From the Editor of Sparks of Calliope:

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

Happy Halloween from Sparks of Calliope!

Where poetry, mystery, and imagination meet…

As October draws to a close and the shadows grow a little longer, all of us at Sparks of Calliope wish our readers, poets, and friends a wonderfully haunting Happy Halloween!

Halloween is a particularly fitting occasion to celebrate the power of the written word. After all, few things can stir the imagination quite like a well-crafted poem. Whether contemplating the supernatural, confronting mortality, or simply exploring the mysteries of the human experience, poetry has always possessed the ability to enchant, unsettle, and inspire.

A Halloween Visit with Edgar Allan Poe

What better literary companion for Halloween than Edgar Allan Poe? The master of the macabre left an extraordinary legacy of poetry and prose, exploring grief, obsession, beauty, and the darker corners of the human imagination.

From the haunting refrain of The Raven to the melancholy beauty of Annabel Lee, Poe’s poetry remains as captivating today as it was in the nineteenth century.

In the spirit of the season, we invite you to visit our page dedicated to this remarkable American poet and revisit the words that have haunted generations of readers.

Explore Edgar Allan Poe at Sparks of Calliope

Discover Our Book Directory

Looking for something new to read as the evenings grow colder?

Our Book Directory features published collections by poets whose work has appeared in Sparks of Calliope. It is an opportunity to explore the writing of talented contributors beyond the individual poems published in our journal.

Every book represents a distinctive poetic voice, and we encourage our readers to discover these collections and support the authors who help make our literary community possible.

Are you a past or present contributor with a published poetry collection? Our directory also offers eligible authors an opportunity to showcase their books to readers who already appreciate their work.

Browse the Sparks of Calliope Book Directory

New Poetry Arrives November 3!

Although October is coming to an end, the poetry certainly isn’t!

We have new poetry scheduled for publication on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, as we welcome another month of poetic observations, fresh perspectives, and creative expression.

Be sure to return to Sparks of Calliope on November 3 to enjoy our latest featured work.

To our contributors, readers, and everyone who continues to support independent literary publishing: thank you. Your enthusiasm for poetry keeps the sparks of creativity alive.

May your Halloween be filled with a little mystery, a little wonder, and perhaps a raven tapping at your chamber door.

Happy Halloween!

— The Editor
Sparks of Calliope
A Journal of Poetic Observations

Two Poems by Terence Culleton

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

Hospice Visitor

For WFC

In spite of all, you were a better man
than I’d ever have been in spite of all,
more zealous in your faithful office than
was called for, really. The disinfected hall

you walked down after church those afternoons
was flicker-lit, drop-ceilinged, walls off-white.
You carried flowers sometimes or balloons,
brought cards or rosary beads, smiling that quite

quite iridescent smile you loved to show
to hopeless, grey, forgotten, dying souls
in railinged beds. You stood by them as though
your smile could fill with light the darkest holes

they’d ever think themselves thrown in though still
alive—lovelight to warm or consecrate
their fading, give them just a bit of will
to smile back as they watched you perorate

about whatever you’d go on about.
You knew—I know—and wanted them to hear
there was a light that would not flicker out
and that’s what you gave them as they gave ear.


Stargazers

I’d live to have
that life again,
streets that were,
and never are,

the curb, the fence,
the muscle car
on blocks: nine
maybe, maybe ten,

I walked along
(that “now” now “then”)
numinous, an avatar
whose life I’d live

to have again
on streets that were,
and never are:
wall-grate mobbed

with cyclamen,
“stargazers,”
each a star,
light from far

away, plain-chanting
ever out of when
I’d live to have
that life again.




Terence Culleton has published poems in a variety of reviews and journals in both the U.S. and the U.K., including Amherst Review, Alabama Literary Review, Birmingham Review, Blue Unicorn, Cumberland Review, Edge City Review, Modern Poetry Quarterly, and Sparks of Calliope. A Bucks County (PA) Poet Laureate emeritus, his work has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and several of his poems have been featured on NPR. Mr. Culleton’s fourth volume of poetry, Message From a Floating Dock, is out through White Violet Press. Look for news about Terence on his website: terenceculletonpoetry.com.

