Jerl Surratt

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Age Before Beauty

You’re so handsome, yet you have eyes for me.
And you’re the right size for me, your face upturned
for kisses, my back bent as to a fountain.

I hope you’ll stay, I guess, through all my days
though that would mean you’d have to face an end
you’ll come to see one day from miles away.

Right now it seems limitless, our time together,
you talking to me about anything but the weather,
me mining myself for reminiscences that you’re
as hungry for as you are for the helpless attention

I pay you, so pleasantly uncomfortable for us both.
You see our future in the world as it is. My last
impressions of love you’ve made my first. We don’t
care to know how to get out of this.

*

Jerl Surratt’s poems have been published in The Amsterdam Quarterly, The Hopkins Review, Kenyon Review and in other journals and two anthologies. He is a 2025 Pushcart Prize nominee and was awarded the Robinson Jeffers Foundation’s annual poetry prize by final judge Marie Howe.

The Testimony of White Tulips by Crystal Taylor

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The Testimony of White Tulips

I was eight
when Sandy first
came for dinner.
She ate raw meat
from her palm,
on a dare.
Maybe it was
a mating ritual,
peacocks’ feathers
fanning kitchen air.

Mom caught Evelyn,
two lips
tickling Sandy’s ear.
Curtains agape,
a spotlight
above the sink
lit a stage
for strange neighbors—
a flower-box of tulips
as witness.

Mom and Dad
smothered her belonging—
in a trash bag
with her things,
drop-kicked them
into weeds.
The porchlight cast
flying shadows
on golf balls where
her eyes once lived.

Our father gave
my sister away,
under Orion’s belt.
Invisible streamers
trailed our street.
Tiered cake
melted on the seat.

*

Crystal Taylor is a neurodivergent poet and writer. When not writing, she spends time with her partner of 20 years. Her most recent work lives in Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Tiny Wren Lit, Rust + Moth, and other sacred spaces. Follow her on X @CrystalTaylorSA and Instagram @cj_taylor_writes.

Five Poems by Sandra Kohler

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Your Absence

Your absence is
presence this morning
when I wake, when
I rise, when I face
the day without you

after fifty years
of being with you
each day, each night
every day, every night
all day, all night.

How can I learn
to live without
your presence, to live
with your absence,
to live again?

*

Tonawanda Winter #2, Missing

Morning’s tropical: wet, warm;
rain’s fallen, temperatures soared.
There are no doves on the crest
of 83. No one’s afoot. Wrong –
there’s one youngish black man
slowly walking up the other side
of the street. And now in front of
85, Dennis’ truck lights go on.
A sudden spray of doves alights

on the balcony of 83, flurries,
flies off. There are sparrows in our
lilac. Straggling walkers appear,
vanish, there’s someone I’ve not seen
before on the porch of a house two
up from 83. One small piece of matter
– ort, crumb – is picked up then spat
out by three sparrows one at a time.
They dislike the taste of this day.

I miss the dead. My brothers, my
friends, They’re gone. I feel their
absence, their presence. Shirley, Steve,
Susan – each so alive for me. A breeze
stirs, gusts. Dennis’ truck is back, he
gets out, goes inside carrying a small
paper bag. Now the street is empty of
everything but wind. The lilac’s empty
of sparrows. My stay here is over.

*

Afternoon Aubade with Cathedral

I lie in bed in the middle
of the afternoon in a strange
hotel in a strange city,

my husband/lover/partner’s
arm lying across my body as it
has for thirty years, weighted

with time, with hours of the
evenings mornings afternoons
we’ve laughed and quarreled,

made love and told each other
some truths about ourselves,
spoken or allowed our souls to

be silent. Today our bodies
are weighted with these hours,
with years of our presence

in a space holy and unbounded
as La Sagra Familia, the space
Gaudi would not finish.

*

Tonawanda Winter #5, Fears

The morning brings a mystery. Does each day’s
dawning? There’s a police car parked in front of
83, just across the street. My husband watches it
pull away – neither of us sees whether the officer
in it gets out, goes up to the house. Around here,
a police car augurs bad news: either its being
delivered, or that something’s happened within
the house for which help has been summoned.

The day’s brilliant, winter fresh. Stillness, sun,
light breezes stirring. I am astir, I’m alive, awake.
I check the time. I need to shower and dress and
leave. Someone walks up the street, a complete
stranger. Young man? boy? in an orange jacket,
phone in hand. Then stillness again. Even the pin
oak leaves aren’t moving – no, wrong, they’re

starting to tremble. The street, the sidewalks
are empty of walkers and cars, the blue sky
of clouds. Once again I have allowed anxiety
to shape what I am able to see of the morning.
How I wish I could empty my heart of these
fears. Could I? How? Will I? When?

*

Time At Last?

The day after what would have been
your eighty-ninth birthday, I am thinking
again about you, sister, brooding once
more about your failures, your cruelty,
bravery, the strange cocktail of attributes
you carried into all your relationships as
daughter, sister, wife, mother, daughter-
in-law, mother-in-law, friend.

What were you like in the years before
our mother’s illness, before her death?
I don’t know, I remember little. What I
do know, do still remember, although with
memories transformed by time’s perspective,
is the fabulous tale you taught me about
those early days, about myself, about
my loss, about my motherlessness.

In your version of my childhood, I was
not motherless. You were motherless,
but I was not, because when she died,
you became mother to me. I believed
your invention for decades, until I was
older than our mother was when she died.
Your lie kept me from seeing that I was
in mourning, yet not allowed to mourn.

Not allowed to mourn, how could I
recover from mourning, heal? How can
I forgive you? If I cannot, how can I
forgive myself? For not having mourned,
for not recognizing that I was in fact
mourning then, despite all our denials,
yours and mine, of that. Is it time at
last to forgive you, forgive myself?

*

Sandra Kohler’s third collection of poems, Improbable Music, (Word Press) appeared in May, 2011. Earlier collections are The Country of Women (Calyx, 1995) and The Ceremonies of Longing, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003). Her poems have appeared in journals, including The New Republic, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, and many others over the past 50 years. In 2018, a poem of hers was chosen to be part of Jenny Holzer’s permanent installation at the Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia.

Truce by B. Lynne Zika

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Truce

Night’s set itself down
and won’t move on.
All the boots
are lined up at the door.

The porchlight’s on.
The father’s home late,

picking his way
through the fallen heroes
on the rug. The dishes

are abandoned by the sink.

One child, one mother
collapsed in two beds,

the war over and night,
as before, taking up
the whole of the sky.

*

B. Lynne Zika’s prose, photography, and verse appear regularly in online and print journals. 2024 publications include Medusa’s Kitchen, Lyrical Somerville, and The Crossroads. Previous years include Gargoyle Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review, Medusa’s Kitchen, The Crossroads, Delta Poetry Review, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. She is the author of The Strange Case of Eddy Whitfield, The Longing, and Letters to Sappho: Putting Out the Fire. In addition to editing poetry and nonfiction, she worked as a closed-captioning editor for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Awards include: Pacificus Foundation Literary Award in short fiction, Little Sister Award and Moon Prize in poetry, and Viewbug Top Creator and Hero Awards in photography.

Joint Custody by Julian Koslow

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Joint Custody

Evenings with dad we studied other families
on TV: What’s Happening!! Diff’rent Strokes,
Eight is Enough, All in the Family,
then learned the arts of healing from M*A*S*H,
the cures for lives in disrepair
from The Love Boat, and Fantasy Island, where
all losses were restored,
all problems solved in an hour,
less the ads.

We sat together on the orange couch
and ate our spaghetti. Meanwhile,
dad made strawberries
with lemon juice and sugar.
And the night inched up the windows
and the night inched up the windows

until we felt the prickle of its stare
and lowered the bamboo blinds.

*

Raised, educated, and then educated some more in New Jersey (Ph.D. Rutgers, 2005), Julian Koslow left academia to take care of a child with special needs. His poems can be found in Sugar House Review, Delmarva Review, The Columbia Review, New Ohio Review, SRPR, Cumberland River Review, and Paterson Literary Review among others. His poem, “Just Another Drop in the Ocean of Forgetting” received an Honorable Mention for the 2023 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award.

Three Poems by Joseph Mills

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Party Planning in the Assisted Living Home

You ask what kind of cake they would like,
and they say, “I don’t know. I’m not hungry.”
You suggest cakes they’ve had in previous years
and they get annoyed. “Who wants an old cake?
Am I old and stale? Is that what you’re saying?”
You know better than to respond. You suggest
chocolate, and they grimace. You say, “Vanilla?”
and they recoil “What would be the point of that?”
You say, “I just want to make something you like.”
Their face changes. They lean in and whisper,
“I’ll just have whatever Clint has.” Their husband,
Clint, died years ago. You ask, “Does he like lemon?”
She nods, “Yes. With a lot of frosting. Too much.”
You promise her there will be a lot, even too much.

*

Nostalgia

More years than not
the tree got knocked down

because of dogs,
or parties, or fights,

but mostly because
the holiday season
was a drinking season,

and each time the tree
would be levered back up,
broken ornaments swept up,
decorations cleaned up,
water mopped up,

so the next night
the tree seemed as bright,

and maybe outside
no one could tell
anything had happened,

and maybe for some
that would have been reassuring,
things can be set aright,

but once you know
how it can come down,
whether by accident or anger,
it never seems aright again.

*

Veterans Day

Every year she buys him socks as a gift.
Warm ones. Thick ones. Thermals. Woolens.
He doesn’t need them. He has drawers full,
but he always seems genuinely grateful,
much to the bewilderment of the children.

For two years in that war, he felt he never could
get his feet dry and warm and he was sure that
he was going to die. He would write her the first,
not the second, but she knew, just as she knows
the shape of love isn’t a heart, but a foot.

*

A faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Joseph Mills has published several collections of poetry with Press 53, most recently “Bodies in Motion: Poems About Dance.”

The Dark Side of the Moon by Diana Day

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

The Dark Side of the Moon

This morning as the sun
was rising, I thought I saw
the dark side of the moon.

The waning moon was a
crescent of silver, its dark
side a curve of indigo blue.

As the clouds shifted, they
covered the dark side that
I was sure I had seen.

Was I seeing what I wanted
to see? I’ve done this so
often with people,

thinking I’d seen the whole
of someone when their
dark side was obscured.

*

Diana Day won the poetry prize from a chapter of the Poetry Society of Texas as a teenager. She then worked as an advertising copywriter for ad agencies in Atlanta and New York City. Now retired in the Blue Ridge Mountains, she devotes her time to writing poems. She is a member of two poetry groups as well as the North Carolina Writers Network. Her work has appeared in Types & Shadows and will appear in Witcraft in May.

Two Poems by Nathaniel Gutman

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I Hear the Sirens Wailing

When an approaching firetruck’s siren fills the air,
my German Shepherd stands erect, head tilted,
a plaintive howl resounding from her gut,
alerting the neighborhood wolves,
claiming her ancestry.

When I see the first pictures of carnage,
hear air-raid sirens wailing,
the echo of her primal cry crawls up my spine,
but all I have in my throat,
on October 7,
is a broken whimper.

