….1. France. Poppies blooming blood.

Hedged by four sheets strung on wire, my grandparents
spent their wedding night, December 1917:
a New York married-barracks, moans muffled
the night before the men […]

“Lose something every day. Accept the fluster . . .” (Elizabeth Bishop)

Every once in a while I open
one of too-many, tiny

boxes, and there you are,
bright stab of memory: My bra […]

“An artist is said to be original exactly when he takes up the challenge of tradition and makes us see something more than we already knew.” Demetri Porphyrios. Classical Architecture.

I am a fund […]

It’s wrong to feel lucky
when a poplar blooms.
…………Branches spit out slender pinks below low clouds.

In fields here, we find arrowheads.
Ancient whispers on the ridge. One death begs […]

Vigil
Outside the nurses’ station,
third floor east, twilight spreads
its white canopy over
the busy avenue of bright buildings.
Down the hall, an orderly lofts a pale
sheet over a vacant bed.
In the next […]

As a very small child I learned language just like all small children. Only in my case there were some mysterious words that took me years to sort out their true meaning. There were words like Amtrak, lugao, Santo […]

A Taxonomy of Lists by Fred Wilbur     As a youngster, I watched my father slice out-of-date reports whose 8 1/2 x 11″ sheets had blank back sides; the pivoting knife of the p […]

Ahab’s Widow
I wait for him as every whaler’s wife.
I write him letters every day.
I tell him how he grows bigger and stronger.

I tell him of his first words and of his first walk on his own.
I write, […]

It was my granddaughter’s fourth birthday party. I, old lady
with cane, was sitting in the shade on the side, then made my way
cautiously to watch the children hit the piñata with a plastic bat […]

Antonyms for “Affluence”
It is a myth that mice
are impossible to eat.

I see my tuxedo
on another man,

a groom or musician.
It is a myth

that the bride will be thinking
about Queen Vic […]

Sara Biel has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

I Want to Give Him a Chance
Her voice is thin, scrapes and rolls, a dry leaf across the sidewalk.
My fingers grip the phone, […]

Nate Jacob has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

Mourning Doves
Looking back, the choice seems obvious.
A man is given the chance in life
to select from a pantheon of […]

Elizabeth Nowak has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

Dear Mi-Kwon

Before the whole world went mad,
you wrote to ask about my life
in beautiful America. I could not then […]

Zeina Azzam has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

Forgive Me
For lying to the teacher in the school yard
Talking ill of my friend behind her back

For making an excuse to […]

Victoria Korth has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

Mr. Abraham
You would unstick huge floor-to-ceiling windows
with a metal-clawed broom handle,
soak the floor where […]

I’m not squeamish about getting my hands dirty, knees soiled, but I never thought I’d be writing about garden club ladies.

The county Garden Club (founded 1935) recently donated their records to the loc […]

William Prindle has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

Apologizing to Ferlinghetti

You never took
                      the deal
the hand
            Am […]

What man would not look back
when claiming a celestial voice
commanded him to go away from
pleasures of wine, games of chance,
lust, secular music, dance, art, poetry?
The men who deny life’s g […]

feels this way.
Familiar like the abstract
place you grab for
when you’re curled in despair
on your own kitchen floor
begging to go home,
not knowing where you mean.
No matter whose hair and b […]

I have always thought that John Donne’s metaphor of the drawing compass in “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” one of the most ingenious in English poetry. Not simply about two lovers parting, it descr […]