Two Poems by R. Nikolas Macioci

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

In Defense of Falling Leaves

I blame all murders on the autumn,
a yearly example of blameworthy trees
breaking leaves from limbs, killing them
with color. Fascinating how we accept death
when it’s beautiful. The fall flushes logic
from our brains as if we’d swallowed a fire
hose, readies our empty heads to accept
October’s funerals as dismissible demise.
The many rakes that scratch leaves into
burnable piles are accomplices, instruments
that do not forbear collusion in the hands
of humans. They say these leaves go back
to earth to nourish another life, the new
upon old trees, but innocent leaves pay
the price of perpetuality.

Wind is a culprit, too. It grabs foliage
by their stems, breaks them from branches
as surely as a dangerous hand breaks a neck.
It is the season of natural violence.
October is a maniacal assassin, homicide,
its specialty. It is a humiliating mistake
to pay homage to a time when billions of
deaths break loose, lose permanence
beneath a hard-blue sky. Fate commits
the crime without bloodshed, dresses victims
in chromatic vestments to fool us into believing
to kill is necessary this time of year.


Lost to the Fog

The funeral amounted to a small affair,
a gathering of family and friends huddled
beneath a gray sky. I delivered a eulogy,
voice trembling as I spoke about her
kindness and the way her eyes crinkled
at the corners when she smiled.

Afterwards, at the house she’d shared
with me for 37 years, silence deafened.
I wandered through rooms, each one
imbued with her presence, the worn
recliner from which she watched television
without being able to follow a narrative,
her light-blue sweater hanging from the back
of a kitchen chair, the wooden spice rack
she so cleverly placed in the corner
on the sink counter when I couldn’t
figure out where it should go. Grief,
a heavy cloak, settled upon me, its weight
suffocating.

The world outside continued its relentless
movement, oblivious to the gaping hole
ripped in my life. Within the walls of this
quiet house, time froze in a moment
of profound loss, a testament to the bond
with Aunt Liz that even Alzheimer’s
couldn’t erase.




R. Nikolas Macioci earned a PhD from The Ohio State University, taught for Columbus City Schools for thirty years.  OCTELA, the Ohio Council of Teachers of English, named Nik Macioci the best secondary English teacher in the state of Ohio. Nik is the author of twenty-three books. He was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize, and twice for a Best of the Net award.  

Two Poems by David Sapp

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

Changed Everything

I knew she could
Churn butter
Roll cut and dust
A heap of noodles
Hang a mountain of laundry
In the middle of winter
On clotheslines by the quince trees
Snap a mess – a bushel basket
Of green beans under the willow
In no time at all
Bake twenty pies for Grange
In an afternoon
Put up a cellar full
Of pretty Mason jars
Peaches pears cherries
Beans and beans and beans
Kill a spider without
Hesitation or trepidation
Say “bullshit” when anyone lied
Or showed signs of nonsense
According to her sisters
Win “every damn time”
At Uno Flinch Rook Euchre 
I saw her drive the tractor once
When my uncles couldn’t
Come to help bale hay –
But that didn’t surprise me
It was when I saw Grandma
In her chair after a long day
Readied to read the paper
When her light winked off
And it wasn’t the bulb
“Go get the pliers” she said
And I watched as she rewired
The lamp – just like that
Her fingers swift and sure
(There were several moments
I could say changed everything)
This was another
Just like that I knew
I could do anything


As If for Emphasis

For a while there
Before she could
Form the words she
Intended or demanded
(And was maybe
Better off for it)
Before a deluge
A lifetime of words
To communicate with
The breadth of the world
Annika my granddaughter
Would on occasion
Stomp her tiny foot
Accompanied by
A laugh or squeal
As if for emphasis
To a little thought
Or out of satisfaction
In performing a task
Occupying her attention
But not I think
Out of frustration with
Her lack of eloquence
In conversation
(Thus far)
When she stomped
Her tiny foot
Her expression
Was a giddy joy
She stomped saying
All’s right with me
And all around me
For the moment




David Sapp, writer and artist, is the recipient of Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and art and is a Pushcart nominee. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Asia. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior; several chapbooks; a novel, Flying Over Erie; a book of poems and drawings, Drawing Nirvana; and five books of poetry and prose, Finally Chopin, Love and History, Acquaintances, A Precious Transience, and a memoir titled The Origin of Affection, winner of the Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award.

