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Poem of the Month for May 2025

Our Poem of the Month for May 2025

Hummingbird
by Trisha Knudsen

 

Hummingbird

 

A flitter crossed before my eyes

Constant wings in ease of flight

His body bobbed as he flew by

And caught me in my line of sight

 

His visit quick, his purpose sure

As I stood still with mouth agape

And let him pass in time, demure,

And make his brilliant swift escape

 

And though his time with me was short

A bright spot in a common day,

He was a sweet and precious sort

Of gift that comes but cannot stay

 

 

Trisha Knudsen is a published poet and a creative artist. She has been writing poetry for 50 years. A retired teacher of special needs and gifted children, she is the creator and owner of RetreatQuest, a business offering creative arts and writing workshops and retreats for women, with the hope of reintroducing them to their inner artists. Find her at tlk2me@lyricguitar.net.

Poem of the Month - April 2025

Our Poem of the Month for April 2025

 

Memory Loss

by Robert Runté

 

We perceive our selves

who we are,

in this moment,

as the culmination of all our experiences;

therefore: that our memories are a part of us,

something that we have,

or that we lose

as we forget.

But memory is also held for us by others.

The people who know who we are,

because they were there

and remember too.

Their memory, perhaps,

ever so slightly different,

a variant perspective,

as if seen from an angle

to where we thought

we remembered standing.

Recognizable, still, as the same moment.

Defining moments,

existing in our heads, our selves. . .

infinitely outnumbered

by the memories held in trust by others

remembering those same moments.

Mirrors to our remembered selves.

What happens when those others are gone?

What happens to our selves when they leave

and in leaving,

take some portion of our memories with them?

Unbalanced,

more of our memories

across that boundary

than remain here,

we begin to lean, to tip precariously,

until inevitably,

we are our selves

forgotten.

 

Robert Runté is Senior Editor with EssentialEdits.ca, and a former professor. He has won three Aurora Awards for his literary criticism and his fiction has been published over 100 times. 

"Memory Loss" was previously published in: 

  • Impsired #23, June 1, 2023 (online); and in print anthology, Impsired Magazine #12, Sept 2023.
  • Forgotten Fragments of Time, Adam Shove, ed. Dark Thirty Poetry, April 15, 2024, pp. 25-26. 

March 2025 Poem of the Month

Our Poem of the Month for March 2025:

Remember

by David Hill

Are we vast enough
To allow the judgments but
Not act upon them
To feel the turmoil from an other's choice
Recognizing the fear as we tremble within
And stand alone no matter the consequences
Are we vast enough
When a new layer is revealed
And we want to run and hide or
Turn away and pretend
Are we vast enough to stand in all the emotions
Resting in the center
While opposing energies build upon left and right
Are we vast enough
To smile
Not the harsh one
Or the fake one
But the gentle one that arises
In spite of ideas
The unarmored one that spreads wildflowers

Of love

Aren’t we vast enough to Watch all this

Despite the thousand hooks and thorns
That arise from within the hubbub
And remember

We are always free

 

 

David Hill has spent the greater part of a long life outside the norms of society, a choice that has afforded him a unique perspective. His poems therefore reflect the path less traveled. You may read more of his work on Facebook. 

February 2025 Poem of the Month

The ABCs of the End of the World

by Carolyn Clink


The Amazon burns.

Arid pollution floats 
like an algae bloom
over asthmatic bumblebees—

a buzzing biomass 
of clear-cut carbon
footprints

in a chaotic desert dance
of dehydration and energy-efficient
extinction. Famine floats

through flooded farms
searching for fuel-cell 
resistance fighters

gone the way of greenhouse glaciers 
in a hybrid car.

Hydrocarbon hurricanes 
impact ice shelves, icebergs,

curling ice, and icecapades
in a final-jeopardy-worthy,
karmic, light-leakage landslide,

curdling the Milky Way 
in a Magellanic Cloud of nuclear winter.

