Poems for Persons of Interest

  Editor’s Note Dear Readers, Welcome to the March 2026 issue of Poems for Persons of Interest! This issue features poems and translations from 29 wonderful writers representing all 6 continents, including:   Bronwyn C , who marks her first publication credit with a surprising, sensuous translation of Sappho 31. Tonye George whose “ Kenopsia Coil” offers up the haunting fragments that remain after loss. J.C. Scharl , who turns the humble CVS or Rexall into a site of wonder and wisdom in “Drugstore.” Gerald Yelle , who digs for bones he didn’t bury, and finds them, in “Glory Be to Mullet-Headed Thunder Gods.”   The poems in this issue address the full wonder and catastrophe of the human condition – love, death, hope and joy – in free verse, in rhymed metrical forms, with longing, with compassion, and with humour. The word count of the whole thing is just over six thousand, and I am impressed, if not surprised, at just how much poetry can squeeze into so few words. ...

Ballistics The safety is always off. You don’t see the barrel shine until light flashes on your teeth, ivory levers, set for the smallest slip.   We don’t speak; we fire. The tongue snaps a silver slide, chambering a syllable before thought clears its throat.   A hello can graze. A goodbye goes through drywall, lodges where the house keeps breathing, long after the argument has aired itself out.   All night we field-strip our mouths, oil the hinges of vowels, pretend we don’t know that recoil bruises the hand, and what’s spent stays spent.

Prime Minister Walpole Leaves Office, 1742 The republican expected that the power of the Crown would be reduced to a mere shadow, the high Tory that the Stuarts would be restored, the moderate Tory that the golden days which the Church and the landed interest had enjoyed during the last years of Queen Anne, would immediately return.                                                                                           Thomas Macaulay, “Horace Walpole,” (1833) shadow; golden; church; landed; last shadow; golden; church; landed; last   So he returned to Houghton, tried to read, found he'd no taste for it, strung those who followed. The kingdom had had twenty years of him.   shadow; golden; church; landed; last   The kingdom had had twenty years of hi...

  Winter Wakened in My Heart On being diagnosed with heart failure. After the 14 th century lyric, “Wynter Wakeneth Al My Care.” Winter wakened in my heart, and its rhythm fell apart. How much longer can I chart the years I've left to live and breathe as leaves turn green, then brown? All seasons end in grief, and yet they still must branch and flow, Whether I'm here or gone below, the sun will burn, the wind will blow another hundred years or more, though winter grows much colder, and spring contains no cure. All my dreams at once seem thwarted, and my faith is long departed; I see the end of all I’ve started— my too-small measure on this earth. I pray the seasons’ passage my life may yet preserve.

  Mid-Life Reckoning If I hear one more woman moan how she’s become “invisible” in middle age— as though it’s only through that narrow gauge that she identifies herself—oh, please! I’d like to share with her a simple fact: not all of us experience life that way; we’ve passed though rooms unnoticed every day. Looking back, we’re glad for what we lacked; it left us free to find a different prize for something more than just our figures, faces. It’s no surprise that we don’t sympathize, or spend the hours longing to trade places. And yet it might conceivably be nice to be admired more than once or twice.

  Heart The ruins here would shock a tabloid journalist. The ruins here would make an ancient V-1 sneer.  A puritan would shake his fist at heaven and turn atheist in ruins here.

  Round the Mountain She’ll be coming round the mountain.  So they said— those voices in the hollows of my head. The promise there still resonates and hums. She’ll be coming round the mountain. It’s been years now, but who’s counting? She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes.   She’ll be driving six white horses, and behind her chariot, symmetrically aligned, her troops will mass, in unimagined sums. She’ll be driving six white horses at the vanguard of her forces. She’ll be driving six white horses when she comes.   And we’ll all go out to meet her at the gate that gapes on life, where even now we wait, and strain our senses for her distant drums. Oh, we’ll all go out to meet her at the gate, just like Saint Peter. Oh, we’ll all go out to meet her when she comes.   And we’ll all have chicken and dumplings, and that feast will spread for the departed and deceased, who now are out there, scavenging for crumbs. And we’ll all have chicken and dumplings, a...

