The Luminous and Surprising in Poetry: An Introduction
I’d like to express my thanks to the wonderful guest editors who co-curated the poetry feature for our Winter issue of Persimmon Tree. I am thrilled to introduce Katherine Soniat and Gyorgyi Voros, who have put together this splendid regional feature of poets who live in the eastern states. I described Katherine Soniat some years ago as a poet of soaring lyric range. Originally from New Orleans, she has developed a sharp sense of the intersections of place and culture. In a 2007 interview with Andrew McFayden-Ketchum, Soniat called such creative meetings the place of the “middle mind,” through which a poet accesses the consciousness of dream-reality, as well as the living present and the lost past.
Soniat travels widely to immerse herself in various cultures so that they become transformative filters for more personal contexts. Expanding the focus of poetry in such a way allows threads of art, myth, history, geography, and geology to inform her collections, shaping sequences of poems that resonate across a broad but personal spectrum. Soniat is the recipient of two Virginia Commission for the Arts Grants, a William Faulkner Award, a Jane Kenyon Award, Anne Stanford Award, and Fellowships to Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. For several years, she lived on a beautiful ravine (with one frequently-noted bear, The Kenilworth Bear), in Asheville, North Carolina, teaching in the Great Smokies Writers’ Program at the University of North Carolina.
Soniat’s co-editor, Gyorgyi Voros, is a nature poet of the marvelous swerve. Her poems seem to go along in one direction and then suddenly, deftly, swerve into surprise and discovery of what Ann Lauterbach has described as “the gorgeous surfeit of the natural world.” An epithalamion for friends becomes a revelatory meditation on the sounds of music in nature. As Voros puts it in the fascinatingly titled “Epithalamion: To Think of Coriander as a Saxophone,” “all things make music.” The poem continues on to a lush litany of the natural materials humans use to make music—the bladders, guts, shells, and even, in Tibet, the “two human half-crania/ joined at the crown . . ./ so that/ beads on string can strike/ the drumheads.” The counsel to these lucky newlyweds? “Knock on this world of bone and skin / and whistle thinly in time”! Oh, to be a newlywed who receives as a wedding gift such a poem! Gyorgyi Voros is the author of the scholarly monograph, Notions of the Wild: Ecology in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, in addition to the beautiful collection, Unwavering. For many years, she taught creative writing and literature in the English Department at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Soniat has spoken of reading poems as feeling like “sitting on a beach while the tide comes in: Each time I sit down to look at them, I end up . . . immersed in their waves.” As I’ve been reading and proofing the poems Soniat and Voros have selected for this Eastern States Poetry Feature, a wave of awe, admiration, emotion immerses me. I meant to just dip in, but the power and force of these poems, and indeed, of the fine poems submitted as a whole, have pulled me in. I emerge quite breathless, profoundly moved and inspired.
These poets write of loss and aging with such precise and compassionate understanding that the field of experience is enlarged. At times, they approach the specter of our aging bodies and of death with such ebullient, sparkling wit that we are able to relax into the essential joys in life—humor being one such joy. As well, however, they bring somber voices of lament, charged by the wisdom of age, to the contemplation and response to war and violence, to the urgency of climate change. Women have observed—weathered and navigated and sometimes survived—disrespectful and even abusive treatment. When they write of such observations, such lived experience, they infuse the scourge of sexual abuse in our society with words of tender praise for the courage of victims in speaking out. It is my fervent belief that such words matter and help to change the environment in which we live, bringing the force of beauty and care to the field of abuse.
With great gratitude to all the wonderful poets for their offerings, to the remarkable poets gathered here, and to the superb co-Guest Editors for their work, I invite you to sit with us on the shores of this poetry feature, and to immerse yourself in its crystal-blue and healing waters.
Killer Whale Menopause
–for Eric Kocher
How did the late night hosts miss this one? Wide open for jokes
about hot flashes cooled down by the open sea? Or stand-up comics
blaming lady whales of a certain age for making the oceans hotter?
Dry blowholes? Killer whale mood swings?
These orcas
live decades beyond their childbearing years, lucky (like me)
to be free at last of cramps. What’s a little osteoporosis or a few
whiskers? A killer whale moustache? Their sisters—belugas,
short-finned pilots, and narwhals—along with some on-land chimps
live old enough to live the good life. Nana marine mammals pass on
ecological knowledge—where to find salmon, sharing fish
with their grand-calves. Most male killer whales
die in their thirties, but a granny whale can thrive into her eighties,
making her, some would quip, the cougar of the sea.
How did the late night hosts miss this one? Wide open for jokes
about hot flashes cooled down by the open sea? Or stand-up comics
blaming lady whales of a certain age for making the oceans hotter?
Dry blowholes? Killer whale mood swings?
