Tag: Poetry

Two Poems by John Whitney Steele

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

Borrowings

Stitched into my brain, Dad’s favorite saying:
A job half-done is better not begun.
When I start a poem I’m only playing.
But it’s my job and I’m my father’s son.

And so my duty is to make you feel
as if the top of your head were taken off.
Anything short of that has no appeal.
To write a half-baked rhyme’s not good enough.

Is a job worth doing not worth doing badly,
the perfect not the enemy of the good?
So many questions I would have asked my dad,
but I was busy doing what I could
to garner his approval, honor the old man,
and emulate the little engine: I think I can.


The Swimmer

I undulate my body, dolphin kick,
windmill my arms to breach and dive back in.
With a flick of my fluked tail I’m dolphin;
airborne, I torque my pec-fins, flip and spin.
My podmates, wowed by my new tricks,
celebrate with whistles, squeaks and clicks.

Bobbing on sleep’s surface, drownproofing,
davening before the Wailing Wall,
I rise to clear my blowhole, stoke my lungs,
plunge into the depths of the Kabbalah.

Belly-up, spread-eagled, I embrace
the feathered pillows of the ocean-sky,
enter heaven’s rainbow-pattern gates,
see my face reflected in God’s eye.




John Whitney Steele is a psychologist, yoga teacher, assistant editor of Think: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction and Essays, and graduate of the MFA Poetry Program at Western Colorado University. His poems have been published widely in literary journals and both his chapbook, The Stones Keep Watch, and his full length collection of poetry, Shiva’s Dance, were published by Kelsay Books. John lives in Boulder, Colorado, and enjoys hiking in the mountains. You can visit his website at www.johnwhitneysteelepoet.com.

Two Poems by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

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

My New Year’s Resolutions

Every day caress my cat.
Brush him to a golden sheen.
Surf the Net and tour the world
Here on my computer screen.
See that every single meal
Features cookies, pie, or cake.
Resolutions on this list
Surely I will never break.

“My New Year’s Resolutions” first appeared in The New York Times Metropolitan Diary.


The Guest Selects Her Own Indulgences

with apologies to Emily Dickinson

The guest selects her own indulgences,
Then fills a plate
With sweets whose sheer deliciousness
Brooks no debate.

Unmoved, she notes the carrots waiting,
Then turns away,
Unmoved, until her eyes alight on
The pastry tray.

I’ve known her from an ample table,
Choose four,
Then set the force of her attention
On more.

“The Guest Selects Her Own Indulgences” first appeared in The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin.




Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 280 poems published in a wide range of places, including twenty in past issues of Sparks of Calliope.

Two Poems by Joshua C. Frank

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

Night Driving

You’re driving back from out of state.
It’s late at night; home’s far away.
Your headlights on the interstate
Give fifteen feet of not quite day
In blackness from the cloudy sky,
From hills ahead, from hills you’ve passed.
Each big, black mountain flying by
Looks no different from the last.
The road’s white dashes lull your mind;
You sing along to stay awake
With every album you can find—
Night driving’s more than you can take.
A sign appears that lets you know:
Two hundred miles more to go.

“Night Driving” first appeared in Snakeskin.


The Billboard

It’s propped along the route I roll—
A squatting square against the sky,
Atop a sturdy metal pole,
To tell me what new thing to buy.

A squatting square against the sky,
It blocks the airy, fluffy clouds,
To tell me what new thing to buy
To follow the unthinking crowds.

It blocks the airy, fluffy clouds,
A big sign saying come and shop
To follow the unthinking crowds
To buy that brand of soda pop.

A big sign saying come and shop,
Atop a sturdy metal pole,
To buy that brand of soda pop—
It’s propped along the route I roll.

“The Billboard” 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, Westward Quarterly, Atop the Cliffs, Our Day’s Encounter, The Creativity Webzine, Verse Virtual, and The Asahi Haikuist Network, and his short fiction has been published in Nanoism and The Creativity Webzine.

Two Poems by John Tustin

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

Life is Flowers

Life is flowers
In a plot of dirt
With small stones around them
In a rugged circle

And you and I
Stand outside of the fence
Where the flowers exalt the sun,
Their green arms extended upward
In their plot of dirt
With small stones around them
In a rugged circle.

You and I look into that place
Impossibly bright and green
And red and gold
From our asphalt spot
And we see the flowers that exalt the sun
With their green arms extended upward
In their plot of dirt
With small stones around them
In a rugged circle

And the flowers look like lovely young men and women
Exalting God and the sun
And once in a while a breeze catches their scent
And brings it to us
And there we stand, smelling the flowers that look like lovely young men and women
Exalting God and the sun
With their green arms extended upward
In their plot of dirt
With small stones around them
In a rugged circle

From our impossible distance
Outside that fence.


