Category Archives: poem

“Poem to my Imaginary Friend circa 2008” by Dan Nowak

8 Replies

I try to imagine you
like names are precursors

or premonitions. You stay
somewhere without a body.

By no means are you
post-modern. I do not need

more sensation, I need more
friends who write. More

who read, and make me feel
uneducated. I want you

to teach courses without
tuitions and still get

a Biothermal dynamics
professor’s salary. You feel

this need for family,
to dance, to misshape the world

as a play. Drama is left
as a nameless reminder

of our love of self-help.
No matter how hard I close

my eyes you never show
or talk or kiss. Tell me

what does your voice sound
like – angel or typewriter?

–Dan Nowak,
Of a Bed Frame
Accents Publishing

Dan Nowak’s first book, Recycle Suburbia, won the 2007 Quercus Review Poetry Series Award. He also has a chapbook, Burning the Arson Dictionary: Poems for Thomas McGrath published by RockSaw Press. Dan is co-founder and co-editor ofImaginary Friend Press and an editor for New Sins Press. Dan lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and enjoys that Lakefront Brewery is less than a mile from his home.

“Wind-Slip Day” by Nana Lampton

196 Replies

Three ravens slip the wind
into the hayfield
to forage after the storm.

When the harbor smoothes,
I will paddle my kayak out to sea.
I am waiting out the wind
the way we endure slow time,
the end of marriage, a mother dying,
the way winter endures for spring,

or one alone patiently awaits the other.
What unfolds today will indicate
the weather, what the sea has in mind.

–Nana Lampton,
Bloom on a Split Board
Accents Publishing

Nana Lampton earned a BA in English literature at Wellesley, and an MA at the University of Virginia, and she attended programs at the Harvard Business School. In 2004, she received an MFA in Writing from Spalding University. Nana has also studied drawing and painting at the Corcoran School of Art and the Louisville Visual Art Association. Nana’s other publications include the books Snowy Owl Gathers in Her Trove, and Moon with the Sun in Her Eye. Her art and poetry have been exhibited at the Chapman Friedman Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Northwoods Gallery in Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin, among others.

“Recommendation to God” by Bina Kals

706 Replies

God if you were born now among us
do you think we’d recognize you

just don’t arrive in a stable
because the media wouldn’t cover that

if you again decided to feed us
with two fish and five loaves of bread
I doubt we’d like it

you know we’ve advanced a good deal
we prefer our bread toasted
and of the fish—caviar
promotes skin regeneration
and removes free radicals

if you haven’t sunk into despair
send only a single star but if possible
far away from the gravitational field of the earth
otherwise global political chaos would ensue

if you have other things to do
do not reopen our eyes
otherwise mel gibson may come out with a new film
in which again you’re being lashed
for an entire 11 minutes
I don’t know how we could stand that

–Bina Kals,
translated from the Bulgarian
by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
The Season of Delicate Hunger:
Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry
(Accents Publishing)

Bina Kals was born on March 15th, 1967 in Bourgas. She holds a degree in biotechnology engineering and is currently studying theology. She has worked as a community organizer and cultural liaison. Bina is the author of two books of poetry, most recently Twelve Hours of Santorini (2011), for which she received a literary award. Bina lives and writes in Bourgas.

“Omen” by Bianca Spriggs

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And then there was the time we found a sorry gray cat
that’d been hit outside _____’s house right down the street
from the café. The animal was so pitiful, our bleeding hearts
couldn’t stand to leave it, so we gathered newspapers,
our hands never once touching any parasites, to maneuver it
off the pavement and the threat of more mangling tires.
The flies hadn’t gotten to be very thick yet, and we lifted
the cat over to the grass, its peridot eye petrified open.
It lay there on _____’s lawn for three days because we didn’t
know what else to do. Later, when we confessed we’d chosen
his house to place the cat until we could find someone to bury it,
he got angry and called us putas; he’d been so afraid a wronged lover
had come to put roots on him. He never suspected the hands of friends
would turn his fate sour. All the bad luck that barreled towards him,
thunderheads in a summer storm, he blamed on us and our dead cat.
Even after we all moved away, even though later we were all
very congenial, _____’s troubles stuck to him like dried blood
on the sagging outer gums of a dead mouth.

-Bianca Spriggs,
How Swallowtails Become Dragons
(Accents Publishing)

Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem Fellow Bianca Spriggs is a freelance instructor of composition, literature, and creative writing. She holds degrees fromTransylvania University and the University of Wisconsin. She is a Kentucky Humanities Council Lecturer and the creator and programmer of the Wild Women of Poetry Slam (formerly the Gypsy Poetry Slam) featured annually at theKentucky Women Writers Conference. Heralded as “the new standard bearer for the Affrilachian Poets” by founding member Frank X Walker, Bianca is the author of Kaffir Lily (Wind Publications) and her work may also be found in the anthologies New Growth: Recent Kentucky Writings and America! What’s My Name? and the journals Union Station Magazine, Appalachian Heritage Magazine, and others.

“Heat” by Bobby Steve Baker

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There is a guitar inside the distance of the house,
soft classical baroque, a fugue.

Over the desert from the irrigated lawn,
the Sierras gather up horizons deceptively close.

Alone with a martini in my hand,
a pimentoed olive

floating/sinking.
I despise pimento.

This one moans it is the penis of a dog
and snares rabid sexual power.

I eat it. A woman, very thin and wispy
comes out of the abode house.

Ancient but cut and stuffed to appear much younger,
she joins me speaking, You smell like a dog in heat.

Males don’t or maybe always are, I deflect.
In any case it’s odorless.

She says she is not a male and so can smell
what she likes, pheromones perhaps.

She is the soul of the cities, islands,
and does not feel the desert as a life force.

