One Sentence Poems
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This journal is intended to be read as an issue. Please consider starting here.
Dear Readers and Contributors,
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The editors are grateful to all who submitted to this issue and congratulate all whose work appears here. My love and thanks to c0-editors Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco, Natalie Wolf, and Clare Rolens.
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"Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences." ― Sylvia Plath
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Yours,
Dale
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John Grey
Glacier
A hundred feet of silence
holds its breath,
unmoved by the thunder
that shatters below.
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John Grey is an Australian poet and US resident whose latest books are Bittersweet, Subject Matters, and Between Two Fires, available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, White Wall Review and Trampoline.
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Alisa Golden
Abiding in Stoic Philosophy
A man in slanted
morning light is hosing
the sidewalks down
before the customers come,
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while on the wire above,
hundreds of
rock doves in lines
ruffle awake,​
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and he knows
that cleaning is
the only thing
in his control.
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Alisa Golden, Editor of Star 82 Review, hears words, thinks in pictures, and stitches both together in textiles, taking breaks to dance. www.neverbook.com | www.star82review.com
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Michelle Geoga
Meteorological Summer
By June 1st, I have given up socks, and
I’m reviewing the signs of what’s coming,
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because the peonies make pink promises
and the garlic scapes curl four hundred degrees
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while the mosquitos love me so thick I get three
with one slap to my arm and the moon,
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almost full, is the witness to our fight
over turning the air on.
Michelle Geoga is a writer and artist from Michigan who writes about what she sees and who she meets and the everyday stuff that surprises and delights.
Alisha Erin Hillam
Sydney Harbour
I ask every instructor
from the sailing club—
immigrants, all of them—
what brought them
to Australia
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and in answer
each of them
throws their arms out toward
the water around us
like booms gybing wide,
the harbor winds
still filling their hearts
like sails.
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Alisha Erin Hillam is a Midwestern American writer, now residing abroad, whose work has appeared in publications such as Passages North, ONLY POEMS, Barrelhouse, Lunch Ticket and Consequence Forum.
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David A. Lee
The Moment After
When the chest stills and the room forgets to breathe, someone says his name as if it might return with him.
Circle of Light
When the resident shines a ring of brightness
into the patient’s dilated pupil,
both of them glimpse the beginning of sight.
David A. Lee practiced ophthalmology and now writes poems that look for light in the dark.
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Shoshauna Shy
The Internet Cannot Decide If You Died
December 9th or 12th at Age 77 or 80
Lordy, Lyn Lifshin, I look
for your books in every
secondhand bookstore
in my hometown, the stores
in Spokane, Portland, Boulder,
even at Loganberry’s in Cleve-
land, skim the spate of L’s but
they go from "La," "Le" and straight
to "Lo" and no skinny spine, no slim
columns of your snow or roses to
be found although I even check
in Raleigh, I check in Charlottesville
hoping to spot your languid nouns
slinking among the stacks in
go-go boots or maybe you were
erroneously reshelved with the "Mi’s"
or "Ki’s" by some hasty patron
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and now everyone who owns
your books is feverish to keep
them squirreled away in drawers
like the diaries of their own dead sisters,
unwilling to part with another vowel
of yours since you have parted
with this world.
Shoshauna Shy's poems have been made into videos, graced the interior of taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses.
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Jane Sasser
In Defense of Daylight Saving
We are talking now of summer evenings,
that house-high hay of Dylan Thomas,
hot sun on steaming grass and sidewalks,
long hours of sticky light melting, languid,
into the blue hour, the gloaming, flicker
of lightning bugs and joy of bare feet,
oh, let it go on forever, be Alaska, light dim
but never darkened, stunned moose calf
stiff-legged in the meadow, her pricked ears
framing a half-moon in rosy sky.
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Jane Sasser’s poetry has appeared in JAMA, North American Review, and The Sun, along with her three poetry chapbooks, What’s Underneath (Iris Press), Itinerant (Finishing Line), and Recollecting the Snow (March Street Press).
