Poems from the 12-Hour Couplets Contest: Brood X, Elizabeth Johnson

Elizabeth M. Johnson is a lawyer, poet, and transplanted Chicagoan living in Detroit.  She is the granddaughter of immigrants.

Brood X

Before you’re gone again, you’ll leave your mark:
dirt burrows in the yard, the twig’s worn bark.

The paw paw trees will lose their boughs. Cypress,
willow, and ash. Just think how ravenous --

seventeen years! In vast numbers, you sing.
You’re shock and awe, a mating call springing

from a buckled rib, a hollow abdomen.
You’ll leave your mark before you’re gone again.

An ancient symbol of insouciance?
To me, your wide eyes don’t say innocence.

No lovely sibilance, no gentle hiss,
instead continuous, cacophonous,

your whirring cycles faster in the heat.
I’m crunching carcasses under my feet.

Abandoned exoskeletons remain:
you leave your mark. And you will come again.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Poems of Hope Contest: Ozarkian Seasons, Ethan McGuire

Ethan McGuire is a healthcare cybersecurity professional and a writer of essays, fiction, poetry, reviews, and translations who lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana with his wife and their two children. He last appeared in PFPOI in September 2024 Couplets Contest, with  his poem Old Gods . Ozarkian Seasons I Deciduous blossoms, heat breezes, drifting leaves, white water dreams: Hope will never fail.   II Lumbering storm clouds rest palms of rain on the earth— nature breathes anew.   Blistering summer— withering vacationers— praying for Winter.   A cat’s patter wind in shrugging, paint-splashed treetops: Death’s beauty in leaves.   Frost makes fields brittle; crystal ice coats dying trees. Red cardinals sing.   III A wrinkling mirror— grass, dirt, and sky reflected— I pray to God there.   Hunting Spencer Creek— cliffs, red clay, coral fossils— awed, I lost my gun.   Dilapidated oak rife with poc...
Read more

Poems of Hope Contest: A Thief to the Heart of Brother André, Arden Medres

Arden Medres is a poet and fictionist from the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. The sequence here published was born at the height of his enthusiasm for the dramatic sonnet. A Thief to the Heart of Brother Andr é Quebec, 1974 I. If the door to heaven is the heart of Jesus, And the key is love and prayer, have I tried To pick the Sacred Heart that may just free us With feeble twigs? Does He feel me in his side,  Stabbing to prove Him dead, but also craving At the same time a shower of holy water? Am I, who cannot ever merit saving After this act uncivil as a slaughter, To suffer from ghosts until they certify Me madder than the average believer? The locks at your museum would comply To me, but now a paralyzing fever Comes over me to touch the reliquary, Whose seal I dare not break to hold what it must carry. II. But why do I stop here, who have transgressed  Already over mortal lines, and leave The fruit unplucked, which to rub against my breast  Would make the demons ...
Read more

Poems of Hope Contest: hold on firmly when the birds sing, Chris L. Butler

Chris L. Butler is a Black American poet and essayist living in Canada. He is the author of the forthcoming chapbook,   Melodies of the Oppressed   (Ethel Zine, 2025) and a 3x Pushcart Prize nominee. He loves tacos and lattes, not necessarily together — but way more than he should. Chris is committed to the liberation of all oppressed peoples.  hold on firmly when the birds sing after Ha Jin Never let go of your essence Ignore those who shame your beliefs Only you know your life’s history, Let the magpies squawk their beaks And to the virtuosic blue jays— Who oratorio your praise Quit singin’ from that dirty ass bird bath Nobody wants to hear that shit. Never let go of your character May your fingers be an iron fist. Even if the frost bites Or the heat scalds If the pain of the opposition hasn’t welded your hand Then you haven’t held on firm enough As long as you glue your grip to your morals And adhesive your soul to your principles No pigeon can e...
Read more

Poems of Hope Contest: Beaver Pond, Maya Clubine

Maya Clubine 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, and her poem " Sun Inside My Brain " won the inaugural PFPOI 12-Hour Sonnet Contest. You can find her and her work at mayaclubine.ca . "Beaver Pond" first appeared in the McMaster Journal of Theology & Ministry . Beaver Pond I saw him once. Between two quiet moments when everything was cloaked in the warm sunfade and the haze of frog song by the pond. He pierced the surface like a finger in an open wound, leaving a wake behind him big enough to haul a bright new world. Since then, I haven’t seen him. Maybe I scared him away, or maybe he has changed his route for fear of his disrupting me. But still, at every turn, I look for him. I’m left unsatisfied by that first glimpse and go on hungrily searching for another. Something about his presence reassures me. I yearn to know that “Beaver Pond” is not some...
Read more

