Poem March 2025

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March 2025

The Opal Ring

When I was thirteen, my grandmother gave me an opal ring.

I like to wear it when I dress up to go out.

It is so delicate most people never notice it.

My grandmother whispered, It’s from some old beau.

I wear the ring, her memory, to feel magical.

Three small iridescent stones, a gold band worn thin.

Only when I asked did she whisper her secret.

Did you ever look deeply at the displays of color,

opaque stones holding quiet fire? The band’s worn thin.

The last time you betrayed me I slipped on the ring.

Iridescent means plays of color. So few truly look deeply.

She called me to her room, opened a sacred drawer.

This is the last time you betray me. I slip on the ring,

its blue-green, pink lights so delicate. You never noticed.

In her room, she handed me a velvet-lined box.

My grandmother gave me her opal ring. I was only thirteen.

—Debra Kaufman

Poem February 2025

POEM

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February 2025

The Fog

Some say strong winds and hard rain sing,

but I love the more subtle things:

stillness as mists make frost and dew,

the time between crickets and wren

before the cruel light crawls in

and work takes me away from you.

 

Drunk with sleep but almost aware

that we are more real than dreams,

but much less sure and far more rare.

 

Not cold silence, that’s too extreme

though the loudest leaves go quiet

as fog fills in what we forget.

 

The sun starts showing silhouettes.

Stalled clocks whisper: “Not yet. Not yet.”

— Paul Jones

Poem January 2025

POEM JANUARY 2025

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Still Life

Entering that gallery so many years ago,
I spotted a gem, the perfect fit
for the remaining blank space
on one wall in my living room.

It’s a small piece, really,
to dominate such a large room —
two slender pale yellow vases,
each graced with a modest bouquet
of brilliant orange hibiscus blooms,
set off within an ornate gold frame,
which glistens whether bathed
by the afternoon sun or more simply,
in the reflected light of a nearby lamp.

When I return to my apartment
after dinner, I sometimes amuse myself
by spinning a backstory for the painting:
a peace offering from a contrite beau
who’s wounded his sweetheart,
a birthday gift from a loving daughter
to honor her hard-working single mother.
But always it welcomes me home,
and reminds me I’m still here.

—Martha Golensky

Poem December 2024

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Poem December 2024

Winter Solstice

The sun through branches lights

my face. I look through

my eyelashes: prisms.

I close my eyes,

the field glows

warm carmine.

No snow, no

promise of snow.

A crow bark-laughs.

Another clatters its beak like castanets.

Their chatter perhaps

of pecans aplenty

or the simple mad joy

of being alive

in this moment.

It is easy

to love

what is passing.

Debra Kaufman

Poem November 2024

POEM NOVEMBER 2024

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Great Blue Heron

He looked like an old man hunkered down
in a faded blue overcoat, his collar turned up,
shoulders hunched. He didn’t seem bothered

by the shallow water his feet were covered

by, nor the chill winter air blowing around
his bare pate. But then his narrow head rose

like a periscope, higher and higher — swiveled
in the direction of a hardly perceptible splash.

Slowly, he moved toward the sound on legs
as skinny as walking sticks, to the place where
dinner was served and eaten so fast, any cook

would wonder if he tasted it. It was enough,
however, to restore his quiet contemplations.

Hunger sated, he curled his long neck into its
warm collar, and stood as still as a painting

while the sun sank and the snow moon kept

rising like a white balloon over the darkening
lake, the stark tree branches, and a lone heron
blending, bit by bit, into the blue light of dusk.

Terri Kirby Erickson

Poem

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October 2024

The Doorman at the Washington Hilton

Regal in his red cap and Nehru tunic,

he summons with a silver whistle,

depended from a silver tassel

around his neck,

a taxi for Jacob,

our first-born –

mere minutes to make his train

to Philadelphia, then another

to New York, and the plane

to Dubai, then Zambia.

How can it be that you raise children

for the world and they rush off to it,

places and people you’ll never see.

Is that your son, the doorman asks.

When I am unable to answer,

he tells me of his son, in Iraq,

his fear of the telephone

he can’t bear to answer.

All week, this man has held doors for me,

hailed cabs,

smiled as if he did not have such a son.

    — Joseph Bathanti

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September 2024

Static Apnea

Toes taste water
before it swallows
our bodies.

In a waterfall embrace—
bones brush against
mossy boulders.

Our skin succumbs
to unknown atoms
when the wild decides
where we fall in.

The flow that washed away our sins
is saving someone else by now.

Miles away—
neck deep
in a faith pool,

we hold our breath
to float above
rock bottom.

— Clint Bowman

Clint Bowman’s debut full-length collection of poetry, If Lost, will be published September 5 by Loblolly Press.

Poem August 2024

POEM AUGUST 2024

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Steadfast

A lone tree fell in my woods

But it didn’t hit the ground

Or make that debated sound

It fell into the steadfast embrace

of another tree

With its outstretched branches free

They lean into each other

The broken and the strong

The living and the gone

It’s only with a passing breeze

And a creaking, crying bough

That they make sure we hear them now

    — Kayla Stuhr

Kayla Stuhr is a Scottish visual artist, writer, and award-winning filmmaker.

Poem July 2024

Poem July 2024

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Cicada Rondeau

They don’t so much sing as plead

In their droning sound stampede.

I hope they find the love they need —

Something more than meet-and-breed.

Can that even be with insects —

To have sensations beyond touch?

Do they know joy as well as sex?

They don’t so much.

                              — Paul Jones

Paul Jones is a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of the collection Something Wonderful.

Poem May 2024

Poem May 2024

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Beguiled by the Frailties of Those Who Precede Us

Scrub your face with a vengeance.

Brush your teeth till your gums bleed.

Comb your hair into a pompadour, braid it

into cornrows, buzz cut a flattop with side skirts,

spit-paste that cowlick to your forehead.

That’s how it begins, this becoming who you aren’t.

A twitch or tic or two you may inherit, but the face

in the mirror you recognized only once

before you’re beguiled by the frailties of those who

precede you — your wayward Aunt Amelia,

the lying politician, tongue flickering through his false

teeth, the long-legged temptress slyly sipping a latté

at the corner coffee shop, your scapegrace 

one-eyed Uncle Bill — all of them competing

for your attention, all of them wanting you to become

who they believed they were going to be.

Between intention and action, take a deep breath

and welcome the moment you become who you aren’t.

Slap on Uncle Bill’s black eye patch,

stuff those willful curls under Aunt Amelia’s cloche,

pluck your eyebrows, rouge your cheeks, bleach

those teeth whiter than light: then stare deep into

the reflection behind the mirror: who you’ve become

will trouble you, even if you shut your eyes.  

            — Stephen E. Smith

Stephen E. Smith is a retired professor and the author of seven books of poetry and prose. His memoir The Year We Danced is being released this month by Apprentice House Press.