The streets, albeit not with gold, were paved, The path both broad and even; wide the way And easy, with no uniform to don. By almost nothing was he put upon. Old age had been foreseen, and so he saved, The modicum matched with its rainy day. The sheets were clean, as were the neat clothes worn From bawling babe, to teen, to man, and on. Few were the oaths required to be sworn, And almost nothing had been sacrificed, Or found worthwhile, or worth the dying for. As to the depredations brought by war, None had been undergone. All things sufficed, Since almost nothing crucial had been needed. Yes, easy, broad, and even, he conceded, Though through it all, what all of it had meant He couldn’t say. No, not in any event.
*****
Len Krisak writes: “the speaker, slightly morose (?), confesses both to a life of no particular hardship and to an inability to decide on the meaning or quality of such an existence.”
Len Krisak’s translation of the Aeneid appeared in 2016. His translation of the Inferno will be out from Routledge in September, as will his own poems, Magpie. The past winner of the Richard Wilbur and Robert Frost prizes, he is a four-time champion on Jeopardy!
The cruelest welcome party greets their birth. Instead of feeding at a mother’s teat, they’re stretched upon a table for the mirth of birds and crabs that hunger for their meat. No time for toddling, sprinting from the first, the lucky reach a second party where their thinning band of comrades is immersed in pools of creatures glad to eat them rare.
The world’s so honest with them from the start — no lullabies, no fairy tales believed, no revelation of the brutal part, no sudden grief at having been deceived. They learn so young of running for one’s life to earn the chance to swim in seas of strife.
*****
Paul Burgess writes: “Even though I’ve spent much of my adult life far from the ocean, my hometown is Hilton Head Island, which is a barrier island off the southern part of the U.S.’s East Coast. There are many provisions there to protect the loggerhead sea turtle nesting sites and to avoid disturbing the hatchlings scrambling to get to the ocean. However, even when humans refrain from making things worse, the reality of what the turtles face from the second they hatch is one of the bleakest existential scenes nature has ever produced. The image and its symbolic potential suddenly hit me one day out of the blue, and I had to write this poem.”
Paul Burgess is the sole proprietor of a business in Lexington, Kentucky that offers ESL classes in addition to English, Japanese, and Spanish-language translation and interpretation services. He has recently contributed work to The Road Not Taken, Blue Unicorn, Light, The Orchards, Pulsebeat, Snakeskin, Lighten Up Online, and several other publications. https://paulburgesswritingandlanguage.blog/
It’s sad to lose a friend, you know, In bloom of youth, In healthy glow, Full of vigor, ethics, truth. It’s sad to lose that friend.
It’s sad to lose a friend of old, His fumbling brain, Old jokes retold, Full of misery, aches and pain. It’s sad to lose that friend.
But sadder still to lose a friend To politics, The ugly end. To hate and scorn and fascist tricks. Oh, how I miss that friend.
*****
Janice D. Soderling writes: “This is one of those poems that sometimes comes in a rush and you have to grab a pencil to write it down before it disappears. But of course I had been ruminating, pondering; who has not in these divisive times? We are many who have lost a dear friend, perhaps even a family member, someone who once was compassionate and kind and fun to be with, but suddenly, or gradually, has become unrecognizable, full of blame and contempt, even hate, for the Other. Not for a person, but for a vague collective, the Other.”
Janice D. Soderling has poems, short stories, and flash in many literary journals and anthologies. Her most recent poetry collection is Namingthe Names which includes “Lost Friends.” Soon to be released is Short Circuits, about one hundred very short poems, none longer than twelve lines. Both collections are published under the Kultivera Production imprint.
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.”
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.
Although we came in hopes to find the most amazing staging yet, the final act still filled the mind with all the trappings of regret. Although the happy lovers met with joyous singing – hers and his – we’ve seen from Carmen to Cosette how sad the ending always is.
Why do we cry for womankind, for Tosca on the parapet, for Butterfly, her love declined, for Manon and for Juliet? Haven’t we seen the sweetest pet fall victim to the wily Wiz? Haven’t we seen – from death to debt – how sad the ending always is?
The villain always lurks behind the arras, holding out the net that will entrap the golden hind, the mark of arrows ready set. At first we didn’t feel the threat; we never thought our hopes a chiz, But now we’ve learned our alphabet: How sad the ending always is!
But pour champagne, my friends, and let the golden bubbles rise and fizz! For just a moment we’ll forget how sad the ending always is.