These orcas
live decades beyond their childbearing years, lucky (like me)
to be free at last of cramps. What’s a little osteoporosis or a few
whiskers? A killer whale moustache? Their sisters—belugas,
short-finned pilots, and narwhals—along with some on-land chimps
live old enough to live the good life. Nana marine mammals pass on
ecological knowledge—where to find salmon, sharing fish
with their grand-calves. Most male killer whales
die in their thirties, but a granny whale can thrive into her eighties,
making her, some would quip, the cougar of the sea.
Nude with Loons
I rarely see my naked breasts in daylight, or
watch their nipples pierce the stillness of a lake,
a broadcast radar of concentric ripples
in glinting shivery early morning light.
I glide and glide, amazingly alone
and naked in this pristine glacial pool,
stripped to skin, with no protective sheath
or covering to hide myself beneath
— this urban goose who goes to sleep at three
and never sees the dawn — how strange to be reborn
a bashful swan.
I crane my neck to make sure I’m alone,
encircled by the mountains’ sheltering mounds
and spy nearing the isle that bears their name
a pair of loons and their trailing young
track three small V’s across the shining lens
above their splintered, mirrored other selves.
Their famous calls echo in the silence,
an aria of purity and peace.
Yet isn’t this the way the world once was
and the way it might again still be?
Gliding naked beneath a placid sky
propelled by muscles’ languid pull and draw
not prone to fears of spying, or desire
or twitchy thoughts or judgment or defiance
— only a creature floating free
amidst bits of sky and rising, rising sun
watch their nipples pierce the stillness of a lake,
a broadcast radar of concentric ripples
in glinting shivery early morning light.
I glide and glide, amazingly alone
and naked in this pristine glacial pool,
stripped to skin, with no protective sheath
or covering to hide myself beneath
— this urban goose who goes to sleep at three
and never sees the dawn — how strange to be reborn
a bashful swan.
I crane my neck to make sure I’m alone,
encircled by the mountains’ sheltering mounds
and spy nearing the isle that bears their name
a pair of loons and their trailing young
track three small V’s across the shining lens
above their splintered, mirrored other selves.
Their famous calls echo in the silence,
an aria of purity and peace.
Yet isn’t this the way the world once was
and the way it might again still be?
Gliding naked beneath a placid sky
propelled by muscles’ languid pull and draw
not prone to fears of spying, or desire
or twitchy thoughts or judgment or defiance
— only a creature floating free
amidst bits of sky and rising, rising sun
Nobody’s Girl: The Ballad of Jenna Giuffre
1983-2025
(Jenna is the family nickname for Virginia Giuffre.)
Blond girl
beautiful child
even at 7
an object to be defiled
On the streets at 14
a runaway on the loose
where she found hunger and pain
and more abuse
Recruited and groomed
by a dark angel named Ghislaine
trafficked as a sex slave
by Jeffrey Epstein, pedophile most profane
Shattered and battered
and told she didn’t matter
passed around
like fruit on a platter
Escape to love
marriage and motherhood
the specter of shame
always hovering
Denied and made afraid
defamed and betrayed
when she spoke
to the FBI and the DOJ
A maelstrom of death threats
and waves of hate
with no safe place to hide
may have spiked her suicide
Her words from the grave
a white flag unfurled to the world
came too late to save
nobody’s girl
Blond girl
beautiful child
even at 7
an object to be defiled
On the streets at 14
a runaway on the loose
where she found hunger and pain
and more abuse
Recruited and groomed
by a dark angel named Ghislaine
trafficked as a sex slave
by Jeffrey Epstein, pedophile most profane
Shattered and battered
and told she didn’t matter
passed around
like fruit on a platter
Escape to love
marriage and motherhood
the specter of shame
always hovering
Denied and made afraid
defamed and betrayed
when she spoke
to the FBI and the DOJ
A maelstrom of death threats
and waves of hate
with no safe place to hide
may have spiked her suicide
Her words from the grave
a white flag unfurled to the world
came too late to save
nobody’s girl
Lingering with the Web of Life, photomontage by Sally W. Donatello.
Scarcity
Love, ever a torment,
a yearning—the knot
I’ve got for what I need.
Love, not blind, but stupefied
like grief, like bleeding.
The trouble with me
is agony, the piercing note
of longing, its persistence.
It’s plainly the shame
of scarcity, the freeze
of what I sprang from.
I guess I cried.
a yearning—the knot
I’ve got for what I need.
Love, not blind, but stupefied
like grief, like bleeding.
The trouble with me
is agony, the piercing note
of longing, its persistence.
It’s plainly the shame
of scarcity, the freeze
of what I sprang from.
I guess I cried.
Sacra Scrittura
Cast a line from the mouth of the Mississippi to Memphis,
wait until you hear the innocent drop of the lure
on the water and you feel the tug
in time.
Draw up the magenta mackerel moaning
from their long journey from the coast
from their time on the chain
from their time in high cotton
from their time in the mud full Valley of the Kings.
