Richard Weaver (10 Poems)

Author’s note: These poems began as an ekphrastic response to the German Expressionist painter, Franz Marc. Marc sent many painted postcards to his friends. These are addressed to Else Lasker Schular, a poet, dancer, novelist, dramatist, and all-around bohemian who Marc and his wife befriended. Marc was stationed near Verdun, France where nearly 1 million…

Peter Clive (3 Poems)

Fish out of water Strange companions share your dry stone pool: Z-rod and V-rod; comb and mirror; wolf and whale; serpent and crescent; horse and rider in perfect profile, the affectation of dispensing with stirrups in emulation of those foreign emperors whose cupidity and presumption our forebears fought off long ago yet another irony lost…

Lynne Burnett (Chapbook Confessions #6)

Chapbook Confessions is a series in which poets discuss, at length, the writing of their most recent collection of poems, in whatever way they desire. For more information on the series, go here. Below, Lynne Burnett writes on her 2018 collection, Irresistible (Finishing Line Press). First, I must confess I never intentionally set out to…

Luanne Castle (Chapbook Confessions #5)

Chapbook Confessions is a series in which poets discuss, at length, the writing of their most recent collection of poems, in whatever way they desire. For more information on the series, go here. Below, Luanne Castle writes on her 2015 collection, Doll God (Aldrich Press).   When I first read the Chapbook Confessions project, I…

Kathy Boles-Turner (Chapbook Confessions #4)

Chapbook Confessions is a series in which poets discuss, at length, the writing of their most recent collection of poems, in whatever way they desire. For more information on the series, go here. Below, Kathy Boles-Turner writes on her 2018 collection, Ramshackle Houses & Southern Parables.   Listening. That’s all I was doing when poetry…

Robert Okaji (Chapbook Confessions #3)

Chapbook Confessions is a series in which poets discuss, at length, the writing of their most recent collection of poems, in whatever way they desire. For more information on the series, go here. Below, Robert Okaji writes on his 2017 collection From Every Moment a Second.  Chapbook Confession, or, How to Write Chapbooks without Knowing…

Adrian Slonaker (4 Poems)

The Kids Who Moved Away Long before social media and internet searches, there were the derelict desks whose occupants had vanished like the Roanoke colonists. Tendrils of classroom cliffhangers wrapped around each void: Did Tanya graduate from her frog voice? Did David forgo flood pants? Did Kim snap Polaroids in Nairobi? You imagined faces frozen…

Sarah Law (Chapbook Confessions #2)

Chapbook Confessions is a series in which poets discuss, at length, the writing of their most recent collection of poems, in whatever way they desire. For more information on the series, go here. Below, Sarah Law writes on her 2014 collection Ink’s Wish. Sarah Law lives in London, UK, and is a tutor for the…

Amy Soricelli (5 Poems)

Teacher Training I cannot sit her down and say things that will make the difference in the shape of her feet or sounds from the kids she teaches when they ask all the time; they ask about the world and the lonesome way people behave. She will say things now, on the phone, that startle…

John Looker (Chapbook Confessions #1)

Chapbook Confessions is a series in which poets discuss, at length, the writing of their most recent collection of poems, in whatever way they desire. For more information on the series, go here. Below, John Looker writes on his 2015 collection The Human Hive (Bennison Books) Asked to explain the secrets of his craft, the…

Adam Penna (10 Poems)

How to Worship Today, a thousand fallen leaves: some yellow, some red, some green, some circling the trees. They teach us how to worship, and the wind— it lifts the worshippers. It whips them up. They seem hysterical with happiness. I am hysterical with happiness. The sun shines on my head and on my hands….

Ion Corcos (4 Poems)

These Mountains In this still bay, limestone blue, the fall of mountain steep with scree. Clumps of hard grass grip the slope, shorn like valleys I have seen in eastern Turkey. Don’t tell the Greeks, don’t tell the Turks; some of them at least. The far mountains, covered in a haze of sun and clouds,…