*

SETZUAN

She’s a prostitute. She’s a man. She’s pregnant.
She’s fourteen.

Tuesday, I fly 8000 miles to see her,
prostitute, man, pregnant,
in Tel Aviv.
She transforms doing Brecht on stage,
downtrodden women, evil men who rule them,
his feminist-Marxist vision:
The Good Person of Setzuan.

On our way back, parents of young women hostages,
peacefully march along the road, demanding:
Netanyahu, go! Now!

We roll down windows, they come close,
we honk our horn in support,
and to shove away the contagious pain
in their raw eyes.

*

Nathaniel Gutman is a filmmaker who has directed and/or written over 30 theatrical/TV movies and documentaries internationally, including award-winning Children’s Island (BBC, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel), Witness in the Warzone (with Christopher Walken), Linda (from the novella by John D. MacDonald; with Virginia Madsen). His poetry has appeared in The New York Quarterly, Tiferet Journal, Pangyrus, LitMag, Constellations, The American Journal of Poetry.

poems by Scott Ferry & Leilani Ferry

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

last night the poem

wasn’t coming
and my daughter came out of her bedroom
because she couldn’t sleep

and she showed me her poem
about sitting on the green slide alone
at recess watching the cherry blossoms fall

like gentle snow and unrequited love
and wishing that people would understand her
and the beauty of the cascading white sky

          — Scott Ferry

*

Every day

every day I walk out by the cherry blossoms
and sit on a bright green slide
just at the edge

I watch the petals fall from the
cherry trees
watch them fall

and snow down on me
like snow in the spring
with so many things running through

my head
the beauty of the light falling through
the trees

yet all I can think about is him
then her,
I can tell you like her because I

know the look of your eyes when
you like someone
of all people I should know that

the winds sweeping my hair
knowing you will never like me back
it hurts

but you will never understand

every day under the cherry blossoms
on my bright green slide
just at the edge of my seat

with petals falling down on me
like snow
I think of you

and that I’ll never have a chance
with my middle school love

          — Leilani Ferry

*

Scott Ferry is a RN in the Seattle area. His most recent books of poetry are collaborations: Midnight Glossolalia with Lillian Nećakov and Lauren Scharhag and Fill Me With Birds with Daniel McGinn, both from Meat For Tea Press. His book of prose poems, Sapphires on the Graves will be available from Glass Lyre in early Summer. He continues to write feverishly as the voices in his head demand. He tries to be a decent husband and father and general human whilst screaming into the mirrored lake of oblivion at intervals. More of his work can be found @ ferrypoetry.com.

Leilani Ferry is 12 years old and is a natural artist and writer and lovely and passionate person.

*

Etymology by Robbie Gamble

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Etymology

I have come to believe that the colorful
modifiers lugubrious and fecund
were swapped out at birth, because
tonight the spring peepers are joyous
in their chorus, and their exuberant
lovemaking sounds both polyphonic
and slippery, which could only be
described as lugubrious, while fecund

is a word I would want to utter
when the calendar flips to November
and the water heater conks out
and my favorite aunt dies unexpectedly
and the prospects for an impending
election seem abysmal.

*

Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in Cagibi, Post Road, Whale Road Review, Salamander, and The Sun. He divides his time between Boston and Vermont.

A Stone’s Story by Jane Edna Mohler

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A Stone’s Story

I was a hunk
of rock you could barely
lift without grunting.

Remember that hot beam glaring
from my core? I shivered
a fever you’d give your right hand

to feel. That white degree.
I pulsed through the earth’s sharp
shell, or did I plunge

from a wrathful sky?
No matter.
It’s the story that counts.

I was all you’d expect
from a god, not the dull stone
you think you see.

That wasn’t me, folded
into the warm row of a tilled field,
the comfort of worms as neighbors.

Not me, spending decades mired
in mud, scored by the blade
of a brainless plow.

*

Jane Edna Mohler is a Bucks County Poet Laureate Emerita (PA), 2016 Winner of Main Street Voices (PA), and second place winner in the 2023 Crossroads Contest (MD). Latest publications include Gargoyle, Gyroscope, One Art, River Heron Review, and Sheila-Na-Gig. Her collection, Broken Umbrellas, was published by Kelsay Books. Jane is Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. See www.janeednamohler.com for more information.

Bulletproof by Cindy Veach

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Bulletproof

         Before my belly was a kiln. Before episiotomy.
Before hemorrhage. Years before my brother starting spiking
his thermos with Absolut. Before my mother forgot. Before
my father died, Al Hirschfeld hid his daughter’s name

         in drawings of Marilyn, Elvis, Ella, Ringo Starr. NINAs
concealed in gams and jowls. Harmless insanity he called it. Long
before I left the church. Before my children left home. And yes,
it’s true that the army used Al’s NINAs to train

         bomber pilots to spot their targets. And yes,
I’ve now lived long enough to know what I did not know then—
that he objected to his art being used to kill people,
drew his daughter with no NINAs and named it

         Nina’s Revenge; that some nights my father
took off to wander Times Square, eat at an Automat—
or so he said. And yes, maybe my brother was right
that he wasn’t always true—

         but some memories are bulletproof. I look back and long
for those Sundays when my father came home with bagels
and the New York Times and we’d spend all morning
hunting for the NINAs in that week’s Hirschfeld drawing.

*

Cindy Veach’s most recent book Her Kind (CavanKerry Press) was named a finalist for the 2022 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal. She is also the author of Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts Center for the Book ‘Must Read,’ and the chapbook, Innocents (Nixes Mate). Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore and Salamander among others. She is the recipient of the Philip Booth Poetry Prize and the Samuel Allen Washington Prize. Cindy is poetry co-editor of MER. www.cindyveach.com

Two Poems by Alison Luterman

~ ONE ART ~ 6 Comments

Karen Carpenter on Top of the World

My mother pushed the shopping cart at A & P,
buying Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and canned tuna,
while I stood transfixed in the magazine section,
reading the latest edition of Tiger Beat.
The Carpenters were on the loudspeakers,
they were everywhere that year,
like air or water, especially Karen Carpenter,
whose voice was as thrillingly deep and low
as the hush inside a Redwood grove,
smooth as a swatch of velvet held against your cheek.
The tabloids I read featured full-colored spreads
of her and her brother in their matching Dutch-boy haircuts,
mouths open, singing like celestial twins in perfect harmony.
I never guessed that she was shy
like me, that she would have preferred to hide
behind her drum set rather than be displayed
like an awkward doll. I didn’t know she was criticized
for her weight, or that she longed for a life
off the road. Over the years I noticed
how she became thinner and thinner,
collarbones and scapulae jutting out,
but still this seemed to be part of the larger joke
about them, how corny they were, how wholesome, how “good”,
while the real artists were out getting drunk
and trashing hotel rooms. She was truly good, no joke,
she was superb, her voice never cracked or faltered,
no matter the pain, she never hit a sour note.
She just kept crooning, mainlining comfort
into our ears like a well-brought-up daughter.
Until the very moment
she up and disappeared.

*

Eva Cassidy Live at Blues Alley

She had a cold and didn’t think she sounded good,
but it was the only night they were able to record,
and she’d scraped together all the money
she’d been able to save
from her day job in a tree nursery, so they had to go ahead
and use it and now
it’s what we have left of her,
and it’s live, and it’s still happening,
here, in my beat-up little Honda,
decades after her death,
where I’m listening to her sing “Fields of Gold”
like she knows that she won’t last the year,
because the wistful way she’s conjuring
those fields of barley
where she’s promising we’ll walk someday,
fools no one. To listen for that blue note
under the melody could shatter you
but you have to let it
pierce the place in your heart
where you’ve been pretending you’ll never die.
That’s what I hear anyway,
stopped at a red light
while some joker who doesn’t use his turn signal
almost T-bones me. I know
when the song’s over she’ll leave the stage
forever. Still the clear strains
continue, even though those fields
will be covered in snow, much too soon.
Because this kind of truth lives on and on–
it is made of silver
                                    and light
                                                      and bone.

*

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

Escaping Into the Present: Poetry as a Practice for Reseeing the World — A Workshop with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Escaping Into the Present: Poetry as a Practice for Reseeing the World
Instructor: Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Date: Wednesday, June 26, 2024
Time: 5:30-7:30pm (Mountain Time)
Price: Sliding Scale 
Event will be recorded

>>> Buy tickets here <<<

The act of writing a poem can bring us more closely to the essence of the moment, can help us exist in immediacy. In this two-hour online playshop, both practical and playful, we’ll sharpen our observational skills to engage with the poetry that lives in everything—objects, locations, situations, conversations. We’ll practice meeting what Hopkins calls “thisness.” As Mary Oliver writes, “the world offers itself to your attention, over and over.” Let’s meet it together, pen in hand. All levels of experience welcome.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer co-hosts Emerging Form (a creative process podcast), Secret Agents of Change (a surreptitious kindness cabal) and Soul Writer’s Circle. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app for your phone. Her poetry has appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, American Life in Poetry, and Carnegie Hall stage. She has 13 poetry collections, the newest is All the Honey. She’s been writing a poem a day since 2006 and she shares these on her blog, A Hundred Falling Veils.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Woman by Jenna Le

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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Woman

after Charlotte Brontë’s Villette

“A loud intruder,” griped the grouchy rat.
“A bold cross-dresser,” marveled the cravat.
“A timid blushing thing,” the pink dress said.
“Her gaze burns,” sniffed the letter left unread.

“Undignified,” the balled-up hanky frowned.
“A menace,” moaned the specs, smashed on the ground.
“How dare she touch me!” snarled the hat. “Absurd!”
“She’s rather nice,” the pocket-watch demurred.

“Poor body! She’s half-starved,” the cream cake tutted.
“And yet she’s puffed with pride,” the desk rebutted.
“Her conscience is her guide,” the pamphlet shrugged.
The shawl: “A chillier frame I’ve never hugged.”

The last to speak, the violet, said this:
“Her slightest word’s intenser than a kiss.”

*

Jenna Le (jennalewriting.com) is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011), A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), an Elgin Awards Second Place winner, voted on by the international membership of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, and Manatee Lagoon (forthcoming from Acre Books, 2022). She was selected by Marilyn Nelson as winner of Poetry By The Sea’s inaugural sonnet competition. Her poems appear in AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and West Branch. A daughter of Vietnamese refugees, she has a B.A. in math and an M.D. and works as a physician in New York City.

Because I was Lonely by Tina Barry

~ ONE ART ~ 25 Comments

Because I was Lonely

in Eighties New York City, I placed
a personal ad, promised to be prettier,
more exciting than I am.

Because they were lonely,
I hauled a plastic bag full of letters
from the newspaper’s office,

subwayed beside its poking points,
already their girlfriend,
protective of their secrets.

Men auditioned in swirled script.
Postcards and Post-its. Quiet pages
translucent as shed skin.

One cooked a perfect Spanish omelet.
Another posed with three dachshunds,
offered a ready-made family.

A widower sent a list of everything
he missed about his wife. I stopped
reading at seven pages.

I dated a few. A sweet man who giggled.
A divorced dad who brought
his sullen teenage twins.