Watch them gasping from their stories
exhaling all they know.
Turn east and turn again.
Cast the line from Memphis to Timbuktu,
listen for permission from the first fisherman in time.
Let the lure settle on the moonlit waters of the Niger
lean back against the line
watch the curved men pull themselves from the water Bambara Bo-so
watch them point their fingers to the Eye Star
and the white dwarfs living in the skies.
Shhhhh
They have been coming out of the water
for 6,000 years to chart the secrets
of slow dancing buffalo women
who mate with constellations
and lower their iridescent, wise children
back into the water
to become fish
to listen to the stillness
and write their cosmic stories
for the leathery volumes they will hold safe
until the right time.
Turn West.
In the morning
cast the line to Salamanca,
the lure will settle on the ever-busy river near the university
What nature does not give, Salamanca does not lend.
You will wait the day long
for the professor fish to carry your line
past the Spanish stories of the adventurer Columbus
past the Mozarabic memories of the Moors
through the ocean to the waters of the Great Hill People.
From all the turning
it is you who will become a fish
full of stories
making your little way
Cayuga Mohawk Oneida Tuscarora Seneca Onondaga
to the lure in time.
Between the deltas and the secret cities
we swim
we fish
following the lure
pulling a trillion words
howling whispering delirious forgiving terrible words
following the line of stories.
wait until you hear the innocent drop of the lure
on the water and you feel the tug
in time.
Draw up the magenta mackerel moaning
from their long journey from the coast
from their time on the chain
from their time in high cotton
from their time in the mud full Valley of the Kings.
Watch them gasping from their stories
exhaling all they know.
Turn east and turn again.
Cast the line from Memphis to Timbuktu,
listen for permission from the first fisherman in time.
Let the lure settle on the moonlit waters of the Niger
lean back against the line
watch the curved men pull themselves from the water Bambara Bo-so
watch them point their fingers to the Eye Star
and the white dwarfs living in the skies.
Shhhhh
They have been coming out of the water
for 6,000 years to chart the secrets
of slow dancing buffalo women
who mate with constellations
and lower their iridescent, wise children
back into the water
to become fish
to listen to the stillness
and write their cosmic stories
for the leathery volumes they will hold safe
until the right time.
Turn West.
In the morning
cast the line to Salamanca,
the lure will settle on the ever-busy river near the university
What nature does not give, Salamanca does not lend.
You will wait the day long
for the professor fish to carry your line
past the Spanish stories of the adventurer Columbus
past the Mozarabic memories of the Moors
through the ocean to the waters of the Great Hill People.
From all the turning
it is you who will become a fish
full of stories
making your little way
Cayuga Mohawk Oneida Tuscarora Seneca Onondaga
to the lure in time.
Between the deltas and the secret cities
we swim
we fish
following the lure
pulling a trillion words
howling whispering delirious forgiving terrible words
following the line of stories.
Smithsonian
Somewhere in the archives there must be
the face of Emmett Till, before and after,
and those men pointing in the same direction
from the balcony where King was shot,
and the line of highway patrol officers
barely holding their dogs on the Pettus Bridge.
Somewhere there are the bayonets pointed at
strikers wearing signs that say, I AM a Man,
and Rosa Parks in her winter coat on the bus,
Elizabeth Eckford in her white blouse
hugging a book as she walks to school.
When the government orders them removed
they will still be here, and there, and here—
too many magazines, books, reels to burn,
too many records, memories to redact.
One exists now only in these words
and in my mind: April, 1965,
spring break—a white hand pointing a gun
out the vent window of a car creeping
behind me as I walk with my clipboard
down a street in Petersburg, Virginia,
the car stopping when I stop
at the porch of a woman who calls me
angel—not because I am, but because she
sees through me to a bigger world
nobody can block. Her gaze is clear
and fierce as she takes the pen, signs
her name, then steps up close to that car,
peers straight in at the driver, her eyes
saying, Here I am, you know where I live.
the face of Emmett Till, before and after,
and those men pointing in the same direction
from the balcony where King was shot,
and the line of highway patrol officers
barely holding their dogs on the Pettus Bridge.
Somewhere there are the bayonets pointed at
strikers wearing signs that say, I AM a Man,
and Rosa Parks in her winter coat on the bus,
Elizabeth Eckford in her white blouse
hugging a book as she walks to school.
When the government orders them removed
they will still be here, and there, and here—
too many magazines, books, reels to burn,
too many records, memories to redact.
One exists now only in these words
and in my mind: April, 1965,
spring break—a white hand pointing a gun
out the vent window of a car creeping
behind me as I walk with my clipboard
down a street in Petersburg, Virginia,
the car stopping when I stop
at the porch of a woman who calls me
angel—not because I am, but because she
sees through me to a bigger world
nobody can block. Her gaze is clear
and fierce as she takes the pen, signs
her name, then steps up close to that car,
peers straight in at the driver, her eyes
saying, Here I am, you know where I live.
