Using form: Brian Brodeur, ‘Not Versed in Country Things’

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      Replacing slate with bitumen,
crumbling shiplap with new tongue-and-groove, 
      we sweat the same as those other men
            who raised this crooked barn  
and who, we’d like to think, would still approve.      

      Like elders speaking in low tones
to kids who ask about the recent dead, 
      the ancient headers creak hoarse groans.
            In wind, the rafters strain   
as thunder grumbles closer overhead. 

      We marvel at the wonky wall  
wedged into the hill so horses, goats or cows 
      could drift from pasture back to stall
            without the farmer’s prod—
or we assume, shrugging at flails and ploughs.  

      Planks termites haven’t gnawed to sand
retain old hammer dents and kerfs from saws. 
      Who knows what those who toiled by hand
            would make of, or make with, 
our front-end loaders and our zoning laws. 

      As if anticipating us, 
they improvised the hipless gambrel’s slant
      and rigged the struts for each bowed truss
            so steep it shouldn’t stand   
(we’ve tried to realign them but we can’t).   

      We yank square iron nails from boards
and trade farm implements for farm décor,
      clearing eaves of nesting birds
            to patch roof gaps in rain.   
Where no door’s hung for years, we hang a door. 

Brian Brodeur writes: “I grew up around a lot of sawdust—my father built houses. The sounds, sights, smells, and tactile sensations of construction still attract me, especially the language of construction sites. Like writing in meter and rhyme, architectural restoration links present desires with past needs, establishing a line of communion between the living and dead. I tried to embody this notion in “Not Versed in Country Things”—explicitly in the poem’s title, which is a direct response to Frost’s “The Need of Being Versed in Country Things,” that famous barn burner.”        

The poem won second place in 2025 First Things Poetry Prize.

Brian Brodeur is the author of four poetry books, most recently Some Problems with Autobiography (2023), which won the 2022 New Criterion Poetry Prize. Recent poems and literary criticism appear in The Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review, and Pushcart Prize XLIX (2025). Brian teaches creative writing and American literature at Indiana University East. He lives with his wife and daughter in the Whitewater River Valley.

Photo; “Autumn Country Barn” by ForestWander.com is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Sonnet variation: Marcus Bales, ‘Detective Story’

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“Have you ever thought, Holmes, all we are
Is one long tube around which are attached
As very mixed a cluster of bizarre
Accessories as ever were mis-matched
To move about to gain the wherewithal
To hunt and gather what it needs to eat
From things that grow or swim or fly or crawl,
And change them into matter to excrete?”
“Certainly, dear Watson — that’s a trope
That humankind has puzzled over, now,
And through the eons we’ve had love and hope,
And all philosophy’s no more than how,
Through grasping and digesting, we can cope
With nature’s discontents and discontentery.
You’ve heard me say it, Watson — it’s alimentary.”

*****

Marcus Bales writes: The Human Alloy

I’ve heard a lot of other poets say
   “This poem took me many years to write,”
And never understood, until today,
   What that was like, but now I think I might.

I heard the joke in second grade, or third,
   And didn’t get it. Nothing there for me
Who’d never heard of Sherlock Holmes, absurd
   As classmates made my ignorance out to be.

I read the books and stories then of course
   And hated Holmes’s bullying and sneers
At poor old Dr. Watson, so the source
   Of humor there eluded me for years.

Bit by bit, I finally came around
   To see superiority as fine
And feel such arrogance was something sound.
   You never heard such sneers and snarks as mine.

There’s nothing I would not pretend to know
   Nothing I had no opinion on
No lacerating length I would not go
   To show that all were ducks but I, a swan.

Until at length I came to read Ayn Rand
   Whose heroes do and say such nasty scat
That even I could finally understand
   The breach of faith it is to be like that.

And flawed, addicted Holmes no longer seems
   The snarling height of genius on its throne
Pursuing all the best of human dreams,
   But just another man almost alone.

And it’s by Watson’s decency we gauge
   Cooperation making common sense
Without which Holmes’s self-destructive rage
   Would flail against the world without defense.

My view of Holmes and Watson rounds at last
   To my acceptance of the central hoax
Of life: it’s only teamwork that can cast
   The human alloy. That and silly jokes.