An inmate sent a letter, stamped
with a prison logo like a warning
tattoo. I let it sit

for a week. Inside, an old
black and white, “Me. Ten years old”
scrawled at the bottom.

I ran a finger along its edge, worn
from handling, stared at the boy,
messy-haired, gangly in his Sunday suit.

How lonely he must have been to part
with it.

*

Tina Barry is the author of Beautiful Raft and Mall Flower (Big Table Publishing 2019 and 2016). Her writing can be found in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including ONE ART: a journal of poetry, The Best Small Fictions 2020 (spotlighted story) and 2016, Rattle, Verse Daily, trampset, SWWIM and elsewhere. Tina’s third collection I Tell Henrietta, with art by Kristin Flynn, will be published in 2024 by Aim Higher Press, Inc. She has three Pushcart Prize nominations as well as Best of the Net and Best Microfiction nods. Tina is a teaching artist at The Poetry Barn and Writers.com.

I have spent years falling out of each window by Julia Webb

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

I have spent years falling out of each window

the tall building of grief gave me.
Every day I climb to the top of the tower
and let myself fall again.

Even though I have tried to stop
feeling the guilt of the living,
the groove it runs in is too well worn.

Each night as I climb
the stairs of my grief,
I pause for breath at the midway point.

Each night I hope to meet the ghost
of a loved one coming back the other way.
But there’s only me and my breath.

I wonder what my dead would tell me
if I gave them voice
perhaps, burn the building down.

*

Julia Webb is a neurodivergent writer, editor and teacher (from a working class background) based in Norwich, UK. She has an MA in Creative Writing (poetry) from the University of East Anglia. She is a poetry editor for Lighthouse – a journal for new writers. She has three collections with Nine Arches Press: Bird Sisters (2016) Threat (2019) and The Telling (2022).

Man O’War by Chiara Di Lello

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Man O’War

the creek is cold against my body, pulls like the pace
of summer days and nights, just enough to make me kick to keep up
The oceans this month are the hottest they’ve ever been
and my mother sends a picture of a Portuguese man o’war
washed up on a New York beach
yet our creek is flowing fast and cold
from the flood that came down last week like vengeance
and turned the mill falls downstream to a roaring maw

A mother died in this creek a few days ago, pitched over
the mill falls and into that whitewater
My neighbor tells his children if you’re overboard in rapids
look forward, go feet first, and steer with your hands
as best you can. Your strongest chance of survival
is if you can see what’s coming, and try to get through.
Even before the flood, his family knows
to keep your head – eyes, ears, mouth – out of the water
The cold is such a blessing on hot, hot days.

*

Chiara Di Lello is a writer, artist, and educator. She loves coffee, art, and bees, and unequivocally supports the movement for Palestinian liberation. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Two Poems by Abby E. Murray

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

She Wants to Live

For her tenth birthday she receives a pale jade bracelet
with a shark charm and a QR code on the price tag,

which we use to download an app on my phone
and track Boo, the young female hammerhead swimming

laps around the Bahamas at .2 mph. Every morning since,
we’ve logged in to see how far Boo has traveled

in what might seem to be lazy triangles across the Tongue
of the Ocean, a dark chasm yawning at the bottom

of the Atlantic, even though we suspect how industrious
Boo must be to survive—that her path must be as deliberate

and careful as it is beyond any faraway child’s control,
no matter how true that child’s love is. When my daughter

blew out the single candle on her cupcake I told her
she is halfway old enough to set out on her own because

this news would have thrilled me at her age, and she cried,
said why would you tell me that! and I remembered how,

at her age, I’d attended zero protests, marched for human rights
roughly never, heard no constant reporting on the slaughter

of children, both here and abroad, and although my own
shoulders had been saddled with poverty, I carried no words

for its implications and origins. I didn’t know what it meant
to be powerless or complicit. I had not held my mother’s hand

outside the White House and screamed, our words swallowed up
by its depth, its capacity to consume even light. My daughter

is ten and like most ten-year-olds, she wants to live as if it is
not just an evolutionary chore to avoid the alternative

but also her joy. She wants to dive through the void
knowing safety will carry her like a wave. That said,

the world she’ll inherit leaves her wanting her mother
for as long as possible. Longer. How could I blame her?

While she’s at school, I check on Boo’s blinking transmitter,
notice she hasn’t surfaced yet today but is headed back

from the deep toward a shallow she clings to, a golden arm of sand
that’s been there, open to the abyss, since long before she was born.

*

In Which I Show Myself Some Mercy

But not too much, not enough
to be noticeable to fellow commuters

as I stand in the bus shelter reading
about a woman who lies down

on the quiet earth to lend a few
seconds of gratitude to the dirt,

the way it compresses its ancient self,
its already profoundly compressed

and contorted and torn up self
to accommodate her heels and calves,

weary hips, shoulders, her head
heavy as a stone, and I point it out

(to no one but me) reflexively
as luxury, this awareness of the world,

this calm, this time spent noticing
a thing as constant and plain as soil

while so many of us are running
through clouds of exhaust to get

to the next cloud of exhaust,
and because I am starting small,

I am microdosing mercy and usually
in places away from home, where

no one is likely to steal the stash
I have, I give myself the minute

it takes to remember: we don’t always
turn to the earth for comfort but

also its cold reminder: how furious
and stubborn hope can be, how good

it is at existing below ground, speaking
only in mushrooms for centuries

if it has to, bound in thorns or buried
under boulders or, yes, flattened

beneath the weeds and grass—hope is
no privilege, it is too inconvenient,

too irreverent, insistent as a hailstorm,
and so, as I step outside the bus shelter

pulling my hood up between me
and the downpour in order to leave

room for the woman who wears no coat,
I forgive myself, my chapped hands

and soggy shoes and reckless impulse
to survive at the expense of living,

my rush to call anything we need and take
a decadence, and this mercy is potent,

it is a quick deep inhale, it is tangerine
on a dry tongue, it is enough

to make me look up through the rain
on my glasses and know I’m seeing stars.

*

Abby E. Murray (she/they) is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. Her book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She served as the 2019-2021 poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, and currently teaches rhetoric in military strategy to Army War College fellows at the University of Washington.

This Body by Savannah Cooper

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

This Body

After I moved out, my parents talked
about buying a gun and ammunition,
storing both in their bedroom closet.

For the first time, I told my mother
I’d wanted to die when I was a teen,
if I’d had a gun handy I might have
managed it, might not be here now.

Her shock was palpable over the phone,
her uncertainty around emotion as heavy
as ever. I’m sorry, I didn’t know.

I wanted to tell her more—
about learning to mask myself
from a young age, about feigning belief
and security, about breaking again
and again, about insomnia, even about
watching soft-core porn at 3AM
when I couldn’t sleep, feeling like
a criminal every time I masturbated

because this is what she and my father
made me, this is what the church gave me:
guilt and shame and regret, hatred
for every inch of this body and mind.

But instead I said something lame, let
the topic fall into awkward silence.
My parents never bought a gun. I never
told them what their god took from me.

*

Savannah Cooper (she/her) is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet, bisexual mess, and amateur photographer. Her work has been previously published in more than 30 journals, including Parentheses Journal, Midwestern Gothic, and Mud Season Review. Her debut poetry collection Mother Viper is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press.

Amber by Gopal Lahiri

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Amber

There are nights,
when winds are silver; they have ears.

A cluster of eyes– green, milky, blue,
I only see red hibiscus.

A line stretches– it divides space,
caresses my fingers.

A soft tongue– it brings salt and pepper
water wants to drench my body.

There are days,
when you burn everything into ash.

*

Gopal Lahiri is a Kolkata, India, based bilingual poet and critic and published in English and Bengali language. He has published 29 books to his credit and his works are translated in 16 languages. Recent credits: The Wise Owl, Catjun Mutt Press, Dissident Voice, Piker Press, Indian Literature, Kitaab, Setu, Undiscovered Journal, Poetry Breakfast, Shot Glass, The Best Asian Poetry, Converse, Cold Moon, Verse-Virtual journal and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2021.

Lost Dimensions by Tim Murphy

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Lost Dimensions

Music once a refuge
now a trigger pulled 
by the piano’s high note

once a bath
the brain took to forget
all that could never be unseen

now glass thrown
to concrete, each shard
a needle piercing the drum.

*

Tim Murphy (he/him) is a disabled, bisexual poet who is bedbound with Long COVID and ME. His writing explores chronic illness, disability justice, and our complex, tenuous relationship with the more-than-human world. Tim’s poetry appears in over a dozen literary journals, including Louisiana Literature, Gastropoda, Wordgathering, Writers Resist, and in the books, The Long COVID Reader (2023) and Songs of Revolution (2024). Instagram and Twitter (@brokenwingpoet).

Idlewild by Richard Schiffman

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Idlewild

Back then it was enough
to stand outside the fence
with dad and watch
the lumbering steel birds taxi
down the runway,
then bank into the blue and vanish.

We were seeing no one off,
yet felt the ache of departure, even then,
and the mystery of it,
how something can leave so completely,
leaping into air, defying gravity
to land upon a shore a world away.

*

Richard Schiffman is an environmental reporter, poet and author of two biographies based in New York City. His poems have appeared on the BBC and on NPR as well as in the Alaska Quarterly, the New Ohio Review, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, Writer’s Almanac, This American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily and other publications. His first poetry collection “What the Dust Doesn’t Know” was published in 2017 by Salmon Poetry.

The Eclipse by William Palmer

~ ONE ART ~ 6 Comments

The Eclipse

          after Walt Whitman

When I wore my solar glasses that cost a simple dollar,
When I watched the perfect ball of fire 93 million miles away,
When our moon moved in measured time between us and our sun,
How my mind cleared
In those mystical moments toward totality,
And not until I took my glasses off did I realize
I had not thought about lies, fraud, or immunity.
I never thought once about his name.

*

William Palmer’s poetry has appeared recently in I-70 Review, JAMA, ONE ART, On the Seawall, and Rust & Moth. He lives in Traverse City, Michigan.

Lucky Rice by Ellen Austin-Li

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Lucky Rice

Just the three of us on the Midway.
Late August at the New York State Fair,
my brother Carl & Barb & me
& the sun blazing & the barker calling us
into the tents to see the bearded lady
& the World’s Smallest Man. Way back,
before Carl & Barb had kids & I was single.
Flash again & we’re riding the Twizzler,
smashed together in the twirling car, metal
arms groaning with the threat of letting go
the faster we spun. The centrifugal force
& Carl’s mouth a perfect “O” & Barb’s face
bleached flour, her eyes squeezed shut, tears
coursing my cheeks as I laughed & cried
at the same time. Afterward, we walked
on wonky legs to the Dairy Building, & collected
little plastic red-hearted “I LOVE NY” cups
as we pounded free samples: chocolate, strawberry, white.
& me shouting: This has to be the best day of my life!
Somewhere on the way out, we found that stall
with the guy hawking Lucky Rice. You could order
your name etched on a single grain, the artist
then dropping the piece into a tiny ampule of water
threaded on a red satin cord. A necklace of sorts.
Carl returned years later—a carny rat,
he calls himself—to search for that seller,
then ordered my wedding present.
I can’t wait for you to open your gift, he said,
on the lead-up to the day. Back then,
I wish I had been more grateful when I looked
inside. Now it hangs on a shepherd’s hook floor lamp
next to the Chinese lantern in my bedroom. See
the husband’s initials with mine, enshrined on a grain
of lucky rice? The letters amplified by the liquid.
Me & Jolly, the man from Taiwan I married.

