Amy Barone | Two Purple Poems

Purple

 

Like a desert flower,

they surprise, pop up

on islands of late winter mud.

 

Burst through bare patches of grass.

Symbols of royalty and pride.

Crocuses robed in purple with yellow tongues.

 

Hungry for a new season.

My company on a sunny March day

as the days stretch out.

 

All in wait for more color, light, life.

Easing our loads. The promise of green.

A time of hope.

 

 

______________________________

 

Hyacinth

 

A scent sends me back —

where spring was a destination.

 

Nature nurtured. Violet flowers

emerged in a secret spot,

trumpets of sweet perfume.

 

Today I placed a potted hyacinth

on the grave of loved ones

who tended gardens.

 

 

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Amy Barone’s most recent full-length poetry collection, Defying Extinction, was published by Broadstone Books in 2022. SPD recognized it as a Poetry Bestseller of the Month (July 2022) and an SPD Recommended Book. We Became Summer was released by New York Quarterly Books in 2018. Barone has also published two chapbooks, Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing). Her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, New Verse News, The Ocotillo Review, Paterson Literary Review and several Brownstone Poets anthologies. She belongs to the Brevitas online poetry community. Originally from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, she currently lives in New York City and Haverford, PA. Follow her on Twitter where her handle is @AmyBBarone.

Charles Pierre | Early April Violet

Early April Violet

 

 

An ordinary shift in the chilly wind

brings this seed to sprout amid braided debris,

just above the high-water line on a beach,

where the Nissequogue River enters the Sound.

All one can see are five frail petals

on a slender stem, with no visible leaves

to cushion them in such a punishing place,

where the life of a being so small is gauged

in days, and the thin light of early April

is the only tenderness this flower will sense,

exposed on a raft of dead grasses and reeds,

bent by onshore gusts as the new moon ascends,

when a spring tide floats the violet to sea.

 

 

This poem originally appeared in the author's poetry collection, Father of Water (2008).

 

 

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Charles Pierre was born in New York City in 1945 and raised in Centerport, New York. He studied at the University of Virginia and worked as a copywriter in Manhattan, where he has lived since 1973. Mr. Pierre is the author of five poetry collections: Green Vistas, Father of Water, Brief Intervals of Harmony, Coastal Moments, and Circle of Time.

George Held | Yellow and Honey Moon

Yellow

Yellow crocus
bursts from snow cover
melting my heart

Yellow daffodils
bending in the April breeze —
sure signs of spring

Full moon in June
year’s lowest on the horizon —
honey-yellow moon


______________________________

Honey Moon

 

At ten the White Pine tops are backlighted

by a yellow glow that stops me in mid-

stride. Soon the etched disc of the Honey Moon

follows its aureole over the trees,

and I’m tempted to rhyme “moon” with “June,” but

such custom betrays the unaccustomed

glory of this nocturnal sight. One night

a year, this lowest of all the full moons

on the horizon gilds the east. I might

have been at the movies, or cloud cover

could have obscured this cool phenomenon.

From now on, for however many moons

I’ll be around, I’ll free my calendar

to let me keep this moonstruck rendezvous.

Previously published, in slightly different form, in Phased (Poets Wear Prada, 2008, 2010)

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George Held has published four children’s books with Filsinger & Company, Ltd. and over a dozen poetry titles with various small presses. His most recent book, Second Sight: Poems, was released by Poets Wear Prada in 2019. A collection of stories titled Lucky Boy is due out in 2020. Believing that smaller is better in poetry, he writes a lot of haiku. He wears his trousers rolled in Sag Harbor, NY.

Chiara Maxia | Early Afternoon

Early afternoon

Daisy scent in the air
dry grass stinging my legs
an old white dress.

April

Eyes closed,
flattened by the downpours of sun.
Laid down in the backyard
I disaggregate.

I melt in the sun

I melt.

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Chiara Maxia is a multilingual actress and writer. Born on the Italian island of Sardinia, she has lived in different countries including England, Russia, Scotland, and France. She started training as an actor in Italy, continuing her studies in London and later in Paris, where she graduated in Film Acting in 2019. She currently splits her life between France and Italy. In 2018 she published her first poetry collection, Flirt. ICON — poems and visuals — was released in April 2020.

