Tag: poem

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poetry

The Hammock by Jim Peterson

The Hammock | Jim Peterson

 

Four a.m., the hammock sways
in the fall breezes, carrying you

through the universe like a great seed pod.
Having abandoned your place in the bed

beside me, you study your pain, your thoughts,
withdrawing into the dark firmament

of the warm cocoon. You ride
the great river of the horse beneath you,

embracing it with your legs,
knowing it in the circle of reins and

heart and mind—the alignment of woman
and beloved beast you manifested day

after day in the fields and forests
and mountain gorges, in the circles

and angles within arenas. The hammock
binds you in that space where your life

rises before you like a colorful breath
and the dew lies down on your face.

New light feels its way through leaves
of the ornamental cherry and the redbud.

You swing between the trees
you planted with your own two hands,

riding that river of a horse down and down
its tortuous course to the ground you must walk alone.

About the Author:

Jim Peterson has published the novel Paper Crown from Red Hen Press in 2005 and seven poetry collections, most recently The Horse Who Bears Me Away from Red Hen Press in 2020 and Speech Minus Applause from Press 53 in 2019.  His collection of short stories, The Sadness of Whirlwinds, was published by Red Hen late in 2021.  He retired as Coordinator of Creative Writing at Randolph College in 2013 and remains on the faculty of the University of Nebraska-Omaha MFA Program in Creative Writing.   He lives with his charismatic, three-legged Corgi, Mama Kilya, in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Issue #15
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Issue #18 ~ “Best Of” Edition
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poetry

Bend by Jim Peterson

Bend | Jim Peterson

 

I found you walking beside a horse
without halter or lead.  It shadowed you,
sometimes resting its enormous head
on your shoulder.  I’d been alone
for a long time.  I feared you were the end
of all that.  Sometimes at night 
we laid a blanket down in the pasture,
the dark, ground-hugging clouds of horses
grazing around us.  I talked a lot 
but you didn’t care.  You were already
who you were.  Whenever a horse saw you
its ears pricked forward.  Its eyes
followed you.  When the horse stumbled
and fell, it was you who stumbled and fell.
When it flew over the fences and creeks
it was you flying.  When its body curved
from nose to tail, when it shortened
or stretched out its gait, it was you.
I said teach me.  You showed me my hands
that didn’t know they were feeling
the horse in the reins.  You showed me
my legs and feet that didn’t know
they were shaping the stream of that body.  
I couldn’t fathom that my thoughts
fell into the river of the horse and altered
its course, its bearing.  As I learned, I felt
the current of my body bend 
toward the current of yours.  Their confluence—
woman, man, and horse walking together.

About the Author:

Jim Peterson has published the novel Paper Crown from Red Hen Press in 2005 and seven poetry collections, most recently The Horse Who Bears Me Away from Red Hen Press in 2020 and Speech Minus Applause from Press 53 in 2019.  His collection of short stories, The Sadness of Whirlwinds, was published by Red Hen late in 2021.  He retired as Coordinator of Creative Writing at Randolph College in 2013 and remains on the faculty of the University of Nebraska-Omaha MFA Program in Creative Writing.   He lives with his charismatic, three-legged Corgi, Mama Kilya, in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Issue #15
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micro monday poetry

Comfort Food by Sydney Sheltz-Kempf

Comfort Food | Sydney Sheltz-Kempf

Could a depressed person make homemade ravioli? Ha.
The joke’s on you, C-SSRS. 
My hand-me-down bread machine is an Oster, 
and the manual contains an eggless recipe for pasta dough 
so there’s nothing manual about it. 
My hands are free
to collect all the tears I shed while
shredding the parmesan,
and I have enough salted water
to boil the entire batch. 
My arms and legs are the right gangly proportion to flail
like a yellow perch out of water, 
but he won’t let me sit in my bathtub alone anymore
because he knows I’ve chosen the scent of my soap 
based on how it tastes in my lungs: 
vanilla with a hint of sotolon. 
Sometimes when I just can’t do anything else, 
I sit on the linoleum floor
in the tiny apartment galley kitchen, 
lean my head against the flimsy plastic of the dishwasher door
and let the tears run down my face until the tissues in my hand become a sponge bath.
It’s a trick I learned from my mother
when she answered the cord phone on the wall 
and learned her baby brother died. 
She was so dehydrated when she pulled herself off the floor
that she never cried again – a salted fish of grief.
I just want to be like my mom. I ask her: 
“Did you have a bread machine?” “Yes.” 
“Was it before or after you cried?” “I can’t remember.” 
It is not the first time
she has not given me the answers I need.
If I’m depressed enough, I’ll make the damn waffles too
(thank you Oster manual) 
and let the maple syrup run in rivulets instead, 
pooling stagnant like all the memories
forgotten in the dopamine drought.  
Carbohydrates are comfort food
only because they stick in your gut 
and hold you together from the inside out, 
crammed in the crevices 
where the things that eat away at you used to lie. 
I need to shower,
and my husband is expecting a semblance of dinner, 
but I only have enough caloric energy
for one horrifically large task: 
living.

