Poems for Persons of Interest

  Editor’s Note Dear Readers, Welcome to the December 2025 issue of Poems for Persons of Interest! I am proud and pleased to offer you poems of love, memory, family, history and contemplation from the 27 wonderful poets who share their work in this issue, including:    J.S. Absher , whose “Life List” takes us into an experience of problem-solving, family memory, beauty, and guilt.  Abiodun Peter Ekundayo, who with “ In This Poem, Love Wears a Mask,” paints a portrait of yearning, desire, and hope. Kate Bluett , who teaches both the reader and her son how to face the things we’re afraid of in “To My Son, On Fear.” Idinye Eweha Favour , a new voice to watch for. “A pen that loves" takes us into the beauty and power of art. I could go on, but it’s my hope that you’ll read the poems in this issue yourself, walking through their landscapes of nostalgia, pain, and everything in between.  Thank you to all our past and present contributors for...

Virgil I Did you see me fall like lightning, Virgil—surveyor of the heavens? I came To play a profane chord for man, Or so the gods have said. But Virgil, Virgil, I dreamt you spoke In tongues with words I could not form When I sang to them my anguished tales of pain And my hymns to Dionysus— Hymns of mourning and of mania, my veins all ice And napalm. I dreamt the sun was black, I dreamt the sea was blood, I dreamt The earth was splintered, I dreamt of Satan's men. II Show me the gorge and the waterfall. Beguile me with scents of lilac and damask, Of mountain woods and olive groves, And with Poseidon's endless tide. Show me the synagogues of Cordoba, And sing me an Andalusian lay. Show me the minarets of Cordoba, And share your hallowed strains with me. Show me the high priest and his blossoming rod. Show me the pillars in the temple of God.   Originally published in The Lyric

  Tithonus in Autumn: A Fragment Perhaps were I to stand where once I stood, Where once I walked, the blue of days gone by Would part, recalling me to my lost home, The happy cottage of my boyhood years, With pleasant wattles, and with waters calm. Perhaps the bread was never quite enough, Nor were the fields of wheat quite e’er so high As we could wish; nathless, when autumn came, The stooks dotted the fields like pilèd gold; And we would fill our table’s twisted horn With berries slight, and warty gourds, and leaves, And hail that little, hollow, half-filled thing As our best prize, a cornucopia Copious with plenty, amply spilling The mellowed sweetness of the world’s decline— Sweet to behold, and sweeter still to taste.

  Elite The golds in their greengold sheathes. The regencies in their diamond swaddles. All the fin de siècles sharp like caudal fins. I could have rejected the pale one, the one Light filtered through like a redundancy of sun. Like a ribbon of snow, I walked Through the cold thick as the plumage of an owl. An owl in the Tyrol’s could have slit My wrist then broke it to the very marrow. I could have fallen and been unable to grab The nearest anything to get back up. Killed by an owl in the Tyrol. The talons of the Tyrol. The Rolls Royce of deaths. The rose filters through snow. Like a ribbon of snow, owls’ Feathers cinched my throat. Snow fell the plush of a chamois. Each crystal started to sting. Powdered glass fell all around and on all of me and inside. My insides got extremely red: What could I have done than die. The death as one gets led to one’s dying and The dying itself, the never dead drama. I did not stay still: like a caesura not a comma. I died—I died hard—but I did no...

  When He Was With Us When he was with us, we would stumble, we were  As children in our errors. But he would guide  Us right, his bit and bridle were a comfort,   And his pale hands were gentle on the reins.  The day then came when he was taken up.  We implored, when will you restore your family?  The tremors in our limbs will thwart your purpose.  Already our hearts yearn for your reunion.  He said the time was not for us to know.  Then darkness fell. Blind now, as everyone  Is blind, we hold each other close, and see  Shadows cast, as if from invisible  Light, high above. We share with strangers what  We can. The gnawing absence grinds its teeth.

The Seagull's 402nd Seguidilla I’d rather than sugar be Salt; what’s good enough For the sea is good enough For me! Off-the-cuff Remarks have been known As many a cinque-spotted Conquest’s cause and moan.

Irish Goodbye Only a chameleon could do it better: Taking on the eggshell color of the walls, Then the front door, Episcopal red, Then the furred blackness of the fogbound midnight, Into the streets of our everyman suburb. Oh, what an enviable skill. For Sartre Was right about other people. No, not you. You are one of the ones worth talking to, And I might have said goodbye had I found you Alone in the hallway. You’d have understood.

