The Voices Project
Follow us
  • POETRY LIBRARY
  • ABOUT
  • SUBMIT
  • RESOURCES

The Thaw~ By Rich Glinnen

5/25/2021

0 Comments

 
It was as if every married woman in town
Decided simultaneously
That there was no room in their closets
And flung their wedding gowns out their windows,
Where they would billow one last time,
As if young, starved bodies still filled them,
Until landing in mounds between parked cars,
Ridges strewn across lawns,
Clumps gathered on curbs
And the sides of driveways,
 
Like so many lounging homeless
Relishing the thaw,
The feeling returning to their toes,
The promise of spring,
And the waterfalls made of those
Broiled by winter
Rushing down the sewers.

​
Author Bio:
Best of the Net nominee, Rich Glinnen, enjoys bowling, and eating his daughter’s cheeks at his home in Bayside, NY. His work can be read in various print and online journals, as well as on his Tumblr and Instagram pages. His wife calls him Ho-ho.
0 Comments

Lover's Lane~ By JJ Howser-Doty

5/25/2021

0 Comments

 
The two lovers hold hands
Content with the world were they
Happily in their own world the two walked down Lovers Lane
With the lamp lights showing the sidewalk in front of them
The two lovers walk with a confident walk
Their confidence shows with their smiles
The trees on either sides of the walk are jealous
Lover Lane is known for the happiness it brings
With passions so sweet they have a treat
A toast to one another
One that will last a lifetime in Lovers Lane
The treat of love is one that will be cherished
Lovers Lane has done its job
Bringing happy people to be another significant other
Not one like a brother or mother
But one that shows the heart it has been robbed
Of its own breath
Cherished forever and ever
The lovers walk through Lovers Lane


Author Bio:
JJ Howser-Doty love to write for fun and enjoys romance novels and mystery.
0 Comments

The Brook~ By Paula Danes

5/25/2021

0 Comments

 
The swirling dirt settled into her hair, ruffling it,
making her feel dirty and scared, mixing with
moisture from the babbling brook beneath their feet and
the heavy scent of scrub grasses, making the hairs on her bare arms
stand at attention. He stood in front of her, Cheshire smirk on
his face, peacock dancing, daring, cajoling, as his partners in crime chanted
cheers, jeers, encouragement, threats.
Sweat trickled down her back, adrenaline shot along nerves. Shoving her to
the hard ground had been enough, but striking hard one young
sister’s face, lip now cracked and bloody, knocking the other into the
rough-hewn wooden pole edging the small babbling brook’s bridge,
that had been too much. Copying him, she danced. He swung his meaty hand
once, and she ducked, fear fueling her movements like a marionette
jerking to a higher power’s plan. She swung, her foot almost sliding on
slick wooden bridge. Why had she let him force her there? If they fell…
concussions? He parried, lunged, toying with her. Unprepared for possible
defeat, she blazed with both hands, pounding his face again and again--
his bloodied nose, his swollen chin. Finally, eyes blurred, vacillating between
crossed and straight, he retreated, slipping, righting himself, face contorted,
“Damned she devil.” Ten years old, she won the only fight of her life,
but all she felt was abject misery, an adrenaline hangover, and fear she and her
contender would meet again. But, he and his cronies abandoned the playground,
Never to return that summer.
 
Fifty years later, in a grocery store bullets slam, ten bodies spew life,
neighborhood crushed where once a babbling brook, hewn wooden bridge, and a simple
playground stood. Shaking, tears rolling down aging cheeks that a city
once again became a shrine to hopelessness that burst
from a tortured soul to splatter, shred victims alive and dead.
Yet, a niggling fear clawed its way up already overtaxed nerves.
Had the shooter once been forced to defend himself over a brook
like the one no longer babbling there?


Author Bio:
Paula Danes’s name has been mispronounced, misspelled, and misunderstood over the years, so now she goes for simple with a contraction of her real name, instead. After decades of crazy experiences, now that she’s settled in Indiana, she’s finally given herself permission to focus on her first love—writing. As she completes her MFA in creative writing, her hope is to share stories and slices of life with readers as she helps them see the world through the different eyes her writing presents.

0 Comments

Nooning Tree Estates~ By Keith Hoerner

5/20/2021

0 Comments

 
$10,000 down
Gets you in
Your choice of
Ranch or two-story
In prestigious Nooning Tree

“Is there one, a Nooning Tree?”
“Of course,” the saleslady answers
Loose strands of hair catching
The corner of her mouth
Like a lie

Tempered by talk of tradition
She motions; I follow
Slipping on the deceptively
Green sod
Outside her display home

She points, arm outstretched
Fingers fanning
In a ta-da moment
“There …
The Nooning Tree”

Under that very shade (weather permitting)
Noon meals were served
To plantation workers
Every day
Quaint, now, isn’t it?”