Two Poems by Mark B. Hamilton

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

Under a Hazy Sun

Without the sun to lift this dreary weather, we
might lose our confidence in Nature—that faith
that hovers above our human body’s frailty.

Before Mother Earth inspires spring, its wraith 
of furrows will tow us through wending places
but guide our passing, as if a living breath.

In sweat that freezes, I recognize their faces,
these men who heft logs into place. They are bold,
with hearts combining into every crafted brace.

With winter’s numbing cold, they tightly hold
onto hope, and build the frames of solid hearths
from muddy wattle into a chimney’s scaffold.

Their efforts could comprise our only worth,
these huts the tumbled columns of an ending
for this, a story urging outwards towards myth.

To those who seek its truth by the telling
a squared, plumbed measurement does matter
as value and as pleasure expressed in the doing.

At noon I write, as Floyd arrives with a letter
from Lewis who supports McFarland’s intention
in claiming expenses he justly incurred, after

sustaining troops during the Whiskey Rebellion.
I walk up the hill for a meridian with sextant,
for the latitude of our camp under a hazy sun.

Then, I order Shields and Floyd out to hunt
for turkeys roosting above in thickening sleet.
The keelboat needs adjustment of stores in front.

As we wade hip-deep in the ice on freezing feet
for barrels to carry ashore and stack under guard,
we pound the loose pries with mallets to reseat.

Yet the Boat tilts farther, and harder aground,
and there is nothing more we can do or replace.
A frosty mist hinders the work, and has slowed

even the chimney builders, so I have them place
two Commissary horses in taking the load
from men’s shoulders, dragging logs in traces.

With teams, our hauling men now stride the road
enthused with new and more hopeful emotions.
The happy alterations have changed their mode

of work, diminishing fears and predilections
that Old Hermit Winter might not care to flee
the sapling’s leaf, preferring to keep them frozen.

With more horses and eight more men, Drewyer
returns, although none of them are in readiness.
The men stand idle like rotted poteaux-en-terre,

as a wall without apparent worthiness.
I send for another team of horses and for corn
and turnips from Griffeth’s farm, when a witness

from past campaigns does visit me this morn—
a Delaware Chief of the Greenfield Treaty
which ceded much land. Our greeting is sworn

in remembrance, and we talk with whiskey,
a bottle which he declares is good. At best,
this welcome has stayed the raw weather, as we
huddle in huts with his Indian words, and rest.

“Under a Hazy Sun” is an original history-based poem adapted from: Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, Volume 2, (University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 134-40.


Fresh Venison

A boon! The hunters hang the air with deer
recovered, swinging frozen, the blind fetch
made easy since far off it’s crows we hear
around those heaps of guts in a snowy ditch,
like a wallow of blood. While Drewyer again
hangs three more, plus turkeys at the fork,
a fourth is added by his Indian. The other men,
who lately arrived, have now begun to work—
to set a roof upon their hut without more loss
of my good opinion, which does mend. To folks
in the country, I send Shields paddling across
for butter, where he does well to avoid a soak
from pirogues trading south toward St. Louis.
A Frenchman, stops to visit, and confides in me
that several good voyageurs wish to join us,
as engages who know well the lower Missouri,
but he holds a strong concern for retaliation
from the Spanish Commandant, as his authority
remains absolute. I talk of our new possession
of Upper Louisiana, promising to pay a fee
for their knowledge, come spring to the Ocean.

