Category: Poetry

“Ghost Girl” by Joshua Frank

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One sunny May, I ran to play,
When I was twelve years old,
Upon the hill. I miss her still—
A girl with curls of gold
In ribbon ties, big sky-blue eyes,
And waving, dark-red dress
Soon ran my way and asked to play—
How could I not say yes?

“I’m Beth,” she said. “My mother’s dead;
I’m hiding from her ghost.”
I thought, “A shame, her gruesome game,”
But soon I was engrossed.
We laughed and played along the grade,
Cavorted up the hill,
And soon rolled down, clothes turning brown,
Collapsed, and then lay still.

Then Beth and I stared toward the sky,
Then wrestled, then caressed,
And very soon that afternoon,
Our love began the rest.
We hoped our playing would one day
Give rise to married bliss.
I gazed into her pools of blue;
We leaned in for the kiss.

A woman’s ghost gave off the most
Horrendous, ghastly chill.
We stood upright in cold and fright;
Her ghost-hand reaped the kill.
I saw Beth die. Her ghost stood high
And quickly shed its shell.
Her ribbons fastened to the grass
As down her body fell.

Both, hand in hand, flew off the land.
Beth’s ghost was forced to go
Away from me like Annabel Lee,
But where, I’ll never know.
Then Beth up high bid me goodbye;
She waved as she looked back.
The two ghosts flew into the blue,
And everything went black.

I felt Mom shake me wide awake;
She’d found me on the hill.
“Are you all right?” She yelled in fright.
I sat up feeling ill.
I told her of my one-day love
And how she met her death.
My mother deemed it all a dream
And said there was no Beth.

So I believed I’d been deceived
And never met the lass,
Until I found, upon the ground,
Her ribbon coiled on grass.
The ghost who took her didn’t look
And left it unawares.
I picked the band up in my hand
And three blonde, curly hairs.

“Ghost Girl” was first published by The Society of Classical Poets.




Joshua C. Frank works in the field of statistics and lives in the American Heartland.  His poetry has been published in The Society of Classical Poets, Snakeskin, The Lyric, Sparks of Calliope, Westward Quarterly, New English Review, Atop the Cliffs, Our Day’s Encounter, The Creativity Webzine, Asses of Parnassus, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, All Your Poems, Verse Virtual, The Asahi Haikuist Network, LEAF Journal, and the anthology Whose Spirits Touch, and his short fiction has been published in New English Review, The Creativity Webzine, and Nanoism.

Two Poems by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment

Death Can Be Good

Death can be good.
I’ll tell you how.
Just have it come
Decades from now.

“Death Can Be Good” first appeared in Time Magazine.


Simon’s Sentiments

Can’t resist those cakes and pies?
I don’t judge you by your size.
I won’t care if you get fat.
I’ll still love you–
I’m your cat.

“Simon’s Sentiments” first appeared in The Providence Journal.




Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 300 poems published in a wide range of places, including twenty-four in past issues of Sparks of Calliope.

And the nominees are…

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Best of the Net

Sparks of Calliope nominated six poems for inclusion in the 2025 Best of the Net Anthology, sponsored by Sundress Publications. Eligible poems appeared between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024, and were previously unpublished.

Best of the Net 2025 Nominees

“Flowers” by Gary Borck

“Along the Shoulder” by Terence Culleton

“Dear Son” by Jacqueline Jules

“Honeymoon” by James Mulhern

“The Metaphor of Work” by Ali Rowland

“Anticipation” by Beate Sigriddaughter


If you would like to view our previous nominations, you can find them here.

Two Poems by M. Brooke Wiese

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Tuesday Morning

On Tuesday morning on my way to work
I slipped and fell between two subway cars
while trying to avoid the smells and groping.
Everyone on board heard the screeching

wheels as it braked and torqued and buckled.
I overheard the engineer’s muffled chatter,
telling headquarters what exactly was the matter
as I lay shoehorned in between the rails

beneath the massive chassis, white-knuckled, hoping,
as the great behemoth’s underside slid
slowly over me, gouging my forehead,
flaying my palms, and leaving rust flakes in my eyelashes.

Suddenly at sea, submerged, I swam
beneath my Leviathan, touching my forehead to her
as I suckled, safe in the water, her calf,
her only daughter. I breached with whale-song and splashes.

I awoke in heaven, or someplace like it.
It was so beautiful, and everyone
was beautiful. My mother said, “Hold on.”
She looked so young. “Don’t come,” she said. “Don’t come.”

