Category: Poetry

“She Left the Window Open” by James Sale

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 2 Comments

She left the window open so
Her soul could float free
In ways her body never could
Or mind would ever be.

There, as we arrived, she lay,
A dressing gown her cover
Along with dreams of long ago
And hopes her time was over.

She made a smile as we came in –
Bees back to some lost hive –
But soon the theme was God’s harsh laugh,
Mocking those who live.

I knew I’d stay and have to hear
Her rant against the One
Who made the sinews of the heart
And human soul His throne.

At eighty-eight her wisdom gained
Had drifted through the glass,
Now open, yet for all that stained,
The queen about to pass.




James Sale, a 2022 Pushcart Prize nominee, has had poetry and literary works published in Hong Kong, the USA, and the UK. His work has appeared in The Society of Classical Poets, The Epoch Times, The Times Educational Supplement, The Hong Kong Review, The Anglo-Theological Review, The St Austin Review, and many others. An international and award-winning poet, he currently is one of two judges for the Society of Classical Poets’ 100 Days of Dante poetry competition. For more information about the author and about his own Dante project, visit https://englishcantos.home.blog.

“Mistress” by Michael Pietrack

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 4 Comments

Within those sheets, my mistress lay,
her flawless form with perfect feet.
One last embrace; I cannot stay!
I hear her heart in metered beat.

Her voice, a ballad siren song
with lyrics begging my delay.
But I’ve already been too long!
Within those sheets, my mistress lay.

The grandest thought one could create
was “could the wife and mistress meet?”
She’d see a villain-elle and hate
her flawless form with perfect feet.

She draws me back into the sheets.
Seductive eyes say, “Come and play,”
But I must leave this incomplete!
One last embrace; I cannot stay.

Perhaps… I’ll finish this last rhyme.
One hasty end-stop short and sweet.
The chugging quatrain steams to climb!
I hear her heart in metered beat.

The writing’s done… now comes the chafe.
A writer’s wife airs her dismay.
The notebook closed; my secret, safe.
Within those sheets, my mistress lay.

“Mistress” was first published by The Society of Classical Poets




Michael Pietrack is a new writer from Colorado, USA.  This businessman and former baseball player started writing poetry during the pandemic.  He will launch his first book of poetry, titled Legacy, in early 2023.  Michael has a BA in English Literature from Colorado Mesa University, where he minored in Theatre, and an MA in Education from New Mexico State University.

“Wolf and Wheel” by Kelli Simpson

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment

I was born breach and reaching
for a Bible and a break-up song.
It’s eight months to the day
since I last saw you.

I’ve weaned myself of counting breaths,
redeemed myself by wanting less;
it’s only when I dream
that I break and call you.

Sunrise sees me clothe the bones,
braid my hair, and carry on.
Summer’s come and almost gone –
wolf and wheel.

Let autumn steal my time to think.
Winter, chill my blood to ink.
Spring is soon enough for me
to thaw and feel.




Kelli Simpson is a mother and poet living in Norman, Oklahoma. She has had poems published in Bewildering Stories, One Art Poetry Journal, Gyroscope Review, Lamplit Underground, Taco Bell Quarterly, and elsewhere.

Two Poems by Allen Lee Ireland

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Lighthouse Murder

She offered light that was as boldly bright
As evening star or satellite.
But now she’s ancient, dusky, hollow-eyed,
A piece of local history
Preserved by some society.

To one who’d grown up in her scope,
Who’d given up on life and hope,
She seemed as purposeless as he.
They’d lost their lights concurrently….

It was a cold, bleak sea.
He stood beneath his eyeless friend
And heard her voice upon the keening wind:
“I might have saved a ship or two
From wrecking on a bar or bank,
But I could not save you….
I lit the night, the world. Now look at me:
I can’t do anything but be.”

“Goodbye,” he said, then sank
And lay down in the darkness of the sea.


Tableau

A green leaf and a brown leaf, side by side,
On an old oak we walked together past,
The walk I sensed somehow would be our last,
In early autumn, just before you died.
The two leaves seemed the perfect metaphor
That day, for what we were: a grey-haired lady
Who stooped a bit and was approaching 80,
Beside her son (I’d just turned 44).
Your cheeks were flushed as you were laughing, talking,
And pointing out the wonders that you saw:
The mist, the leaves. Your joy made me withdraw.
I drooped and dragged, I was so tired from walking….
I see us now, amid the autumn scene,
Myself the dead brown leaf, and you the green.




Allen Lee Ireland‘s poetry has appeared in The Road Not Taken, The Lyric, Red Planet Magazine, and Button Eye Review.  He is currently working on his third book of poetry. His previous collections include Loners and Mothers and Dark and Light Verse.

Two Poems by Jean Biegun

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Opus Pause

I sense my pages turn before I see
the message written there for me to read.
My short sight yearns for ageless reverie.

The light is dim, I lie, and glance briefly
to grab more time to dance with my own lead.
As pages turn too fast, I fail to see

when false steps trip and send me to my knees.
Remorse and wisdom both I fail to heed.
My short sight clings to ageless reverie.

