Poetry

. Ottawa Ho! In the days of yore, it is written, All the dreamers would dream of the sea. __But the sailor’s way __Has become passé— It’s the trucker’s life for me! How I long for the open...

. Those Who Go Down to the Sea in Ships a poetic paraphrase of Psalm 107:23-30 The men who go down to the sea in their ships, Who sail on the water and pursue their trade, The sound of the sea echoes back from...

. Abortion “My body, my choice” All her life that seemed best, And especially where There was rape or incest. But as early as twelve weeks A fetus feels pain, And in just eight weeks’ time Facial...

. Missed Call O Muse, would you call back another time? My little boy, armed with a sharpened stick, winged with a blanket, sure that he can fly, is leaping off the countertop to try things unattempted yet in...

The Best Poems of 2021: Winners of the 10th Annual International SCP Poetry Competition JudgesJoseph S. SalemiJames SaleEvan Mantyk Past First Place Winners Susan Jarvis Bryant (2020)Joseph Charles MacKenzie...

. First Place ($200 Prize) Alex Rubstein, 12th grade, homeschooled, Canton Aargau, Switzerland "Civis Romanus Sum" . Second Place Ellie Strano, 9th grade student homeschooled in Lexington,...

. Judges Margaret Coats Evan Mantyk . First Place ($100) Talbot Hook, Connecticut "Mourning the Dead" by Li Qingzhao; "Bamboo-Grove Pavilion" by Wang Wei . Second Place Joseph Greene, California "Solitude"...

. Plum Blossom Blessings The pine, bamboo, and plum are winter’s friends, Yet plum trees bloom to overcome the chill And herald spring. Resilient health extends Throughout my struggling mind and body...

. Starbucks Villanelle Will someone call an order for Elaine? I have a bunch of stuff I need to do. The wait today is driving me insane. This one dude wants a pinch of sugar cane. I can’t believe he’s...

. The 10 Best Love Poems of 2021 What makes a great love poem? Love is such an emotionally charged topic that the answers to that question are going to vary tremendously depending on who you ask. But all the...

. The Blood of Revolution  The blood of revolution fills my veins; Of those who fought to sever tyrant’s chains, Of those whose voice of freedom wasn’t kept Silent as enslavèd justice wept. Of mothers...

. Tel Shikmona Mosaics here surprise: you wouldn’t know, tramping on thistles, dry late-summer stubble and tripping over rubble, stumbling, slow, that this rough trail leads to the long-ago till...

. My Mother’s Eyes We took a ride into the countryside to search for bluebells but we first saw phlox. Delighted by the sight my mother cried, “Look at the flowers flutter on the rocks! Look at the...

. Sir Percival A quiet desperation lives within my soul: to find the Holy Cup, the Grail; to touch something beyond this mortal pen, and taste my God, His blood, from Cross’s nail. I am not worthy, this I...

. Solitude by Wilhelm Müller (1794-1827) | from German by Joseph Greene As when a cloud is darkened And drifts through sunlit sky, While through the many treetops An icy breeze does fly: As such I make my...

. Never Again Never again, beneath the sun Would mortal beings come undone. A pledge arose and soared on high--- It warmed the heart and lit the sky The day the force for freedom won. Yet now cruel camps with...

. Bach in Heidelberg for Marjorie Bach’s chorus didn’t leave us much to say After the Easter Monday concert in The Holy Spirit Church. Taking our way Over the Old Bridge seemed like we’d just...

. You Are Too Far from Me Send me your love for I’ve nothing to write,And my words are vacant or ugly---I slept through the morning, I raved out the night,And you are too far from me. I feel the entropy...

. The Attempt to Curse J.K. Rowling Once upon a time the stars aligned To strike a writer bound for King’s Cross Station As if by magic with this happy thought: Suppose a boy to his surprise should find He...

. The Demons of the Night All since she left me I have lived in fear Of creatures dwelling in the shadows here, And all around and pressing into me With pallid faces I can scarcely see. For they are hooded...

