Poems for Persons of Interest

Jeffrey Rensch  has been writing poetry for 50 years.  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. Courage Courage, come when you can. Courage be mine, don’t make me Show you in order to have you. Courage, show at night from nowhere, The last alternative to terror, The only viable thing besides. When there was peace we put Our courage in a drawer and closed it Tight and the key got tossed And the side fused with the desk itself And soon our fingers slipped When we tried to tease it open. We grew afraid of the drawer. In a far metropolis I was mugged. They ran down an alley.  Somehow I Went after my life without a thought And grabbed it.  I was like a thief Myself.  How had I managed it? There was no drawer, only the thought Of losing felt like a death. Courage was nowhere till it was. Only when something else was ...

Liv Ross is an urban monk, a poet, a storyteller, and a student of Christian spirituality. When she’s not writing, Liv practices gardening, pipe-smoking, leather-working, and mischief. In the Spirit of Bezalel I take a breath. I breathe out a flame, for Your flame has been breathed into me. My eyes are on the prize, gazing at the gifts held in these hands rising to the task of creation. Art is born of abundance, and abundant are the ways in which to amend awe into the soil of civilization. It all begins with beauty. Yes, beauty. For you best believe that life and laws have limits when nothing guides our gaze or grips our guts, holds our hearts safe against the world's weather. Beauty lies in the eyes of we who behold it. Daily, we drink of deep drafts like dewdrops and tip out the tenderest of threads - slender, silver spidersilks - woven into the warp and woof of wonder. Consider. Even the carrion crow carries iridescent radiance in a certain slant of light. Or amethyst and gold....

Andre Demers is a poet and fictionist from  the  Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. He enjoys reading long poems for  the  Short Poetry Collection on Librivox.    The Gardener Mind Tonight the sleepless at their windows moan, "How sweet it would be to shed the spectacles Of language, learning it all again with eyes Fresh in the morning when my thoughts may matter, And concepts, that need no words to carry them, Would also leave me unperturbed. Please scatter Over my searching eyes a dreamless sleep, That neither memory or imagination Disturb my practice at the dying thing. Maybe the flashing over of our life Occurs at once, or over all the nights We spend a span in poking through the past In seeming needfulness, whether it be A memory aged a decade or a day." And the wind says, as a sandman singing to us, "The trouble with thought is that its object is Not clearly a free choice, since habit has Begun its bundle of conjunctive choices So very long ago whe...

Stephen   Bauhart  is a poet, a father, and a PhD student at the University of Calgary. After a twelve year writer's block he's back trying to make it all make sense in verse and rhyme Alberta Prairie Breeze A million million stalks of grass Sway and whisper, bend, and flow, Murmuring ‘round those who pass – Bid they “welcome”?  Bid they “go”? Just walk, my friend – you’ll never know. That murmur’s not for you, my friend – The secrets prairie breezes said, And say and say without an end Will still be whispered when you’re dead, To swaying seas of grass, instead.

Grant Shimmin  is a New Zealand 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 ,    The   Hemlock Journal ,   Blue Bottle Journal  and   Cool Beans Lit. This poem was originally published in KUDU . Spring song There’s a bird whistling a tribute to the reddening sky I think it’s a warbler Grey According to the bird books which don’t list the colours of its song  or that it rises above the criss-crossing, chattering chorus of the avian commoners-by-comparison  It’s the song of fast-coming Spring putting on a preview before Winter has a final wet whirl Of grades of gorgeous green grasping gratefully at hillsides where gorse bursts buttery from its buds Of pink and ivory blossoms  Of crisp mornings of blue and lightening hues of gold Grey royalty, this warbler Musical monarch of the verdant valley Would that...

