He closes his eyes while, around his head, like playground shouts, a flock of angry birds explodes. He feels an overwhelming dread, remembering his irate father’s words and what the words preceded: those first blows that pummelled his thin shoulders and his ears, left him confused and with a bloody nose, his much-loved, navy T-shirt stained with tears. He blinks, refocuses. The birds have gone. And, looking at his wristwatch, he can see hours have slipped by like buses missed. A pawn on life’s great chessboard, he stands helplessly. Time flows around him. In it he will grow to strength while it diminishes his foe.
*****
Richard Fleming writes: “I’ve written a great deal of verse over the years, much of which I’d happily disown, but amidst that unruly scrub-grass a few flowers have blossomed. The bouquet presented here comprises a mixture of formal and informal verse, including a number of older poems that have appeared elsewhere: there are also several more recently written ones that have not previously been published.
“The Russian poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, is quoted as saying: ‘a poet’s autobiography is his poetry’ and that may be true to a degree but let’s not forget that poetry is a creative art, a flight of fantasy, therefore poems that, at first glance, may appear to be autobiographical will almost certainly have been embellished by the writer’s imagination.
“The selection leans strongly towards rhyming verse: my preference, despite the fact it seems to have fallen from favour in the world of modern poetry. What odds? I’ve never been one to run with the pack.”
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
Under a porridge heaven (scourged with black, and prickly-pale as sackcloth) drear and dun, the road lays down its cobbles, mirrored slick with recent rain and half a sickened sun.
A passer-by or two. Not noticing the shambling creatures going to their deaths. A troop of oxen, slipping on the slime, heading for the abbatoir. Their breaths
resigned and patient; runny eyes that see the emerald grass, the clear, bright streams, the fields, the apple-blossomed ease of Normandy.
Silver-drooling snouts. Sometimes a snort or sniff. But nothing more. Remembering the sea. A passing smell. A passing thought.
*****
John Gallas writes: “I love ‘Oxen’, a little gem you find sometimes when translating from periodical/magazine contributions that mostly sank without trace over time. I’d be delighted. It’s from ‘La Parnasse contemporain’ (only ever 3 editions – 1866, 71 and 76).”
Armand d’Artois (1788 – 1867) was a French playwright and librettist. Here is the original:
LES BŒUFS
Sous un ciel bas, d’un blanc triste, teinté de noir, Qui prend l’aspect blafard et morne d’un cilice, La rue étend au loin son pavé rond et lisse Que l’averse a rendu luisant comme un miroir.
Quelques passants s’en vont, flanant sur le trottoir, Sans voir ces condamnés qui marchent au supplice : Des troupeaux de bœufs, dont le pied trébuche et glisse Sur le chemin qui mène au sanglant abattoir.
Et dans les yeux rêveurs de ces bêtes superbes Sont encor peints les clairs ruisseaux, les hautes herbes Et les pommiers en fleur du gras pays normand.
La bave en fils d’argent tombe de leurs narines, Et parfois l’un d’entre eux renifle longuement, Comme au ressouvenir d’âcres senteurs marines.
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.
it doesn’t mean two shlubs like you and me would be in Eden with them. God knows I am partial to a slice of apple pie and grew up filching off a neighbor’s tree the peaches he intended for his nieces. How many generations would the ruse have lasted? Theologians float their theses, but sin’s a firecracker with a fuse
that heaven’s ghostly glow can light as well as any spark that fountained out of hell. Can’t speak for you, though I suspect I do, I’d grow so bored, I’d climb the wall with you: A derring-duo, deathlessness-defying, we’d sneak out into all that lively dying.
*****
Amit Majmudar writes: “If Eve and Adam Never Fell” continues a long tradition for me. For a reason unknown to me, I have written obsessively for decades about the fall from the garden of Eden, in fact by sheer volume of work it comes in third behind the Ramayana story and the 1947 Partition of India among my recurrent themes. “Subtle Anatomy,” for example, is one of my first ever published poems, way back in 1999:
Subtle Anatomy by Amit Majmudar
An arm is the spine of an angel wing, cracked at the elbow. Webbed for gliding once, we could leap off of cliff or bridge or tower and saw no problem with a leap of faith. What happened to it? Ask the suicide. After the battle in heaven, the good angels, precursors to the Turks who shamed their captives, carved and carted off those wings—atrocious— a mound of wings more chilling than a mound of skulls: in this case, the contributors could watch the ground tumor swell. So you see we have some angel in us, even if it’s the bedeviled kind, stripped of its wings like a drunk pilot, out of service.