                                                                          

In the acidic ocean, a six-legged
octopus and a polar bear with gills
quibble over reduced rain forests,

reused rubbers, and recycled cyclones, 
while solar-powered Tsunamis unleash
 a torrent of ultraviolet species.

If only wind energy 
came from outgassing,

or wave power from the pissing 
away of finite resources on wars.

Instead, an extra-yellow river 
backs up and civilization ends.

 

Carolyn Clink is a Canadian poet living in Mississauga, Ontario. She won the Aurora Award, Canada's top science-fiction, fantasy, and horror award for Best Poem/Song in 2011 and 2022. She has published over 125 poems in various magazines and anthologies over the past 40 years. This poem won the Aurora Award for best poem/song in 2011

Poem of the Month January 2025

Poem of the Month - January 2025

Time Piece
by Francine D'Alessandro


Lately, I turn my attention to past,
present, future. Maybe it’s age,
maybe too much internet time
stumbling into one wormhole then
another, lingering in the ether
with philosophers and physicists
and poets, discovering there is
no past or future, as some tell it.
So, here I am in the eternal now
which others say does not exist
though past and future do and
the fixed point of now a knife edge
of waterfall: river one moment,
cascade the next. I always visualize
Niagara—from the Canadian side—
so, time seems to go in reverse.
I’m a collector of time theories,
working them like big jigsaw puzzles—
1000 pieces, all white. I often consider
the all-at-once theory: what did happen,
what will happen arrayed on one easily
navigable continuum but for physics,
that Gordian knot of time travel
teasing memory and imagination alike.
When I get there, do I see myself
rushing through snowy Village streets
on my way to meet friends at the Cedar?
Or do I feel the chill again, ungloved hands
balled fists thrust into pockets of a coat
I remember I will in the future forget
on a train in Toronto.

Poem of the Month December 2024

Our Poem of the Month For December 2024

An Old Man's Tears

by Jack McClintock

 

 

The tears of a child flow not so freely as

those from the eyes of an old man who’s lost.

Watch the thinning years, slumped in a chair

amid the fading light of winter afternoons.

Remember her soft voice that made the night recede.

Her gentle touch, no comfort in the gloom of dim reverie.

Can she be here in some way not understood?

Does she smile behind a curtain, playing with heartache

like a mischievous child, ready to reveal herself with a laugh?

Silence in the once shared space holds unfathomable emptiness,

like the absence in her eyes as she lay still in lifeless desolation.

Eternity, summed in an instant.

A lifetime spent as one, now suddenly and forever apart.

Can one go about on the streets again, and why?

Love wanders aimlessly in its own vastness.

How does one speak the unutterable?

Her voice sounds in a room without a threshold.

Tears gather as memory kindles the warmth of a look or smile.

There are words for everything under heaven, but none for this.

One could live a thousand years, and never dare to love again.

Sublime in love, disconsolate in loss.

The lord of shadow offers peace, the last best hope of suffering.

Lost.

Utterly alone.

Waiting for the curtain to fall on an empty stage.

 

 

 

The name's Jack, Jack McClintock, lifetime resident of central massachusetts. I began writing poetry when I was seventeen, and for much of my life poetry was the only vessel into which I could safely pour my soul. The dreads and dreams, the longings and fears, the passions and prayers that moved me during a lifetime of hiding my feelings from the judgment of others, spilled without much effort into the verses you’ll find in A-Turn-of-Phrase, published on Amazon in March of 2021. Now, close to the end of a lifetime etched in verse, I'm at last both willing and able to share my work with others. Love it, hate it, think what you will, for as Elon Musk would tell you of money or power... I don't care. 

Gale Eaton - 2 poems

Poems of the Month for November 2024

This month we're presenting 2 poems by retired professor, librarian, and author Gale Eaton:

 

Lichen

A gray flake balanced on grass tips

The flimsiest of cobwebs are

more firmly moored

A filigree of neither one

thing nor the other

algae nor fungi

A committee ready to

break apart in the wind and carry on

its work elsewhere

 

Somewhere Else

On the clouded edge of morning,

darker than at this hour

last month, trees sigh gently

and against their shadow—

scalloping routes pale leaves

will trace next month—pale

butterflies drift like ash.

