Tag Archives: sonnet

Bartolomeo Dotti, ‘Abortion in a Flask’, tr. John Gallas

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To Giacopo Grandis, doctor and anatomist

Dear Giacopo, this sad, obscene disaster,
forever motherless, and piped of breath,
if ever it was living, died too soon,
and goes untimely to the feast of death.
And are the Humours of its tiny tub
sweet milk, or tears? For sure, its mother’s womb,
its first and living globe, was made of flesh,
and not the glass that rounds it in this tomb.
The embryo is dead: long live the corse.
Its promised Immortality cut short,
it floats in blood, aborted, come to naught.
O Man! O Slab Professors! Learn perforce
that this is Woman’s flesh and blood: more sweet,
more frail than glass; less strong than aquavit.

*****

John Gallas writes: “The ‘Abortion’ poem by Bartolomeo Dotti (1651-1713) is part of a work in progress (a History of Italy in Poems – featuring not the Great Monuments but the lesser poets from the 1st poem in Italian up to a poet b.1935). If you ever want any more, there’s 84. At least 60 rhyme and bounce.”

VII
L’ABORTO NELL’AMPOLLA
A Giacopo Grandis, fisico e anatomico

     Questo, Giacopo mio, sconcio funesto
cui diè morto natale il sen materno,
se maturo nascea, moria ben presto,
e voi d’intempestivo il fèste eterno.
     Non so se dolce latte o pianto mesto
gli sia di quel cristal l’umore interno;
so ben che l’alvo suo fu come questo,
poi ch’utero da vetro io non discerno.
     Vive quasi per voi chi per sé langue;
embrïone morì, scheletro nacque,
fatto parto immortal d’aborto essangue.
     Uomo, impara! Insegnarti al Grandi piacque
che sia ventre di donna e maschio sangue
piú fral del vetro e men vital de l’acque.

There is a brief outline of Dotti’s turbulent life here.

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.  


John Gallas, ‘Blantyre Sonnet’

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My new clothes should eat the pilau – Persian proverb

Refused admission. Speel’s. On Friday night.
Apparently my clothes. Not smart enough.
Full they said. Departed in a huff.
Ate at Goldberg’s. Went back Monday night.
Same fat bouncer. Wore my Paul Smith suit.
Nothing said. Nice table by the bar.
Cocktails. Hognuts. Champagne. Caviar.
Alligator steaks. Took off my suit.
Arranged it on the chair like that and that.
Spooned the food inside it. Then the drink.
Waiters looked the other way. I think
I proved my point. Paid up and took my hat.
Tipped the bouncer. Bowed at Bwana Speel.
‘I think,’ I said, ‘the suit deserved the meal.’

*****

John Gallas writes: “It’s one of my favourite ‘Persian Proverb’ stories (the original is a merry little read, involving a guest at a Vizier’s house) and making the sonnet was therefore – the whole content being pre-provided – an exercise in style, form, rhyme etc., a challenge I very much like – which is why I do so much translating. I also happen to think that the ‘message’ (though I’m not that fond of poems with ‘messages’) applies increasingly to a world of judgement by appearances, influencers, and pre-packaged (but, alas, empty-packaged) ideas of social success. I don’t often get this ‘relevant’, but the applicability just came with the story, and that kind of proves it’s timeless/universal, and not my personal grouch.

‘Blantyre’: has an interesting history – I was asked to ‘Rep of Ireland-ify’ it for a Food Festival in Cork, were it went down (haha) well – so I entered it for the ‘Taste’ poetry competition last year … and it won! So I have 2 versions – I think the ‘Irish’ one is a bit more zippy, but whichever you prefer is ok with me – I’ve attached the ‘Abhar Blas’ (‘A Matter of Taste’) version.”

ábhar blas
(a matter of taste sonnet)

refused admission – Friday night – at ‘Gator –
apparently my blús – not smart enough –
FULL they said – departed in a huff –
ate at Porkys –
went back one week later –
same trom Bouncer – wore my Trixie Blout –
nothing said – nice table by the bar –
tapas – Boxty Raws – Moss-Roasted Gar,
Thomas Walk Champagne –
undressed – laid out
my suit – like someone in my seat – and piled
the food into its lap – poured in the drink –
Waiters looked the other way – I think
I proved my point – paid the damage – smiled –
tipped the Bouncer – thanked Cócaire O’Neill –
I guess – I said – the suit deserved the meal.

*****

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.  

