Poems for Persons of Interest

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...

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.

Coleman Glenn lives in Bryn Athyn, PA with his wife and their six kids. His poems have appeared in  Light ,  Autumn Sky Poetry Daily ,  Blue Unicorn ,  THINK , and other publications.  His first collection, A Little Light (2024), is available from Amazon in both the United States and Canada . Magical Thinking At nine, I knew that I could use the force to tap into the universe’s flow and nudge a floating object off its course or sense a stranger’s mental undertow. With passing years such fluid powers waned as oceanic childhood shrank to youth and surety of wish-fulfillment drained, revealing rocky hollows of the truth: we’re made of matter — severed flesh goes rotten; someday a person I can’t live without will die; when I go, I’ll be casually forgotten. These facts remain, unmoved, severe and dry. Some few stray swirling fantasies survive: Existence is. A child is born alive.

I am pleased to announce that the winner of the Thanksgiving Poetry Contest is Jeffrey Rensch for  " Thank you for the shivering ."   Jeffrey 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 " and " Carol of disarray ." Thank you for the shivering The sunlight stayed but lost its floor of heat. What heat there was had nothing under it, felt appliqué. It didn’t issue out of some great, underlying store, some as if molten core of comfort – but was fine to be so cool. Let us take comfort from what might have been pain but was anything but pain. I thank you for the shivering, I like the change. I want to and I do. I’m shivering and so are you. The summer lethargy sweeps down into I don’t know where, the heat goes who knows where. We have to be okay not to be there.

I am pleased to announce that the winner of the 12-Hour Carol Contest is D.W. Baker, for "Alchemists' Hymn."  D.W. Baker is a poet, father, and teacher from St. Petersburg, Florida. His work appears in Identity Theory, The Pierian,  and  Voidspace Zine , and has been nominated for Best of the Net. He reads for several mastheads including  Variant Lit . See more of his work at  www.dwbakerpoetry.com .

I am pleased to announce that Ella Harrigan is the winner of the 12-Hour Couplets Contest for her poem "Mother."  Ella Harrigan is a poet and student at Swarthmore College, where she is a senior editor at the magazine Small Craft Warnings . She was the 2020 Virginia Ball Creative Writing Competition winner, the 2021 Claudia Ann Seaman winner in nonfiction, and has been published in Polyphony Lit and the Swarthmore Review. Mother yes, imagine it. what, on accident, i took from you. the apartment bright and piled with books   rising from the floor like hills. flowers from a friend on the windowsill.   and you, in the shower, humming, washing your hair. your beautiful long hair.   imagine me unborn, my brother sitting in his old bedroom, home for the summer, picking his nails. his guitar untuned.   you love him. the red that shines through his beard reminds you of your father. the rest isn't clear.   in the kitchen, your mother cal...

I am pleased to announce that Maya Clubine is the winner of the first 12-Hour Sonnet Contest for her poem "Sun Inside My Brain."  Maya 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. You can find her and her work at mayaclubine.ca .  Sun Inside My Brain There was a little light show in my head, my vision clouded by persistent spots. No fractured skull or artery that bled, only peripheral light and distant dots exploding into fireworks of blue, and green, and red. It was as though my thoughts precariously hung like drops of dew, translucent and too small, distorting all that they contained they dripped things I once knew. I saw myself through glass. I can recall light growing into sun inside my brain, and then a rumbling like the car might stall, a ray of black behind a stroke of pain, and then what struck me as some kind of rain.