  Sappho 31 I see the light of a god in that person— One of the people, yes, but with ears sharp as a bird that digs for its dinner in the earth He sits opposite you, harkening as you mould Sweet song   And when your charming laugh follows I truly lose myself— My heart beats ruthlessly against my breast, Thrusting to fracture these ignorant fetters that hold together No-one   In truth, my tongue breaks and spills me out, In a moment, the fire will peel from under my skin and split me open— You are the apple of the eye of heaven, singing out But damn me, I can’t hear a thing   I sweat and tremble but To him, it seems all sport, hunting you, while I wilt like yellow grass Discipline me, I beg, as I lie dying, train me to be you Make this lovely song ring clear— Give me the courage to bear it

  Taken Remind me again just what I’m doing here Just when I need it, when I stray in dreams That are not lucid, cloudy as dark beer That renders maudlin till the drinker deems All fortunes blurred. But men duller than I Enjoy without desert—or even with— By measures I don’t reckon but defy, Since all of them defy me to the pith. So weightless in your muslin hippy dress, You stretched me somehow, straightened out my spine In moments; yes, you made the air confess My rightful presence and shored up the mine Beneath my feet that threatened to collapse. Of course, you would be taken. Yet, perhaps…

  Medusa, Preparing to Turn a Man to Stone ( Mosaic Floor: Medusa , the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston) You ask why my poems are locked between my teeth; dear sir; innocence is perjury and the world  broadcasts my vice, therefore I have no choice  but this mind, this monologue; you say the world has changed; I must look outside; you claim I will find towers well beyond Olympus; green tongues, flushed cheeks, venom on tap;   but windows are for fools; I am stone; the Lady  of Thought offers no space for self-reflection; perhaps  she has none to give; my self-portrait is a mosaic  of shattered mirrors; took hours to make; I adore it so;  any robbery would be such egregious sin; see me there, a round-faced girl, hardly a knotted misery; so  sweet, so fresh, so gentle; young to the world’s terrors. 

Strange Man, Flamingo Boat (after this painting: https://www.dorotheum.com/en/l/6535122/) Majesty!  Majesty!  Majesty! Soft, Vice, Paramour! Recognize me, why don’t you— I am your underdog, King of Plastic, Bane of Taste, My faux pearls reign supreme In this—let’s call it Ocean— I am the Night, I am the Moon, I Jump, I Fly, I Crow, I Swan, I chew through mounds of Turkey, I wear a crown of Salt, See us march, see us Glitter as I admire my token-paved Fleet— I glance down, now and then, At the Moss, the sea’s new emerald Rippling underfoot, It is conspiring, cackling—you see? It is a Carnivore, It grins up at my headpiece With what must be jealousy, It inspects my perfect Wings— I must not look, But Majesty, I tremble— Moss, Fungi, Fury, It looks at me and sees a Goose— It waits to devour Me the night I lose my Laugh  And they all see my Soft  And I lose my war with  The scattered Night Sun, Lost to pitch-black, a light  

  priorities kneeling on a chair focused on the blue light of a screen chin on his arms      crossed on the table curved back a perfect C.   crackling of a wrapper in the next room his back, an I his feet freed from the oppression of sitting still.   he uncrosses his arms right palm on the table left on the chair back propels himself toward the ground.                                                                       jumps   sprinting   smiling and screaming   I want   while landing from his final stunt   and looking up at me from his forty inches. ...

  I was given Leviathan A gold ring through his nose and a rope to lead him by. A fitting gift for a daughter born after ten buried in a collapsed house.  I weave lilies in the scales, polish teeth to pearl, sleep in the reptile curl of his tail. I teach Leviathan to speak softly, as I do. I am always afraid. Now no one will come close to me walking along the sea in the early morning or descending dark.  

  Kenopsia Coil When my mother left, the world held me in all the wrong places: behind stars, between rusty doors, in hindsight, too tightly, too often, too late. The chairs kept rocking as if habit could replace a body, as if a child in mourning needs a dice rolled to Ludo losses. My mother was the lightning between me and cruelty, the pulse between my dreams and the ghost inside the wardrobe. Everything in our house tried to remember her—the sidewalks, the chores, the bed still shaped like her absence. I wore her loss in dresses, in earrings. It followed me into showers, into offices, into days that asked too much of me. I built her photographs on the shelf of my head, where grief keeps what it cannot touch. Roots found by storms may never learn mercy, but a love raised by the ocean will always reach for touch along the shore. This island of voids— and still, my father says: you have her eyes. Dark. Sober. Always waiting to light something up. Always dreaming. ...

  Excuses, Excuses The Book of Genesis does not record if, ordered to convene His beastly horde, our father Noah felt unease or stress                                     before the Lord.   Nor, for that matter, did the man profess even a hint of hesitance. I guess he must have felt a sort of embarras                                     at such richesses .    The line of nervy animals went far. Creeping or cutesy, fleshly or bizarre, all wanted saving. How did he appraise                          ...