Illustration: ‘Blantyre Sonnet’ by RHL with ChatGPT-6 Astra Light. Not perfect, but I wasn’t going to waste time arguing about to collapse the clothes…

Using form: Helena Nelson, ‘Post-NSTEMI, as prescribed’

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We want your heart to function at its best.
Bisoprolol’s a helpful little pill (lol)
and aspirin’s a friend. You’re less impressed,
it seems, by side-effects of Ramipril
but the cough may pass. Any chesty pains?
Squirt GTN under your tongue. It’s droll
how nitro-glycerin expands the veins
and arteries. As for Lansoprazole,
undoubtedly protecting your digestion
from anti-platelets such as Prasugrel,
yes, take it. Eplerenone is my suggestion
as best antagonist. Won’t you pop that in,
O protagonist? And zap LDL
for sure before you snore—Atorvastatin.

*****

Helena Nelson writes: “After a heart attack, I was fitted with a stent in one cardiac artery and prescribed eight drugs, though one was optional (the GTN spray) and another only for the first six months (Prasugrel). I struggled to remember their names and purposes, so I put them in a sonnet, and as much about them as I could manage. LDL is so-called ‘bad cholesterol’. Bisoprolol is a beta-blocker and helps regulate blood pressure. Eplerenone is an aldosterone antagonist (this supposedly helps keep the heart muscle in shape). Make of that what you will. As they say on FaceBook, ‘it’s complicated’.”

Helena Nelson runs HappenStance Press (now winding down) and also writes poems. Her most recent collection is Pearls (The Complete Mr and Mrs Philpott Poems). She reviews widely and is Consulting Editor for The Friday Poem.

Illustration: “San Antonio Dr. Julio Palmaz and Schatz invent balloon expandable heart stent” by gunaxi is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Bouts-rimés: Maryann Corbett, ‘Shelley’

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I struggle with his life. In that warm land
of his self-exiled end, a graveyard stone
hushes his willfullness, but when the sand
first mixed his ashes, didn’t London frown
and sneer that the infidel would now command
a truer view of God? And all I’ve read
about his careless loving (women as things
to take, enjoy, and jettison) has fed
a crabbed dislike. But let the poems appear
in their own strength—raging at old, mad kings,
hymning the autumn, moaning black despair,
packing in fourteen lines the whole decay
of human tyrants’ pride—and they strip bare
my morals: Wonder sweeps his sins away.

*****

Maryann Corbett writes: “What sparked this poem, quite simply, was an invitation from Ken Gordon of The Sonneteer to write a bouts-rimés with the end-rhymes of Ozymandias, in celebration of Shelley’s birthday. I fooled around with a subject unrelated to Shelley himself but decided that, given my instructions, the poem had to be about Shelley, so I’d have to do something with my conflicted feelings about the man.”

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.

Illustration: Joseph Severn’s portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley, in Wikimedia. The radical 19th century poet practiced the politics of the plate. For Shelley and other liberals of his day, keeping sugar out of tea was a political statement against slavery.

Sonnet: Bob Trewin, ‘It Doesn’t Last’

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No matter what you do, it doesn’t last:
Your best endeavours are gone in an hour.
If you could see the present become past,
Your better weather just a passing shower,
If you could see your garden run to weeds
That once was hoed and tended with such care
And understand you only bury seeds
That will outlive us, and will still be there
When we are gone, to sprout and live anew,
Would you think that your labour is worth while
To do the things you feel you have to do,
To make the effort, go the extra mile?
What else is there to do but push ahead?
So damn them all and be glad you’ll be dead.

*****
Bob Trewin writes: “This is my first poem in Snakeskin. I have previously appeared in some anthologies produced by the Holmfirth Writers’ Group (published by George Simmers, who is a founder member). I have also self-published two collections: Snowflakes in the Night, available from Amazon and the Lulu bookstore and Sonnets and Sundries, available from the Lulu bookstore.

“As for where this poem came from, I wonder how much you, living elsewhere, are aware of the rapid transformation that is happening in the UK, a transformation that no recent government has had a mandate to sanction, let alone actively pursue. If it is reversible, I will certainly not be around to witness it.”

Since scribbling some mediocre verse as a teenager, Bob Trewin put aside his pen for the best part of half a century. He began writing poetry again after retirement and now belongs to a number of groups scattered across the Pennines in West Yorkshire. He has won first and second prize in successive years in the National Association of Writers and Groups’ Open Poetry Competition.

“Garden work” by Bilderschachtel Photography is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnet: Alex Rettie, ‘Protection’

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“Jansen, you gotta wear gloves when you work
on the grinder. You want hurt yourself?” And
then Kaczmarek looked down at Frank’s left hand.
He saw the scar before the boy could jerk
his arm away. “It’s nothing. An accident
is all, ya know?” He’d done it Sunday night.
Sometimes the burning made you feel alright
when you were getting lonely. He had meant
to do it somewhere hidden, but it felt
good, the old man noticing like he had.
That’s probably how it was to have a dad—
he’d hit your backside with a leather belt
when you were a little shit, but he’d care
if you were hurt. He’d even stroke your hair.