*

Ellen Austin-Li’s first full-length collection, Incidental Pollen—a 2023 Trio Award finalist, 2024 Wisconsin Poetry Series semi-finalist, and runner-up to the 2023 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize—is forthcoming from Madville Publishing. Finishing Line Press published her two chapbooks, Firefly (2019) and Lockdown: Scenes From Early in the Pandemic (2021). Her work appears in Artemis, Thimble Literary, The Maine Review, Salamander, Lily Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. She’s a Best of the Net nominee and holds an MFA in poetry from the Solstice Low-Residency Program. Ellen co-founded the monthly reading series Poetry Night at Sitwell’s, in Cincinnati, where she lives.

Picnic by Les Brookes

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Picnic

We spread our plain white sheet
beside the stream, the sun high,
our shadows black and stunted.
The field was a mass of cowslips.
We ate hard-boiled eggs
lightly salted and a plate
of gherkins and olives.
We smiled and munched,
and I lost myself
in the soft pink pout of his lips.

His eggshell eyes were blue
and shone like coloured glass.
His face was a bowl of cream
wreathed by a blond halo.
He rose on bare feet,
slipped to the water’s edge
and dabbled his toes. I gazed
at his slender white legs
and shifting shoulder blades
and knew I was falling in love.

*

Les Brookes lives in Cambridge UK. He writes poetry and fiction, and his work has appeared in anthologies published by Cambridge Writers and Paradise Press. He is the author of Gay Male Fiction Since Stonewall (Routledge) and blogs at lesbrookes.com

First Kiss by Dick Westheimer

~ ONE ART ~ 5 Comments

First Kiss

You – like lemons
I – like apples.

Each morning
I pull a ripe apple
from the bowl,

place it on the same cutting board
on which you sliced
your lemon.

You a lemon
for your morning tea

I an apple
for my breakfast
sliced in a puddle of lemon juice

Their flavors mingle in my mouth –
our first kiss of the day.

*

Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have appeared or are upcoming in Whale Road Review, Tony Seed, Gyroscope Review, Minyan, Rattle, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, and Cutthroat. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by SheilaNaGig. More at dickwestheimer.com

Haiku Targets — A Workshop with Michael Dylan Welch

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Haiku Targets
Instructor: Michael Dylan Welch
Date: Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Time: 5:00-8:00pm (Pacific)
Note: The 3rd hour of this workshop will be intended for haiku sharing and discussion.
Price: $25 (payment options)

To register for this workshop, please contact Mark Danowsky (Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART) at oneartpoetry@gmail.com

*

Haiku Targets

Haiku poetry has a rich history in Japanese and English that extends far beyond counting syllables. This workshop, led by Michael Dylan Welch, explores various targets you have at your disposal in writing literary haiku. They include seasonal references (kigo), a two-part juxtapositional structure (equivalent to using a kireji, or cutting word), and chiefly objective sensory imagery. In our first two hours we’ll explore and discuss example poems and learn a bit of haiku history (including poems by Japanese masters). In the optional third hour, we’ll try a writing exercise and share our poems for discussion. Rules are obligations but targets are opportunities, and some of the “rules” people believe about haiku are essentially myths. Learn how to make the most of the opportunities you have to improve each haiku, and how these techniques can help you improve your longer poetry.

*

Michael Dylan Welch has been investigating haiku since 1976. He has published dozens of haiku books, judged and won first place in many haiku contests, and has had his haiku, longer poems, essays, and reviews published in hundreds of journals and anthologies in more than twenty languages. Michael is a cofounder and director of the Haiku North America conference (1991), cofounder of the American Haiku Archives (1996), founder and president of the Tanka Society of America (2000), cofounder and director of the Seabeck Haiku Getaway (2008), and founder of National Haiku Writing Month (www.nahaiwrimo.com) (2010). He is also an officer of Haiku Northwest, founder and curator of SoulFood Poetry Night, and president of the Redmond Association of Spokenword. Michael served two terms as poet laureate of Redmond, Washington, and in 2013 was keynote speaker for the Haiku International Association conference in Tokyo. In 2012, one of his translations from the Japanese appeared on the back of 150 million US postage stamps, and his haiku have also been carved into stone in New Zealand and printed on balloons in Los Angeles. Michael documents his publications and other poetry activities at www.graceguts.com. He sees haiku as a poetic path to empathy and vulnerability, preferring to emphasize targets for haiku instead of rules.

Two Poems by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Poems without Metaphors

Nests with no birds.
Tracks with no train.

Blood without red,
blood without blue.

Cupboards with no food.
Mouth without a tongue.

Lovers scorned.
Empty envelopes.

Orphans.

*

Backyard Lyric

Sunlit, I sit cradling
my hardcover book
with its scents

of wood and ink.
I doze and do not think.
A breeze sends

last year’s dry yellow
magnolia leaves eddying
down the driveway—

gold flashes clatter
and add more light
to indigo sky.

Nearby, a cardinal
(unseen) weds its red
purpose to deepening green.

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton teaches French and Creative Writing at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, where she is the Adeline A. Loridans Professor of French. Recognition for her poetry includes an Academy of American Poets College Prize and a 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award. She is the author of five books. Kelsay Books will publish her first book of children’s poetry, A to Z Poems for the Very Young, in 2024.

Moving Mona Lisa Downstairs by Jessica Whipple

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Moving Mona Lisa Downstairs

When the museum staff told her she was
being reverse-curated, she forced a yawn.
They cited “improved visitor experience” and her eyes
rolled like onyx marbles let loose on a table.
Don’t mock me (smiling gently). We all know what people
come here to see (pleased with herself, as always).
Who was she, even? What did she want from them?
And how does a woman like this end up in the basement?
She stands, smooths her frock, and walks there herself.

*

Jessica Whipple writes for adults and children. She published two children’s picture books in 2023: Enough Is… (Tilbury House, illus. by Nicole Wong) and I Think I Think a Lot (Free Spirit Publishing, illust. by Joseée Bisaillon). Her poetry has been published recently in Funicular, Green Ink Poetry, Door Is a Jar, and Whale Road Review. Her poem “Broken Strings” was nominated for a 2023 Pushcart Prize. She lives in the US and inhabits the places where picture books and poetry intersect. You can find her on Twitter/X @JessicaWhippl17.

GEMÜTLICHKEIT by Michael Salcman

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

GEMÜTLICHKEIT

Despite a vow taken after the war
the occasional German word
escaped my father’s mouth
in a hail of Yiddish spit.

Gemütlichkeit was one such word,
by actual vote their favorite
in Berlin and the German side
of Prague—where it held
the warmth of a house alive
with comfort,
and so many other meanings
you could hear it breathing
with books and a cat, friends
and wife, enough warm food
and drinks like a fiery slivovitz.

He knew
the wet sound of this word
how it unwound slowly on his tongue
syllable by syllable,
and how it took some time to forget
where and when it was spoken

Last.

*

Michael Salcman: poet, physician and art historian, was chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland. Poems appear in Barrow Street, Blue Unicorn, Hopkins Review, Hudson Review, New Letters, and Smartish Pace. Books include The Clock Made of Confetti, The Enemy of Good is Better, Poetry in Medicine, his popular anthology of classic and contemporary poems on medical subjects, A Prague Spring, Before & After, winner 2015 Sinclair Poetry Prize, and Shades & Graces: New Poems, inaugural winner of The Daniel Hoffman Book Prize (2020). Necessary Speech: New & Selected Poems (2022) and the forthcoming Crossing the Tape (2024) are published by Spuyten Duyvil.

Three Poems by Andrea Maxine Recto

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

I think I love you

You’re sipping coffee
and leafing through your dad’s woodworking guide.
I’ll be jamming with my bass player in the afternoon
and another local musician this evening, you reply.
I was asking about your plans for the day.
You could have been reciting the Bible
or reading a grocery list,
I’d still hang on to every word.
Have to go get cat food and beer at some point too, you add.

I smile.
You scratch your head and stare in the distance.
There’s something about the way you speak
that mingles with the memories I hold dearly,
knows how to touch the tender places of my body,
and makes a home of the hard places between my ribcage.
I’m still smiling,
but this time, my cheeks redden a little.
You look at me, puzzled,
and tuck a stray hair behind my ear
before gently cupping my face.
Maybe I’ll slip into something more proper
and get to work on that darn dresser I keep putting off.
You laugh quietly,
toying with a toothpick in your mouth.
I liked that you worked with your hands.

I can’t help but stare at your lips,
and wonder what it’s like
to be the tiny creatures that live in your house.
The black ants that cross your coffee table daily.
The little gray mouse you refuse to get rid of and even gave a name.
Or even the damselflies that live near the lake out in front.
How close in proximity
they are to you.

*

Things I say to myself

I play this game
where I stand naked in front of the mirror
and ask the body before me, who do you belong to?
Some days, I say I am my mother’s daughter
or the apple of my father’s eye.
Other days, it’s the name of my new lover.
One day, the name I say will be mine.

*

What colors do cracked glass windows show?

My father used to tell me he could taste colors.
I remember laughing at that as a little girl.
I hoped that one day I would too.
He opened and closed his bedroom door three times;
I never asked him why.
He always wore this sage green sweatshirt
and said God didn’t care about what he did,
much less what he wore.
One day, I entered his room and found him sound asleep at noon.
Bottles crowded his dresser.
He looked happy, young even,
but mostly peaceful.
I stood by his bed and watched him sleep for half an hour.
I later woke up in the middle of the night
and found him kneeling on the grass in the middle of the yard.
He was uprooting the flowers.
The burgundy roses, mulberry asters,
golden buttercups, and tangerine tulips – all of them.
It was a warm evening,
but he was shivering when I touched his shoulder.
Underneath the moonlight,
I could see his face was wet.
I couldn’t tell if it was sweat, tears, or the morning dew on his cheeks.
He howled,
and I swallowed the terror
that had begun to live in my throat.
The next day, uniformed men came to dress him in white.
He had somehow broken a vase;
crimson ran down his arm.
I removed my jacket and wrapped it around his hand.
My father looked at me, tears in his midnight eyes,
only broken things can taste colors.
I try my best to keep my voice from shaking,
then you and I are in the same boat.

*

Andrea Maxine Recto is a Spanish-Filipino poet living in Manila. Her poetry explores the themes of womanhood, grief, love, darkness, and introspection. Her work has appeared in ONE ART and the Santa Clara Review, with more forthcoming in the Long River Review, Spry Literary Journal, and elsewhere.