These Dead
“The dead are more interesting than the living…
And they can fly.”
—Diane Seuss
Zig-zagging like cicadas
or June bugs
but no
not
airborne
The dead
(these dead
of whom I can speak)
glide
only through time
while they rest
under moss
in the mosquitoey
lichen-tree shaded corner
of Oakwood Cemetery
where I walk
among unmarked graves
one drizzly afternoon
spongy grass yielding to
one step at a time
great-great-grandcestors long since mingled
into the black loam of Iowa
as chimney swifts chirp and burble
a woodpecker’s rat-a-tat echoes
from a shadowy stand of spring-leafed hackberry
These dead
the so-interesting dead
I hear their whispering but can’t
yet
make out words
And they can fly.”
—Diane Seuss
Zig-zagging like cicadas
or June bugs
but no
not
airborne
The dead
(these dead
of whom I can speak)
glide
only through time
while they rest
under moss
in the mosquitoey
lichen-tree shaded corner
of Oakwood Cemetery
where I walk
among unmarked graves
one drizzly afternoon
spongy grass yielding to
one step at a time
great-great-grandcestors long since mingled
into the black loam of Iowa
as chimney swifts chirp and burble
a woodpecker’s rat-a-tat echoes
from a shadowy stand of spring-leafed hackberry
These dead
the so-interesting dead
I hear their whispering but can’t
yet
make out words
The Spiritual Pull of Nature, photograph by Sally W. Donatello.
Norway, 1959
I saw the clouds come all the way down
to touch the mountain across the valley
from my grandmother’s house.
No one at home knew clouds could do this.
In the sinuous climb to the top of the world,
my sister would sing something childish
like Row Your Boat after we were done counting
oncoming cars and blue oncoming cars etc.
“Why am I me?” quivers. “Why not her?”
“What is the difference?” Why were we in the back seat
together in the family car, slithering on two lane roads,
shafts of light on the violent fjords?
Why did I speak a different language?
What had I missed? Why did my cousins eat apples whole, even the core?
And what would my mother say when I lost my sight,
my own fault for staring too long at the eclipse.
to touch the mountain across the valley
from my grandmother’s house.
No one at home knew clouds could do this.
In the sinuous climb to the top of the world,
my sister would sing something childish
like Row Your Boat after we were done counting
oncoming cars and blue oncoming cars etc.
“Why am I me?” quivers. “Why not her?”
“What is the difference?” Why were we in the back seat
together in the family car, slithering on two lane roads,
shafts of light on the violent fjords?
Why did I speak a different language?
What had I missed? Why did my cousins eat apples whole, even the core?
And what would my mother say when I lost my sight,
my own fault for staring too long at the eclipse.
Buzz Off
At least you’re not brittle, Death,
not a sophisticate stalled in gridlock
traffic because you can’t distinguish
“Walk” from “Don’t Walk.” At least,
you’re not mired in transit. Pity’s
not your shtick. You don’t Pepto-Bismol
silkworms. Some say you’re peaceful
but who believes them? Besides,
you obliterate too many pedestrians.
You’re unsafe, you smear the feeble.
not a sophisticate stalled in gridlock
traffic because you can’t distinguish
“Walk” from “Don’t Walk.” At least,
you’re not mired in transit. Pity’s
not your shtick. You don’t Pepto-Bismol
silkworms. Some say you’re peaceful
but who believes them? Besides,
you obliterate too many pedestrians.
You’re unsafe, you smear the feeble.
Om mane padme hum, om mane padme hum
As I drive up West Jackson where a fish crow
scolds uh-uh-uh from a magnolia, a truck
with a Trump sticker blasts through a red light,
my turn signal clicks, and somewhere in the distance
comes the wah-wah of a police siren,
my thoughts push and jangle, full of care.
I slip the CD into the radio and am carried back
to the quiet interlude between crowds of tourists,
fried fish and heavy scones, that rainy
August morning when we climbed the steep
stone stairs of the old clock tower in Keswick,
to the clove-scented room where the man
from Nepal who spends a month every year
lays out his wares—scarves and bracelets, CDs,
incense. He comes from Keswick’s sister town,
where, a poster explains, the people here
helped build a school in the mountains.
In that quiet interlude between jostling tourists,
fried fish and heavy scones. I bought a soft
green scarf and a golden scarf, and through the room
where the man sat silent floated a lilting music,
flutes piercing sweet and then the chanting, long and long.
scolds uh-uh-uh from a magnolia, a truck
with a Trump sticker blasts through a red light,
my turn signal clicks, and somewhere in the distance
comes the wah-wah of a police siren,
my thoughts push and jangle, full of care.
