Category Archives: poem

“Side by Side” by Lori A. May

he was raised in a series of eight,
learned to horde his helpings

she was raised on budgets and bottom
lines, warned to consider famines of families

his plate: a potpourri of leftovers
his stomach full and satisfied

hers: scraped clean, reflective
ready for washing

-Lori A. May
Square Feet
Accents Publishing

Lori A. May writes across the genres, road-trips half the year, and drinks copious amounts of coffee. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The Atlantic, Writer’s Digest, Brevity, Midwestern Gothic, and The Writer. Her editorial roles have included working with Kaylie Jones Books (an imprint of Akashic Books), Creative Nonfiction, and other independent presses. She is also the founding editor of Poets’ Quarterly. Lori is a graduate of the Wilkes University MFA program, where she was awarded the Norris Church Mailer Fellowship. She teaches in the University of King’s College creative nonfiction MFA program and is a frequent guest speaker at writing conferences and residencies across North America. Visit her website at www.LoriAMay.com.

“We Finished the Usual Way” by Ivo Rafailov

3 Replies

She
looked me in the eyes

and insisted it’s easy
to rejoice at offered love,

insisted also she would gladly
lay next to a good writer,

explained how she sees
writers locking eyes with death.

Finally she reached into my glass
and said: I’ll eat this olive.

She did it
slowly,

so I could see
what it’s like

when

a fly
slinks into
a scarlet wound.

-Ivo Rafailov,
translated from the Bulgarian by
Katerina Stoykova-Klemer,
Season of Delicate Hunger
(Accents Publishing)

Ivo Rafailov was born on February 25th, 1977 in Bourgas. He holds a degree in cultural studies from St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia. He works as a graphic designer. Ivo is the author of two books of poetry, most recently Countable Temptations (2013), and he has received awards for both photography and poetry. Ivo is the co-founder of Frost Press, which has published collections of contemporary American poets in Bulgarian, including Billy Collins, Ted Kooser and Carl Dennis. He lives and works in Sofia.

“the best, the best” by Eric Scott Sutherland

8 Replies

he’s from Cuba
the best music
we talk boxing
and baseball
the best, the best
I hand him a cup
of coffee and ask

so, why are you here?

the pendulum’s rod
cuts twice through
the cloud of every
stranger’s breath
a worn earth turns
another nth degree

we both smile
knowing the answer

-Eric Scott Sutherland,
Pendulum
(Accents Publishing)

Eric Scott Sutherland is a hawk watcher, Kentucky creek walker, tree loving Lorax, community and event organizer, the author of two chapbooks and the full-length collection incommunicado (2007). pendulum is his fourth book of poems. He is the creator and host of Holler Poets Series, a monthly celebration of literature and music since 2008. Eric makes his nest in Lexington. Follow Eric and Holler at www.ericscottsutherland.com.

“What Breaks” by Lynnell Edwards

265 Replies

(a lesson for children)

Listen: you know I have told
you why we must not touch,
why we must not run
ragged through the gallery
in our socks, sliding across
the smooth floor, why we
must not stomp and flail
in anger or frustration so near
the glass.

Glass breaks.

Now look: here is the cup I took
from the annealer this morning. You watched
me blow its round bowl, shape
its thin stem, turn and turn and press
the base. But, see here?

It has a flaw. Take the safety glasses
and stand back.

These pieces are worthless now, can only
wound. Get the broom and do not
cry anymore. I will not show
you again how the created world
can slip from its orbit, godless
forever and shattered.

-Lynnell Edwards,
Kings of the Rock and Roll
Hot Shop (or, What Breaks)
(Accents Publishing)

Lynnell Edwards is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop (or, What Breaks) (Accents Publishing). Her short fiction and book reviews have also appeared widely in such literary journals as Pleiades, American Book Review, New Madrid, and The Connecticut Review. She is Associate Professor of English at Spalding University, and prior to that, a faculty member at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon. Lynnell is a graduate of Centre College, the center of the glass-blowing universe in Kentucky.

“Putting on the Ritz” by Emily R. Grosholz

11 Replies

After a long, cool winter,
At last in May a suite
Of warm days wakes the sleepers.

One covered from crown to root
In thick crepe skirtlets stops
Me, back from hibernation:

Loveliest of trees,
Big as the Ritz’s balletic
Vases charged with bloom.

Not bought, not concocted,
Only improbably real.
Why am I not surprised?

My hair is snowed with silver,
Evidence how little room
Fifty springs allow.

And yet midwinter someone
Burst to life inside me,
And lately started dancing.

Just so improbably
Snow hung along the branches
Changed suddenly to flowers.

-Emily R. Grosholz,
Childhood
(Accents Publishing)

Emily Grosholz grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and has taught philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University for thirty-five years, with sojourns in France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Israel, Finland, Costa Rica, Russia, Greece, Spain and Italy. She and her husband Robert R. Edwards (medievalist, rugbyman, and soccer coach) raised four children in State College, Pennsylvania, surrounded by small farms and green hills on one side and the town and university on the other. She is an advisory editor for The Hudson Review,and this is her seventh book of poetry.

Childhood contains illustrations by Lucy Vines.

