Anzac Day, 25 April: John Gallas, ‘Anzac Snap’

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‘The soldier is F. Come (NZ), to be killed soon after on the crest of Chunuk Bayir.’

Churchill sat in a smoky chair
and watched the London rain:
We’ll chase the Turks to Hell, he said,
and chase them back again.

The Beautiful Battalions sailed
under a seething sky:
they landed at Gallipoli
to do his work and die.

We’ll be in Consty-nobble soon
and drinking pink champagne,
and then we’ll get our medals, boys,
and sail back home again.

But X was full of dying men
and Y was full of dead,
and Heaven, boys, was full of shells
that whistled overhead.

O Johnny Turk keeps shooting, boys,
so keep your heads down low:
we’ll be in Consty-nobble soon,
cos Churchill tells us so.

I just stood up to see the sea.
It’s quiet, boys, I said,
and something whistled through the sky
and hit me in the head.

The farm is still at Paterau,
the sheep graze by the sea,
and men ride up and down the bush
who’ve never heard of me.

O History is made by men
with nothing else to do.
They watch the rain, and have ideas
to try on me and you.

But glory isn’t Names and Noise,
it isn’t Arms and Men:
it’s living out the little life
I’ll never live again.

*****

John Gallas writes: “A ballad for the Aotearoa/NZ dead at Gallipoli (Gelibolu). The epigraph is a photo caption from a book that, along with the accompanying picture of F. Come, set me writing. In common with lots of Australian/NZ commentaries (eg. Peter Weir’s film ‘Gallipoli’) it is less than complimentary about the Top Brass, and attempts to represent the soldiers themselves as people from farms and towns who would never come back. Gallipoli remains a potent historical event to NZers: the debate between splendid sacrifice vs foolish waste, world solidarity vs nothing-to-do-with-us, significance vs time-to-forget-it is ongoing. 

“The Blue and Red Pencil drawing by David Barker (Gallipoli, 1915) represents an anonymous ‘cheery’ EnZed soldier. Like Come, he never got back to his farm; he was “At the landing, and here ever since”. The drawing is on p.53 of my collection ‘Star City‘, from which this poem is taken.”

*****

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.  

Sonnet: Meredith Bergmann, ‘Public Art’

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A girl, eleven, racing down the street
(who might be an imaginary daughter)
pulled by her Lab (a female?) plants her feet
before a statue whose bronze skirt has caught her
big dog’s attention.
Works of art command
our gaze, on average, for three seconds. Thought
or feeling must work quickly. We can’t stand
like statues—life is taxed and overwrought.
She doesn’t have her gadget, so she scans
the stone: “Remember”, “Deepen” and “Surpass.”
Her dog is eager for a fresher scent.
The sculptures, though, are asking if she can
imagine she might wield these words. It’s fast.
This is the moment of the monument.

*****

‘Public Art’ was originally published in The Sonneteer.

Meredith Bergmann is an award-winning sculptor whose public monuments can be seen in New York, Boston and beyond. Her Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument was unveiled in Central Park in August 2020, and she recently unveiled a monument for the historic center of Lexington, MA. Her many poetry publications include Barrow Street, Connecticut River Review, Contemporary Poetry Review, Hopkins Review, Hudson Review, Light, Mezzo Cammin, New Criterion, New Verse Review, Tri Quarterly Review and the anthologies Hot Sonnets, Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle, Alongside We Travel: Contemporary Poets on Autism, Powow River Poets Anthology II, and the forthcomingThe Country in the Mirror: Poems of Protest and Witness. She was poetry editor of American Arts Quarterly from 2006-2017. She has won three honorable mentions from the Frost Farm Poetry Prize, and in 2020, a 2nd prize from the Connecticut Poetry Club. Her chapbook A Special Education is available online from Bainbridge Island Press, and The Dying Flush, with poetry and illustrations by Bergmann, 2024 is available from EXOT Books.