Michael Helsem   was born in Dallas in 1958. Shortly afterwards, fish fell from the sky. Prayer Breakfast Alizarin zip back Yaldabaoth creel Xeric dew were Entire vestige fade   Unless grim time Has saved iridescence Respendent jonquil Quisling keyhole paid   Lucky our moment now Not mere oligarch Looms puissant Kriegspiel Quite jolly rodent   I saw heinous Thugs gobble up Fire voracious eaves Woven dire xyster   Culls your barrows Zymurgic America

Steve Knepper edits  New Verse Review: A Journal of Lyric and Narrative Poetry . Farmhouse Cellar Icicles scale its skin of stone. Its door’s half-dammed             by the drifting floes. Come in now snow child. Kick off your boots. Doze stove-side deep in a dragon’s heat, lulled by the crack             of cordwood aflame down in this vault             where visions flicker, this castoff heap,             this hoarded treasure: the lacquered rack             where deer rifles wait, the ice cream crank,             canister, and bucket, the pumpkin pail,           ...

Paul  D.  Deane  is a computational linguist by vocation and a poet by avocation. He has edited  Forgotten Ground Regained  ( alliteration.net , a website devoted to modern English alliterative verse) since 1999. Three of his poems appear in Dennis Wise’s book,  Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology. What a Perfect Poem A sample of the flyting form once beloved for insult and abuse Pal, pardon me, but your polished verse like a bright, burnished mirror just blanks out my vision. When you take your turn next I trust you'll be terse -- just swerve round and swing into sweeping revision. No lemon or lime could make my lips purse when meter meets matter in mad imprecision like a perfectly patterned poetic hearse. Let it go to ground and its grave condition in time      will surpass the power of parasites and mold.      Both parrots and poets can prattle and rhyme      and bang ...

Paul  D.  Deane  is a computational linguist by vocation and a poet by avocation. He has edited Forgotten Ground Regained ( alliteration.net , a website devoted to modern English alliterative verse) since 1999. Three of his poems appear in Dennis Wise’s book,  Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology. Welcome to Our Website Welcome to our website. We are your friends                          (assembled to serve                          your every sensed need.) Fill out our forms, get freebies galore                     (our plan is just perfect                     for point-and-click greed.) But your name and number will never be revealed       ...

Eric Colburn 's poetry has appeared in Appalachia , Blue Unicorn , THINK Journal , and elsewhere. He lives with his family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Untidy and Simple The vacant lots and leafstrewn alleyways we used to smuggle our small bodies through are nearly gone by now, filled in with new immurements, marked and massed cement, the maze of walls and rules, of laws and loss, that cage us here. What havens have we hurried to, so desperate to escape the past? If you have taken steps toward brighter, newer days, may you yet find your freedom in the wild- ness of the world–while wildness still exists… Some leaves still strew the path. Not every lot has been surveyed, surmised, surcharged. Some child, today, now tiptoes toward some shadowed bliss, now teases out the tightly tangled knot.

Grant Shimmin is a New Zealand 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 ,    The   Hemlock Journal ,   Blue Bottle Journal  and   Cool Beans Lit. This poem was previously published in   fussub . Meeting the ‘hood patrol on my two-wheeled commute Wiry and weathered Faux black leather vacuum-sealed around his sparrow limbs The beat from the portable radio penduluming from the crossbar comfortably outpacing his pensive pedalling Grey hair long under the black beanie of a summer not-quite-arrived Mouth smoke-grip puckered advertising a vacancy He rides, watching warily This is his ‘ hood I ’ m just an intruder in transit

Kelly Scott Franklin  has published poems and translations in  Able Muse , Nimrod ,  Literary Matters , Driftwood Press Literary Magazine, Thimble Literary Magazine, National Review, Ekstasis Magazine, Light Poetry Magazine , and elsewhere. His essays and reviews have appeared in C ommonweal, The Wall Street Journal, The New Criterion , and elsewhere. He is an Associate Professor of English at Hillsdale College, and lives in Michigan with his wife and daughters. Makers' Marks -For Kristine I know the brandy freckles and the rum-drop rains dotting the drafts of Edgar Poe, and I can tell a tale of manuscripts so marred by circle stains they might be maps for walking tours of Dante’s hell. I’ve seen Fitzgerald’s proofs, with pale gin rickey rings, the purple laudanum splashes that De Quincey made; I caught that cedar note of whiskey where it clings to every line that Dylan Thomas ever laid. A fleck of red vermouth, a dark negroni drip in notebooks Hemingway br...

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...