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.
Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken In, sprinkled with ashes, Pop switches channels, takes another Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks What to do with me, a green young man Who fails to consider the Flim and flam of the world, since Things have been easy for me; I stare hard at his face, a stare That deflects off his brow; I’m sure he’s unaware of his Dark, watery eyes, that Glance in different directions, And his slow, unwelcome twitches, Fail to pass. I listen, nod, Listen, open, till I cling to his pale, Beige T-shirt, yelling, Yelling in his ears, that hang With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling His joke, so I ask why He’s so unhappy, to which he replies… But I don’t care anymore, cause He took too damn long, and from Under my seat, I pull out the Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing, Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face To mine, as he grows small, A spot in my brain, something That may be squeezed out, like a Watermelon seed between Two fingers. Pop takes another shot, neat, Points out the same amber Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and Makes me smell his smell, coming From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem He wrote before his mother died, Stands, shouts, and asks For a hug, as I shrink, my Arms barely reaching around His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ‘cause I see my face, framed within Pop’s black-framed glasses And know he’s laughing too.
Featuring it in 2007 (alongside another Obama poem, “Underground”), The New Yorker noted that it “appears to be a loving if slightly jaded portrait of Obama’s maternal grandfather, with whom he spent a large part of his childhood.”
Clip clop clip clop steady up yon stuntgrass rise, boy, long as low and stony-brown, slow like weeks with nothing in them: saddle-tick, dirt-crump, poker-face.
Clip clop clip clop privy-top and anchor-wires, church-cross, store-spike, steady boy, up yon one-street, just more-trodden dust: saddle-tick, dirt-crump, poker-face.
Clip clop clip clop steady, boy, through sad wood civics, rippled in yon saloon-glass store-side, road-end, horses maybe leaving: saddle-tick, dirt-crump, poker-face.
Clip clop clip clop rise, boy, steady, way ahead, purple-white mountains, nothing in them maybe, like weeks maybe: saddle-tick, dirt-crump, poker-face.
2.
My brother’s name was Crazy Sean. They shot him in the head. He rattled through the summer corn and turned the green shucks red.
I laid him in the willowbrake. I couldn’t stand to pray. I kissed his cheek for pity’s sake, and then I rode away.
The plains are full of buffalo. The woods are red and gold. The mountaintops are white with snow. His memory keeps me cold.
I’ve rode through Hope and Whisky Creek. I’ve rode through Faith and Love. I’ve laid in Hate and Hide-and-Seek, and run from God-Above.
The prairie shines, the buckdeer cry. The hawks hang in the heat. Clipclop clipclop, the world rolls by. They say revenge is sweet.
3.
Somewhere still, stark as an afternoon; Ached in long planks of sunshine; Like a gambler’s card dropped on an empty land; Vauntsquare, the nailed-up main street creaks Against the air. Clipclop – hotel, laundry, saddles, Telegraph, clap-houses, guns. The horse stops. Into this hollow spine of fellowship blows a slow O of wind. Three men clatter at a boardwalk: Nacarat boots, sharktooth mojos – oh my brother.
4.
I shot one on the shithouse board. His head smashed like a squash and sprayed the backboards red. He pissed his boots and died. The stinking hole spit up a fat, black fly, which was his soul. I shot one in the barbershop. The chair caught fire, and ate his o-colonied hair. He fell out like a slice of spitroast meat. The duster wrapped him in its winding-sheet. I shot one in the cornfield. Larks of blood flew off his skull and twittered in the mud. He rattled through the stalks. His mashy head threw up its brain and turned the green shucks red. I took a bath and threw away my gun. I rode away wherever. I was done.
5.
drizzle pops on his hatbrim, cord and wool and steam-sodden, saddleticks like an empty stomach.
windpump wires and tin-dump, like horizon-drowning, horse, then man, hat, gone, clipclop, dusk drips in.
paraffin lamplight pricks the town, glo-worms, night hunched above, coyotes carry their eyes like stars.