The birthstone days, each anniversary
push hard to bring discernment to my need.
The decades quickly turn, and now I see

frail bones, hair falling: loss the enemy.
This half cup teases hands that end palsied,
a heart that churns for ageless reverie.

Yet still I sing without finding a key
and pass the book for other eyes to read.
I sense more pages turn but all I see
are sightings learned in ageless reverie.


Bonnie and the Great Depression

She had a mind for hairpin turns and sighed 
when Clyde’s first thrill-ride spun them out of town.  
The road ahead sped far and free and wide. 
 
Their ways veered fast. Hot cash, quick gin supplied 
his fuel while her dim wishful heart cooled down. 
She paid a mind to hairpin turns and tried 
 
to hold the ring (her compromise) but shied 
when nightmares crashed the merry-go-round. 
Their road ahead sped fast, not free, not wide. 
 
The cycle held and straight roads were denied 
and breath: his flat line track just looped around. 
Now hard against the hairpin turns, she tried 
 
to navigate for steady, sober rides. 
His reckoning dead-set, he swerved and frowned. 
Feel how this road leads far and free, he lied. 
 
[An intervening verse—Reader’s aside: 
Hey Bonnie, quit careening off that clown! 
The road hog’s lost…and something else has died.] 
 
She stepped clear then and let the years collide 
and burn as Clyde drove to his next ghost town. 
She thanked her Reader and then turned and sighed: 
the road ahead stretched far and free and wide.




Jean Biegun, retired special education teacher, lives in California after a lifetime in the Midwest. Poems have appeared in many publications including Amethyst Review, Mobius: The Poetry Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, Soul-Lit, Eastern Iowa Review, World Haiku Review, Door is a Jar and Gyroscope Review. Her chapbook Hitchhikers to Eden will be published by Kelsay Books in 2022.

“One for the Road” by Heather Dubrow

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My sister always cleaned every drawer
within an inch of its life,
sorting the assorted, folding the laundered.
And hiding flasks beneath the scented sweaters
in case someone caught the scent on her breath
and cleaned out all her bottles.
The only AA she knew was American Airlines,
whose drinks carts came around too seldom
for her thirsts.

Yes, Robert Frost, two roads diverged in a wood
and I won the smoother, lighter path—
looking just like my sister.
looking away from my sister.

As a teenager, I called her “sister-child”
even though she was older
and couldn’t or wouldn’t say why
the only time she asked.

We both inherited the family gene
for housekeeping:
Mine kept the family home
serene and vetted,
she kept within her secreted house.
As adults, we lived in separate wings
and separate solar systems.
She locked her drawers shut, her life shuttered.
And I—forgive me, Eleanor, if you ever can—
strode by all your rooms and cellars so quickly,
and kept all my own doors fastened tight.




Heather Dubrow is the author of Forms and Hollows, Lost and Found Departments, and two chapbooks. The journals where her poetry has previously appeared include Prairie Schooner, Southern Review, and the Yale Review. Two of her poems have been set to music and performed. Director of Fordham’s Poets Out Loud reading series 2009-2020, she holds the John D. Boyd, SJ, Chair in Poetic Imagination there and has also taught at Carleton College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“My Lost City” by Diana Raab

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(After “Oh My Lost City” by Pablo Naruda)

New York, the place of my birth,
Still hear Streisand’s words of glory—
the city that never sleeps,
even for me as a teen
who slept under stars
with sexy boyfriends and cars.

Each Sunday visited
Rockefeller Center
where dad taught ice skating
they called him Mr. Mark—
unable to pronounce his long last name—
Marquise—invented after immigration
from some French ancestors
which is maybe why I love croissants, espresso,

chestnuts and steamy nuts from street vendors.
I left before I could drive,
but now want to revisit my roots, especially
with dad gone and the city changed faces
more times than I can count.

Queens was my place, Cunningham Park
where hippies puffed joints and concerts
permeated lively words with numbered streets
and houses in rows like soldiers, only colors
setting them apart, one hundred and seventy-third street—
oh the pink shingles dad pained when I was born
to match his pink impala—
the kid mother never wanted, but dad cherished.

She planted a cherry blossom tree
in keeping with theme,
her green thumb also holding the reins of her
favorite four-legged equine partner,
always more important than me.
She’s still there, waiting to die
but never dying to live
I only wish her well— planted
in the city I used to call my own.




Diana Raab, Ph.D., is an award-winning memoirist, poet, blogger, speaker, author of 10 books, and contributor to numerous journals and anthologies. Her two latest books are Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Plan for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life and Writing for Bliss: A Companion Journal. Her poetry chapbook, An Imaginary Affair, is forthcoming in July 2022 with Finishing Line Press. She blogs for Psychology Today, Thrive Global, Sixty and Me, Good Men Project, and The Wisdom Daily, and is a frequent guest blogger for various other sites.