“Fresh Venison” is an original history-based poem adapted from: Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, Volume 2, (University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 140-41.




Mark B. Hamilton works in diachronic forms to transform content. Along with his scholarly expertise in the era of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1803-1806, he has traced their entire route on their approximate time-table, traveling as they did by paddle and pack mule—a 3-year, 8,000 mile journey. A forthcoming volume of traditional verse, 1803: The Wintering, won First Honorable Mention for the Donna Wolf-Palacio Poetry Prize. Based upon the journals of Captain William Clark while at Camp Dubois, during the winter of 1803, this book will be available from Finishing Line Press in January 2026.

Two Poems by John Brantingham

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

This Person

The first night of class one of my students
reaches out, and I take his hand and shake
it and only after remember this breaks
the prison’s rules. We’re supposed to keep
away from them, make sure we never use
anyone’s first name. He and I talk about college.
He speaks with the kind of endless knowledge
people who read all the time amass.
He’s the only student here older than
I am, but his face is more hopeful than mine,
his face less lined. He’s missing a tooth,
has a couple of scars, but what I’m drawn
to are his eyes. They are intelligent and kind.
They look into you. They’re the kind that find truth.


Vengeful in Prison

My student’s tattoo, one letter on each
finger, spells “vengeful” when he puts his fists
together. His eyes and face seem kind, but its
meaning is clear enough — a word meant to teach
the rest of us not to hurt him the way
others have. Sometimes I read an education
of pain in his back-to-the-wall caution,
how his eyes flit around, even when he stays
seated, ready. He tells me when he gets
out he’ll major in philosophy maybe.
He tells me that he’s not the same man
he was the first time he was arrested.
He tells me in his mind at least he’s free.
He tells me he changed. He tells me we all can.




John Brantingham was a New York State Council on the Arts Grant Recipient for 2024, and he was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. Learn more about John at https://www.johnbrantingham.com/.

Editor’s Note:

This was not exactly the bio John sent for me to include with his poems should I select any for publication. But upon sending an acceptance notice for the two pieces above, I received a reply instead from his wife Ann stating that John has passed away since this submission, and graciously consenting to their inclusion here. Rest in Peace, John.

Two Poems by Katie Hong

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment

Checkout Line

The woman in front of me is placing her groceries on the conveyor belt
while the cashier, maybe seventeen, hair up in a messy bun,
keeps her eyes on the register screen.
The woman’s bag is canvas, reusable, expensive looking,
and she’s pulling out coupons from a shiny leather wallet,
each one unfolded carefully.
The cashier’s shoulders go tight when she sees them, 
I can’t tell if she’s annoyed by the coupons, the extra work of scanning,
or if the woman said something while I was still choosing between checkout lines, 
something about expired sales or wrong prices or the way things used to be done.
The woman probably said something about organic foods, 
and how she always buys organic in this annoying voice,
using an uncomfortable amount of vocal fry and the word ‘like’
the cashier nods but doesn’t look up. Maybe the cashier is tired of women like this, 
women who need everyone to know about their stupidly expensive, pseudo-healthy
diet choices. The woman taps her credit card against her palm 
one, two, three times while waiting for her items to ring up. 
The rhythm says hurry up, says this is taking too long.

I decide she’s the type of person who thinks the cashier is incompetent, 
too slow, not meeting whatever impossible standard she’s invented
for how quickly her organic quinoa should be scanned. 
The cashier still won’t make eye contact.

Good for her, I think. Don’t let this woman make you feel small.
The woman tilts her head, says something I can’t hear.
The cashier pauses over a bunch of kale.
The woman’s voice gets louder “I’m sure it was two-for one.”
There it is. I knew it. She’s going to make a scene over 50 cents, 
over needing it to be right, over needing this teenager to admit she knows better.
The cashier calls for a price check and the woman crosses her arms. 
I want to say, Just let it go, just pay the extra dollar and stop making her day harder,
stop needing to win.

