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Sentimental Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch

Victimhood

 

When blizzard, quake, economy

attack and show no lenience,

what does the future want of me?

It’s such an inconvenience.

 

A Surprise Party

 

Everyone turns out for it,

everyone but you.

You never know who might attend.

No, you never do.

They may not know each other,

but ah, they all knew you.

 

Couples Therapy

 

Mild is the blister’s sting

the day you finally burst it

and disinfect the wound.

As for the shoe, you’ve cursed it,

but memory makes you sad

to see it so encrusted.

For years you put it on, and on—

a punishment you trusted.

 

 

Claudia Gary, author of Humor Me, Bikini Buyer’s Remorse, and poems in journals internationally, teaches at The Writer’s Center (writer.org) and elsewhere. Follow @claudiagary. pw.org/content/claudia_gary.

Ball Gone Astray

 

Child, I might tell you

nothing rolls here

            crooked upon the earth—

but I’d as surely in the end

hand you a leaf of truth

            that could outlive a year.

 

And I might well tell you

all turns to bliss

            of love and faith—

that the leaves beneath

which you run will descend

            to a faultless ball;

 

That your several destinies

will make a roll call

            of the utterly blameless—

but I must return to you

this perfect sphere

            of yours in lieu of these.

​

​

Daril Bentley has been a finalist for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award and the New Mexico Book Award for Poetry. He has most recently been published in Journal of the Isles, CircleShow, and The Halcyone Literary Review (Best 64 Poets of 2018.)

Questions

 

Pull me through the clouds,

let me sit with you.

It’s been four years.

I just want more time.

I have so many questions.

Should I take this time

to find out the answers or

should I just sit quietly?

 

What made you take

the heroin that stopped your heart

and shattered my life?

Who sold it to you, this thing that

took our breaths, our words?

 

But if I could sit by you again and

ask, ask . . .

 

I would hold your hand until

it was time to go and . . .

​

​

Susan J. Mitchell’s poetry has been or is forthcoming in Appalachian Journal, Harbinger Asylum, and Epiphanies and Late Realizations of Love Anthology. Her latest book is After the Heroin: A Mother’s Story in Poetry.

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Ann

 

Come to me, Ann,

put on your old brown shoes

button up your coat

close up the house

and come to me, Ann.

 

Suns can rise and set

Catullus said;

that same old wonderful line

comes back

one way or another,

time after time;

we know it to

be true and don't care,

don’t pay it no mind,

share and share alike

that wretched wisdom.

 

The weather changes,

the king dies, the tyrant deposed,

revolution, fire, burning,

the comings and goings,

but we don't care,

not for a moment, not nohow,

for now is our only island,

our rock, our well of hope.

 

Come to me, Ann;

you may as well

leave it all behind,

let it all go and

take your chance;

we can love, can lose,

will lose it all

to the brigand time,

lose it all in the end,

our lives, too,

but for now

take my hand, my heart;

forget the final pitiful loss

of everything and let us

kiss the sacred crown

of flowering May,

make our vows,

and be here now.

 

 

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Bay Area Poets’ Coalition, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired. He once owned a cat that could whistle "Sweet Adeline," use a knife and fork, and killed a postman.

On Planting A Tree

 

All my life I’ve wanted to see a chestnut tree.

The looming giant of the forest

In stories told by old men.

I’ve never seen one.

 

I want to see elm trees again.

I remember a week when I was ten,

They cut down every tree on Elm Street.

Too sick with the Dutch Elm to live.

And left the street lined with stumps

Two or even three feet across.

 

Fifty years later

I have planted a horse chestnut.

It’s small.

There isn’t a horse, and it’s not a chestnut tree.

But someday it will loom over the street,

A displaced giant from a distant forest.

 

 

Bruce McGuffin’s poetry has appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, Parody, and The Asses of Parnassus. His day job involves thinking about radios at a laboratory outside Boston.

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