Joe-Anne McLaughlin | Pollen (in Prada)

Pollen (in Prada)

See how the green grains
secret themselves into gray
sheaths when it rains —
as languorously as verdigris
seeds bronze. And we can breathe.
We can breathe,
at least, until they strip,
refreshed and lusting again
for hot-green sex, and we
sneeze. God bless spring!

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Joe-Anne McLaughlin has an MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University. She has taught at Syracuse and Stockton College in New Jersey. Her books include The Banshee Diaries, published in 1998 by Exile Editions, Ltd., in Toronto, Canada; Black Irish Blues, published by Brooding Heron Press in 2000; and Jam, published by BOA Editions, Ltd., in 2001. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, and The Southern Poetry Review. She currently resides in Munnsville, New York, where she lived with her husband Hayden Carruth, who died in September 2008.

George Held | Spring Haiku

Spring Haiku

Two young deer traipse
across my yard, dipping mouths
to graze green shoots


Green grows the grass
in the Bois de Boulogne —
here comes the sun


Sere grass bending
in the morning wind —
sap stirs the maples


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George Held has published four children’s books with Filsinger & Company, Ltd. and over a dozen poetry titles with various small presses. His most recent book, Second Sight: Poems, was released by Poets Wear Prada in 2019. A collection of stories titled Lucky Boy is due out in 2020. Believing that smaller is better in poetry, he writes a lot of haiku. He wears his trousers rolled in Sag Harbor, NY.

Charles Pierre | Green Vistas

Green Vistas

I walk the hard and darkened streets
of Manhattan as winter thaws,
where steel and concrete choke the earth,
where nature can't unfold or flow.

Gaudy neon and bits of glass
sparkling in asphalt swell the night
with portents of spring that lead me
to a park on the river's edge.

My left hand flies from its pocket
to test the air. The air says, Write,
until trees are flaming with leaves,
until waves are emerald fire.

Title poem of Green Vistas (Halyard Press), first published in 1981 and reprinted in 2009.

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Charles Pierre was born in New York City in 1945 and raised in Centerport, New York. He studied at the University of Virginia and worked as a copywriter in Manhattan, where he has lived since 1973. Mr. Pierre is the author of five poetry collections: Green Vistas, Father of Water, Brief Intervals of Harmony, Coastal Moments, and Circle of Time.

Jack Cooper | While We May

While We May

A fecundity of seed drifts

On the breeze and greenth wakens,

Thickening the tongue and in the eye —

Drunkenness to look on . . . 

All enrapt in a cool spell;

Shivering under a slight stole of rain.

Coin, flitted, of the elm, frittered —

Literally, fluttering butterily — away.

Glows grass (and grows) with her near-glad strength:

Proserpine’s lengthening sad,

Mad turn from afar: Did she not? Come back?

Neither of us lived nor should we ever have loved.



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John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper is the creator of These Are Aphorithms (http://aphorithms.blogspot.com), author of Ten (Poets Wear Prada, 2012), Ten … More (Poets Wear Prada, 2016), and translator of Wax Women, with French texts of the original poems by Jean-Pierre Lemesle (International Art Office: Paris, 1985). His work has appeared widely, in print and online, most recently in The Opiate, Rat’s Ass Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, and Paris Lit Up 7. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, he is editor and co-publisher of Poets Wear Prada, a small press based in Hoboken, New Jersey. He lives in Paris.

Patricia Carragon | Shades of Green

(for Evie Ivy)

shades of green

            in the sunlight

                        my tree knows Lorca



Urban Haiku and More (Fierce Grace Press, 2010)



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spring speaks green

           the buds on trees

                       the blades of grass



Bear Creek Haiku Blogspot, Tuesday, March 31, 2020



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young trees

stretch green fingers

toward sun


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Patricia Carragon is the author of several books of poetry and fiction.  Her most recent poetry collections are Meowku (Poets Wear Prada) and Innocence (Finishing Line Press). Her debut novel, Angel Fire, is forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press. Patricia hosts the  Brownstone Poets reading in Brooklyn and publishes an associated anthology annually. She is also an executive editor for Home Planet News Online.