I slip the CD into the radio and am carried back
to the quiet interlude between crowds of tourists,
fried fish and heavy scones, that rainy
August morning when we climbed the steep
stone stairs of the old clock tower in Keswick,
to the clove-scented room where the man
from Nepal who spends a month every year
lays out his wares—scarves and bracelets, CDs,
incense. He comes from Keswick’s sister town,
where, a poster explains, the people here
helped build a school in the mountains.
In that quiet interlude between jostling tourists,
fried fish and heavy scones. I bought a soft
green scarf and a golden scarf, and through the room
where the man sat silent floated a lilting music,
flutes piercing sweet and then the chanting, long and long.
No Fears of Ceasing to Be: I Remember When I Felt Safe to Die
For the sword outwears its sheath/
and the soul outwears the breast.
George Gordon, Lord Byron,
So We’ll Go No More A-Roving
and the soul outwears the breast.
George Gordon, Lord Byron,
So We’ll Go No More A-Roving
When a jagged fingernail catches in the weave of life,
sheath ragged, torn from the life breath
coming in notched rhythm as the heart confuses,
as black mold covers walls and joints,
as junctions wear thin and collapse in surrender,
aging, guessing, which piece, which bolt or axle
will be the one to fail, to bring the body machine
to a screeching, complaining halt,
when fragile veining refuses to budge,
no heavenly WD-40 to lubricate past errors,
rusted parts, when chunks break and fall,
no celestial duct tape to repair leaking
demented brains dripping reason drop by drop
to form viscous puddles on the platform of the soul,
in stubborn, lighthearted resolve
I traipse toward the doorway.
sheath ragged, torn from the life breath
coming in notched rhythm as the heart confuses,
as black mold covers walls and joints,
as junctions wear thin and collapse in surrender,
aging, guessing, which piece, which bolt or axle
will be the one to fail, to bring the body machine
to a screeching, complaining halt,
when fragile veining refuses to budge,
no heavenly WD-40 to lubricate past errors,
rusted parts, when chunks break and fall,
no celestial duct tape to repair leaking
demented brains dripping reason drop by drop
to form viscous puddles on the platform of the soul,
in stubborn, lighthearted resolve
I traipse toward the doorway.
Happiness Startled Me
It rode into town, below the speed limit,
using no directionals, with an out-of-state plate.
I pulled it over, approached cautiously,
said where are you going?
what are your intentions? and
how long, exactly, do you plan on staying in the area?
Its presence aroused in me a vague familiarity.
I was certain we had met before, but
when or where, I could not recall.
Despite my questions, it appeared unruffled,
so I let it go, only to find it later,
an unexpected visitor at my door,
I called my sister—happiness has found me!
Live with it, she said.
I’m wary of the houseguest
but find myself easing into it—
the way my body leans into a hard wind
or settles in an easy chair,
shifting a bit
before I get comfortable.
using no directionals, with an out-of-state plate.
I pulled it over, approached cautiously,
said where are you going?
what are your intentions? and
how long, exactly, do you plan on staying in the area?
Its presence aroused in me a vague familiarity.
I was certain we had met before, but
when or where, I could not recall.
Despite my questions, it appeared unruffled,
so I let it go, only to find it later,
an unexpected visitor at my door,
I called my sister—happiness has found me!
Live with it, she said.
I’m wary of the houseguest
but find myself easing into it—
the way my body leans into a hard wind
or settles in an easy chair,
shifting a bit
before I get comfortable.
The Visual Language of Botanicals, photograph by Sally W. Donatello
Winged
It’s hard to pin down an angel.
They’re like muses or neighborhood cats,
drifting about
as the spirit moves them.
Don’t expect they’ll turn up
with polished halos and hallelujahs.
They’re as likely to sweep by
on a shock of surreal plumage
as a sough of celestial wind.
Under a cover of moonlight,
angels whisper in dream-speak, seed
your eyes with afterglow. They leave
both your pillows smelling
oh-so-faintly of apples.
Or maybe that’s just me.
Your angels
might smell like anise seed or
night-blooming jasmine, like
the forgotten scent in the crook
of your mother’s neck.
You don’t believe? No matter.
Angels draw near anyway. They slip
around the limits of reason, hush
the ten thousand nattering things
that rattle the chambers of your heart.
They come weeping for us,
their pitiful half-baked kin,
creatures made of mud and longing,
born naked, howling, born earthbound,
without so much as a feather.
They’re like muses or neighborhood cats,
drifting about
as the spirit moves them.
Don’t expect they’ll turn up
with polished halos and hallelujahs.
They’re as likely to sweep by
on a shock of surreal plumage
as a sough of celestial wind.
Under a cover of moonlight,
angels whisper in dream-speak, seed
your eyes with afterglow. They leave
both your pillows smelling
oh-so-faintly of apples.
Or maybe that’s just me.
Your angels
might smell like anise seed or
night-blooming jasmine, like
the forgotten scent in the crook
of your mother’s neck.
You don’t believe? No matter.
Angels draw near anyway. They slip
around the limits of reason, hush
the ten thousand nattering things
that rattle the chambers of your heart.
