Poems for Persons of Interest

  Thank you to all the poets who submitted work for this issue. We couldn’t do it without you. We wouldn’t want to.

  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.