Sharon Perkins Ackerman holds an M.Ed from the University of Virginia. Her poems have appeared in the Southern Humanities Review, Atlanta Review, Appalachian Places, Kestrel, Meridian, Broad River Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Salvation South, and others. Her second poetry collection “A Legacy of Birds” is available on Amazon and her third collection “Sweeping the Porch”(Pine Row Press) will be published early 2026.
At times I almost convinced myself the Whitman photograph, signed, would be mine, instead of the Longfellow which hangs in the big room in airs chilly and wintry, night falling, as I listen for nonchalant Walt to appear. How the thought cheers me, singing still, for I called Nin’s father, “Dad,” seeing him rise up singing arumph arumph in his bass-o-roar-re-o: Whitman? Sure, he said. He was parceling things in a manner to appear partial to his son-in-law, yours truly, whose mine I learned not to shout, begetting such failures falling, even though another … Continue reading Shub’s Sestina for his Father-in-Law by Shelby Stephenson→
What’s Worthy “A man is only as good as his word,” my father used to say and I’ve tried to live up to that—even now I hate telling the smallest, inconsequential lie. In a scene from How Green Was My Valley one of the coalminer’s sons says to his coalminer father “If manners prevent us from speaking the truth, then we will be without manners” and I like to think my days of being without has been bountiful, despite some missteps my father must have committed too. On the whole, my father would have been … Continue reading What’s Worthy and Hue, 2 poems by Tim Suermondt→
which birds are out? you can count on your favorite ones, usually some finches here—-they arrive all-colored by the thicket from other people’s timbered properties & short-lived playgrounds, when it will smell like honeysuckle, you can count on that Colin Webb is a native of Baltimore, Md. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in White Wall Review, Apeiron Review, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, The Northern Virginia Review, and elsewhere, and he has been a finalist for The Arch Street Prize. Follow us!
I don’t know why this simple apparatus makes me smile. After months of scooping out lemon rinds and soggy granola with bare hands, there’s something sweet about the soft buzz of a motor mushing up the day’s drudgeries. It’s a mind, body, spirit kind of thing, don’t you think? I mean, when another active shooter splatters our headlines red and migrants get stored in cages while the planet sizzles and viruses roam the earth a garbage disposal seems to have an odd way of leveling the playing field. Barbara Conrad is author of three poetry … Continue reading New Garbage Disposal by Barbara Conrad→
From a distance I saw a frog, standing like a soldier in a field of summer grass. Up close, the creature looked alive. My curious dog sniffed its warty behind. I, too, touched its stiff and tailless end with the blunt unfeeling tip of my white summer sneaker. Later, we found another: the stretched-out skin of its helmeted head, arched above its shoulders round; its fore and hind legs spread, poised like a soldier for action. Closer inspection showed death: a flat black disc of missing eye and fat, red tongue in locked jaw … Continue reading Blunt Force by Lisa Low→
Doña Chuy For my grandmother, after her favorite song, Solamente una Vez. You were never one for sitting down. And long after it did not work out, you showed who could wear the pants better and built a house. Your hairdresser’s eye arranged an enclosed patio with a lemon tree as its centerpiece. Is this the huerto in which your hope glittered so many years later? A clock of citrus suns by which to measure his ill-timed return. And when the church bells sing in the plaza, you will them to be as faint as … Continue reading Doña Chuy and How I Remember “Inti” is the Kichwa Word for Sun, 2 poems by Eric Odynocki→
Locusts One day I’ll hear you are dead. It will come from some benevolent phone tree or on the wings of locusts, an army of ill will. They will deafen my ears so I never hear my name from your crooked mouth again. Only the endless circling and whirr of wings wailing like a heart beating itself to death Island Leafing through the journal I found a forgotten flamingo feather scavenged from an island filled with sienna skin skin like yours, skin I still smell in sleep. Considerable light is absorbed In the soft dark … Continue reading Locusts and Island, 2 poems by Linda Laino→
Meet Your Local Poets: Spotlight on Linda Verdery Linda Verdery, a Bremo Bluff, Va. resident, is a career educator with graduate degrees in English and Humanities. As an undergraduate she studied Art History and Painting. Both painter and writer, she is affiliated with the Annie Gould gallery in Gordonsville and a poetry study group in Charlottesville. Say a few words about your connection with poetry and art. Writing poems and making paintings are complementary. I frequently dream in both images and words. I see landscapes as portraits and portraits as landscape. And a still life … Continue reading Meet Your Local Poets: Spotlight on Linda Verdery→
I wondered what it could mean that on my first view of the ocean a dog lay dead in the surf. Bloated and caught on the sand, its black body swelled gently in the come here of waves, its hair an aura around it. No one stirred. Sipping drinks, laughing as though it wasn’t right here, catching the breakers, walking the beach. Why don’t they drag it away? Does nobody see it but me? The tall lap swimmer proclaims at dinner: I saw the dead dog float out to sea. Relieved for us all, … Continue reading All the Things We Do Not See by Megan Atthowe→
In spite of the impending blizzard, my friend and I agree, “Today we have to burn our spiral notebooks.” Those tortured scribbles of our youth haunted our attics like madwomen, voices of the grieving girls we were, maps of the clumsy steps we took. On fire, their beauty took our breath away. Fire turned fear and wound to flaming peonies. Sweat rained. Casting book after book to the fabulous heat, casting off anguish like souls between lives. Fire turning pages in farewell, wavering ash like shirred silk. Suddenly, laughter collapses us, sprung like the spiral … Continue reading Burning the Spiral Notebooks by Irene O’Garden→
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