They come weeping for us,
their pitiful half-baked kin,
creatures made of mud and longing,
born naked, howling, born earthbound,
without so much as a feather.
Holidays I Will Not Be Celebrating
On Do Not Bother Your Husband Day
you must not blow on his neck
in a childish and provocative manner
and inquire sweetly what he is reading
On Do Not Tell Your Grown-Up Child What to Do Day
you must not point out
that the big toe is poking through the sock
and the hairbrush is a Superfund site
On Do Not Give Your Friends Advice Day
no telling them to lose weight
contribute to a Roth IRA
stop dying their hair
I also won’t be observing
Throw Out Boxes from the Basement Day
Eat Only Organic Vegetables Day
Do Not Pick Fights with Your Sibling Day
I plan to boycott
Never Complain Day
Keep the Puns to Yourself Day
Do Not Worry about the State of the World Day
But you can count on me for
Worship a Tulip Day
Get Over It and Be Friendly Day
Be Grateful that Your Hands Still Work Day
and You Aren’t Dead Yet Day
which is today.
you must not blow on his neck
in a childish and provocative manner
and inquire sweetly what he is reading
On Do Not Tell Your Grown-Up Child What to Do Day
you must not point out
that the big toe is poking through the sock
and the hairbrush is a Superfund site
On Do Not Give Your Friends Advice Day
no telling them to lose weight
contribute to a Roth IRA
stop dying their hair
I also won’t be observing
Throw Out Boxes from the Basement Day
Eat Only Organic Vegetables Day
Do Not Pick Fights with Your Sibling Day
I plan to boycott
Never Complain Day
Keep the Puns to Yourself Day
Do Not Worry about the State of the World Day
But you can count on me for
Worship a Tulip Day
Get Over It and Be Friendly Day
Be Grateful that Your Hands Still Work Day
and You Aren’t Dead Yet Day
which is today.
Call and Response
I make a vibrating, chuffing sound with my lips, which
is echoed by my mare—though hers is deeper, more
resonant.
I don’t remember the first time this occurred, this call
and response between horse and rider; but now it’s a
regular occurrence,
as we pass through the wooded perimeter trail, the
leaves and twigs crunching beneath her hooves. It
seems to calm her; I know it calms me—this goofy
face I make to form the tickling movement of my lips.
We are serenaded by sweet birdsong, the toonk of
barking tree frogs, and the yips of the resident red fox.
The retired chestnut mare in the upper pasture neighs
insistently to her gray mare friend, ensconced in a stall,
where younger, riding horses spend the heat of the day.
A duet of echoing whinnies ensues, growing ever more
anticipatory, as though they know barn turnout time is
coming, and with it, the evening hay and grain—
and a reunion for the night, where they’ll greet each
other with a full-throated, rumbling nicker. The bond
of their friendship is real, unconditional, primal.
I chuff to my mare once more; she responds, echoing
the sound in kind. Our bond is one of complete trust, a
young mare and her old lady rider,
wandering through the woods at a moseying pace, the
jarring sounds of the world’s discordant voices—both
close to home and far removed—
forgotten, if only for an hour, here in our sanctuary, our
place of refuge. I recall the words of my childhood,
echoing within my head,
a prayerful earworm; I say them aloud, to myself, to
this microcosm of calm, to the universe: Peace be with
you; and also with you.
is echoed by my mare—though hers is deeper, more
resonant.
I don’t remember the first time this occurred, this call
and response between horse and rider; but now it’s a
regular occurrence,
as we pass through the wooded perimeter trail, the
leaves and twigs crunching beneath her hooves. It
seems to calm her; I know it calms me—this goofy
face I make to form the tickling movement of my lips.
We are serenaded by sweet birdsong, the toonk of
barking tree frogs, and the yips of the resident red fox.
The retired chestnut mare in the upper pasture neighs
insistently to her gray mare friend, ensconced in a stall,
where younger, riding horses spend the heat of the day.
A duet of echoing whinnies ensues, growing ever more
anticipatory, as though they know barn turnout time is
coming, and with it, the evening hay and grain—
and a reunion for the night, where they’ll greet each
other with a full-throated, rumbling nicker. The bond
of their friendship is real, unconditional, primal.
I chuff to my mare once more; she responds, echoing
the sound in kind. Our bond is one of complete trust, a
young mare and her old lady rider,
wandering through the woods at a moseying pace, the
jarring sounds of the world’s discordant voices—both
close to home and far removed—
forgotten, if only for an hour, here in our sanctuary, our
place of refuge. I recall the words of my childhood,
echoing within my head,
a prayerful earworm; I say them aloud, to myself, to
this microcosm of calm, to the universe: Peace be with
you; and also with you.
Lover
This sure thing
(kerneled) will unfurl
yielding all
(kerneled) will unfurl
yielding all
Embodying Space-Time, photograph by Sally W. Donatello.
