Poetry

adapted from Babrius, first century A.D., and Jean de La Fontaine, 1621-1695 __At least twelve thousand years (though likely more) Between the wolves and sheep had raged a war, Until the lupine clan convinced the ewes and rams They’d cease their onslaughts on the helpless lambs. The only stipulation to...

  Editing with the OED for Rita Bornstein __Like a mental abattoir, the OED, With brumous exactitude, looms over me As my blue pen prunes my cachaemic prose, Decorticating glut in orderly rows. Excessive eikonology, they say, May work for those who love facetiae And frilly essays built of guipure...

  Abracadabra The written word is magical And not just something clerical. You scratch some marks into the sand; I see the marks and understand What you are thinking in your head Without a single word being said. Like channeling or ESP The thought goes straight from you to me....

  The potato blight and resultant Great Famine struck Ireland from 1845 to 1851. Potato crops didn’t recover until 1852, by which time at least one million people had emigrated to escape poverty and starvation. A further one million people perished during this period. Meanwhile, Australia experienced a gold rush....

  Doris Evelyn Alice Falconer, born April 9, 1922, died August 24, 2004 You taught me the importance of good humour, the gravity of truth and courtesy; to never take for fact a rampant rumour, but make the time to search for honesty. You showed me many wonders gleaned from...

  The Falcon “In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire?” ---William Blake, The Tyger Falcon, falcon, flying high Over pines that scrape the sky, What ingenious deity Has framed your feathers, formed...

  Oh, to helm an angel ship __Adrift in a billowy sea With a specter crew in a sky of blue, __Just the vast beyond and me. Flying the mist like gulls on the wind, __With never a falter or care, On silver sails and vapor trails __To the call...

by Andrew Benson Brown James Sale’s HellWard is the first volume of a planned trilogy entitled The English Cantos. If the quality of the current volume is any indication of the two forthcoming ones, then there is much here for the poetry lover to enjoy, learn from, and look forward...

  a villanelle My heart goes out to those unknown, Whose life by Time’s cruel hand erased, Their ravaged, riven, nameless stone. Shattered, lost, grass o’ergrown, No date to tell when coffin placed. My heart goes out to those unknown. How many winds and rains hath blown, To scourge the...

  Ab Initio Mundi* *ever since the beginning of the world At first the darkness reigned o’er all that was, Until a little point of light emerged. That grew and grew regardless, as it surged Ahead and climbed to greater heights because It was controlled by heaven, on the whole,...

  in memory of my father-in-law, Pietro Lorefice (1938-2020) The bell now tolls, dear Pietro, for this hour When we must bid your faithful soul adieu, And lay to rest that mortal frame we knew, Now spent, like withered grass or faded flower. I knew that you were likely to...

  My marriage failed (they always do.) Emotionally unequipped To work things out without a script, We didn’t try to talk it through. What do I pay that therapist for? You can’t see what emotions mean Until you get them on the screen. We left them on the studio floor....

  When the wokest of folk virtually convoke In a year of elections and riots and fear, Uncle Joe from the basement the Nanny will stoke. He’ll invoke Ms. Kamala as newscasts evoke, “She’s a centrist!” to mask a career racketeer When the wokest of folk virtually convoke. Will Kamala...

. Upon a boat, by ocean bound, Below the sun, upon the sound, The bait, a line, a reel, a fish: Bound for butter, herbs and dish. . . Alec Ream is a writer living in Virginia. His poetic work and creative fiction have been widely published. A member of the...

  Madcapfesto We’ll unlock prison gates and let the inmates saunter out. We’ll tear down wall and rule; we’ll sponsor every lug and lout. We’ll overlook drug smuggling and the trafficking of sex. We’ll hike up workers’ taxes to increase the welfare checks. Equality. Equality. We’re proud to make that...

by Joseph S. Salemi The poetic effusions of some people are so incompetent that they cross the line into unexpected humor, and thereby become valuable. Such is the case with the work of William Topaz McGonagall (1825-1902), whose poetry has been kept in print long since his demise—first, as a...

a villanelle We came together with an open mind No crass intolerance or blinkered view Is it too much to ask us to be kind? The streets in which we children played were lined With generosity, and we all knew We came together with an open mind The teenage dreams...

Winner and Runners-up of The Society of Classical Poets 2020 Haiku Competition Judged by Mike Bryant and Susan Jarvis Bryant See all entrants here.   Thunder-bellied clouds Move slow over heathered hills, Pregnant with June’s rain ---Savannah Leahy, Competition Winner   Sixteen Runners Up   With soft clicks and clucks,...

  A Ditty What happened to the human race? It vanished, friend, without a trace. And what, pray tell, of humankind? You may well seek, but will not find. And finally, humanity? It slipped into insanity.     It’s Coming ... I won’t accept a chip. I will not take...

  dedicated to all those braving injustice in Hong Kong with nobility of spirit Muffled voices, anguished cries, Trampled freedom, published lies, Flouted treaties, threatened fates, Outlawed protests, closed debates; Unveiled changes to the Law, Breaking backs with final straw, Taking rights to speak and pray From the people every...