About the Author:

Sydney Sheltz-Kempf began writing poetry to cope with the stress of her PhD in Developmental Neurobiology. Her previous work can be found in Intima: Journal of Narrative Medicine, Sonder Midwest, Hilltop Review, Atlas + Alice, Evocations Review, Dying Dahlia Review, and elsewhere. Her previous chapbooks include “Adding Up Forever: A Memoir” (2018), “Kissing the Face of the Grandfather Clock” (2023), and “An Experiment Gone Wrong” (2023).

Categories
micro monday poetry

How to Hear God While Making Thanksgiving Dinner by Charlene Pierce

Virginia Simionato

How to Hear God While Making Thanksgiving Dinner | Charlene Pierce

Your granddaughter wants your attention. Your youngest grandson has learned to climb and loves the sound of pans banging against their lid; the other toddler has learned that the power of his scream is stronger than words and decided to never use them. You have the bird in your hands, raw and waiting to be stuffed. You’re covered in salmonella, and who knows what other deadly bacteria you can’t pronounce, you need to wash. The towel is missing. To hear your granddaughter’s soft voice, you must kneel to her, put your ear close to her lips. Your oldest grandsons are running through the house, laughing. They found something to make a sword. You hid the wooden knife, the plastic Ninja Turtle dagger, the pink sparkly baton, the cat toy with a ball hanging from a wand, and still they found something to make a sword. Secretly, you’re proud of their ingenuity, and you want to play, run through the house yelling “en guard,” but your granddaughter wants your attention. You fear they will soon be at the age when Nana isn’t cool, but they have friends who are. The turkey is raw and waiting to be stuffed. The pies are done. The oven isn’t beeping yet, or maybe it is, but you can’t hear it, and you smell the browning crust taking over the pumpkin’s spices. You used to make them by hand, back when you had time or when you thought you had time. Your priorities were different then, and you only had two daughters. Mothers now, sitting ear to ear, talking as sisters do, only to each other. You could call to them, tell them to take the pies from the oven, the cranberries will be simmering over soon, and the turkey is raw and waiting to be stuffed. But you remember how your shoulders relaxed when you went to Grandma’s for Thanksgiving, and someone else was cooking, and someone else was tending to the children, and someone was taking care of you, and you want that for your daughters. You want everything for your daughters, and this you can give them even though the turkey is raw and waiting to be stuffed, and your granddaughter wants your attention. Dry your hands on your pant legs and kneel down to listen. Put your ear near her lips.

About the Author:

Charlene Pierce founded the Nebraska Poetry Society, a non-profit organization, to make poetry accessible to all. It is an essential mission for her as a person with a disability who has overcome poverty. Her poetry and prose have appeared in several literary journals and Nebraska anthologies, including “Misbehaving Nebraskans.” She published “The Poet’s Journal: A Beginner’s Workbook for Writing Poetry.” By day, she is a freelance writer, appearing on websites and blogs across the country, as well as in local magazines.