*****
Gail White writes: “It was Barbara Loots who called my attention to the fact that the plots of many operas could end with the words “and then she dies.” Being an opera heroine is almost always fatal. My first poem on this theme was a short one, “Opera Rondeau”. Then it occurred to me that the same idea would support a ballade. Writing this was fun, as finding enough rhymes for “is” pushed me into the realm of slang. And, of course, life is indeed a process of finding happy distractions from an inevitable tragic ending.”
Gail White is a widely published Formalist poet and a contributing editor to Light. Her new chapbook, Paper Cuts, is out on Amazon or from Kelsay Books. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with her husband and cats.
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.”
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.
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.
The Earth’s a pot of water on the range, and nothing happens for a billion years; then as the water heats, things start to change and movement – formless, unaware – appears. Next the first tiny bubbles start to form, brains self-assembling, they form, collapse, form and collapse in water barely warm, minds that start yearning for some Great Perhaps. They grow, they start to rise, still fade away while dreaming of a life that will not fail; and this is humans as we are today, starting to boil up from this mortal jail to break into the vastly bigger air… unknowing where steam goes, what happens there.
*****
This is as close to religious belief as I can get. Somewhere at the intersection of Nietzsche and Vonnegut, of reincarnation and “It’s all a simulation”, with Musk aiming for Mars and wondering aloud if he’s an NPC, is a place of absolute and unknowable change. And that’s where we are.
I kiss you every morning, even though you’re far away; even though your bed’s a thousand miles out of reach. I know it’s fantasy — only in my head — I know I cannot slide my fingertips across the smooth skin of your shoulders, your arms — or along the sleek sloping of your hips — or fall into oblivion in the warm raven tangle of your hair — and that it’s just poetic silliness to think that you can feel my chest against your back, or the brush of flesh when my body instinct- ively reacts — and yet somehow I feel the distance, not the touch, is what’s unreal.
Timothy Sandefur is an attorney practicing law in Phoenix, and also the author of several books including biographies of Frederick Douglass and Jacob Bronowski, and a book of poems called Some Notes on the Silence. He has a Substack page: sandefur.substack.com.
a bored and haughty wife, now sidelined and abeyed, half-pivoting within a flood-tide of brocade, smiles at the black-skinned boy who bears her dress’s train. final tercet of the French sonnet “The Dogaressa” by José-Maria de Heredia (1842–1905)
Veneto, black-skinned boys, and trains: displaced by devastation, young Africans with pluck and brains revive that combination. They search these railcars for remains of others’ dislocation, like gleaners seeking fallen grains — a task of desperation.
Before each stop, the train brakes grind. We pause. We recommence. A boy appears, as if assigned. His scrutiny’s intense. He scans for objects left behind through lack of care or sense. (I guess. I’ve yet to see one find a bit of recompense.)
We stop. We go. The scene repeats, on every train we’ve taken. The boy surveys the floors and seats for anything forsaken, and — empty-handed still — retreats, his eagerness unshaken. I’ve seen his clones on city streets. What trades do they partake in?
Some hold out cups to beg, although we blind, deaf crowds move on. (They tug our heart- and purse-strings, so we play automaton.) Some boys this age get pimped, I know. Some pilfer things to pawn. The train brakes shriek. We stop. We go. Our boy’s come back. He’s gone.
He’s trapped in this recurrent dream. I feel I’m trapped here, too. The other passengers don’t seem to see him passing through, except a few who show extreme contempt (as I construe their narrowed eyes’ attentive gleam). That, too, is déjà vu.
“A zodiac of sorts,” I muse: The Wailing One. The Doors. The Kid who seeks what others lose. The Gaggle that ignores. The Watchdog ready to accuse young scapegoats it abhors. And I, the Poet, prone to use portentous metaphors.
Again, these constellations wheel. Again, I contemplate commuters’ faces, which reveal obliviousness or hate. Another horrifying squeal. Another hurried wait. Another search. How must he feel, this boy, about his fate?
Though circumstances brought him here, not slavers, is he free? He scrambles just to live, it’s clear, although he ought to be in school. He’ll be no engineer. No teacher. No M.D. Survival is his life’s career, decides society.
I think what lives my children lead. I think of things I’ve read. The long-dead voices that I heed. The headlines in my head. The decadence. The waste. The greed. The desperate. The dead. What choice was smooth-faced Ganymede presented with instead?
He rode to immortality, but did he have a say? Consent’s a triviality to gods, some might inveigh, and rape’s a technicality (defined the ancient way), and pederasts’ carnality had stricter rules of play.
I know. But circumstances tore that kid from loved ones’ care to Mount Olympus, where he bore the things that slave-boys bear. And bears them still, forevermore. No beard, no death, can spare young Ganymede, exploited for eternity up there.