  Hero of Her Heart On February 9, 2007 Sgt. James J. Regan of the 3rd Battalion 75th U.S. Ranger Regiment was killed on active service in Iraq. Some time after the funeral, Sgt. Regan's fiancee Mary McHugh visited his grave in the Arlington National Cemetery where he was buried...

  Due to a recent government edict, approximately 5 million Australians must wear masks whenever they leave the house. We wear a mask because we’re told That COVID has us in its hold, And if outside we dare appear Without this prophylactic gear Authorities will slap a fine Because we...

  Cotton candy is, yes, is angel hair spun out while merry-go-rounds whirl full-speed with satisfaction fully guaranteed in the local splendor of Blake’s Prairie Fair. Surely the most pageant-magic carnival since ’17, when Carrie Nation broke whiskey bottles, and poor old Bryan spoke silver-tongued on Charles Darwin’s downfall. The...

All poems by Bruce Dale Wise The Prisoners in Manacles by Lu “Reed ABCs” Wei The prisoners in manacles in western China were just on a day out, stated the Chinese ambassador. The picture shows the people kneeling, shaven, wearing blinds. They’re being led to trains by guards—to trains—relaxing binds....

  Oh, When I Think Back Oh, when I think back to those halcyon days, When I believed the possibility That truest love would manifest to me And highest hopes would set the heart ablaze, I looked amidst the heat, and smoke, and haze To find this source of reciprocity,...

  Taj Mahal Built to commemorate a love that died Four hundred years ago, how sad to say She never saw what we can see today. Serenely does its massive bulk preside Above a seeming swamp on every side, The damp is almost palpable, the grey Sky vaunts its marble...

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, by Joseph Lange (1783? / 1789?); as viewed by a Philistine Consider Lange’s well-known portrait Of his in-law, a composer: It’s good, we see, but it requires A scrutiny that’s closer. This fellow couldn’t get a job, Or keep one if he got it. Was he...

  Full Lives, Empty Souls after Ecclesiastes 6 There is an evil I have seen in those who live beneath the sun: A man to whom God gives both wealth and riches, and who knows respect among his peers, whose every room is filled with everything he might desire, yet...

by James A. Tweedie On my most recent visit to England in 2017, I paused to record a number of prominent grave monuments that included poetic tributes to the deceased. Here are the four I found most interesting from the standpoint of poetry. No doubt those of you who live...

  Laocoön To prophesy is not a gift to those So gifted, who can see in subtle signs What is to pass; they bear the double woes Of speaking truth to unbelieving minds And knowing none can thwart the gods’ designs. __With such impotent power upon his heart, __The prophet...

translated by Alan Steinle. Introduction and translation copyright ©2020 by Alan Steinle. Skip Introduction and go to poem.   Introduction Poetry is that which is worth translating. The poem dies when it has no place to go. —Eliot Weinberger My life has been the poem I would have writ, But...

  Rueing Tattoos When young she was drawn to that skin-art taboo of embellishing flesh with a tattoo or two. Now time’s marching on and gravity’s struck, her sweet chickadee is akin to a duck. And that spry butterfly, as blue as the sky, that graced blissful space at the...

  On Consecrated Ground Moses on the Mount; Exodus 3-4 Moshe, a Hebrew truant from His resident Egyptian land Committed crimes with this outcome: His life was now in Pharaoh’s hand. Absconding to a rural place In Midian, he found a mate And then a new trade to embrace: To...

  Tomoko When the Enola Gay dropped ‘Little Boy’, Tomoko---just a little girl herself--- Was robbed of any hope of earthly joy And sentenced to a life upon the shelf, Until, that is, she and two dozen more (The ‘Hiroshima Maidens’, all of whom Were suitably disfigured and, therefore, Fit...

"During the war, the Indian Army evicted Pakistani intruders and succeeded in recapturing Tiger Hill and other posts as a part of ‘Operation Vijay’. Indian soldiers had secured this victory after a three-month conflict that led to a loss of lives from both sides — the Indian side lost nearly...

Golden Gloves My father fought in Golden Gloves. Back then The ring was where you slugged your way to hopes. It was no place for fey, aesthetic men— There’s no nuance on canvas, or the ropes. I asked him, Dad, what does it mean to lace Into someone? He smiled,...

  A Proposal---July 28, 2020 Upon this date in 1794, The French Revolution concluded in gore, As Robespierre’s head hit the blood-stained floor Of Paris’s Place de la Concorde, Leaving poor France worse off than before. Instead of commencing a new revolution, Established on radical, naive solutions That spark civil...

All of the below poems were read on May 31, 2020 at The Society of Classical Poets Symposium, which was held online due to the pandemic. Below are poems from Session II.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRsff4CR7do Bad Move by Rob Crisell The sun is out this afternoon— There’s not a cloud up...

  How Monkeys Came to Be adapted from a Palestinian folktale Monkeys and people once were one. For monkeys had from Adam come. As Adam's sons in every way, Those monkeys looked like us today. Yet by mere happenstance was fated That monkeys from us deviated. A woman once in...

  The Gardener at War Throughout our lives we hustle and we slave __To turn our gardens into magic places __Where beauty at its pinnacle erases Our darkest intimations of the grave; But what mundane reward would ever save __Us from the unavoidable disgraces __Of having fought entire non-human races...