Now only two things of yours remain:
the stain on my sheets from that time
neither of us could wait
and your running shoes,
which maybe you’ll return for
because they still have some miles left in them.
-Jesse Manley,
Bigger Than They Appear:
Anthology of Very Short Poems
(Accents Publishing)
Melons are deceptive.
Their bruised, scarred skin
divulges nothing.
A watermelon’s green rind
promises summer ripeness—
how easy to imagine deep pink pulp,
smooth texture, sweet juice.
. Insert the knife:
the melon splits clean open,
revealing no perfect pinkness
only pale and mealy flesh.
Seedless—
. a disappointment.
-DM Benningfield
Bigger than They Appear
“What a cache of treasures this collection is, what a cache of jewels. […] All are reminders of what the best, briefest poems can do: give back the world to us, as it passes, in the mirror of a few well-chosen words.”
-Cecilia Woloch
DM Benningfield’s work has appeared on Lexington’s Accents Radio program, in Southern Women’s Review, and Aurora. She’s currently writing her first novel and chapbook.
Your thoughts will burden
into the body of a flower
pressed in a book,
fragile and beautiful as snow.
So cold. A weathered bloom
unable to open for anyone.
-Keith S. Wilson
Bigger than They Appear
“What a cache of treasures this collection is, what a cache of jewels. […] All are reminders of what the best, briefest poems can do: give back the world to us, as it passes, in the mirror of a few well-chosen words.”
-Cecilia Woloch
Keith S. Wilson is an Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem Fellow living in Kentucky.
A caldera of intimation, a cinder,
a bright relic in a penny arcade,
a candela, a radiant dalliance,
a break in the calendar, when I cried,
a grained reading. I lingered, an Inca
reclined on an edge, a dicier side receding.
-Alex Cigale
Bigger than They Appear
“What a cache of treasures this collection is, what a cache of jewels. […] All are reminders of what the best, briefest poems can do: give back the world to us, as it passes, in the mirror of a few well-chosen words.”
-Cecilia Woloch
Alex Cigale’s translations of Russian Silver Age miniature and contemporary minimalist poems are online at Offcourse (albany.edu, issue 41) and Alba (Ravenna Press, issue 21), respectively.
End of the flight. The aisle fills with us, our
faces toward the door—crowns swirled in dark curls,
slick black swoops, coarse grizzled pepper
and salt, white tufts, silken, thinning—
time-lapse bodies sturdy, bent.
I sit, no longer
in a hurry.
-Leatha Kendrick
Bigger than They Appear
“What a cache of treasures this collection is, what a cache of jewels. […] All are reminders of what the best, briefest poems can do: give back the world to us, as it passes, in the mirror of a few well-chosen words.”
-Cecilia Woloch
Near dawn
in a strange part of town
I lock myself out of my car.
Through the window I see
my keys in the ignition,
my phone on the seat,
and, on the floor,
a note from a woman:
What has happened?
I feel a terrible distance between us.
-Andrew Merton
Bigger than They Appear
“What a cache of treasures this collection is, what a cache of jewels. […] All are reminders of what the best, briefest poems can do: give back the world to us, as it passes, in the mirror of a few well-chosen words.”
-Cecilia Woloch
More from Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs and Andrew Merton:
Andrew Merton has been a political reporter and columnist for the Gloucester Times, The Boston Herald Traveler and the Boston Globe, and a contributing editor with Boston Magazine. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Ms. Magazine, Yankee Magazine and The Boston Phoenix. His book Enemies of Choice was published by Beacon Press in 1980, and his anthology In Your Own Voice: A Writer’s Reader was published by Harper Collins in 1995. His poetry has appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Powhatan Review, Paper Street, The Comstock Review, Silk Road, Third Wednesday, The American Journal of Nursing, and elsewhere. He teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire.
creek beds
are cradled in
the creases of
maple leaves
–Eric Scott Sutherland
Bigger than They Appear (2011)
“What a cache of treasures this collection is, what a cache of jewels. […] All are reminders of what the best, briefest poems can do: give back the world to us, as it passes, in the mirror of a few well-chosen words.”
-Cecilia Woloch
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 (2014) 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.
The sea that roars
gently in a shell
also crashes in a cup
held to the ear,
among other vessels
whose tides have only
to be taken up;
their further shores, named.
-J.D. Smith
Bigger than They Appear (2011)
“What a cache of treasures this collection is, what a cache of jewels. […] All are reminders of what the best, briefest poems can do: give back the world to us, as it passes, in the mirror of a few well-chosen words.”
-Cecilia Woloch
J.D. Smith’s third collection of poetry, Labor Day at Venice Beach, is forthcoming in 2012. He periodically provides updates at Smitroverse.
I saw the man standing in the field at dawn.
. He was standing like a small storm.
I looked at the sky and saw the fields coming.
Waves. The tiny storms were on their way.
-Trey Moody
Bigger than They Appear (2011)
“What a cache of treasures this collection is, what a cache of jewels. […] All are reminders of what the best, briefest poems can do: give back the world to us, as it passes, in the mirror of a few well-chosen words.”
-Cecilia Woloch
Trey Moody lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, and is the author of Climate Reply (New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM) and Once Was a Weather (Greying Ghost Press).
skyward, and he is the first to see the rainbow. Bellshaped
flowers droop under the weight of even the finest
drops. The unexpected shower scatters misty beads along
a spider’s woven silk. Green leaves at branch tips wear a
polished gloss.
-Elizabeth Brennan
Bigger than They Appear (2011)
-Cecilia Woloch
Elizabeth Brennan lives in Sonoma County, California. She is author of the chapbook Sewing Her Hand to the Face of the
Fleeting (Quale Press).