Anthill Watch the ants in evening as they wind Homeward. Surely they’ve grown tired of this life, If their lives are like ours: strange and fickle, A tug-of-war between heart and mind, Ready to fold and fall like the ash leaf At the first sign of cold. Still they go deep Into their dark and intimate mazes Where a few stay awake as others sleep And dream of the sugar of honeysuckle Or the way an autumn sunset blazes Through the veins and arteries of shedding crowns, And the soil, root by pebble, starts to freeze. We too reside in such night-stricken towns, Waking to work and dying by degrees.

Hospice When my own time comes I hope they put me In the same room. You couldn’t see what I saw – The interstate winding into the hills, With soft clouds hovering above it. Every dusk, as the taillights started to flare, I imagined it a thread out of folktale That would lead you into the dreamy West Where we told you everyone was waiting. For what man in his dreams hasn’t driven A fast car into the almost-darkness, Knowing that all who matter are gathered At the edges of a twilight bonfire, Praising without end that laborer Who laid down the highway and wove the clouds.

Authorization Every kid going to the museum with their class had to have their parents sign a photo release form, in case their picture gets taken and shared.  Could somebody provide one for me too? I’m not coming along for this particular outing but I hereby relinquish all rights to images of me amid this fifty-plus-years field trip I seem to be on. Add this clause, though:  nothing where I’m posing. Record the frowns when I became less concerned with how I looked than what I was thinking. Aim the lens at me from behind, hands deep in pockets, shoulders hunched and scuffing my shoes. Shoot some footage of me shaking my head at people I know, at strangers, at myself.  Skip social media and blow up the snapshots until they’re big enough for a gallery wall.  Edit the video into a documentary about  a subject other than me – just a few frames. Let me be the jump cut to something bigger. Make more sense of all this than I have.  ...

Be There There is more to life than being free. Or rather, freedom is something to use wisely, So when you need to you can be a person Who knows how to love. Free, choose what you might Rather not: pack a bag, pull out the plastic, Tell whoever you have to “I’m out.” Embrace a day’s jet lag And just get there, do what you need to do, Because all our mistakes and failures, All the stupid suffering, Can pale before the unknown good Of making that brief call to say “I’m coming. I’ll be there by two.” Although it may not change a thing, Be there. Buck up. Be an adult. Show the fuck up.

Ultima Thule We were sitting in the living room When Sue opened the bedroom door and said “Come now.” We did, and I felt like the groom Called joyously the day that we were wed To join my bride, now drifting in our bed. We went and she lay silently, not moving At all. She wasn’t breathing. Was she…? No one could say. The room was filled with loving Grief. They say that hearing is the last Sense to go. Did she hear us in…time, As everything she was became the past? But then she took one long, deep, slow, sweet breath. She knew her family was at her side. She had been waiting for us. Then, she died.

 On the dock at Ogygia When you are in motion             When you pull the oars at your sides                         When your eyes fill with the horizon   Let me be the water. Let me be the water. Let me be the water.

Melancholy The melancholy that we try to cure Is just the world itself reflected pure. Nostalgia “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.” The things we lose grow cheap and so do we.

Fifty Bridegrooms She was there again. “How was your summer?” She asked. “Better than the spring.” He replied. For he had been forced to think April cruel. And could now never forgive the author. She moved on and he saw her aright: Furtively grappling with some Aeneas, Her belt ashine gleamed his eyes to clarity: A bottle-blonde whore belted up from boy Pallas. Forty-nine bridegrooms slaughtered in bed, And in that belt, an ignorant implied Boast of one more marred beyond life’s limits. He tried to make the argument for her, To return Turnus to simple sympathy: Aeneas had no right to Italy But divine. He stopped: everyone longs for home, Even if it does not bring peace. That is What dreams are for. And in that, he knew her, And what she opposed. We need not ask Troy What we had built it for. We built it for Peace, in and against the dread hope of war.