Somewhere trees are burning.

These stand calm, loose-jointed.

Easy to think they’re older than

they really are, safe to outlive me

and all my kind. Between us

the road carries my kind’s errands,

minivans and pickup trucks,

parents and contractors, wheels

intentional, benign, weighing

the pavement with familiarity.

Easy to feel they’re all connected,

a casual interweaving of errands

purposeful as roots in an

endless wood. Somewhere

towns are burning. Here

a neighbor’s hollered greeting,

a truck’s back-up warning down

the street, the innocent wind.

Easy to believe everything

will be all right. Easy to let go

and drift ash pale

down the coming season.

 

Maine native Gale Eaton won poetry prizes in the 1960s, continued to write while a children’s librarian in Massachusetts, and lost the thread during an academic career. As assistant director and then director of the University of Rhode Island library school, she helped set up satellite courses for Worcester students. Since her 2012 retirement she has published four volumes of nonfiction and (with a sense of homecoming) returned to writing poetry.  

Poem of the Month October 2024:

Our Poem of the Month for October 2024:

Big Dogs Far Away
by 

Evan Plante

 

 

I know the sounds

those brrrs and grrrs

that set my hairs on end.

 

Those are the sounds of close dogs

near dogs —

and not those far away.

 

You see, there’s a problem with dogs far away.

They are always big dogs in the distance...

whether or not they are big dogs indeed.

 

Perhaps it’s the close dogs’ immanence

that makes them seem manageable to me

— and I have some experience here.

 

I’ve made friends with even formidable dogs

like German Shepherds or Doberman Pinschers

when they were right in front of me.

 

But I fear those dogs far away.

To me, they are always the Hounds of the Baskervilles.

Surely they will eat me if I leave my home!

 

But don’t worry. I do leave my home —

and I do have adventures!

What I do not have is clarity.

 

You see, I understand the physics of the situation...

that the mere sound of dogs could never eat me.

The metaphysics, though... that’s another thing.

 

 

I was born in Worcester and I still live here today In fact, that was the topic of my winning poem in this year's (2023) Rain Poets (Walk in the Woo). I'm a member of the Worcester County Poetry Association, but I have no academic qualifications or publications... having made my living as a Cable Splicer for New England Telephone. I am a husband, Father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, so I've seen a few things, but the poem stands alone.

Poem of the Month - September 2024

Our Poem of the Month for September 2024:

 

My Nature Poem

by Joe Fusco

 

It’s the morning after a 10-inch snowstorm,

The sun is peeking out over the triple-decker across the street,

Taunting me.

 

I hate Winter in Worcester.

The barren branches of the city’s trees look ghoulish in their white shrouds.

Everything is so …slushy,

I ruin a pair of white socks every time I walk down the front steps to fetch the paper.

 

I hate Winter in Worcester.

The snow flurries predicted by an exuberant meteorologist are measured by a yardstick.

Potholes contain relics of fallen Volkswagens.

Icicles on the side of our house hang like death threats.

 

I hate Winter in Worcester.

Spring is just around the corner but it’s the l-o-n-g-e-s-t  block in New England.

Then Summer follows with its scorched earth, endless road construction, and crowded city restaurants.

I hate Summer in Worcester,

Too.

 

Joe Fusco Jr. is a well-seasoned humorist/poet from Worcester, Massachusetts.

He is the author of five books of semi-amusing poems and essays: “Random Thoughts from a Curmudgeon “ (2023), “Pondering the Pandemic during The Rust years”(2021); “Hmm…That’s Different” (2020); “Three Score” (2014); and “The Lost and Found Essays” (2012), all available at local bookstores and Amazon.