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Juan Pablo Mobili
Father's Work
I could be one of the clowns
stumbling
out of the tiny
make-believe car
at the circus,
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or a bear
longing to sleep
a whole winter
rudely awakened
by a cave in disarray,
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but I am
still
their father—
I keep watch.
Heirlooms
Certain hurts
we bequeath,
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will rise again
like Lazarus,
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a seed’s revenge
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returning to burn
the garden down.
Born in Buenos Aires and adopted by New York, recently appointed Poet Laureate of Rockland County, New York, Juan Mobili has published extensively in the US and abroad, has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations, and is the author of Contraband (2022).
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Thom Valicenti
A Petition to the Blue Moon Poetry Committee
For once
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let’s have
a poem
where nothing goes
wrong,
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no one
gets
hurt,
and the only
sound
is
the squish
squish
of humans
softly
breaking
no promises.
Thom Valicenti is a musician/library worker/poetry enthusiast/human-shaped bag of bone, blood, and meat with electricity in it, who currently resides just west of Boston Massachusetts but whose permanent address is another planet.
Stephanie Smith
Imperfect Tending
I have failed the potted begonias, the African violets,
and the golden pothos
and am left only with mom's cactus, which,
despite my imperfect tending,
patiently sits in the bathroom window
as if summoning what it remembers.
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Stephanie Smith lives surrounded by pines and mountains in Georgia, but she misses the beaches of Miami, her hometown.
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Dolo Diaz
Your Undertow
I see your undertow
the same way one sees the signs
of the rip current in the ocean,
the strip of calm between
the foamy hands of the surf,
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the same way one feels the subtle pull,
so you swim to the side,
not to be carried out to sea,
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the same way the lifeguards at the beach
watch it, and warn the swimmers,
plant red flags in the sand,
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and I want your undertow
to carry me deep into your ocean,
past the kelp beds and the rock shelf,
into the silent blue where you dwell,
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ignore the loud warnings,
whistles, flags,
my own instincts honed for safety,
your own hesitation,
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and drift with your ancient current,
see where it takes us both,
be swept into what you feel,
carry what you carry.
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Dolo Diaz is a poet with roots in Spain, currently residing in California, and her work has appeared/forthcoming in SLANT, The Summerset Review, ONE ART, Third Wednesday, Right Hand Pointing, and others. dolodiaz.com.
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Ping Yi Yee
Awake!
We are a squandering
of space dust
till we head towards
the stars waiting,
outside time,
for the return of kin.
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After a three-decade detour in public service, Ping Yi Lee writes poetry and prose, with work appearing in Orbis, Litro, Stony Thursday Book, London Grip, La Piccioletta Barca, Vita Poetica, Eclectica, and The High Window.
John Harn
His Mother Told Him
Your father was a bean pole too at your age
and look how he turned out
which resonated, to a point
but off in the distance a rockfall dirge.
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John Harn grew up outside Detroit, spent most of his adult life in Oregon and currently lives on the Big Island of Hawaii where this poem were written.
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Brian Duncan
Promise
In the field where we made our pact,
where drunken autumn bees
still race death among the goldenrod
and the bobolink still call
from their blinds in the low shrubs
and the world seems miles away
and time only just begun,
starts the cord that stretches back as we go,
ever finer, that shows us the way to come home.
Brian Duncan lives in Kendall Park, New Jersey with his wife, Margie, two tuxedo cats, the ghosts of two dogs running in the woods, and a headful of memories.
Gwen Hart
Perspective
Everyone talks about
the tortoise and the hare
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running a race
in the summer meadow,
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but no one mentions
the yellow finch
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zigzagging
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above
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or the plaid sunhat
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of the woman
with the watercolor kit
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tucked under her arm,
walking in the other direction
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at her own gentle pace.
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Gwen Hart teaches writing at Montana State University Northern.