“your skepticism” by Victor Pambuccian

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when I told you
the unique being
that’s you
is the only one
who could have moved
the mountain
tired in its bone marrow
of the same sunrises and sunsets
you smiled
in disbelief
for you think
we’re only
pretexts
for some cosmic
puppet theatre
that there are
523 women
alive now
who could have had
the same effect
that I could never
comprehend your uniqueness
but only perceive
a set of traits
that even though
I’ve lived
countless lives
and have
never before prayed
without pause
for another being’s
blissful existence
in a landscape devoid of trees
the belfries never lie
in times of the distress
of oceans bereft of beaches
that there are
universal laws
for which no
language can ever
be invented
that prevent
the badger from singing
for a crow
that gates cannot
contain an inner space
that meetings cannot
be but pre-ordained
between the thirsty
and the involuntarily hungry
who will have nothing
to tell each other
except excuses for
having stepped on each other’s toes
that the first step
in a long journey
is never a probability
that seeing does
not need a seen
even if emptiness
is less appealing
on weekdays
that the only valid excuse
for love
is silence




Victor Pambuccian is a professor of mathematics at Arizona State University. His poetry translations, from Romanian, French, and German, have appeared in Words Without Borders, Two Lines, International Poetry Review, Pleiades, and Black Sun Lit. A bilingual anthology of Rumanian avant-garde poetry, with his translations, for which he received a 2017 NEA Translation grant, was published in 2018 as Something is still present and isn’t, of what’s gone. Aracne editrice, Rome. He was the guest editor of the Fall 2011 issue of International Poetry Review. His poems have appeared in Communion, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Panoplyzine, Lucky Jefferson, O:JA&L, Poetica Review, Apricity Magazine, Detour Ahead, The Elevation Review, The Dillydoun Review, Red Ogre Review, Pure Slush, and Havik: The Las Positas Journal of Arts and Literature.

Two Poems by Matthew James Friday

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Fishing for Poems

I was asked, what is poetry like?

I thought, it’s like fishing.

You set up your intentions
on the bank of the page
and cast off into the current

of images and ideas.
then wait
                for inspiration
to nibble your bait, sink
the float and the poem bites.

Now the struggle begins:

wrestling with imagery,
trying to land the language
on the bank of verses.

Out of the water plops
the first draft. Disappointingly
underdeveloped.

Poets never exaggerate the catch.
A poem is always ‘this’ big,
often smaller, a tiddler

in the powerful play,
but still something to contribute
to Whitman’s waters.


Always Hoping To Write a Great Poem

Often the keyboard is sterile. I stare
out of the window and watch the trees.

Maybe something no one has ever said about trees.

Forget the clouds, too obvious.
The blue sky, yawn.

Birds bouncing around, little Buddha’s
not having to worry about creation.

I hear the song of a hundred ghostly ideas
ganging up behind me, giggling.

I sense the almost complete emptiness
inside every atom. Ideas like electronics
zip around, all potential, waves of hope.

I feel the bonding of a basic shape.

But as I write, it wriggles and flitters
out of my mind. I grab, but it is gone.

Just the scent and shadow,
a fear I will never know the elements
to turn leaden words into gold.




Matthew James Friday is a British-born writer and teacher. He has been published in numerous international journals, including The Dillydoun Review, Lunch Ticket, The Oregon English Journal and Shot Glass Journal. The micro-chapbooks All the Ways to Love, The Residents, Waters of Oregon and The Words Unsaid were published by the Origami Poems Project (USA).  Matthew is a 2021 Pushcart Prize nominated poet.

Two Poems by Tad Tuleja

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2023 Best of the Net Nominee

Stout Heart

“Real men don’t cry,” he heard them say when he
Was six, and the boy, fallen, took it straight
To heart, wanting to please and not to be
Mistaken for a girl. And so his fate
Was sealed. He made a garden in his heart
Where every sadness blossomed into stone.
He shrouded it behind an oak rampart
And when he fell he went to it alone.
Impassively he watered it with tears
Invisible. This pantomime of strength
Became his shield. In vanquishing his fears
He exiled tenderness so that at length
He found himself the sovereign of a land
Where even silent grief was contraband.


Cloudbreak

A lone beam of sunlight, javelin straight,
Breaks from a cloud to irradiate our garden.
The paraphernalia of work are suddenly luminous.
Wheelbarrow, rake, gloves for a moment aglow
While a trowel, eater of soil, flings back a flash,
Blinding me like I’ve been punched by a
Phosphorus fist. Watching the beam emerge
From the riven cloud, I recall Victorian tableaux
Like the finger of God steadying Jacob’s ladder
Or comforting Jesus in Gethsemane as Peter
Denies him. Was it such a beam that made Paul
Stumble or augured a victory for Christ at the
Milvian Bridge? Things that drop from the sky
Suggest origins wondrous. In this garden, though,
I see only tools: wheelbarrow, rake, gloves,
That specular trowel. Things of the brilliant earth,
Pointing only to themselves. But in the sweep
Of the visible, wondrous enough.




Tad Tuleja is a Texas-based folklorist and songwriter with interests in the Hollywood Western, honor cultures, and the mythology of violence. He has edited anthologies on vernacular traditions and military culture and received a Puffin Foundation grant for his song cycle “Skein of Arms.” He has a weekly podcast and performs songs under the musical alias Skip Yarrow.