WhimsicalPoet: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry, 1: WhimsicalPoet: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry

By Susan Miller, Allison Whittenberg, S.E. Clark and 19 more

WhimsicalPoet: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry is a new quarterly anthology that features the work of today's most talented artists and poets. Each issue is carefully curated to accrue a fine selection of international works.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sara Altman
• Release date: Feb 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393534532

Susan Miller

Susan Miller is an editor/reporter for USA TODAY newspaper who enjoys creative writing as a hobby. Her poetry has appeared in several publications, including Gemini Magazine, Common Ground Review, Months to Years, Under the Bridges of America, Sandy Paws and the Arlington Anthology. She had a short story published in Beach Life.

Book preview

Allison Whittenberg

Lag

When you realize,

"Please return the library books.

They’re on the table."

are her last words;

they balance every I love you she’d given

instead of goodbye.

The incessant familiarity of instruction,

 the sum 

of my mother.

Watching Jordan’s Fall

. . . God, I hate November.

All the hope I had hoped

against hope for Jordan.

Dad beat Jordan, to

straighten him out, to show

Jordan, to silence him.

My brother lived until the next

season, onto the next winter,

very quiet like a fallen leaf.

S.E. Clark

Persephone

With an obsidian blade you

split the pomegranate from 

navel down and found 

rubies. 

I thought you might be impressed. 

You said, I can’t eat these, 

and poured them into your mouth, 

cut up your tongue. 

You kissed me bloody

and I paid for my hubris. 

Sometimes I still taste metal, 

most often on days you are away. 

The stories the bards tell are all wrong. 

They say you ate the fruit of the underworld but 

all the plants in my garden bear gems 

and stalagmites. 

It was you

who took a seed from your pocket, 

grew the tree and broke open the pomegranate, 

fed me berries with tender flesh and hard pitted hearts, 

and I ate the fruit of the earth.

Ben Nardolilli

Over the Frontier

Cowboy in the desert,

You might think he’s in his element,

The finest place for him to be,

But no, this isn’t the kind of desert

You’ve come to expect

A cowboy’s silhouette to blossom in

There’s no mesas, no cacti,

No brush, no shrubbery,

No canyons lined with silver streams

Slowly carving through layers

Of red and brown rock,

No Native Americans  to look out