Issue #22 ~ “Best Of” Edition
Categories
micro monday poetry

Beach House by Hannah Miet

Beach House | Hannah Miet

I was new to LA
It was November
and wind-cold
the kind you feel
in your clavicles,
and I’d thrown away or sold
all my winter jackets

I shivered by the ocean
and did hot yoga
and got yeast infections
and wrote a rich kid’s USC essay
for $100 on Upwork

I ate frozen yogurt
twice a day
thinking it probiotic
but the sugar brewed
a storm beneath my skin

In class with Botoxed blondes
or in cafes filled with talkers
I wondered how anyone
got here, stayed here,
paying bills
in a city where a cup of coffee
costs more than minimum wage

I applied online

for a job at a juice bar
and sat in traffic,
thinking existentially
about student debt

Nobody tells you
Los Angeles gets cold
They don’t tell you
the beach can be menacing
in its beauty,

as the sunset reaches
its prime-time crescendo
and everyone smiles
as you walk by,
baby —

alone.

About the Author:

Hannah Miet is an award-winning writer and New Yorker based in Los Angeles. Her poetry, prose, and journalism have appeared in PANK Magazine, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Rumpus, The Naugatuck River Review, Pelican Bomb, The Atlantic, The Two Weeks anthology, and elsewhere. She recently participated in the Kenyon Review’s Summer 2023 Poetry Workshop. Learn more at https://writing.hannahmiet.net/ or follow her on Instagram @hannah_miet.

Categories
poetry

Limerence by Levi Cain

Limerence | Levi Cain

 

ok now i am beholding u / yes i am bewitched by
the stubby curl of yr ponytail the wide open arc
of shoulders the single black hair poking like an errant
needle from yr chin which u despise & i love
endlessly bc it is u & god do i love the ribbit of yr laugh
when u forget yourself & are too loud in movie theaters,
yr bright teeth flashing like headlight in a churned up storm.
the half-life of an argument is three hours & my forehead
sometimes sweats from the weight of it. the antidote is venting
the poultice is gossip the nostrum my agreeable nod
the antivenom the yes the sure the ok what the fuck.
& sometimes yr reborn by the yes & sometimes yr body
cannot escape the rage & i watch u stand in it,
all of u vibrating like a bumblebee. & my heart pretzels
itself into the familiar waiting. i love the u at midnight
& in the morning when yr swearing at traffic,
kind fists doing drumbeats on the steering wheel.
doesn’t yr mood fill the whole of me with smog
& a slice of dawn & maybe dawn & a slice of fog
who can be sure not my sisters not my best friend not my roommate
not i with my heart pounding at yr quickness to feel
but:
                        wouldn’t i build a house for yr anger.
                        wouldn’t i make myself green with shutters
                                    & a porch.

About the Author:

Levi Cain is a non-binary Queeribbean in Boston, MA. Their work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and has appeared in The Slowdown, Shenandoah Literary Magazine, Room Magazine, and elsewhere. Find them at levicain.wordpress.com.

Issue #13
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poetry

Two Poems by Bob Hicok

Fire | Bob Hicok

Is your solitude crushing?
Do you feel like a milk carton
at the bottom of the ocean
with your face on it asking the abyss,
Have you seen this child?
The abyss shrugs and puts its back
into digging the hole
other holes look up to.
“Dunno” is the entire vocabulary
of the mysteries of life.
That’s something a giddy man says.
A limber man. A man
with nothing to snooze.
The funniest thing about life
remains that we’re all in this
alone together. I see your loneliness
and raise your jumping out a window
with trying to catch you,
the only sport that matters.
One day you’ll return my cordless drill
and the favor, and I’ll build
a new set of bookshelves
and try to live forever
in the time I have to live awhile.

Green Thumb | Bob Hicok


A rose,
anticipating failure,
died.
I buried it
where it stood.
When a rose rose
where the rose had failed
to believe in itself,
I thought my mother
might rise and be
my mother again,
so sat at her table
waiting for dinner.
Meatloaf. Her secret
was onions, a little cocaine.
Anticipating success,
I tucked a napkin
under my shirt
and put a rose
where she used to sit.
That rose soon quit
being beautiful
and I slowly quit
remembering where Orion
is in the sky.
I ate the wilted petals
in a house as empty
as a fist is
of light.
The hunter, the hunted:
where o where
o which am I?

About the Author:

Bob Hicok is the author of Water Look Away (Copper Canyon Press, 2023). He has received a Guggenheim and two NEA Fellowships, the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress, nine Pushcart Prizes, and was twice a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and nine volumes of the Best American Poetry. 