Flower Poem Nothing left Hope weighing in Below zero   Looking for a cliff   Average bottle of Soy sauce kill a man   Or enough salt Institution living Crippled   Body not bad Brain toast Like a broken computer   They offered me a job As groundkeep Serious offer Wage above my stipend   A plan hatched I took it   We were free Only had to be morning roll call   50 a week in cash or a digital card shop online     plant what I want in derelict flowerbeds bonuses promised if it became beautiful   seeds of course bulbs followed 1000s died at my hands   My first bloom Blue Boy Bachelor Button Not much bigger Than a quarter   Some consider it a weed To be rooted out And removed   I pinned it over my heart walked to the pub   I had cash A beer wasn’t disallowed As long as made that roll call   Saw a lady in denim jeans and flannel shirt Her eyes caught the bachelor button before my eyes   I smiled We got to talk...

Trinity In memory of Richard Feynman “The baby is expected on…” what date? Let’s see, it was the 16th of July. I flew right back as soon as it came through. I got there just in time to miss the bus, But that was fine. I knew where we would meet. Our radio died (because of course it would), And so we sat and played a guessing game Out in that desert silence. Wait, wait, wait… Until, through static, suddenly, the word: It’s time. Just seconds left to go. Stand by. Dark glasses? Geez, it’s twenty miles away. I’ll never see the goddamned thing, unless I’m sitting in a truck, windshield between Me and the ultraviolet light I know Could really blind me. But I have to see The flash. Bright light can never hurt your eyes. And then, oh Jesus, there it is! So bright, I gotta duck. I see this purple splotch, An after-image. That’s not it. Look up, See white change into yellow into flame. And then the ball of fire starts to rise, Billow, get black around the edges. Now You see it isn’t fire, it’s ...

Heartbeat of an Appleseed Gifts there are that drop soft only when grasping leaves and they can descend like soft, gray feathers carried on a fitful current to my yard where I sit and soak in sunshine’s weakening warmth and let the fading beauty fill my heart— a solar powered creature. Aren’t we all? Every breathing thing needs sun, water, and air. As a child, did you hold your breath through a tunnel’s maw? I don’t see how it can be called a game. That sweet inhale shared like a collective gasp when a car bursts from darkness into light feels as close to joy as the sun’s warm hand cradling my face in the autumn chill. Perhaps the point is to make oxygen taste sweet. Beneath the littered wrappers and paper cups, the bones of the road still yearn to be beautiful and curve in slanted sunlight that turns gold even the ugliness of a breathing world. Some stars disappear once looked for, but blaze in rest: dazzling silence of the peripheral. When you feel the gaze of our closest star, just ...

Circle of Referents Chip of sappy bark clinging to the bottom of my heel reminds me I walked barefoot in the dark yard. Blanket imprints pressed like crop circles across our yard reveals all the spots our picnic chased the shade. Pen’s bold ink which falters into streaky shades confessed all the words written in this house. Empty tissue box standing guard so air can be housed warns of a sneeze’s power: in close quarters a plague dawns. Needle in the car bereft of gas in the hour of pearl grey dawn points to all the cross country meets traveled to this week. Inevitable error my mom finds in every post makes me weak with gratitude for words written by a human. Every word is how we heal.

Nothing Gold Can Stay After Robert Frost Nature's first green is green. I know it; I have seen. In fall, green turns to gold, Then withers, becomes old. Time rusts it all away. Nothing gold can stay.

  Odi et Amo (Catullus 85) I hate and I love; Do you ask me why? I have no idea. I’m baffled. I sigh. All I can muster (The answer lacks luster) Is: I feel it happen. I’m tortured. I cry.

An Old Man of the Sea People used to pay me plenty—plus A thousand bucks per plan—to build my boats. But now they pinch my plans and all my notes And no one pays a cent. We don’t discuss Their dreams. There’s never any talk of storms Or reckoning or quest for Southern Cross. They build their boats without a prayer across The foot and tack and shroud, without the forms Of faith. I never thought I’d live this long. My sails are heavy, stowed. It is too much. I turn the engine on each week, a touch Of penance pleading with the main’s plain song. I’ve been aboard this boat for years. I’m thinking Maybe I am a sinful person, sinking.

