Poems for Persons of Interest

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...

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 ...

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 "...

Frances Boyle is the author of three poetry collections and two books of fiction. Guernica Editions will publish Skin Hunger , her first novel, in 2026. Originally from the Canadian prairies, Frances has long lived in Ottawa.  www.francesboyle.com .  “Kite” was originally published in the chapbook anthology   After the Bookstore Closes for the Night  (Bondi Studios 2012) and republished in   Portal Stones  by Frances Boyle (Tree Press 2014). Her previous poems on PFPOI include " Wing loading " and " Gag Ordered ". Kite (after a painting by David Blackwood)   Luminescent with night, you glow moon-shiny as a misted dime.  Fog and clear cold breath of an iceberg calf, new current to ride through the windstream. Body banks to fly and fall and fly in air beyond air – cool force within the lift and rise belonging to the sky. Wind rips through the gap in your heart to fill it with space, hope insistent, gentle as a herding dog. Exult in the giving over, ...

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...

Carla Sarett writes poetry, fiction and, occasionally, essays; and has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best American Essays, Best Microfictions and Best of Net. She has published one full-length collection, She  Has Visions  (Main Street Rag, 2022) and two chapbooks.   Carla has a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and is based in San Francisco. Ajar Once, dying bees fell on me as I slept naked. I woke to a blanket of failing wings. That is true although other things are not.   For example, I cannot say if the stray cats who wandered through our house at night are a memory or a memory   of a dream as vivid as John Wayne talking to his wife's grave, in the orange twilight.   I cannot say if wildness is escaping through every open space, or if it is lying in wait like the seagulls I imagine flying over my bed   if I forget what I am supposed to do with all of this living and dying and everything in between.   So I might as well start at the m...

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...

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

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.

Sarah Burke Cahalan   w rites about natural history,  hope/grief/faith, the layers of places and how those correspond with our own layers as people moving through time and place.  She has poems, current or forthcoming, in  Hog River Press ,  Poetry is Currency ,  Trampoline , and others.  Sarah is from Massachusetts and is currently based in Dayton, Ohio (USA). Before and afterlife Sometimes on the mattress there are stains, the entropic egressions of those veins that cannot take the pressure of their blood, that leak and swell extremities, distress them raw and tender, pink — despite our care as we compress her legs in socks and straps which resemble, more or less, Lazarus’s wraps, linen strips from homespun flax, unraveling as he surfaces.