Two Poems by Shauna Shiff

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

A Home

Nothing fancy—a cottage, perhaps white clapboard
with a bright blue door. Oh, and flowers

tall as my thigh, a banshee of blooms that I would tend
and water and adore. This is what I wanted

before I had it. I thought my own walls
that I could paint any color I choose

would stop the tally I kept running
of all I didn’t have, like it did for my mother,

when as a child she graduated from shack to trailer,
stared up at the popcorn ceiling and thought

I have arrived. Permanence is a prayer all the poor
bow their heads toward, as if wanting is enough

to stop stability from its shifting, a foundation folding
at the slightest tremor. Finally, I am a fixed pinpoint

on the map, that once elusive wish is a solid floor
beneath me, but I wonder, maybe ungratefully

if I should have asked the world for more
than just a roof over my head.

*

Come Closer

Be it barstool
or grocery store line
when a man taps my arm

his words are shell-smooth,
sparse even, shucked clean
of the unnecessary,

talk like a foot path, sure
stone upon sure stone,
placed perfectly to lead

to a guileless glass window,
wide open. Look through
and see what he wants—

any woman, swallowing
his words whole.

*

Shauna Shiff is an English teacher in Virginia, a mother, wife and textiles artist. Her poems and short stories can be found in Stoneboat Literary Journal, Atticus Review, Whale Road Review, Rock Salt Journal, Cola and upcoming in others. In 2022, she was nominated for Best of the Net.

Write a Demi-Sonnet! — A Workshop with Erin Murphy

~ ONE ART ~ 11 Comments

Write a Demi-Sonnet!
Instructor: Erin Murphy
Date: Wednesday, June 12, 2024
Time: 3:00-4:30pm (Eastern)
Price: $25 (payment options)

To register for this workshop, please contact Mark Danowsky (Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART) at oneartpoetry@gmail.com

*

Write a Demi-Sonnet!

In this generative workshop, you will learn to write a demi-sonnet, a form invented by the instructor, Erin Murphy. Demi-sonnets are seven lines (half a sonnet!) and end with a full or slant rhyme. Poet Claire Bateman calls demi-sonnets “small but alarmingly penetrative,” while James Allen Hall says they “go by quickly but their staying power is immense.” Read sample demi-sonnets here and here. And here is a prize-winning demi-sonnet by Jennifer Wang written in response to a Rattle magazine prompt. During the workshop, you’ll read and discuss sample demi-sonnets, write one (or several) yourself, and learn how practicing the compressed form has applications for composing and editing both poetry and prose.

NOTE: Participants should bring to the workshop 3-5 original poems of 20-60 lines each.

Erin Murphy is the author or editor of fourteen books, chapbooks, and anthologies, most recently Fluent in Blue (Grayson Books, 2024) and Human Resources (forthcoming from Salmon Poetry). Her collections of demi-sonnets include Taxonomies (2022), Assisted Living (2018), and Word Problems (2011). She is poetry editor of The Summerset Review and professor of English at Penn State Altoona. Website: erin-murphy.com

Erin Murphy

Two Poems by Carson Wolfe

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SIX HOURS OF DAYLIGHT

after Taylor Byas

I’ve brought this on myself. My butch swagger.
My thermal padded muscles. Why did I hold
all those doors for her? She drags me out of
bed, wraps my hand around the sharp tusk
of an animal I did not hunt. I heard a sound
outside, she whispers, shoving me toward
our deck view of Lake Salcha, where a pack
of slednecks saw her earlier, wearing nothing
but a winter scarf, cigarette hung between
ruby lips. I square my shoulders, pull back
the curtain. Aurora borealis performs her
usual show. The terror of my own breath
fogs the glass—surprise at this sudden
imposter, the reflection of my girlish face,
a stranger in this cabin.

* 

SONNET FOR THE SIDE PLATE

Miss Katherine eats dinner from a side plate
to control portions. The men’s, large and filled
with potatoes, earth-dug by my bare hands.
Each day, the same, but smaller. I sow seeds,
collect eggs, nurture the soil. Once, I reached
for seconds of cornbread but Miss Katherine
sucked in her stomach, so I grabbed the salt.
Then, coffee for breakfast, Pabst Blue for lunch.
I feel myself shrinking out in the field
spreading mulch in southern heat. Miss Katherine
guts a catfish she won’t eat. Her son chops
off the head of a snake with his shovel,
we watch its thin body wriggle in dirt.
Now, my side plate, collard greens. I say grace.

*

Carson Wolfe (they/she) is a Mancunian poet and winner of New Writing North’s Debut Poetry Prize (2023). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming with Rattle, The Rumpus, The North, New Welsh Review, and Evergreen Review. They are an MFA student of Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and currently serve as a teaching assistant on the online writing course Poems That Don’t Suck. Carson lives in Manchester with their wife and three daughters. You can find them at carsonwolfe.co.uk.

For My Daughter, on Her First Birthday by Svetlana Litvinchuk

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For My Daughter, on Her First Birthday

When my baby was born she had
an extra short umbilical cord

we were extra connected extra close
the doctor’s only choices were to

either cut it immediately or to place her
back in my belly where she could

drink milk from the starry inside
every day I think about how to do that

how it would have been

we could develop our own language
knock twice for yes and once for no

I would describe everything so she
wouldn’t miss a thing. I wouldn’t tell her

about the warplanes flying overhead or
about the ice caps melting around us

I could digest all the world’s pain
for her and let only the sugar pass

when the time comes for her wedding
I can dance on my husband’s feet

the way only daughters do and when
she knocks twice for “I Do”

I will cry tears of joy, my waters
breaking, causing a great flood

*

Svetlana Litvinchuk is a permaculturist who holds BAs from the University of New Mexico. She is the author of a Season (Bottlecap Features, 2024). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sky Island Journal, Apocalypse Confidential, Littoral Magazine, Black Coffee Review, Eunoia Review, Big Windows Review, and Longhouse Press. Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, she now lives with her husband and daughter on their farm in the Arkansas Ozarks.

Second Drowning by Michael Northen

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Second Drowning

This was not like the time before when I almost drowned
when the water lay above like a thick ceiling I could not reach.
Then I saw the sunlight diffuse though the water
leaning back in that golden acceptance, I closed my eyes.

This time it was like a Japanese painting.
The anesthesiologist said, count to three
I was only a plum branch sketch on canvas
white disappearing into white.

The problem was only mechanical I told my mother
through a phone in her nursing home room
a valve in the heart that needed repair
I’d tell you to come home, she said, but I don’t have one.

This time it was whiteness. No gold water calling.
“Our Father” my mother said, as she fingered the beads,
her prayers traveling in a circle. We knelt on the floor.
Our fingers circulating again through the old design.

*

Michael Northen is the founder and past editor of Wordgathering (2070-2019). He was co-editor of two previous anthologies of disability writing Beauty is a Verb (2011) and The Right Way to Be Crippled and Naked (2011) both from Cinco Puntos.

Two Poems by Ellen Rowland

~ ONE ART ~ 5 Comments

Brothers

My uncle dies in his favorite armchair
while watching football, having just eaten
dinner, a martini in hand. His alma mater
scores a goal and he hoots as though he himself
has carried the ball across the finish line,
winning the game for his team. He slips away then
like the ice from his sweating glass
onto the avocado carpet, a sheen of utter
content on his face. My father battles lung cancer
for five slow years, taking so much longer to
reach the end, a pain crawl really, his bone-deep pride
brittle on the field. No shoulder pads or heroic knees,
knocked around mercilessly, he is unwilling
to relinquish the fight. Their friends applaud
and mourn them equally, flock like fans
to their lilied caskets, then file their way out
into blessed sunlight, fingering the ticket stubs
in their pockets.


* 

Origami

Is it strange that I don’t have a bucket list,
that all I want already fits in my life? And
what if I told you that I look forward to the
crossword after lunch, smoked Lapsang Souchong
at 4:30? That I cherish the sound of the dog’s
leash as it comes off its hook, the ecstatic leaps
she makes when that jangle tricks her arthritic
bones into believing she is agile and ageless
for half an hour a day? Would you think me
boring if I claim more than small satisfaction
at the pleasure of opening that great book
next to that great man I’ve shared a bed with
for 23 years? Japan calls, of course it does.
A singular want that fits in a cup: the haiku of
its vermillion Torii gates and blossomed benches,
the quiet bathing trees. The golden trails of
kintsugi cracks and blood-red lanterns, swaying.
The idea is wonderful, yes. But so is the now
of thick salty feta on a slice of toasted sourdough
eaten at the counter off of paper plates. So is
stepping outside in his flannel shirt to hear
a pair of koukouvagia preening each other under
a salt spill of stars, the constant creek running
to where? and where? and where? until the cold
and dark remind me the covers are still thrown back,
each fold waiting to be shaped again into something beautiful.

*

Ellen Rowland is the author of two collections of haiku/senryu, Light, Come Gather Me and Blue Seasons, as well as the book Everything I Thought I Knew, essays on living, learning and parenting outside the status quo. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and in several poetry anthologies, most recently The Wonder of Small Things, edited by James Crews. Her debut collection of full-length poems, No Small Thing, was published by Fernwood Press in 2023. She lives off the grid with her family on an island in Greece. Connect with her on Instagram and Facebook

What We Hold Onto by Eileen Moeller

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

What We Hold Onto

Not the high-heeled shoe Mother.

The barefoot Mother soaking her
aching feet at night after work.

Mother who did what she had to do.

Not the diet thin Mother.

The cushiony plump Mother
you squeezed from behind
as she stood at the stove.

Mother whose body was beautiful.

Not the whiskey sour Mother.

The coffee cup Mother who
laughed at her own jokes,
so hard it made you laugh,
whether you got them or not.

Mother who skirted depression.

Not the Chrysler Imperial Mother,
helped by mysterious men.

The feisty Mother who told
creditors, Listen, you can’t
get blood from a stone.

Mother who cut deals.

Not the screaming Mother
who could have been in
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

The singing mother, who made
long rides, looking out the window,
something we begged for.

Mother who taught transcendence

Not the fast asleep Mother,
when you were getting ready for school.

The sewing Halloween costumes Mother,
who made you a Dutch girl, a Gibson girl,
Mary in blue and white robes,
the sewing Easter outfits Mother,
who got dressed up and took us
to mass once a year.

Mother who took breaks from herself.

Not the tell-you-too-much Mother.

The aproned Mother who seemed
to be without secrets, who told
funny stories about the neighbors
as if that was all she cared about.

Mother big as a moon, waxing and waning.

Not the breast cancer Mother
who froze like a deer in the headlights.

The survivor Mother who fought for
a longer life, the hopeful Mother
who could see her burdens lifting.

Mother of need, who needed mothering.

*

Eileen Moeller lives in Medford, New Jersey with her husband Charlie. Originally from Paterson NJ, she has lived in many places, including Central NY, where she earned an M.A. in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She has four books: Firefly, Brightly Burning, Grayson Books 2015; The Girls In Their Iron Shoes, Finishing Line Press, 2017; Silk City Sparrow, Read Furiously Inc. 2020; and Waterlings, Word Tech Communications Inc. 2023. A fifth book, Still Life with Towel and Sand, will be released later this year by Kelsey Books. Her blog is: And So I Sing: Poems and Iconography.