But then the manager comes over and snaps something at the cashier,
not at the customer. The cashier’s face goes red and she ducks her head.
The transaction ends. The woman takes her bags, glances back at the cashier, says,
          “You’re doing great,”
and leaves. The cashier exhales. I step forward with my items: 
frozen meals for one, a can of soda,
the same kale I was so sure would be the problem.
I don’t say anything. I swipe my card. She bags in silence.

Outside, I see the woman loading groceries into a sedan,
careful with each bag, and I realize I needed her
to be careless. Needed her to be the villain
of someone else’s shift so I wouldn’t have to think
about how I move through the world,
which lines I hold up, whose patience I test,
who’s been kind to me when I was too wrapped up
in my own small urgencies to notice I was being difficult.
The sedan pulls away. I stand there holding
my single bag, the receipt already crumpled in my hand.


Rubber Band

I’ve kept a single rubber band 
Looped around my bedpost for 3 years.
It’s gray now, rimmed with rings of dust and lint,
Stretched thin in places where my thumb
Kept worrying it during conversations
I didn’t want to have.

It was there the night before my presentation
when I couldn’t sleep, when I wrapped it
around my finger too tight,
Counting how many seconds until 
The tip of my finger turned white.

It was there the morning I got the acceptance email,
when I snapped it across the room
At the wall that heard me rehearse
the same hopes twenty times.
It slid behind my bed,
But I dug it out with a broom
because it belongs on my bedpost, not there.
My younger cousin held it once,
And I showed him how to weave it 
between his fingers into a star.
He wore it on his wrist for the rest of the day,
then set it down on my desk before he left,
Like he knew I couldn’t lose it.

Sometimes I think it’s waiting 
to be used for something ordinary:
bundling the stack of photos on my shelf, 
keeping a crumpled page from escaping,
looped around a moment–

I’ll need it later.

Today I moved it from the bedpost to my pocket.
It weighs almost nothing, but carries what I cannot.




Katie Hong is a high school student based in Seoul, South Korea, whose love for poetry is surpassed only by her passion for baking and spending time with her puppy, Loki. With a gift for words and a keen eye for detail, Katie weaves intricate tapestries of emotion and imagery in her poetry, inviting readers to embark on self-discovery and introspection. When she’s not immersed in the world of poetry, Katie can be found in the kitchen, experimenting with flavors and textures to create delicious treats that delight the senses. With a zest for life and a boundless imagination, Katie is committed to sharing her voice with the world and making a meaningful impact through her writing.

Two Poems by David D. Horowitz

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 2 Comments

Heroes

Greek and Asian slaves were the primary sculptors of Ancient Rome

Stone faces show us emperors as gods,
The human stress behind divine facades.
Note creases, furrows, baldness, moles, and age,
World weighing on a smile, quiet rage
That fears assassination. Vandals whacked
Long noses, glued back on now, when they sacked
And killed. These sculptors, though, keep Rome alive
An emperor dependent on a slave.


His Love for Her Is

Rye whiskey more than chilled white wine,
Volcano more than valentine,
Dark forest more than trim, clipped rows
And less bouquet than wild rose
And less machismo’s toughest pose
Than softest kiss while holding hands,
How silence says it understands.




David D. Horowitz lives in Seattle, where he founded and currently manages Rose Alley Press. His latest poetry collection, from Rose Alley Press, is Slow Clouds over Rush Hour. He recently edited Purr and Yowl, a cat-themed poetry anthology published by World Enough Writers. David’s poems have been published in many journals and anthologies, including The Lyric, Raven Chronicles, Terrain.org, Better Than Starbucks, Coffee Poems, and Sparks of Calliope, and his essays regularly appear in Exterminating Angel.

Two Poems by Kathryn Kimball

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

Seeing with Grave Eyes, 1842

The extraordinary St. Mary’s Church in Wreay, England,
completed in 1842, replaced an earlier dilapidated chapel.

I woke from the dead
to find myself in the parish church.
No longer was I a sleeper
in a soft mound under the yew,
grass rooting down.