Yes, if
It were true

If *only* - it were *true*
For a few of us
Still know fact from fiction
About this suburbanized
183-year-old black walnut

Its gnarled branches
Leafingthroughsecrets

Midday laughter filtered
Not
Through this centurion’s autumnal rush
Frenetic excitement hung thick in the air
Frozen families, slack-jawed gawkers, jeering landlords *gathered*

On what is now
Premium
Lot 241 (backing to woods)
Where a barbarian’s buffet
Was laid

Bulging
Blood-shot eyes
Subtle smells of rope-
Burned flesh
Slaves *lynched* on the strike of *noon*

On a *tree*
On
A
Bountiful
S t r e t c h o f l a n d


Author Bio:
Keith Hoerner (BS, MFA) lives, teaches, and pushes words around in Southern Illinois. No stranger to lit mags, he is published frequently. Also the founding editor of The Dribble Drabble Review—his webzine was recognized in the Int'l 2021 Webby Awards as well as being a Best Microfiction 2021 winner. His first book (a memoir titled The Day The Sky Broke Open) was recently published by Adelaide Books, NY/Lisbon; a second book is forthcoming from Adelaide in Spring 2022 (a collection of short stories and poetry titled Balancing on the Sharp Edges of Crescent Moons).
0 Comments

Imagineby Wendy Gist

5/19/2021

0 Comments

 
Imagine your creative spirit within a
Magician’s memory, an inventive mental
Ability like streams
Gathering in mirage deserts to
Insult the perfect dryness of sand.
Nonconforming, a way to
Experience the Empyrean.


Author Bio:
Wendy Gist's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in For Women Who Roar, Fourth River, Galway Review, New Plains Review, Oyez Review, Poetry Pacific, Rio Grande Review, Soundings Review, St. Austin Review and other fine journals. Gist has worked as a professional contributing writer for many leading publications. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of the chapbook Moods of the Dream Fog (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Gist was named semifinalist for The Best Small Fictions, 2017.
0 Comments

Proposed Solution (One Size Fits All) ~ By Tony Marconi

5/18/2021

0 Comments

 
For every mass shooting
​Thoughts and prayers.
 
For every home destroyed
by tornadoes and hurricanes:
Thoughts and prayers.
 
For those afflicted by wildfires
and contamination from
rediscovered, buried toxins:
Thoughts and prayers.
 
For the underfed or the starving:
Thoughts and prayers.
 
For those who die in squalor:
Thoughts and prayers.
 
For those who live in make-shift tents,
for those who live near garbage heaps,
for those who live against walls
near train tracks, near broken shells
of buildings destroyed by bombs:
Thoughts and prayers.
 
Your parents died, your brother died,
your child died for lack of clean water,
for lack of basic medical treatment,
for lack of supervision while playing
in those previously sown minefields:
Thoughts and prayers,
thoughts and prayers,
thoughts and prayers…
as if there were a caring god.


Author Bio:
Tony Marconi is a retired teacher living in Ohio. He has published a book of experimental fiction, The Complete Works of the Literate Dead, and two novels, Toscotti’s War and Upon the Hush of Night. Tony’s poetry has appeared in The Cornfield Review and Grand Little Things, and he has had numerous short stories and poetry as published in various chapbooks and journals.
0 Comments

A Designer of Systems~ By Robert Ronnow

5/12/2021

0 Comments

 
1
​
I say I’m a designer of systems, plans
Man’s
Parts that stand together, set in place to serve
Trees and planets, too, which are unplanned by us
The observant, wise man
Tries to understand
Name the parts, pistil and stamen
Rocks, eskars
Elements.

Winter is shuddering to an end, mud roads
Cardinal pairs
Robin flocks return that will soon pair off
Buds
Soils swell
Will I live to smell it again, learn the lobelias
Understand and name the parts
It ought to be a great comfort to be so insignificant
Go among weeds, a wind
Thinking to myself

One’s never alone
A dichotomous key is needed, a book of twigs and fruits
Accumulated over time and generations
Without it mine would be a blank mind

To be blank but knowledgeable
Without any machinery
In a perfect silence
That is the definition of death for which we have only to wait
But in my panic last night I thought death’s inert
Grace requires consciousness
Hold on long to the senses
At least a century, maybe more
A boy hanging upside down from a fence at sunset, counting clouds

2

Now we go to our daily practice
And chosen disciplines
Sustained by the satisfactions of being good men among our fellow men
Women
Choosing to do this and not that
With the finite days allotted us that at first seemed like a lot
They’re now few
But the chickadee’s life to the chick and the cankerworm moth’s to the worm
Seem as long to them as ours to us
What question am I asking today
By now, past half a century, I should have chosen a discipline
And been satisfied

