I wandered nowhere special in my past,
just drifted, looking, lonelyish, half-arsed.
Nor in my present is there brilliant light–
I drift, doze, dream, enjoy the day and night.
What then will help me through a magic door?
Sensing the future’s avalanche downroar.
*****
This was published a couple of months ago in Snakeskin. Thanks, George Simmers!
“The Magic Door” by h.koppdelaney is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.
The night was cloaked
In disarray
My heart was soaked
In chardonnay
The joint I smoked
In shades of grey
The music broke
A new song played
And then you spoke
Looking my way
A need awoke
Swept me away
Feelings evoked
I dare not say
*****
Lisa Marshall writes: “The poem is one long stanza with alternating lines rhyming. It is about a woman who is feeling forlorn on a night that isn’t going her way. She uses substances like cannabis and alcohol to forget her feelings and herself. But suddenly the music changes and she is asked to dance (tango) by a love interest. Suddenly her mood changes and she starts to feel something which she expresses through dance instead of words.”
Lisa Marshall is a poet and author who resides in beautiful Dartmouth, Nova Scotia – also known as the City of Lakes. She is the author of Black Olive: A Novel and Poetry for the Feminist’s Soul, both of which are available on Amazon Kindle.
Read more at Not Another Nice Girl Blog.
Fire steals from slow decay the frame
Of one who wished for us to claim
This small relief:
The words are said, the ashes flown.
What’s left? A weight, a shard of bone
Still sharp as grief.
*****
J.D. Smith writes: “This poem came about in response to the death of a very beloved and quirky dog. Though she was already 10, she was a small dog and could have been expected to live longer. Her ashes, and those of her littermate, were interred with those of my parents.”
J.D. Smith has published six books of poetry, most recently the light verse collection Catalogs for Food Lovers, and he has received a Fellowship in Poetry from the United States National Endowment for the Arts. This poem is from The Killing Tree (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Smith’s first fiction collection, Transit, was published in December 2022. His other books include the essay collection Dowsing and Science. Smith works in Washington, DC, where he lives with his wife Paula Van Lare and their rescue animals. Twitter: @Smitroverse
Photo: “gone but remembered: dog ashes” by safoocat is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
I answered your desire to meet
resistance and be honed by friction.
Sharp as you were, you couldn’t beat
the zero-sum of contradiction.
Abrasion was your privilege,
the only stroking I have known.
Now you have lost your cutting edge
and I am just another stone.
*****
Susan McLean writes: “This poem was inspired indirectly by the suicide of a talented poet whom I had seen at conferences, but had never had a conversation with. I heard that she had killed herself on Christmas Eve because of an unhappy love affair. Since I knew nothing about her personal life, this poem is not about her, but her fate made me think about unhappy relationships, particularly those in which both partners have strong but conflicting personalities. I had in mind such stormy creative relationships as those of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin, in which the clashes are initially part of the attraction, yet turn destructive eventually. However, the imaginary relationship depicted in this poem is not based on the specifics of any of those relationships.
Balance and antithesis are the key characteristics of the theme of this poem, so I thought two quatrains with a rhyme scheme of ABAB would give equal weight to the “I” and the “you” of the poem.
This poem first appeared in Mezzo Cammin, an online journal of female formalist poets, and later was published in my second book, The Whetstone Misses the Knife, which featured a bronze bust of Camille Claudel by Jacques Chauvenet on the cover.”
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
What do you want possessions for?
You’ll die, then you’ll have nothing more.
You lost your house in a fire? The fact is
That was just for practice.
*****
We live (as always) in a time of existential threat to us as individuals and as a species. This short poem was recently published in The Asses of Parnassus – thanks, Brooke Clark! “Light verse”? I like to think so…
Photo, popularly known as ‘Disaster Girl‘. The young Zoë Roth had been taken by her parents to watch the controlled burning of a structure for training purposes when her father took this prize-winning picture of her. To her ongoing delight, the photo became a viral internet meme, and its NFT sold two years ago for close to $500,000.
The artist said the wit
was “full of it”,
disparaged him.
The punster tore the painter limn from limn.
*****
Apparently some people believe that puns are “the lowest form of humour”, but I would suggest that those people are not good at wordplay, and therefore have no poetic sensibility. Look to Homer, Shakespeare and Samuel Johnson for puns; enjoy more discussion and examples here.
This short poem was published in The Asses of Parnassus, home of “short, witty, formal poems”. Thanks, Brooke Clark!
Photo: “punster” by danbruell is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
They’d all be like, never say never
in classes we had, but whatever.
I turned to the windows and hallways
that always said always say always.
*****
Editor’s comments: From Pino Coluccio you should expect light and dark combined, light but deep, usually short, always well-phrased… and always existential. This, the eponymous piece of his 2017 collection, is tucked away in the middle of the book. The book won a Trillium Award, putting Coluccio in the company of Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje and Alice Munro. He has given me permission to republish more of his pieces from Class Clown periodically.
Pino Coluccio lives in Toronto.
We aim to sing
Boldly as the brave acrobat on his thin string
Across the air.
But yet, no matter how we juggle words and dare,
And think ourselves stupendous,
We’re risking nothing… we’re no Flying Wallendas.
*****
The Seven-Person Pyramid, the creation of Karl Wallenda, cost a couple of the acrobats their lives in 1962. https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/2012/06/10/wallendas-history-one-of-greatness-and-tragedy/29102856007/ Poetry may also try for spectacular effects, but without the inherent dangers of the highwire. Poets are more likely to risk their lives through their livers than anything else.
This short poem was just published in Lighten Up Online (thanks, Jerome Betts!)
We spiral round the sun, like water
spirals round a drain;
herded like sheep to the slaughter,
it’s an old refrain–
what you coulda, what you oughta…
so few years remain.
*****
This short poem was recently published in The Asses of Parnassus – thanks, Brooke Clark! Btw sorry if the poem seems morbid – fall/winter has always made me reflective; I’ve been feeling time running out since my teens.
“File:Pool drain vortex as viewed from above the water at Grange Park wading pool.jpg” by Glogger at English Wikipedia is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
He: Met with a colleague for cocktails. Last night is a blur.
Having a wonderful time. Wish you were her.
She: I’ve been tidying up and arranging while you’ve been gone.
When you want to retrieve your things, they’re out on the lawn.
*****
These two couplets by Susan McLean were recently published in The Asses of Parnassus; she comments: “I got the idea for this poem by misreading a line in a poem by Amit Majmudar. It is not the first time I have gotten an idea for a line by misreading or mishearing something: aging has its unforeseen benefits. The line was the standard phrase from postcards, “Wish you were here,” which I misread as “wish you were her.” I immediately saw the comic potential of that phrase, and at first I thought of the exchange as written on postcards. But then I realized that conferences are often short, making sending a postcard impractical, and that no one tends to send postcards anymore. So I reconceived the poem as texts–which also have to leave a lot unsaid because of their length. I left open the question of whether “her” was an accidental typo or a deliberate choice.”
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
Photo: “Business Affairs” by edwicks_toybox is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
Form in Formless Times 