Tag: Poem

Fiona Ritchie Walker

That first summer in the cabin,
my flat belly, you too new

to be fluttering like the wings
in the eaves above us, ready to swirl

en masse across the moonlit sky,
this next generation,

Pipistrelle bats learning to fly.
Night after night I sat, reading, pretending

I wasn’t watching the clock,
wasn’t listening for the last one home.

Fiona Ritchie Walker is a Scottish writer, now based in Bournville, Birmingham. Her poetry and short fiction has been published widely in collections and anthologies, most recently in Amsterdam Quarterly, Postbox Magazine and Magma’s Islands issue.

Sarah Dickenson Snyder

I wish someone had said when I dived
into that well of fear. Where were those
Buddhist monks when I didn’t use the blue sink
in the upstairs bathroom for years after
a thermometer shattered and left numberless
glass slivers and tiny balls of mercury—Death,
a clinging partner, making me walk downstairs
to brush my teeth & stay up all night sometimes
alone with the darkness.

Sarah Dickenson Snyder’s collections include The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), With a Polaroid Camera (2019), and Now These Three Remain (2023). She’s had Best of Net and Pushcart Prize nominations. Recent work is in Rattle, Lily Poetry Review, and RHINO. See more.

Hana Damon-Tollenaere

I think it might be
Too hot to bake cookies but
Let’s try something else let’s
Try taking the night off or
Building a pillow fort or
Unraveling
Thread by thread
The ways our stories might
Have overlapped had
Things gone differently

Hana Damon-Tollenaere was shortlisted in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2023.

Thomas Mixon

There was nothing. On the walk
I unfolded both my arms, but
not a single leaf would touch
my greedy floating ribs. I knew
I carried needs they were against.
I carried needs. They were against
my greedy floating ribs I knew
not a single leaf would touch.
I unfolded both my arms, but
there was nothing on the walk.

Thomas Mixon has poems in miniskirt magazine, Rattle, Radon Journal, and elsewhere. He’s a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee.

Devaki Devay

World bee day, it’s mother’s day,
It’s a blue moon, it’s boba day, it’s national turtle day, it’s a Friday, it’s our anniversary, it’s the day we met, it’s your birthday, it’s your birthday again, it’s twenty years ago
On this day, a picture
On your phone: You were celebrating – God knows what. But still,
Thank God you were.

Devaki Devay is a writer of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. Their work can be found in several literary magazines, including Barren Magazine and Peatsmoke Journal, and has been included in Best Small Fictions 2023. Their debut poetry chapbook, LOOKING IN LIGHT, is out with Bottlecap Press.

Alice Louise Lannon

Today I saw baby geese
and a body

face down on the street.
All the way home I thought

about being lonely. I said
hello to the old man in the lobby;

he told me my legs were lovely,
that my husband had better

watch out.

Alice Louise Lannon is Scottish poet and writer of creative non-fiction, currently living in Vancouver, Canada. She holds an MLitt in Creative Writing from The University of Glasgow. Her publication credits include: Wet Grain, From Glasgow to Saturn, Querencia and Last Stanza Poetry Journal. At the moment, she is working on a book about the sea & storytelling & women’s narratives.

Begüm

in a search of arms, I found pebbles along the way:
unwanted truths that I threw back to the water

you are lonely

or maybe I misheard.
How deep in the forest are we again?
the clouds have gone green since, and the mud,
perpendicular.

Begüm is an aspiring psychologist, who has been writing poetry for a few years now but only recently started to publicise her work. Most of her pieces are inspired by people she loves. She is now working on getting her first poetry book published.