  Villanelle of Quiet Desperation Frustration’s edge is finer than you thought: life sinks its teeth in you in little ways. No, nothing ever works the way it ought.   There is no coffee in the coffee pot. The milk’s gone bad; you suffer more delays. Frustration’s edge is finer than you thought.   You want a break. This wasn’t what they taught in school. Your life is one unending maze where nothing ever works the way it ought.   The tie you wear to work’s a gordian knot you can’t untie until you get a raise. Frustration’s edge is finer than you thought.   You held out hope (which never gave you squat). Your father died without a word of praise. No, nothing ever works the way it ought.   Your kids don’t look like you; your nerves are shot. You’re not a person but a paraphrase. Frustration is the only thing you’ve got. Things never work the way you think they ought.

  Airplane                 a prayer Dear  God,  I am  afraid  to fly— or rather  to fall out of the sky. Who knows? Perhaps if wings collapse or engine stalls  and airplane falls we’ll make a swift and spiraling descent into a vale of tears  from firmament. Please give me faith that I’ll survive this hypothetical steep dive and keep your arms,  like wings,  spread wide so that  we’ll exit from your side. Amen.

  The Call That Didn't Happen At 9:17 p.m. I set my phone face down and left the room, as if absence could decide for me. The kettle cooled. The light in the kitchen flickered once. And then it started behaving . Nothing dramatic occurred. I returned later to the same, familiar silence, still intact, still very unwilling to explain itself. What we didn’t say found its home somewhere else and slowly settled there,  practically and cruelly— between tomorrow’s queued up plans and the habit of breathing. I could understand then that not all endings announce themselves loudly. Some simply stop asking. The night continues. The body adjusts. A different life arrives without raising its voice.  

  Two Roads I look at one road, then the other. I hold the ashes of my brother who only asked one thing of me before his body set him free.  “Go spread my ashes in the wood where we once played.” I thought I could but now I stand where paths divide. I always needed him to guide.

  Promise I promise not to make fun of your dress sense or drive a cold spike through your skull or disparage your cooking skills or push you off a cliff or make you wait or poison your oatmeal or block your view or have you locked away or shout at you when I could whisper or smother you with a pillow or make you drive on long trips when you’re tired or sic a wild boar on you or bluster or talk to you in riddles or hire a hit man or a voodoo priestess to get rid of you or snore  or blow you to pieces with TNT – and what have you got?             richer or poor             sickness or in health – I have so many promises  and I promise only to break half of them.

  Psalm 5 Give ear to my words, O Yahweh; Take heed of my sighs; Attend to the sound of my cry, My king and my God, For to you I pray. Yahweh, in the morning will you hear my voice? In the morning will I turn to you and keep watch? For you are not one to delight in wickedness; Evil does not dwell with you; The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all workers of iniquity; You shall destroy all who speak falsehoods; The man of blood and deceit Yahweh abhors. But, as for me, by the greatness of your mercy will I come into your house; I will bow at your holy temple in fear of you. Yahweh, lead me in your righteousness because of my enemies; Make your way straight before me, For there is nothing sound in their mouth, Their inner parts are an abyss, Their throat is an open grave, Their tongue is slippery. Proclaim their guilt, O God; Let them fall by their own devices. For the multitude of their transgressions cast them out, For they have rebelled against you. But let all ...

  Psalm 6 Yahweh, do not rebuke me in your anger, And do not chastise me in your wrath. Be gracious with me, Yahweh, for I am weak; Heal me, Yahweh, for my bones are dismayed, For my whole being is sorely dismayed. And you, O Yahweh, when? Return, Yahweh, deliver my soul; Save me for your mercy’s sake. For in death there is no memory of you; Who in Sheol will give you thanks? I grow weary of my groaning; I make my bed to swim all night; I dissolve my couch in tears; My eye is wasted with grief; It grows old from all my enemies. Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity, For Yahweh has heard the voice of my weeping. Yahweh has heard my supplication; Yahweh will receive my prayer. Let all my enemies be ashamed and sorely dismayed; Let them turn back, be ashamed in a moment.