A pen that loves Oh to be loved by an artist,  the passage of time won't   sweep your footprint.  The last time I saw him,  he hid away, passing a   handwritten note through   my torn door net.  His yellow eyes glowed  like my night lantern blown   to the highest wick.  It carried my first layered  rose petals wrapped in a blade.  Each word pushes the knife further.   The last time I felt him,  the wall shivered, as my sorrow  hugged their cold skins.  Even my mother felt it.  Each morsel was a stone  dragged through my throat.  Its scale is too restless to return.   Lament held me by my arm,  refusing to let me outrun it,  but dawn came trembling through.   I got an affidavit from God.  His words run through my lungs.    My love, stolen by a masked thief  in the night. Even in silence, there is   always a soft release of air. Bu...

 

Augustine to Theodora 385 AD Long have I lingered, wasting time in bed,  While the morn is bright and ripe for timely deeds,  Gazing into thine eyes that always said,  “A little longer, longer; my soul needs  To try once more if it may possess you wholly  With just the eyes, if touch has grown unholy.”  O, Theodora, now I rise betimes,  And thou must leave my side so painfully,  Ripped like a rib. How could it be a crime  To love thee out of wedlock? Dear to me  Art thou forever, and may not be less dear,  Though parting should pierce me as it were a spear.  And yet I may not be as dear to thee  As God, who bids thee sail back ‘cross the sea  To Africa, never to love another,  Not I, not any. Alas, my saintly mother  Has prayed for me so long to approach the light,  And plots a marriage that ends our lusty night.  But she must come of age, and so I wait  Two long hard years for nothing, and ti...

Mary Shelley to Frankenstein “For round the walls are hung dread engines, such  As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch  Ixion or the Titan...” -Letter to Maria Gisborne, Percy Bysshe Shelley  Because it was my pleasure, I brought down  Fire from the heavens to pour into your veins,  Quickening your blood with secret charms. Renown  Must attend my work, and yet for all my pains,  You must be printed with no name,  As though you were a thing of shame,  For those who will impugn you for my youth and sex,  Or perhaps your blasphemous aim,  And a little it does vex  That they cannot suspend their disbelief,  Because the world’s not ready yet to dream  Or hunt the far-off visionary gleam,  But it is a relief  That some future generation will be fit  To be your truest readers, who commit  Ideas to reality. The nature  Of things is coming to light. The legislature  Of states must always be ca...

Soren Kierkegaard to Regine Olsen 1849  O, now, Mrs. Schlegel, my salutations must  Forgo the possessive I would always use  With my beloved exclamation marks  To address you who I think of now and then,  As per your request, though you need not have asked it,  For it was bound to be since the world’s beginning  That you would haunt my days and bless my life,  And I would think of you perpetually,  And have you in the corner of my mind  Throughout the many businesses of the day.  Words are too weak to write out my heart’s wishes,  And it has taken me so long to give  The explanation that you so deserve,  Yes, coming on a decade, in which I saw you  So many times but never spoke with you,  As I would do now for a better world’s sake,  For closure, for nostalgia, for sweet friendship,  For the forgiveness I do not deserve  From you, that would be like a mountain cure,  Treating my wasting b...

study of figure vii i begin to disintegrate, disillusionment takes my hand and kisses my palm. these are my last rites. i listen to the voices in the form of music. i cannot decipher a reality that is clean. everyone looks dirty. their faces are disgusting. i want to cut their heads off. can i help you with something? please do not touch me.

This old experiment of green The forest-opened senses, on return,  are over-filled by all of our machines.  Not just the glowing spell of screens,  but car hum, airplane roar, and churn  of laundry in its drum. We burn  a million candles as we clean  our scarcely soiled PJs and jeans.  The noise and light too much, we learn  again to close ourselves, to shut and lock  our doors, and fingertips, and ears, and focus  all of our attention—on our screens,  of course—our screens and nothing but our screens.  (Well, maybe earbuds too?) But if we block  out nature, won't it just, in turn, block us?  

 in the dark A single cricket stirs. There is no sign for sense but this slight scrape of cadence in small hours. Such complete dark is simple – no outlines, no details. Somewhere an earthworm feels wings vibrate in the temple. Dear Death in whose august milieu there are no throes that winnow breath through dust – disclose to me somehow your undisturbance while things fall apart. Let me borrow now some silence from my stock-still heart. Big Oak Flat Road, October Whole fields are foxfur dun: stalks burdened with vermillion dust, the calyx gone to rust, bowed underneath the moth- weight of October sun. Summer was just a guest. Along her slant egress each reed leans toward the south.

