is fashioned by a deeper me, a me that’s crafted deeper still,
where things like impulse, taste, and will derive, a dimly curtained core of which I fathom little more
than that I fathom little, and that I will never understand, unfairly blank, unfinely bleak,
a dark obstruction as I seek a fuller understanding of
the self I am and try to love.
*****
Max Gutmann writes: “”The Self” strikes me as a strong piece of light verse, light because it’s almost entirely intellectual.It relies on form: its single-sentence, mirror-image construction in which the beginning and end of each half reflect (on) the end and beginning of the other.”
Max Gutmann has contributed to dozens of publications including New Statesman, Able Muse, and Cricket. His plays have appeared throughout the U.S. and have been well-reviewed (see maxgutmann.com). His book There Was a Young Girl from Verona sold several copies. Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, A WordPress.com Website.
I. You slow it down and speak the speech from home As if admitting no impediments, No infectious thoughts into your room, No intrusions, anxious sentiments, Just cadences of comfort from your couch. As close as that. Yet you are far enough To thwart contamination borne of touch, Random droplets in the air, a cough. Every day I come to sit with you To put this ghastly time and place aside, Inject your native lightness here anew Into my thoughts of those who may have died, Or may be dying, or contaminate Those in the street who can’t self-isolate. II. Summoning the bard into your lungs Might be your day’s initial antidote Against the plague. Then, climbing up the rungs To the apex of the ague in the throat Of your talent, holding his lines there As if to muster powder for a shot At wiping out the virus with a prayer Or spell enacted in a sacred spot, You step into the spirit of the thing. You’ve got us where you want, and we’ve got you, Artful doctor. You begin to sing. We feel as if we just might make it through. We step into your seance every day. You gesture, and the plague has gone away.
*****
David M. Katz writes: “These two poems are part of “These Masks,” a “diary” of 20 Shakespearean sonnets I wrote from March to May 2020, during the very start of the pandemic. When I began, I resolved to read one of Shakespeare’s sonnets a day, along with Helen Vendler’s commentary on it in her book, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and then write a sonnet responding to what was happening in the world. Before I wrote the sonnets published here (#s 4 and 5 in the sequence) I found that the great actor Patrick Stewart had begun reading a Shakespeare sonnet a day online from his home. I had previously found Stewart’s 1995 performance in the role of Prospero in The Tempest in New York’s Central Park an inspiration to me poetically and, now, there he was, a bright light during the dark days of the plague, reading to us intimately, every day. The sonnets are in praise of that great joy.”
The ‘Sonnets for Patrick Stewart’ were first published in the Sonnet Scroll of The Poetry Porch.
David M. Katz is the author of five books of poetry—The Biographer, In Praise of Manhattan, Stanzas on Oz, and Claims of Home, all published by Dos Madres Press, and The Warrior in the Forest (House of Keys). Poems of his have appeared in Able Muse, Poetry, The Paris Review, The Hudson Review, and THINK. He is a co-host of the Morningside Poetry Series in Manhattan and posts frequently on his website, The David M. Katz Poetry Blog. He recently starred in Gully’s Paradise, a feature-length film by Shalom Gorewitz.
Photo: ‘Patrick Stewart Performs the Complete Sonnets of William Shakespeare’ is an unabridged audio book from Simon & Schuster.
An email enquiry that I received about formal-only poetry magazines makes me think I should update my resources list with that focus.
Able Muse – US magazine and press; website is not always completely current Asses of Parnassus – Canada: short, witty, formal poems, snarky is fine, hosted on Tumblr. Blue Unicorn – US: print only; prefers formal but will take other work Chained Muse – US: prefers classical themes. Dodgy political bias Crab Orchard Review – US Extreme Formal series of anthologies from Rhizome Press. US. Grand Little Things – US: “Returning versification to verse” Light – US: large biannual issue, also the home of weekly topical light verse Lighten Up Online (LUPO) – UK: light formal verse, quarterly Lyric – US: “Founded in 1921, The Lyric is the oldest magazine in North America in continuous publication devoted to traditional poetry.” Lyrical, positive… flowers and countryside. New Verse Review – US Poetry Porch – US: lyrical Pulsebeat Poetry Journal – US Road Not Taken: The Journal of Formal Poetry – US: hard to find online because of its name, but a good small publication for formal and semi-formal verse. Snakeskin – UK: probably the longest-established poetry zine in the world; no longer 100% formal, but still a great favourite. Sonnet Scroll – US: a sonnet-specialized alcove on the Poetry Porch Sonneteer – US: substack emails The HyperTexts (THT) – US: an enormous assemblage of verse from all times and places; the editor’s personal preference for formal and leftist verse doesn’t rule out selections by Walt Whitman or Ronald Reagan! The works are mostly republications, but if you have a body of strong work the editor may be interested in creating a page for you. Think – US Verse-Virtual – US: a monthly publication for a caring community of poets and finally: Wergle-Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, No Fee – US: $3,750 in prize money
Once when her kisses were fire incarnate and left in their imprint bright lipstick, and flame, when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes, leaving me listlessly sighing her name …
Once when her breasts were as pale, as beguiling, as wan rivers of sand shedding heat like a mist, when her words would at times softly, mildly rebuke me all the while as her lips did more wildly insist …
Once when the thought of her echoed and whispered through vast wastelands of need like a Bedouin chant, I ached for the touch of her lips with such longing that I vowed all my former vows to recant …
Once, only once, something bloomed, of a desiccate seed— this implausible blossom her wild rains of kisses decreed.
