One Sentence Poems
Transmission
"The sentence, with its narrow typographical confines, is a lonely place, the loneliest place for a writer, and the temptation for the writer to get out of one sentence as soon as possible and get going on the next sentence is entirely understandable."
― Garielle Lutz, “The Sentence Is a Lonely Place,”
The Believer, January 2009, Issue 59.
Dear Readers and Contributors,
Thanks for sending all the wonderful sentences. And thanks for not moving on to the next one!
The editors are grateful to all who submitted to this issue and congratulate all whose work appears here. My thanks to co-editors Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco, Natalie Wolf, and Clare Rolens.
Yours,
Dale
David Williamson
All this ever was
was a perfect strawberry milkshake
shared on concrete steps spiraling
to some constellation
once worshipped as
divine,
and as your final, celestial sigh
shot shockwaves through darkness,
the planets dimmed, and visions of
stargazing and forever
began to taste
like an empty
plastic cup.
David Williamson is a mathematician, teacher, writer, poet, and a vocal proponent of strawberry milkshakes.
Lorri McDole
Holding
I cram a KIND mini bar in my mouth, a superstitious
bid to summon a real person to pick up pronto, but it’s the
fucking IRS, so an hour and a half, six mini bars, and countless
vodka swigs later, a speed-talking woman answers, says the number
I’ve reached is for requesting more forms, not for asking about
the form I didn’t request and have already received, but of course
she’s happy to send as many additional forms as I’d like
to whatever address I’d like
for free.
Lorri McDole’s writing has appeared in various journals and anthologies, and her favorite writing prize so far (besides money) is Amourettes, a CD of French love songs by Les Chauds Lapins (The Hot Rabbits).
Would You Rather
Live one thousand years of this life
or one hundred years each of ten different lives
our grandson reads from his book,
and my husband and I respond in unison
with opposite answers, which makes me wonder
if I’d rather stick my actual foot in my mouth
and chew it up and swallow it or say things out loud
before I’ve had the chance to think them through.
Jason Fraley
Praia de Monte Clérigo, May 1, 2026
Drowning does not begin
underwater but with his face
a mirror of ocean froth,
his arms stretched up,
eager to give the rapture
better directions, to wave
goodbye to those of us
stranded on the shore.
Jason Fraley started in West Virginia, has made it to Columbus, Ohio, and hopes to go further one day.
Barbara DeCoursey Roy
Nurse Log
Just when I think hope is dead,
a rainforest thick with amputations,
some defiant clump of moss
spreads its spores upon the bark
like little choirs singing in the dark.
Barbara DeCoursey Roy lives in the woods near St Louis, Missouri, where she practices writing poems and being old.
Lunch Break at Calvary Cemetery
The dead want their asphodels
sliced thin like fennel, prefer bay
leaf wreaths, the ambrosial scent
of a winter stew, don't mind
if you feel awkward talking
to them under a November sky
with your cheese sandwich
and thermos of coffee.
Juan Pablo Mobili
After Talking to My Doctor
I fold
the napkins
carefully,
my idea
of repenting
for the sins
I committed
against my body,
making perfect corners
of old linen.
Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires, adopted by New York, and forever a foreigner everywhere, all of which is where his poems come from.
Anthem
When they raised
the plastic utility flag
above my father’s grave,
a place marker, they insisted,
for the headstone
still to come,
still uncarved
in the stone cutter’s
cluttered workshop,
(though its dates
were hardly subject to change),
I had the idea, as a show
of devotion, to rise
to my feet and sing,
or at least mumble some lyrics,
but it soon dawned on me,
as I felt for my heart, silence
was the anthem
of my father’s new country,
and I hung my head
like a flag.
Doug Fritock is a writer, husband, and father of four living in Redondo Beach, California, whose work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Rattle, Whale Road Review, and SoFloPoJo among other literary journals.
Fame
When my father finally turned up
on my doorstep again, this
more than a week
after his midnight departure
in the back of the funeral director’s
elongated car, as though
he were a movie star
quietly being chauffeured
to some exclusive afterparty,
or a celebrity politician
en route to address
a gathering of well-heeled donors,
he looked smaller, less
distinguished than I remembered,
more like an ordinary
box of ashes
shipped overnight
from a West Virginia crematorium,
as if his once luminous star
had burned itself out,
his fifteen minutes expired.
Joe Carrithers
Distance
I cannot recall
the last time you hugged me
as you departed for a flight out of town,
not a hug that would suggest carnality
or even love,
just the hug that gives me one last sensation
of your body next to mine,
one last chance for my flesh to remember
the press of chest to chest,
stomach to stomach.
Joe Carrithers keeps busy by teaching college writing, critical thinking, and literature classes at a community college in Southern California.
Lynne Schilling
The Kiss
I haven’t seen him
for decades,
but our bodies
remember
themselves
and hug first
then our lips
remember, too,
and for minutes,
it seems,
before with a little jolt
we separate,
our minds
still locked
in embrace.
After writing poetry sporadically for most of her adult life, Lynne Schilling got serious about it at age 75 and hasn’t looked back—penning and publishing free verse and Japanese short form poetry.
.This is One Sentence Poems
Travis Park
Library Book
Thirty years after someone pressed
a maple leaf between these pages,
I open the novel
and find an autumn
still waiting for its reader.
Travis Park lives in Indiana, where he writes poetry, takes long road trips, and is usually paying attention to the wrong thing at exactly the right moment.
After the grandstand empties
and the last funnel cake stand
folds itself into the dark,
a single goldfish circles its plastic bag
on the midway
as though rehearsing
the memory of a river.
October
While carrying the season's first armload
of firewood to the porch,
I realize that every stick
was once reaching
for the same sky.
The County Fair
J.R. Solonche
When Books Dream
At night, they dream of hands that will open
them slowly, as if unwrapping a fragile gift,
and they dream of the scent of ink rising
like warm bread, of margins filled with small,
urgent whispers, and they dream of lamplight
spilling across their spines, of the soft rustle
that feels like breathing, and they dream of you—
not as you are, but as you might be when
the right sentence finally finds you.
J.R. Solonche, a frequent contributor to this journal, is the author of 50 books of poetry and coauthor of another.
Kelsi Lindus
Nice as bones
Doesn’t my foot look nice as bones
my friend asks, holding up an x-ray,
and it’s true, her foot looks nice
as bones, glowing from its joints
as bones, thin and delicate
as bones, a ballerina’s pink silk point
as bones, graceful and breakable
the way we’re wanted.
Kelsi Lindus is an iron deficient writer and filmmaker based in Seattle.
Lauren Wolk
Madrid—March 11, 2004
And then, as the city wakened,
came mad nonsense as if from horses thirsting:
tendons unfurling like wet ribbons,
bones shocked by the light,
eyes like hot grapes,
tongues powdered,
hair kinked and curling in the heat,
feet baking inside their hard shoes so that,
in the end,
bodies that began soft and clean
went out of this world with hooves.
Lauren Wolk is a novelist, poet, filmmaker, and visual artist who lives and works on Cape Cod.
One Sentence Poems
is edited by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco, Clare Rolens, Dale Wisely, and Natalie Wolf. It is an Ambidextrous Bloodhound publication. Thanks for reading!