Tag Archives: sonnet

Sonnet: Richard Fleming, ‘The Attic’

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The attic, once unreachable, taboo
in childhood, is a temple laid to waste.
I climb the ladder, face the overdue
clear-out of debris with a mild distaste.
A View-Master, kaleidoscope, a kite,
a rocking-horse in much need of repair,
a reel-to-reel recorder I’d recite
poems into as though speaking them ‘on air’.
I dust them off, then pack them in a case
and glimpse in a chipped mirror on a shelf,
the look of an intruder on his face,
a fellow who can only be myself,
the last one left, unsportingly miscast
as tomb-raider, despoiler of the past.

*****

‘The Attic’ was first published in a set of ten semi-autobiographical poems in The High Window, where Richard Fleming was the Featured Poet.

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

“VIEW-MASTER” by Kim Hanwool is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Sonnet: Melissa Balmain, ‘Solidarity. On a recent explosion of fireflies across the US’

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Even my ordinarily blank lawn
is flashing this July—no bottle rocket
or Catherine wheel could match the pleasant shock it
gives me each time a tiny lamp turns on
to help a bachelor find a blinding date.
The bugs can’t read, of course, about pollution
and other woes that might spell dissolution
for all their kind, but as they mate and mate
I like to think they somehow know what’s looming,
deep in their chitin—that their sudden blooming
is nature’s way of putting up a fight,
and that these living fireworks before us
can make us hear, and heed, a timely chorus:
When darkness threatens you, crank up your light.

*****

Melissa Balmain writes: “For some reason, I’ve written a lot of bug poems lately. And I’m starting to suspect this has given insects the wrong idea about me. Memo to the ants infesting my kitchen: if you think my plans for you involve writing an ode, think again.”

First published in The New Verse News

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). 

Photo: “Fireflies and Star Trails No. 3” by ikewinski is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnet: John Gallas, ‘Ascension Sonnet’

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you can’t unload the caravan for one lame donkey

It’s six a.m. We’re swarming up a drain.
Someone up the front knows what we’re doing.
Me and Tich are flying up the flueing.
Snap! My leg falls off. You can’t complain:
you can’t expect an army on the trail
of half a dog and sugar-sick to stop
and say Oh dear, Goodbye. I squirm and flop
along the gutter’s edge. A wizened snail
laced up in cobwebs grins across the slime.
I hear a million footsteps fading. Tich!
The sun smacks like a snare-drum. Life’s a bitch.
My head goes dry. I’m running out of Time.
I climb a twig to face the Ant Unknown.
We have to face our last few pricks alone.

*****

John Gallas writes: “Ascension: a slightly cruel Proverb to modern ears, but of course often the case as we all bustle forwards in life. The sad demise of this Ant is done in a cod-Existential drama, and tries to mix some black humour with the Final Stand (even with a leg missing). The also-once-left-behind snail a warning to us all. Who knows how Ants talk, but they are sociable, so …”

Ascension Sonnet is one of the 100 sonnets collected in The Coalville Divan (part of John Gallas’ ‘Star City’ from Carcanet), which use as their beginnings Persian Proverbs from the Wisdom of the East series by L.P. Elwell-Sutton.

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.  

“Trail of Ants” by McLevn is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

R.I.P. Chris O’Carroll, ‘Ballynagaul, County Waterford’

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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‘.

Chris passed away earlier this month. Christopher O’Carroll Obituary (1951 – 2026) – Pelham, MA – Daily Hampshire Gazette. The world of light poetry will retain his glow.

“Annestown Beach, County Waterford” by mwmosser is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Sonnet: RHL, ‘Bubbles’

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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.

‘Bubbles’ was first published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

“Boiling Pot” by Brad Ruggles is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

John Gallas, ‘Amman Sonnet’

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‘Musk is known by its smell, not the shopkeeper’s words’

‘As smooth as a sheet and as sweet as a sweet; nutritious,
delicious, delightful and sprightful and dreamy as silk;
as fat as a sausage in sassafras, creamy as milk;
a Quazi of Fishes, a Mogul of Dishes; capricious,
lubricious, the Sultan of Mambo, the Queen of the Deep;
scrumptious with camel’s milk, aubergines, pickles and beans;
with anchovies, lovage-leaves, lentils and lashings of greens;
as cool as a cucumber, fragrant and filling and cheap;
unequalled, unsequelled, the Whacker, the Whopper, the Winner,
the One; stuff it or steak it or bake it or boil it
or roast it or toast it or roux it or stew it or broil it
or fry it but BUY IT! I give you THE NUMBER ONE DINNER!‘
‘That one, please.’ He winked: ‘You like my spiel?’
‘I would have bought it anyway.’ An eel.