*****
Michael R. Burch writes: “Once” was submitted to The Lyric in 1999, and elicited these comments from editor Jean Mellichamp Milliken: “. . . I actually loved “Once” (better than ‘Twice,’ even), but you need a resolution—it leaves the reader hanging . . . please, please finish it. It’s such a wonderful, fiery, lyrical piece!” The original poem was intended to leave the reader hanging. There was no resolution at the time it was written. The challenge of writing an ending couplet was intriguing, however, and “Once” was accepted (in its revised form with an ending couplet) and appeared in The Lyric along with “At Once,” “Twice” and “The Leveler.”
Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into 23 languages, incorporated into three plays and four operas, and set to music, from swamp blues to classical, 86 times by composers.
The attic, once unreachable, taboo in childhood, is a temple laid to waste. I climb the ladder, face the overdue clear-out of debris with a mild distaste. A View-Master, kaleidoscope, a kite, a rocking-horse in much need of repair, a reel-to-reel recorder I’d recite poems into as though speaking them ‘on air’. I dust them off, then pack them in a case and glimpse in a chipped mirror on a shelf, the look of an intruder on his face, a fellow who can only be myself, the last one left, unsportingly miscast as tomb-raider, despoiler of the past.
*****
‘The Attic’ was first published in a set of ten semi-autobiographical poems in The High Window, where Richard Fleming was the Featured Poet.
Richard Fleming is an Irish-born poet and humorist based in Guernsey, a Channel Island between Britain and France. Widely regarded as one of the island’s foremost literary voices, his versatile work blends lyricism, sharp wit, emotional depth, and a strong sense of place. Drawing from his Northern Irish roots and adopted home, his poetry and prose explore love, loss, nostalgia, identity, and modern life. Collections include Strange Journey (2012), held in the National Poetry Library, and Stone Witness (Blue Ormer) featuring the BBC-commissioned title poem. His work can be found on Facebook https://www.facebook.com richard.fleming.92102564/ or Bard at Bay www.redhandwriter.blogspot.com
Although we came in hopes to find the most amazing staging yet, the final act still filled the mind with all the trappings of regret. Although the happy lovers met with joyous singing – hers and his – we’ve seen from Carmen to Cosette how sad the ending always is.
Why do we cry for womankind, for Tosca on the parapet, for Butterfly, her love declined, for Manon and for Juliet? Haven’t we seen the sweetest pet fall victim to the wily Wiz? Haven’t we seen – from death to debt – how sad the ending always is?
The villain always lurks behind the arras, holding out the net that will entrap the golden hind, the mark of arrows ready set. At first we didn’t feel the threat; we never thought our hopes a chiz, But now we’ve learned our alphabet: How sad the ending always is!
But pour champagne, my friends, and let the golden bubbles rise and fizz! For just a moment we’ll forget how sad the ending always is.
*****
Gail White writes: “It was Barbara Loots who called my attention to the fact that the plots of many operas could end with the words “and then she dies.” Being an opera heroine is almost always fatal. My first poem on this theme was a short one, “Opera Rondeau”. Then it occurred to me that the same idea would support a ballade. Writing this was fun, as finding enough rhymes for “is” pushed me into the realm of slang. And, of course, life is indeed a process of finding happy distractions from an inevitable tragic ending.”
Gail White is a widely published Formalist poet and a contributing editor to Light. Her new chapbook, Paper Cuts, is out on Amazon or from Kelsay Books. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with her husband and cats.
Even my ordinarily blank lawn is flashing this July—no bottle rocket or Catherine wheel could match the pleasant shock it gives me each time a tiny lamp turns on to help a bachelor find a blinding date. The bugs can’t read, of course, about pollution and other woes that might spell dissolution for all their kind, but as they mate and mate I like to think they somehow know what’s looming, deep in their chitin—that their sudden blooming is nature’s way of putting up a fight, and that these living fireworks before us can make us hear, and heed, a timely chorus: When darkness threatens you, crank up your light.