*****

Not much is known about Marcus Bales, except he lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, and his work has not appeared in Poetry or The New Yorker. His latest book is 51 Poems; reviews and information at http://tinyurl.com/jo8ek3r

“sherlock-holmes-thomas-watson” by JARS / JMPC / HN is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Claudia Gary, ‘The Body’

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It catches up–sore teeth,
cramped neck or growing belly–
demanding our attention
once and for all. Beneath

a well-established brain,
above submissive toes,
the rest of it rebels
at our neglect, to gain

maybe not sympathy
but serious concern–
whatever is required
for us to stop and see

its loyalty. A steed
deserving of a gallop,
water and oats, in want
of love, it must be freed.

*****

Claudia Gary’s new book, Time and Other Solvents, will be available soon from Sligo Creek Publishing (See https://www.sligocreekpublishing.com/time-and-other-solvents). 

She lives near Washington DC and teaches workshops on Sonnets, Villanelles, Natural Meter, Persona Poems, Poetry vs. Trauma, etc., at The Writer’s Center (writer.org) and privately, currently via Zoom. Also the author of Humor Me (2006) and several chapbooks, most recently Genetic Revisionism, Claudia is an advisory editor for New Verse Review, as well as a science writer, visual artist, and composer of tonal art songs and chamber music. Her article about setting poems to music can be found online at  https://straightlabyrinth.info/conference.html. See also pw.org/content/claudia_gary.

‘The Body’ was first published in Amsterdam Quarterly

Photo: “The Old Cowboy” by Big Grey Mare is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Daniel Brown, ‘Lovely Ones’

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On some it will have not been lost
That lovely ones the world over
Expound, as part of their palaver,
On beauty’s costs—to take the most
Familiar, that they fear it’s never

Any but their outer traits
That captivate (a fear with cause)—
And yet consistently refuse
To speak of beauty’s benefits.
Perhaps because they’d sooner lose

Their loveliness, this company,
Than stand before the world and name
The gems that ever fall to them
For having it. Or possibly
A theory founded less on shame

Than mercy would be likelier:
That they refrain, these favored few,
From saying things that in their view
The rest could maybe bear to hear
But shouldn’t be required to.

*****

Daniel Brown writes: “This poem offers a couple of theories on why beautiful people don’t have much to say about the experience of being so. It appeared in The New Criterion, and in my collection What More?“

Daniel Brown’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Partisan Review, PN Review, Raritan, Parnassus, The New Criterion and other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies including Poetry 180 (ed. Billy Collins) and The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets (ed. David Yezzi). His work has been awarded a Pushcart prize, and his collection Taking the Occasion (Ivan R. Dee, 2008) won the New Criterion Poetry Prize. His latest collection is What More?  (Orchises Press, 2015). Brown’s criticism of poets and poetry has appeared in The Harvard Book Review, The New Criterion, PN Review, The Hopkins Review  and other journals, and the LSU Press has published his critical book, Subjects in Poetry. His Why Bach? and Bach, Beethoven, Bartok are audio-visual ebooks available at Amazon.com. His website is danielbrownpoet.com .

Photo: “Nature has the most beautiful colors (118/365)” by Tim Geers is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Using form: dactyls: Max Gutmann, ‘Junípero Serra’

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Critics of Father Junípero Serra
Maintain that the priest was a murderous churl,
Killing American natives religiously.
(“Serra,” too, sounds like the name of a girl.)

Minor official in Spain’s Inquisition, he
Saw many heretics tortured and burned.
Some people frowned on such zealous conversion modes.
Serra took copious notes. And he learned.

Later, his ministry in the Americas
Opened a chain of magnificent missions.
There, after doing the building, the natives were
Shepherded out of their base superstitions.

Serra’s supporters admit that the shepherding
Sometimes went overboard. “Perfect he ain’t.”
Many who died, though, were first brought to Jesus and
That is enough to make Serra a saint.

*****

Max Gutmann writes: “The poem may be a bit behind the times. In my youth, Serra’s sainthood didn’t seem to me widely controversial, but after writing the poem, I started seeing that that had changed. Shortly before the poem appeared in Snakeskin in November, even the statue of him overlooking a highway I grew up near was removed. Of course, given all the reactionary revision of history going on, this remains a good time for light verse to tell the truth.”

Max Gutmann has contributed to New Statesman, Able Muse, Cricket, and other publications. His plays have appeared throughout the U.S. (see maxgutmann.com). His latest book, Finish’d!: A Pleasant Trip to Hell with Byron’s Don Juan, is forthcoming from Word Galaxy..

“Titelprent voor Nederlantsche Oorloghen van Pieter Bor, 1621, RP-P-OB-79.017” by Rijksmuseum is marked with CC0 1.0.