Her People
live when it’s dark in the bedroom, and inside her head.
She doesn’t hesitate. She thinks in stride with nothing.
Hem of a sheet humped up—cave in a city on earth
that could go away.
Tonight, she plays finger puppets with the covers
and whispers, You know, there’s so much sadness in this world.
She’s three, and I almost didn’t hear her.
In my mother’s house there was no heart. In my mother’s heart
she was always looking for a home. I threaded stories of her,
ones neither of us had ever heard.
Soft ones with feathers
at the bottom. When my son had a daughter, she came into
this blueness knowing details with a past.
She doesn’t hesitate. She thinks in stride with nothing.
Hem of a sheet humped up—cave in a city on earth
that could go away.
Tonight, she plays finger puppets with the covers
and whispers, You know, there’s so much sadness in this world.
She’s three, and I almost didn’t hear her.
In my mother’s house there was no heart. In my mother’s heart
she was always looking for a home. I threaded stories of her,
ones neither of us had ever heard.
Soft ones with feathers
at the bottom. When my son had a daughter, she came into
this blueness knowing details with a past.
Domestic
Canopy of trees. Reverie.
Hive hum in the yarrow
displaces road thrum. Home
was once a hankering,
nerves ever on high alert
for elsewheres. Now
a friendly clutter of rooms
atop each other, blocks
full of, if we want it,
child’s play, quiet, not
anything like what the stale
dictates say. Desiccated
roses ring the kitchen,
watercolors stain the sink.
Mudprint in the hall
where we forgot the inside-
outside divide, grass,
leaves, little sticks
and pickings of the day
(rock or feather) littering
our wake. The door,
like breath, swings both ways.
Invites what’s out to
tumble in, and us
to hurtle forth each morning,
domesticity spilling
into the green air, the big
blue-ceilinged house without
walls rippling from this center,
all the world home.
Hive hum in the yarrow
displaces road thrum. Home
was once a hankering,
nerves ever on high alert
for elsewheres. Now
a friendly clutter of rooms
atop each other, blocks
full of, if we want it,
child’s play, quiet, not
anything like what the stale
dictates say. Desiccated
roses ring the kitchen,
watercolors stain the sink.
Mudprint in the hall
where we forgot the inside-
outside divide, grass,
leaves, little sticks
and pickings of the day
(rock or feather) littering
our wake. The door,
like breath, swings both ways.
Invites what’s out to
tumble in, and us
to hurtle forth each morning,
domesticity spilling
into the green air, the big
blue-ceilinged house without
walls rippling from this center,
all the world home.
Season Lightly with Salt
Robin Michel (editor)
Season Lightly With Salt, Poems and Recipes from the Test Kitchens of the San Francisco Wild Writing Women is a joyful and sometimes bittersweet collection of poems and recipes that pays tribute to family, friends and community. Written by the San Francisco Wild Writing Women, poets Angie Minkin, Elise Kazanjian, Heather Saunders Estes, Kathryn Santana Goldman, and anthology editor Robin Michel, this delectable book serves up poems centered around food and family and includes recipes from each poet’s own kitchen.
Preparing and sharing meals with one another nurtures and sustains, comforts and consoles, and heightens our pleasures. We are a nation of immigrants who have brought to America dishes from all over the world. It is more important than ever that we sit at one another’s table and break bread together.
Every palate will find something to satisfy their tastes in these poems and recipes from the various cultures blending in America’s stewpot. You will even learn how to read fortunes in a cup of Armenian Coffee. Available from Raven & Wren Press and select bookstores.
Guest Editor, Katherine Soniat has taught at the University of New Orleans, Hollins University, and for twenty years was on the faculty at Virginia Tech. The sense of place is central to her work, and she travels widely to immerse herself in various cultures so that they become transformative filters for more personal contexts. Crete, the Andes, the Bavarian Alps, and the Grand Canyon are a few of the regions she has included in her writing. Expanding the focus of poetry in such a way allows threads of art, myth, history, geography, and geology to inform her collections, shaping sequences of poems that resonate across a broad but personal spectrum.
Guest Editor, Gyorgyi Voros is a poet, scholar, and amateur mycologist living in Roanoke, VA. She is retired from teaching literature and writing at Virginia Tech. She is the author of Notations of the Wild: Ecology in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens and of a collection of poems, Unwavering. Her poems have appeared in Agni, Boulevard, Parnassus, Sharpish Pace, Shenandoah, Southern Review, and other journals. Some of her poems are about mushrooms.