Joe’s musings have appeared in Damfino Press, Ballard Street Poetry, Worcester Review, Asinine Poetry, Soul Lit, and the naughty ezine Clean Sheets. He was a co-winner of the Jacob Knight Poetry Award in 2002 and was named Best Poet by Worcester Magazine readers in 1999 and 2002.

Joe is a Humor columnist for Worcester Magazine and the last Worcester Mega-Slam winner in 2017. He features at bookstores, libraries, clubs, and coffeehouses throughout Central Massachusetts and Belgium. He is the host of the Poetry Extravaganza at Redemption Rock Brewery in Worcester.

Joe has taught “Humor 101” for high-school students at Gateways Academy in Shrewsbury and for adults at the Worcester Senior Center, Eisenberg Assisted Living, Notre Dame Assisted Living, and The Residence of Orchard Grove.

He is the Vice-President of Programming for the Worcester County Poetry Association.

Joe has lived in lovely Worcester with his better-half Cyndi and their large family for thirty-eight years. He is a registered Independent and sleeps with one eye always open.

More info on Joe can be found at joesyellowpad.com

Poem of the Month August 2024

Our Poem of the Month for August 2024

 

LET TIDES BECOME MY ENEMY

By Michael McAfee

 

Let tides become my enemy, and Artemis my nemesis

Eclipses, crescents, seas and rilles, all targets of my jealous wrath

And months no longer time define, nor ebbs nor cycles regulate

Let wild dogs now howl in vain upon some other orb at night

 

For cruel Fate, without my leave, decided I was too alone

Sent love to whisper soothing words across my pale and barren heart

Yes, I said cruel, for even though my passion pulled my love to me

Another planet pulled at her more strongly than I ever could

 

So curses on the pioneers that landed on pale Selene

And curses on the industries that sent their workers brave and skilled

And curses on the engineers who made the voyage safe and sure

Yes, curses on them one and all, for through them Fate took her away

 

So now I have a lofty goal that will forever drive me on

To venture to her cratered face, so I may crush it, smooth and flat

Thus ravaged, withered, overthrown, she’ll orbit for eternity

To show to future paramours how bleak their futures are to be

 

 

Michael McAfee, a resident of Millis, MA, has been writing poetry since he was five years old, but really didn't do much with it until he self-published his collection "Tarot Poems" in 2016.  Along the way, he's written quite a few scripts, both for audio theater and community theater productions.  Professionally, he's a software quality assurance engineer, and extrovertedly enjoys talking about projects (anyone's, really, not just his).  He sends a hearty thank you to everyone who's enjoyed his work so far.

Poem of the Month July 2024

So frugal 

by Eve Rivah

 

      he said,
You could stretch Washington’s face to a grin
I scoured thrift shops and yard sales 
for all that was needed or desired

never been a slap-dash sort of person
more of a one foot in front of the other
in a slow but not quite meticulous way

he thought I spun straw to gold
inspected my wheel
lanolin imbrued nary a hint of gold

he’s gone now 
my scattered thoughts can’t wind him back
can’t breathe life into bones
long turned to dust

yet still I talk 
of what I’ve done
what he missed
but it’s me that’s missing

my cardinal sin of want that can’t be 
he no longer a young man
not a photo fading to ash

 

 

Eve Rifkah is a poet of history and myth. She earned her MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She was co-founder of Poetry Oasis, Inc. (1998-2012), a non-profit poetry association dedicated to education and promoting local poets. Founder, and editor of DINER, a literary magazine. She is the 2021 recipient of the Stanley Kunitz award. Presently Rifkah teaches courses on poetry at Worcester Institute for Senior Education (WISE). She is author of One Kid: a Telling, a memoir of early childhood, Dear Suzanne, a biography in verse of artist Suzanne Valadon 1865-1938, Outcasts: the Penikese Leper Hospital 1905-1921, a documentary in verse, Lost in Sight poems dealing with fact and fiction, art, myth, and history.
and chapbooks, Scar Tissue, a biography of Corrine Kamiel,  At the Leprosarium 2003 winner of the Revelever Chapbook Contest. A play, Outcasts the Lepers of Penikese Island, based on her first book, was performed at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, NY and again at the Vineyard Playhouse, Martha’s Vineyard August, 2023.

www.eve-rifkah.com


 

Poem of the Month - June 2024

Our Poem of the Month for June 2024

 

Flame

by Tony Fulginiti

Your womb is the color

Of light blue in the morning,

That shakes off the night.