6.
reckoning done how will he ever be warm
purpose gone how will he outrun the storm
bearings none how will he find another
riding alone how will he tell his brother
*****
John Gallas writes: “‘Western Man’ is a weird one: I have a quite spooky love of Westerns, jogging as they do some very deep links with Old En Zed, remnants (many remnants!) of which I grew up with and in. Those old wooden towns, the dim General Stores, the slightly grim and mostly silent (mostly) men, the cheek-by-jowlness of town and bush. It means quite a lot to me. I find the end of most Clint Eastwood films, and especially ‘Once Upon A Time in the West’, as the hero says ‘I gotta go now’, and rides away into lonliness after some bloody vengeance or other, inexpressibly moving.”
John Gallas, Aotearoa/NZ poet, published mostly by Carcanet. Saxonship Poet (see http://www.saxonship.org), Fellow of the English Association, St Magnus Festival Orkney Poet, librettist, translator and biker. 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.
So far the nights feel lonelier than the days. In light, the living keep me company, and memories of voices through the years.
Each summer threads a green familiar maze. Emerging sun-struck, you can barely spy the slow kaleidoscope of clouds and hours.
Those flannel nightshirts chilly sleepers wear as summer wanes: I’m giving them away. Pass it on: you keep at the same time.
A bough has broken from the Duchess tree. Rain swelled the apples. Too much lightness weighs heavy: the heft of the idea of home tempered with the detachment of a dream, or tidal pulls, like ocean, like moonrise.
*****
Rachel Hadas writes: “Summer Nights and Days, from perhaps 2009-2011, is one of a number of pieces written in and about Vermont which I recently tightened into short prose texts and collected in my latest book, Pastorals (2025); as it appears here, it’s still in its poem format. This piece may or may not have been written after my late husband’s death in 2011, but is certainly refers to a time when I was essentially living alone. My son and his visiting friends were the recipients of old nightshirts (more recycling).”
Rachel Hadas’s recent books include Love and Dread, Pandemic Almanac, and Ghost Guest. Her translations include Euripides’s Iphigenia plays and a portion of Nonnus’s Tales of Dionysus. Professor Emerita at Rutgers-Newark, where she taught for many years, she now teaches at 92Y in New York City and serves as poetry editor of Classical Outlook. Her honors include a Guggenheim fellowship and an award from the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters.
“Evgeny and Evgeniia faced an excruciating choice. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers told the couple they could leave the United States with their child and return to their native Russia, which they had fled seeking political asylum. Or they could remain in immigration detention in the United States — but their 8-year-old son, Maksim, would be taken away and sent to a shelter for unaccompanied children. In the end, they chose the agony of limbo in the United States over a return to a place where they saw no prospect for freedom or any future for their family… The last time Evgeny and Evgeniia saw Maksim was on May 15” —The New York Times, August 5, 2025. New York Times photo of Evgeny, Evgeniia, and Maksim.
Sophie’s Choice seemed light-years from our time, a fading tragedy that made us weep for Streep.
But now with tactics changing on a dime in brutal ways we thought could not repeat, sick heat
pervades my belly and begins to climb: how can we keep denying what it means when scenes
unspool of parents, guilty of no crime, compelled to choose the thing that they most fear, right here?
*****
Melissa Balmain writes: “As the poet Barbara Loots recently put it, what we need right now is a tsunami of truth. I contribute a few drops when I can.”
‘Evgeny and Evgeniia’s Choice‘ first appeared in New Verse News.
Melissa Balmain’s third poetry collection, Satan Talks to His Therapist, is available from Paul Dry Books (and from all the usual retail empires). Balmain is the editor-in-chief of Light, America’s longest-running journal of comic verse, and has been a member of the University of Rochester’s English Department since 2010.
Photo: New York Times photo of Evgeny, Evgeniia, and Maksim.
The doctor raised an eyebrow. He’d pronounced the sentence (death) And expected her to die now; yet the patient still drew breath. The woman was a smoker, and the cancer had a hold That was strong enough to choke her. She was ninety-three years old. Her lungs must be a sump, awash with nicotine and tar, And with a clogged-up pump like that she wasn’t going far.
Well, any trouble breathing? Not at all, I just can’t walk! (I see her, thick smoke wreathing, still unpausing in her talk.) A cough, perhaps? Not really – nothing wrong that I’m aware. The doctor starts to feel she must be using different air. There’s nothing more to say, his grim prognosis is complete; The science of today must now acknowledge its defeat.