Cupped Hands

I kept trying to hold you in my cupped hands
and most of you spilled through the spaces
because you are thinner than water most of the time.

What little of you I could hold onto
I splashed on my face
and you danced in my hair, clung to my eyebrows,
ran giggling down my shoulders,
dampened the down of my chest.

Soon enough you had evaporated,
not even cooling my skin anymore.
I looked into my cupped hands where I once held
but a small pool of you,
each palmar crease tingling with memory and loss,
a giddy little jolt of arousal and joy
still pulsing up and down,
up and down the heart line.




John Tustin has poetry forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Trailer Park Quarterly, Blue Unicorn and others. His first poetry collection is available from Cajun Mutt Press. He is also a previous contributor to Sparks of Calliope. Find links to his poetry published online here.

“The Time of Nostalgia” by Nolo Segundo

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

We went to visit our old neighbor
after they moved her to a nursing home,
an old English lady of ninety-one,
still with that accent of east-end London
and the sweet pleasantness of the kind.

She was too old, too alone to live alone.
She would forget to turn off the gas range
or how to turn on the thermostat or TV,
She had trouble following a simple talk,
but remembered the Blitz, 75 years past,
as if the Nazi bastards were still at the door,
and London was in turmoil: as though Hell
had crashed through the gates of Heaven.

So her family moved her, leaving empty
the house next door, empty of our friend
of 30 some years, empty of her lilting
English accent and her sharp sense of
good old fashioned English humor…
and it seemed like someone had died.

After a few weeks we went to visit her,
my wife and I, taking some sweets and
a small plant– oh yes, and our sadness
too– though we made sure to leave it
outside, unattended to for the moment.

We entered a very large and rambling
sort of building, with pleasant lawns
and locked doors and intercoms for
some voice to decide if you can enter.
It was like sort of a prison, you think,
but a very nice and very clean prison.
Our neighbor was in a special wing,
called rather romantically, ‘Cedar Cove’
and as we entered through yet another
set of stout doors, we greeted her and
she smiled back, but very much as
one might greet a total stranger….

“The Time of Nostalgia” first appeared in Freshwater Literary Journal




Nolo Segundo, pen name of retired English/ESL teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia]  L.j.Carber, 76, became a published poet in his 8th decade in 165 literary journals and anthologies in 12 countries. A trade publisher has released 3 collections in paperback on Amazon: The Enormity of Existence [2020]; Of Ether and Earth [2021]; and Soul Songs [2022]. These titles like much of his work reflect the awareness he’s had for over 5o years since having an NDE whilst almost drowning in a Vermont river: That he has–IS–a consciousness that predates birth and survives death, what poets since Plato have called the soul.

“Lotus Eater” by Glenn Wright

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment
“Hell is other people.” —Jean-Paul Sartre
“Hell isn’t other people. Hell is yourself.” —Ludwig Wittgenstein

We don’t even know if we really exist.
We experience life in a soft, balmy mist.
Our memories are suspect and partial at best.
We’re happy to do what the voices suggest.
The faces around us are rarely the same
one day to the next, but they call us by name.
They smile at us blandly with features serene,
but when we reach out, we touch a glass screen.
Our needs and our wants are supplied in an instant
by mechanical hands of our robot assistant.

Our emotions are pale; no passions molest us,
no griefs, no desires, no raptures to test us.
We can’t help but wonder, while living like kings,
what purpose we serve in the grand scheme of things.
Why are we here? Who made us? What reason?
Such thoughts are unpleasant, feel almost like treason.
Perhaps we are dead, and this is our fate:
not heaven or hell, but a limbo-like state,
a warehouse for souls devoid of all merit,
who should neither reward nor chastisement inherit.

Perhaps we are prisoners in Plato’s cave.
We see lying shadows, but freed from this grave,
by the light of our reason, someday we will see
in philosophy’s glare the true reality.
Perhaps, sent on an interstellar mission,
we sleep a millennium on the expedition.
Perhaps in some universe larger than ours,
we are a child’s project to practice his powers.
Perhaps we exist in a novelist’s mind,
gestating characters, not yet defined.

Perhaps I am lost in dementia’s maze,
or, terminal, kept in an opiate haze.
The darkest of thoughts occurs to me then.
Perhaps there’s no “we,” but just “I” in this den.
Perhaps I’m Creator of all that I see,
all the others, projections from deep inside me.
The panic of loneliness freezes my blood.
My muted emotions rise up in a flood.
I reach for the pill, knowing where it will be,
and pray for the darkness to set my soul free.