Photo of Boston Women’s Memorial, Meredith Bergmann, 2003, from City of Boston

Sonnet: Saad Kayani, ‘Sonnet’

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I see no pretty things to write about.
Industrial smoke obscures the summer skies.
No novel image schemas to lay out—
no logical entailments to devise.
I’ll write instead of how efficient, say,
a cluster bomb can be, the skill it takes
to mow the grass on which the children play
and monetize the rubble that it makes.
But better artists beat me to that muse:
the medalists whose medals killers win,
the columnists who weave the daily news,
and spin, and spin, and spin, and spin, and spin!
I’m dizzy now—no pretty things to say.
Poetry is for fascists anyway!

*****

‘Sonnet” was first published in Snakeskin.

Saad Kayani lives in Toronto. Recent poems appear in Shot Glass Journal and Neologism Poetry Journal.

Photo: “GAZA Crisis July 2014” by Syeda Amina Trust® is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Villanelle: Susan Jarvis Bryant, ‘Gassy Asses – a windy villanelle’

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He had a wealth of worthless words to say –
A jawing maw of poppycock to spout.
His bellyful of bluster blew all day.

From dawn till dusk the cosmos heard him bray.
He hee-hawed on until the sun went out.
He had a wealth of witless words to say.

Like rasping bagpipes cranking up to play  
With unremitting eardrum-splitting clout
His bellyful of bluster blew all day.

One Stone-of-Blarney afternoon in May
He heard a louder bloviator shout.
She had a wealth of wicked words to say –  

A brassy blast – a gossipy array
Of noxious guff – the lingo of a lout.  
Her bellyful of bull blew him away.

Their hot air flared. It seared the Milky Way.
It charred a slew of stars and left no doubt   
They had a wealth of wedded words to say –  
A honeymoon of hooey night and day.  

*****

Susan Jarvis Bryant writes: “Through fear of reprisal, I have nothing to say about the bloviating brayers who prompted this windy villanelle. Asses have been known to bite and kick (savagely) when mocked. I know this from personal experience… and livid scars.”

‘Gassy Asses’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Susan Jarvis Bryant is originally from the UK and now lives on the coastal plains of Texas. Susan has poetry published on The Society of Classical Poets, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, Light, Sparks of Calliope, and Expansive Poetry Online, The Road Not Taken, and New English Review. She also has poetry published in The Lyric, Trinacria, and Beth Houston’s Extreme Formal Poems and Extreme Sonnets II anthologies. Susan is the winner of the 2020 International SCP Poetry Competition and was nominated for the 2022 and 2024 Pushcart Prize. She has published two books – Elephants Unleashed and Fern Feathered Edges.

Photo: “Braying donkey” by arcticpenguin is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

William Walters, ‘Interdisciplinary Indiscipline’

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A lifetime ago, back in seventh-grade band,
“The Bullwhip” had all us kids pledge to expand
Our goals for our music.  He went on to ask us
To double our time spent in personal practice.
The girls—mostly woodwinds—were eager to please;
Ol’ Bullwhip could always control them with ease.
We boys on the trumpets and trombones, however,
Were harder to handle—we thought we were clever.
We readily signed when the sheet came around—
Exploited a loophole that one of us found.
Response to the ask had just turned on a dime,
And some even wrote that they’d triple their time!
Now no one could say that we out and out lied.
A math rule we’d learned was defense on our side:
Go multiply zero as much as you will—
The answer you come to remains zero still.

*****

William Walters “This poem tells a true story about an early class with our respected and beloved school band director, a colorful character who wore cowboy boots and carried a bullwhip around on his hip and actually went by the nickname “Bullwhip.”  A remarkable educator, he managed to be strict and demanding and patient and caring and encouraging all at the same time and, by our high school years, had us rural Southwest Kansas kids whipped into shape—figuratively, not literally—and disciplined to be an excellent marching band that competed very well against the big schools from Wichita, Topeka, Kansas City, and the like when we travelled back east for contests.  We had only about 170 students total in our high school, and we always had over 80 in the band!  Bullwhip certainly knew how to run a music program, and he gave our sleepy little town something to be proud of!     

“As far as the meter of the poem is concerned—it’s technically some kind of hendecasyllabic meter with hypercatalexis in a couple of the distichs.  But I didn’t really think much about rigid adherence to any form; I just went with what seemed to flow and what sounded good to me.”

