The inside of the collar’s badly frayed; the pink and sky-blue stripes began to fade a while ago. I’ve worn it for twelve years, she wore it for a few, and it appears it might not last much longer. I’ll be sad to lose it, and to lose the sense I’ve had, each time I slip it on, that she would grin to see it on me. She was short and thin, I’m not, so when I wear it, I expose a bit of leg, while it reached to her toes. And she’d wear slippers with it, taking care they matched the robe; my bigger feet are bare. I put this robe on and I put on all the ways we differed—though I don’t recall we argued much. She listened to Garth Brooks, I favor Brahms; she was the best of cooks — those famous meatballs, cookies of all kinds — while takeout is my strength. Sometimes what binds two sisters may be each one’s readiness to be amused by her antithesis when it’s wrapped up in measureless affection — as I still feel wrapped up in our connection, and not just when I wear her robe. Although I’ll let it go soon, with regret, I know I won’t let go of her until the day the world lets go of me. Some things don’t fray.
*****
Jean L. Kreiling writes: “This poem is entirely autobiographical; my sister Susan’s premature death to brain cancer broke my family’s heart. Wearing her robe has been therapeutic—as was writing this poem—but I’ll miss her every day for the rest of my life.”
Jean L. Kreiling is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Home and Away (2025). Her work has been awarded the Able Muse Book Award, the Frost Farm Prize, the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Prize, and the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Prize, among other honors.
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.
A graybeard and a girl walk on this beach. She’s his grandmother; she’s not really here. He stoops for shells and pebbles. His hands reach Across a family’s distances and years. Of her eleven children, three are left — His father and two aunts back in the States. He pockets bits of Ireland, reverent theft Of relics for her blood to venerate. She lost two brothers here, both fishermen Who labored daily on this chill, gray sea That one day failed to bring them home again. That’s when her childhood ended. That’s when she Booked passage for her children’s native land. She’s not here; she can’t hold her grandson’s hand.
*****
Chris O’Carroll was largely known as a poet for his light verse, but even a volume with the title ‘The Joke’s On Me‘ would contain more reflective work such as this sonnet. As an expatriate child of expats, I enjoy his appreciation of the back and forth across the seas, a family aware of its roots and far away. I included this poem in the Potcake Chapbook ‘Families and Other Fiascoes‘.
Pyjama’d, nightied, they are read to, snuggled close, or independently alert. The Baudelaires’ unfortunate events unravel. Hogwarts weaves a family for Harry. Boyhood and a Bear are said goodbye to.
The boy enjoys but doesn’t like to show. His sister smiles because she knows, she knows. The youngest bites her toes.
The youngest settles back and blithely bites her toes.
*****
“Bedtime Stories” was a happy memory of that short time when our three children could each enjoy listening to the same story.( When it wasn’t my turn to read to them I would sit in on my wife’s episode, just to keep up.) I tried to stick to the bare facts and avoid any too obvious doting. But it is a very fond memory.
“Bedtime Stories” was first published in Snakeskin
Brief biography of Joe Crocker (masculine/feminine/neutered)
He writes his stuff and slides it under doors. His age and sex, his fantasies, are no concern of yours.
The rhymes reflect his humour — down to earth. A pamphlet is forthcoming but refuses to come fearth.
Winner of the Awkward Prize, ham-fisted. Never short- or long- but sometimes black- or shopping-listed.
Nominated (pusher) for the pushcart. Squawking from the slush pile, self-regarding little upstart.
Google says he’s one of Sheffield’s legends — a rock star who gets by with little help from friends, well… ex-friends.
Loneliest of trees, a cherry blooms Unseen by you whose spartan rooms Have windows that are far too high For views of anything but sky.
Now with your nineties in full swing, You’ve doubtless started wondering If last year’s rides to see spring’s glory Were the last ones in your story.
And so you’re gamely making do With what’s available to you: A faded sprig from Mother’s Day; Pink sneakers; blushing fruit puree.
*****
Melissa Balmain writes: “This poem was indeed written for my mother-in-law, the irreplaceable Anne Cilurzo FitzPatrick. She died the following winter, in 2023, after a life devoted to family, music, writing, volunteer work, and the tireless pursuit of dark chocolate. Her obituary can be found here.”
‘For My Mother-in-Law’ appears in Melissa Balmain’s third poetry collection, Satan Talks to His Therapist, 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.
father as a funhouse mirror: somewhere in that mess is my reflection.
