Tag: ars poetica

Two Poems by Jennifer Mills Kerr

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Why I Write

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* 

Last Light of Winter’s Day

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

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

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

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

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

*

Jennifer Mills Kerr is an educator, poet, and writer who lives in Northern California. An East Coast native, she loves mild winters, anything Jane Austen, and the raucous coast of Sonoma County. Her poems are forthcoming in The Inflectionist Review and SWWIM. Say hello at https://jennifermillskerr.carrd.co/

Ars Poetica by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Ars Poetica

Burning sun
gilding autumn grass.

Fingerprints
on window panes.

Pink lipstick
on a glass.

Sting of a kiss or fist.

Ink bruise
on the skin of the page.

*

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

January Ars Poetica by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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January Ars Poetica

        (for L.L. Knowlton)

Awake, more knotted dreams in my hands. 

It stays dark past dawn. Where have you gone?

With what spoken bone will you return?

Now I see: dust tossed in a lake became voice.

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton is Professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, where she has taught for twenty-five years. She has a PhD in French Literature from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MFA in Poetry from Antioch University. The author of four books, she was named a Georgia Author of the Year in 2018. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets College Prize and a Pushcart nominee. Her work has recently appeared in literary journals such as Boston Literary Magazine and Raw Art Review. You can find her on Facebook.