  Two Poems by Bhartrihari 1. Her speech is honey but her heart is poison. Drink only from the lips but strike the poisoned heart with helpless fists.   2. How can the proud fullness of her breasts,  her trembling eyes and brow, her lips  swollen with passion’s urgent sap, fail to disturb me?   But why does this streak of hair, adorning her waist like a string of letters inscribed by the flower-armored god of love, torment me even more?         Bhartrihari (ca. 4th–5th centuries CE) was an Indian poet writing in Sanskrit about whom nothing certain is known. Some traditional sources suggest he was a Buddhist monk, others that he was a king who abandoned his throne for the life of a renunciant. Some have suggested that the poet Bhartrihari is the same Bhartrihari who wrote the Vakyapadiya , a work on the philosophy of language. The editor of the critical edition of the poems, D.D. Kosambi, called Bhartrih...

  Anagnorisis The horror’s how he sees it all too late, misreading signs with all-too-mortal eyes. He thinks his good intentions will negate the horrors. Now he sees it all too late: his hubris, how escape attempts cinched fate. On stage, his fall is now immortalized. The horror’s how we too might see too late, misleading signs and all-too-mortal eyes.

  It's Raining Cigarettes Again We’ve been told to leave them, but I can’t stand the sight of so much white in my garden. I scattered cosmos seeds specifically to disconnect my focus from the sky, get lost in worlds of colors here on Earth. Three weather balloons already, this morning, cradling their contraband in utero. A neighbor shot the last one down.   I’m on my hands and knees, gathering unwanted crops, tossing them into the street the way my grandparents wouldn’t have dared to do with butts or any tractor chaff. The old machines are rusting on the edge of fields that we’ve been told to leave alone. I miss my wife. I call her phone.   Every hour there’s a spherical incursion of forbidden airspace. Her plane’s delayed. The neighbor swaddles his revolver like the baby I am thankful he can’t father. As he waves his barrel at the clouds, stomping on my flowers, asking anyone who’ll listen for a war, what else can I do but close my eyes, and touch the ground? ...

  Survey of Literary Masterpieces II I’ve lost another student in the fog and haunted trees of this darn survey course: the long, long slog from Hamlet to Herzog .    It’s all a little off but could be worse, I guess. If last semester he had bailed, I might have left him stuffed in some stone purse   of Dante’s eighth. As is, he’s simply failed. (He ceased to read somewhere before the whale but after Caesar’s countrymen were hailed.)   The empty seat he’s left will tell the tale, while he drifts further toward the sea’s curved line where sky comes down, till we see just his sail   and then nothing. But all of this is fine. Indeed, not all of them can reach the shore of credit hours secured. The fault’s not mine   if Junior thinks that Milton is a bore, protests that Mrs. Browning is too twee, her husband’s work a towering chore.   You can’t blame me. Oh no, you can’t blame me. What lightning lies on pages I unfurled as best I could. I cannot make ...

  Diplomatic Mission London. A pile of snow whitens the lawn, fireplace sparks, dining glows. Mother  doles from the aluminium pot which she swears  was a gift from her mother who swears  it was a gift from her mother.  Bread, meatballs, hot stew, red wine.  Soldiers murder for this, God knows, refugees kill for this.  A picture sweeps across the screen, vanishes,  sweeps full vision. We need no dictionary to  understand what, who, or where.  Mother continues to dole: Ham? Pork? Mutton?  She placates, cajoles, pleads but  in this house  nobody is dining tonight.

  Two Yellow Marigolds I cut such big blooms  that bend stems,  take them inside  for a bouquet   that I put in a cranberry-red vase  by the kitchen sill,                two suns              rising at dawn              by a pair              of rubber gloves.

  Drugstore It reveals itself slowly, over years, this place—long ago  I saw it all as only hairclips, neon pens, and sweets.  The rest of the expanse was less than mystery, a blank,   more obscure than God or death for being totally unseen,  until one day I suddenly beheld zit cream  and tampons, remediation of the body’s first betrayals, those precious faults by which we are awakened to our lovely frame. I overlooked the Arizona Tea and Dinty Moore beef stew till college midterms, when the little matter of subsistence became a concern; at the same time  I discovered the expanse of pharmacy, which promised little  helps against the migraines battening on my brain and little  helps against the sadness settling on my soul… since then  I’ve found new realms—diapers, wipes, and baby creams  one aisle over from adult underwear, both edges of our life the same—and I’ve bought goods I never knew existed  to address human conditi...

  To My Poor Father Eleven years have gone. It rained a little after your burial, and we all drank tea.   Your fingers in the pyre were just as they were the night you died.   Nothing happened. It was just December, the first week.   Sometimes, I board a crowded bus to get off somewhere in the crowded street dreaming of walking with someone to the sea but always returning all alone to this room.