Culture

The Ballerina Just before the break of day she woke from dreams of grand jeté and knelt beside her bed to pray. Like a feather, then she rose and slipped into her warm-up clothes to dance in silence...

As yet untouched by any writer’s thought you’re still pristine and perfectly unspoiled. Just like a botox-frozen face that ought to pull and stretch, from life you have recoiled. Expressionless, your...

by Evan Mantyk Where is Homer? The epic poems of the famous Greek bard were the cornerstone of education for young Socrates, Alexander the Great, Roman emperors, William Shakespeare, and every serious...

(poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) The Viacruces del Migrante, migrant caravan, which started out two hundred strong has grown to thousands, and keeps on increasing as it travels north through Mexico, on foot, on...

Birthday Greetings As themes show signs of nature's stay, And time’s propitious dates hold sway, The evidence augurs your bloom, From sculptured years that now have hewn A shapened belle upon a...

Sonnet 201. The Force that Through the Green Fuse Pulls the Poem. Written in the Dylan Thomas Museum, Swansea. July 2017 Oh to be the Poet! Love the words And see them wound around the teeth and tongue, To...

Cherubic laugh; sly, impish grin; Angelic face; wild chimp within. It does not matter; sleep awhile As soft mirth tickles forth a smile. Gray moths will hum a lullaby Of feathery wings, then you and...

by Joseph Charles MacKenzie Read the Selected Poems from Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal online. Purchase the book here. Two arts are beautifully displayed in Helen Palma’s Selected Poems from...

  I woke this day beside the two-way Wye, at peace with wars too often waged inside between the push of how, the pull of why. The river, calm against the ebbing tide, displayed an ease I had not...

by Manfred Dietrich The world is riddled with riddles. Riddling is as old and as ubiquitous as language itself. When God invited Adam to name the beasts and the beauties of creation, he showed that each...

Dark Devil’s Pool, where Spirit of the Tweed __Conceived the first-born of the Tuede clan; __Each maiden fair, and muckle braw each man, __With “Thol and Think” their battle-cry and creed. They built...

“Religion is an opiate of the masses,” So says the Prof. lecturing to his classes. “College used to be a carrier pigeon For this terrible thing called ‘religion.’ Where all were forced to swallow...

by Charles Eager William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in 1770—the same year as gave us Beethoven, Hegel, and Hölderlin—and died at the age of eighty, rich in the knowledge of his...

For John McCain, Ernest C. Brace, & Alexander Solzhenitsyn I season my pen with the sonnet's blood, And do not reason with a moonless sky, Thus, in durance, we hearken to the wry Whisper of words from...

I . The Accused: “Your Honor… And if I were a troubled lad and if indeed I did go bad, it matters not what I've done since? No point in trying to convince when crushed between the iron jaws of...

—from A Gallery of Ethopaths* For those of us who cherish text, There’s anguish in what I’ll say next. The world of letters, by tradition, Was one of grace, style, erudition— A shrine to language...

The Coworker A “need-to-know” it’s called in Personnel and I’m just high enough to need to know she’s going through that quiet hell of watching someone’s life she loves recede. A bit more...

After RFK __I’m named for one about whom Lowell wrote That doom was woven in his veins. In June Of 1968, my father trained To blow-up bridges at an Army base In the Show Me State when news ambushed The...

(All poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) Consumer Rights by Cal Wes Ubideer Accountability, transparency, and search control, consumer advocates are fighting Big-Tech's data hold. For far too long consumers...

by James Sale Wind in the Cave, Finishing Line Press, 2017 Out of Nothing, Shanti Arts Publishing, 2018 Recently in a poetry review of another poet on these pages I commented that the poet had included 33...

Translation by Evan Mantyk "The Ballad of Mulan" was written in the sixth century about a legendary warrior, Hua Mulan, who lived during China’s Northern and Southern dynasties period (420–589...

The Country Club To think about a country club Begun for whisky in a tub, Distilled from fields of golden corn In a town where I was born, For folks to gather, have a blast In golden days, in time long...

Check-Mate by a Pawn for my sons We parry, thrust: This game of wits, Where each pawn must Deflect your hits. My mounted knight Skips overhead, First back, then right; Your knight is dead. But...

Sonnet for a Cosmetic Company Ah Youth! To whom each maiden plights her troth To coax and woo each winsome charm to stay ‘Tis difficult to match your coat to cloth So ill designed and irksome in its...

Lay your hand in mine dear, ___Lay your hand in mine; If you will lay your hand in mine We shall like eager, fruitful vines ___Intertwine: Then I’ll be yours ___And you’ll be mine. Place your lips...

Left to Write It isn't difficult to find __the works the masters left behind, and others too have written verse, __some for the better, some for worse. So can there still be ground to break, __and are...

Her name is like the rain-perfumèd air Of summer on a lost and winsome day: I breathe it and am free of every care, I say it and want nothing more to say. Her name is laden like the honeycomb Whose...

My Wife Is Clad in Cloth From Head to Foot My wife is clad in cloth from head to foot. How deep her eyes, how vast and sane her eyes. As we leave, I drink her clear brown eyes Then she walks behind me by...

  Things shifted for them suddenly From seeing their folks in the morn To mourning their folks in the sea.   Mike Ruskovich lives in Grangeville, Idaho. He taught high school English for...

Three Loves in One We've gathered Love, but only insofar As we have reaped a crop from seeds we've sown. Those hours we cherished our beloved are The most rewarding times we've ever known, Which bears a...

a Petrarchan sonnet Highlighting midnight across darkened skies flies the Supermoon hidden in all of its glory; though sightless and somber, a maker of stories soon reaching its perigee, near us it...

  The best day of your life; a child is born! Start out happy, but get ready to mourn. You'll try to keep them from all of life's danger, "Don't eat that and don't talk to a stranger." You read...

Nobody came today to ask me questions, nor has anyone asked me for anything this afternoon. I have not seen a single graveyard flower In all this merry procession of lights. Forgive me, Master; how...

(All poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) Venezuelan Woes by Lud Wes Caribee As Socialist experiment Venezuela sinks into far greater depths, a plunging country on the brink, Maduro, striving for an orderly...

This villanelle is a tribute to the Rust Belt, and all the communities devastated when corporations close their American plants in pursuit of cheaper labor abroad. Where silhouetted sentinels silently stand...

Musical Comedy or Doggerel for Dilettantes The Sonata Like a Classical sonata, our day opens with a theme, Whether thrown from bed by thunder or lulled softy from a dream. With our breakfast comes a...

Canto 3 is the third canto in the sequence of the English Cantos, the first two of which are available to read on the SCP website. James Sale is attempting in this poem to emulate Dante, and this begins,...

  Please bring the wine cuz I'm flat broke, I couldn't even buy a can of Coke. But once you smell my heart's sweet rose, you'll only wish you were all nose.   Robert Klein Engler lives in...

in tribute to James Sale and in memory of Joe M. Ruggier (1956-2018), who first published this poem in The Eclectic Muse (December 2017) Those Thracian hordes who grabbed your garment’s hem— Were they...

Paradox as Explanatory Paradigm in Norman MacCaig’s ‘Summer Farm’ by Phillip Whidden   Summer Farm Straws like tame lightnings lie about the grass And hang zigzag on hedges.  Green as...