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Len Krisak, 'A Life'

The streets, albeit not with gold, were paved, The path both broad and even; wide the way And easy, with no uniform to don. By almost nothing was he put upon. Old age had been foreseen, and so he saved, The modicum matched with its rainy day. The sheets were clean, as were the neat clothes worn From bawling babe, to teen, to man, and on. Few were the oaths required to be sworn, And almost nothing…

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Sonnet: Paul Burgess, 'Sea Turtles'

The cruelest welcome party greets their birth. Instead of feeding at a mother’s teat, they’re stretched upon a table for the mirth of birds and crabs that hunger for their meat. No time for toddling, sprinting from the first, the lucky reach a second party where their thinning band of comrades is immersed in pools of creatures glad to eat them rare. The world’s so honest with them from the start…

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Janice D. Soderling, 'Lost Friends'

It’s sad to lose a friend, you know, In bloom of youth, In healthy glow, Full of vigor, ethics, truth. It’s sad to lose that friend. It’s sad to lose a friend of old, His fumbling brain, Old jokes retold, Full of misery, aches and pain. It’s sad to lose that friend. But sadder still to lose a friend To politics, The ugly end. To hate and scorn and fascist tricks. Oh, how I miss that…

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Lindsay McLeod, 'Blind Date'

It’s a roll of the dice it’s the turn of a card makes me feel Jesus Christ it shouldn’t be this hard, to find someone who’s nice and attractive to me but on this carousel I’ve found only… let’s see  Trace was full blown racistI suspected Venus had a penis,Enid was a children’s authorironic, Enid was the meanest, dear Scarlet near insistedwe should hop straight into bedbut I resisted because her…

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Max Gutmann, 'The Self'

The self I love and try to be is fashioned by a deeper me, a me that’s crafted deeper still, where things like impulse, taste, and will derive, a dimly curtained core of which I fathom little more than that I fathom little, and that I will never understand, unfairly blank, unfinely bleak, a dark obstruction as I seek a fuller understanding of the self I am and try to love. ***** Max…

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Sonnets: David M. Katz, 'Two Sonnets for Patrick Stewart, who read Shakespeare online during Covid'

I. You slow it down and speak the speech from home As if admitting no impediments, No infectious thoughts into your room, No intrusions, anxious sentiments, Just cadences of comfort from your couch. As close as that. Yet you are far enough To thwart contamination borne of touch, Random droplets in the air, a cough. Every day I come to sit with you To put this ghastly time and place aside, Inject…

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Resources, updated: 21 formal-only (or nearly so) magazines and presses

An email enquiry that I received about formal-only poetry magazines makes me think I should update my resources list with that focus. Able Muse – US magazine and press; website is not always completely currentAsses of Parnassus – Canada: short, witty, formal poems, snarky is fine, hosted on Tumblr. Blue Unicorn – US: print only; prefers formal but will take other workChained Muse – US: prefers…

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Sonnet variant: Michael R. Burch, 'Once'

for Beth Once when her kisses were fire incarnate and left in their imprint bright lipstick, and flame, when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes, leaving me listlessly sighing her name … Once when her breasts were as pale, as beguiling, as wan rivers of sand shedding heat like a mist, when her words would at times softly, mildly rebuke me all the while as her lips did more wildly…

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Sonnet: Richard Fleming, 'The Attic'

The attic, once unreachable, taboo in childhood, is a temple laid to waste. I climb the ladder, face the overdue clear-out of debris with a mild distaste. A View-Master, kaleidoscope, a kite, a rocking-horse in much need of repair, a reel-to-reel recorder I’d recite poems into as though speaking them ‘on air’. I dust them off, then pack them in a case and glimpse in a chipped mirror on a shelf,…

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Ballade: Gail White, 'After the Opera'

Although we came in hopes to find the most amazing staging yet, the final act still filled the mind with all the trappings of regret. Although the happy lovers met with joyous singing – hers and his – we’ve seen from Carmen to Cosette how sad the ending always is. Why do we cry for womankind, for Tosca on the parapet, for Butterfly, her love declined, for Manon and for Juliet? Haven’t we seen…

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Sonnet: Melissa Balmain, 'Solidarity'

Even my ordinarily blank lawn is flashing this July—no bottle rocket or Catherine wheel could match the pleasant shock it gives me each time a tiny lamp turns on to help a bachelor find a blinding date. The bugs can’t read, of course, about pollution and other woes that might spell dissolution for all their kind, but as they mate and mate I like to think they somehow know what’s looming, deep in…

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Lindsay McLeod, 'Fairytale'

Sweetheart, let me tell ya I don’t need a Cinderella, no coach from lowly pumpkin or fairy godmother will do, Rapunzel’s hair from prison tower,no magic lamp or ring of powerand I don’t agree it’s freedomhaving nothing left to lose, I know that I’m not muchbut if you think that I’m enoughthen we’ll be happy ever after,writing our story me and you we can steer clear of poisoned apples,fight the…

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Susan McLean, 'Mending' - ?

Her cashmere sweater, navy blue, was passed to me when Mother died. Though soft and warm, with little wear, it has a hole that needs repair. Mending it from the other side, I spot another, then a few. I hold the sweater to the light. Small holes shine out like stars at night. From her I learned this homely art,as well as not to toss or wastewhat might be saved. I thread and sewand knot and…

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Sonnet: John Gallas, 'Ascension Sonnet'

you can’t unload the caravan for one lame donkey It’s six a.m. We’re swarming up a drain. Someone up the front knows what we’re doing. Me and Tich are flying up the flueing. Snap! My leg falls off. You can’t complain: you can’t expect an army on the trail of half a dog and sugar-sick to stop and say Oh dear, Goodbye. I squirm and flop along the gutter’s edge. A wizened snail laced up in cobwebs…

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Call for Submissions: 'Extreme Formal Poems II', ed. Beth Houston

From Beth Houston: “I’m writing to let you know that I’ve changed the latest Rhizome Press anthology I’m currently reading for from Extreme Sonnets and Villanelles to Extreme Formal Poems II, and I’ve extended the submission deadline to January 15, 2027. I’m making the change to give more poets the opportunity to be included (by request) and to give me a chance to get the word out. I’ve been…

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RHL, 'R.I.P. the English Girl in the Bahamas'

There was a young girl who married a pirate They boarded a ship called La Mouette. They had a ship’s cat and also a parrot – Well, if not a parrot, a noisy old rooster – And a couple of cabin-boys who called her Mum – And a sea-dog of course, or at least they used to. They dressed up in finery, drank lots of rum… They sailed ever sunwards, and they’re sailing yet. ***** People who move to the…

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R.I.P. Chris O'Carroll, 'Ballynagaul, County Waterford'

A graybeard and a girl walk on this beach. She’s his grandmother; she’s not really here. He stoops for shells and pebbles. His hands reach Across a family’s distances and years. Of her eleven children, three are left — His father and two aunts back in the States. He pockets bits of Ireland, reverent theft Of relics for her blood to venerate. She lost two brothers here, both fishermen Who labored…

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