*****
Melissa Balmain writes: “For some reason, I’ve written a lot of bug poems lately. And I’m starting to suspect this has given insects the wrong idea about me. Memo to the ants infesting my kitchen: if you think my plans for you involve writing an ode, think again.”
Melissa Balmain edits Light, North America’s longest-running journal of comic verse, and teaches writing at the University of Rochester. Her poems and/or prose have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Ecotone, The Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Nimrod, Poetry Daily, and Rattle. Her latest book of poetry is Satan Talks to His Therapist (Paul Dry Books).
Sweetheart, let me tell ya I don’t need a Cinderella, no coach from lowly pumpkin or fairy godmother will do,
Rapunzel’s hair from prison tower, no magic lamp or ring of power and I don’t agree it’s freedom having nothing left to lose,
I know that I’m not much but if you think that I’m enough then we’ll be happy ever after, writing our story me and you
we can steer clear of poisoned apples, fight the dragons, choose our battles, but sweetheart, what kind of a halfwit goes out dancing in glass shoes?
*****
Lindsay McLeod writes: “I wrote this one years ago, for the sweetest person I’ve ever met, after promising that I would write her a poem every week. In the end they filled a book, writing just shy of a hundred for her.”
Lindsay McLeod lives by the Port in South Australia where he is driven by his cattle dog, Mary. Lindsay’s most recently published work can be found in Rat’s Ass Review, Snakeskin, and Meniscus. Currently, he is said to be considering a life of crime to support his poetry habit.
Her cashmere sweater, navy blue, was passed to me when Mother died. Though soft and warm, with little wear, it has a hole that needs repair. Mending it from the other side, I spot another, then a few. I hold the sweater to the light. Small holes shine out like stars at night.
From her I learned this homely art, as well as not to toss or waste what might be saved. I thread and sew and knot and thread again. Although I salvage what the moths defaced, I cannot patch my threadbare heart, for I can never, never, never suture what is gone forever.
*****
Susan McLean writes: “I got the idea for this poem and began writing it in my head as I was mending the sweater, and since, as I mention, the mending took quite a while, I had several lines completed before I was done with the sewing. The rhyme scheme, ABCCBADD, rather mimics the activity of closing up a hole and tying off the thread with the final couplet, though that was not something I was conscious of as I was writing it. My unconscious does its own thing while my conscious mind struggles with finding what to say. However, I was quite conscious of echoing Lear’s lament for Cordelia in the repeated “never, never, never” of the next-to-last line. That repetition and negation have always struck me as being the epitome of grief.”
‘Mending’ was first published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.
Susan McLean has three books of poetry: The Best Disguise, The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and her latest, Daylight Losing Time (Able Muse, 2026). She had also published a book of translations of Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her poems have appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, Crab Orchard Review, Able Muse, and elsewhere. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
It’s six a.m. We’re swarming up a drain. Someone up the front knows what we’re doing. Me and Tich are flying up the flueing. Snap! My leg falls off. You can’t complain: you can’t expect an army on the trail of half a dog and sugar-sick to stop and say Oh dear, Goodbye. I squirm and flop along the gutter’s edge. A wizened snail laced up in cobwebs grins across the slime. I hear a million footsteps fading. Tich! The sun smacks like a snare-drum. Life’s a bitch. My head goes dry. I’m running out of Time. I climb a twig to face the Ant Unknown. We have to face our last few pricks alone.
*****
John Gallas writes: “Ascension: a slightly cruel Proverb to modern ears, but of course often the case as we all bustle forwards in life. The sad demise of this Ant is done in a cod-Existential drama, and tries to mix some black humour with the Final Stand (even with a leg missing). The also-once-left-behind snail a warning to us all. Who knows how Ants talk, but they are sociable, so …”
Ascension Sonnet is one of the 100 sonnets collected in The Coalville Divan (part of John Gallas’ ‘Star City’ from Carcanet), which use as their beginnings Persian Proverbs from the Wisdom of the East series by L.P. Elwell-Sutton.
John Gallas, Aotearoa/NZ poet, published mostly by Carcanet. Saxonship Poet (see www.saxonship.org), Fellow of the English Association, St Magnus Festival Orkney Poet, librettist, translator and biker. 2025 Midlands Writing Prize winner. Presently living in Markfield, Leicestershire. Website is www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk which has a featured Poem of the Month, complete book list, links and news.
Form in Formless Times 