To My Son, On Fear The first thing is to face it: Turn around. You’ve run so long that you can’t feel your legs; you didn’t even know you ran. Sit down. It says it gives a damn, but it reneges, and every step you ran more tightly bound you to its side. Don’t lift your hands. Don’t beg, for that’s a power you grant it: Take it back. Hold still and let the monstrous thing attack. I know, my love; I know you’re terrified, but all our fears will catch us in the end. Each day since you were born, how I have tried to shield you from the teeth, the claws that rend. They’ve always caught me but I’ve never died, and there are some things you can learn to mend— but first you have to learn how not to run. Sit down, and lift your face as to the sun, and let the horror soak into your skin. It’s not the thing you fear; it’s fear itself: of dying, failing, falling into sin, betraying, hurting someone. Let it whelm and overwhelm you. Sweetheart, drink it in so that your hidden shame consumes yourself....

Love is Ajar Everything is sideways In this period called life. The spoon sings soprano, the fridge hums in alto, and the curtains do a two-step with the wind. My sister is a square. Solid yet reliable. She folds laundry like origami prayers and guards the house with elbows sharp and love into confession. My brother is a triangle. Always pointing somewhere up, out and away. He plays jazz on the roof with a saxophone made of tin and dreams that echo like goat bells in the valley. Mama is a circle. Round with stories, soft with forgiveness. She rolls through the kitchen singing hymns to the onions, anointing the stew with holy oil and paprika.   Baba is a rectangle. Tall and silent. He stands like a cupboard full of secrets and tools. His laughter is rare but when it comes, it’s a drumbeat that shakes the dust off our bones. And me? I’m a spiral. Always turning, never quite arriving. I write poems on the walls with chalk and leftover gravy, trying to make sense of the sideways gospel we ...

The Doer's Song Do the thing that you must do - Do it, straight and clear. Do what cannot be undone And do it without fear. Then if the world, it goes askew, At least the thing was done, And as you face the aftermath, The next thing is begun. And maybe that’s not meant to be, But, maybe say it was, Then say the thing, and say it true, And say it just because The thing that’s said that must be said Will burn the truant tongue When old men take the words to bed They didn’t say when young. Sayers, doers, will be free To bear the weights they choose, And race for what they wish to be Even if they lose. The heart that roams may not be lost If it wanders its own way, And for a while outruns the cost That man can never pay. First published in the book Holy Jokes & Twisted Rings .

Twinkle Toes When spring-wind blows and winter snows Have overstayed the season’s lease And the twinkle in my toes Must wander — where? God only knows What steps will make them be at peace — Stutter-steps shake winter shivers ‘Twixt crocus blooms across the prairie When feeling free one’s fancy quivers Through feet that float like spring melt-fairy That rides the warm winds, light and airy, Amidst the snowdrifts ever shrinking The sunbeams, and the dewdrops, drinking, Taking in the season, thinking, Of spring that’s springing, growing, chancing, That ice might never slow my dancing! If odd chill breeze reminds me, then, Of winter winds, I’ll think not when, And worry not, choose not to know That seasons come, but also go — I’ll dance as blossoms fall like snow!

 Life List The black cherries were in fruit. The tops of our two trees were thick with birds. We’d never seen their like. The spyglass mislaid somewhere in our rummage, I started up the tree, but the birds scattered. I was raised by Daddy to use the tools I had at hand, to worry a problem like a redbone hound      with a raccoon. I fired at noonday….   Subtle crest, yellow belly, a bandit’s black mask, and red chevrons on her wingtips: cedar waxwing, we found it in the book. Would it have been better if I hadn’t? Murdering a beauty did make me sad,      but beauty made me have to look.

Longest Day Rosefinch on the wire greeting dawn, the town below, the hills beyond spread before me through a window of the home I left years ago: your kind came here after I’d gone, finch from the west, and settled down in the place I’d flown from elsewhere bound without a target, errant arrow.      Rosefinch on the wire, a dying has brought me back to town at summer solstice: time spins us round. At 8 the yardman starts to mow. Heat is rising. Blackberries glow. Fly to the feast, eat your pound,      rosefinch on the wire. The house finch, a member of the rosefinch genus, is a native of the Western US and Mexico. It escaped from pet shops in the 60s and slowly spread across the eastern US. It first appeared in North Carolina in the late 60s, and a decade later it was found all over the state. I remember first seeing it in my hometown maybe 30 years ago.