Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight. My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my female Sultan, The most beautiful among the beautiful… My springtime, my merry-faced love, my daytime, my sweetheart, laughing leaf… My plants, my sweet, my rose, the one only who does not distress me in this world… My Istanbul, my Caraman, the earth of my Anatolia My Badakhshan, my Baghdad, my Khorasan My woman of the beautiful hair, my love of the slanted brow, my love of eyes full of mischief… I’ll sing your praises always I, lover of the tormented heart, Muhibbi of the eyes full of tears, I am happy.
*****
Suleiman the First, born in 1494, was Ottoman emperor from 1520 to 1566. Known to his subjects as The Lawgiver from his extensive reforms of education, society, taxation and criminal law, he was known in the West as The Magnificent for his court surpassing Europeans in grandeur. He formed an alliance with the French against the Hapsburgs, extended the empire in the Balkans and North Africa, and broke with tradition by marrying a Ukrainian or possibly Polish slave from his harem: Roxelana, or Hürrem, the mother of his successor Selim the Second. Under the pen name Muhibbi, he wrote love poems for Roxelana.
Painting: Attributed to Anton Hickel (1745-1798), Roxelana and Suleiman the Magnificent
Our mother was a mousetrap under the stairs. She used as bait the things she never said. We’d hear a snap and find three silver hairs in an old passport, pinned like something dead.
Our father was an occupying force in a town of collaborators. Good behavior meant not signaling in morse enemy troops camped in a distant wood.
Our parents paced—her mind a radio playing the classic dirges until dawn, his heart a spider web spun in the snow catching the dusk sun before it was gone.
For supper, they would feed us each a crumb of moonlight. Our house was a moving train. Evenings they danced in a delirium of silence, drunk on a thimbleful of rain.
*****
Morri Creech writes: “I don’t really have comments for this poem. The first line came to me, and the rest of the poem found its way as I continued to search for context to support that sentence. I didn’t know what I was going to say until I was saying it.”
Morri Creech is the author of five collections of poetry: Paper Cathedrals (Kent State U P, 2001), which received the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize; Field Knowledge (Waywiser, 2006), which received the Anthony Hecht Poetry prize and was nominated for both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Poet’s Prize; The Sleep of Reason (Waywiser, March 2013), a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize; Blue Rooms (Waywiser, October 2018); and, most recently, The Sentence (LSUP, September 2023). A recipient of NEA and Ruth Lilly Fellowships, as well as grants from the North Carolina and Louisiana Arts councils, he is the Writer in Residence at Queens University of Charlotte, where he teaches courses in both the undergraduate creative writing program and in the low residency M.F.A. program. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with the novelist Sarah Creech.
Odysseus, the master home again after long wandering strange lands and seas, contending twenty years with monsters, men, and gods, observed his dog beset with fleas, decrepit, curled upon a pile of dung, ignored, abandoned by a careless world.
Thus lay Argos. Swarms of flies buzzed and swirled around his wasted body. His head hung. His legs lacked strength to stand. But that one voice he knew. A scent he’d always recognize. The man, to guard his beggarly disguise, withheld all signs of care. He had no choice.
The dog’s ears pricked. He feebly wagged his tail. Then knowing that his master had returned he died. Odysseus shed hidden tears. He dared not stroke the dog. Within he burned. This final comrade lost to no avail, and lost forever all those missing years.
***** Richard Meyer writes: “After many decades, I’m reading The Odyssey again, the highly acclaimed translation by Robert Fitzgerald (1961). It won major awards and is considered a classic. Selections from the Fitzgerald translation were in high school English textbooks for years, including the one I used when teaching. I was prompted to revisit The Odyssey after seeing Christopher Nolan’s much talked about recent film adaptation of the ancient epic. The scene with Odysseus and his old dog Argos is one of the well-known episodes in The Odyssey, and a few days ago I had the notion to condense the scene into a modern poem. Most of my poems are written in the new formalism style, using rhyme, meter, and the traditional tools of poetry. In ‘Argos’ I use an irregular rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter meter, with occasional metrical variations for effect.”
‘Argos’ was first published in Facebook.