We caress your belly,

Mound of life,

Ballooning toward resolution,

Tethered to liquid fire.

 

Anthony Fulginiti: 

I have been writing, beginning in my teens, short fiction, journal, poetry. I was initially published, cited for an Honorable Mention poem in the Worcester Review 1973-74, Worcester County Poetry Contest.. I was encouraged and continue to write poetry, mostly, although I have had short fiction pieces and poetry published in Worcester Magazine. I published poems in the Diner, a local literary journal, The Sahara, also poetry and  as one of the Rain Poets selected in 2022.  The Issue was an occasional poetry publication, by the Worcester County Poetry Association . 

I think the last time I gave a poetry reading was at Nick's Bar, hosted by David McPherson.

I was into poetry slamming 30 years ago in 1993. A workshop at the Worcester Art Museum invited  Patti Smith, national poet slam champion. She lit the fire in me and I 'slammed around,' mostly Worcester. I was on the first Worcester Poetry Slam Team, in 1993 which went out to San Francisco for the National Poetry Slam competition .We went to a few venues in San Francisco; I think one of them was called 'The BrainWash Cafe'. We lost to LA in the first or second round.

I have a BA English at Worcester State University and most recently been in a graduate course, Writing Fiction. At the Worcester Art Museum I probably participated in over 20-25 writing workshops. I was generously funded with scholarship money to participate in many of the workshops.

I hosted the Coney Island Hot Dog Poetry Series in the mid nineties, following a return from the National Poetry Slam. I am a bibliophile and always read novels, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, essayists mostly in the political realm.

Poem of the Month - May, 2024

Poem of the Month for May 2024

As It Is

by Mark Wagner

 

The moment just after you wiggled

Through the womb into the world

Your mother cradled your fragile skull.

 

Your skin still wet from the waters

Held to her, before fear and surprise

Before anyone had said your name

Or sullied time with their longing.

 

There was only love and the light

Called for you to open your eyes,

To forget the pain that came before

And begin to love the world as it is.

 

Mark Wagner is an educator and writer who has published two books of poetry -- A Cabin in a Field (2001) and Homebuilding (2011). 

Poem of the Month: April 2024 - On Seeing Your Children Praying

On Seeing Your Children Praying

by Oliver de la Paz

 

If there is a way to tell them about heaven

tell them without the flourishes. No one

is ever bewitched. No one ever finds food

in dry places. There are deserts and deserts

of fact parching throats. If there is a way

to tell them. Say it as though there are flames

agitating the sides of the barn. Say it

to the bones arranged on the plate. Each

stone has its dream of green field.

Each field is full of your sober friends.

Tell them smoke fills their mouths, that

the house is on stilts made of matches.

Everyday, no one loves this theater of

confused gods, no one loves the fuse

though someone falls in love in libraries

everyday and that we never need apologize.

 

Oliver de la Paz is the author and editor of seven books. His latest collection of poetry, The Diaspora Sonnets, was published by Liveright Press (2023). In 2023 he was appointed as the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA. He is a founding member of Kundiman and he teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at PLU.

Poem of the Month - March 2024

Poem of the Month for March, 2024

 

Orthogonals

by Gale Eaton

 

Turbines line up offshore

straight as desks in a classroom,

white as headstones in a

military cemetery.

Extraterrestrial beings

far from earth orbit

might spot them as artefacts on

a planet where natural right angles

are usually fool’s gold.