Cynthia Hogue is the Poetry Editor of Persimmon Tree. Her tenth book of collected poetry, instead, it is dark, was published by Red Hen Press in June of 2023. Her other collections include Revenance, listed as one of the 2014 “Standout” books by the Academy of American Poets, and In June the Labyrinth (2017). Her third book-length translation (with Sylvain Gallais) is Nicole Brossard’s Distantly (Omnidawn, 2022). Her Covid chapbook is entitled Contain (Tram Editions, 2022). Among her honors are a Fulbright Fellowship to Iceland, two NEA Fellowships, and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets (2013). She served as Guest Editor for Poem-a-Day for September (2022), sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. Hogue was the inaugural Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University. She lives in Tucson.
Kristine Rae Anderson is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author of the chapbook Field of Everlasting. Her work has appeared in Anacapa Review, SALT, About Place Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and their three-legged rescue dog, and volunteers as a literacy tutor. 
Ingrid Arnesen taught English to International Students at Cornell for 30 years, and has lived and worked in the Middle East, Scandinavia, and the Far East. In 1987, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to translate and anthologize Swedish women’s poetry. She is a long-term resident of Ithaca, NY.
Joan Barasovska lives in Chapel Hill, NC. She serves on the board of the North Carolina Poetry Society and hosts a poetry series at McIntyre’s Books. Joan is the author of Birthing Age (Finishing Line Press); Carrying Clare (Main Street Rag); Orange Tulips (Redhawk Publications); and Unblessed, Unsung (Main Street Rag).
Helen Beer is the author of numerous short stories, poems, essays, and feature screenplays. She shares her life with a husband, three cats, a horse, and an adventurous human son. She admits to deriving an inordinate amount of therapeutic benefit from mucking horse poop.
Star Black’s most recent book is The Popular Vote, a collection of poems that addresses the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. She is the author of four books of sonnets, Waterworn, Balefire, Ghostwood, and Velleity's Shade, and a collection of double sestinas, Double Time. Her collages have been exhibited at New York City’s Poets House and The Center for Book Arts. She worked as a photographer and visual artist in New York City for many years and has taught poetry at the New School and Stony Brook University.
Big Ivy poet Nancy Dillingham is a sixth-generation Dillingham from the community of Dillingham in the Big Ivy section of western North Carolina. Her poetry collection Home was nominated for a SIBA. Recent publications include No Time Like the Present: A Memoir in Essays; Curves: Collected Stories; After Helene; and On Love: Collected Poems. She lives in Asheville, NC.
Denise Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry are Pink Lady (Pitt Poetry Series, 2025), Second Story (2021), and Scald (2017). Blowout (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami.
Ann Fisher-Wirth is Mississippi Poet Laureate for 2025-2029. Her seventh book of poems is Paradise Is Jagged (Terrapin Books, 2023). With Laura-Gray Street, Ann coedited Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press, 2025). A senior fellow of the Black Earth Institute, she received the 2023 Governor’s Award for Excellence in Poetry from the Mississippi Arts Commission.
Monika Gross lives in Asheville, NC. She holds a BFA in Drama from the UNC School of the Arts. Past writing residencies include Hedgebrook, Hambidge, and Rensing Center. Monika was the 2015-2017 NC Arts Council’s Playwriting Fellow. She has been a certified Alexander technique specialist since 1985.
Gurupreet K. Khalsa, a current resident of Alabama, considers connections, space, time, reality, illusion, and possibility. She holds a Ph.D. in Instructional Design and is a part-time instructor in graduate education programs. Her work has appeared in multiple print and online journals.
Mindy Lewis is the author of Life Inside: A Memoir, co-author of A Curious Life: From Rebel Orphan to Innovative Scientist, and editor of DIRT: The Quirks, Habits and Passions of Keeping House. Her writing has appeared in magazines, literary journals, and anthologies. She teaches memoir and creative nonfiction workshops.
Kathryn Etters Lovatt (Camden, SC) earned her M.A. from Hollins University and continued her studies while teaching at the University of Hong Kong. Where Comparison Ends, her poetry chapbook, and her short story collection, How to Euthanize a Fish, were published by Main Street Rag.
Monifa Love is the author of the poetry collections Provisions and Dreaming Underground, and the prize-winning novel Freedom in the Dismal. Love is a professor at Bowie State University where she also serves as Acting Dean of the Thurgood Marshall library.
Mary Ellen Redmond earned her MFA in poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Cortland Review, Comstock Review, The Drunken Boat, and One Art, but the publication she is most proud of is the poem tattooed on her son's ribcage.
Judith Sanders has published two poetry collections, In Deep and The Universe with Borscht. Her poems won the Hart Crane and Wergle Flomp Humor prizes. Her prose has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and selected as a Longread ”Top 5.” She lives in Pittsburgh.
Betsy Sholl’s tenth collection of poetry is As If a Song Could Save You (Four Lakes Prize, University of Wisconsin Press, 2022). She served as Poet Laureate of Maine from 2006 to 2011 and is faculty emerita at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Educator, photographer, writer and steward of the land thread through Sally W. Donatello’s creative survival. In the digital darkroom she narrates nature’s storytelling. Her images are included in Persimmon Tree (