Richard Meyer, a former English and humanities teacher, lives in Mankato, MN. His book of poems Orbital Paths was a silver medalist winner in the 2016 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards. He was awarded the 2012 Robert Frost Farm Prize for his poem “Fieldstone.” His poetry has appeared in a variety of print and online journals and has also received top honors several times in the Great River Shakespeare Festival sonnet contest. He is also the author of Wise Heart, a memoir of his mother Gert who was born in poverty, came of age during the Great Depression, enlisted in the army during World War II, served overseas, achieved the rank of first sergeant, and was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service performed during the Battle of the Bulge. Richard’s most recent book is Stumbling Onward, a collection of new and selected poems – and a 2026 revision contains over 50 new poems. His books are available on Amazon.
Awakening alone, Proceeding on my own To negotiate the day As I’d done too long to say—
Now that I had a lover That life of mine was over. My next would be with her, And doubtless happier—
Though fondness, truth to tell, Inflected my farewell To the solitude that I Had been companioned by.
*****
Daniel Brown writes: “I’d like to think some readers will identify with the sentiment expressed here. The poem 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 .
Like an obsequious waiter runs the attendant Equator round the fat gut of our obscenely glutted world. This great gobbed globe of God’s glory, spat by Him into space and spinning in spirals and falling forever further from Faith’s Face.
*****
A religious poem? I don’t know, I like the sound of it though. Anyway, the continuing and global nature of the drift away from Faith suggests it is all part of God’s plan…
“Water causes the mind to become.” Pratītyasamutpāda
Impossible love is the spirit of poems escaping the rhythms, and forms, and the former expressions of lovers like Shakespeare and Ovid. Reshaping traditions re-feathers the beds for the sensual sessions and canopy-shaking delights of The Muse, yet neither The Lady, so dark and complex, nor Corinna her equal, nor any persona She dons, entertains the idea of a breather; instead, with a tumble of laughter, it’s time for a sequel. Impossible love is eternal renewal; The Muse’s allure is forever unique, yet the heart of her dances is primal and deep. The relationship calms and confuses the poet: the infinite love. But the finite romances. The union of poet and Muse re-invents and recovers the poetry born of the love of impossible lovers.
*****
Daniel Kemper writes: “On first read The Muse will likely be understood as “the muse,” IOW, the actual, earthly woman who inspires a poet. The bit about “any persona she dons” will get read as merely “her varied moods” or some such. But there’s a reason for the Buddhist epigram. There’s a reason for capitalizing The Muse. This is The Muse as a spirit, a spirit whose visit inspires and is itself an inspiration who arrives, created (or summoned?) by aspiration. Writing then, is making love to The Muse, who sometimes inhabits the bodies of mortals, the personae she dons… Alas, is it possible for spirit and flesh to commingle?
“Clearly this poem is all-in on the classical style, save that it’s a sonnet in amphibrachian meter (x / x). Few poems exist at all in the canon in amphibrachs, but there are some. All sloppy. No sonnets. Few realize that when you read through the end of the line, as generally one should, these become a simple anapestic meter (x x /) like “…[Christ]mas and ALL through the HOUSE not a CREATure was STIRRing not EVen a MOUSE.]
x / x x / x x / x x / x x / x x / x x / x x / x becomes x / x x /x x /x x /x x /x x /x x /x x / x
meh. Anyway…
“PS: There’s a little meta-textual play where the poem talks about “escaping the rhythms and forms and former expressions.” The line is self-referential. This poem, being a sonnet in a meter that no sonnet has yet been written in, is itself “escaping the rhythms and forms and former…”
‘Impossible Love’ is previously unpublished.
Daniel Kemper, a former tournament-winning wrestler, black belt in traditional Shotokan karate, and infantryman has earned a BA in English, an MCSE (Systems Engineering), an MBA, and an MA in English and had works accepted for publication at more than a dozen magazines, including a pushcart nomination. He’s been an invited presenter at PAMLA 2024 and presided over the Poetics Panel in 2025 and has been the feature poet at several Sacramento venues.
Shouldn’t the moment be more–well, dramatic? Shouldn’t it toll like Donne’s dead-bell? But no. Mere paper-rustling. It’s a burst of static That stutters off to silence, while late snow Alights outside and melts forgettably, A numb reminder. Nothing I can see In the small print addresses dread, or God, Or love. Somber reflection? Not a bit. Forms in quadruplicate: White over yellow, pink, and goldenrod,
For a dead end. No hymns, no holiness– No funeral; every gathering spreads the plague. Perfunctory forms depress me, and they press Me now, because I’ve left so much so vague. When until now has dying loomed so real I shrank from my dead flesh? Or when did I feel This keen to leave less horror for my son And daughter? Save them shock-and-awe about Choices, when mine run out? I mutter grimly, I will get this done.
