Category Archives: short poems

David Callin, ‘Sangliers’

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It is not a forest, more a sun-
dappled woodland near the Pont du Gard,
the river fol-de-rolling merrily.
Here, where they’ve been told the wild things are,
a family, a mother and her young,
step through wild garlic till they come upon
a small ménage of wild boars, sangliers:
a mother and her young, a glade away.
Their shadows lengthened by the dappling sun,
each gives way to the other and trots on.

*****

David Callin writes: “There are no deep secrets about the poem. It’s a memory from a family holiday in 2006, and my wife’s description of the experience of this strange meeting on her return from it. It struck me strongly at the time, but I must have stored it away, because I didn’t try to turn it into a poem until nearly 20 years later. Then, as a non-metrical poem, it didn’t take, but I found it again when looking for inspiration for George’s excellent short poems Snakeskin (issue 339, May 2026). It seemed to blossom in its new form.

“This is unlike the bulk of my poems, most of which – but by no means all – arise out of the life, history and folklore of the Isle of Man, where I’ve lived all my life apart from a brief period in the 1980s when I made a bolt for freedom, first to London and then to the Netherlands. But the place has a way of reeling you back in.

“My first full book of poems, From the Nab, is essentially Manx in subject matter. There is a review of it in Light (whose editor, I see, also features in your blog). This is the link to that … https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/book-reviews-summer-25/

“If any of your readers should like a copy – and who wouldn’t, based on that review? – a simple email to me, with their postal address, would do the trick:  dcallin2bvc@gmail.com

“Other than that, I pop up in Snakeskin from time to time – as often as I can, really. And occasionally in other places.”

*****

The image features a wild boar (Sus scrofa) with its piglets, commonly known as humbugs due to their striped appearance. 

Joe Crocker, ‘A one-way visit’

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to the vet with our decrepit cat:
snaggle-toothed, arthritic, ectoparasitic.
His kick-ass piebald coat is now a mat
for fleas to wipe their feet on.

His legs are lame. His dignity is flat.
He used to know his name was Tipperary.
Today it could be Tom or even Jerry.
Enough. He’s had enough.
And that is that.

*****

Joe Crocker writes: “Tipper” was my youngest daughter’s cat. He had white socks and a white tip to his black tail. “Tipperary” seemed like a fitting formalisation for his vaccination record. (And somewhere in my head was TS Eliot’s “The Naming of Cats”.) I don’t suppose Tipper ever really knew our name for him. In his final weeks he looked utterly bewildered and certainly unable to “keep up his tail perpendicular, spread out his whiskers or cherish his pride.”

‘A One-way Visit’ was originally published in Snakeskin.

Brief biography of Joe Crocker (masculine/feminine/neutered)

He writes his stuff and slides it under doors.
His age and sex, his fantasies, are no concern of yours.

The rhymes reflect his humour — down to earth.
A pamphlet is forthcoming but refuses to come fearth.

Winner of the Awkward Prize, ham-fisted.
Never short- or long- but  sometimes black- or shopping-listed.

Nominated (pusher) for the pushcart.
Squawking from the slush pile, self-regarding little upstart.

Google says he’s one of Sheffield’s legends
— a rock star who gets by with little help from friends, well… ex-friends.

*****

Photo: “Portrait of a Very Old Cat” by sjrankin is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Tom Vaughan, ‘Stuff Happens’

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Bad stuff happens.
Some survive
but it’s a risky business
being alive.

Good stuff happens
too – though don’t
count on it lasting
long. It won’t.

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: “Stuff Happens was of course part of a remark by US Secretary of Defense/Defence Donald Rumsfeld in 2003 in response to widespread looting in Baghdad following the US/US military ‘intervention’. Although I wrote the poem on the eve of the current war in the Middle East, it was intended as a more general comment on what a long-ago Roman called the nature of things, in personal as much as in global affairs.”

‘Stuff Happens’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and three poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance; and Just a Minute, 2024, from Cyberwit). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks and frequently in Snakeskin and Lighten Up Online. He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Photo: “Stuff Happens” by Chris Piascik is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

D.A. Prince, ‘Dawn Chorus’

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That first sound splintering the listening dark,
letting the light slip in between the notes —
a blackbird, surely, surer now, his spark
picked up by robins. Liquid tuning floats
through unseen branches, marking territories
of nests and mating, brings the grudging air
its first flushed streak of colour. In the trees
a strengthening music, patterned like a prayer.

*****

D.A. Prince writes: “By a happy coincidence Snakeskin published ‘Dawn Chorus’ on International Dawn Chorus Day  —  the first Sunday in May when the early morning birdsong, (and every bird’s aim to establish territory and seduce a potential mate) is at its peak. You need to be awake early to hear it. I was out just after 5 a.m today and could pick out the differing songs of blackbird, robin, great tit and blue tit: not many species because although I live in a village (plenty of trees) we’re on the edge of a large city (so no open farmland). Still, the blackbirds made sure the chorus was loud and liquid, and the dawn chorus should be as musical for a few more days.