To be a war president one must have war
May you live in interesting times–wish or curse?
Squirrels, high in oaks,
Fiber, fat and protein in acorns
Strong runners, leapers, climbers
Should stay off the roads which some cannot avoid being where they’re born
Natural selection is occurring
Those that look for machinery in motion
Hesitate or don’t as needed before crossing
Live in larger numbers than those whose modus operandi’s
Guessing
The ravens eat the fur and guts of bad guesses off the roads

I impose my own small order
Having chosen mountains over plains or shore
Go to my daily discipline
And estimate the motions of the seas and stars
Measuring my satisfactions by my children’s satisfactions


Author Bio:
Robert Ronnow's most recent poetry collections are New & Selected Poems: 1975-2005 (Barnwood Press, 2007) and Communicating the Bird (Broken Publications, 2012). He designs systems that allow people to do their best work regularly and predictably, instead of intermittently and by chance, and to produce outcomes in quantities large enough to make a difference in their communities. Visit his web site at
 www.ronnowpoetry.com.
0 Comments

The spring awakening. The sonnet~ By Pawel Markiewicz

5/12/2021

0 Comments

 
The springtide wakes up not only in dreams.
The snowdrops blooming in the moony garths.
One listens the propitious paradise.
The dearest graylag geese coming in flocks.

I think of the Primula from afar.
The wild boar piglets were born in a grove.
I feel springwards the warmness of a soul.
Native dreameries are fulfilled galore.

Springtide be primeval home of Naiads!
I taste the verdure of some dreamed climes.
You are dreamy like fairylike bouts.
The friends of springy morn – are tender owls.

I can praise and bewitch Ovidianly.
Thus, I am able to enchant peaceably.


archaic: garth – garden
genus Primula – primrose
verdure – literary green
bout – dance
morn – morning
springy - vernal
Ovidianly – adverb from Ovidian

Naiad – definition through the haiku:

The tender Naiad
a merest-guardian from the
Greek dreamiest stories

​
Author Bio:
Paweł Markiewicz was born 1983 in Siemiatycze in Poland. He is poet who lives in Bielsk Podlaski and writes tender poems, haiku as well as long poems. Paweł has published his poetries in many magazines. He writes in English and German.
0 Comments

The Home Health Care Aide and the Old Man~ By Jacqueline Coleman-Fried

5/11/2021

0 Comments

 
In the house where my father lived and died,
the young woman who cared for him is trying
to move out.
In her old bedroom, a large stuffed bear
still sits on her bed,
a painting of her sister in Tbilisi with liquid eyes
still hangs on the wall.
For seven years, my father was more constant
than any man she’d known--
more than her father and grandfather, who died young,
and the husband who left her with a child.
My father loved how brave she was, how can-do--
coming to this country by herself,
excelling at jobs too sad and dirty for citizens.
With Dad, she always had a house and kind man
to talk to.
With her—though he couldn’t walk or change
his soiled diapers--
he still had much to give.


Author Bio:
Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet and essayist living in Tuckahoe, NY. She salutes home health care aides, who make it possible for the elderly and disabled to live in their own homes. Many immigrants take these demanding jobs when no one else will, and are not appreciated, but Ms. Coleman-Fried's late father and his aide came to love each other deeply. This poem is about their poignant relationship.

0 Comments

Strings of Sadness~ By Robert L. Martin

5/5/2021

0 Comments

 
Sweet cello tears dripping
from the walls of the caves,
rolling over rocks and flesh,
the crying earth,
the weeping trees,
the dying flowers,
the tombs of the soldiers
as the earth sobs,
rolled up in a fetal ball
inside the pain and pulse,
the orchestra inside the heart,
the cellos conjuring up the past
when the flowers died,
when the earth laid to rest
in the catacombs,
when the rivers ran out of themselves,

sweet cello tears inside the walls
contented in their sorrow,
music of the throbbing eyes,
gardens of sympathy blooming,
beauty in the sadness,
beaute de tristesse,
a moving in the stolid soul,
the melting of the iron hearted,
fire in the midday slumbering,
torches inside the spirit
illuminating the mossy paths,
beauty squinting in the light,
sticking out its proud chest,
blowing off the dust,

arriving when the cellos play,
when the overture begins to cry,
when the beauty comes through
as the mood begins to tell a story
with the sweet sadness of the strings,
the melting of the stolid heart.


Author Bio:
Robert L. Martin wrote two poetry books, "Wings of Inspiration" and "Rhymes of the Joke Machine," both available on Amazon. He is also included in many anthology books. He is a pianist and the organist at First UMC of Wind Gap, Pa. www.firstumcwg.org
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Poet Search

    by last name

    Archives

    January 2023
    June 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012

    RSS Feed

Contact The Voices Project: editors@thevoicesproject.org