Glenn Wright is a retired teacher living in Anchorage Alaska with his wife, Dorothy, and their dog, Bethany.  He writes poetry to challenge what angers him, to ponder what puzzles him, and to celebrate what delights him.

Two Poems by J. A. Wagner

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

Monarch of the Morning

I saw him there in the morning cool,
a pale sage bush his morning stool,
silent, asking with a roar,
which of us deserved it more;
it was his place—he made that plain—
and if I, foolish, should remain,
I must acknowledge all his right
to be there in the morning bright,
so willingly I acquiesced
in such opinion so expressed
and left him in possession there
for nothing else would I dare–
it was his place, it was his then,
that jaunty little cactus wren.


Family

she was over thirty,
plain as she was old,
favorite of her father,
something of a scold;
he was nearly forty,
unbeloved by fate,
last left on the homestead,
happy with his state;
somewhere one November
lonely led the two
on a star-sharp evening
to try a something new–
then there was a sudden,
then there was a fall,
though neither loved the other,
no neither one at all,
but such were then the seasons,
such were then the times,
not accommodated,
close akin to crimes,
so then upon the new year
a brand-new tale was coined,
the spinster and the farmer
awkward bound and joined,
till in the midst of August
affection found its face
and for the rest of living
buried all disgrace–
all this no puny purpose,
in the scheme of memory,
from this unplanned connection
came a family.




J. A. Wagner holds a Ph.D. in history from Arizona State University and has taught classes in British and American history at Arizona State and Phoenix College. A retired editor, he has published a dozen reference works in English and European history. He splits his time between Wisconsin and Arizona.

Two Poems by Jan Hassmann

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 2 Comments

Bridgehead

Stately the old bridgehead muses over the canal.
Red bricks and a coat of arms,
charms the new bridge will never have.
Stronger, yes, and taller too,
but made from things that don’t grow.

Bigger ships need taller bridges.

50 years since they took her from him,
her crooked heart all black and rotten,
but not forgotten.
A plaque they put up, picture too,
commemorative, as they do,
living such short lives.

And so he watches, swans and ships,
and desperate souls flung off the bridge.
Oh, they jumped off the old one, too,
but not so many.

A lot more than you’d think!
says Millie from across the way,
she’s with the fire brigade,
she knows about these things.

They don’t put them in the papers anymore,
no need to advertise the spot.

The bridgehead cares not
who hears his lullaby,
as swans and ships and lives float by,
their crooked hearts all black and rotten.
But not forgotten.


Broken Clock

Still got that old clock I bought a while ago,
blue,
with fluorescent hands that glow
and watch me sleep at night.
It never worked, but it’s still ticking.

Sometimes.

I can’t bring myself to put it away,
at least once a day
I look up from my affairs,
hearing a tick and a tock,
reminded of a spark of life
still in the clock.

Like in roots under rocks,
rotten and soft.

It might just be showing another world’s time
maybe it’s not broken, but by design
made to measure
other things.

In a place where at noon the night begins
and the hands turn
widdershins.




Jan Hassmann earned his master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Tübingen, Germany, and left immediately after to teach the very same at universities in Beijing and Kunming, China. Fifteen years later he returned to Europe, where he runs an amicable poetry club in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Two Poems by Shamik Banerjee

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 2 Comments

The Materialist’s Misfortune

I know you like to taunt me, Ma, until
My face is red with frustration. But will
You not regard the fact that I am still
A little boy?

“You are fifteen. Go find a girl.”, you say,
But teenage is to grow, not waste away
On girlfriends. No more of this theme today!
I have my joy.

“We’re glad you got the university.
I bet you’re seeing someone.” Well, for me,
What matters right now is the bursary.
Don’t start again!

“Congrats! My son! A graduate at last!”
Now find a match before youthhood is past.”
Profession! Ma! I want to make it vast
Like other men!

“You’re thirty one. It’s getting more delayed?”
It will slow down my progress, I’m afraid.
I swear, I will, right when my future’s made.
“Okay, lets see.”

I have all that I ever sought: no strife,
A good career, and fortune, yet my life
Lacks something, Ma. I wish I had a wife—
I’m forty-three.


My Uncle’s Desk

To him, this desk was no less than
A pretty maid is to her man;
The groom, my Uncle, wedded it,
His bride, the desk, he petted it.

At it, he taught my life’s first letters—
‘The more one reads, the more one betters’;
From it, harangued and often scolded
Whenever my mischiefs unfolded.