We imagine alien

intelligences as bipeds, while

whatever intelligences inhabit

the ocean must imagine

extrathalassic beings as

something else:

less intelligent, or

aesthetically challenged.

Burdened by rectangular

obsessions and unable to

camouflage ourselves in

the curves of a good

environment.

 

 

Maine native Gale Eaton won poetry prizes in the 1960s, continued to write while a children’s librarian in Massachusetts, and lost the thread during an academic career. As assistant director and then director of the University of Rhode Island library school, she helped set up satellite courses for Worcester students. Since her 2012 retirement she has published four volumes of nonfiction and (with a sense of homecoming) returned to writing poetry.

Poem of the Month - February 2024

 

Poem of the Month for February, 2024

On the Common

by Judith O'Connell Hoyer

 

He was idling there, as if it were a desert island,

no ship on the horizon come to save him,

not a soul to spot his distress,

just traffic whooshing by on Franklin Street.

Hello, Mr. Prendergast, I said.

But his mind had gone soft with the weight of memory.

I knew him from the Belmont Home for Men

where I worked that summer as a nurse’s aide.

When day died down, he’d sink into a seat on the # 24

that still runs along Belmont Street, a street stacked

with three-deckers like volumes of old history books.

He’d step off at Green Hill, walk to that place where

the side door was never locked, where no one asked

what he’d been up to, where he could count on 3 square meals,

a clean cot, his US Army Air Force blanket unraveling

at the foot, and meds dispensed at the nurses’ station

where I once watched his nightmare unfold

somewhere over the Pacific. He was shaking and sweating,

mimicking the rat-a-tat-tat of a machine gun

pressed against his cheek, face down in the tail of a B-29.

Today I walk through those public acres behind

Worcester City Hall, see a younger Mr. Prendergast

killing time on a bench by himself, with looks a girl

would have gone for before some other war came along.

 

Judith was raised in Worcester and lives in Wayland, Massachusetts. She is a retired  school psychologist whose full-length poetry collection, “Imagine That” was published by FutureCycle Press in February 2023. Her poems have appeared in journals that include the Atlanta Review, CALYX Magazine, Cider Press Review, Tar River Review, The Lake (UK), Southwest Review, The Moth Magazine (IRE) and The Worcester Review.

Poem of the Month January 2024

Our Poem of the Month for January 2024:

 

Once upon a time in Paris
By Daniel Letona

 

Those colors, dessert for my eyes,

I wanted French words with lots of vowels like "oh la la,"

So my voice could wave like the ocean hitting shore,

Like the function collapsing into a particle,

I wanted sounds, YELLOW,

Like Icarus' excitement before the fall.

Like Elton's Bridge Road,

Like fields of sunflowers with ORANGE skies,

Those colors merging like clouds,

Textured like cotton candy, wrapped around my mind.

I felt all the possibilities,

I was both dead and alive,

I was Schrödinger's Adam with an apple,

Emerging into consciousness, no longer a probability.

I exist and I'm the observer,

I'm Rodin's Thinker, bridging my soul with poetry,

I'm living love through hell,

Because life is finding peace in loss.

That Charcoal, the calm after the storm,

The tears almost of joy,

The warmth and comfort of the ashes,

The longing for the life that was, that will never be,

The windmills fighting my sanity,

The burning desire for freedom.

The blending of colors and feelings,

The swirling of time,

My NOW moving like thought dunes,

The awareness that dulls the "je ne sais quoi" of life,

Like some sort of self-plucking in mid-air.

The white feathers across the skies, following my fall,

Spinning towards flashing orbs,

Leaving me with the joy of almost touching the sun.

 

 

Daniel Letona:
I was born and raised in a small city in Honduras named Comayagua. Moved to Massachusetts to be a Software Developer after college. I enjoy re experiencing life through writing specially metaphors.