No, no, he’s fortunate, insist some authors. He’s adored. Complimented. Cuddled. Kissed. Ambrosia’s his reward for having topped the favorites list of such a lofty lord. The death we mortals face, he missed. That shouldn’t be ignored.
A palace slave is nonetheless a slave, and can’t decline a burden, though it might oppress: a massive cup of wine; the heavy train of someone’s dress who thinks herself divine; the weight of knowing each caress means mainly “This is mine.”
The dogaressa eyes her toy. Her property. Her pet. Some see in him what might destroy stability — a threat. But I behold a human boy ensnared in power’s net. What games his owner might enjoy will fuck him up, I bet.
But maybe I misjudge her smile. I view it through the prism of factors I must reconcile, like French conservatism, a splash of Afrophobic bile, and anti-feminism. Perhaps she’s not a pedophile. (Forgive my skepticism.)
Perhaps she smiles because she’s kind (though labeled “bored” and “haughty”). Perhaps the lady’s too refined to have a thought that’s naughty. The dots connected in my mind to Ganymede are dotty, perhaps. To me, though, they’re combined. These points are not staccati:
Aquarius, the catamite within the Zodiac; a twisted queen who claims the right to toy with pawns; this black — and therefore foreign — youngster’s plight, forever circling back in search of luck. These trains unite on thought’s recursive track.
He’s African. He’s Syrian. He’s Phrygian. He’s Rom. He’s Asian. He’s Nigerian. He’s white, but can’t go home. His bedroom is empyrean: its roof is heaven’s dome. His cup’s part full, in theory. In it? Coins. It’s styrofoam.
He’s Ganymede, collectively, yet every clone’s unique. They all seem doomed to tragedy, but don’t mistake mystique and myth for how things have to be. Inertia’s prospect’s bleak, but railroad cars and history change course with friction’s shriek.
He’s made it to the Occident. (Let’s pause now to salute ourselves, and our enlightenment.) His homeland tried to shoot and starve him. He should be content he didn’t drown en route. He’s lucky! Don’t misrepresent the fact he’s destitute.
Some myths should really be revised. Some fictions should appall. When those who claim they’re civilized spew racist vitriol, and orphaned kids are demonized by oligarchs, we all should spot the pattern, unsurprised. The writing’s on the wall.
The doorway yawns. I stiffly rise on travel-swollen feet. At noon, I crossed the Bridge of Sighs; my daytrip’s now complete. The train goes on, with one surprise — a monetary treat for hopeful, homeless, hungry eyes — between one wall and seat.
*****
“In 2016, while an estimated 363,348 refugees and other migrants successfully crossed the Mediterranean to reach Europe, an additional 5,136 people who attempted that journey were either confirmed drowned or reported missing (Source) — still a record now, ten years later.
“New installments of that ongoing tragedy were generating some of ‘the headlines in my head’ (Stanza 9, Line 4) in the summer of 2016, when I accompanied my mother on a 10-day Mediterranean cruise. We arrived in Padua a few days early so we could adjust to jet lag, and from there we made day trips by train to Ravenna and Venice before our cruise began.
“During our day in Venice, I was startled by the profusion of Moretto- or Blackamoor-themed luxury items I kept coming across, all gold-adorned: Jewelry. Doorknobs. Lamps. Tables. Atlas-like figures supporting architectural features. On the 9pm train back to our hotel in Padua, I pondered this centuries-old fascination with Blackness among Venetians of great wealth. My mind had just wandered to the little Black boy at the end of Heredia’s sonnet “The Dogaressa” when, as if on cue, a very dark-skinned African immigrant of about ten years old arrived for the first of his many hurried inspections of our train car.
“For the decade it took me to finish and find a home for ‘Ganymede in Northeast Italy (Veneto),’ that child has kept returning to my thoughts. Perhaps now he will haunt others’ thoughts, too.
“I am very grateful to David Stephenson for publishing this long poem in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal and to my fellow workshoppers at Eratosphere for telling me what wasn’t working in two earlier drafts over the years.”
*****
Julie Steiner is the pseudonym of a recovering classicist in San Diego, California. Her original poetry and verse translations from Italian, Spanish, French, Latin, and Greek have appeared in many venues — most recently, Light, Lighten Up Online, Literary Matters, The New Verse News, and The Ekphrastic Review. For links to some of these poems, visit her Substack, Off-Piste on Mount Parnassus (offpisteonmountp.substack.com).
Form in Formless Times 