*****

John Gallas writes: “a little meditation on selling techniques vs the buyer who knows what s/he wants anyway. I once heard a fruit-seller in Amman singing for half an hour about their wares, while the customers, unimpressed but smiling, just bought what they needed. So the song was a kind of merry soundtrack to shopping, and everyone liked it: I’ve tried to reproduce this in the sonnet. And I’ve added a plonking ‘eel’ bathos.”

The one hundred sonnets collected in The Coalville Divan (part of John Gallas’ ‘Star City’ from Carcanet) use as their beginnings Persian Proverbs from the Wisdom of the East series by L.P. Elwell-Sutton.

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.  

Photo: “Fischmarkt (2)” by Gerry Balding is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Sonnet: RHL, ‘Why I Lie’

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When hitchhiking, inevitably tasked
with answers to ‘Where from?’ and ‘Origin?’
I lie to simplify the tales I’d spin
if my odd background really were unmasked.
(The childhood travels, seas in which I’ve basked;
prep school: Jamaica. Teen years schooling in
a former English palace, slept where Queen
Victoria stayed…) because then I’d be asked:
‘Why hitchhike? Spoiled kid! Don’t lie! Get out!’

Therefore of course I have to cut some slack
for other people with their bogus tales:
big boasters may have nothing to boast about,
while quiet ones may not want to go back,
whether to jobs or spouses, wars or jails.

*****

I thought I’d pair this with Marion Shore’s reflection on lies, which I republished here in the previous post. The issue of deliberate lies is unresolved for me, along with so many other things. But at least I (rarely) lie about my confused background any longer – I just mention bits that seem relevant in the context.

‘Why I Lie’ was first published in the Sonnet Scroll of the Poetry Porch.

“Both the truth and lies can get you in trouble” by duncan cumming is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Semi-formal sonnet: Red Hawk, ‘Old Age Requires the Greatest Courage’

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The greatest courage is not needed for war,
but for ordinary people growing old.
Like soldiers, the aged are never very far
from death: many are called,
all are chosen. A soldier faces danger
then retreats, but for the old, going back
is not possible; they may hunger
for youth but pray for the luck
of a quick death. When one by one
the body’s systems fail, they must be brave
and face annihilation of the flesh and bone,
the Soul clinging like a shipwrecked sailor, to love;
finally, love is all we are given
to navigate between exhaustion and heaven.

*****

Red Hawk writes: “What inspired this poem is the School of Hard Knocks, surviving on Earth for 83 years, observing the chaos and madness of the human species, 45 years of self observation to see my own inner chaos & madness, and the Objectively Clear understanding that we all die, we all pay for our emanations, our lives, and finally there is the revelation that all & everything is the Love of Our Creator (whatever that is) & we are how that Love manifests in human form; the Love of Our Creator manifests disguised as our life. Following that, the chaos & madness which that Love takes in human beings is the result of it passing through the human mind & being corrupted and perverted by that screening process. Absent the interference of the ego structure, that Love manifests cleanly, clearly, and without judgment.

“The sonnet form is one of my favorite poetry disciplines & owes much to Shakespeare, Keats, & Edna St. V. Millay! Being one given to speaking too much & too often, this discipline has been a tremendous ally in taming that compulsion & mastering the tongue. Rhyme, though not in favor just now, is another tremendous discipline: it opens the gateway to the unknown—I may begin with a plan or an idea, but the demands of the rhyme send me at once into unknown territory: I don’t know what or how will come next to satisfy the demand of the rhyme and now I am subject to intuition & inspiration, the opening to the Divine.

