castle ruins
framed in stone
crescent moon
Competition HERE
Helen Farrell Simcox Has poems published in Revival, Stony Thursday, Haiku Ireland, U.S. anthologies and several e-zines.
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Close your eyes
to the dark,
Because the sun
burns inside us.
For what are our lips
But the dew-crossed moss,
And our breath
But the rustle of slender leaves,
Or our tongues
But the silent bird
Which longs to sing,
But only flutters to the heart?
What out of this kiss
Can open a heart’s deep root,
But the curl of dangerous smoke
Rising from below?
Competition HERE
R.K. Wyrick is a graduate of The University of Missouri. He lives and works and consumes massive amounts of coffee in Kansas City.
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Unending
the tide pours forth;
waves of tireless motion.
Rainbow cascades tumble and froth,
hurl themselves expectantly forward,
catch the slanting of the sun,
crash to earth.
Small explosions of colour
as widening pools
spill ever broader across the ground.
More junk mail on the doormat.
Competition HERE
Ian Williams was born in Lancashire but has lived in Northumberland for over 15 years.
He has been partaking in the rather solitary occupation of poetry writing for many years, inspired in his youth by the Mersey “beat” poets. Ian writes in a variety of style inspired by the people and places around him and the feelings and emotions that they generate. His background in mental health also comes through in his work.
Also a photographer, in recent years Ian has undertaken joint poetry/ photo exhibitions across the North East and Scotland including: Alnwick, Darlington, Peebles, Selkirk and others. Ian’s work has been used by the Northumberland Tourist Board. Ian also performs regularly on the North East spoken word circuit.
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Persephone has fled the underworld once more
the umpteenth time in a million years
her crown fallen behind her, not looking back.
She’s heard that pillar of salt story and tonight
it’s all you can drink
all you can conjure
Ignoring the wicked glint of a comet,
a little streak of time in the back corner of the eye,
Aphrodite’s graceful kiss
buzzes her with forgotten magic
as she reaches out a resurrected hand
to the smiling gentleman who tells her
with words that dash and sparkle
behind his brown eyes
that he can love both sides of her
her fresh green dress
her flame-red hair
Competition HERE
Michael Pacholski was born in 1968 in Wisconsin but has spent most of his life in Illinois where he attended Illinois State University, receiving a Master’s Degree in English (emphasis on Creative Writing) in 2000. His poems have been published in Comstock Review, Karamu, Retort, and 63 Channels.
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Write a tanka about love – love of another or love of a place. Make us feel the emotions connected with your love. Remember the criteria for writing a good tanka posted in the Editor’s View.
Competition HERE
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A rainy day in May,
chill wayward sprinkles lit
through cracked clouds, sun oblique
and sneaky—though denied
full glory, still she lights
this concrete plaza, says
these blocks shall not reflect
a gray, amorphous sky,
but flame in sharp relief.
Bright banks of craggy light
become a summer space,
where winter’s echoes melt
and trickle earthward, catch
fire, seed the air with scent
of baptized clay.
Competition HERE
C G Olsen teaches Norse Mythology and studies Viking poems about pictures on shields, among other things. In his free time he writes, draws, plays guitar and takes his friends hiking in local parks. He has had work published in Fables e-zine and the Rose and Thorn journal, and upcoming poems in Ideomancer and Everyday Poets. You can read up on his adventures on his wordpress blog Vikings, Books, etc.
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he has trapped her in parts
left lying around the house
in the living room
her leg is tied to the bookcase
toes tap tap tapping
in time to the
interminable sounds of the evening
her mouth lies in the hallway
nagging
let me up
and where do you think you’re going
down the pub with your mates again
look at me when I’m talking to you
in the bathroom
she stares wide-eyed from the peeling mirror
scrunches up her nose when
she sees him
her arms plunged and scalded in the
kitchen sink and her bottom below them
curving
tantalising
untouchable up against the cupboards
he lingers
considers
longs then turns away and goes upstairs
where in the bedroom
one breast lies exposed amongst the sheets
it is cold beneath his hand
he stops a moment in the hall
where she is
forever reduced to a pair of angry lips
he shouts I’m off out love
then closes the door gently behind him
Competition HERE
Rachel Hawkins has been writing poetry since she was a young child. Then she grew up, got a “real job” and couldn’t find the time. She just got started again recently and loves trying to use words to connect with other people, past and present, through shared experience.
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beat of hooves
plays bass to birdsong
country music
Competition HERE
Rachel Sutcliffe As a youngster, Rachel Sutcliffe had a great imagination and loved story and poetry writing. For a while, her creative writing took a back seat as she discovered the joys of foreign language learning. However she remained an avid reader despite not writing as much herself. Personal circumstances have led her to really concentrate on her writing again. She finds it a great form of therapy! Rachel is an active member of a writing group and is pleased to have seen several of her poems and short stories published recently in various anthologies and magazines.
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In his suicide note
he joked that his Irish blood
had been at war with his English blood
and that if the note wasn’t
crumpled, discarded,
and thrown away by morning,
his attempts to negotiate a peace
had been disastrously in vain.
Competition HERE
Robert W. Booth is a gentleman-bastard, poet, scoundrel, scholar, and thief. Though he typically works full time in his home state of Maine, Robert is currently cut adrift on an open ended road-trip with no set destinations or return date and very well may be the scraggly-bearded man bending an elbow two bar stools down.
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cold winter evening
on a distant balcony
a firefly
Competition HERE
Matthew Christian Borkowski is from the Southeast U.S. originally, but for the past nine years has been living on Shikoku in west Japan. He is slowly working on completing the 88 Temple Pilgrimage of Kukai.
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