On Wednesday I was in the morning papers.
On Thursday I was back at work and coping.
To be honest, the weekend was lost in bars.
And Tuesday I slipped between two subway cars.


Rubaiyat Written in the Hospital Waiting Room

In the waiting room of a famous cancer
hospital in New York, a man
is sleeping, head back, mouth agape,
his wife’s bag beside him on the cream and tan damask.

He seems to be the only one asleep.
With a direct view of a large, tranquil seascape
on the far wall, perhaps he dreams
of fishing in Barbuda, or some other escape.

At least in here, thank god, there are no screams.
It’s quiet as a library, or the gentle rains
that come in late summer. People talk softly
or not at all, lost in their thoughts and daydreams.

An older woman in a persimmon sari
with green-apple edging sits surrounded by family,
standing in blue jeans or suits; only one is weeping –
I know what she’s thinking, “If only, if only…”

Old friends, two women are speaking.
Someone from Housekeeping is busy sweeping.
A thin young woman I’ve seen before, barely
out of her teens, looks thinner. She’s disappearing.

And what of me? Yes, that’s me over there,
beneath the painting, reporting on how this lottery is unfair:
a life suspended, neither in nor out, nothing nor all –
all while awaiting a turn in the chemo chair.

When I was small the Ouija Board foretold I’d fall
and die at thirty-one, but then, oh well…
Now, like all of us here, my every “then”
is forestalled, as we listen, always, for the Reaper’s footfall.




M. Brooke Wiese has published most recently in The Road Not Taken, Sparks of Calliope, The Chained Muse, and Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, and is forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry Review. Her chapbook has been accepted by Finishing Line Press, and her sonnets have been taught by poet Billy Collins to his college students.

Two Poems by Carol Lynn Grellas

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At Dinner Time

–after “On the Back Porch” by Dorianne Laux

I lean against the chilly glass and peer
through to a mirage of greenery, leaf-filled 
wings, into another world outside the sliding 
door, the patio filled with hummingbirds
dipping and diving, enjoying the sugar
water, I’ve just refreshed the mosaic feeders.

It’s hard to say what I like most about
this part of the day. Maybe the fact
I know I have a good man waiting
for me in the other room, who soon
will sit beside me and spoon the tomato 
bisque I’ll be making for dinner.

Behind me, my new puppy chases 
sliced carrots I’ve scattered across
a marble floor, they spin and slide, 
her paws pushing and pawing at thin 
orange carved veggies. Tomorrow
will be another day, something yet

to happen could change the course 
of my life, but at this moment, all things 
seem right. The ivy-overgrown rises
towards the roof tiles nearly reaching
the top, as they curl over the old brick
and become dormant for winter’s days.

They stagnate in slow motion as I gaze
at the gable, a sign of summer has ended. 
My youngest daughter sings a Joni Mitchel 
song playing her soft blue guitar. It fades
in and out of the room, her door open; 
I can see her sitting on the edge of her bed.

An aria fills the air with hope. Years ago, 
my parents would have been here, too. 
My mother, sipping her glass of chardonnay, 
noting on the chrysanthemum’s shade of lavender, 
my dad watching the news, asking when 
dinner will be ready, my grown children 
once creating bustling sounds of joy, 

family chaos since quieted. Oh, to the glory 
of little feet trampling past in a flurry of wonder, 
days vanished yet echo as I stand here, 
paralyzed for all that’s been and all that’s yet 
to be, my heart a binary organ forever 
divided by gratitude and grief.


Picture the Past

          It’s easy, you think, to remember being 
young—part child and animal, before you learned
what it meant to be human. I mean before
you did what you were told to be a good human
the kind of human your mother would be 
proud to say she created. You owe
your mother that, you think, once you’re old
enough to understand, gratitude, once 
you’re old enough to recognize guilt
and once you’re old enough to value 
what it means to have empathy.
          But it turns
out being young isn’t easy to remember
when you try because so much of your memory
is fueled by black-and-white photos
moments between breaths when someone,
probably your mother decided she needed
to keep your image forever. Who knows why,
as forever isn’t real, either, if you are talking
about a human lifespan. So, the memories
you have of being young are just a reimagining
of something now intangible.
          All this is to say
whatever you remember about that time in your life—
you were probably never as good as you thought
or as bad, and you weren’t even as you thought,
you were something else entirely and that something
else is the exact part you will never be again. So
remember, your remembering is serving one purpose,
to help or hurt your nostalgic heart: nothing you recall
from those days is or ever was the way you remember
it, which is the reason you’re able to go forward,
reinventing whatever is needed to carry on.




Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas is a graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, MFA in Writing program. She is a thirteen-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a seven-time Best of the Net nominee. In 2012, she won the Red Ochre Chapbook Contest with her manuscript, Before I Go to Sleep. In 2018, her book, In the Making of Goodbyes was nominated for The CLMP Firecracker Award in Poetry, and her poem “A Mall in California” took 2nd place for the Jack Kerouac Poetry Prize. In 2019, her chapbook An Ode to Hope in the Midst of Pandemonium was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards. In 2021, Her latest collection, Alice in Ruby Slippers, was short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and awarded an honorable mention in the Poetry category.

Her work can be found online and in print and has been featured in Mezzo Cammin, Verse Daily, and many more. She is a former editor-in-chief for the Tule Review and The Orchards Poetry Journal. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors for Women’s Wisdom Art, an organization in Sacramento that supports women’s wellness through creativity in all forms. Her latest collections of poetry, Handful of Stallions at Twilight (Finishing Line Press) and A Shared and Sacred Space (Kelsay Books), are newly released this past summer.

Two Poems by Deepa Onkar

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 2 Comments

Stillness Heals

At dawn, I watch a water lily –
its petals closed – among
leaves and dark reflections
on the pond’s skin. We almost
touch — the pond and I:
I watch the submerged shadows
of my pain rise. Slow ooze
of light, ripples of breath.
Not everything is seeking stillness,
as I am — there’s the tumult of fish
and frog in the bed and a loud flurry
of bird-noises from trees. The water lily
stirs, imperceptibly. Not long
until it wakes, not long until I heal.


Glow

By the time the sky turns a darker shade
of dusk I’ve snapped out of the illusion
that with one quick turn I will walk down
my old garden path. The marigolds
and balsam have dissolved into the rubble,
and there’s not a trace of the wildflowers—
those slips of colour that turned up
in the grass at playtime: here, by this stump
of a tree I’d lie on shimmering moss,
examine the tiny perfection of petal
and phyllid.

Where there’s a fragment of a fence
now, I’d lie — trying to wish on a star
as it shot across the dark, always too quick.
Sometimes, a wish was a meandering firefly—
I’d watch it as it made its lazy trail
to the edge of nothingness
sub-atomic, scintillating. There was so much
that glowed: snails’ trails and mushrooms
and the undersides of leaves —
I wish I had wished on them
instead of giving my light away to the skies.

The stars are showing up one by one.
Here I am, observing them
observing the erasures of the earth
and the ways of the heart —
this must be survival.




Deepa Onkar lives in Chennai, India. She believes that the quiet and reflective spaces that she writes poetry in enable her to freely explore her thoughts and feelings at depth, and offer her a window to witness the magic of creation. Her poems have appeared in The Lake, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Sonic Boom, Poetica Review, The Lothlorien, and others.

Two Poems by Wanda Penalver Bevan

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August 25th

You left me on this day in 2009
It was an equally spectacular one to this
with a stunning blue sky and the brightest of sunshine
and a slight breeze making it not too hot for a
southern California day in late August
It was no surprise at all that you chose a beautiful day
for your journey
You held my hand for so many years
through so many things
yet in your suffering I held yours for merely four
So brief those years seem to me now
Yet how long they must have
seemed to you
Short or long the time was never wasted on us
And when I held your hand for the
very last time I whispered
Mom, if you can hear me, I’m here
Then just like always you waited for me to leave first before
you would go
And though you were indeed finally ready for us to part
I was not


Layovers and Divorces

I woke up and found them all over the walls
the certificates from dance recitals
the award for public speaking
the high school diploma
Shifting my weight to the left and lying on my side now
more awards on a shelf to the right of the dresser
entered my view
first place soccer champions
first place cheerleader competition
all strategically placed
and from my vantage point, without a trace of dust

