Tag: ode

Ode For Firsts by Jaiden Geolingo

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Ode For Firsts

We are in the third act.
We are observing each other’s
curvature. We are breathing
down each other’s neck
like a needy fanblade. Starting the day
with socks on the ground,
I wanted more and I realize now that there’s only a dead leaf
in the picture. Here is your catechism
where the only rule is releasing
the metaphorical fire hydrant.
I’ve let go of things,
a lacuna in the catalog of the body.
So, given that, this must be history in clockwork—
I parcel you up like an heirloom, you divine thing.
Today, I’ll be selfish. You’ll see me in a strange display.
You will not stay with me for a while.

*

Jaiden Geolingo is a Pinoy writer based in Georgia, United States, and the author of How to Migrate Ghosts (kith books, 2025). A finalist for the Georgia Poet Laureate’s Prize and a 2025 National YoungArts Winner in Poetry, his writing appears or is forthcoming in diode poetry journal, The Shore, The Tupelo Quarterly, Writers Digest, and elsewhere. Jaiden is the editor-in-chief of Hominum Journal and a Best of the Net nominee. He is currently working on his second manuscript titled Hymnal of Hourglasses.

Ode to the Indigo Bunting by Julene Waffle

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Ode to the Indigo Bunting

You are not blue, not really—
but a trick of feathered lattice,
microscopic barbs bending light
into indigo illusion.
A prism perched on my wire fence,
you split the ordinary
into astonishment.

Summer is your longitude,
your body the compass
that inhales starlight,
exhales migration.
You read the Milky Way
like scripture,
winging south on constellations.

What is indigo, if not
the syllables between violet and night,
a threshold color,
ink before it dries,
a pigment of prayer?
You wear it as vestige,
a psalm sewn into a bruise,
your song a bright cipher
against the grain of dawn.

Fragment of sky, flame of my hedgerows,
what sermon do you sing—
that beauty is only refraction?
That even bones can carry
the language of galaxies?
That wonder arrives
winged and weightless,
dressed in an arc of color
that is not color at all?

*

Julene Waffle, graduate of Hartwick College and Binghamton University, is a teacher, family-woman, boy-mom, pet-mom, nature-lover, and life-liver. She enjoys pretending like she has it all together. Her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal Blog, The English Journal, Mslexia, The Ekphrastic Review, among other journals and anthologies, as well as her chapbook So I Will Remember (2020). Learn more at www.wafflepoetry.com, X: @JuleneWaffle, and Instagram: julenewaffle

Ode to a Crystal Dreidel by Liz Marlow

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Ode to a Crystal Dreidel

Throughout the year,
you wait
in the curio cabinet—
sunlight’s fingers

grab at you
through the window
every afternoon.
We adore you

from behind glass doors,
your blue viscera
held tight like leaves
trapped in ice.

But today,
my son watches
you in wonder
like a great miracle.

You spin
from delicate fingers,
maple seed in the game.
How you land

determines win or loss
instead of anchor
to become life.
O how your confetti glows,

fills the room
as the chandelier
catches, presents us
with what you are

meant to be,
with what you have
waited all year
to become.

*

Liz Marlow is the author of They Become Stars (Slapering Hol Press 2020) and The Ground Never Lets Go, forthcoming from Moon Tide Press in 2026. Additionally, her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Best Small Fictions, The Greensboro Review, The Idaho Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is the editor-in-chief of Minyan Magazine.

Ode to a Fake Plant by Gene Twaronite

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Ode to a Fake Plant

Your perfect leaves
shine back at me
as if freshly washed
by a spring rain
and make me
want to believe
in you
to touch your skin
and feel the pulse
of your artful
unblemished life
on display
in a tidy white pot
you will never outgrow
I do believe
you would thrive
in my sunless bathroom—
a perpetual plant
who never needs
watering or fussing
and would not care
if I live or die

*

Gene Twaronite is a Tucson poet and the author of five poetry collections. His first poetry book, Trash Picker on Mars, was the winner of the 2017 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. His latest poetry collection is Death at the Mall (Kelsay Books). A former Writer-in-Residence for Pima County Public Library, he leads a poetry workshop for University of Arizona OLLI. Follow more of Gene’s writing at: genetwaronitepoet.com & genetwaronite.bsky.social

Ode to the rainstorms that keep my friends close by M.J. Young

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Ode to the rainstorms that keep my friends close