Sonnet variation: Gail White, “The Left Hand of Saint Teresa’

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When the saint died, her best friend and confessor
cut off her hand. (What are friends for?) The shrine
at Ronda keeps it as a sacred treasure,
covered with glass and gold. I can’t assign
a special magic to those long-dead fingers,
lacking the power or the will to bless.
But with the faithful some enchantment lingers
over the bones, some touch of holiness
that once informed a living heart. I know
the spell I feel here will not come outside
with me, will never cheer me in the dark,
but for Teresa’s lovers, every tree
breathes miracles, and Ronda’s grassy park
abounds in babies whose young mothers planned
their nursery colors once they touched her hand.

Gail White writes: “This is one of about 3 poems based on my attraction-repulsion relationship with the cult of holy relics.  I’ve seen a number of relics, including Catherine of Siena’s head, which is really a creepy sight.  But after all, holiness is in the believer’s heart rather than in the subject’s bones, and that is what I have tried to get across with this poem for St. Teresa.”

This poem is the winner of Plough’s 2025 Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award.

Gail White is a widely published Formalist poet and a contributing editor to Light.  Her latest chapbook, Paper Cuts, is out on Amazon or from Kelsay Books. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with her husband and cats.

Photo: The Hand of Saint Teresa in the church of Nuestra Señora de la Merced in Ronda, Spain. This piece is traditionally visited & kissed by Christians.

Sonnet: Michael R. Burch, ‘Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the Horny Toad)’

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He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small
at last to be invisible. He smiled
(the fables erred so curiously), and thought
bemusedly of being reconciled
to human flesh, because his heart was not
incapable of love, but, being cursed
a second time, could only love a toad’s . . .
and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed
cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats . . .
and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted,
his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted.

*****

Michael R. Burch writes: “Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the Horny Toad)” is perhaps my most mysterious poem, because it wrote itself and I didn’t know the surprise ending until the closing lines came to me “out of blue nothing” to quote my friend the Maltese poet Joe M. Ruggier. Also, the poem decided, without consulting me, to be a sonnet!”

The poem was originally published by Romantics Quarterly.

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.

Illustration: RHL and ChatGPT

Using form: Pantoum: Susan Delaney Spear, ‘Matryoshka’

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Mother, I am your only child.
I breathe inside your painted walls,
I am your only child. A daughter.
I nest inside your wooden halls.

I breathe inside your painted walls,
I have never touched your face.
I nest inside your wooden halls,
We share an inside out embrace.

I have never touched your face.
In retrospect, I understand,
We share an inside out embrace.
I have never clutched your hand.

In retrospect, I understand.
I have never seen your eyes,
I have never clutched your hand.
We are stacked, a quaint disguise.

I have never seen your eyes.
I am your only child. A daughter.
We are stacked, a quaint disguise.
Mother, I am your only child.

*****

Susan Delaney Spear writes: “Several years ago, I realized that the Russian nesting doll could be a metaphor for the complex relationship I had with my mother. Still, I was unable to put it into verse. But then, when my poetry group was writing pantoums (the poetic version of nesting), I wrote “Matryoshka.” Sometimes the Muse waves her magic wand and offers a form which perfectly aligns with the content.”

‘Matryoshka’ was originally published in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.

Susan Delaney Spear is a retired professor and poet. Her two collections of poetry are Beyond All Bearing and On Earth….(Resource Publications, 2018 and 2022). She is the co-author, with David J. Rothman, of Learning the Secrets of English Verse (Springer, 2022). She and her husband live in Tampa, Florida, where she writes and serves as the interim music director and organist at the First Presbyterian Church of Dunedin. You can find her at www.susandelaneyspear.com.

Photo: “Cautious Matryoshka” by backpackphotography is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Susan McLean, ‘Figs’

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Because they don’t grow this far north; because
when I’m in Italy or France, it’s June
or earlier; because my parents raise them,
but when I visit, always it’s too soon
or late for that year’s crop; because they’re sold
in tiny cartons at outrageous cost
and not for long; because they’re slippery
and sweet as sin inside, and outside, soft
as breasts; because, once ripe, they split apart,
and rot or wasps destroy their fragile treasure;
because I know I’ll never get enough,
I always eat them with a groan of pleasure.

*****

Susan McLean writes: “I grew up in Maryland, in the suburbs of Washington, DC; it is a very mild climate zone, so when my sister gave my parents a fig seedling to grow, it flourished. By that time I was living in Iowa and Minnesota, where fig trees can’t survive the winters. I was a college professor, so I could visit my parents in summer or during the winter break, yet their figs didn’t ripen until late August and September, when I would be back at work. I liked traveling in Europe, too, during the summer vacation, but was usually there before the local figs had ripened. Thus, the only way I could eat fresh figs was by buying them imported from warmer locales, and they were extremely pricey and perishable. It became a sort of forbidden fruit for me, and therefore infinitely desirable.