“Red Hawk (aka Robert Moore) is not an Indian name, nor was it ever intended to be one or pretend to be one; it is an Earth name, given by Mother Earth many years ago after a 4-day water fast at the Buffalo River in an effort to save my life in one of the darkest periods of my life. Given to me during one of the worst ice storms in recent Arkansas history, it was given as an answer to prayer. It came about through conscious labor, prayer and wish, and was paid for by intentional suffering and remorse. It indicates a deep love & reverence for the Earth and how it has shaped my life. It is an honoring of Conscience and of the source which named me: our Mother Earth. To not acknowledge Her gift would be to disrespect Her and Her power to name and direct the course of my life; I am Her legitimate son. As the illegitimate son of unknown parents, Robert Moore is my adopted name given to me by 2 people who died of alcoholism; I honor it and them by the way I live my life.
You can google many of my books at Amazon, or find many of them at www.hohmpress.com. The book on self observation is now in 14 languages.”

‘Old Age Requires the Greatest Courage’ was first published in Rattle.

Photo: “Red Hawk” by Kiesha Jean is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Sonnet: Jean L. Kreiling, ‘Fado for Beginners’

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Fado (Portuguese): fate, and also a Portuguese style of music for
solo singer and guitar, usually expressing saudade, or longing.

Most of us long for something—love or wine
or one more hour before we say goodbye—
or feel an ache that we can’t quite define,
the pulsing of our blood a silent sigh.
In Portugal, we see the shiny thrones
of kings who yearned for women and for land;
we taste the port and tread the cobblestones,
admire bright tiles—but only understand
this place when we hear passion made of song:
when fado marries fervent poetry
to music. Then it’s clear that we belong,
for we too know desire and memory.
As if returning from a long exile,
our pulses, too, sing fado for a while.

*****

Jean L. Kreiling writes: “At a small, dimly lit club in Lisbon, my friends and I enjoyed delicious green soup and cod cakes, along with the attentions of a charming waiter.  But as a musician myself, with high standards and somewhat narrow tastes, I was not sure whether the promised Fado performance would appeal to me. When the young performers appeared between appetizer and entrée, and then between entrée and dessert, they immediately drew me into their spell of gorgeous sound and irresistible emotion. I was impressed by the flawless technique of both singer and instrumentalists, but more than anything, I was tremendously moved; I think I caught a glimpse of the Portuguese soul. I feel so fortunate to have shared the depth of humanity one hears in Fado.“

‘Fado for Beginners’ first appeared in the Sonnet Scroll of The Poetry Porch.

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.

Photo: “Toni Frissell: Fado singer in Portuguese night club, Lisbon, 1946” by trialsanderrors is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Acrostic sonnet: Mike Mesterton-Gibbons, ‘Veronika The Cow’

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(Science has reported the first evidence in cattle of
using a single tool for multiple purposes, a skill 
previously seen only in humans and chimpanzees.) 

Veronika the cow can wield a broom,
Enabling her to scratch her back and breast,
Relieving itch. This Austrian, for whom
Old age brings fame, is now the manifest
New poster-girl for multi-purpose tools
In use by livestock, widely thought to lack
Keen intellect. But what if they aren’t fools
And, copying Veronika, attack
The status quo with brooms held high – if smart
Hoofed animals refuse to constitute
Earth’s humans’ prime rib roast supply and start
Campaigns to claim their basic right, pursuit
Of happiness? . . . Will humans have a beef
With Austria’s tool-user-cow-in-chief?

*****

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons writes: “Yes, Veronika uses opposite ends of the broom for different purposes. There’s a nice video of her in action on the Science website where I first read about her. The article and video are here: https://www.science.org/content/article/no-bull-austrian-cow-has-learned-use-tools“

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England.  His poems have appeared in Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Light, Lighten Up Online (where this poem was first published), the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, WestWard Quarterly and other journals. Links to all these poems can be found at  https://www.math.fsu.edu/~mesterto/Unscramble/wordplay.html. In 2025 he won the Children’s Unpublished category of the Eyelands Book Awards with Flora’s Flock and Other Stories to Read Aloud.

“Veronika’s tooling technique and targeted areas (cow tools)” by Antonio J. Osuna-Mascaró, Alice M. I. Auersperg is licensed under CC BY 4.0.