Category Archives: short poems

Using form: Gwendolyn Brooks, ‘We Real Cool’

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The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

*****

Gwendolyn Brooks was one of the greatest 20th century American poets: stylistically creative, with haunting imagery and themes, emotionally engaging, socially engaged. She wrote formal verse, free verse and loosely structured ballads – sometimes all in the same sequence, as in The Womanhood.

Appropriately, ‘We Real Cool’ is her best-known poem: simple, poignant, striking at the heart of America’s structural inequality and moral failures, and presented on the page with a bizarre twist that is both unnecessary and essential: unnecessary because the three-word lines rhyme correctly without having ‘We’ at the end… essential because the reader is forced to emphasize the ‘We’, so that the last line seems (like the youths’ lives) unnaturally shortened, prematurely ended.

A simple poem. Maybe not her greatest, but iconic.

Photo: “Pool Players” by Johnny Silvercloud is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Vadim Kagan, ‘I Have Never’

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I have never in my lives
Met a girl named Arabella –
Captain Blood, the lucky fella,
Took them all to be his wives.

I have never been reborn
As a pirate quartermaster –
Long John Silver, lucky bastard,
Shouldered me aside with scorn.

I had never – strange but true –
Had a chance to rape and pillage;
Takes a crew to burn a village,
Takes much gold to get that crew.

So for now let’s all enjoy
Cold and wet northeastern snow,
How and why – we’ll never know…
Yahrr, my mates, and chips ahoy.

*****

Vadim Kagan writes: “We were visiting BVI, and I had this wonderful morning ritual – walking along the beach to the coffee shop, and then dragging a beack chair to the water so that my feet were in the surf… and coming up with a poem or two watching the sun rise and the clouds change colors. Since childhood I’ve been a huge fan of Rafael Sabatini’s “Captain Blood” novels, so the first two lines just happened, and then the rest kinda followed. I think back home the forecast called for snow that day, so the contrast was again already there for me to make use of.”

Vadim Kagan writes poetry and prose in English and Russian.  Vadim’s poems, bringing together traditions of Russian and English metered verse, have been put to music and performed by local and international artists. His poems have been published in The Lyric, Founders Favorites, The Road Not Taken,  the Lost Love chapbook and recently in the Maryland Bards Poetry Review 2025. Vadim lives in Bethesda, MD, where he runs an AI company providing advanced technology capabilities to Fortune 500 companies and government agencies.

‘I Have Never’ was first published on Vadim Kagan’s Facebook page, where you can find more of his work.

“RAYMOND, Alex. ‘Captain Blood’, 1935.” by Halloween HJB is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

R.I.P. Anthony Watkins – untitled poem

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Log some star date or another

All systems are failing
shadows flicker around
the darkened room

There is no captain
to report to, I am he.

Lost among the leaves.

*****

Poet, author, editor, publisher and digital creator Anthony Watkins passed away this week after a long illness. I knew him only through his creation of Better Than Starbucks, the wonderfully broad tent poetry-fiction-and-interviews magazine that came out monthly and provided for writers of all styles. It was a generous and inclusive publication, well reflective of its creator.

The poem above is one of the last messages posted by Anthony Watkins on his Facebook page, as everything was winding down.

Photo: “Hubble’s New Eyes: Butterfly Emerges from Stellar Demise in Planetary Nebula NGC 6302” by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Short poem: RHL, ‘Clearing the Cache’

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At night we dream to clean our memory,
discard trash from our cache.
Reincarnating after death would be the same;
the past, scraped by death’s emery,
unknown in the new game,
cleansed of our memories, but with a stash
of added skills…
and karma’s unpaid bills.

*****

No, I don’t believe in reincarnation. I don’t believe in anything, or in nothing; I’m an absolute agnostic. “I think therefore I am” is as far as you can go with any certainty – even “who or what I am” is ultimately unknown.

‘Clearing the Cache’ was published in Bewildering Stories. Thanks, Don Webb (if you exist, of course…)

“Glitch 183” by mikrosopht [deleted] is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Short Poem: Andrew Sclater, ‘Dear Mother’

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Dear Mother come softly across your grey veil
and onto the path in the dark where the snail
is crossing obliquely and nightjars sing sweetly
and put down your toilet bag quietly, discreetly
on the rim of the cemetery fountain. Now wash
your hair free of this mud and these worms, and squash
those white maggots that gleam in your ears,
then smile as you used to. We’ll have no more tears.