Before Eve met the serpent, she was fleshier than even Rubens’s palette could stomach and spineless, literally. The serpent dove in her through the nest-hole anus until the scorpion-stinger coccyx slurped in too, and she sheathed him whole. He straightened her, the breath in a balloon, into this human posture of rebellion, this upright and bipedal challenge. Settled, the serpent sent nerves everywhere, claiming each inch of her with senses. Not with an apple but an apple’s taste the serpent ruined her, fossilizing to the vertebral column. So you see we have some devil in us too and dead center at that commanding everything.
previously published in The Journal of the AMA
*****
Amit Majmudar’s recent books include Twin A: A Memoir (Slant Books, 2023), The Great Game: Essays on Poetics (Acre Books, 2024), the hybrid work Three Metamorphoses (Orison Books, 2025), and Things My Grandmother Said: Poems (Knopf, 2026). His forthcoming book is a novel, Cervantes in Chains (Slant Books, 2027).
‘If Eve and Adam Never Fell’ was first published in The Sonneteer
Dear Giacopo, this sad, obscene disaster, forever motherless, and piped of breath, if ever it was living, died too soon, and goes untimely to the feast of death. And are the Humours of its tiny tub sweet milk, or tears? For sure, its mother’s womb, its first and living globe, was made of flesh, and not the glass that rounds it in this tomb. The embryo is dead: long live the corse. Its promised Immortality cut short, it floats in blood, aborted, come to naught. O Man! O Slab Professors! Learn perforce that this is Woman’s flesh and blood: more sweet, more frail than glass; less strong than aquavit.
*****
John Gallas writes: “The ‘Abortion’ poem by Bartolomeo Dotti (1651-1713) is part of a work in progress (a History of Italy in Poems – featuring not the Great Monuments but the lesser poets from the 1st poem in Italian up to a poet b.1935). If you ever want any more, there’s 84. At least 60 rhyme and bounce.”
VII L’ABORTO NELL’AMPOLLA A Giacopo Grandis, fisico e anatomico
Questo, Giacopo mio, sconcio funesto cui diè morto natale il sen materno, se maturo nascea, moria ben presto, e voi d’intempestivo il fèste eterno. Non so se dolce latte o pianto mesto gli sia di quel cristal l’umore interno; so ben che l’alvo suo fu come questo, poi ch’utero da vetro io non discerno. Vive quasi per voi chi per sé langue; embrïone morì, scheletro nacque, fatto parto immortal d’aborto essangue. Uomo, impara! Insegnarti al Grandi piacque che sia ventre di donna e maschio sangue piú fral del vetro e men vital de l’acque.
There is a brief outline of Dotti’s turbulent life here.
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.
My new clothes should eat the pilau – Persian proverb
Refused admission. Speel’s. On Friday night. Apparently my clothes. Not smart enough. Full they said. Departed in a huff. Ate at Goldberg’s. Went back Monday night. Same fat bouncer. Wore my Paul Smith suit. Nothing said. Nice table by the bar. Cocktails. Hognuts. Champagne. Caviar. Alligator steaks. Took off my suit. Arranged it on the chair like that and that. Spooned the food inside it. Then the drink. Waiters looked the other way. I think I proved my point. Paid up and took my hat. Tipped the bouncer. Bowed at Bwana Speel. ‘I think,’ I said, ‘the suit deserved the meal.’
*****
John Gallas writes: “It’s one of my favourite ‘Persian Proverb’ stories (the original is a merry little read, involving a guest at a Vizier’s house) and making the sonnet was therefore – the whole content being pre-provided – an exercise in style, form, rhyme etc., a challenge I very much like – which is why I do so much translating. I also happen to think that the ‘message’ (though I’m not that fond of poems with ‘messages’) applies increasingly to a world of judgement by appearances, influencers, and pre-packaged (but, alas, empty-packaged) ideas of social success. I don’t often get this ‘relevant’, but the applicability just came with the story, and that kind of proves it’s timeless/universal, and not my personal grouch.
‘Blantyre’: has an interesting history – I was asked to ‘Rep of Ireland-ify’ it for a Food Festival in Cork, were it went down (haha) well – so I entered it for the ‘Taste’ poetry competition last year … and it won! So I have 2 versions – I think the ‘Irish’ one is a bit more zippy, but whichever you prefer is ok with me – I’ve attached the ‘Abhar Blas’ (‘A Matter of Taste’) version.”