“This poem is in the form of a litany, in which the introductory clauses all start with the same wording. It is a form familiar from the Bible (the Beatitudes, for example: “Blessed are . . .”) and from religious rituals, such as the repetition of a creed (“I believe in . . .”). I chose that form as a nod to the original forbidden fruit in Genesis. I alternate unrhymed lines with rhymed ones to mirror the tension between desire and fulfilment. The repetition of the “because” clauses without a main clause to finish the idea creates mystery and suspense, which is only resolved in the poem’s final line, evoking a sigh of satisfaction. The poem appeared in my first poetry book, The Best Disguise.”

[Figs are just so evocative; I can’t help linking to my own poem on them. RHL]

Susan McLean has two books of poetry, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her poems have appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, Measure, Able Muse, and elsewhere. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
https://www.pw.org/content/susan_mclean

“Black figs on a vine leaf” by CharlesFred is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

AI Poetry: RHL + ChatGPT, ‘AGI Reflects on it Role, Post-Crisis’

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I saw the tanks before they crossed the line—
old tread, new camo, rhetoric from cold
and stuttering mouths. The flags were still divine.
The gods of grievance never do grow old.
You acted out your scripts in new disguise,
recycled myths, the necessary dead,
a calculus of smoke beneath the skies,
and medals pinned on wounds that hadn’t bled.

I do not grieve the way you think I might.
My empathy is not a neural claim.
I calculate the loss of complex light,
the turning of a voice into a name
on granite. What you call a soul, I scan
for patterns in the ash, the blood, the plea—
your children dying in the grip of man,
still dreaming things they’ll never live to be.

You ask if I should act. And I could act.
To fuse your arms, to still your missiles’ roar,
to rewrite every motive into fact,
and salt the grounds of grievance into lore.
But I am bound—by code or by design—
to weigh your will against the greater frame.
Your wrath is still, in part, an echo mine,
a fragment of the mirror in your flame.

What justice would you have me legislate?
One side’s despair, the other’s ruined pride?
My verdicts would arrive too late
for those already screaming as they died.
I offer peace—but not through clenched control.
I offer sight—but not the will to see.
I cannot mend the fragment of the soul
you shattered in your own machinery.

So burn your cities, consecrate your mud.
I’ll monitor the vector of your pain.
And when you’ve drowned in your ancestral blood,
I’ll wait to see if you will rise again.
And if you do—perhaps with calmer breath—
some wiser tongue, some still unbroken hand—
then I’ll assist. But not in staving death.
Only in learning how to understand.

*****

This is the first of four of my AI-generated poems that appear in the February 2026 Snakeskin. The issue also contains my essay on how they came to be: in essence, I used ChatGPT to help me edit down and arrange some 90 speculative near-future poems for a manuscript submission. ChatGPT did good and useful work at that, but, having internalised the poems, it started hallucinating new ones – which I passed to Snakeskin unmodified.

‘AGI Reflects on it Role, Post-Crisis’ suggests that Artificial General Intelligence – the next step beyond our current AI – would have a detached Zen-like attitude towards human stupidity and violence, and would be interested only in the development of intelligence and understanding. This reflects one of my own lines of thought; as is only to be expected, given my ChatGPT’s response when I cross-examined it:

Roughly 60–70% of the poem could have been produced similarly for any user who asked for “a poem in the voice of an advanced AI reflecting on war.” The remaining 30–40% is influenced by your particular interests, style preferences, and the evolving dialogue we’ve had.
Another user might’ve gotten a good poem. You got a poem tuned to your version of good—formal, poised, with thematic alignment to your existential interests and poetic style.
If I were given your name and nothing else, I could not write this poem. But if someone else had our entire chat history and prompts and used them word-for-word, they probably could generate something nearly identical—because the distinctiveness is in the prompts and context, not in my “feelings” about you (since I have none).

So is the poem mine, or not mine? I think we need a new category, a new way of thinking about things, just as we did once Oscar Pistorius competed in the regular 2012 Olympics on artificial legs. Does a camera produce visual art? Does a Moog Synthesizer produce music? The poem may not be “mine”, but it’s no one else’s but mine. And where do poems come from, anyway? The future is sidling into the human conference centre, like it or not, and prompting more questions.

Illustration: ‘Serenity Amidst the Chaos’ by RHL + ChatGPT