*****

Andrew Sclater writes: “I think everyone who loses a parent probably wants to resurrect them somehow. But memory is a false friend. We can’t see them clearly enough: we know, with vagueness, what they were like, but not who they were. We’d like to go back but we can’t, though this poems attempts to. Then, the realisation that we stand alone, orphaned, comes slowly, painfully and (awkward as it is) angrily as we grieve. This poem was delivered almost complete to me. It simply flowed out of the first line in a rare and rather magical way. I still like it more than almost everything I’ve written, placing my discomfort so tidily into its formal box.”

‘Dear Mother’ first appeared in Poetry Review.

Andrew Sclater is a Scottish poet currently living in Paris. He has published poems in Ambit, Best Scottish Poems, The Dark Horse, Magma, New Writing Scotland, Poetry Review, Shearsman and elsewhere. He co-founded Butcher’s Dog poetry magazine and the National Botanic Garden of Wales. He has been an editor of Charles Darwin’s correspondence and his Dinner at the Blaws-Baxters’ was published in 2016 by HappenStance Press. His newest pamphlet Quite Joyful is from Mariscat Press.

Photo: “.a…d.i.s.t.a.n.t…memory.” by DeeAshley is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Using form: RHL, ‘Formal vs Free’

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Look: formal verse can be china for tea,
a golden goblet, a mug made of clay.
Free verse is putting mouth to stream to drink.
Yes, you could cup your hands… but do you think
museums want to buy that to display
your “memorable skill”, your “artistry”?

*****

‘Formal vs Free’ is published in the current ‘Blue Unicorn‘, in a section loaded, as often, with verse about verse.

Photo: “Red-figured Greek Red-Figure Kantharos (Drinking Vessels) with Female Heads 320-310 BCE Terracotta” by mharrsch is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Lindsay McLeod, ‘The Swing’

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The black dog comes less to me lately
I fight the bait of the Siren’s barbed songs
I’ve tightened my belt to the hunger I’ve felt
scanned the sky for a place to belong.

But I’ve been to this point of the compass before
since we twitched off our vows and our rings
alone in the dark at one end of the arc
where that half-broken pendulum swings.

Still I’ve nothing left here to hold onto
afraid I’ll fall back to the place that I came
where I’ll take up my axe to the rainbow again
and bite deep into bright shining pain.

*****

Lindsay McLeod writes: “Fear not for my current mental health, as I wrote this 20 years ago.”

‘The Swing’ was originally published in Snakeskin.

Lindsay McLeod is an Australian writer who lives quietly on the coast of the great southern penal colony with (yet another ferocious Aussie animal) his cattle dog,  Mary. Lindsay still drives a forklift to support his poetry habit.

Image: “Feeding The Black Dog” by @mich.robinson is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Short poem: Robin Helweg-Larsen, ‘Moving On’

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“How old are you?” she asked. “Too old,” I said;
“sadly, my youth is gone.”
She looked like wanting to move on, though wed;
I had no wish to be the one moved on.

*****

Published yesterday in The Asses of Parnassus – thanks, Brooke Clark!

“how dark how cold” by Stuti ~ is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Damian Balassone, ‘The Mormon and the Mermaid’

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Wounded and winded
by the wind and the waves,
he scratches her name in the sand,
her love is rescinded,
she hides in the caves
where the water caresses the land;
he sings her name in spite of his distress,
and fashions beauty out of loneliness.

*****

Damian Balassone writes: “With regards to the poem, I have no connection to either Mormons or mermaids – it’s about polar opposites.  I think the last line came first.  He doesn’t get the girl, but he gets the poem.”

‘The Mormon and the Mermaid’ was first published in the Shot Glass Journal.

Damian Balassone is the author of four books, including the forthcoming collection of short poems and epigrams Love is a Weird Cat and the children’s book Here, Bear and Everywhere. You can read more here.

“the Other Side of the Tunnel” by ihave3kids is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Short poem: RHL, ‘Comparatively Speaking’

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One day we’ll all be dead;
survival chances: slim.
So concentrate instead
on aspects you prefer:
“I’m winding down,“ he said,
“but not as fast as him.”
“Losing my looks,” she said,
“but not as fast as her.”

*****

Speaking as someone now in the 4th quadrant of my 1st century, what other options are there? Anyway, this was first published in the Asses of Parnassus – thanks, Brooke Clark!

“Old people party 2” by weldonwk is licensed under CC BY 2.0.