I was awake and seeing, seeing
light streaming through coloured glass,
and a procession of polished angels
and flying wooden birds everywhere—
and me seeing with new eyes.

But this was not the church I knew
before I fell deep into the well
& drank the death water.
Those dull windows were set in crumbling stone,
some shuttered tight like a dead man’s eyes.

When it’d come a storm, the wind
would blow the slates off like hail
& pigeons roosted in the rotten rafters.
I’d seen mice scurry up the aisle
for bits of holy bun, but I never followed.

And here I was sitting, transported,
after spending I don’t know how long
in the deepest dark I never could imagine
till this streaming light overtook me,
and I came out of gestation.

And, before me, a bird bigger than a rooster—
with wings spread like flapping sheets,
its neck stretching up like a hay fork,
a bird like I’d never seen
among the little robins and wrens.

But it wasn’t the bird
that made me feel like morning.
T’was the colored light all around it
creating a shadow of itself
as fine as any double rainbow.

And all those spread wings—
of angels, bats, and cockerels,
lifting the loss that had found me,
loss as deep as the old well rumbling
with cold water from the fells.

Up, up, the wings flew
and took my burdens away
like the shadows they were,
which all seemed real enough—
but all was fading, fading …

Where was the light? Where was I?
Then an arrow pierced me truly,
pierced me with this unwanted wisdom:
I was to take myself back to the grave,
waiting, till all my seeing itself became the light.


Hartley & Nothingness

Hartley Coleridge was
the diminutive son
of the famous poet,
deemed guileless as the dewdrop,
destined to have a lamb’s heart
amid the roisterous herd,

who took early to drink and spent
many nights cold in barns & ditches,
who called himself “poor elf,”
wrote impeccable sonnets
& wore all his life
a short blue jacket
over his narrow chest.

No wonder people thought him odd.
For himself he wondered
“all the day & all the evening
what it would be,
if there were Nothing,
if all the men & women,
and birds & beasts,
& the sky, & the Ground
were all gone. Darkness & coldness—
& nothing to be dark & cold.”

He was only four or five
when he wondered that
I, past the 52 years he had to live,
ponder the same,
knowing there is Nothing to be added.
Nothing taken away.

That is why I always cry
when Hartley, found by the roadside,
and tucked in bed, neighbors standing vigil,
rasps his request to hold again my baby
in his dying arms




Kathryn Kimball grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, has an MFA and PhD, and taught writing and nineteenth-century British and American literature. Her translations and poems have appeared in Acumen, Atlanta Review, Blue Mountain Review, Blue Unicorn, Dewdrop, Plume, Galway Review, Haikuniverse, Solstice, Tipton Poetry Journal and elsewhere. She published a chapbook in 2021 and a volume of poetry in 2025 and won the Columbia Journal 2023 translation prize. She lives in New York City.

“Institute of Stolen Dreams” by Robert Castagna

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

Wake up! 

Wherever you were intending to go
this morning,
the plans have changed.
Good news! No solitary confinement.

No more reminiscing about the past.
No more walks in the cemetery
with empty worries.

The institute has not barred daydreaming
but it is harder to do
with a bullet to your head. 
You can smoke cigarettes
but hide the flame— 
in fact, hide any enthusiasm.

Dreams are postponed indefinitely.

The institute is conducting experiments
on the benefits of delaying
and scientists are happy with the initial trials.

The Bureau of Sleep has special pillows
and pills help you forget.
The worst thing is worry.
Amnesia Passports for that!

The documents are blank,
just fill in the spaces 
and be sure to sign at the bottom.
(Include Xerox copies.)
The Bureau of Nothing Doing will stamp it red.
Add a fading picture.

These passports will take you nowhere 
but you’ll think there’s something to it,
a glimmer of hope, maybe,
to keep you shooting.




Robert Castagna currently teaches a poetry workshop at the local senior center where they are creating a book of poetry sponsored by the local arts council in Medford MA. He is a photographer and has returned to school to acquire a Master’s in English at UMass Boston. He hopes to teach and continue to write poetry.