“This poem is not as it was first written but editing has, to my mind, given it a tighter focus. It was originally a sonnet, and covered two ‘choruses’: one, the birdsong (as appears here) and the second the early morning noises as an old house wakes up, with the creaking of hot water pipes and the radio’s news broadcast. Unsure if this worked I put it away for a few months: when it re-appeared I cut the sestet so that all the attention fell on the birdsong.” 

D.A. Prince lives in Leicestershire and London. Her first appearances in print were in the weekly competitions in The Spectator and New Statesman (which ceased its competitions in 2016) along with other outlets that hosted light verse. Something closer to ‘proper’ poetry followed (but running in parallel), with three pamphlets, followed by a full-length collection, Nearly the Happy Hour, from HappenStance Press in 2008. A second collection, Common Ground, (from the same publisher) followed in 2014 and this won the East Midlands Book Award in 2015. HappenStance subsequently published her pamphlet Bookmarks in 2018, with a further full-length collection, The Bigger Picture, published in 2022. New Walk Editions published her latest pamphlet, Continuous Present, in 2025.

Photo: “Dawn Chorus…” by Dave – aka Emptybelly is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Unforgettable Nonsense: A.E. Housman, ‘Hallelujah!’

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‘Hallelujah!’ was the only observation
That escaped Lieutenant-Colonel Mary Jane,
When she tumbled off the platform in the station,
And was cut in little pieces by the train.
Mary Jane, the train is through yer!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
We shall gather up the fragments that remain.

*****

The Salvation Army is the only army I can think of that would have had female officers in Housman‘s time.

I first came across – and immediately learnt by heart – this poem in ‘The Puffin Book of Funny Verse’ compiled by Julia Watson and loaded with a great variety of illustrations. I highly, highly recommend the book for children… and all the young at heart.

Photo: “Salvation Army Band” by Sherlock77 (James) is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Political poem: Jerome Betts, ‘Call for Obliteration’

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Crackpotus thinks that war is fun
(Of course, he never fought in one)
And so he bombed his little heart out…
Oh, chuck the cruel crazed old fart out!

The 25th amendment’s what
Is needed, not a sniper’s shot,
Until, his time come, all can cry
Damnatio memoriae!

*****

Jerome Betts writes: “This squib was prompted by the civilian casualties caused by the War of Donald’s Ego and the increasingly callous madness of his accompanying tweets. The second stanza supports a remedy advocated by a growing number in the USA, unlikely as it is to be put into effect  by the spineless sycophants that make up his Cabinet of Horrors. It would be nice to find words to really hit him where it hurts, but the nearest I could come up with is Damnatio memoriae, a modern Latin term for an Ancient Roman practice. Might it just puncture the hide of a POTUS obsessed with attaching his name to buildings and institutions?”

‘Call for Obliteration’ was first published in The New Verse News.

Jerome Betts edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up Online. 

Illustration by David Horsey, Seattle Times.

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.

Short poem: RHL, ‘Earth (and Mars)’

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This planet is humanity’s place of birth,
but not the end of what we’re capable of –
we’ve just begun.
 
But don’t let Elon Musk take off from Earth:
he’ll nuke us if and when he gets pissed off…
or just for fun.

*****

‘Earth (and Mars)’ was first published in Rat’s Ass Review.

“The trouble with space!” by Philip Ed is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Short poem: Langston Hughes, ‘God’

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I am God–
Without one friend,
Alone in my purity
World without end.

Below me young lovers
Tread the sweet ground–
But I am God–
I cannot come down.

Spring!
Life is love!
Love is life only!
Better to be human
Than God–and lonely.

*****

Langston Hughes, key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, published his short poem ‘God’ in the October 1931 issue of Poetry. Despite the illustration I have chosen for his poem, Hughes was neither straight nor white… but I’m sure he would forgive my choice, as he was a very tolerant individual.

Le Printemps (Spring), oil painting by Pierre Auguste Cot, 1873. Metropolitan Museum of Art, online collection (The Met object ID 438158), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20137984

Using form: rhymed univocalic: Susan McLean, ‘No-Show’

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Oh no, Godot!
So slow to show.
Who knows how low
two fools won’t go
to hold off sorrow?
How cold, how wrong
to con or ghost
hobos who long
for comfort most.
So go tomorrow.

*****

Susan McLean writes: “For its ‘Moon’ issue, Ecotone put out a call for submissions in the rarer French repeating forms and suggested that one way to evoke the moon was by using the word O or words in which a lot of o’s appeared. I wanted to write a rondelet using words whose only vowel was o, which made sense because the subject was the moon. Therefore, I made a list of as many words as I could think of that used no vowel but o, looking particularly for words that rhymed with one another. Luckily, that vowel can be used to represent many different sounds. I wrote a rondelet called “Solo” that later appeared in the journal.
I had heard of Christian Bök’s Eunoia, a collection in which each poem uses a single vowel, and I later learned from Pedro Poitevin that it is called “univocalic verse.” I had many words left over from my search for o-words, one of which was “Godot.” I have always been a huge fan of drama, and I attended and read many plays in my youth, when Theatre of the Absurd was still in vogue. But some of my most boring and irritating theatre experiences were at plays by Samuel Beckett. I decided to write a poem that was my critique of the premise of Waiting for Godot. The poem first appeared in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

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

“Waiting for Godot” by UMTAD is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.