Two Poems by Betsy Mars

~ ONE ART ~ 8 Comments

Mid-morning in a Strange Bed Again

I hear the sirens and I think
the birds have stopped
their wake-up call, but then
I listen and there it is, insistent,
the constant repetition,
the bird-clock chiming,
an undercurrent of time, three notes—
and if I really pay attention, another
answering through the noise
and swish of fronds brushing
each other in the soft breeze.

*

Muffler

I wake up, neck tight,
dream’s scarf
still encircling my throat.
I unwind it, feel my heart
breath returning,
dream receding, stepping back
into the alley of the night.

*

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.”

Chime by Robin Turner

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Chime

Birds as the wars wear on.
They return to us each day.

A piteousness of doves.
A scold of jays.

         A chime
                  a chime

of tiny wrens. Each tender
morning.

*

Robin Turner has recent work in DMQ Review, Rattle, Rust + Moth, The Texas Observer, and elsewhere. Currently a poetry reader for Sugared Water, she lives with her husband near White Rock Lake in Dallas, Texas.

Two Poems by Brett Elizabeth Jenkins

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

HERE’S THE THING

I have been trying to love myself.
It’s not a big deal—it’s a minor thing really.
But until now, I haven’t.
I’ve hated the gruff voice in the morning
before I’ve had a drink of water
and the soft half-moons on my fingertips,
shadows of guitar callouses.
I would look at myself
in the bathroom mirror
and drink a pint of self-pity
telling my reflection
she’d never amount to anything.
I was making myself a ghost, a place
where a person used to live.
Why not love the soft downy fur
on the back of my neck
and the fibrillating minutes
between sleep and wakefulness
when I don’t know if I’m dead or alive?
There are certain impossibilities
but I don’t think falling in love
with myself
feels insurmountable.
We put humans in space
and grow watermelons without seeds.
Here’s the thing: you have to find out
how to do a thing
before it seems possible.
Love myself?
I decided to try.
A small turkey sandwich with the crusts
cut off. A foolish dance
in the shower. Whatever I want
it’s mine—it’s magic.
The dim hours before bed,
putting things where they go.
Letting the dishes pile up
then cleaning them all at once
on an early Saturday
the windows open
the birds looking in at me
the whole world in love
or at least, me.

*

WHEN I DIE NOBODY WILL REMEMBER MY ZODIAC SIGN

When I keel over from a heart attack
in the Costco parking lot, nobody will say
“what a Pisces.” No one will care that I crossed
my arms too much in conversation—a nervous
habit—or that I I gave up on Catholicism
in the tenth grade (except maybe the Catholics).
When I die, nobody will care
that I was the one who let her gas tank
run until it got past the E line. Or that I thought
peanuts were the poor man’s nut.
When you die, as long as you weren’t a horrible
person, there will always be something
good to keep in your pocket. The way
your forgetfulness was a calling card—
the scarf you left in the backseat
of your friend’s car, or the hat that’s still
in your ex-lover’s attic. Everybody has a secret
and here’s mine: I want there to be more things
about me that are forgotten
than remembered. I want the way
I buttered my toast to remain a mystery.
My sugarsick days alone in bed, a mystery.
I want the small moment I sat
watching a heron swoop low and hard
with its beak to be known only to me,
a box of dust. A used-to-be. A thing
that was here and then was not.

*

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins lives and writes in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She is the author of the book Brilliant Little Body (Riot in Your Throat, 2024).

I Did Not Do It by Susan Cossette

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I Did Not Do It

That cheap leather belt
tossed on the floor is yours,
not mine.

Those angry wounds
wrapped around my neck,
that guilt is yours.

I had the new books for homeschooling,
hand-sewn turquoise and pink ribbon dresses for my girls,
herbs and pine nuts gathered from the desert.

The purple Nevada sky hides no lies.
You know the truth, as do I.

And three tiny dark-eyed girls gaze
at a freshly filled grave,
plump earth adorned with pink flowers
that will wither in a day.

My Paiute mother tells me

         don’t come back,
         there is nothing here for you,
         don’t visit anyone in their dreams,
         your work here is done.

But I tell you—
I did not do it.

*

About this poem:
A month ago, a family member of mine perished under suspicious circumstances at the too-young age of 28. Initially thought to be a suicide, investigators now believe it was an incidence of domestic partner violence. The case remains open and is being actively investigated by law enforcement. Our family demands answers and justice.

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).

*

Birding with My Sister by Pamela Wax

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Birding with My Sister

She tracks the migration of hummingbirds,
calls to say they were in Philly two days ago,
could arrive today at her lake house in upstate
New York. Her feeders shine red with nectar,

readied. Last summer she fell for a blue
heron. She’d moor in the middle
of the lake, play a game of dare with him,
refused to part first. She swore he waited

on the banks for her to kayak past
for their rendezvous, sent me daily
photos of his one-legged posturing.
We joked about this boyfriend, the time

she spent in pursuit. I even googled him,
wondered if Heron might break her heart.
But he’s a symbol of calm, his visitations
a call for deep breath, pause. Just one

is never a siege. Today I bird with her,
anticipate the dare of charm, tune, shimmer
of flock, the pungent bouquet of truth in wings
chattering with brio and hum. Had I not

been a fish in my other life, I’d adopt her
reverence for flight, for yogic postures
lakefront, for plotting patterns of exodus
and stations of oasis on the migrant

journey. But I am propelled to undulate,
flapping and feeding in the great,
briny school of the deep, not rooted
to land, nor destined for flight.

*

Pamela Wax is the author of Walking the Labyrinth (Main Street Rag, 2022) and Starter Mothers (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her poems have received a Best of the Net nomination and awards from Crosswinds, Paterson Literary Review, Poets’ Billow, Oberon, and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House. She has been published in dozens of literary journals including Barrow Street, Tupelo Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Chautauqua, The MacGuffin, Nimrod, Solstice, Mudfish, Connecticut River Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Slippery Elm. An ordained rabbi, Pam offers spirituality and poetry workshops online and around the country. She lives in the Northern Berkshires of Massachusetts.

Ordinary Illumination by Bethany Jarmul

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Ordinary Illumination

I’m going nowhere, but I’m sweating
on the elliptical machine.
My husband works at his desk nearby.

Outside the glass doors, the leaves
on the trees are beginning
to bud, but from here they look naked
and cold. “Look, a blue jay.” I point

to the winged visitor
preening on a branch.
“Do you think it’s Blue?” my husband
refers to the blue jay we named

at our old house, five years ago.
He tells me the lifespan
of blue jays is seven years,
give or take.

All of us, all of the living,
exist in that give or take,
in that short burst of light
between birth and death.

A red-headed woodpecker
pecks at another tree.
A cardinal flits by with his mate.

I am undone by the wealth of beauty
in flight, wondering if
I’m soaring in the brief

sun-lit sky of life
or just flapping my wings,
going nowhere.

*

Bethany Jarmul is an Appalachian writer and poet. She’s the author of two chapbooks and one poetry collection. Her work has been published in many magazines including Rattle, Salamander, ONE ART, and South Florida Poetry Journal. Her writing was selected for Best Spiritual Literature 2023 and Best Small Fictions 2024, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on social media: @BethanyJarmul.

Three Poems by Tatum Williams

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When You Don’t Believe In God, Pray Sweetly To The Moon

one night
there was you

sitting just there
at the tip of

a skinny moon
your head dangling over

the milky edge
knocking it back

and forth
like a curious dog

just as though
there you’d always been

playing Parcheesi
in a crater pit

Alien, I called
up to you

with eyes like fishbowls
and razor blade

teeth purple like jellyfish skin
you must not be

from around here, I said
but you just laughed out

your wide blue mouth
and I watched that laugh

drip down
and plop

from the roof
to the window

into my bed tied
up in a yellow bow

a winter lemon
a ball of marigold butter

a comet’s broken tail
I suspect

you wouldn’t say but
you built the stars

in the back of your throat
and spit them

out right over my bedroom
window so I might follow

Orion’s loose belt
or Ursa Major’s curious snout

to maybe once see
your glass float eyes

filled with little green
dots glowing

sea plankton
tea leaves

escaped from
the bag

I might hear
your favorite jazz singer

playing from other planets
where you’ve stashed

your stolen radio
and greasy napkined

love letters penned
with web strung

talon hooked hands
I’d ask if you’d like

to lay down
just with me

beneath the covers
where it might

be warmer than
it is on the moon

*

7 a.m, A Fight in the Bathroom

The stream of water each morning
gallops gently down to sit witness
to this thing she made
how she intended:

fish boned, tentacle bearded,
man eyed. Hooks dug in
left to stain the bed
instead of the silver scale.

Brown black irises, wet
as a waterhorse’s back,
calculate the distance in nautical
miles, move from one white space to another.

The honied moments of peace, before
absences are hurled from tiger shark teeth
into the salivating sea.

This is the truth:
barnacles ripped from the surface,
the bathtub split down the middle.

Darling, remember the risk.
Love, stay.

*

Archeology

In my room there is a shadowbox of messes
a collector’s case of overcompensation
of breakups and breakdowns,
a shrine of fruit that’s gone too sweet with overripe

Next to my bed there is a paper log of
all the bruises I had last month,
the abrasions that marked up my face.
You can follow along if you just read the dates:

50 freckles by mid-July,
4 crooked teeth in April.
In January, 2 apple red beads of blood
that landed on my lip after you got punched in the mouth.

In the hall you’ll find a jar of secrets because
nobody can ever seem to keep them. Keep looking
for the labeled vase of mistakes that were made
last year – repeat them, don’t learn a thing.

They should be next to the burning eyes pinned like
a beetle wing. The lumps in throats,
the dropper bottle I’ve kept of tears that wore
the backs of my eyeballs flat.

I saved the memory of my first kiss in a cast of resin,
even though my teeth clicked behind his
and my face burned for days, just because
I liked that I didn’t know where my hands should go.

If I could show my collection to The World
I’d do it by letting them capture that same mouth.
I’d swallow up every reminder I get that pain sits
in the belly like a stone.

I’d tell them with my lips, hurt comes
with a basis for comparison. Hearts ache
only when they have something to
sink their sickly sweet love into.

Blemishes only form under skin that can blush.
Bone feels weak after muscle gets worn.
The World is a tragic, fragile, lovely place
immortalized in this showcase.

I’d have a gallery wing devoted to every lie I’ve ever told.
I would devote this museum to bedlam.
I would fall in love again and again.
I would be a mess forever.

*

Tatum Williams is 22 year old student at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, studying English and creative writing. She is just a few short months away from receiving her Bachelor’s degree, and is hopeful in pursuing her first poetry publication. She is a thrifter, pottery painter, and lover of miserably hot summers.

