People told me that after you wear
your wedding band long enough,
there would be a permanent
indentation on your finger,
but what they didn’t tell me,
what they may not have even known,
is once you leave the ring off
how soon your skin forgets.
Keep reading, and Scott Hughes will keep writing. www.writescott.com
When the man in the next room died,
his daughter gave his flowers
to the nurses, so Emily, listen to me,
when I am the man in the next room,
give my flowers to the ugliest nurse only.
J.R. Solonche is the author of ten books of poetry and a frequent contributor to One Sentence Poems.
He keeps himself
alive and well
by riding his
stationary bike
ten stationary miles
every stationary day.
H. Edgar Hix is ready for more, particularly in small doses, but also finds what already is is difficult enough to keep up with.
I will
hold
my palm
against the window between us,
and I’m sure
to push
through
if I
just
wait
long
enough.
Lysbeth Em Benkert is a long-term transplant to the upper mid-west where she teaches writing, rhetoric, and literature.
When you are reading
in front of the Eastern
window, light resting on
your graying crown, as though
you were a deity
of fictional thought, fraught
with some mind’s best idea,
a story filling you
like pomegranates and
lemons, I imagine
you younger, writing lines
in the marbled notebook
that disappeared with time.
A cognitive psychologist intrigued by memory and language, Pamela Joyce Shapiro writes poetry to capture thoughts and moments otherwise forgotten.
Pale pink blending into orange,
yellow weaving across red,
a pattern as intricate and lovely
as the valentine
my son made for me in preschool,
a zig zag of white paste
bleeding through the center
like an old scar that’s healed.
Judith Waller Carroll’s poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on “The Writer’s Almanac,” published in numerous journals and anthologies, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
Stone, tangled with vines,
listing from one side to another
as they rise up the slope
much the way a body moves as it climbs
or the way your golden retriever,
the feathers of his tail swaying,
leads you to this hill
that once led to someone’s home
and now only goes as far
as what’s left of the gazebo,
half-blocked by boulders,
leaving you to imagine the rest:
a Georgian manor house,
a dreamy-eyed girl in the window seat,
a young man whistling
as he takes the steps two at a time.
Judith Waller Carroll’s poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on “The Writer’s Almanac,” published in numerous journals and anthologies, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
5.6.19
11.32 a.m.
55 degrees
Profligacies in orange and black, black and red, white and white, white and yellow,
officers of influence, their color remains after they have flown, and the toads are a
nimbus of sound in the bright afternoon, their chirring rising and rising to a stop, a
dialogue, a harmony, a synchronization of spring’s opus played, revised, played again.
“They are from a project called POND. These short poems are acrostics. This is a one-year-long project. Everyday, at different times during the day, I visit our pond with notebook and camera in hand. I jot down some notes, and take a picture or two, if a good photo op. presents itself. Then I head home and write a four line acrostic using the letters P, O, N, and D. I do not use any of my first words more than once. I need a different P, O, N, and D word every day for a year; I began the book on November 9, 2018 and will complete it on November 9, 2019.”
John L. Stanizzi is author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits – Fifty 50-Word Pieces, and Chants. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, and many others. His newest book. Sundowning, will be out later this year with Main Street Mag.