Lucy Vines was born in 1929 in Hartford, Connecticut. She was raised in New York City, then came to France during the McCarthy era and has lived in Paris ever since, in a milieu of writers and painters. She is married and has one child. The Morat Foundation in Freiburg, Germany, the École des Beaux-Arts in Nîmes, France, and the Maison de l’Amérique Latine in Paris have held retrospective shows devoted to her work. Her works are untitled.

“The Night Kitchen” by Brandel France de Bravo

238 Replies

It all began with a sleepless moon
counting cows and covering the counters
with sudsy light. The dented and rusty
still speak of that night, how back in the day
they used to dine with the dish and spoon,
and the young follow in their footsteps:
the trivet eloped with the teapot,
the spatula proposed to the pan,
and somewhere, they say,
the sieve and whisk are shacking up.

But the carving knife keeps company
with no one. Head buried deep
in a wooden block, he shuns the dull
familiar, this futile utensil love.
Let them tie their knots. He will write
mash notes to occlusive consonants,
the plosive “d” of divide, divorce
and … Sometimes at night
he can be heard moaning softly,
stirred by the glint of memory:

the firm grip of the farmer’s wife,
the three tails writhing,
the mice who never saw what was coming.

-Brandel France de Bravo
Mother, Loose
(Accents Publishing)

Brandel France de Bravo is the author of Provenance, which won the 2008Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize in poetry and was a ForeWord Book of the Year finalist. Her poems, which have been nominated for thePushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and essays have appeared in various journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Fairy Tale Review,Gulf Coast, and Seneca Review. She is co-author of Trees Make the Best Mobiles: Simple Ways to Raise your Child in a Complex World and the editor of Mexican Poetry Today: 20/20 Voices. A graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College with a master’s in public health, she works for a consumer health organization in Washington, D.C.

“Kingdom of Speculation” by Barbara Goldberg

“Black Achilles” by Curtis L. Crisler

409 Replies

This god has fallen
My damn fingers go against me
Work to keep me balanced on new appendages

Crutches guide me now
It is good if I don’t misinterpret my new swagger
How I once feared nothing—heartache, gun shots, tsunamis

I now fear stairs
I have counted them out—13
Down and up, all the superstitions

I have left myself to gain more of myself
Finding myself in another mindset—a carnival game
And like all carnival games, the house was against me

I could not win, have learned the creaky banister a friendly
Like some adventurer it holds me up, as I hear my neighbors’
Voices behind closed doors

I don’t want them to see me like this, flailing, obnoxious
I don’t want their hands of assistance
I want my tendon healed

Zeus cannot see this, so turns his head
Elohim cannot see this, so smiles at me
Kali cannot see this, so empowerment’s limp

The Coyote will not regurgitate the sun, or howl at me
I beseech them all, anything to get back to me
There is no compromise

I must do the work, so I transform into something strange
Something like Doc Octopus, with impediments
Ready to avenge all my shortcomings

–Curtis L. Crisler,
Black Achilles
(Accents Publishing)

Curtis L. Crisler’s forthcoming poetry book, “This” Ameri-can-ah, will be released in 2015 (Cherry Castle Publishing). His books are Pulling Scabs (nominated for a Pushcart), Tough Boy Sonatas (YA), andDreamist: a mixed-genre novel (YA), and his poetry chapbooks areWonderkind, Soundtrack to Latchkey Boy, andSpill. He’s been published in many magazines, journals, and anthologies. He is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, and a Cave Canem Fellow.

“Afterglow” by Roberta Beary

268 Replies

rose petal saké—
my crazy is not
his crazy

jasmine scent of the other woman is me

daymoon
grass stains
of original sin

broken vow the gin bottle's vacant blue

the way he says
consensual
mauve sunset

–Roberta Beary
Deflection
(Accents Publishing)

Roberta Beary is the haibun editor of Modern Haiku; she tweets her photoku @shortpoemz. Her book The Unworn Necklace was named a William Carlos Williams finalist by the Poetry Society of Americain 2008, the first such honor for a book of haiku. A frequent judge of haiku and haibun contests, she travels worldwide to give workshops on the art of the short poem. Her poetry is featured in the reference work A Companion to Poetic Genre (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) and in the anthologyHaiku In English The First Hundred Years (Norton, 2013). www.robertabeary.com.

“Another Tying” by Vladislav Hristov

2 Replies

they back to back
one to another tied up
talk only ahead
where nobody hears
nobody questions
a dog walks by
then a second
donkeys trot
pigs and horses
time passes
they back to back
one to another tied up
long ago ceased
to talk

–Vladislav Hristov,
translated from the Bulgarian
by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
The Season of Delicate Hunger
(Accents Publishing)

Vladislav Hristov was born on July 23rd, 1976 in Shumen. He is a poet, writer and photographer, and his work has been published in numerous literary magazines. Vladislav is the author of three poetry books, most recently φ(2013). He has received international recognition for his haiku, and in 2012, he was listed as one of the 100 most creative haiku authors of Europe. Vladislav was the originator of the first “Seasons” national contest for photo-haiga. Additionally, he launched the fundraising project “Rice fields—photos and haiku” for relief of victims of the 2011 earthquake in Japan. He lives and works in Sofia.

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