Back home, I watch my mother as she settles in her chair, Sips coffee, lights another and inhales without a care. I pass her the harmonica, she takes it, has a blow, And jaunty and euphonic her recital starts to flow. The angels have their harps but death’s a word they never knew; Down here it’s flats and sharps and death’s a song on air turned blue.
*****
Simon MacCulloch writes: “A largely true account of the somewhat surreal day on which my uncomprehending late mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. I’m still quite proud of having rhymed “harmonica” without anyone called Veronica to help out.”
Simon MacCulloch lives in London and contributes poetry to a variety of print and online publications, including Reach Poetry, View from Atlantis, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Spectral Realms, Black Petals and others.
Litter mates. Glitter mates. Mirror of what you hate, what you adore about yourself. Sleep together on the floor. Giggles and snorts, kicks, forts of chairs and furry blankets. Fury. Tangle. Tussle and brush. Braid and wrangle, pulling hair; it’s just not fair. One of you is picked. Not it! On your mark, get set and go! Kicked gameboards; slam and pout. Crossing the street when the mean dog is out. I dare you. A secret meeting place under the willows against the fence. Sheets and pillows. Toothbrushes, blood, things buried in mud. All-ee, All-ee in free! Quit looking at me. Canned peaches, cold beaches. You and not-you; anyone but you.
So sick of that piano song! Scented markers. Shotgun! Wishing she was anyone. Wanting to be anyone. Else. Lure the cat to your lap from hers, pointing out how loud he purrs. Making cookies. Making up. Stealing make-up. Just shut up. Together, bang the pots on New Year’s. Pretend that you don’t hear her tears. Her bad boyfriend that you hate. And yours. Get home late. Will you, won’t you? Tattle-tell. Pounding on the bathroom door, shirt that’s wadded on the floor. You, not you.
Share a mattress in the tent, trees and stars and what you meant. The thrilling doorbell. That weird noise she makes in her throat. You both finish the movie quote. Belting songs in underwear, saying that you love her hair. Midnight soda run, car windows down—U2 blasting to the edge of town. Knowing look, shared favorite book, all the things you’ll always keep. Someday, you’ll rock her child to sleep.
*****
‘Sisters’ was published in New Verse Review, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Darlene Young writes: “I’ve been blessed with two radiant, hilarious, gifted sisters. The one closest to my age has been battling cancer this year, something that took our mother when we were in our early twenties. I wrote this poem in honor of her, her courage, and all she has meant in my life.”
Darlene Youngis the author of three poetry collections (most recently, Count Me In from Signature Press, 2024). She teaches writing at Brigham Young University and has served as poetry editor for Dialogue and Segullah journals. Her work has been noted in Best American Essays and nominated for Pushcart Prizes. She lives in South Jordan, Utah. Find more about her at darlene-young.com and @darlylar.
I shut my eyes under the scalding stream, scrubbing off last night’s dream, when suddenly I hear your voice again as though it caught in the clogged drain
and was sent bubbling back up from the other world where you’re not my mother. This time, it’s really you. I’m really here. I blink. We do not disappear.
Dad left, you say, to shower at the shop so I don’t need to stop just yet—and yet I do, unable to resume old customs, unlike you.
In a one-bath four-person household, we learn what we mustn’t see, growing, in time, so coolly intimate with one another’s silhouette
behind the opaque frosted shower screen that once more stands between us two. While at the mirror you apply foundation and concealer, I
wash out my hair with rosewater shampoo, which means I’ll smell like you all day. Mama, I shout, I’m coming out, and as you look away I knot
around me tight your lavender robe de chambre, cinching my waist, and clamber out of the tub, taking care not to step outside the cotton mat and drip
on the cracked floor you’ve polished with such zeal we’re mirrored in each tile. Yet, you’d forgive spillage, or forget. What else will you love me despite?
*****
‘Coming Out of the Shower’ by Armen Davoudian is reprinted with permission from Tin House Books from the book The Palace of Forty Pillars (2024). The poem was originally published in Literary Matters.
