ONE ART x Quartet Reading

August 3, 2026 ~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

ONE ART x Quartet Reading

Hosts: Jane C. Miller (൪uartet) & Mark Danowsky (ONE ART)

Date: Sunday, August 16
Time: 2pm Eastern
Duration: 1.5-2 hours

Featured Poets: Sue Ellen Thompson, Melody Wilson, Annette Sisson, Cora McCann Liderbach, Sarah Dickenson Snyder

Tickets are FREE!
(donations appreciated)

~ About The Co-Hosts ~

Jane C. Miller is the author of Canticle for Remnant Days (2024) and coauthor of Walking the Sunken Boards (2019). A winner of the Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Contest and two Delaware Division of the Arts fellowships, her work has appeared innumerous journals including RHINO, Colorado Review, Whale Road Review and on buses in Luzerne County, PA through the Poetry in Transit program. Miller coedits the online poetry journal, ൪uartet. janecmiller.com

Mark Danowsky is Founder & Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry and Poetry Craft Essays Editor for Cleaver Magazine. He curates Stay Curious on Substack. He previously served for many years as Managing Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. His short poetry collections include Take Care (Moon Tide Press), Meatless (Plan B Press), Violet Flame (tiny wren lit), JAWN (Moonstone Press), and As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press). His poems and other writing have been curated in many journals including, Gargoyle, The Summerset Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Modern Haiku. These days, he writes quite a lot of haiku and aphorisms. He currently resides in the Greater Philadelphia Area.

~ About The Featured Readers ~

Cora McCann Liderbach of Cleveland, Ohio, has poetry in journals such as Quartet, ONE ART, Painted Pebble, Jackdaw Review, Gyroscope Review, Sheila-na-Gig Online and Artemis. She is a 2022 Best of the Net nominee and has a chapbook, “Throughline” (Finishing Line Press, 2024).

Melody Wilson is a Pushcart nominated poet whose work appears in Nixes Mate, Anti-Heroin Chic, Crab Creek Review, Nelle, Rust and Moth, Verse Daily, West Trestle Review, and elsewhere. Her first collection, Madre Dura, received the 2026 Paul Nemser Prize from Lily Poetry Review. A graduate of Pacific University’s MFA program, she lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband Phillip and their dog Z. Find more of her work at melodywilson.com.

After years in the classroom, Sarah Dickenson Snyder now carves in stone, sculls on the Connecticut River, and rides her bike. Travel opens her eyes. She has five poetry collections: The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), With a Polaroid Camera (2019), and Now These Three Remain (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2023), and To Eve (Nixes Mate Review 2026). Several poems have been nominated for Best of Net and Pushcart Prizes. Work is in Rattle, Verse Daily, and RHINO. sarahdickensonsnyder.com

Annette Sisson lives in Nashville, TN, with her husband and soft-coated wheaten terrier. She retired at the end of May from Belmont University, where she taught for 37 years. Since retirement, she has traveled, bought a new house, put her old house on the market, and spent two weeks at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her poems have appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Penn Review, River Heron Review, RockPaperPoem, Rust and Moth, Sky Island Journal, West Trade Review, and many other journals and anthologies. Her second book, Winter Sharp with Apples, was published by Terrapin Books in 2024, and her third book manuscript, Rhizomes and Bones, was recently “Runner-Up” in the Cider Press Book Award. In 2019 she won The Porch Writers’ Collective’s poetry prize, and in 2024 and 2025 she was a finalist for the Charles Simic Poetry Award. Her poems have placed in many other contests, and more than a dozen have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Sue Ellen Thompson is the author of six books of poetry—most recently SEA NETTLES: NEW & SELECTED POEMS. She has taught at Middlebury College, Binghamton University, Wesleyan University, Central Connecticut State University, and the University of Delaware. A resident of Oxford, MD for the past 20 years, she has been mentoring adult poets and teaching workshops at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda. In 2010, the Maryland Library Association awarded her its prestigious Maryland Author Award.

Cinnabar by Melody Wilson

April 28, 2024 ~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

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.