. The Two Corteges by Joséphin Soulary (1815-1891) | translated from French by Hadyn Adams Within a church two groups of people met: An infant’s funeral cortege, the first: A woman followed, her heart fit...

. On the Cost of Doing Evil I care not if the sky burns red and human flesh is seared. I pray that all souls will just rot as many long have feared. I wait for when the birds don’t fly and locusts take the...

. Toasting Burns    His words ring out from windswept glens. __They lilt from lapping lochs. I see love through his red-rose lens; __I hear the midnight clocks In castle nooks chime Auld Lang Syne __As...

. Dystopia Reality is never what it seems To be.  It hides itself in shrouds of mist, In bulging envelopes of gilded dreams, In requisite pronations of the wrist That guides the palsied hand that holds the...

. Mourning the Dead by Li Qingzhao, Southern Song (1084-1155) | from Chinese by Talbot Hook Above in the heavens the star-river flows; Down on the earth the curtains hang low. As the air grows chill, and my...

. The High Cost of Low Prices Poetry is what I treasure. Books of poems give me pleasure, but my grief’s been hard to measure, since I did some shopping. “50 Famous Poems”---nifty! Now on sale for just...

. The Joys of Spring a pantoum It’s here—sweet long-awaited spring. New blooms smell lovely; skies are blue. The trilling birds are on the wing. Earth has awakened; life is new. New blooms smell lovely;...

. Disambiguation As in the dawn the nature of the beams Of light invading chambers---how they glint, Conceal with shade, or paint with rosy tint--- Reveals the day, not as it is but seems, So, in the natal...

. To Tchaikovsky by A.N. Apukhtin (1840-1893) | Translated from Russian by Olga Dumer With my musician friend’s departure A minor key pervades my lines. Yet, like a fugue’s evolving texture, Old...

. The English Cantos: StairWell Canto 4 Leaving a broken relationship of the past behind in Canto 3, the poet enters a new world of education and what that means. Before entering a specific establishment, the...

. Rescuing Contemporary Poetry from Vers Libre The conservative & informal vs. the free Before addressing my thesis, let me explain my choice of the word conservative in identifying a category of poetry,...

. The Heroes of Beijing on the Jan. 21 movie premiere of Unsilenced, just days before the Beijing Winter Olympics As great as it may be to send those hockey Pucks on icy wisps of air into A net as sweet as...

. Apocalypse The fractured sky splits, flaming at the edge— The earth heaves upwards in explosive wrath. No eye can bear the clay-caked risen dead Sleepwalking through the streets in blackened shrouds. The...

. To Sleep, to Sleep by Friedrich Hebbel | translated from German by Sean Thompson To sleep, to sleep and only sleep And never wake and have no dreams! The bitter woes that made me weep but half-remembered...

. Self-Exile "Parue—nec inuideo—sine me, liber, ibis in urbem.” —Ovid While driving underneath I had to pray: the tunnel, God, had better not cave in— as if New York could make the earth obey. My...

. Black and Red Within a latent, pathless peak, A mountain’s womb begins to leak The flicker of a fervent hue, When primal mantles stir a brew. This billow turns into a cloud That sprinkles as a stony...

. O, Brother Surveillance permeates us now,__George Orwell saw it coming.Stamped social credits mark our brow,__the cityscape is humming, The virus hum, the wifi hum,__a background, humdrum silence,Something...

. The Winter Games Go On Although detainees must sleep in cramped cells on cement floors, and though they must wear shackles with their numbered uniforms, and though repression crosses Xinjiang’s pale...

. Lockdown The day sprawls wider than a yawn, a mouth that sucks a ticking clock, a door that lets the wind blow in, but no one comes to lift their fist and knock. The rain outside is free to run and fall and...

. Sonnetized “Why poetry?” My chair leans in his chair And slides me a sabbatical-swelled smirk. The past nine months I’d shouldered all his share So he could spend his patriarchal perk In penning pap...