ábhar blas (a matter of taste sonnet)
refused admission – Friday night – at ‘Gator – apparently my blús – not smart enough – FULL they said – departed in a huff – ate at Porkys – went back one week later – same trom Bouncer – wore my Trixie Blout – nothing said – nice table by the bar – tapas – Boxty Raws – Moss-Roasted Gar, Thomas Walk Champagne – undressed – laid out my suit – like someone in my seat – and piled the food into its lap – poured in the drink – Waiters looked the other way – I think I proved my point – paid the damage – smiled – tipped the Bouncer – thanked Cócaire O’Neill – I guess – I said – the suit deserved the meal.
*****
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.
Illustration: ‘Blantyre Sonnet’ by RHL with ChatGPT-6 Astra Light. Not perfect, but I wasn’t going to waste time arguing about to collapse the clothes…
We want your heart to function at its best. Bisoprolol’s a helpful little pill (lol) and aspirin’s a friend. You’re less impressed, it seems, by side-effects of Ramipril but the cough may pass. Any chesty pains? Squirt GTN under your tongue. It’s droll how nitro-glycerin expands the veins and arteries. As for Lansoprazole, undoubtedly protecting your digestion from anti-platelets such as Prasugrel, yes, take it. Eplerenone is my suggestion as best antagonist. Won’t you pop that in, O protagonist? And zap LDL for sure before you snore—Atorvastatin.
*****
Helena Nelson writes: “After a heart attack, I was fitted with a stent in one cardiac artery and prescribed eight drugs, though one was optional (the GTN spray) and another only for the first six months (Prasugrel). I struggled to remember their names and purposes, so I put them in a sonnet, and as much about them as I could manage. LDL is so-called ‘bad cholesterol’. Bisoprolol is a beta-blocker and helps regulate blood pressure. Eplerenone is an aldosterone antagonist (this supposedly helps keep the heart muscle in shape). Make of that what you will. As they say on FaceBook, ‘it’s complicated’.”
I struggle with his life. In that warm land of his self-exiled end, a graveyard stone hushes his willfullness, but when the sand first mixed his ashes, didn’t London frown and sneer that the infidel would now command a truer view of God? And all I’ve read about his careless loving (women as things to take, enjoy, and jettison) has fed a crabbed dislike. But let the poems appear in their own strength—raging at old, mad kings, hymning the autumn, moaning black despair, packing in fourteen lines the whole decay of human tyrants’ pride—and they strip bare my morals: Wonder sweeps his sins away.
*****
Maryann Corbett writes: “What sparked this poem, quite simply, was an invitation from Ken Gordon of The Sonneteer to write a bouts-rimés with the end-rhymes of Ozymandias, in celebration of Shelley’s birthday. I fooled around with a subject unrelated to Shelley himself but decided that, given my instructions, the poem had to be about Shelley, so I’d have to do something with my conflicted feelings about the man.”
Maryann Corbett earned a doctorate in English from the University of Minnesota in 1981 and expected to be teaching Beowulf and Chaucer and the history of the English language. Instead, she spent almost thirty-five years working for the Office of the Revisor of Statutes of the Minnesota Legislature, helping attorneys to write in plain English and coordinating the creation of finding aids for the law. She returned to writing poetry after thirty years away from the craft in 2005 and is now the author of two chapbooks and six full-length collections, most recently The O in the Air (Franciscan U. Press, 2023). Her work has won the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize and the Richard Wilbur Award, has appeared in many journals on both sides of the Atlantic, and is included in anthologies like Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters and The Best American Poetry. A seventh book, Notifications from the Unseen, is forthcoming from Slant Books.
Illustration: Joseph Severn’s portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley, in Wikimedia. The radical 19th century poet practiced the politics of the plate. For Shelley and other liberals of his day, keeping sugar out of tea was a political statement against slavery.
No matter what you do, it doesn’t last: Your best endeavours are gone in an hour. If you could see the present become past, Your better weather just a passing shower, If you could see your garden run to weeds That once was hoed and tended with such care And understand you only bury seeds That will outlive us, and will still be there When we are gone, to sprout and live anew, Would you think that your labour is worth while To do the things you feel you have to do, To make the effort, go the extra mile? What else is there to do but push ahead? So damn them all and be glad you’ll be dead.