Anchovies in My Salad by Hannah Dilday

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Anchovies in My Salad

There were about thirty of us sitting quietly
In the dim light, as the aroma of garlic filled the air.
Sounds from the kitchen eased my mind
As I picked at my salad, chewing each piece of lettuce
Far too long cus’ I wasn’t in the mood for talking.
Red wine flowed all around me, but I was too young to drink.
I felt safe nestled between my best friend and my mother
They knew I wasn’t in the mood for talking
So they chewed their salads slowly too, piece by piece.
After I’d choked down half of mine, I overheard someone say,
There are anchovies in the dressing.
When I overheard this, I began to cry—I was a vegetarian,
I had been a vegetarian most of my life, after all.
My aunt scolded me for crying over anchovies in my salad,
But I wasn’t crying about the anchovies,
I was crying because I’d just buried my dad
Who wasn’t at dinner at his favorite restaurant.
The waiter brought over a new salad without anchovies,
I dried my tears and I ate it piece by piece slowly, slowly.
I wasn’t in the mood for talking because
My dad wouldn’t have gotten mad at me for crying
Over anchovies in my salad. So I began to cry again because
He wasn’t here to not get mad at me for crying over
Anchovies in my salad.

*

Hannah Dilday earned her Bachelor’s in Philosophy from The University of Oregon and studied abroad at The University of Cambridge. Though she always had a passion for writing, she did not realize her calling to poetry until relocating to The Netherlands four years ago. At 17, Hannah lost her father to an aggressive form of leukemia and she is often inspired by memories of her late father. In addition to writing poetry, Hannah enjoys photography, traveling, and learning Dutch.

A poem walked down the street by Bonnie Proudfoot

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

A poem walked down the street

A poem walked down the street, checking
doorways and alleys to see what it could see.
It took off its headphones and heard
what everyone was listening to, it bought
the news and read the headlines. It watched
a falcon land on the ledge of a skyscraper,
and the steel grate rise on the bodega.
It waited for its life to start.

The poem went to the doctor for heartburn.
The MRI showed that it was pregnant
with other poems who were pregnant with
other poems, that the poem’s ovaries held
so many possible poems, that when
the poem laughed or hiccupped they bumped
into each other and couldn’t wait to be born.

The poem picked up an axe and felt the handle
in its hand. It ran its thumb along the
beveled edge. The poem felt purposeful,
like it was ready to get to work, to split
something apart, like it was ready
to view the core once that thing was split,
to grieve for the thing that it had broken.

Stop me if you heard this one: a poem
walked into a bar, asked for a shot and a beer.
The bartender said sure, coming right up, but
the poem backed away, thinking that was
too easy, that this somehow should have
been harder. The poem pulled out a quarter,
set it on the pool table. It took a few
practice breaks. Sometimes a ball
landed in a pocket. The poem opened
its heart, goldfinches flew out,
the jukebox danced in the corner.

*

Bonnie Proudfoot’s fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies. Her novel, Goshen Road (Swallow 2020) received WCONA’s Book of the Year and was long-listed for the PEN/ Hemingway. Her poetry chapbook, Household Gods, can be found on Sheila-Na-Gig editions, along with a forthcoming book of short stories, Camp Probable. She resides in Athens, Ohio. https://bonnieproudfootblog.wordpress.com/

Avocados by Brett Warren

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Avocados

Your boyfriend worked on an avocado farm.
He’d bring us flats of the ones too ripe
for grocery stores. We’d watch from the door
while he parked his truck and reached
into the bed, shirtsleeves rolled up, arms
muscular and tan from all that lifting

and the sun. I wasn’t a fan—in fact
one night I pushed him up against a wall
when I thought he was being sanctimonious
with you. That was the word I used,
sanctimonious. He was stunned.

The land of avocados was an embarrassment
of riches, no matter how much guacamole
a girl could mash up. So we gave avocados
to everyone, even the building manager,
who didn’t call the cops or kick us out
when one of our parties got a little loud.

Now it’s supply-chain problems, bad climate,
avocados watery half the time, not so rich
anymore, pits no longer perfect planets
you could stick toothpicks in, grow a tree
if you wanted to. We never wanted to.
Did I ever apologize to that boyfriend

for that time with the wall? He said
we were full of ourselves and went back
to Oklahoma, where no one would imply
he was anything but a nice guy. No one
cried. But he was right—we took chances.
We had strange friends, stayed out too late
when we went dancing. That boyfriend

was the future, and we weren’t there yet.
We still wanted to sit barefoot in the sun,
scooping buttery curls from alligator shells
we held in our hands. You and me, a pair
of mismatched chairs. All we ever needed
was a sharp knife, a little coarse salt.

*

Brett Warren (she/her) is a long-time editor and the author of The Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in Canary, Halfway Down the Stairs, Harbor Review, Hole in the Head Review, ONE ART, Rise Up Review, and other literary publications. A triple nominee for Best of the Net 2024 (Poetry), she lives in a house surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees—nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of her writing attic as a runway. brettwarrenpoetry.com

Four Poems by Timothy Green

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

The Secret

We had to stop for gas and spent the night
in the town’s one hotel. A mirror on the wall
was the portal to another world. All night
I lay awake, watching the other couple lying
there. The man twisted around his sheet
like a rope he was climbing. The woman’s
shoulders at the far end of the bed. There wasn’t
much distance between them. Every minute
the clock gained a minute. Every hour, one
of them stirred. In the morning came the light,
rising slow like a tide over the dingy carpet.
Soon, they were drowning in it, even while
eating their eggs.

*

High-End Hotel

The heavy door’s high-end lock
beeps behind you after the whisper-
click of the air against the high-end
doorframe, and you shuffle down
the long hall of doors like dominoes,
each one sleek as midnight, deep
as the hole at the center of the galaxy,
each room its own universe flecked
with stars you move past at the speed
of light over the high-end carpet
whose lushness is not lost on your
slippered feet, a fabric so soft you
find yourself personifying, as if you
were a masseuse, your feet a massage,
and it thanks you, yes, the carpet
thanks you for pressing your heels
deep into its tissue as you tirelessly
trot to the elevator room, its gleaming
bank of metal doors a modern ladder
angels must ascend, but you descend
with the rush of a fatal drop, 39, 33,
so many floors, the numbers proudly
speeding up, then slowing down until
you reach the lobby, its celestial spheres
of chandeliers, and the man at the desk,
his attire more crisp than bacon, more
crisp than the freshest apple, more
polished than you would feel lying
prone at your own funeral, manicured,
minted, laced with the mortician’s
makeup, your face finally in death
a work of art, your casket itself not
as polished as the high-end stone
he stands behind, as you ask, in your
most confident voice, where you
might find the ice machine, there
were no signs, you see, and usually
there are signs, but no, he tells you,
we have no ice machines here, dear
plebeian, so please proceed backward,
up the elevators, down our longest
high-end hallway, and simply text
this fine desk for room service.

*

The Royal Estate

The sad prince was sad that he didn’t know
sadness. A butler brought his every whim.
Fetch me four hummingbirds playing the
harmonica, he’d said just this morning,
and here they were, blurred wings buzzing
against the silver lid of the dinner tray,
the harmonica propped up on a pair of
golden wishbones, everything gleaming.
And they were quite the quartet, two Anna’s
on the high end, a Rufous and a helmetcrest
taking bass. They even knew showtunes
and seemed pleased when the prince could
guess them, though the prince only sighed.
Next time, bring me something I don’t want,
he said to the butler, still perched at the door.
Didn’t I just? the butler replied. Through
a window behind them, across a long
courtyard at the far end of the great garden,
the lonely prince was watching with his
telescope, the words lost to the distance.
He handed it off to one of his several
handmaids. It wasn’t yet time for tea.

*

Typical Day

They turned a corner, climbed some concrete
stairs, and there it was: the park they’d never
leave. It rose from the hill like a dream. There
were people and frisbees. A dog chased a ball
off its leash. The blossoms were blooming.
The bees wove their way through the weeds.
It had been quite the journey to get there,
all the trains and the transfers, the tokens and
turnstiles, the numbers and letters, the red
and the blue and the green. Their feet were
sore from the walking. Their shoulders were
pink from the sun. It was a typical park from
a distance. But they knew that it was the one.

*

Timothy Green is editor of Rattle magazine, host of the weekly Rattlecast, and co-host of weekly The Poetry Space_ with Katie Dozier. He’s the author of a book of poems, American Fractal, and lives in Wrightwood, California.

I CAN’T BE THE ONE by Phyllis Cole-Dai

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

I CAN’T BE THE ONE

to welcome you home, but when you arrive
tonight, the faithful trees keeping watch
in the yard curl their toes in pleasure, and all
the doors of the house throw their arms wide
to receive you, and all the curtains draw apart
to lighten the dark as you enter, and all
the chairs scrape back from the kitchen table,
bidding you to sit, and the stew ladles itself
into a bowl beside the candle that lit its own wick
for joy, and the crusty loaf breaks itself open,
to rest upon the wooden board for a dab
of butter, of jam, of honey, any sweetness you
might desire, and each empty bed turns down
its sheets and plumps up its pillows, hoping
to hold you in your sleep—while in one lonely
corner, hugging the wall, the patient piano
waits her turn, soft ache in her taut strings,
ready to play every loving song she’s learned
between the last time you left and this return.

                      for my son, Nathan

*

Phyllis Cole-Dai is a multi-genre writer in South Dakota, soon to relocate to Maryland. The author of more than a dozen books, she co-edited both volumes of the popular anthologies of mindfulness poems. Poetry of Presence. Learn more about her work at her website (phylliscoledai.com). Join The Raft, her online community, and ride the river of the creative life, buoyed by the arts and open spirituality (phylliscoledai.substack.com)

One of Those Nights by Michael Akuchie

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

One of Those Nights

In the plot of a dream,
I wished the sand outside
the house would divorce
its lifelessness and suddenly
put on the weight of some
monster that only feeds
on the stench of sinners.
But then I awoke in a room
with a window too tiny to watch
the stars bleed a distinct light
that folks on a night stroll can
cultivate into a way home.

*

Michael Akuchie’s poems have appeared in Poet Lore, The Rumpus, Cosmonauts Avenue, Lost Balloon, Drunk Monkeys, Ecotheo Review, Whale Road Review, and Gordon Square Review. His debut chapbook of poems, Wreck (The Hellbore Press), was published in 2021. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria.

Heirlooms by John Walser

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Heirlooms

When you come home
the lanterns of the evening

the crush and exhale
of summer swelter
has yet to come:
this heatless August:
or at least not
the cardinal feather
early morning burn.

Still the careworn lawns
the drought grass
tongueless:
baked clay cracked
brown grey.

When the sun goes down
let’s sit outside
under the hawk call moon
let’s light the trees
and near midnight on fire

I’ve watered the tomatoes
I’ve watered the herbs
I’ve watered the peppers
as though steeping:

the drying ground
the shoot shadows:
a gift for you.

*

John Walser’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Spillway, Water-Stone Review, Plume, Posit and december magazine. His manuscript Edgewood Orchard Galleries has been a finalist for the Autumn House Press Prize, the Ballard Spahr Prize and the Zone 3 Press Prize as well as a semifinalist for the Philip Levine Prize and the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award. A four-time semifinalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize, as well as a Best New Poets, a Pushcart and a Best of the Net nominee, John is a professor of English at Marian University and lives in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, with his wife, Julie.