At it, reviewed his files, accounts,
Son’s tution fees, the bills’ amounts,
The sum to borrowers he gave,
A month’s expense, how much to save;

On holidays, at break of day,
He sat at it to fully pay
(Through lens of lunettes spectacles)
Attention to his articles.

He decked it with a flower vase,
A flagon old, an hourglass,
A penholder, a blunted comb,

And picture of the sacred ‘Om’.
When minded to hilarity,
Made aunt’s and children’s mockery
While sitting there and taking sips
Of Ginger tea with grinning lips.

And when in grave and tetchy mood,
Strict language formed his attitude,
But not for long this state would be
When he sat there for poetry.

He sat there one full night to catch
The Cricket World Cup’s final match,
And all throughout the coming day,
His run-down eyes upon it lay.

The countless verses that he penned,
The letters for his dearest friend,
The tomes of novelettes he read;
Each happened at this very stead.

Time passed. He aged, so aged his bride—
With oldhood comes life’s ebbing tide;
His movements slowed and came to rest
When Parkinson’s impinged his chest.

Brute Fate! it took from him the right
To feed and bathe, to hold and write;
With each day, it severely wrung
And stole the power of his tongue.

He summoned me on his last day
Through my aunt to make his last say—
She gave a note, it read: ‘My will:
Before I’m rendered cold and still,

‘I’m passing down my desk to you.
I hope, like me, you’ll love it too.’
I smiled at him, his eyes looked pleased—
Took one last breath and got released.

Before my eyes, his desk now stands—
No woodworms, cracks or trace of ants;
Still burnished, solid, gives a glow
As if produced a while ago.

I sit here now and tell my mind:
“The dearest thing he left behind,
Still keeps us close though we’re apart,
And bears the imprint of his heart.”

“My Uncle’s Desk” first appeared in The Hypertexts.




Shamik Banerjee is a poet from India. Some of his poems are forthcoming in The Hypertexts, Lighten Up Online, Westward Quarterly, and Disturb The Universe.

Two Poems by Carey Jobe

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

In Country

The conductor’s whistle,
an answering squeal as the train’s wheels
lurch, a quickening hiss
as milling, infernal crowds in the cavernous
Hauptbahnhof fall away to the dull sheens
of Frankfurt, the gray-green Main,
the cindery, static, mizzling slate
of a German sky…

Being American
is part of my baggage. Even before I greet
cabinmates with a botched
phrasebook sentence and sit, my tonsured scalp,
baby-pink GI face, draw stares or nods
of boreal politeness. I hunker,
arms locked, a deaf-mute, into my cushion.
Like a film screen,

fleeting scenery
at my shoulder offers bittersweet refuge out of
and into heaviness:
miniature, pastel, red-tile-roofed cottages,
bikers on beech lanes, pastures neat
as quilts under a skyline
of blue hills, like Tennessee’s, flash by.
What a poor guesser

the mind is!
Where is the Germany of the daydream? dirndled
villagefolk dancing
in the half-timbered Marktplatz? Horn-echoing
woodlands of Wagner, Goethe?—the generous
country of the tinted postcard
that somehow (oh, inevitable appetite
which makes the dissatisfied

put dreamage
to the proof!) enlisted a fleecy adolescent
indolence to board northeast-
erly-gusting winds and report for duty where
the Neckar feeds the Rhine? Today
I must confront
impermeable bedrock. The conductor, grunting,
punches my ticket.


On Grass

I stepped outdoors while the sun was warm
to search thin snow if something formed
could help dislodge a bedded, numb
river rock where the blood is warmed.

A robin kept fleeing my slow boot tread,
not far, re-staking each claim of ground
with quick jabs and quizzical cocks of head.
I wondered what livelihood it found.

The drab grass, strawy and rough to touch,
smelled moist, like spring, its patchy green
shiny with thaw in the windy March
day’s clashing tempers of cloud and sun.

“Winter will need to move indoors,”
I laughed aloud, misting chilly air
with cheer that nudged my heart-rock loose.
The scene didn’t notice or seem to care

about inner weathers, cheer or grief
or landscapes they carve in a human breast,
unless in the ruffled annoyance of
a bird hunting grasses for its spring nest.




Carey Jobe is a retired attorney who has published poetry over a 45-year span.  His work has recently appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Lyric, The Road Not Taken, The Chained Muse, and The Society of Classical Poets.  He has authored a volume of poetry, By River or Gravel Road, and is currently working on a second collection.  He lives and writes in Crawfordville, Florida.