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 Formal & Rhyming Poetry                              with Vera Ignatowitsch

Words as Weapons

 

One day at recess in second grade a kid

who tumbled from the monkey bars yelled “Fuck!”

I’d never heard the word, or if I did

it hadn’t stuck.  The children were thunderstruck.

— This was in the fifties, don’t forget:

The f-bomb was atomic, but TV news

would leave unbleeped a racial epithet

to blaze from coast to coast in interviews. —

An outraged teacher dragged the boy away

to Mr. Armstrong’s office by the ear.

But seeing my classmates galvanized that day

made an unintended lesson clear:

Whatever the rules of etiquette allowed,

a word can make you the center of a crowd.

 

 

Richard Wakefield’s first poetry collection, East of Early Winters (University of Evansville Press), won the Richard Wilbur Award. His second collection, A Vertical Mile (Able Muse Press), was short-listed for the Poets’ Prize. His poem “Petrarch” won the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award.

February

 

Winter. Dark dead days. Anger

sparks out greedily among us.

Each word holds danger

of attack. A man on the bus

 

snaps at the driver, who flings back

a sharp answer. In the office

we crouch like ferrets tracked

by wolves through dead ice.

 

Slowly, a thin strong string pulls

the winter sun back from its solstice.

Careful! The child’s orange ball could miss

and fall into the sea. There’s no stranger

tale than this: to hear the child call,

laughing, two months from a manger.

 

 

Arthur Powers is author of two collections of poetry published by Finishing Line Press, The Book of Jotham, winner of the 2012 Tuscany Novella Prize, and two volumes of short stories set in Brazil: A Hero for the People and Padre Raimundo’s Army.

Li Po on Changping Mountain

 

Because he knew the Tao, Li Po could hold

his hands out and the birds would flutter down

from branches in the nearby trees; would fold

their wings and rest in safety having found

a place that centered heaven’s harmony;

a peaceful haven sending out the call

creation sang—no different from a tree,

roots going down in that which upholds all.

 

 

David W. Landrum’s poetry has appeared widely in journals and anthologies in the US, UK, Canada, and Asia.

Time in Eternity

 

When you were as an angel in my arms,

Had laid your bare head just below my chin,

Your length pressed up to mine, entrusting charms

My whole youth’s starward longing could not win;

With still the murmur of your love in me,

Miracle-tones of all my lifelong hope,

I wished that there might start eternity

And seal forever that sweet envelope;

And as it did, my thoughts are now for you

As every star is blotted by the sun,

And so the sun itself

Has perished too,

And with it, every dream of mine

But one.

​

 

Poems by Tom Merrill have recently appeared in two novels as epigraphs. His latest book, Time in Eternity, can be purchased from Ancient Cypress Press.

A Moment White

 

You lit upon the land one night,

a night of drifting lightness

when earth became, beneath the flight

and fall of superincumbent white,

a lintel for your brightness.

 

You seemed at first, like first love, pure,

too pure for any boot print,

then through a window’s aperture

I saw a rabbit’s telltale spoor:

tri-footprint; jump; tri-footprint.

 

So out I walked and broke a track,

a track through our own Yukon,

where trees were bowed with bended back

and branches seemed about to crack;

I climbed a creek to look on

 

its frozen headwall waterfall,

a fall of pools and plunges;

arrested in a timeless stall,

it hung in air devoid of all

the movement ice expunges.

 

The creekside path was buried deep

by deepness with no bottom:

black waters roiling in their sleep

below the ice panes would not keep

the wintry vows of autumn;

 

the icicles would, tear by tear,

in tears dissolve, transforming

to waterfalls again and spear

the air, and you would disappear

in watersheds of warming.

 

But while you lay by me we two,

a twosome, still and glowing,

were one; your beauty chilled me through—

I wished that I could blanket you

and ease you in your going.

 

 

John Beaton writes metrical poetry. His work has been widely published, won numerous awards, and he recites it in spoken word performance. Raised in the Scottish Highlands, he now lives in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island.

Mere Absence

 

Today’s a day we won’t get back again,

Once gone it’s gone—there is no bringing back.

You may have done your best to seize it then

Just when you think it’s yours your grip goes slack.

For some it’s the feel of running water—

For me more like that ancient myth-turned-dream

In which you’ve chased your love and almost caught her

When she shapeshifts—Ovid’s favorite meme.

You try whatever works to carpe diem

And yet tomorrow fades to yesterday

Moving from the a.m. to the p.m.

Till you yourself will finally blow away

Without a trace, like you were never here.

Mere absence—now there’s a thought that’s queer.

 

 

Donald Carlson lives in Texas. His poems have appeared in The Windhover, The Lost Country, The Pawn Review, Chronicles, and more. His collaborative volume of poetry, with Timothy Donohue and Dennis Patrick Slattery, is Road Frame Window, published by Mandorla Press.

Panhandler

 

She stands on the corner with her sign,

cars grumbling, waiting for the green,

their drivers jittery jays, the line

 

eternal. Visibly unseen,

she eyes their windshields. Now it turns

and all, from van to limousine,

 

tear out as if the city burns.