***** Bob Trewin writes: “This is my first poem in Snakeskin. I have previously appeared in some anthologies produced by the Holmfirth Writers’ Group (published by George Simmers, who is a founder member). I have also self-published two collections: Snowflakes in the Night, available from Amazon and the Lulu bookstore and Sonnets and Sundries, available from the Lulu bookstore.
“As for where this poem came from, I wonder how much you, living elsewhere, are aware of the rapid transformation that is happening in the UK, a transformation that no recent government has had a mandate to sanction, let alone actively pursue. If it is reversible, I will certainly not be around to witness it.”
Since scribbling some mediocre verse as a teenager, Bob Trewin put aside his pen for the best part of half a century. He began writing poetry again after retirement and now belongs to a number of groups scattered across the Pennines in West Yorkshire. He has won first and second prize in successive years in the National Association of Writers and Groups’ Open Poetry Competition.
“Jansen, you gotta wear gloves when you work on the grinder. You want hurt yourself?” And then Kaczmarek looked down at Frank’s left hand. He saw the scar before the boy could jerk his arm away. “It’s nothing. An accident is all, ya know?” He’d done it Sunday night. Sometimes the burning made you feel alright when you were getting lonely. He had meant to do it somewhere hidden, but it felt good, the old man noticing like he had. That’s probably how it was to have a dad— he’d hit your backside with a leather belt when you were a little shit, but he’d care if you were hurt. He’d even stroke your hair.
*****
Alex Rettie writes: “Protection” was first published in the Summer 2026 issue of Nimrod International, edited by Boris Dralyuk. It’s part of an as-yet unpublished manuscript called “The Triangles,” which follows the lives of two gay men (including Frank, the speaker of the poem) and a nun (the former teacher of one of the men).”
Alex Rettie is a Calgary poet who has been published in print and online journals in Canada, Australia, the UK and the US. He co-edits the online poetry journal Poems for Persons of Interest (https://pfpoi.blogspot.com/). You can find more of his work on Substack at https://poemsforpoi.substack.com/.
From worship and tenderness to profanity. Two poems becoming one through the contrapuntal technique.
Quatorzain I: Secrecy.
Solemn prayers fill the empty church; hallow’d songs arise from pews of birch.
Midnights are when angels fill the halls— neither flaw nor sin to weight their calls— right where Heaven’s ardent mercy falls. Yes, Amen, and God, they sing aloud, earnest praises proudly thus avowed, bless’d by secrecy’s embrace and shroud.
Only God may hear them. Only he knows the meaning of their cry and plea. Yet-unknown and his alone to see, choirs outbreathe a psalm when no one’s near as an offering at last sincere, echoed up in majesty and fear.
Quatorzain II: In Sacred Places.
Caressing, smiling, both confiding, enamored dreamers kiss in hiding. In sacred places coinciding, grotesque to Earth, they birth a treasure, humanity devoid of measure, melodic in its throes of pleasure.
Secure’s the love away from judges— revealed to none who touch begrudges, observes the bruising lips and smudges— liturgical in eyes’ occlusion. Neglect has borne them disillusion, religion out of shared seclusion.
Nocturnal lovers taste affection seduced by solitude. Perfection.
Contrapuntal: Secrecy in Sacred Places.
Solemn prayers fill the empty church; Caressing, smiling, both confiding, Hallow’d songs arise from pews of birch.
Enamored dreamers kiss in hiding. Midnights are when angels fill the halls— In sacred places coinciding,
Neither flaw nor sin to weight their calls— Grotesque to Earth, they birth a treasure, Right where Heaven’s ardent mercy falls.
Humanity devoid of measure, Yes, Amen, and God, they sing aloud, Melodic in its throes of pleasure.
Earnest praises proudly thus avowed, Sincere’s the love away from judges— Bless’d by secrecy’s embrace and shroud.
Revealed to none who touch begrudges, Only God may hear them. Only he Observes the birth of bruising smudges—
Knows the meaning of their cry and plea. Liturgical within seclusion. Yet-unknown and his alone to see,
Neglect has borne them disillusion— Choirs outbreathe a psalm when no one’s near Religion out of shared seclusion.
Asan offering at last sincere, Nocturnal lovers taste affection, Echoed up in majesty and fear. ’ Seduced by solitude. Perfection.
