Poetry

  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...

United They Fall Exhausted armies cling to noble trees along the margin of a meadow mown two weeks ago.  It's fifty-five degrees, and summer's long campaign is at an end, the bugles stilled, except...

Ah, now comes the mellow season, Marks its time with jackdaws caws. Autumn with its rusty reason Offers forth its season’s laws. Now no more the pretty laces, Florals found along the way. Brackish...

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...

  For Elizabeth La Cienega slept on a muted afternoon At old Las Golodrinas, when I spied a nest Of swallows beneath the age-worn latias, hewn By a hand that is gone with the days that were...

  So delicate at first, the music swells And fills with brilliance of a dawning sun Each listener and cracks the callused shells The world has formed around our heart. And none Remain unmoved as...

  An acrobat named Larry Loops was best among all circus troupes, But he quit one day and was heard to say, “My boss made me jump all those hoops!”   There once was a man from...

In his bedsitter years, he was alone And all his dreams were haunted by some girl More wonderful than any precious stone Who’d bring fulfilment to his empty world. The loneliness pressed on him, dense...

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...

Death Is the Cooling Night by Heinrich Heine Death is the cooling night, Life is the sultry day, But now darkness settles And I long for respite. Outside my window looms a tree; In it sings the...

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...

a Petrarchan sonnet Life’s hills have been trampled since first we met, That mad, magic moment long years ago, When your smile lit fires in the candle’s glow And trapped me forever in Venus’...

—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...

  Pure of any mortal mote ___and boundless (but for sight): The deep dry sky of Autumn ___inscribes the shadows bright. (For what could dusty leaves conceal ___from such an endless eye? What...

  The butterfly, the sea anemone, And snowflake, though possessive of the true Design of grace and perfect symmetry, Seem crude and ugly when compared to you. The stars that line the deep, black...

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...

Painted, woody there it stands, this door behind which kingdom fans. Bright with order, calm with ease, a wooden plank with hidden seas. A plight to pick which path is best, the fallen stairs or the...

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...

Woman: Why choose the red dress, dear? Reply: To me it's really white, To you it should be clear, Mood sets a color right!   Boy: Are you playing handball? Reply: No! In fact it's...

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...

I. I’ve awed at the Atlantic’s bluest depths, and peered at the Pacific’s deepest blues; the warm blue summer waters of Key West, and cold blue winter on the Charles, too. I’ve watched the moon...

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...

Ye boundless vaults of heaven without an end, __Thy silvery fields of azure stars unfold Above the earth, and verdurous spruces bend __Toward the western halls of mellow gold; There, through their...

I Taught a Lesson to My Toes I taught a lesson to my toes, They’d overstepped the mark, Escaping time and time again From nylon prisons dark. I warned them of the consequence Should they destroy more...

a rondeau Cape Disappointment, battered and distressed, Besieged, beset, by brute-force waves hard-pressed As broad and deep Columbia collides With Chinook-whipped Pacific Ocean tides— Leviathans...

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...

. Written: March 27, 2022 A Wedding Sonnet To those true cultivators of Zhen Shen Ren,* There is no common form we cannot take: The vows of love said by the finest men Know of no finer sound than what we...

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...

A Life Well Lived a rondeau A life well-lived begins and ends surrounded by the love of friends. The air breathed in and out each lung are signals that songs should be sung, for life’s a blessing God...

  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...