She clings to her soggy cardboard, blinking

at pellets pelting roadside ferns

 

as cold as her toes. The day is sinking.

More cars pull up with holiday gifts

(no, not for her). Exhaust fumes stinking,

 

belching billows, a Chevy shifts

to second. While others follow after,

she shivers in the swirling drifts,

 

wincing at the blizzard’s laughter.

 

 

Martin Elster, who never misses a beat, is a percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. He finds contentment in long walks in the woods or the city and writing poetry, often alluding to the creatures and plants he encounters.

Minus Ninety-seven

 

Cold enough to freeze the balls

off a pool table. The temp falls,

“wind-chill factor” kicks in, hard,

dog squats before she hits the yard.

“Keeps Out the Riffraff,” our t-shirts say.

(Who dreamed up “wind-chill,” anyway?)

Any ass out in all this weather

deserves three toes and skin like leather.

We snowmobile to jobs and bars,

let our taps drip, plug in our cars,

bundle our kids till they can’t bend over,

curl up with Jim Beam and Russell Stover.

All of this—and the cold still wins.

We’re being punished for our sins

puff the dour preachers stiff with fear.

Well, Armageddon outta here.

 

 

Jane Greer founded and edited Plains Poetry Journal in the 1980s. Her poetry collection, Bathsheba on the Third Day, was published in 1986. Her new collection, Love Like a Conflagration, is looking for a publisher.

Poet Envy

 

Remember, darling, you are no one else.

That constant murmuring inside your head

pours out a stream of story no one tells

but you.  And pretty soon when you are dead

you’ll take it with you, going underground,

a dry bed where there was a river once.

For now, although you aim for sense in sound,

comparatively speaking, you’re a dunce.

 

But never mind.  The smallest seepings flow

together, unimagined and unseen,

and these white pines are sucking far below

to lift the darkness up alive and green.

And nothing is original or new

but you.  There’s ever only one of you.

​

​

​Barbara Loots has been published over five decades in many poetry places. Her collections are Road Trip and Windshift, a finalist for the 2019 Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Excellence.

Blessed

for Brandy Poiry

“If a man knows to do good...”

 

Everywhere but here is hell.

Hips circulate in crimsoned light

to trumpet flares and trombone swells.

I burn through cash like it’s a blight:

whiskey for me, cocktails for friends,

and generous tips for all the staff.

Elsewhere, tonight, a young life ends.

A sax emotes. Our waiter laughs.

I’ll lounge around tomorrow morning,

enrobed in white, peruse the news.

Its details sanitized for story:

Deceased is black. The shooter, blue.

I’ll close the page, step out for air,

return my neighbor’s wave and smile.

But for God’s grace, we’d be elsewhere.

Everywhere but here is hell.

 

 

Richard Porter is co-founder of Pub Hound Press, an independent publisher dedicated to writers from Joplin, Missouri. His work has appeared in The Asses of Parnassus and the occasional bathroom stall.

Lighthearted Verse

Philosophical Investigations

 

I dream of whispers in a distant wood

And search philosophy for life’s design.

Is it myself I have misunderstood?

 

I light a scented stick of sandalwood,

then pour a glass of cheap Australian wine

and dream of whispers in a distant wood.

 

Listen and drink: a solvent livelihood.

Listen and think: the sound is anodyne.

Is it myself I have misunderstood?

 

Of what we cannot speak (like pain) we should

treat silently, said Ludwig Wittgenstein,

before he dreamt of whispers in the wood,

 

of language, loss and loneliness withstood,

of words that seem far more than just a sign.

Was it the self that he misunderstood?

 

Who seeks the beautiful, the true, the good?

Or is it poetry we should decline.

I dream of whispers in a distant wood

It is myself I have misunderstood.

 

 

Conor Kelly is an Irish writer who has had poems published in Irish, British, American, and Canadian magazines. He curates the Twitter site @poemtoday dedicated to the brief poem.

On this page we publish selections of metrical poetry from our contributors. Submit your blank verse, metrical rhyming poems, villanelles, sonnets, and other formal poetry to betterthanstarbucks2@gmail. We love both traditional and experimental forms and subjects, and please do submit limericks and lighthearted verse as well!  Vera Ignatowitsch

A Bibliophile’s Pipe Dream

(After visiting the Cornish National Trust property on its tidal island)

 

St Michael’s Mount commands Mounts Bay –

The castle, that is, I should say,

Which soars above the circling spray.

 

And there old books in leathery rows

Laugh at  the wind-whipped breakers, those

That deal the rocks great thudding blows.

 

Its library has a window-seat,

A situation hard to beat

In winter with a log-fire’s heat . . .

 

To read . . . then wait, all warm within,

For tea and toast and biscuit-tin

Or tonic with a splash of gin  . . .

 

Ah, no! I find to my disgust

Such visions dismally non-plussed:

‘Closed now till spring. The National Trust.’

 

 

Jerome Betts edits Lighten Up Online in Devon. His verse has appeared in Light, The Asses of Parnassus, The New Verse News, Parody, Per Contra, Snakeskin, The Hypertexts, and various anthologies.

The Hyper Texts

“some of the best poetry on the web” Vera Ignatowitsch

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