*****
Farah Shah writes: “I was actually not very moved at first to participate in OnlyPoems’ call for monostitch poem submissions. I’m unfortunately a woman of many words, especially in my writing. I’ve found word limits, shortening stories, and other forms of briefening composition painstaking at best. However, I’ve been trying to do things I’m not very good at (or maybe not very passionate about) because I’ve found the more you move a muscle, the stronger it becomes. I recently cut a piece of mine I loved into less than 300 characters; the Frankenstein-esque process of sewing back the body parts of that poem was difficult, but the new composition that emerged I found to be much stronger. In a way, with less to write, I had more to say. Like many peoples’ poems, mine is about my father (dads just make for such great material), and because of that, it’s also about me. My father is someone I could write almost anything about: love songs, comedies, tragedies. I didn’t think I could write about us in one line, but I tried to, and I did. Like I mentioned to Karan, the editor of Only Poems, writing this poem reminded me to call my dad.”
‘Funhouse’ was originally published in Only Poems.
Farah Shah is a recent University of Central Florida graduate, spending time between degrees learning to bake sourdough, overworking her airfryer, and penning sappy poetry while she waits for her dough to proof. She spent her formative years in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and thinks the best parts of herself come from that time. She writes: “I have yet to wrangle my writing into one specific place, but I post here and there on my instagram @farahxshah, and I’ve been featured on Threads “Closing” Issue for microfiction: https://www.threads.com/@threadlitmag/post/DTTbwivjNQW?xmt=AQF0J35LQzeadqjpGB8j6qbUeGGrAMYyGhCUb3x810IEZg“
Mother, I am your only child. I breathe inside your painted walls, I am your only child. A daughter. I nest inside your wooden halls.
I breathe inside your painted walls, I have never touched your face. I nest inside your wooden halls, We share an inside out embrace.
I have never touched your face. In retrospect, I understand, We share an inside out embrace. I have never clutched your hand.
In retrospect, I understand. I have never seen your eyes, I have never clutched your hand. We are stacked, a quaint disguise.
I have never seen your eyes. I am your only child. A daughter. We are stacked, a quaint disguise. Mother, I am your only child.
*****
Susan Delaney Spear writes: “Several years ago, I realized that the Russian nesting doll could be a metaphor for the complex relationship I had with my mother. Still, I was unable to put it into verse. But then, when my poetry group was writing pantoums (the poetic version of nesting), I wrote “Matryoshka.” Sometimes the Muse waves her magic wand and offers a form which perfectly aligns with the content.”
Susan Delaney Spear is a retired professor and poet. Her two collections of poetry are Beyond All Bearing and On Earth….(Resource Publications, 2018 and 2022). She is the co-author, with David J. Rothman, of Learning the Secrets of English Verse (Springer, 2022). She and her husband live in Tampa, Florida, where she writes and serves as the interim music director and organist at the First Presbyterian Church of Dunedin. You can find her at www.susandelaneyspear.com.
Notes left behind by strangers long since dead entranced my mother—not the squiggles, dots and lines themselves, but what musicians read from them on radio, the sounds ink spots had spelled. In quartets and in Claire de lune, her young ears heard what many can’t discern: enchanting, complex things—beyond the tune— about which she had little chance to learn. When she grew up, her voice was warm and rich as those of many singers who’d been schooled in breath control and quarter notes and pitch. She was as musical as some who’ve ruled the concert stage—but she sang in the car and kitchen; we heard her wide repertoire.
We heard her car and kitchen repertoire of opera arias, concerto themes, and deep regret she never got as far as piano lessons. Her childhood daydreams were seeded by the sagging upright housed at her Aunt Margaret’s—maybe she’d learn there?— and fed by radio: Puccini roused her love of opera, Brahms made her aware of string-sung drama. She pursued her chances to learn and listen—and also to plead for lessons, though her parents’ circumstances made that impossible. But she’d succeed in giving her kids what she’d never had— assisted in that effort by my dad.
It took substantial effort. Mom and Dad lacked wealth, but not love or imagination. Wrong turns became adventures, plans gone bad would show up later in a wry narration. Fun for us kids was low-cost, even free: a paper crown on birthdays, or a game made out of raking leaves, or a decree that it was Ice Cream Tuesday. We became as skilled as they were at composing joy: we heard another music in our days of sibling harmony, learned to deploy exuberance and laughter as one plays an instrument. And then catastrophe and cleverness brought opportunity.
Our clever dad saw opportunity when fire destroyed a nearby school, with all its contents lost—including, doubtlessly, the old piano. But Dad made a call and had the badly damaged upright brought to our garage. It was a rescue mission: the smoky wreck could be revived, he thought. He’d never played, and he had no ambition to do so, but he always had been good at fixing things. And so he scrubbed the keys, patched felts and hammers, and restored the wood of the disfigured case. And by degrees, the sooty hulk became something we prized. Untrained, unmusical, he’d improvised.
With talents of his own, he’d improvised, so we could, too. And he and Mom had planned and saved so we’d have lessons. Though advised to start us at age seven, Mom had grand ambitions for my younger hands. At six, I got to know the keys and clefs with smart, no-nonsense Mrs. Steffen, who would mix high standards and commitment to the art of making music with kid-friendly stuff. I played a little Mozart (simplified), a piece called “Crunchy Flakes” and other fluff, some basic boogie-woogie, drills that tried my patience. And my two sisters and I all played—too loudly—Brahms’s lullaby.