Poem of the Month Dec 2023

Our Poem of the Month for December 2023:

City Hall

by Judith O'Connell Hoyer

 

 

My parents met in this building,

its marble corridors noisy

with people in pursuit of answers,

oak-paneled chambers

presided over by a popular mayor,

ceilings that leak and paint that flakes.

Silver sings in his trousers’ pocket

as he takes the stairs two at a time.

Ominous news of the world rolled under his arm.

Her head a good mess of auburn curls,

her blue handknit spritzed with rain.

A mutual friend sees them and says,

I don’t believe you’ve met.

No chance for him to crush a smoke

or run a pocket comb through his hair.

No escape for her to apply fresh red to her lips

or straighten the seams in her stockings.

There is everything in this brief encounter:

thrilling thunder, dripping umbrella,

slippery mosaic tile, smell of damp wool.

Suddenly sun rests its chin on the windowsills,

and it’s time to head out under the tower’s giant clock,

its gilded needles casting-on stitches for a story that begins

in Worcester, Massachusetts, April 1938. Before the war.

 

 

Judith was raised in Worcester and lives in Wayland, Massachusetts. She is a retired  school psychologist whose full-length poetry collection, “Imagine That” was published by FutureCycle Press in February 2023. Her poems have appeared in journals that include the Atlanta Review, CALYX Magazine, Cider Press Review, Tar River Review, The Lake (UK), Southwest Review, The Moth Magazine (IRE) and The Worcester Review.

Poem of the Month - November 2023

Our Poem of the Month for November 2023:

After Your Illness You Bake Bread
by Susan Roney-O’Brien

 

Dark rye, the kind we used to buy

in Brookline bakeries, the smell

rich with caraway, the loaf

still warm. You crave sauerkraut,

Swiss, corned beef, Russian dressing

a Reuben for your first meal in days.

We live in the middle of nowhere

It’s eleven at night and even though

I‘m willing to drive three towns away

for the makings, you dismiss the thought,

say you’ll save sandwich dreams

for tomorrow’s lunch. You wake early,

a fever of 102, body aches, screaming

joints. I bring up toast and tea. Rye toast

from the bread you baked yesterday

between Covid and this new sickness.

Reuben will have to wait; I’m afraid

to leave you. I carry your cup

to the sink. While you sleep,

I walk the dog, feed and water

the hens, start soup from bones

pick them clean. You call for me.

Your sheets are soaked. So when

are you going out for corned beef?

 

Susan Roney-O’Brien curates a monthly poetry venue, is part of 4 X 4, a group of visual artists and poets and works in programming for the Worcester County Poetry Association. Her poetry has been published widely, translated into Braille and Mandarin and nominated for many Pushcart Prizes. She won the 2020 Stanley Kunitz Medal in Poetry. Publications include chapbooks: Farmwife, the winner of the William and Kingman Page Poetry Book Award, and Earth (Cat Rock Press). Word Poetry published Legacy of the Lost World in 2016. Kelsay Books published Bone Circle, in 2018 and Thira in April, 2020.

Poem of the Month - October 2023

Our Poem of the Month for October 2023:

Prayer Can Be Anything

By Karen Elizabeth Sharpe

Prayer can be a pile 

of roadside stones, beseeching.

The quicksand sorrow invokes. 

The hemlock across the lake, 

supplicant in thin-needled halo light. 

It doesn’t have to be 

text, wafer, or baptism, 

two hands pressed, rosary clicking. 

Witness silver morning light 

polish the empyrean sky,

the great blue heron 

keyholing the elaborate blue,

the near perfect rumor 

of waning snow,

the surety of this late winter light, 

however stretched and thin.

 

Karen Elizabeth Sharpe is the author of Prayer Can Be Anything and This Late Afternoon. She is a poetry editor at the Worcester Review, and her poems have appeared in Columbia Journal, West Trade Review, Mom Egg Review, Catalyst, Mason Street Review and other literary journals and anthologies. Karen has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  www.karenelizabethsharpe.com