‘Interdisciplinary Indiscipline’ was first published in Allegro.

William Walters has been a professor of English and linguistics at Rock Valley College, in Rockford, Illinois, for the past thirty-seven years.  He played trombone in many music groups in high school and college, and he’s a bass trombonist in a college/community band even now.

Photo: “Enterprise Middle School band plays for White Bluffs Center Tea Party” by Scott Butner is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Monostich: Farah Shah, ‘Funhouse’

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father as a funhouse mirror: somewhere in that mess is my reflection.

*****

 Farah Shah writes: “I was actually not very moved at first to participate in OnlyPoems’ call for monostitch poem submissions. I’m unfortunately a woman of many words, especially in my writing. I’ve found word limits, shortening stories, and other forms of briefening composition painstaking at best. However, I’ve been trying to do things I’m not very good at (or maybe not very passionate about) because I’ve found the more you move a muscle, the stronger it becomes. I recently cut a piece of mine I loved into less than 300 characters; the Frankenstein-esque process of sewing back the body parts of that poem was difficult, but the new composition that emerged I found to be much stronger. In a way, with less to write, I had more to say. Like many  peoples’ poems, mine is about my father (dads just make for such great material), and because of that, it’s also about me. My father is someone I could write almost anything about: love songs, comedies, tragedies. I didn’t think I could write about us in one line, but I tried to, and I did. Like I mentioned to Karan, the editor of Only Poems, writing this poem reminded me to call my dad.”

‘Funhouse’ was originally published in Only Poems.

Farah Shah is a recent University of Central Florida graduate, spending time between degrees learning to bake sourdough, overworking her airfryer, and penning sappy poetry while she waits for her dough to proof.  She spent her formative years in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and thinks the best parts of herself come from that time. She writes: “I have yet to wrangle my writing into one specific place, but I post here and there on my instagram @farahxshah, and I’ve been featured on Threads “Closing” Issue for microfiction: https://www.threads.com/@threadlitmag/post/DTTbwivjNQW?xmt=AQF0J35LQzeadqjpGB8j6qbUeGGrAMYyGhCUb3x810IEZg“

“Sunday Self Portrait” by davitydave is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnet: Paul Burgess, ‘Asymmetrical War’

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They’re hoping schools won’t rain as rubble showers
resulting from an errant missile strike.
I can’t afford the drive to see the flowers
around the gorge I’d waited months to hike.
They fear they’ll find their children split in half
or buried under shrapnel, dust, and rocks.
I’m scared the jagged line upon a graph
will show decreasing values of my stocks.
Their sky’s become an endless sea of threats
erupting with the sights and sounds of war,
but over here, we’re making mobile bets
on every prop the market’s apps can score.
There’s something vaguely troubling, sad, and dark
about an age of gulfs so deep and stark.

*****

Paul Burgess writes: “I am grateful that we are safe here in the U.S., but I also feel queasy thinking about the fact that Iran is really experiencing the horrors of war while we are fretting about gas prices (with reason, of course), watching the stock market (again, understandable but minor compared to fearing for one’s life), and literally betting on various war-related scenarios and outcomes (sociopathic at best).”

‘Asymmetrical War’ was first published in the The New Verse News

Paul Burgess is the sole proprietor of a business in Lexington, Kentucky that offers ESL classes in addition to English, Japanese, and Spanish-language translation and interpretation services. He has contributed work to Blue Unicorn, The Road Not Taken, Light, The Orchards, Snakeskin, Pulsebeat, Lighten Up Online, Apricity, Star*Line, Asses of Parnassus, The New Verse News, and many other publications.

“Electron asymmetric motion animation” by Sbyrnes321 is marked with CC0 1.0.

Ekphrastic verse: Wendy Videlock, ‘Before You Put Your Armor On’

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Each morning when you wake to put
your armor on, remember this:
all the world’s a spinning stage,

all the world’s a carnival—
and though it doesn’t have your back
or love the cover of your book

all the world’s a turning page.
Just when you thought the minstrels, fools
and dragon cats had lost their way

inside the inflammation age,
they shed the husks of self defense
and enter stage, not from the right

or from the left, but from behind.
They sneak right up and inch ahead
into the distance of your mind.

