Poems for Persons of Interest

 Felicity Teague is the author of the poetry collection From Pittville to Paradise . She lives near Cheltenham, England. Revenge of the washing machine   Whoa there! Don’t wrench me open so darned wide – truth is, I’m breaking, warped with all the use. You overload . Last time, I almost died! Well, this is just the usual abuse.   You can’t stop spilling, can you? Trousers, shirts and, worst of all, unlucky underwear. Dude, I could catalogue a hundred hurts you’ve made me suffer through your lax self-care.   You know, one day I might just shout, “ENOUGH!”, give you my sternest treatment, roar on roar till nothing’s left but tiny bits of fluff… and then I’ll stomp across the kitchen floor!   You’ll fall, in awe. And I’ll begin my reign as Queen Machine. Now kiss my filter drain!

Matt Stefon is the author of the poetry collection  Beyond the Spaghettiville Bridge, from Alien Buddha Press. He lives in New England. Baloney It doesn’t match up—I know it doesn’t match up to the expectation that you had when I came home last night back from the store with a bag that wasn’t exactly full of any of the things you had by then already come to expect after countless market trips before—on which I’d spoiled you—like a spoiled king, but which contained the substance of the meal I, over-work weary, then made you, and left out to cool and then, asleep, left out all night. And spoiled. So now, to break the fast, fresh cold cuts served with love on a bread plate. You can even eat this plate. That is great.

James McConachie has been published by Iambapoet, Eat the Storms, Black Bough, the Dark Mountain project and Pilgrim House Magazine. His debut collection will be published by Black Bough, late 2024. Anthro   We invented fairies, for some reason, spritely scampered hand-friends, puckish, princely imps, homunculi, winged tiny heathens. And I wonder why and whether, simply   the familiar comforts of a face are what we need, to feel assured, at home with all our rights, as the ascendant race and brute dominion as a founding tome.   While all around the air, the limbs of trees are dense with weightless lives of dazzling song, from a kaleidoscopic panoply of miracles. I fear we have it wrong   to centre wonder, as a part of us. Since seed set fat, we have been ever thus.

Frances Boyle is a noted Canadian poet and fiction writer. Her first novel comes out from The Porcupine's Quill next week.  Wing loading   A hawk’s spare journey, fencepost to power line, wingspread remembering all the places she’s been, the nest among poplars, the sway of the wind. The distance she travels in an afternoon broken by the amethyst sky, clouds bruised and limping into place overhead, the gaps where the light shows brilliant in cracks. She hunches her head against the ruffling of feathers, the unsleeking of her plumage, barbs bent transverse to the grain by wind and wet. She hover-hops, rights herself. What home has she now?

  The most expensive tulip during the 17 th -century Dutch tulip-mania was the Semper Augustus, a variety of “Rembrandt” or “broken” tulip with streaked petals caused by mosaic virus. According to Charles Mackay in The Madness of Crowds , the final owner purchased a single bulb for twelve acres of land, just before the bubble burst and the flower became worthless. Daniel Galef's first book, Imaginary Sonnets  (Word Galaxy/Able Muse Press, 2023), is a collection of persona poems from the point of view of different historical figures and literary characters. The Semper Augustus Whispers to Its Last Buyer, 1637   It always shall be summer! Once you learn this simple, lovely truth, what’s left to fret? In rows on rows, the crannied wall, the urn, upon my blooming face the sun shan’t set. I am a Rembrandt—my mosaic flaw proves my perfection. Guilders tip the scale against a florin, as, by natural law, what falls must rise: The rending of the veil, the gold within th

  Ella thought this was the not-as-good of the two sonnets she sent. I really disagree. MARRIAGE (SCISSORS) naked in the mirror i cut my hair with kitchen scissors. i like it here, alone with just the soft of my arms, the cool air at my shoulders, my body overgrown. in the other room you sleep, all hot breath and fear half-abated, large and grasping. i walked with you through the valley of death and we came out of it blistered, gasping. so you sleep off your sorrows and retreat to dreams, whose shadow-wounds you'll forget by waking — while i, in my reflection, meet them. each malformed, a sculpture mis-set — i do not miss it. the hair, i mean, the scrape of brush on scalp. each stroke an ache.

David J. Rothman’s most recent books are  Learning the Secrets of English Verse  (Springer 2022), coauthored with Susan Spear, and  My Brother’s Keeper  (Lithic 2019). Settling Scores   Good God, why shouldn’t people love their money? Look what it brings: time, power, clothes, good teeth, Education, safety, comfort, sunny Days on sparkling beaches underneath A clear, untroubled, cobalt sky. Why not? Show me the good that you can do without it, The gift you make untouched by cash. We’re caught In currency’s bright stream, no doubt about it, Though it’s made from the same star stuff as us, As the dirt is, and just like anything On earth it can become wild, dangerous, An evil root, a curse, a scorpion sting. Love may be king, but cash settles the scores. The question is: What do you do with yours?

  I'm posting a few of the entries from the recent 12-Hour Sonnet Contest. These aren't runners up, or honourable mentions, or whatever. They're just poems I liked and wanted to share. If I'm not posting your poem, it doesn't mean I didn't like it! It doesn't even mean I think the ones I am posting are better than yours! Honest. Anyway, this poem by Elizabeth Johnson struck my fancy because it's fun. I think I may have a fun deficiency order, so fun poems are among my faves.  Elizabeth M. Johnson is a lawyer, poet, and transplanted Chicagoan living in Detroit.  She is the granddaughter of immigrants. Low-rise Uprising Attention, Pantsmakers! who have lately displayed an overwhelming fondness for low-waisted pants - I simply cannot be the only one who doesn't want to bare ass crack whenever I sit down. And, too, Attention, Those Who Get The Flash! – it’s not my fault, but I apologize to you since I suppose (but do not know) you’ve got much better thin

I am pleased to announce that Maya Clubine is the winner of the first 12-Hour Sonnet Contest for her poem "Sun Inside My Brain."  Maya is a Canadian writer and MFA candidate at the University of St. Thomas (TX). Her chapbook Life Cycle of a Mayfly won the 2023 Vallum Chapbook Prize. You can find her and her work at mayaclubine.ca .  Sun Inside My Brain There was a little light show in my head, my vision clouded by persistent spots. No fractured skull or artery that bled, only peripheral light and distant dots exploding into fireworks of blue, and green, and red. It was as though my thoughts precariously hung like drops of dew, translucent and too small, distorting all that they contained they dripped things I once knew. I saw myself through glass. I can recall light growing into sun inside my brain, and then a rumbling like the car might stall, a ray of black behind a stroke of pain, and then what struck me as some kind of rain.

 This is a place where I'll be publishing the sort of poems I like -- often that will mean formal poems, but not always. Send me poems you think are of interest to anrettie@gmail,com.