Two Poems by Melody Wilson

June 21, 2023June 21, 2023 ~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

White Mare

          Only if there are angels in your head will you
                    ever, possibly, see one.
                                        —Mary Oliver
                                        The World I Live In

All my horses are dead now.
The Shetland pony, the sorrel,

the bay. Gone like grandparents
trailing genes. When I say

that once I rode
very well, I mean

summer thighs clung
to the mare’s barrel,

our sweat mingled like
blood brothers. I mean

I first studied my reflection
in the eye of a horse—

the flea-bitten gray who leaped
tumbleweeds, no saddle, no shoes,

my hands twisted into mane,
her hoofs striking sand:

one-two, one-two. My heart
falls into rhythm even now.

Bijinga

Three dots of concealer still
mute my age spots. Dot, dot,
dot, and my skin appears
as I imagine it once did.

The Japanese call this
Bijinga, the art of painting
women to reveal their
inner beauty. No matter

whether the image matches
the model, what counts
is an inquisitive brow, pursed
lips, hair restrained by silk

flowers and a small jade
sword. My mother
pulled her hair back,
threaded it through a bun

she brought from a box,
wound the tail around.
She tilted toward the mirror,
applied lipstick, tore a sheet

of toilet paper from the roll,
closed her lips on the fold,
popped them open.
She appraised her face

in the mirror, tossed the tissue
aside. I knew she was
leaving when the dresser
was littered with kisses.

Melody Wilson’s work appears in Sugar House Review, VerseDaily and The Fiddlehead. Upcoming work will be in Kestrel, Crab Creek Review, and Archetype Magazine. She received 2022 Pushcart nominations from Redactions and Red Rock Review, and was semi-finalist for the Pablo Neruda Award. Her chapbook Spineless: Memoir in Invertebrates comes out in August 2023. She’s pursuing her MFA at Pacific University. Find her work at melodywilson.com.

My Father’s Voice by Melody Wilson

January 25, 2022 ~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

My Father’s Voice

My face was always dirty. I blamed it on the wind
or my invisible friend. Mama stretched over the seat,

licked her thumb, scrubbed at my grubby cheeks.
Facing front again, she lurched into song, usually

How Much is that Doggie in the Window. My sisters
would plead for our father to sing—his smile

in the rear view, straight teeth, black mustache,
his turn at last. He sang like the best part of the sun—

like the Santa Anas that flowed in over his arm resting
on the door. As I walked out on the streets of Laredo…

four bare-legged girls lined up on the back seat—suddenly silent.
The primer-red Caddy sailed over the ribbon of asphalt

that held down the sand …as I walked out in Laredo one day….
Somewhere there’s a layer of time where leather still smells

like gasoline, where the Mojave rolls absently by, the song
just now falling, weaving itself into wind.

Melody Wilson’s recent work appears in Quartet, Briar Cliff Review, The Shore, Whale Road Review, Timberline Review, SWWIM, and Tar River Poetry. She received the 2021 Kay Snow Award, Honorable Mention for the 2021 Oberon Poetry Award, and finalist in the 2021 Patricia Dobler Poetry Award.

Poem by Melody Wilson

March 26, 2021March 26, 2021 ~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

The Doctrine of the Kite

It floats from my fingertips—
a cathedral of rice paper
and balsa.
“Lighter than air,” Daddy said,
sipped his beer,
tapped ash from his cigar.

He said gold pounded thin enough
would cover the earth; meat should
never be wrapped in foil.
The number three always brings bad luck.

Morning was crowded with kites:
boxes, diamonds, deltas.
Children pelted the playground,
paper whiffling, tails flowing,
they released the keels
trusted in speed and skill.
Lines sang through sweaty hands.

Six toed cats are charmed, he said,
and Joshua trees can move.
Man and God are forever
locked in duel.

I held the kite above my head that day
reciting everything he said.
It quivered once,
twice, then rose
and rose.
The string pulling away
from the spool.

Melody Wilson lives and teaches near Portland, Oregon. She has one Academy of American Poets Award, and several smaller awards including a 2020 Kay Snow award. Her work has appeared in The Portland Review, Visions International, and Triggerfish Critical Review.

Tag: Melody Wilson

ONE ART x Quartet Reading

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