*****
Brooklyn Crane writes:
This God-Forsaken Contrapuntal!
Contrapuntal poetry seems complicated, and it actually is. Merging lines and meanings can be quite tricky! However, I’ve read several of them either composed of poems which barely hold up on their own or too short enough to be manageable, and in response to this, I obviously went over the top. Let’s see everything you can do by blending two poems together!
A contrapuntal text is the result of the intercalary arrangement of two separate pieces of writing which creates a hidden meaning.
When I prepared to pitch the idea of writing a complex-as-all-hell contrapuntal to my friend and fellow writer Narcisse Tardif, the very first thought that came to mind was that of how most contrapuntal poetry out there simply isn’t formal at all. I mean, who has the time for that? Of course, this being my publication, the name of which is Scheming Rhymes, I naturally had to do something about that. Two questions came out of this train of thought, and these were:
What if it was a contrapuntal between two sonnets?
What if I could produce an acrostic resulting from their intercalation?
If you’ve actually read my poem, you will obviously notice that the sonnets are not sonnets at all—or at least not in the traditional sense of the word. They are indeed quatorzains, as the silly French call the 14-line arrangements that most sonnets adhere to, but the only thing these have in common with them is the couplet of the Shakespearean variant. Undeniably, I could have just written two sonnets. However, it’s never that simple on Scheming Rhymes, and you’re here for it. We’ll get there in a bit.
Regarding the acrostic, yes—there’s a reason for the italicized start of every line. Why did I do this? I just wanted to leave a signature in this poem. Here it is!
Fourteen and fourteen from each poem constituting this contrapuntal add up to twenty-eight lines for me to work with. Scheming Rhymes perfectly fills half of that space while Brooklyn Crane sadly leaves me one letter short. Upon this ill-fated realization, I added the S at the end and pretended myself to be a brilliant strategist who can overcome anything with enough delusion. Surely the reader will know that an apostrophe precedes itbecause, you know, the poem is mine.
It is now that we can address the odd rhyme schemes of the quatorzains as, with the previous information in mind, I went ballistic.
“Could I arrange the poems in a way that their merging results in a different form? If so, which form would that be?”
SO! Because I had just recently posted my terza rima composition breakdown, it was freshly in my mind that a possible solution to this conundrum was such a form. I mean, think about it. Terza rima poems work on a formula of 3x + 1 (or 2), so I did 28 minus 1, divided by 3, and I landed on– I KNOW YOU ARE NOT HERE FOR THE MATH! Anyway, I landed on 9 tercets plus 1 loose line, accounting for all twenty-eight verses.
Next was the question of what the rhyme schemes had to be in order to fulfill this crazy dream. Terza rima works on a ABA BCB CDC … YZY Z (or ZZ) scheme, so I superimposed it on the acrostic as follows.
I hope that you are starting to see the way these two bastards came into existence. We now have the structural guidelines for both quatorzains and the resulting terza rima. This would absolutely be enough for a sane person to go about their day. It’s a double quatorzain/terza rima/contrapuntal/acrostic after all.
It was not enough for me, but I will not bore you with the metrical choices made in this poem. It’s explained on the paid-for section of my terza rima post, though.
Oh, yes. This is a shameless plug for my paid subscription. Come on—you already love Scheming Rhymes!
With all of these guardrails to work with, it was finally time to write. It was absolute hell.
But why do this?
The short answer is: because I can, lol. The actual answer, however, is that I do it because it can be done. Scheming Rhymes is all about exploring what we can do to enrich poetry, understanding both the traditions that educate our verse today and the techniques that might innovate its composition tomorrow. This work is not perfect, I’m aware, and there is sure to be someone who executes the planning behind it more expertly, but we ought to encourage writers to challenge themselves and produce beauty through effort, not through simply making poetry easier.
So there you have it. Here’s to more brutal antitheses to free verse poetic prose!
Join the madness—or don’t!
As with all previously explored forms and techniques, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer. Here’s the text by Ani Beeler that inspired me to explore this technique using a completely different approach:
Brooklyn Crane: Celebrating human ingenuity in poetry! Writer, advocate, unapologetic rhyme addict, and public enemy of AI content. Subscribe to Scheming Rhymes—read more of my work and learn more about poetry forms and techniques.
Illustration attributed to Mihály Zichy based on Mikhail Lermontov’s poem The Demon, via Art Renewal Center.