Bless my friends
who, when I came
out to them, said
deadass not because
they didn’t believe
me but because
I had finally said
I’m gay, bless
their hooting after
I confirmed
with my own deadass
even though I don’t
like using profanity
but their happiness
overpowered my guilt
so it was okay
even if
the librarians inside
were wondering why
five young
twenty-somethings
were huddled under
the covered patio
in the butterfly garden
when it’s raining
so thickly, laughing,
but it wasn’t as if it
was raining
when we got there
and when it started
to rain we figured
that it would stop
in a few minutes
because it’s summer
and the rains
are usually frequent
but quick,
spits, as my mother
says, but I don’t
because it reminds
me of having saliva
in my face
and the accompanying
words I’d rather forget
and I’d rather be happy
when thinking about
the little dash
of summer rain
we’re gifted, laugh
with my friends
who were scrambling
to pick up the pieces
of our board game
as the wind tried to
claim them for itself,
me hugging
a copy of The Goldfinch
to my chest
because even though
I wondered
if Tartt would make
Theo canonically gay
or bi or something
before remembering
that this book was popular
so that wouldn’t happen
I still like
her writing style
and besides,
I was with my friends
so who cares about
Theo who doesn’t
even exist
when the wind
made us hysterical
in a giddy way
because in that
moment
the most important thing
was to make sure
that none of
the character
or room or
weapon cards
or score sheets
got too wet or were taken
by the wind
which was a nice worry
to have
compared to everything
it is we were dealing
with on our own,
but under the patio
in the middle of
the butterfly garden
walled in by the rain
that smalled
our worlds,
we could laugh
with each other
and not look past
the problem
of getting out
of the rain unwetted.

*

M.J. Young is a writer and MFA student at Florida International University. His poetry can be found in Vagabond City Lit, Stone of Madness Press, and more. In his free time he enjoys listening to Philip Glass and exploring bookstores. He can be found on Instagram @mjyoungwrites.

Ode to My Spine by Valerie Bacharach

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Ode to My Spine

Vertebrae, pale as winter sun, fixed in place
by screws tiny as a newborn’s fingernail.
Trace its path on the x-ray—
a trail alive with reconnecting protons and electrons.
When I sit in silence, I can hear
the swift flow of blood,
ligaments with their quiet song.
Nerves freed from compression flare
down my leg like last night’s lightning.
Muscles speak again in the body’s code—
contract and release, release and contract.
My spine’s aging column holds me
erect as one foot steps forward,
hovers in space above sidewalk,
breath held tight in lungs, my future a tenuous thing.

*

Valerie Bacharach is a proud member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops. Her book, Last Glimpse, will be published by Broadstone Books. Her chapbook After/Life will be published by Finishing Line Press. Her poem Birthday Portrait, Son, published by the Ilanot Review, was selected for inclusion in 2023 Best Small Fictions. She has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and one Best of the Net.

Two Poems by Olga Dugan

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The Effort

        (for Nicky)

he has to go, take care of his other kids
she throws his jacket at him, ushers
back into the dining room her baby-girl
my great niece in creams, peats, pumpkins
little leafy-gold shoes—an ode to autumn

the Thanksgiving crowd swallows up
the two-year old while she stands apart
watching, burnt-orange and sienna wig
situated neatly, squiggles down her neck
the effort to look pretty exudes
from the doll-baby top that v’s in black
cotton down white see-through seersucker
a proper stop where an under blouse
covers her cleavage

blue, red, yellow, pink-painted horizons
stylize tattered jeans, but hardly swath
tears and rips I see
when congratulations!
for everything to everyone else
move into the living room away from her
and the turkey she’s made with such skill, care
when she looks in the mirror for competence
confidence I know are there
but—eyes lowering, regret aging her face
shoulders heaving, going limp—I know
she has, once more, missed…

still, her effort to look again so not to stymie
all hope, inspires, and mustering up
a compatriot’s faith in her battle of beating
failure with a try, I savor the moment
by looking again, too

*

An Ode of Modern Martyrs

today, our polyphonic voices still
hum Amazing Grace, Alleluia
shout Be Outraged, Pay Attention!
we still stand against what makes
the word “evil” flesh
still sow seeds so love grows
strong enough to drown out hydras
spewing from many heads many heads
hate, mendacity, myth—some grafted
in this law, that praxis, some raised
in monuments of concrete, bronze—

because the legacy of centuries slain
every defender of peace
every “strange fruit” in age, creed
color of martyr has been and is
to bet on our very precious lives
that humanity is more than its troubled history
that the angels of our better natures can discern
tares from wheat, tares even greater angels
will one day gather for burning
that truth, though sometimes hidden
too often slowed to a grind
will nonetheless reign and remain
the arc ever bent toward the good and just

*

Olga Dugan is a Cave Canem poet. Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, her award-winning poems appear in many literary journals and anthologies including The Write Launch, The Sunlight Press, Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith, Ekstasis, The Windhover, The Agape Review, Grand Little Things, Kweli, Emerge, ONE ART, Channel (Ireland), E-Verse Radio, evolution: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku, and the Munster Literature Centre’s Poems from Pandemia – An Anthology.