Armen Davoudian is the author of the poetry collection The Palace of Forty Pillars (Tin House, US; Corsair, UK) and the translator, from Persian, of Hopscotch by Fatemeh Shams (Ugly Duckling Presse, US; Falscrhum, Germany). He grew up in Isfahan, Iran, and is a PhD candidate in English at Stanford University.
One afternoon, my father chose to die. He was like, See ya later, guys. I think I understand, since I don’t know if I
can hang, myself. But hang myself? (Don’t try, they whisper, spooked.) Too young to buy a drink, but old enough to snatch one from a guy
who says, “I’m married, but–” His twinkling eye is trained, you know, to tell me with a wink I’ve made the cut. One hand explores my thigh,
the other fingering a Miller. Why are men so callous? Nowadays, I sink beneath the comforter. I’ll never cry
because my lover’s lover’s lovely–Thai, with toned and skinny limbs, her cheekbones pink and angular. Ohio girl, a Buckeye.
I’m from a land where bleach blond angels fly. Beneath the moonlight, friends and I will clink our cups; my wondrous-child eyes defy adulthood, till I sip. It’s bitter, dry.
*****
Editor: The poem was originally prefaced with “There are those who suffer in plain sight. – Randall Mann”
Alexis Sears writes: “I wrote this poem on the eve of my 20th birthday; nearly a decade later, I still hold it dear. ‘On Turning 20’ made me realize that what I had to say may have been more meaningful than I’d thought.”
Alexis Sears is the author of Out of Order (in which this poem appears), winner of the 2021 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and the Poetry by the Sea Book Award: Best Book of 2022. Her work appears in Best American Poetry, Poet Lore, Cortland Review, Cimarron Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her BA in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University. Editor-at-Large of the Northwest Review and Contributing Editor of Literary Matters, she lives in Los Angeles. https://www.alexissears.com/
A play’s last scene has often served as trope, where theater, as metaphoric scheme, enables authors to compose a dream of Life as it exhausts its mortal scope. The actors in our own Life’s play, we “hope” and “love;” some “challenge fate;” some “sob” and “scream,” but all personify Forever’s theme: that with its ending, Life must simply cope. I cannot speak for others in the cast, but my bit-part as extra in The Show — as son and father, husband to the last — gave me such joy as any man could know. I’ve lived a lucky life. Of this I’m certain. So when my last scene ends, ring down the curtain.
*****
Michael Murry writes: “The background concerns the passing away of my 48-year-old son, Stuart Langston Murry, in a freak accident while visiting his mother in northern Taiwan. As part of the grieving process, I turned to reading some of my favorite poets – especially Edna St. Vincent Millay’s ‘Dirge Without Music’ – before composing an elegy for my son’s funeral: ‘A Song for Stuart’ published as a Memoir in Bewildering Stories Issue 1032, followed by a companion sonnet ‘Anticipating Anonymity’ published in Bewildering Stories Issue 1042. So much for the composition’s background. ‘Inconspicuous Conclusions’ was published in Bewildering Stories Issue 1043.
As for the formal sonnet structure of the composition, I chose to use as a model John Donne’s Holy Sonnet (VI) with its opening “This is my play’s last scene” for metaphorical theme. The sonnet’s 14 lines consist of iambic pentameter (5 stress accents and 10 syllables) lines: 12 with masculine endings and 2 lines for the closing couplet’s feminine endings (5 stress accents and 11 syllables): ABBAABBACDCDee.
For relevant biographical information, see my website: http://themisfortuneteller.com/ with my verse compositions under the “Poetic License” menu tab. Consider me a 76-year-old Vietnam Veteran Against The War – the one that never seems to end – retired and living in Taiwan for the last two decades. I started writing formal verse compositions in 2004 as a sort of DIY bibliotherapy for Delayed Vietnam Reaction. I haven’t stopped yet and see no reason why I should. You and your audience may find my work too polemical for most refined poetic tastes, so if you choose not to quote any of my verses, I will certainly understand. As you please . . .”
Photo: Michael Murry at Advance Tactical Support Base ‘Solid Anchor’, Vietnam, early 1970s.
Form in Formless Times 