Poetry

aroundtown poem # 7 I am a legend in this town at least to the kids on the schoolyard next door every year some grimy gap-toothed seven-year-old marches bravely to the fence to inform me that everybody says I am a witch this fall there’s been an exponential leap with safety in numbers a group […]

In this lovely poem by Angela Shaw, who lives in Pennsylvania, we hear a voice of wise counsel: Let the young go, let them do as they will, and admire their grace and beauty as they pass from us into the future. Children in a Field They don’t wade in so much as they are […]

bedroompoem #1 sing a song of dust mites three million plus their poop living in your pillows and feeding off your goop* vacuuming and laundering will cut the numbers down but what’s a million more or less in mattress bedmite town they’re ugly little beasties when magnified to sight but there’s nothing you can do […]

In this poem, which describes a shameful memory, Robert Clarke uses a haiku sequence. The reader might overlook the form because in good poems the form is servant to the idea, providing it an invisible framework. While not strictly haiku — there is no mention of nature or the season — the small vignettes work […]

friendquotepoem # 2 christy says when my family gets together we talk about politics, banned books, movies, but when my husband’s family gets together they talk about cleaning out the septic tank and the main course when it was still alive © Jacqueline Jackson 2005

grandchildpoem # 3 little brother nether naked capers with a spangly scarf I cinderella I cinderella big sister says I don’t think cinderella had a pe-nuss and a pacifier © Jacqueline Jackson 2005

Emily Dickinson said that poems come at the truth at a slant. Here a birdbath and some overturned chairs on a nursing home lawn suggest the frailties of old age. Masterful poems choose the very best words and put them in the very best places, and Michigan poet Rodney Torreson has deftly chosen “ministers” for […]

friendquotepoem #1  my friend takes her morning walk on lake services road she carries sacks and today picked up beer cans pop cans beer bottles plastic bottles plastic straws   pop cups plastic cups coffee cups coffee mugs newspaper gum paper mcdonald’s paper cigarette packs one left sneaker orange and purple adult size and a […]

Rained out game 6-16-2000 All washed up, Du Monde at two in the morning, in cold and wet rain, long faces of table attendants and street performers seeing little hope for late night customer quarters or tips from the storm sopped Quarters empty tables swept of powdered sugar, chicory sits bittering by the minute, tonight […]

Nearly all of us spend too much of our lives thinking about what has happened, or worrying about what’s coming next. Very little can be done about the past and worry is a waste of time. Here the Kentucky poet Wendell Berry gives himself over to nature. The Peace of Wild Things When despair for […]

aroundtownpoem # 6 a gaggle of girls next door in the schoolyard chants we’re not playing we’re not playing we’re not playing we’re not playing which means of course they are © Jacqueline Jackson 2005

Cornfields i sat on a porch in central Illinois my eyes in wonder at the expansive view a sea of cornfields alive in the wind blossoming prospect of abundant yield the acres rolled grand and spacious beyond were horses on grazing hills the moment endless eternity displayed each seed, each stalk talked on the wind […]