Poems for Persons of Interest

 If there's one thing that gets the words flowing, it's death. And with tomorrow being Halloween, the day after All Saints Day, and November 11 Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, and/or Veterans Day, no time could be better for a contest focused on those we have lost. Another day coming up shortly is US election day, and writing a sonnet will help get your mind off all that. Between 12:01 am and 11:59 pm EDT, October 31, 2024: Send a word doc or pdf with one or more sonnets to anrettie@gmail.com.  Send $5 Canadian for each sonnet submitted to   paypal.me/AlexanderRettie OR if you're in Canada, save us both fees and e-transfer to anrettie@gmail.com. By 11 am EST November 5, I will announce a winner, who will receive 50% of the submission fees! All contestants will be contacted by email. I'll publish the winner and any other sonnets I like here by 9 pm EST, November 5 -- to give you some fun news no matter how the US election goes. Guidelines I'm not going to quibble abo

Felicity Teague features regularly in  The HyperTexts ,  Snakeskin , and elsewhere.  Her second collection,  Interruptus: A Poetry Year , is forthcoming in 2025. The Golden Guinea She squeaks and leaps in autumn air beneath the Gala apple tree, the sun upon her golden hair, then stops awhile to sit and stare before another glad Whee-hee! She squeaks and leaps in autumn air of windblown apple, plum and pear and music of the bumbling bee, the sun upon her golden hair, and sniffs towards the crop-rows, where there’s ryegrass growing fresh for tea. She squeaks and leaps in autumn air, as I provide some snacks to share; she eats her apple boats with glee, the sun upon her golden hair. I smile and watch her from my chair, with thankfulness for all I see: she squeaks and leaps in autumn air, the sun upon her golden hair.

Danny Fitzpatric k   is the author of a few books.  He lives in New Orleans and  edits the journal Joie de Vivre . This poem is taken from an in-progress verse drama about the life of St. Jean de Br ébeuf, SJ. Mission Father, I give you thanks. I feel it here, Amid this unadapted wilderness, The mercy that you laid upon your Son. This is a land of water and of blood, A place your own illimitable will Is shadowed forth in river, vale, and wood. Yes, there is a justice in these shadows, The summons of a million trees to one That tells the hungry soul at last to look And see the source of wisdom, to ponder All the pleasing sight can yield, to stretch hands Modeled on the making of love and pluck That fruit whose savor is the life of God. Do not, dear Father, let me lose the sight Of that sweet bark against this forest fastness. Do not permit a petty strength to tamp The urgent soul’s insistence on your love. Let neither cold nor cruel encounter quell The ardor of a heart that seeks t

  Clarence Caddell lives in Western Australia. He is the author of the poetry collection The True Gods Attend You (Bonfire Books, 2022) and the editor of poetry journal The Borough . I Wonder I wonder always what it means      To them, and may not know Until all three are in their teens      And see me as their foe. He always asks, “Do we live here?”      “Do you?” “Did we before?” And like his brothers, his good cheer      Or bad is like a door That doesn’t lock. And now, the text      “Let’s build a time machine!”— Has it an underside? Perplexed      I ask him what he’s keen To see… No answer. Boxes, glue,      Textas I have, and so on. He plucks a flower, starts anew:      With a curious koan: “What's the word for 'flower'?”      He laughs. Then later on, “Why don't I have a superpower?”      (He's still just four, this son Of mine.) “Well who has powers? Me?”      “What do I have?” Oh please Don't say invisibility,      To live in imagined ease Far from my

I am pleased to announce that the winner of the Thanksgiving Poetry Contest is Jeffrey Rensch for  " Thank you for the shivering ."   Jeffrey 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 " and " Carol of disarray ." Thank you for the shivering The sunlight stayed but lost its floor of heat. What heat there was had nothing under it, felt appliqué. It didn’t issue out of some great, underlying store, some as if molten core of comfort – but was fine to be so cool. Let us take comfort from what might have been pain but was anything but pain. I thank you for the shivering, I like the change. I want to and I do. I’m shivering and so are you. The summer lethargy sweeps down into I don’t know where, the heat goes who knows where. We have to be okay not to be there.