She does not look with longing to the mountains
as I do just then.

When I look back she has changed into a pimento,
and in a moment, swallowed, gone.

–Bobby Steve Baker,
Numbered Bones
Accents Publishing

Bobby Steve Baker was born in Ontario, Canada in 1951, but has lived and practiced cosmetic surgery in Lexington, Kentucky for many years. He holds an MFA degree in Poetry from National University and has published in various literary journals, including Ann Arbor Review, Boston Literary Magazine, and Grey Sparrow Journal. In 2009, his poetry in tinfoildresses was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Bobby grew up in a home where poetry was ever-present but began to write seriously only in the past few years.

“It’s 5 to 10, 5 Minutes before the Beginning” by Kristin Dimitrova

167 Replies

The executioner removed his mask.
The condemned removed the sack from his head.
Both had identical faces.
Then one said to the other:
This is strange, but
it doesn’t change things.
It’s not even important.
Now the question is
how to kill
the eternal five minutes.

-Kristin Dimitrova,
translated from the Bulgarian
by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
The Season of Delicate Hunger
(Accents Publishing 2014)

Kristin Dimitrova was born on May 19th, 1963 in Sofia. She is the author of 10 books of poetry, most recently The Garden of Expectations and the Opposite Door (2012), as well as a novel, two short story collections and a set of four travelogues. Kristin is also a co-scriptwriter of the feature film The Goat (2009). She has received five national awards for poetry, three for fiction and one for the translation of a selection of poems by English poet John Donne. Her poems, short stories and essays have been translated into 24 languages and published in 26 countries. She lives and works in Sofia.

AWP Conference Author Updates: Sarah Freligh

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In preparation for the upcoming Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference this April, Accents will be providing updates and highlights of our writers who are attending. Sarah Freligh, author of A Brief Natural History of an American Girl, will be signing copies of her newest release, Sad Math, at the conference. Sad Math has been described by Mark Irwin, author of White City, as “a marvelous arc that captures and explores what it means for all sentient beings to age and find the unreasonable sum of years.”

Below are details on where she will be signing books at the conference.

When:	Thursday, March 31, 2016 @ 1PM
Where:	Los Angeles Convention Center & JW Marriott Los Angeles
	900 W Olympic Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90015
	(213) 765-8600

Sarah Freligh is the author of Sort of Gone (Turning Point Books, 2008). Her work has appeared in The Sun, Rattle, Brevity, Barn Owl Review, Cimarron Review, Iowa Woman, Third Coast, Tar River Poetry, and Painted Bride Quarterly and on Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac.” Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a poetry grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006, and an Artist’s Exchange grant from the New York State Council for the Arts in 1997. She is co-winner of the Whirling Prize for Sad Math, a post-publication award given by the English Department of the University of Indianapolis. She is a visiting assistant professor of English and creative writing at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

“Home Repairs” by Richard Taylor

1 Reply

Measuring for a new counter-top
of black granite,

studying paint charts and testing
six subtle shades of avocado
on the kitchen wall,

replacing naked florescent tubes
with a natty overhead
in the style of art nouveau,

shoring up the side porch
to bring it into plumb, erasing
swags along the roofline—

my wife is making
so many improvements
I don’t sleep well at night.

-Richard Taylor
Fading into Bolivia
Accents Publishing

Richard Taylor is a professor of English and currently serves as Kenan Visiting Writer at Transylvania University. A former Kentucky poet laureate, he is the author of six collections of poetry, two novels, and several books of non-fiction, mostly relating to Kentucky history. A former dean and teacher in the Governor’s Scholars Program, he was selected as Distinguished Professor at Kentucky State University in 1992. He has won two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Al Smith Creative Writing Award from the Kentucky Arts Council. He and his wife Lizz own Poor Richard’s Books in Frankfort, Kentucky.

“God” by Melva Sue Priddy

10 Replies

I am God
I created man
placed my hand upon
his head gently
and said You
shall have free will.
You shall not return
to me asking What
do I do next?
What do I do next?
What do I do next?

–Melva Sue Priddy,
Bigger than They Appear:
Anthology of Very Short Poems
(Accents Publishing)

Melva Sue Priddy, a native Kentuckian, lives with her husband Gene Strode, who has helped provide a safe environment for writing.

“Rain” by Aksinia Mihaylova

2 Replies

Half an hour I’ve been standing in the shower
and can’t wash off this haunting dream
pursuing me for years,
in which you abandon me
at the farmer’s market
in a southern city.
The tides of blood discard
sand and dead jellyfish in my eyes
and I can’t see how you walk away
carrying someone else’s joy
leaning on your shoulder.

April opens its balconies,
yet the cat in me does not wake up
for the fifth straight month:
hot tin roofs,
sunny tiled roofs
are scenes from another season.

I dig a furrow under the fig,
squeeze in my palm
valerian seeds
and I talk to them in a strange dialect,
but the rain doesn’t come
and you won’t understand anyway
how you need to love me.

Over my head a cloud hangs
like a promise.

–Aksinia Mihaylova,
translated from the Bulgarian
by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
The Season of Delicate Hunger:
Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry
(Accents Publishing)

Aksinia Mihaylova was born on April 13th, 1963 in the northwest region of Bulgaria. She holds a degree in Bulgarian philology from St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia. She is a founding editor of the literary journal Ah, Maria. Aksinia is the author of three poetry books. Her most recent book,Unbuttoning of the Body (2011), won both the Hristo Fotev Annual Poetry Award and the Milosh Zyapkov National Award for Literature. She has translated over 30 books of poetry and prose, and has edited anthologies of contemporary Lithuanian and Latvian poetry. She lives and works in Sofia.

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