Poems (however you define them) pop up en masse—greeting cards, chipper FB graphics, literary zines, blogs, chapbooks, open mic nights. Heck, I once discovered a blog that featured a daily a.m. haiku homage to a young woman’s lover. The images grew tiresome after a few days—a sheet trailing carelessly to […]
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
I never toe-squished from a rocky shore To wade into a duck-and-water cover That would salvage my muddy, sidestepping soul. The Mississippi sun’s baptismal fire Plunged me into chlorined, green-tiled bliss, A state of grace fogging my plastic goggles. This daily meditation ran long and lean, Broken by 32 concrete-grazed […]
Estimated reading time: 47 seconds
Autumn blazed azure and gold, And a tickling thrill stole over me; Fingers slid down the curve of my neck, Then gently squeezed my clavicle, Playing me for a brilliant fool. I swayed into his embrace; Bronze, copper, and iron notes Skittered down and up my spine, In senseless musicality. Yellow squeaked […]
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
i took a turn under a luncheon sun for the unfurling of bearded iris flags, billows of color unwound from pencil-thin buds, petal-splashes of purple, violet, blue, and cream that I floated and then puddled into mud on flimsy pages of watercolor pads— in a class of middling women trying […]
Estimated reading time: 1 minute
W. D. Snodgrass collected the Pulitzer Prize for his first book of poems, Heart’s Needle, in 1960. However, with early glory came career pressure, ego issues, loss of relationships, and writer’s block. Nonetheless, he persisted, even when his art fell out of fashion. An interview with the Paris Review offers an intriguing […]
Estimated reading time: 1 minute