ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of March 2026
Tag: Joanne Leva
Three Poems by Joanne Leva
Lobster
You could crack my lobster or pitch a tent,
festoon it with pirates’ flags and shiny
things flapping in the wind. Stinging wind off
the Atlantic bluster but only half
a block from the hotel where we would stay
year after year. You’d walk for our pizza.
You, with outstretched, undeniable arms.
And, dutiful you, you’d deliver the hot
pepperoni and cheese to our sea mist
balcony overlooking the Sea Foam
Arcade, which overlooks the famous Love
Locks Park where large glycerin bubbles float
buoyant in transitioning summer sky.
*
Daily Routine in Lansdale, PA
Remember you are all people and all people are you.
—Joy Harjo
Remember the bed beneath your body,
the arrival of dawn. How peach color
reveals and illuminates the good sky.
How the reliable sun is mercy.
Remember how you walk on maple wood
floors. How the spirit goes along with you.
Remember your mornings, alone. The way
you remember the cat. How he adores
your lap. Remember your daily work. How
you step up. Remember your voice. Use it.
How green shoots start to show in early spring
and the hardened earth under the feeder
crumbles when you cross the yard. Remember
*
Final Arrangement
Let me tell you it wasn’t all bad, yes
it was Alcoholics Anonymous
on so many nights, car wrecks, chain smoking,
and tripping on acid in our house. Or
the night you left our bed and never came
back, set up a make-shift boudoir complete
with a large screen TV, CDs galore,
tobacco for rolling cigarettes. But,
it wasn’t all bad, there were good times too.
There was kindness in the middle of it.
Odd little kindnesses on my birthday,
our anniversary, Mother’s Day, and
that surf-tumbled, deep-purple sea glass ring.
*
An advocate for creative writing and community service, Joanne Leva is the founder and executive director of the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program (MCPL), founder and coordinator of the Forgotten Voices Poetry Group out of the Indian Valley Public Library in Telford, PA, and author of the poetry collections Eve Would Know (2017) and Eve Heads Back (2020) published by Kelsay Books.
Leva’s poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Peace Is a Haiku Song, 50 Over Fifty, Apiary, E-Verse Radio, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Rag Queen Periodical, Bucks County Writer, Transcendent Visions, WILDsound Festival of Poetry and elsewhere. Her poem, “God Walks into a Bar,” was featured in a Philadelphia Calligraphers’ Society Poetry Reading & Exhibit and companion publication.
ONE ART’s March Reading — Featured Poets: Joanne Leva, Tresha Faye Haefner, Jennifer Browne, Ethel Rackin, Dana Knott, Allison Blevins
~ The ONE ART Reading Series ~
ONE ART’s March 2025 Reading!
Sunday, March 2 — 2pm Eastern (via Zoom)
Tickets are FREE or Donation
>>> Tickets Available Here <<<
Featured Poets: Joanne Leva, Tresha Faye Haefner, Jennifer Browne, Ethel Rackin, Dana Knott, Allison Blevins
Joanne Leva, author of Eve Heads Back and Eve Would Know (Kelsay Books) and an advocate for creative writing and community service. Joanne is founder and executive director of the Montgomery County PA Poet Laureate Program (MCPL), directed by Chad Frame (who is an upcoming Featured Poet!! So, I hope you’ll plan to tune in to ONE ART’s future readings). She also oversees the new Montgomery County PA Youth Poet Laureate program (YPL), directed by Evan Wang. Leva founded and has coordinated the Forgotten Voices Poetry Group and workshop, the first Saturday of every month from the Indian Valley Public Library, in Telford, for over 34 years.
Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Peace is a Haiku Song, 50 Over Fifty, Apiary, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Rag Queen Periodical, Mad Poet’s Review, Bucks County Writer, Transcendent Visions, among others. Her poem, God Walks into a Bar, was featured in a Philadelphia Calligraphers Society Exhibit and Poetry Reading and companion publication entitled, Scripta. Her poem, Looking Back on the Mountain, was featured in an exhibition and companion publication entitled, Making Magic: Beauty in Word and Image, at the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown, PA.
Ask me about the Caesura Poetry Festival & Retreat!
The MCPL is a program of the Indian Valley Arts Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit corporation. Please consider supporting our efforts with a donation.
*
Allison Blevins (she/her) is a queer disabled writer and the author of five chapbooks and four collections. Winner of the 2024 Barthelme Prize, the 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award, and the 2022 Laux/Millar Poetry Prize, Allison serves as the Publisher of Small Harbor Publishing and lives in Minnesota with her spouse and three children. allisonblevins.com. If you would like to support the Blevins family during their current health crisis, you can donate to their Meal Train or purchase an item off their wishlist.
*
Tresha Faye Haefner is an award-winning poet, performer, educator and general facilitator of the fun times. Her work has been widely published and garnered several awards, including the Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, and the Pangea Prize. Her first book, When the Moon Had Antlers (Pine Row Press, 2024) was a finalist for the Glass Lyre Poetry Prize. She is best described as an eco-poet, travel-poet, and performance poet. She writes words for the stage, page, coffee shop, words for sitting under a tree alone, and words for reading to someone you love while rowing them down a river towards dawn.
In addition to writing her own poems about nature and other mysteries, her most important role is to help others feel safe and inspired to write work of their own. Most importantly, she is founder of The Poetry Salon, an online learning community where poets meet to share inspiration, education and support as they write together and cheer one another on! You can get new information, updates and invitations to events at The Poetry Salon by joining The Poetry Salon on Substack at ThePoetrySalonStack.Substack.com.
*
Dana Knott’s writing has recently appeared in The Selkie, Moss Puppy, Minerva Rising, Cosmic Daffodil, and Dust Poetry Magazine. Her micro chapbook “Funeral Flowers” was published by Rinky Dink Press in 2024. Currently, she works as an academic library director in Ohio, and is the editor of tiny wren lit, which publishes micro poetry and micro chapbooks. Check out her profile on Chill Subs: https://www.chillsubs.com/user/dana.a.knott.
*
Jennifer Browne falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. She is the author of American Crow (Beltway Editions, 2024) and the poetry chapbooks Before: After (Pure Sleeze Press, 2025), In a Period of Absence, a Lake (Origami Poems Project, 2025), whisper song (tiny wren publishing, 2023) and The Salt of the Geologic World (Bottlecap Press, 2023). Her work has recently appeared in Poets for Science, Humana Obscura, Trailer Park Quarterly, and One Sentence Poems. Find her in Frostburg, MD and her poems at linktr.ee/jenniferabrowne.
*
Ethel Rackin is the author of four books of poetry: The Forever Notes (Parlor Press, 2013); Go On (Parlor Press, 2016), a National Jewish Book Award finalist; Evening (Furniture Press, 2017); and In Time (Word Works Books, May 2025). In addition, she is the author of the text Crafting Poems and Stories: A Guide to Creative Writing (Broadview Press, 2022).
Her collaborative lyric sequence, “Soledad,” written with Elizabeth Savage, was awarded the 2016 Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred by Elizabeth Robinson, and another collaborative sequence, “Silent e,” is included in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Volt, and other journals.
She earned her MFA from Bard College and her PhD in English Literature from Princeton University. A MacDowell fellow, she has taught at Penn State Brandywine, Haverford College, and Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania, where she is a professor of English.