In this friend’s spare room, the melancholia in
my stomach met my own children’s childhoods
their hard work and accomplishments,
the first places and the times I told them it was
okay to come in second
and I watched the oozing bile seep slowly out
from behind each wooden plaque and tarnished trophy,
embedded in the viscous mass the unpaired eyeballs
there only to judge me,
the serene powder blue walls grieving
for the life I’d had building rooms such as this
Despite my paralysis my fingertips
felt the edges of cardboard boxes at home
in my garage filled with ceramic flowers made in
kindergarten and accolades and great jobs!
not hanging on the walls of the home I failed
to keep together
yet holding memories no less permanent
than the ones in this unfamiliar space

Slow motion lifted me off the bed
and I replaced the turquoise quilt as perfectly
as I’d found it, trusting the remnant of my tears
left on the pillow would
dry before anyone would notice,
then with my thoughts began my descent down
the stairs
hoping the only one my friend would detect
was that I had a plane to catch

“August 25th” and “Layovers and Divorces” first appeared in A Slow Dance in Memoriam and Other Poems.




Wanda Penalver Bevan was born in Ithaca, New York. A graduate of Northwestern University, she’s worked as an actress, paralegal, and hospitality manager. In addition to two screenplays, she’s the songwriter of “Little Girl” (2012), a tribute to the youngest victim of the 2011 Tucson shooting, and her poem “America’s Child” is on display at the Oklahoma City National Memorial honoring those who lost their lives in the Murrah Federal Building bombing in 1995. In 2016, she published her first novel, Their Souls Met in Wishton. Her second book, A Slow Dance in Memoriam and Other Poems (2022), is her first poetry collection. Learn more about her at Wandaswayiswrite.com.

Two Poems by Diana Raab

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My Grandchildren’s Eyes

Sometimes when I face-time
with my toddler grandchildren,
I have this urge
to pierce a hole in their psyche—
just to know
what emotions flood their universe,
which they’ve not yet collected
a vocabulary to express.

There is so much depth
in those little sponge-like eyes,
trying to make sense
of this complicated world
not even knowing the tools they own.

Old souls in young bodies,
laden with frustrations—
or is it me imposing mine on them—
my childhood of being silenced—
no words until I learned
to pick up a pen,
and scribble upon blank pages,
while trying to come to terms
with inconsistencies around me.

In my bones I learned
how positive behavior
was reprimanded
and bad behavior reinforced.

My grandchildren will be different
their parents taught them right,
and for this and so much more
proudness melts from my pore.

“My Grandchildren’s Eyes” first appeared in Poetry Leaves: Anthology.


Beginnings

for Pablo Neruda

You speak of your troubled beginnings
as if your life was forged, shaped by them
into your quotidian.

I don’t see that in your mirror—
nor do I find in the poems you wrote
out of this trauma.

Dear one,
you are no different from any other poet
before or after you whose past

drove them to these shared pages—
like me, etching my words,
locked in my childhood closet,

haunted by the mystery
of my grandmother’s suicide—
and those bottles, those many bottles of pills
bringing her to die in my arms.

How could this not leave
a scorching in me
who hears and shares the intimacy
of the poet you have become.

“Beginnings” first appeared in RavensPerch.




Diana Raab, MFA, PhD, is a memoirist, poet, workshop leader, thought-leader and award-winning author of fourteen books. Her work has been widely published and anthologized. She frequently speaks and writes on writing for healing and transformation. Her latest book is Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors, A memoir with reflection and writing prompts (Modern History Press, 2024). Raab writes for Psychology Today, The Wisdom Daily, The Good Men Project, Thrive Global, and is a guest writer for many others. Visit her at: https:/www.dianaraab.com.

Two Poems by Deb Levine

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Healing: Under a Mangrove

Akin to the albatross on Española
I have flown far —
BWI, Quito, Baltra, Isla Isabela —
and emerged from an egg laid on bare ground
to lie under a mangrove,
watching frigate birds glide like silent pterosaurs,
the arcane arch of their wings distinct, defining.

Settled on warm sand, expanding memories of
ferries, water taxis, day boats, zodiacs,
emerge under a sky so blue it stings.
Stretched shadows cast on sand
run fast to a molten-glass turquoise sea,
bringing to mind blue-footed boobies, with their improbably
azure webbed feet. And the inevitable tacky T-shirts.

I recall biology colleagues piecing together
a creature from found bleached bones —
rib, femur, clavicle, vertebra —
as I have pieced myself together from stray snippets
to lie under a mangrove
watching frigate birds circle like silent pterosaurs
glimpsed through a lacework of branches.