Poems from the 12-Hour Couplet Contest: Sigh, Adam Strauss

Adam Strauss lives in San Diego.  Poems of his appear in the Brooklyn Rail , Prelude , and New American Writing .  H e adores the works of Marc Chagall.​ Sigh Dog—dog—loose Like a gotcha-gotcha goose In a patch like denim Where plenary mocks plenum. Thus this, and thus venom Brightens his leg as would a bruise. They told him he would choose A blue eclipses green, should sense Prevail, nor should he hawk phlegm: hum Evasions, like diapasons through a lens Focused on refractions tang its throat, Tantivy factored by tens—and Tennyson’s moat.
Read more

Poems from the 12-Hour Couplets Contest: Ode to a Controversial Pizza Pie, Bethel McGrew

Bethel McGrew is a freelance writer based in Michigan. Her articles have appeared in various national and international outlets. Find her Substack at  furtherup.net . Ode to a Controversial Pizza Pie T hey say that pasta never goes on pies But they ain’t Jules, and Jules says otherwise. Guys, check this out, let’s take it from the top: A mozzarella base (Jules pies don’t flop). Pasta (no spoon, I like to use my hands). You like my tan? I got it in the sands Of Montauk with the family. Now let’s throw More cheese down. Pecorino: Make it snow Over that vodka sauce. You think I’m done? Guys, come on. Jules is having too much fun. OK, the chicken’s tucked in for the night. And now it’s showtime, gang. Let’s do this right. Pop in the oven. Wait, wait for it, wait… Boom! OK guys, now it’s your turn to rate My masterpiece. Come check it out today, Let Jules make all your worries melt away. It’s hot, it’s here, it’s now, it bends the rules. It’s Penne V...
Read more

Winning Poem: 12-Hour Sonnet Contest

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.
Read more

Poems of Hope Contest: Lines on the Death of a Friend, Bethel McGrew

Bethel McGrew  is a freelance writer based in Michigan. Her articles have appeared in various national and international outlets. Find her Substack at  furtherup.net , and check out her poems for PFPOI's Halloween Sonnet and Couplets contests. Lines On the Death of a Friend You hailed the noonday midnight like a child, As sun and earth hung split, unreconciled. Moonshadow blanketed your sleepy street Until the span of darkness was complete. "You'd hate to be the Third Stage in a play, Walk out to find the crowd has walked away."   That night, we wandered through a golden glow. You brought a cane and took your journey slow. I snapped you with my father, side by side. I caught a Spring Snow shining like a bride. Oh best of friends, gentlest of gentlemen! You'd never see those trees in bloom again.   You faced your sure defeat with roguish grace And little jokes about your yellowed face. You didn't waste a second wondering "...
Read more

Poems of Hope Contest: A gift, Jeffrey Rensch

Jeffrey Rensch has been writing poetry for 50 years.  He is not a big fan of free verse. Previous poems of his on Poems for Persons of Interest include " Being ,"  " Carol of disarray , " and " Thank you for the shivering ," which won the Thanksgiving Poetry Contest last year. A gift Existence by itself is such a gift, It’s almost too valuable to be opened. And who rejects it? Even the rejection Is something that existence offers up, Embracing its own enemies somehow. Utter depression wishes not to be Yet still exists – there is a pulling tide Of goodness underneath the pain, perhaps Making it worse. Must the despair exist? It nourishes a hope it doesn’t want Or says it doesn’t. Yet suppose beneath The misery there lay a bed of joy, Not to be this or this but just to be, hoping against all hope to be dug free.
Read more

Poems of Hope Contest: Listen, Grant Shimmin

Grant Shimmin is a New Zealand new phase poet born in South Africa. An editor for Does it Have Pockets? , he has work in journals globally including Roi Faineant Press , Bull , The Hooghly Review ,  Hemlock Review , Blue Bottle Journal and Cool Beans Lit. Listen Listen, that’s the bellbird Has he switched up his chime for this still, cloud-draped dawn? I think he has. I think there’s a half-note thrown into the regular two-beat rhythm Though plainly he understands rhythm better than I and the rooster who seems to be his neighbour It’s clear that those chimes are the sound check for a Saturday sneaking its light and colour through gaps in the cloudy canopy More voices by the minute are joining the vocal tribute to the arrival of a day cool in its open-windowed anticipation of blind-lowering heat Filter out the random highway rumbles of this dawning hour and listen The best of the day is silence with birdsong
Read more