Two Poems by Nicole Yurcaba

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Ode to a US Army Special Forces Soldier Educating Me about My Homeland’s Literature

Tell me again how you want to fight
Zabuzhko’s sentences into philosophies
bound by proper punctuation. You don’t know
what it is like spending your life lost
in translation, how one language wrestles
a second or third face-down into mud
& forces it to swallow handful after handful–
dirt, grass, gravel, piss, shit, & blood
until you no longer remember
how to say bird or sky or death,
so you could wake up one day to learn
your pregnant cousin who stayed behind
in your family’s homeland burned alive
in a car bombed by occupiers who clip
phone wires & mail them home believing
the internet’s entirety exists within. Tell me
again my homeland’s history, how our nation’s
bard lived in exile, how when my family escaped
we had no home yet home is a mosaic
6,000 miles from where I stand, squinting
in wonder that you think Lemko
is merely a former team mate’s surname.

*

Ode to Drinking at QXT’s in Newark with Franz Kafka

A friend advises I stay wary
of the Existentialists. He knows
damn well I am in too deep
with Kafka, who sits beside
me on a Saturday night,
sipping a cosmopolitan.
Franz, I say. We were born
beautifully dead inside.
Kafka weighs our insignificance
in his right hand.
Your heart weighs an ounce
too little, Franz says. You
are awarded the precipice’s edge.
The DJ spins Blutengel’s
“Forever Young.” My phone
Buzzes–a message from my friend:
Nikola, I wish you didn’t think
of yourself as other. Kafka’s drink
trembles in his hand. He leans
into me, his lips hot on my ear.
His finger’s cold sinks through
my fishnets. We spend too much
time together, Franz states.
Another night, and I may not
be able to keep myself
from pushing you. I take
Kafka’s hand, lead him
to the dancefloor, place his hands
on my chest. His fingers
tap      tap      tap     
the bass rhythm
the policy of truth
known only by the darkness
thrumming beneath my bodice’s ties.

*

Nicole Yurcaba (Ukrainian: Нікола Юрцаба–Nikola Yurtsaba) is a Ukrainian American poet and essayist. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Lindenwood Review, Whiskey Island, Raven Chronicles, West Trade Review, Appalachian Heritage, North of Oxford, and many other online and print journals. Nicole holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University. Nicole teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University and is a guest book reviewer for Sage Cigarettes, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, and The Southern Review of Books.

Two Poems by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

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Ode to the Bic Lighter

My first lighter I found in a parking lot—
a smooth red plastic tube that fit
in my pocket. I knew playing with fire
was dangerous. I knew I wanted
to learn how. I remember trying again
and again to get the right purchase
with my thumb on the serrated sparkwheel.
I rolled and rolled until my skin was raw,
until at last the brief flame sputtered then died.
It wasn’t long before it came second nature—
the smooth flick needed to produce a spark,
the slight pressure on the red tongue
to maintain steady flame.
I learned how it burns
to be lit up too long,
but once you know how to make light,
how easy it is to bring it with you
everywhere you go.

*

Small Hope

Nudged by hope
the heart rises
from exhaustion.

It’s like the great blue heron
I saw this morning
flying up from a wasteland

on broad gray wings
with strong, slow beats
for a moment charged

with grace
before—did you
see this, heart?—

it chose to land again,
bringing all its beauty
to the desolate place.

*

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer co-hosts Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process. She also co-hosts Telluride’s Talking Gourds Poetry Club and is co-founder of Secret Agents of Change. She teaches poetry for mindfulness retreats, women’s retreats, scientists, hospice and more. Her poetry has appeared in O Magazine, on A Prairie Home Companion, in Rattle.com and in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. Her most recent collection, Hush, won the Halcyon Prize. She is often found in the kitchen baking with her teenage children. One word mantra: Adjust. https://wordwoman.com/