*****

Alex Rettie writes: “Protection” was first published in the Summer 2026 issue of Nimrod International, edited by Boris Dralyuk. It’s part of an as-yet unpublished manuscript called “The Triangles,” which follows the lives of two gay men (including Frank, the speaker of the poem) and a nun (the former teacher of one of the men).”

Alex Rettie is a Calgary poet who has been published in print and online journals in Canada, Australia, the UK and the US. He co-edits the online poetry journal Poems for Persons of Interest (https://pfpoi.blogspot.com/). You can find more of his work on Substack at https://poemsforpoi.substack.com/.

“Scarred Hand” by GrantG42 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Sonnet variation, amphibrachic: Daniel Kemper, ‘Impossible Love’

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“Water causes the mind to become.” Pratītyasamutpāda

Impossible love is the spirit of poems escaping
the rhythms, and forms, and the former expressions
of lovers like Shakespeare and Ovid. Reshaping
traditions re-feathers the beds for the sensual sessions
and canopy-shaking delights of The Muse, yet neither
The Lady, so dark and complex, nor Corinna her equal,
nor any persona She dons, entertains the idea of a breather;
instead, with a tumble of laughter, it’s time for a sequel.
Impossible love is eternal renewal; The Muse’s
allure is forever unique, yet the heart of her dances
is primal and deep. The relationship calms and confuses
the poet: the infinite love. But the finite romances.
The union of poet and Muse re-invents and recovers
the poetry born of the love of impossible lovers.

*****

Daniel Kemper writes: “On first read The Muse will likely be understood as “the muse,” IOW, the actual, earthly woman who inspires a poet. The bit about “any persona she dons” will get read as merely “her varied moods” or some such. But there’s a reason for the Buddhist epigram. There’s a reason for capitalizing The Muse. This is The Muse as a spirit, a spirit whose visit inspires and is itself an inspiration who arrives, created (or summoned?) by aspiration.  Writing then, is making love to The Muse, who sometimes inhabits the bodies of mortals, the personae she dons…  Alas, is it possible for spirit and flesh to commingle?

“Clearly this poem is all-in on the classical style, save that it’s a sonnet in amphibrachian meter (x / x). Few poems exist at all in the canon in amphibrachs, but there are some. All sloppy. No sonnets. Few realize that when you read through the end of the line, as generally one should, these become a simple anapestic meter (x x /) like “…[Christ]mas and ALL through the HOUSE not a CREATure was STIRRing not EVen a MOUSE.]

x / x    x / x    x / x    x / x   
x / x    x / x    x / x    x / x   
becomes
x / x   x /  x   x /  x   x /  x  x /  x  x /  x   x /  x   x / x   

meh. Anyway…        

“PS: There’s a little meta-textual play where the poem talks about “escaping the rhythms and forms and former expressions.” The line is self-referential. This poem, being a sonnet in a meter that no sonnet has yet been written in, is itself “escaping the rhythms and forms and former…”  

‘Impossible Love’ is previously unpublished.

Daniel Kemper, a former tournament-winning wrestler, black belt in traditional Shotokan karate, and infantryman has earned a BA in English, an MCSE (Systems Engineering), an MBA, and an MA in English and had works accepted for publication at more than a dozen magazines, including a pushcart nomination. He’s been an invited presenter at PAMLA 2024 and presided over the Poetics Panel in 2025 and has been the feature poet at several Sacramento venues.

“seventh sense” by woodleywonderworks is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnet: George Witte, ‘Progress’

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From sidewalk and cracked windowpane,
demolished wall, foundation, beam,
cement, charred rebar, median,
bare highway undercut by stream,

through paver, panel, gutter, tile,
amenities exposed to snow
corroding granite, marble, steel,
oak porch and bluestone patio,

begot by fecund apertures
into an unrecorded day
green filaments emerge, gold furze,
no tool or fingertip or spray

deployed for terminal reverse—
dominion, put another way.

*****

George Witte writes: “Progress was inspired by Samuel Miller McDonald’s book of the same name, which is a history of “progress” as defined by humanity, where extraction and exploitation of resources has brought the planet to a precipice. I confess to a perhaps morbid attraction to brief poems about end times, with Frost’s Fire and Ice being the exemplar, and Byron’s Darkness being a vision.”

‘Progress’ was first published in The Sonneteer.

George Witte’s four books of poems are An Abundance of Caution (Unbound Edition Press, 2023), Does She Have a Name?, Deniability, and The Apparitioners. New poems are published or forthcoming in Dappled Things, Nimrod, Poems for Persons of Interest, and Revel.
Links: unboundedition.com/authors/george-witte
georgewittepoet.com/poems-online-george-witte

“weeds in sidewalk cracks” by nicknormal is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Sonnet: Paul Burgess, ‘Sea Turtles’

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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.”

‘Sea Turtles’ was originally published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

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/

“seagull eating baby turtle” by maveric2003 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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.