Ars Poetica, Forbidden Fruit by Gary D. Grossman One mile into my daily jog, New Yorker poetry podcast in my ear, hoping for insights and hardware to Sherpa me up poetic Himalayas, and Mary Karr […]

The Radiant Reach of Heat by Ken Holland As if to be human is to seek the warmth of another body, ……………………………………………..skin and the course of blood […]

A Place to Hold Us by Sharon Perkins Ackerman I ready myself to read poetry for a group of graduate students. They’ve had the ingenuity to find an old, abandoned chapel near campus and turn it i […]

Keeping Time and Awake in the Night, 2 poems by Patricia Hemminger Keeping Time The mayfly lives two days, a swallowtail butterfly two weeks. The last generation of monarchs born each year endure for months […]

Ignorance by Michael Penny When I encounter a word I don’t know I check the books and screens. Even after that, there remain words I cannot find the meaning of. Some a […]

The Composer by Anne Whitehouse …………………………for John Kander Music plays in my head, and I listen. Sounds and rhythms, echoes and vibrations. This is how I […]

Equal Opportunity by Claire Scott I just bought an eight-pack of bony Jesuses, an Amazon special, to be sure Jesus remembers this little lamb if I run a red light or ease through a […]

How Pain Matters by Mark Simpson Not thinking about it doesn’t make it go away. Recollection makes sense of it, invents details from the misremembered: as with open carry and its f […]

New Year by Sharon Perkins Ackerman Autumn is officially over, leaves finally cleared, trees naked, winter sky a show of planets that begins early with Venus glazing the western sky. […]

Stealing Japanese Poetry by Robert Harlow Stealing Japanese poetry requires great skill, almost Ninja-like stealth, especially at night when there are so many poets out viewing the […]

Mehr Licht by Sharon Perkins Ackerman If I do a search for poems with the word light in the title, I get 12,600 hits. For dark, I get 6,000. This doesn’t scratch the surface of how many […]

SUCHNESS and DITCH LILIES, 2 poems by Linda Parsons SUCHNESS Unable to find a bait station, the termite guy says Call me when you’ve trimmed all this. I say It’s supposed to be this way, a cot […]

One Moment Along the Food Chain by Marsha Owens This moment demands my attention. Tiny turtles, vulnerable as polar bears, bubble up from their sandy womb, struggle towards light borrowed from the […]

Cafe con Leche by Benjamin Schmitt When you add cream to your coffee there is a moment of storm beneath the surface, the possibility of a sinner planting a kiss on the gates of […]

The Investment by Jacqueline Coleman-Fried My eyes, full of my husband’s body thinning, swelling, sleeping— too full to notice the plant, six feet tall, emerald leaves spl […]

Hansel by Claire Rubin Scott Why does she get all the praise just because she pushed the witch into blood-burning flames it was me who gathered shiny white pebbles glistening […]

It's Done, Beautifully Again by Tim Suermondt Tim Suermondt has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2024 Poetry Contest It’s Done, Beautifully Again My wife, Pui Ying, shows me her […]

The world's ugliest coffee table. Probably made by Martha Stewart in prison by Wayne Bowman OK. Here’s the back story. A couple of years ago, I walked into the living room one Sunday morning, and noticed one of the big pillows my wife and I […]

For Notre Dame by Sian M. Jones An 800-year-old cathedral is burning to the ground. The world is in horror that things, too, can die, though we thought them immune or […]

Before the Ambulance and Dandelion, 2 poems by Dennis Cummings Before the Ambulance I saw him collapse on the trail that divides the golf course, then climbs and looks over the valley crowded with […]