Issue #13 ~ AUtumn 2023
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ISSUE #14 ~ Best Of TGLR
Categories
poetry

Amazing by Matt Mason

Amazing | Matt Mason

 

Sometimes
I feel the motion of the planet
like riding a train when
the wheels hit a shake in the tracks.

Sometimes
it’s a tremor, find myself,
feet tight against the floor,
leaned just a hair or two forward
into the momentum, and

sometimes
the journey has a hum, the endless road
of orbit and tidal pull
hits a chip, a swell, a crack, my legs
take a sec to steady,

sometimes,
this motion:
dizzying, blazing,
cosmic, amazing.

About the Author:

Matt Mason has run poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus for the U.S. State Department and his poetry has appeared in The New York Times. Matt is the Nebraska State Poet and has received a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work can be found on NPR’s Morning Edition, in American Life in Poetry, and in several hundred other publications. Mason’s 5th book, Rock Stars, was released by Button Poetry, September, 2023. His website is: https://midverse.com.

Issue #13
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poetry

La Niña by Gathondu Mwangi

Still life encaustic painting pears

La Niña | Gathondu Mwangi

 
Brown rice. Yellow lentils.
Black scar burned into each.
Small bowl. A little water.
No salt.

This could be a meal for a bird
Grandma’s last dinner.

The last time I called Cũcũ
she said “thank you
for thinking about me,”
her voice strong as a sparrow’s.

Shame, sorrow, anger folded into the cracks of our silences.

I too have known aloneness.
Like an aloe I have lived on drops
            of affection.
Nights I have listened to the quiet
gargle of a water cooler
quench its own thirst.
Months I have sung in response
to a chorus of bloated mosquitoes.

December and the rains arrive
out of time, inundate my dreams
nests waterlog, drop like plops
from yellow fever trees.

I found my Grandma fallen
on the floor of the house where she lived.
The coroner said bronchopneumonia
her right lung a leaf folded into itself.

We waited so long
for a change of season
for a little girl to leave
this is what the late rain brings.

About the Author:

Gathondu Mwangi is a Geographer and writer. Born and raised in Kenya, he travels occasionally to the US where he is undertaking his graduate studies. His work has previously appeared in World Literature Today, Worcester Review, The Fourth River and Kwani.

Issue #13
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poetry

Mosaic by Muiz Ọpẹ́yẹmí Àjàyí

Mosaic | Muiz Ọpẹ́yẹmí Àjàyí

 

the intention, always, is to make music
of my breath. grasp a gangan & dance bàtá
to my heart aches beats. this is not to say
i’ve not been broken over & over. this is not
to say grief is not staple in the homes of boys like us.
here, peek through my flesh. look into my burning
bones. watch as i dare step into fire & pick up a song,
& pick up a scalding song; set ablaze
the gloom perched on my collarbones, all along
reiterating i never intended violence. & if
you ever find me strange & beautiful as mosaic,
know i’ve been shattered into a billion fragments
of jagged glass. but here i defy dissemination,
pick up my colorful tesserae, & begin merging,
once again. a mini cinematography of the way
earth cracks open with the breath of the most
high & ushers out fresh sprouts; green & golden
blossoms. lord, i’m not hesitant about indulging
the smell of my sore while it heals, of wafting
in the bittersweet stench while it hangs
still in the air—air which reminds me
that i breathe; breath which reminds me that
i live; life which reminds me that i’m liable
to being broken again & again. still i stay
chill & undiluted as spring water, knowing,
ya allah, you will piece this boy back together
again, till he moulds into an art mirroring
the aesthetics of the sculpture you kilned.

About the Author:

Muiz Ọpẹ́yẹmí Àjàyí (Frontier XVIII) is a Lagos-born Nigerian poet of Yoruba descent. His writings explore identity, language and place. A final-year Law student at the University of Ibadan, he’s the Asst. Curator of Poetry Column-NND, and a 2023 Poetry Translation Centre UNDERTOW fellow, he features in Splinter, Frontier Poetry, Chestnut Review, 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Tab Journal, Olongo Africa, Lolwe, Tahoma Review, SAND Journal, Poetry Wales, Aké Review, Fantasy, and elsewhere.  He won the Lagos-London Poetry Competition 2022, University of Ibadan Law LDS Poetry Prize 2022, and Jaw War Debate Championship 2025.

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Issue #13
Issue #22 ~ “Best Of” Edition