We all played Brahms’s famous lullaby, and argued over which of us would get to practice next; I knew the time would fly when it was my hour. Paired in a duet, two sisters often bickered just as much as we made music, but we learned to work together, synchronize tempo and touch, forget the other could be such a jerk. Years later I made music my profession, and it became both job and joy, a route to self-sufficiency and self-expression— a gift whose worth I never could compute, from parents who would never read a score, but who would give us music and much more.
They gave us music, but a great deal more than just the audible variety. Their well-tuned lives—examples set before us kids—were also music. They taught me to practice patience in both work and play; to face discord and my mistakes with poise; to transpose trouble to keys far away; to find and share the song within the noise. My mother’s dreams, my father’s diligence, and love composed a priceless education. And those gifts all enrich the resonance I hear in Bach and Brahms—in my translation of small black symbols in the scores I’ve read: notes left behind by strangers long since dead.
*****
Jean L. Kreiling writes: “I often find myself reminding readers that poems are not always autobiographical—but ‘Another Music’ is thoroughly autobiographical, and it’s meant to honor my devoted and fun-loving parents. My mother’s love of music and my father’s brilliance did shape much of my life, and my parents gave me (and my siblings) a richly happy and secure childhood. My parents’ legacy has lived on in the lives of all of their children: music has been important in all our lives, and family has been a top priority and a joy for all of us. Mom and Dad supported my work as a poet just as enthusiastically as they supported my musical endeavors, and I’m grateful that they both lived to see my first book of poems published.”
Jean L. Kreiling is the author of four collections of poetry; her work has been awarded the Able Muse Book Award, the Frost Farm Prize, the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Prize, and the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Prize, among other honors. A Professor Emeritus of Music at Bridgewater State University, she has published articles on the intersections between music and literature in numerous academic journals.
I remember the cold, high-ceilinged room where they had laid him, the smell of incense, brass coffin handles shining in the gloom, an aspidistra, dusty and immense.
To this small boy dressed in a mourning suit, he seemed reduced, much less than he once was: his scalp, without his cap, bald as a coot, his fingers criss-crossed on his chest like claws.
I thought back to the day we watched geese rise high over wetlands blurred with morning haze, the laughter always dancing in his eyes, his warm, familiar smell, his turn of phrase.
Life is so short while memories are long. We the bereaved are left with words unsaid. At the day’s end, he’d sing a lulling song as I rode his strong shoulders home to bed.
A prayer unbidden reached me on a whim: Preserve in me the things I loved in him.
*****
Richard Fleming writes: “This is a shortened, rhyming version of a lengthy free verse poem that I wrote over thirty years ago when I relocated to Guernsey from Northern Ireland. Like many love poems, the original version, The Hidden Traveller, has stood the test of time. This version stands as a homage to its source.”
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 Facebook https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/ or Bard at Bay www.redhandwriter.blogspot.com
My parents stacked the best years of their youth as Bricks to build me. Taught me words I taught Myself to shout them down with when we fought. My parents loved me, though I could be ruthless Hurting myself with things I poured or burned And those who loved me with the things I said. My parents never gloated once I learned, Just held me through my sobs, and kissed my head.
Now, in the living room I stormed out of, They tell me I can stay the month, or year, Because my room will never not be here No matter where I go, or who I love. I am their blood, they tell me. I depart From them as blood does from a beating heart.
*****
Amit Majmudar writes: “A homing pigeon knows where its home is by training, as the falcon knows the falconer’s arm. But there are deeper instincts at work in nature that science still struggles to explain fully, like the way birds know how to migrate by looking at the stars, and the way monarch butterflies find their way to the same vast swath of oyamel trees in Mexico every year. Human beings have something of that in them. Not just for the neighborhoods where we grew up, but for the people, the family, who were there with us. This poem is about that. I distinctly recall its writing; I woke up at the “witching hour,” as I often do, while visiting my sister-in-law’s house in Texas over Christmas break. Ten family members were asleep in the same house, and, unable to fall back asleep, I picked up my phone and found an invitation to submit to a new sonnet journal in my inbox. Immediately, still in the awoken, excited, “witching hour” state (which the Indian tradition calls the Hour of Brahma, the time of peak creativity), I wrote this poem about the bond between the far-afield child and the fixed star of family, first line to last.”
‘Homing’ was just published in The Sonneteer which can be accessed at thesonneteer@substack.com. It offers a free, partial service as well as an upgraded paid subscription.
Amit Majmudar’s recent books include Twin A: A Memoir (Slant Books, 2023), The Great Game: Essays on Poetics (Acre Books, 2024), and the hybrid work Three Metamorphoses (Orison Books, 2025). More information about his novels and poetry collections can be found at www.amitmajmudar.com.
Form in Formless Times 