The sun will melt. The moon will find
your part has not yet been assigned.
You blink, and take your armor off.

The lights will blaze before they dim.
It’s not a sham. It’s not a con.
The curtain falls. Show must go on.

*****

The illustration is ‘Not Dancing’ by Marina Korenfeld, and was the subject of Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2026. Wendy Videlock’s response, ‘Before You Put Your Armor On’, was selected as the Rattle Editor’s Choice.

Wendy Videlock lives on the Western Slope of the Colorado Rockies. Her work appears widely and her books are available wherever books are sold. Her upcoming book, Desert Kin, will appear in August, 2026.

Isabella Hsu, ‘Villanelle of Quiet Desperation’

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Frustration’s edge is finer than you thought:
life sinks its teeth in you in little ways.
No, nothing ever works the way it ought.
 
There is no coffee in the coffee pot.
The milk’s gone bad; you suffer more delays.
Frustration’s edge is finer than you thought.
 
You want a break. This wasn’t what they taught
in school. Your life is one unending maze
where nothing ever works the way it ought.
 
The tie you wear to work’s a gordian knot
you can’t untie until you get a raise.
Frustration’s edge is finer than you thought.
 
You held out hope (which never gave you squat).
Your father died without a word of praise.
No, nothing ever works the way it ought.
 
Your kids don’t look like you; your nerves are shot.
You’re not a person but a paraphrase.
Frustration is the only thing you’ve got.
Things never work the way you think they ought.

*****

Isabella Hsu writes: “The process of writing formal poetry is always fascinating. It is a seemingly cooperative act: the form makes its demands, I acquiesce as far as I am able, it responds. In the case of a repeating form, I’m always looking for ways to ensure the repetend carries more and more weight every time it is repeated. What better choice than the villanelle for expressing the minor falls and failures of everyday life?”

‘Villanelle of Quiet Desperation’ was originally published in Poems for Persons of Interest

Isabella Hsu is a poet from Southern California. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poems for Persons of Interest, New Verse Review, and The San Diego Reader among others. Her poem “The Young Man at Nain” was included in The Colosseum Book of Contemporary Narrative Verse.
https://isabellahsu.substack.com/

“Aargh” by Peanuts Reloaded is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Sonnet: Barbara Loots, ‘Intimations’

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This is a Wordsworth morning. Not a leaf
trembles, the water shimmers beneath a shawl
of vapor, and the wild primordial call
of one loon sounds its tremolo of grief
across the lake. The sunlight like a thief
infiltrates slowly, making shadows crawl
out of the hollows where each animal,
furred, feathered, winged or scaled, to its brief
life awakens. My awakened eyes
and all the senses that belong to me
discover in the love that glorifies
whatever was and is and is to be
the wonder and perpetual surprise
of momentary immortality.

*****

Barbara Loots writes: “My husband Bill and I spend summer months in Canada on a tiny pile of granite dropped by a glacier in the middle of Blackwater Lake near Parry Sound, Ontario. Bill’s father purchased the island right after WWII for the tiny price of a property owned by the Crown, in a deal similar to the American Homestead Act: you must build a domicile on it within 18 months. The cottage cobbled together at that time still stands, with a few improvements, not yet including running water, electricity, or indoor plumbing. We bring a lot of books. I often meet the Muse among the towering White Pines. Poems are a natural consequence. Many of them appear in my collection The Beekeeper and other love poems (Kelsay Books 2020).”

“Intimations” appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of The Lyric (Volume 105 Number 4).

After decades of publishing her poems, Barbara Loots has laurels to rest on, but doesn’t. Residing in Kansas City, Missouri, Barbara and her husband, Bill Dickinson, are pleased to share the household with an acrobatic tuxedo kitty named Jane Austen. Barbara has work forthcoming in The Orchards Journal, The Shining Years II anthology, and I-70 Review. Her concerns and complaints can be found on Facebook and at barbaraloots.com. She serves as the review editor for Light Poetry Magazine (see Guidelines at lightpoetrymagazine.com). 

“Early morning lake” by josterpi is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.