Three Red Foxes on a Gray Day by Faith Paulsen

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments
Three Red Foxes on a Gray Day
I hear it – returning from my mailbox–
how ragged in the wind-torn winter
the raw shriek–
scan field, woods, yard for bird or dog –
But no– one, two,
three sparks
lit matches flare
prance bark
coats thick and ruddy scatting beasts
trick me in the homegrown meadow
in my own backyard
near Philadelphia.
Their calls, their ack-ack-ack’s
stormy confab indecipherable
on this property
which our recent college graduate turned into a meadow
using sustainable skills learned on his study abroad.
Planned it, smothered grass, left oak leaves where they fell.
Planted butterfly weed and shade perennials,
digging bare-chested into soil
dreaming of earthworms,
frogs and butterflies to be enumerated next spring.
Then moved to Chicago
leaving us and our new meadow to process by neglect.
Today a snow day two years into pandemic
the pandemic itself an endless snow day minus
snowy bootprints, wet mittens
and wonder. Instead
mostly boredom and fear.
Still, today, The bleak meadow – cold, hard ground
under leaves under snow
where sometimes deer bed down in the brush –
renders up, now, here,
these little wildfires.
The one on the slope cries out open-mouthed ack
ack-ack-ack.
The other two bow their heads
as if a rock and not a bark
had been hurled at their flattened ears.
One prances, paws the ground, each step its own meaning.
(Male or female? Why are there three?)
Birth, death, mating, earths warm with kits. On land once tameless,
then Lenape, later farmland, woods.
In myth, the fox, fire-bringer. emerges
at times of great and unpredictable change.
Suddenly brave, the two rear up
chase the one through my meadow
into the un-owned woods,
leaving what they came to bring me: Their dance.
Mystery enacted.
*
Author of three chapbooks and mother of three sons, Faith Paulsen’s day job is in insurance, Her work appears or is upcoming in Scientific American, Poetica Review, Poetry Breakfast, Milk art journal, Philadelphia Stories, Book of Matches, One Art, Panoply, Thimble, Evansville Review, Mantis and others. faithpaulsenpoet.com/

Cathie by Linda Laderman

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Cathie

Sunday morning. The line is long. I walk to the hostess stand to check the wait. Thirty-five minutes. It’s worth it. The food is good and cheap. Three thick slices in an order of French toast. I look for Cathie, our regular waitress. She knows our order by heart. I start back towards the end of the line when I notice a 5×7 framed photo on the shelf behind the stand. I move closer to get a better look at the picture. A headshot of a woman. Her blonde hair touches her bare shoulders. A smile I think I recognize. I read the words under the picture. Cathie, waitress—died. I pry details from the girl at the counter—when, how, who found her? I consider my reaction. I didn’t see her out. And almost anyone who meant anything is gone. In a dream, I scratch the bluebells off my black wallet and put them in a red pot. I never touch another piece of French toast.

*

Linda Laderman is a Michigan poet and writer. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Gyroscope, SWWIM, ONE ART, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Scapegoat Review, Rust &Moth, Minyan Magazine, 3rd Wednesday, and Mom Egg Review. She has work forthcoming from Action, Spectacle and The Argyle Literary Magazine. She is the 2023 recipient of Harbor Review’s Jewish Women’s Prize, and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her mini-chapbook, What I Didn’t Know I Didn’t Know, can be found online at https://www.harbor-review.com/what-i-didnt-know-i-didnt-know. Find her at lindaladerman.com.

Radio Observatory by Dane Karnick

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Radio Observatory

Before the quiet zone
Patsy Cline is singing
Walking After Midnight

As my Dodge Omni
Sputters closer to
The giant metal ears

My AM station is
Searching for you near
Allegheny Mountains

Until I encounter
Radio silence and
Leave the car behind

To walk among machines
Which can hear a snowflake
Fall on their steel membranes

Amplifying stellar buzz
Like audio goliaths
Which strain to eavesdrop

On galactic tenants
Murmuring across space
Beyond our senses

Striving to interpret
Those private light years
Just as friendships tether us

Around curious worlds
Of unguarded voices
That tremble on inspection

Noisy as quasars
When listening too close
To what is kept from earshot

*

Dane Karnick was influenced by poet, Tony Moffeit while attending Colorado State University. Dane’s poetry has appeared in publications such as Gravel, El Portal and Bookends Review. He grew up by the Colorado “Rockies”, lived in the Seattle area for 30 years, and resides in Treasure Valley, Idaho.

Cinnabar by Melody Wilson

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Cinnabar

He comes home after dark
from his long day at the mine
way out in the Panamint Valley.
Sometimes he unpacks four or five
rocks onto the table, turns off the lamp
and calls us into the kitchen.
He plugs in the blacklight, waves it
one end to the other—all of us
peer into the dark. The red one is calcite,
he points, willemite the green.
We are looking for tungsten, for blue.
Very rare, he says. Eventually
Mama switches on the lights
pulls his dinner from the oven
complains about the lateness of the hour.
We jostle each other to bed
listen to the screen door bang
as he walks out to the yard,
brushes cinnabar from his boots.
Swoosh, swoosh,
swoosh swoosh swoosh.
Flashes of red and green pulse
behind my eyelids as I try
to imagine blue.

*

Melody Wilson is a pushcart nominated poet whose poems appear in Pangyrus, VerseDaily, The Fiddlehead, Crab Creek Review, San Pedro River Review and elsewhere. She is pursuing her MFA at Pacific University. Her chapbook, Spineless: Memoir in Invertebrates came out in 2023. Find more of her work at melodywilson.com.

Gift of Crows by Adam Haver

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Gift of Crows

Forty years with crows,
throwing kernels and
not looking back as they

caw. Time is only forward,
staccato, so we lunge
ahead with the sound,

but the bright night of
birds, this murder din,
will always recall you.

*

Adam Haver’s writing has been featured in Popshot Quarterly, Poetry Scotland, Ballast, and other journals. He received the 2022 Willie Morris Award for Poetry and an award from the Utah Division of Arts & Museums for a collection of poems addressing wolf conservation. You can connect with him on X: @ac_haver.

Two Poems by Barn Brand

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment
Lost
I find myself sitting at a hard used grimy kitchen table with a green and white checkered tablecloth that leaves half the table exposed
The table is surrounded by four chairs, three clearly are set mates to the table sharing a four leaf clover design carved into their upright, the fourth, the one I’m sitting on, looks more like a junk store giveaway, its ripped green vinyl seat cushion pox marked with cigarette burns
I don’t know this place
I don’t know why I am here or what is expected of me
I’m not sure I know exactly who I am
My name is on the tip of my tongue, it just won’t let me spit it out
I keep trying but it refuses to budge
I’m afraid I will swallow it
And lose my name forever
I’d like to go home, but I really don’t know what that means
I’m scared, no I’m frightened, no I’m terrified
*
Mud
Bob said he did not come from dust
Of this he was certain
His life was too difficult to trace back to dust
Dust floats in the lightest sweet breath of the wind
Dust can leave the gravity of pain and witness the cosmos reborn
No, Bob was the descendant of mud, thick deep wet, boot sucking mud
Add a little lightning
Add a little DNA
Add a halfway decent sculptor
and you got Bob
When Bob passed away, my broken heart and Bob’s ashes waited for a thunderstorm
After the ground was soaked and puddling, I took the tractor out beyond the farm line and poured Bob into a mud filled trench and ground him in with my work boots. It was a slow process, every time I raised my leg, I was at war with the mud that wanted to pull me down to join Bob
I waited there for lightning, used Bob’s Bowie knife to draw blood from my wedding ring finger, watched my DNA join Bob and his mud and prayed that he would come back to me
But the mix was not right
I turned back to the farmhouse that Bob built by hand during the first 3 years that we farmed, and started the journey of living with my memories
*
Bronx born and raised Barn Brand, age 77, has been writing poetry since the age of 12. He feels that his words have now come of age and are ready to be read. Barn is a member of the poetry circles of West Milford, N.J. and Yuma, AZ. – the two communities where he lives his life. When not reading or writing or gardening Barn pedals down the road averaging 4,500 miles each year. His work has appeared on The Recovering Self, and in the MasterLink. His work will also appear later this year in the Paterson Literary Review.
*
Author’s Note:
To me, the writing of poetry is an attempt to bridge a feeling from one mind to another – sometimes we transfer intense emotions that attach to the reader’s core, sometimes what we offer is more lightly felt, but always it is the emotion rather than the story that is paramount.
Grief, lust, depression, love, hate, forgiveness, reverence, humor, and harmony – our emotional history, how we integrate it and how we share it makes us who we are – and that is why poetry matters.

Two Poems by Jacqueline Jules

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Sleeping Swans

I pause by the water to stare
at white feathered bodies
floating so peacefully limp
they appear to be dead.

How can swans sleep
with their heads tucked
beneath their wings?

Another question I can’t answer
as I amble along a path
winding past boats on one side
and cruising cars on the other.

The day is dense with clouds
consuming the light I need
to see what lies ahead.

How long will the sky remain
overcast without pouring rain?

I don’t even know if my legs
will last another mile.

I could trip or get a cramp,
anything could happen
between now and the time
I reach my favorite bench
to view the missing horizon.

Just like my beloved could fall
again or have another fever
in the house where he waits for me,
too frail to join my walks.

When he drifts off during the day,
I watch him like these swans, afraid
his awkward slouch means
he will not wake from his chair.

*

I’ll Be There Now

“Are you afraid of lice?” my son asks,
informing me he just treated the kids
he needs me to babysit.

Am I? Afraid of bugs a shampoo can kill
after three years of dodging an airborne virus
which shut down the world for months on end?

Keeping six feet apart was sensible once.
Until isolation became an ingrained habit.

At the height of it, I asked for
backwards hugs, avoiding droplets
from little noses and mouths

So now that they’re back in school,
kissing hair, not cheeks is risky too.

I’m at an age when the muscle that pumps
my blood could fail with less warning
than a sore throat progressing to a cough.

How long can I wait to embrace the life
I stayed alone in my house to protect?

“Don’t worry,” I tell my son.
“I’ll be there as planned at 6.”

*

Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021), Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press, and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. jacquelinejules.com

Immune to Nostalgia by Joan Mazza

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Immune to Nostalgia

I’m not. I go back to ride
memories as if they were
peak experiences
of transcendence, pleasure—
the old summer bungalow
in Sound Beach, alone
with mother,
unlimited time to read
and read, and walk
the wooded paths
that are no longer.
Time to linger and watch
squirrels. No car or phone,
nowhere to be
except home for supper
and my mother’s cooking.
Clams or scungilli,
fresh from the sea,
over linguine. Wild
raspberries picked
in a thicket on the next
property, boiled into jam
and jarred for sweetness
during Brooklyn winters.
Even now, I try to grasp
that flavor in the air.
Some insomniac nights,
from the screened porch
I ride the thermals,
inhale the warm scent
of wet summer’s dark
and watch fireflies
flash in synchrony.
My button pendant
Life Protect 24/7
blinks back
with equal ardor.

*

Joan Mazza worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam). Her poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Prairie Schooner, Slant, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia.