Category Archives: Uncategorized

Maryann Corbett, ‘Buying a Plot in Plague Time’

5 Replies

Shouldn’t the moment be more–well, dramatic?
Shouldn’t it toll like Donne’s dead-bell? But no.
Mere paper-rustling. It’s a burst of static
That stutters off to silence, while late snow
Alights outside and melts forgettably,
A numb reminder. Nothing I can see
In the small print addresses dread, or God,
Or love. Somber reflection? Not a bit.
Forms in quadruplicate:
White over yellow, pink, and goldenrod,

For a dead end. No hymns, no holiness–
No funeral; every gathering spreads the plague.
Perfunctory forms depress me, and they press
Me now, because I’ve left so much so vague.
When until now has dying loomed so real
I shrank from my dead flesh? Or when did I feel
This keen to leave less horror for my son
And daughter? Save them shock-and-awe about
Choices, when mine run out?
I mutter grimly, I will get this done.

And still I sit here, playing my numbers game,
Tossing my rhyme-pairs into the winds of fear.
Back to the labor. Back to the minor shame
Of shuffling off my life (check there, sign here).
Earth gets my ashes–grudgingly, on terms
That reek of real estate and legal firms.
Transfer-on-death arrangements and new will
Spew gray phrases: drone and drone and drone.
Like worrying a bone,
This work to stifle terrors I can’t kill.

So work–bending the spirit to the letter,
Bowing the head at how the flesh unweaves–
Goes down like a stiff drink; the ache’s no better
Yet, for the iron aftertaste it leaves.
Here, plague: take this dull prose; spare those I love.
I sign at all the Xs (and to prove
My resoluteness, press hard on the pen),
Scribble the check and seal the envelope.
Clinging weakly to hope,
I thumb the stamp on. No one says Amen.

*****

Maryann Corbett writes: “It’s clear, I think, that this poem (first published in Modern Age) dates from the worst days of the Covid pandemic, in 2020 when there was no vaccine, when isolation was the only control, and when the thought of death was pervasive. As my own age cohort was dying in droves, I did think it prudent to make plans in case the worst happened. My ruminations on the process arranged themselves in a shape like that of Larkin’s Aubade.”

‘Buying a Plot in Plague Time’, first published in Modern Age, is collected in The O in the Air.

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.”

Photo: “Roman Catholic Division C, Row 16, Plot 43” by Discover Waikumete Cemetery is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Max Gutmann, ‘The Self’

4 Replies

The self I love
and try to be

is fashioned by a deeper me,
a me that’s crafted deeper still,

where things like impulse, taste, and will
derive, a dimly curtained core
of which I fathom little more

than that I fathom little, and
that I will never understand,
unfairly blank, unfinely bleak,

a dark obstruction as I seek
a fuller understanding of

the self I am
and try to love.

*****

Max Gutmann writes: “”The Self” strikes me as a strong piece of light verse, light because it’s almost entirely intellectual.It relies on form: its single-sentence, mirror-image construction in which the  beginning and end of each half reflect (on) the end and beginning of the other.”

‘The Self’ was originally published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

Max Gutmann has contributed to dozens of publications including New Statesman, Able Muse, and Cricket. His plays have appeared throughout the U.S. and have been well-reviewed (see maxgutmann.com). His book There Was a Young Girl from Verona sold several copies.
Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, A WordPress.com Website.

“Love yourself” by QuinnDombrowski is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Lindsay McLeod, ‘Fairytale’

Leave a reply

Sweetheart, let me tell ya
I don’t need a Cinderella,
no coach from lowly pumpkin
or fairy godmother will do,

Rapunzel’s hair from prison tower,
no magic lamp or ring of power
and I don’t agree it’s freedom
having nothing left to lose,

I know that I’m not much
but if you think that I’m enough
then we’ll be happy ever after,
writing our story me and you

we can steer clear of poisoned apples,
fight the dragons, choose our battles,
but sweetheart, what kind of a halfwit
goes out dancing in glass shoes?

*****

Lindsay McLeod writes: “I wrote this one years ago, for the sweetest person I’ve ever met, after promising that I would write her a poem every week. In the end they filled a book, writing just shy of a hundred for her.”

‘Fairytale’ was first published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

Lindsay McLeod lives by the Port in South Australia where he is driven by his cattle dog, Mary. Lindsay’s most recently published work can be found in Rat’s Ass Review, Snakeskin, and Meniscus. Currently, he is said to be considering a life of crime to support his poetry habit.

“Cinderella Glass Slipper” by Tsts Sheng is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Susan McLean, ‘Mending’

Leave a reply

Her cashmere sweater, navy blue,
was passed to me when Mother died.
Though soft and warm, with little wear,
it has a hole that needs repair.
Mending it from the other side,
I spot another, then a few.
I hold the sweater to the light.
Small holes shine out like stars at night.

From her I learned this homely art,
as well as not to toss or waste
what might be saved. I thread and sew
and knot and thread again. Although
I salvage what the moths defaced,
I cannot patch my threadbare heart,
for I can never, never, never
suture what is gone forever.

*****

Susan McLean writes: “I got the idea for this poem and began writing it in my head as I was mending the sweater, and since, as I mention, the mending took quite a while, I had several lines completed before I was done with the sewing. The rhyme scheme, ABCCBADD, rather mimics the activity of closing up a hole and tying off the thread with the final couplet, though that was not something I was conscious of as I was writing it. My unconscious does its own thing while my conscious mind struggles with finding what to say. However, I was quite conscious of echoing Lear’s lament for Cordelia in the repeated “never, never, never” of the next-to-last line. That repetition and negation have always struck me as being the epitome of grief.”

‘Mending’ was first published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

Susan McLean has three books of poetry: The Best Disguise, The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and her latest, Daylight Losing Time (Able Muse, 2026). She had also published a book of translations of Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her poems have appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, Crab Orchard Review, Able Muse, and elsewhere. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

“darning a sweater” by henna lion is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Melissa Balmain: ‘What I’ve Learned From Museums’

4 Replies

I.

In centuries past,
women seldom moved fast,
preferring to spend
hours on end
staring at pools,
stretching on stools,
or sitting on swings.
Now and then, they had flings
and were equally stirred
by a man or large bird.
If they did need to race –
to hunt deer or outpace
vicious hordes – they took care
that their clothing and hair
would cover, at best,
one perky breast.

II.

For generations, men were super jacked,
no doubt because they wanted to distract
observers from the fact that nearly all
their nether parts were vanishingly small.

III

Kids used to be mini adults,
with often impressive results –
even fresh from the womb
they could light up a room
and preside over sizeable cults.

Other children (nude, not a bit shy)
were great archers. I wish we knew why
they would soon have their fill
of that valuable skill
and, sadly, forget how to fly.

*****

Melissa Balmain writes: “Obviously, the museums and exhibits referenced in this poem are a specific breed—several of which I visited last summer during a heat wave in Paris. (Travel tip: if you’re looking for Louvre-quality art, but you’re running low on Euros, check out the Petit Palais. Not only is it free, it’s air-conditioned.)”

First published in Lighten Up Online.

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). 

Illustration: Boucher, François – Le Repos des nymphes au retour de la chasse, dit Le Retour de chasse de Diane – J 10 – Musée Cognacq-Jay

Ed Shacklee, ‘So We Beat Them’

1 Reply

One limped a little, and another had a stammer,
one was cross-eyed, swarthy, and employed atrocious grammar;
so we beat them with a pipe, and then a club, and then a plier,
bending them like pretzels after binding them with wire,
sending trite condolences with tappings of a hammer.

One was far too clever, another drolly thick,
one was hyper, one disfigured by a nervous tic;
so we beat them with a tire iron, then aimed a rolling pin
at tender ribs, boxed their ears, and kicked them in the shin,
pretending we were sorry while we plied the heavy stick.