It smells slightly of sea and slightly more of sea lion.
Ubiquitous, appropriating every flat surface —
walkway, bench, table, pier —
they sleep, emitting stentorious grunts when they budge.
As whim strikes, they waddle-crawl
down to the sea, and fall under the surface,
morphing into graceful, playful naiads.

Snorkeling in lucid teal bays, transformed
by water, in my element, life is everywhere —
Pacific Seahorse, Sargent Major, Marble Ray, Reef Shark.
I feel right in my skin, settled into my skeleton. Later
I will lie under a mangrove
watching frigate birds float like silent pterosaurs.
I came three thousand miles to borrow my self.

At Playa de los Perros courting iguanas sprawl
everywhere — black, deliberate, craggy, sneezing
salt in brief blasts. Males sport seductive seasonal color.
Here a bachelor, there an iguana patriarch
with six small basalt-colored wives.
I want a hand to hold. Scared, gamely descending the tenuous
ladder to the boat, I’m weaker than I wish; stronger than I know.

My mind skips, like a Sally Lightfoot crab —
rock to rock, thought to thought.
Galápagos. Forming over a hotspot, drifting east,
growing softer, more habitable, less jagged, more open.
I lie under a mangrove
watching frigate birds sail like silent pterosaurs.
How far have I come?


Bogged Down

I am ankle deep in a stinking bog
which squelches, rudely pulling at my foot.
Stranded alone in so much sucking sog
I marvel at the places I’ve been put.

If I try to struggle against this slime
I know I shall go under with no trace;
perhaps I should surrender hope this time,
and, slowly sinking, muster dying grace.

Or, maybe if I, graceless, lay me down,
immersed halfway in lukewarm reeking muck,
and float, suspended, manage not to drown,
I’ll find myself aground on firmer luck.

          If, rank and damp, I knock upon your door
          will you mind my dripping on the floor?




Deb Levine is a (mostly) formalist poet, scientist, and life coach. She was first published in Bay to Ocean 2023. She is Academic Chair for Physical Science at Anne Arundel Community College. Although she majored in Physics at UNC-Chapel Hill, she also completed most of the coursework for the Creative Writing major as a short fiction author. Dr. Levine lives in Stevensville, Maryland, on Kent Island with one cat, two parrots, eight chickens, and the neighbor’s rooster. She dreams in sonnet form.

Two Poems by Cynthia Forbes

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 2 Comments

Bonding

When the first contraction comes
I clutch the bathroom doorframe,
paralyzed by waves of pain,
thinking this may be the day I die.
My eyes in the mirror catch mine
as if to say good-bye.

The midwife comes to deliver,
probes me with a gloved hand,
looks at me with panicked eyes,
sponging back my sweaty hair.
“I think I’m feeling toes,” she says,
“You need a doctor’s care.”

In the hospital emergency room
I wait in a wheelchair,
answering the admission clerk’s questions
until a contraction seizes me again.
I see her eyes pop wide with surprise
before I slump into the pain.

Legs spread on the hard table,
a masked doctor tells me when to push.
I latch onto his eyes, kind and steady,
until a boy is born, blue as the sky.
When they whisk him into the ICU
I’m thinking my baby may die.

He was born face first, not breech,
and stayed too long in the birth canal.
The nurses won’t bring him to me,
so I dry the tears in my eyes
and push my IV through the cold halls
to the incubator where he lies.

The nurse there yields to my insistence.
She sets me in a rocking chair,
places the baby in my arms, and I fall
into his solemn eyes, like an ancient man’s,
telling me he’s traveled far, he is strong,
and happy to be in this strange new land.


The Sharpshooter

Our father
shot family photos.
The early years on slides
we watched again and again
like a favorite movie.

Our father
shot big-antlered bucks,
always killed with one clean shot.
His trophies appeared in the slideshow
between gap-toothed grins and Christmas mornings.

Our father
collected arrowheads—
a bullet box filled with delicate points
carefully wrapped in cotton—
that he found on rocky hilltops.

Our father
collected our wounded hearts
in a box he never opened—
lacerated, poisoned by his biting tongue,
sloppily patched with wet kisses.

Our father
charmed both the ladies and the men,
regaling and joking with unmatched wit,
praising and flattering to their faces,
scorning them all behind their backs.

Our father
charmed his children, too, until in anger
he shot his cruel words to draw blood
and violated the hunter’s creed
never to abandon your injured prey.




Cynthia Forbes is a retired teacher and instructional designer living in Houston, Texas. She writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction.