Category Archives: Poems

Janice D. Soderling, ‘Lost Friends’

It’s sad to lose a friend, you know,
In bloom of youth,
In healthy glow,
Full of vigor, ethics, truth.
It’s sad to lose that friend.

It’s sad to lose a friend of old,
His fumbling brain,
Old jokes retold,
Full of misery, aches and pain.
It’s sad to lose that friend.

But sadder still to lose a friend
To politics,
The ugly end.
To hate and scorn and fascist tricks.
Oh, how I miss that friend.

*****

Janice D. Soderling writes: “This is one of those poems that sometimes comes in a rush and you have to grab a pencil to write it down before it disappears. But of course I had been ruminating, pondering; who has not in these divisive times? We are many who have lost a dear friend, perhaps even a family member, someone who once was compassionate and kind and fun to be with, but suddenly, or gradually, has become unrecognizable, full of blame and contempt, even hate, for the Other. Not for a person, but for a vague collective, the Other.”

‘Lost Friends’ was published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

Janice D. Soderling has poems, short stories, and flash in many literary journals and anthologies. Her most recent poetry collection is Naming the Names which includes “Lost Friends.” Soon to be released is Short Circuits, about one hundred very short poems, none longer than twelve lines. Both collections are published under the Kultivera Production imprint.

“A Single Leaf” by Miss C.J. is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Lindsay McLeod, ‘Blind Date’

Sonnets: David M. Katz, ‘Two Sonnets for Patrick Stewart, who read Shakespeare online during Covid’

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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.

Sonnet variant: Michael R. Burch, ‘Once’

3 Replies

for Beth

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.

“Sand Dunes, Socotra Is” by Rod Waddington is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Sonnet: Richard Fleming, ‘The Attic’

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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

“VIEW-MASTER” by Kim Hanwool is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Ballade: Gail White, ‘After the Opera’

5 Replies

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.”

‘After the Opera’ was first published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

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.

“This picture makes me happy” by James Jordan is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Sonnet: Melissa Balmain, ‘Solidarity. On a recent explosion of fireflies across the US’

3 Replies

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.”

First published in The New Verse News

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).

Photo: “Fireflies and Star Trails No. 3” by ikewinski is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnet: John Gallas, ‘Ascension Sonnet’

RHL, ‘R.I.P. the English Girl in the Bahamas’

R.I.P. Chris O’Carroll, ‘Ballynagaul, County Waterford’

2 Replies

A graybeard and a girl walk on this beach.
She’s his grandmother; she’s not really here.
He stoops for shells and pebbles. His hands reach
Across a family’s distances and years.
Of her eleven children, three are left —
His father and two aunts back in the States.
He pockets bits of Ireland, reverent theft
Of relics for her blood to venerate.
She lost two brothers here, both fishermen
Who labored daily on this chill, gray sea
That one day failed to bring them home again.
That’s when her childhood ended. That’s when she
Booked passage for her children’s native land.
She’s not here; she can’t hold her grandson’s hand.

*****

Chris O’Carroll was largely known as a poet for his light verse, but even a volume with the title ‘The Joke’s On Me‘ would contain more reflective work such as this sonnet. As an expatriate child of expats, I enjoy his appreciation of the back and forth across the seas, a family aware of its roots and far away. I included this poem in the Potcake Chapbook ‘Families and Other Fiascoes‘.

Chris passed away earlier this month. Christopher O’Carroll Obituary (1951 – 2026) – Pelham, MA – Daily Hampshire Gazette. The world of light poetry will retain his glow.

“Annestown Beach, County Waterford” by mwmosser is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Form in Formless Times

Searching for word-for-word memorable poetry… editing the Potcake Chapbook series for Sampson Low

Category Archives: Poems

Janice D. Soderling, ‘Lost Friends’

Lindsay McLeod, ‘Blind Date’

Sonnets: David M. Katz, ‘Two Sonnets for Patrick Stewart, who read Shakespeare online during Covid’

Sonnet variant: Michael R. Burch, ‘Once’

Sonnet: Richard Fleming, ‘The Attic’

Ballade: Gail White, ‘After the Opera’

Sonnet: Melissa Balmain, ‘Solidarity. On a recent explosion of fireflies across the US’

Sonnet: John Gallas, ‘Ascension Sonnet’

RHL, ‘R.I.P. the English Girl in the Bahamas’

R.I.P. Chris O’Carroll, ‘Ballynagaul, County Waterford’

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