A fear of heights gripped one; one lived in mother’s cellar;
one, depressed, developed gout and had a pasty pallor;
so we beat them in a mixing bowl till minds were scrambled eggs,
safe and snug at home because we’d manacled their legs,
and lent our ears but didn’t hear their squalls amid the squalor.

One ignored the hoi polloi as they were mouthing curses,
one kept her nose in books and mumbled antiquated verses;
so we beat them with the crucifix, an ankh, and shepherd’s crooks,
painted them like prison walls and hoisted them on hooks,
and pent them on their merry way in gilded, garish hearses:

and when they got to heaven with its lovely rolling beaches,
their uniforms restarched and blanched to white with holy bleaches,
we beat them with a lightning rod, the hand of God, and thunder,
for only strikes against the flint can spark a soul to wonder.
There is no balm in Gilead but serpent oil and leeches.

*****

Ed Shacklee writes: “Trying to write poetry comes from reading the poems of others aloud, I think. It doesn’t seem to matter if you’re smart or eloquent, or not. I started mumbling to myself sometime after coming across William Meredith’s The Wreck of the Thresher, in which a poem ends, ‘There’s flowering, there’s a dark question answered yes.’ I can’t reproduce the experience here, and I doubt anyone can unless they’re as immature, unlettered, and blue as I was back then, but that resonated; the unspoken question that could be any question, the modest, unconditional yes, and the sudden flowering of that line. It shook something till it was almost awake. Arise and walk, I guess you could say. A while later I heard Meredith give a reading, and I regret that I was too tongue-tied in his presence to go up and thank him.”

‘So We Beat Them’ was first published in Rattle, #50 – Winter 2015

Ed Shacklee lives on a boat in the Potomac River. His first collection, “The Blind Loon: A Bestiary,” was published by Able Muse Press.

And for those who like odd information and representations of animals, The Blind Loon: A Bestiary Facebook group is worth joining.

“Zimbabwean police beats fleeing protester” by Sokwanele – Zimbabwe is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Michael R. Burch, ‘The Toast’

2 Replies

For longings warmed by tepid suns
(brief lusts that animated clay),
for passions wilted at the bud
and skies grown desolate and gray,
for stars that fell from tinseled heights
and mountains bleak and scarred and lone,
for seas reflecting distant suns
and weeds that thrive where seeds were sown,
for waltzes ending in a hush,
for rhymes that fade as pages close,
for flames’ exhausted, drifting ash,
and petals falling from the rose, …
I raise my cup before I drink,
saluting ghosts of loves long dead,
then silently propose a toast—
to joys set free, and those I fled.

*****

Michael R. Burch writes: “The genesis of “The Toast” was that as a college sophomore I was either in love with a girl, or had a serious crush on her, then blew my chance when it finally materialized. I was like Hamlet and Prufrock in lacking the ability to act decisively.

Also, my timing was terrible. The night she showed a sexual interest in me was the first night I ever got drunk, after celebrating a victory in a pool tournament with too many beers. I remember seeing her psychedelic panties, then nothing else. I must have passed out while making out. She was so pissed off that the next day she was dating a graduate student with a beard and a beer belly. I believe she ended up marrying him.

That sad episode explains my toast “to joys set free, and those I fled.”

I seem to remember submitting “The Toast” to a vanity press, before I realized there were such things as vanity presses. I even seem to remember it winning some sort of award: a commemorative coin or something like that. Not that it really matters. But I do think it’s one of my better early poems.

I wrote the original version of “The Toast” circa age 19 as a college sophomore. But I was never happy with the original opening lines:

For dreams descended into dust,
for love that lingered but a day,
for passion wilted at the bud
and skies grown desolate and grey, …

Many years later better opening lines occurred to me:

For longings warmed by tepid suns
(brief lusts that animated clay),
for passions wilted at the bud
and skies grown desolate and grey, …

So there is something to be said for never giving up on a poem and always being willing to improve it. I believe Valery said no poem is ever truly finished, the poets eventually give up. The trick is not to give up too soon.”