And still I sit here, playing my numbers game, Tossing my rhyme-pairs into the winds of fear. Back to the labor. Back to the minor shame Of shuffling off my life (check there, sign here). Earth gets my ashes–grudgingly, on terms That reek of real estate and legal firms. Transfer-on-death arrangements and new will Spew gray phrases: drone and drone and drone. Like worrying a bone, This work to stifle terrors I can’t kill.
So work–bending the spirit to the letter, Bowing the head at how the flesh unweaves– Goes down like a stiff drink; the ache’s no better Yet, for the iron aftertaste it leaves. Here, plague: take this dull prose; spare those I love. I sign at all the Xs (and to prove My resoluteness, press hard on the pen), Scribble the check and seal the envelope. Clinging weakly to hope, I thumb the stamp on. No one says Amen.
*****
Maryann Corbett writes: “It’s clear, I think, that this poem (first published in Modern Age) dates from the worst days of the Covid pandemic, in 2020 when there was no vaccine, when isolation was the only control, and when the thought of death was pervasive. As my own age cohort was dying in droves, I did think it prudent to make plans in case the worst happened. My ruminations on the process arranged themselves in a shape like that of Larkin’s Aubade.”
‘Buying a Plot in Plague Time’, first published in Modern Age, is collected in The O in the Air.
Maryann Corbett earned a doctorate in English from the University of Minnesota in 1981 and expected to be teaching Beowulf and Chaucer and the history of the English language. Instead, she spent almost thirty-five years working for the Office of the Revisor of Statutes of the Minnesota Legislature, helping attorneys to write in plain English and coordinating the creation of finding aids for the law. She returned to writing poetry after thirty years away from the craft in 2005 and is now the author of two chapbooks and six full-length collections, most recently The O in the Air (Franciscan U. Press, 2023). Her work has won the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize and the Richard Wilbur Award, has appeared in many journals on both sides of the Atlantic, and is included in anthologies like Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters and The Best American Poetry. A seventh book, Notifications from the Unseen, is forthcoming from Slant Books.”
Richard experimented with AI. He gave it simple tasks. It did them well.
It seemed to him the limit was the sky: give AI any task, it would excel.
He then instructed AI to supply a composition worthy of Purcell.
It did so very well: on the first try it thrilled him with a Purcell that was swell.
A portrait next, and when the paint was dry it could have been the work of Raphael.
“I want a new play by that Shakeseare guy: a Hamlet sequel’s surely bound to sell,”
demanded Richard. Sweet as apple pie, up on the PC screen, Hamlet-Nouvelle,
a faux Shakespearean drama, met his eye. Was this a long-lost play? No one could tell.
*****
Richard Fleming writes: “I’m very positive about AI, in the face of much weeping and squealing from a few other writers of my acquaintance who seem almost paranoid about it. I’ve used ChatGPT for a number of matters, both great and trivial, to great effect. The image, created jointly by myself and ChatGPT, I think works well.”
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
Added harshness in this comic comes from the rollover text: “The crank doesn’t actually do anything, but it makes the humans happy” – plus the red button’s additional picture of the poet thinking “I hope the STEM crankers don’t look down on me.”
I am delighted by this comic, as usual; even though as a poet impressed with the ever-increasing quality of AI-driven or -augmented verse, I suspect that Zach Weinersmith is worryingly prophetic.
Illustration: ‘Crank‘ by Zach Weinersmith, who publishes a Saturday Morning Breakfast Comics (or SMBC) cartoon daily. He is the author of several brilliant and provocative books, including the previously reviewed ‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness‘.
From sidewalk and cracked windowpane, demolished wall, foundation, beam, cement, charred rebar, median, bare highway undercut by stream,
through paver, panel, gutter, tile, amenities exposed to snow corroding granite, marble, steel, oak porch and bluestone patio,
begot by fecund apertures into an unrecorded day green filaments emerge, gold furze, no tool or fingertip or spray
deployed for terminal reverse— dominion, put another way.
*****
George Witte writes: “Progress was inspired by Samuel Miller McDonald’s book of the same name, which is a history of “progress” as defined by humanity, where extraction and exploitation of resources has brought the planet to a precipice. I confess to a perhaps morbid attraction to brief poems about end times, with Frost’s Fire and Ice being the exemplar, and Byron’s Darkness being a vision.”
Form in Formless Times 