Tag: new year

Beginning, Again by Shawn Aveningo Sanders

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Beginning, Again

Minty spittle slithers down
the handle of my toothbrush.
It’s a cold sunny morning
with new batteries; my teeth
are excited for a fresh start.
I didn’t have high expectations
for last year, a pessimistic way
to say I surpassed my goals.
(well, some of them, anyway)
This year, I feel more confident—
until a splash of cold hits my face.

             breaking news
             holding hope
             for the midterms

*

Shawn Aveningo Sanders shares the creative life with her husband in Beaverton, where they run a small press, The Poetry Box. Over 200 of Shawn’s poems have appeared worldwide, most recently in ONE ART, contemporary haibun online, McQueen’s Quinterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, Cloudbank, and Love Is for All of Us. Shawn is a multiple Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Touchstone Award nominee and has won prizes from the Oregon Poetry Association. Her newest book Pockets (MoonPath Press) was a finalist in Concrete Wolf’s Chapbook Contest. When she’s not writing, you might find her shopping for a new pair of red shoes or toy dinosaurs for her granddaughter. (RedShoePoet.com)

January by Sheila Wellehan

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January

A glittering chandelier dangling
over an empty dawn ballroom.
A cane yanking us from past to now.

Sturdy iron handles encouraging us
to grasp and pull hard.
A dam dismantled so the river runs free.

Abandoned plans discovered in the back
of the pantry. Hands opening to reveal
ruby-tipped matches to light our way.

A wooden mantle to hang our hopes on.
An exquisite fan for us to open, painted
with peacocks, peonies, and daydreams.

A van waiting for us to jump in for a joy ride.
A bowl that’s cracked because it’s so crammed
with brand-newness.

The sanctuary of second to six-hundredth
chances. Shiny coins to jangle in our pockets
the rest of the year.

*

Sheila Wellehan’s poetry is featured in On the Seawall, Maine Public Radio’s Poems From Here, Psaltery & Lyre, Rust & Moth, Thimble Literary Magazine, Whale Road Review, and many other publications. She served as an assistant poetry editor for The Night Heron Barks and an associate editor for Ran Off With the Star Bassoon. Sheila lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. You can read her work at sheilawellehan.com.

Now by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Now

Quick as a key turn or July clouds
releasing downpours, I suddenly
loved you more as you admired

aloud the word maintenant – “now” –
mentioning its literal meaning:
holding a hand. Fifty years of French

and I had never picked that lock.
Now the present folds me
in its have and hold vow,

future pressed to past, palm
to warm palm. Every word my own
swollen cloud, shaped like a clock.

*

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.

Beyond Dreams by Michael J. LaFrancis

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Beyond Dreams

We think we know
what will make us happy,
until we get it,
then we find out,
it must have been something else.

Dreams are like Lego blocks.
They come in a box
with lots of loose pieces,
a picture on the cover.

Testing and trying,
piece after piece,
until construction complete.
Soon luster wears off.

Blocks and boxes are saved
in a treasure box, joy for a day
when there are no more kits

when content to play; curious
to find out what can be created
with the pieces I already have.

*

Michael J. LaFrancis is a trusted advisor, advocate, author and connector supporting individuals, groups and organizations aligning purpose and capabilities in service of their highest ideals. Writing poetry is a contemplative practice providing him with insight and inspiration for living a creative life. His poems are also appearing in Amethyst Review, City Key, Mocking Owl, ONE ART, Last Leaves and Seraphic Review recently or in the coming months.

Grand Re-Openings by Ashley Steineger

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Grand Re-Openings

Love is another kind of open,
a café that never closes.
The sign is flipped, the lights inside

are blinked-out stars, the only
employee is an old man
running a mop again and again

over the mess. The walls are
your muted heart who beats under
the café’s shut eyelid, the chairs

scattered like debris after
a windstorm, functional
but dizzied, glass rims stained

with that one shade of dated
red lipstick, coffee drips as
fevered brown tears down

smooth ceramic. It’s quiet now
but never for long. Have you seen
the handsome stranger, there

at the clouded window with
a peace flag of white lilies?
Have you seen how they hold

each flower’s lithe stem? Can you
hear their whisper begging
you, open the door…please try again.

*

Ashley Steineger is a holistic psychologist who believes poetry is the language of healing. Her poetry has appeared in The Night Heron Barks, Apricity Press, The Lumiere Review, and Palette Poetry, among others. She currently lives and writes out of Raleigh, NC, where she enjoys forest bathing, collecting tattoos, and untranslatable words.

Questions for the New Year by Michael S. Glaser

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Questions for the New Year

How do I recognize
the boundaries I have created
hoping they will keep me safe?

How do I leave
the wilderness
of my shoulds?

*

Michael S. Glaser is a Professor Emeritus at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2004 – 2009. The recipient of several awards for his teaching, his service to poetry and for his poetry, he has published several prize winning collections of his own poetry, most recently The Threshold of Light (Bright Hills Press, 2019) and Elemental Things, (The Poetry Box, 2022) . He has also edited three anthologies and co-edited The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton (BOA 2012). (more at michaelsglaser.com )

Loggerheads by Carol Sadtler

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Loggerheads

Her wide-stance waddle
her forward head with tiny
eyes—who would not
want to meet her
on the beach? Flippers

guided by the tides
and an ancient algorithm,
she mates in surf, drags
her heavy carapace
ashore to bury new

generations begun
60 million years since—
only to be undone
by condos and chemicals
brought by a recent species—

invasive, careless and deadly—
a blip in the grand scuffle—
but for now, carretta carretta
let’s swim in a watery
slipstream, my breaststroke

matching yours in your
warm lightgreen world
where we pretend our
children’s children will not
miss this.

*

Carol Sadtler is a poet, writer and editor whose recent poems and reviews appear in Writers Resist, The Inflectionist, Sky Island Journal, The Humanist, RHINO Poetry, Bangalore Review, Pacific Review, and other publications. She lives in Chicago with her family.