*****

The Toast’ was originally published by Contemporary Rhyme.

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.

“Making a toast” by Stimpdawg is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Elizabeth Hurst, ‘April’

2 Replies

I have to admire their heartless lust
Performing with no emotional fuss,
And when it’s done, no flower cares
That its lover still sprawls bare
To bees and wind, to hummingbirds.
Petals don’t worry if they’re the third
Or fourth—it just doesn’t matter
After they’ve spread pollen’s splatter.
They live to turn their airy tricks.
No rumpled sheets, no mess to fix,
No wet spots stuck to sated thighs
And stamens aren’t concerned with size
Or any of our skillful lies
Or hearts destroyed as sorrows rise.
No flower mourns when another dies.

*****

‘April’ was first published in Snakeskin… in March.

Elizabeth Hurst is originally from Los Angeles and moved up to San Francisco many years ago. She lives out by the beach with her husband, Gerald Stack.

“April Flowers” by Jocey K is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Claudia Gary, ‘The Body’

3 Replies

It catches up–sore teeth,
cramped neck or growing belly–
demanding our attention
once and for all. Beneath

a well-established brain,
above submissive toes,
the rest of it rebels
at our neglect, to gain

maybe not sympathy
but serious concern–
whatever is required
for us to stop and see

its loyalty. A steed
deserving of a gallop,
water and oats, in want
of love, it must be freed.

*****

Claudia Gary’s new book, Time and Other Solvents, will be available soon from Sligo Creek Publishing (See https://www.sligocreekpublishing.com/time-and-other-solvents). 

She lives near Washington DC and teaches workshops on Sonnets, Villanelles, Natural Meter, Persona Poems, Poetry vs. Trauma, etc., at The Writer’s Center (writer.org) and privately, currently via Zoom. Also the author of Humor Me (2006) and several chapbooks, most recently Genetic Revisionism, Claudia is an advisory editor for New Verse Review, as well as a science writer, visual artist, and composer of tonal art songs and chamber music. Her article about setting poems to music can be found online at  https://straightlabyrinth.info/conference.html. See also pw.org/content/claudia_gary.

‘The Body’ was first published in Amsterdam Quarterly

Photo: “The Old Cowboy” by Big Grey Mare is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Daniel Brown, ‘Lovely Ones’

Leave a reply


On some it will have not been lost
That lovely ones the world over
Expound, as part of their palaver,
On beauty’s costs—to take the most
Familiar, that they fear it’s never

Any but their outer traits
That captivate (a fear with cause)—
And yet consistently refuse
To speak of beauty’s benefits.
Perhaps because they’d sooner lose

Their loveliness, this company,
Than stand before the world and name
The gems that ever fall to them
For having it. Or possibly
A theory founded less on shame

Than mercy would be likelier:
That they refrain, these favored few,
From saying things that in their view
The rest could maybe bear to hear
But shouldn’t be required to.

*****

Daniel Brown writes: “This poem offers a couple of theories on why beautiful people don’t have much to say about the experience of being so. It appeared in The New Criterion, and in my collection What More?“

Daniel Brown’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Partisan Review, PN Review, Raritan, Parnassus, The New Criterion and other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies including Poetry 180 (ed. Billy Collins) and The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets (ed. David Yezzi). His work has been awarded a Pushcart prize, and his collection Taking the Occasion (Ivan R. Dee, 2008) won the New Criterion Poetry Prize. His latest collection is What More?  (Orchises Press, 2015). Brown’s criticism of poets and poetry has appeared in The Harvard Book Review, The New Criterion, PN Review, The Hopkins Review  and other journals, and the LSU Press has published his critical book, Subjects in Poetry. His Why Bach? and Bach, Beethoven, Bartok are audio-visual ebooks available at Amazon.com. His website is danielbrownpoet.com .

Photo: “Nature has the most beautiful colors (118/365)” by Tim Geers is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.